Best of Temptation Bundle

by Tori Carrington

  Eva turned away, her cheeks burning. A surprising, hot need erupted deep in her stomach.

  She swallowed…hard.

  “I, uh, forgot to bring my pajamas.”

  Eva jerked her gaze up to Adam’s face, where she vowed to keep it. “Pajamas. Right.”

  Putting pajamas on this man would be a definite crime to society, she thought as her scrutiny dipped back to his gorgeous torso.

  “I usually wear my royal-blue ones on the weekend,” he said. “They’re cotton so they don’t itch, and have these stripes down the front….”

  Eva didn’t understand what he was saying. Royal blue? Stripes? Oh, pajamas. She forced her errant gaze back up to his face and found him pushing up his taped-together glasses. Then her gaze dipped down a second time. Her thoughts threatened to veer out of control all over again.

  She cleared her throat. “Work out, do you, Adam?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Giving him a long, obvious look, Eva smiled. “I asked if you work out.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I do, a little. Does it show?” He glanced down at himself.

  Oh, God. Yes, it definitely showed.

  “Here, let me see if I can’t find something for you to wear.” Like a suit of armor, she thought as she opened the closet door. After a long search, she came up with nothing. It appeared the only thing that would fit him was what he had on…or his polyester slacks and one of his button-down shirts. And he certainly wouldn’t be comfortable wearing his clothes all night. Even if his wearing clothes to bed would certainly make her feel more comfortable.

  “Well,” she said, resigning herself to the fact that she was just going to have to control her raging hormones. “I can’t find anything, so your, um, underwear is going to have to do.” She looked away. “Anyway, I think it covers enough of you to be considered decent.”

  Decent? Now, that was laughable.

  “If you’re sure.”

  She wasn’t sure. “I’m sure.”

  For long minutes, Eva busied herself. She turned off the shower. Folded down the coverlet on the bed. Then crossed to go to her desk, past where he still stood in the middle of her very feminine room looking very masculine despite his geeky glasses.

  She could handle this. She had to handle this.

  “Before we call it a night, Adam, I think it’s a good idea to have that talk I mentioned.” She scanned the room. Not even her old desk chair was here to sit on.

  Instead, she crossed to the bed and started to pat the spot next to her. She changed her mind and motioned to the other side of the mattress. No sense testing herself unnecessarily.

  The mattress moved under his weight and Eva fought the urge to see how his underwear fit now.

  She cleared her throat. “I guess I didn’t make myself clear on the trip down,” she said awkwardly, running her finger along the hand-stitched design on the coverlet. “My entire reason for bringing you here was to make my family not like you.”

  There was a heartbeat of a pause. Then he said, “I don’t get it. Not like me?”

  She glanced at him, wondering if he intended to sleep in those glasses. “Yes.”

  He frowned. “We’re back to that geek thing again, aren’t we?”

  Yes. “No, no, this has nothing to do with my thinking you’re a…geek, Adam. Because I don’t. Think you’re a geek, I mean.” She realized she was babbling, but she couldn’t help herself. He shifted, bringing his body closer than she was comfortable with. She swore she could feel the heat of his skin just inches away from hers. Her pulse leaped. “I thought by not telling you much about the situation here, or what I expected of you that…” She drifted off for a moment, then, “Basically, most people wouldn’t have reacted as well as you did to my family…my father in particular.”

  “I see.”

  Eva could see that he didn’t.

  “I was afraid of this,” he said, staring at his fingernails. Nails that were manicured and neat, attached to fingers that were long and lean, in line with the rest of his body. “I should have insisted you be more specific in what you expected of me.”

  “You did. Insist, I mean,” she said, tugging her hands away from the coverlet when she nearly touched his knee. “I was the one who should have listened.”

  He shifted, obviously uncomfortable again, putting him nearly in the middle of the suddenly too-narrow double bed. Eva almost jumped.

