“Aw, I scared him away,” Sadie pouted.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be back soon,” Bo assured her, focusing on that pout. He wanted to sink his teeth into her lush lower lip. Biting his own lip instead, Bo raised his gaze to hers. “He hasn’t had his breakfast yet.”
“Breakfast. Now there’s a good idea.”
“Are you hungry?” Bo thought of her pussy comment, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His humor quickly turned to lust as he remembered how it felt to have his face buried between her legs, tasting her with his tongue. His bedroom suddenly felt too warm, his skin too tight on his bones.
“Starving,” she assured him.
“Me too,” he growled, scooting across the bed and rolling her onto her back. He was starving for her, hungry for her body. He craved her taste, her touch. It had been more than ten years since he’d had her, and Bo realized he wasn’t close to getting enough. He bent his head, gliding his nose up her neck, inhaling the warm sleepy smell of her soft skin. He nipped her ear.
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?” He pulled back, staring down at her.
“You yell at your cat not to bite your ear, and then you bite mine?”
He grinned. “That wasn’t a bite, it was a nibble,” he protested. “Trust me, there’s a difference. That little demon has been known to draw blood.”
On cue, a god-awful wail filled his apartment. “Speak of the devil,” Bo groaned.
“That’s him?” Sadie asked, eyes wide as another ear-splitting yowl shattered the quiet morning.
“Fuck, yes, that’s him.” Bo groaned. “I need to feed the tyrant before he wakes the neighbors. Or decides to piss in my shoes.” He pressed a kiss to her throat, unable to resist licking her there, just once, hoarding the salty sweetness of her on his tongue. Then he crawled out of bed, yanked on his jeans, and headed for the kitchen.
He’d just set the bowl of food in front of Clark when Sadie appeared from behind the screen separating his bedroom from the rest of the loft. She was wearing his shirt, the hem skimming her thighs. She crossed the room toward him, and as she passed the big picture window, the morning sunlight streaming in turned the faded cotton translucent, outlining every curve beneath in exquisite detail.
Bo about swallowed his tongue.
“I see you’ve fed Mr. Grumpy Face.” She glanced down at Clark, whose grumpy face was buried in his bowl.
He nodded mutely.
“What about me?”
“Huh?” He struggled to catch up, mind stuck several paces back, still on the moment she had passed in front of the window. There was something intensely erotic about how she’d looked standing there in his shirt, the seemingly innocent white cotton becoming the fucking hottest thing he’d seen in a very long time. “What about you?”
“What are you going to give me?”
How about I press you up against that window and give it to you from behind? As soon as he thought it, the image bloomed vividly in his brain. Sadie facing the window, breasts crushed to the glass, nipples tight and puckered, poking through his shirt. He’d press her palms to the window and bend her over, only a little, just enough to give him room to slide between her thighs, then he’d grab her hips, thrust up into her, and—
“Um, Bo?”
“Yeah?” he croaked, mouth dry.
“Are you okay? You seem a little flushed.” She eyed him with concern, coming closer as if she was going to check his forehead for a temperature.
“I’m fine,” he snapped, harsher than he meant to. If she touched him now, she’d be up against that window in a heartbeat. “What was it you wanted?”
“Some breakfast? I didn’t eat lunch yesterday, unless you count that donut and cider. And we were too, um, busy, to have dinner last night.”
“Oh, right.” Heat crept up his neck, and not from lust this time. He was an ass. He hadn’t even thought to offer her anything to eat or drink. “Sorry about that. God, I’m a terrible host.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” One corner of her mouth lifted in a lascivious smirk. “Overall, I think you’ve been quite attentive to your guest’s needs.” She winked, but then her face turned serious. “However, if you don’t feed me soon, there is going to be trouble. You won’t like me when I’m hangry.”
He laughed. “What are you, the Hulk?”
“Worse.” She glanced back down at Clark, who’d taken a break from his meal to lick his paws, underwhelmed by their conversation. “You better watch it, mister. I might decide to steal your food.”
Clark blinked at her, whiskers twitching above his namesake mustache.
“Don’t worry, Clark, she’s not going to eat your food,” Bo assured the cat. Clark made a mew of annoyance and stalked off, tail swishing. Bo snorted with laughter. “Let me take a quick shower, then I’ll whip you up some eggs.”
She made a face.
“That’s right, you don’t like eggs.” Bo grinned, a dozen memories floating through his mind from when they were kids.