  “Look, Adam,” she said, trying to gather her scattered wits, “my mother said my father is going to work tomorrow. It’s the perfect opportunity for us to leave.” Ultimately, Eva had to face facts. And the facts were that this plan was a complete and utter failure. She would have to find another way to try to bridge the gap between her and her father.

  “You want to leave without saying goodbye to him?”

  Eva closed her eyes, realizing how crass that sounded. “No. No, I guess I don’t. But there’s no reason we can’t leave after he comes back. I mean, he’s not sick as I was led to believe, thank God….” She moved closer to the edge of the mattress, his nearness seeming to give off some sort of electrical signal that threatened to short-circuit her thought processes. “I guess what I’m trying to say, Adam, is that I want you to be clear on how to act when you do say goodbye to him.”

  She met his gaze and found the desire to slip those hideous glasses down his straight nose almost irresistible. She resisted. Because it was the right thing to do. Because the feelings swirling through her body were all too new, too unfamiliar, and had developed too rapidly for her to trust.

  “I never meant to imply that you were a geek, but I’m hoping that maybe you could…” He shifted even closer. “That you could act like one. You know, for his benefit.”

  “I see.”

  This time she saw that he did. In fact, she saw far more than that. She saw that he looked about ready to kiss her.

  “Tell me, Eva,” he said in a voice that wasn’t Adam-like at all. A voice that slid over her hot, hypersensitive skin like a hand, urging to life emotions she had vowed to keep at bay. “If we should ever be placed in a position where we should have to kiss—”

  “We won’t,” she whispered, her throat unbearably tight. “It’s not Christmas, and there’s no, um, mistletoe or anything.”

  She shivered as his gaze homed in on her mouth.

  His own lips turned up at the corners. “Just the same, assume for the sake of argument there is a time when kissing is…expected from us…” His mouth moved ever closer, nearer to hers, riveting Eva’s gaze to the well-defined line of his lips. “How, exactly, should we do it?”

  Eva knew she should move away from him, turn her head, do something, anything to prevent what was about to happen. But the simple truth of it was that she wanted this kiss. She wanted it to happen as much as Adam seemed awkwardly determined to make it happen. And she wanted it now.

  Wresting the initiative from him, she stopped the slowly seductive way his head tilted toward hers by pressing her lips tentatively against his. Then she gave in fully to the part of her that made her kiss him in the first place.

  He tasted of toothpaste, a bit of wine, and hot, hot desire. With the tip of her tongue, she brazenly sought a more intimate taste, aroused by the way he opened his mouth slightly and invited her tongue in.

  Need rushed over Eva in swells, carrying pleasure signals to her limbs. She reached out and braced her hands against his solid shoulders, but the touch evolved into a caress, the caress a bold exploration of the marvelous muscles that made this man oh so much more than an inexperienced nerd.

  He had yet to touch her, and Eva found she yearned for that more than anything. Wanted to feel his hand against her heated flesh, needed him to touch her in a way she suspected he hadn’t touched another woman.

  She rested her hand against his clean-shaven cheek, placing the tip of her thumb in the dimple in his chin. Then she deepened the kiss, plunging her tongue deep into his mouth, urging his into hers. Her breathing became a rapid, urgent sear
ch for the air she couldn’t seem to get enough of.

  She stroked her fingers down his incredibly muscled arms and reached for his hands. Tugging on his hand, she met opposition.

  “Eva, I, um, don’t think—”

  “Shh.” She compensated for his slight resistance and led his fingers to the top of her nightgown. She pressed her breast into his palm. The heat of his skin penetrated the thin cotton and shock waves of pleasure shot through her, pushing aside any doubt about what she was doing, infusing her with an ever-growing need for more.

  His palm stayed, unmoving, on her breast. She strained against it, her nipple hard and aching, the increasingly demanding cadence of her kiss telling him she wanted more, much more.

  Dragging her lips to his jaw, she flicked the tip of her tongue in and around the delicious dimple in his chin. Then down to trace the clean line of his collarbone. She moved lower still to catch a nipple between her teeth, teasing it with her tongue. Her fingers sought the waistband of his briefs. She tugged at them impatiently, slipping her fingers in until they touched the silky, hot, hard length of him. She curled her fingers around his arousal and ran her thumb over the sensitive tip. Finding a bead of moisture there, she rubbed it down the length of him. Adam bucked against her. His reaction prodded her on. She began a slow, concentrated stroke designed to push him beyond his limits in a way she guessed no one ever had.

  “Eva—”

  “Adam…just be quiet and touch me.”

  Eva removed her hand from his Jockeys and plied his mouth with her tongue, coaxing him to return the kiss, pleading with him to finish what she had started. All she knew was the incredible need within her to be satisfied…to obtain the release he promised her with his kiss, his nearness.

  Something seemed to give within Adam and the fingers at her breast slid to her waist. Eva groaned in protest, thinking she had scared him away with words that shocked even her, until he glided his hand back up to cup her breast and rubbed a teasing thumb over her nipple. She shuddered.

  Acting on every instinct that at any other time would set off warning alarms for her to run the other way, Eva urgently bunched her nightgown up to the tops of her thighs and straddled him. She hated when the movement interrupted their kiss, but was gratified when their mouths met again.

  Adam pushed her away slightly and did away with his glasses. Eva was too filled with need to concentrate on anything more than the ball of heat spiraling within her. Adam’s fingers dug into the flesh of her thighs and hauled her forward until she rested against his erection. The action forced a gasp from Eva’s throat. The knowledge that there was nothing more than his Jockeys and her panties separating them further fed the fire within her…until a rush of awareness made her take another look at the fact that nothing more than his Jockeys and her panties separated them.

  Adam’s fingers moved from her breasts and inched lower and lower still, until he’d slid his fingers into the top of her panties, finding the tangle of hair beyond.

  Eva dragged her mouth from his and quickly trapped his fingers with her hand. She rested her forehead against his cheek, suddenly staggered by what she was doing, what she had done.

  “Oh, God. This is…this is insane.” Eva gasped for breath, grasped harder still for a handle on a situation that had reeled so completely out of control.

  Not daring to meet his gaze, she twisted away from where she straddled his hips. She tried not to look at the way his erection still pressed against the thin material of his briefs, but was unable to help herself.

  “I…” She pushed her hair from her burning face. She what?

  Eva lifted her gaze to find he’d put his glasses back on. His hair was tousled and sexy from where she’d run her fingers through it, and very blond without the gel he usually applied. The contrast between the nerd she had thought she was safe with, and the man who had awakened a frightening, insatiable need within her, was dizzying. She clutched at the buttoned neck of her nightgown, making sure it was tightly closed.

  “I gotta tell you, Eva, if that’s what’s going to happen if we ever have to kiss in front of your family, I think we should avoid it at all costs.” Adam’s voice was low and husky, and he looked very un-geeklike with his intense, passion-filled expression.

  Eva flushed anew, her body still yearning for the man a foot away from her.

  She looked down and found her nightgown had roamed up and was bunched around her waist. She pulled it down to cover her overheated, bare skin.

  He ran his hands over his head several times, smoothing his hair back, making him look more like the man she could deal with. Or at least the man she had thought she could deal with. At any rate, his looking more like the nerd she had enlisted would make it easier to deal with him in the way she had to. Which was to keep him and the situation as impersonal as possible. And that didn’t include wrapping her fingers around his straining…

  “Tell me something, Eva. Why did you start that if you had no intention of finishing it?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “You were the one who started talking about kisses….”

  “Yes. And you were the one who kissed me.” He cleared his throat and some of the roughness left his voice, but not much. “Not that I mind, you see. But a man isn’t a faucet you can just turn on and off at will.”