“No, it’s good. Eggs will be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, her mouth stretching in the long-suffering smile of a martyr. “They’re part of my nutrition plan for the movie.”
“Well, help yourself to whatever you want out of the fridge. I’ll try and be fast. I don’t want you collapsing from starvation before I get back.” Sadie shot him a scathing look, and he hurried out of the kitchen before she could tan the skin off his hide with her tongue.
Though, Bo thought as he turned on the taps, that might not be such a bad thing. He stepped under the hot spray, wishing he’d thought to invite her to join him. He really was a terrible host. He didn’t entertain at home often. When he wasn’t on a set working, most evenings it was just him and Clark and whatever Chicago sports team was playing that night on TV.
Soaping up, Bo returned to the fantasy of Sadie at the window. He’d always loved it when she wore his shirts, had ever since the first time they’d been together. Shit. No wonder it was such a turn-on for him. The memory of Sadie, straddling him in the hayloft, wearing his shirt, the faded cotton clinging to her sweat-slicked curves, was a permanent fixture of his fantasies.
Bo lathered shampoo into his hair. If he didn’t start thinking of something else fast, he’d be in the awkward position of jacking off to the memory of making love to the younger version of the same woman he’d been with last night. A woman who was only a few feet away in his kitchen.
He stepped under the spray to rinse, his mind drifting again to their first night together. How afterward, they’d curled beneath the blanket, her back nestled to his front, just as they had last night. Making love to her for the first time had made Bo feel closer to Sadie than ever. Like they were part of each other. Maybe that was why they’d avoided taking that step last night.
Back then, the new physical intimacy had made him want to share everything with her. Give her everything. They’d talked of the future. Whispered about their dreams. He’d told her about how he wanted to run his own stable. Something he built himself. And she’d told him how she wanted to be a famous actress and travel the world, going to all the places her parents went each summer without her.
Looking back, that should have been Bo’s red flag right there. It was painfully obvious that they’d wanted different things out of life. But he’d always been a fool when it came to Sadie. And in that regard, it was beginning to look like nothing had changed.
Mixing business and pleasure was a risk he always avoided. Sadie, however, was the exception to every rule. Bo would have thought that now, more than a decade older, he’d have finally managed to grow the fuck up. Hell no. She spared him half a glance and he was on his knees.
If word got out that he was getting a little too friendly with the lead actress on the company’s biggest project, Vic would have his balls in a sling.
He rinsed off, letting the hot water beat against his skull, hoping it would pound some sense into him. Maybe it
would work better if he switched the faucet to ice cold. Though if he walked out of here and found Sadie still wearing his shirt, Bo doubted a swim in the Arctic could cool him off.
CHAPTER 16
SADIE LISTENED TO the sound of water running and tried not to think about Bo, naked and wet, droplets trickling down the muscled hills and valleys of his pecs and abs. She should have followed him into the shower. If he’d offered, she probably would have.
But since he hadn’t, she took him up on what had been offered, and went to rummage in his fridge. Like everything else, his refrigerator was neat and organized, so clean it was almost indecent. Spic and span and sparse.
There was a pint of orange juice, a carton of eggs, some veggies, several bottles of beer, a square of cheese, and a plastic container. That looked promising. Sadie was about to pull the container out for further inspection when her phone chimed. Recognizing her best friend’s ring tone, Sadie’s brain delivered a series of urgent, brief messages.
Ana.
Sunday.
Their bike ride.
Shit.
Sadie dove across the apartment for her purse. “Hello, Ana?”
“Oh good, you’re alive.”
“Sorry about missing our bike ride this morning, you didn’t wait for me too long, did you?”
“Actually, I missed the ride too,” Ana admitted.
In the background, Sadie heard a familiar male voice exclaim, “Oops!’
“Ryan’s still at your place?”
“Mm-hmm,” Ana hummed an affirmative. “I don’t think he really expected me to make him help bake, but he is.” There was a sound of crashing metal. “Sort of.”
Sadie laughed. Leave it to Ana. “Please tell me you made him wear an apron.” Her best friend had a collection of vintage aprons.
“Of course. One of my frilliest.”
“Nice.” Sadie could just imagine what her costar looked like dolled up like a 1950s’ housewife. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“What about you?” Ana asked. “Did a certain former boyfriend make you breakfast this morning?”
“Bo’s in the shower right now, but he promised to cook for me after.”