  Faucet? Man? Eva’s gaze slipped over his toned physique then she forced herself to focus on his face and his big, bulky glasses. No, Adam didn’t look a bit like a faucet. He did, however, seem very much a man.

  Lifting a hand to her neck, she said, “I’m sorry. That should never have happened.”

  He was silent for a long moment. “Why?”

  She swallowed hard. “Because I’m pregnant.”

  EVERYTHING ABOUT this was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Despite what Adam’s body was telling him.

  Lord, he had only meant to tease her as Adam the geek, a desire that had proved unwise. But there had been no way to foresee what had just happened between them.

  And what had happened?

  You lost control, that’s what. And you never lose control. You can’t afford to lose control. You’re on assignment.

  Still not trusting himself, but needing to see that she had actually said what he thought she’d said, he shifted his gaze to Eva’s expressive face. Her words finally registered.

  She was pregnant.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I said, I’m pregnant.”

  He sat back, scanning her from head to foot. No way, no how did she look pregnant. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to be bloated, their bellies swollen, their skin splotchy…and weren’t they supposed to be married? He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing at the stupid last thought. Well, at the very least, she should have to wear some sort of letter, the equivalent of Hester Prynne’s own A, to let everyone know her condition. At least until it showed on its own. Let the man know before they were just seconds away from lovemaking that she was about to become a mother.

  Adam groaned. That thought was even more bizarre than the other. He glanced at Eva. While she was still obviously shaken by what had happened between them, she was also looking at him closely. Too closely.

  Deflect and redirect. Isn’t that what he’d been taught during his first weeks as a field agent? In an uncomfortable situation, deflect any suspicion and redirect it toward your opponent. And sure, while he probably should draw on the inexperience expected by the Adam persona he had created, his mind had ceased functioning somewhere between her pressing his palm against her breast, and her hand slipping inside the waistband of his skivvies. Damn but he had dangerously miscalculated the depth of passion of which this woman was capable. More than that, he had severely underestimated the ferocity of his own response to her.

  But she’s pregnant, he reminded himself.

  God, but this whole situation was weird. And while his instincts told him he should stay in character, awkwardly laugh the whole thing off in some nerdlike way, the real Adam wanted some
answers, and he wasn’t going to stop until he got them.

  “Wait a minute. Didn’t you say you were divorced?”

  “What?” Eva’s well-kissed mouth finally worked around the one-word reply. “Of course I’m divorced.”

  She looked for all the world as baffled as he felt.

  “Look, the last thing I wanted to happen, expected to happen, was this,” she said. And he believed her. She carefully stretched the material of her nightgown to cover her toes. “I meant it when I said I’m not interested in getting involved with anyone. Now you know why.”

  Pregnant. In hindsight, Adam supposed he should have had her condition pretty much pegged when she pulled over on the drive down and killed the weeds at the side of the road. Then a couple other facts came together. Like her avoidance of caffeine. Her odd request that he impersonate her husband.

  Still, given the facts she’d laid out for him the day before, the last thing he’d have expected was that Eva Burgess was pregnant.

  He eyed her, trying to make some sort of sense out of the situation. “Your parents don’t know yet, do they? Not just about the divorce, but about your pregnancy?”

  Why not tell her parents she had divorced a man they had never met? Because that man is the father of the child she carries.

  While the fact that she was pregnant at all should have barred any thought of physical intimacy from Adam’s mind, oddly he still found himself drawn to her. Having had a taste of her sweet, hot mouth, having touched her, he wanted more.

  “No, I haven’t told my family about the baby. Not yet,” Eva said quietly.

  He searched her face. “Why?”

  “Because…” She clamped her eyes shut and Adam used the opportunity to take in everything that was her. The thick dark hair that curled around her face and shoulders like a dark storm cloud. That…that mouth that had the power to undo him with a single, electrifying kiss. Those hands that she gestured passionately with and those same hands’ ability to seek out his most fundamental passions. Drawing them to the surface, bringing him to within moments of nirvana.