“Oh, well done, sir,” Ana said approvingly.
“Well, I haven’t actually eaten yet,” Sadie reminded her, “so I’m reserving judgment on his skills in the kitchen.”
“What about his skills in the bedroom?” Ana purred.
“Ana!”
“Okay, okay, fine.” Ana paused. “But you two did it. Right?”
“Just because the last time I was with the guy was in high school doesn’t mean you can act like a teenager now,” Sadie grumbled. “And yes, we did it. Sort of.”
“Sort of? What the hell does that mean?” Ana wondered. “You know what? I don’t need to know. Just tell me one thing,” Ana demanded. “Was it good?”
Good? Not the word she’d have chosen. Amazing. Mind-blowing. That was a little more accurate. “Um, yeah.” Sadie bit her lip. “Very good.”
“Okay, now I want details,” Ana begged.
Images of Bo wrapping his belt around her wrists, shackling her to his bed, his beard scraping her thighs as he took her with his mouth filled Sadie’s mind with plenty of details.
A crash reverberated over the phone, interrupting Sadie’s mental replay.
“I’m sorry,” Ana apologized in a rush. “I’ve gotta go before your costar burns down my kitchen.”
“I need to get going too,” Sadie assured her.
“Are you spending Rosh Hashanah with your folks?” Ana asked.
“Unfortunately.” Sadie sighed, she’d once again conveniently put that out her mind. “I wish I could hang out with your family. They’re much more fun.”
“I won’t argue with the truth.” Ana chuckled. “We Kaufmans are an entertaining bunch. But your nana will be there, right? She’s fun.”
“Yeah. It will be good to see her. I haven’t really talked to her since Passover. I’m a terrible granddaughter.”
“I’m sure she would disagree.” Another crash. “Okay, that’s my cue. When will you be free to chat? I still need details, you know.”
“I’m not sure. We’re shooting at a stable next week. Call times are all over the place.”
“No problem, we’ll figure something out.”
They said their goodbyes and just before they hung up, Ana said, “Hey, Sadie?”
“Yeah?”
“My nonexistent crystal ball sees a handsome bearded bad boy in your future.”
“You’re incorrigible.” Sadie grinned, heart filled with gratitude for her silly, sweet best friend.
As she ended the call, the water in the shower turned off. The sudden silence in the apartment brought Sadie back to herself. She still needed to get dressed. In a flurry of movement that had Clark squawking up a storm as he scrambled out of her way, Sadie scurried around the apartment, grabbing her clothes.
By the time the bathroom door opened, she’d managed to get her bra strapped on and slip her dress over her head. Her panties were a lost cause. Sadie wasn’t sure how she felt about walking around sans underwear while in a dress. She thought of Logan, her friend Cassie’s husband. Was this how the Scot felt when he went around wearing his kilt? Going commando or … what had Logan called it? Regimental.
Sadie giggled, recalling the Scot’s rolling R as he’d said the word in a teasing brogue.
“What’s so funny?” Bo asked, stepping into the bedroom.
“I was just thinking of my friend’s husband not wearing underwear,” Sadie said, not sure if she should elaborate. Then realizing how it sounded, decided to explain about the kilt.
“Better him than me.” Bo shook his head. “I like my boys safe and sound.”
Her gaze dropped to the fly on his khakis. Sadie’s cheeks heated as she recalled the way his snug boxer briefs had kept everything pinned down, so to speak.
“And now you’re thinking about my dick, aren’t you?” Bo teased, a wry smile playing about his lips.
“Maybe,” she admitted, an answering smile tickling her mouth. No point denying it. Her stare had been rather obvious. She watched as Bo pulled on a pale green dress shirt. The color looked fantastic on him, brought out the gold highlights in his brown hair and made his tawny eyes glow. Sadie heartily approved. But she also felt a little underdressed, and not just because of her missing panties.
“You look nice.”
“You think I look nice?” His grin widened, reaching almost ear to ear now, warming her in its glow.
Sadie shifted her gaze, watching as Bo did up his shirt, his deft fingers flying over the buttons. She caught a glimpse of the thistle bud as it disappeared behind the pale green linen. “Why don’t you have any tattoos on your arms?”
“Work.”
“Huh?” He’d finished with the shirt and was now rolling up the sleeves. Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Sadie looked away from the tantalizing sight of Bo’s strong, sexy forearms. It would not do to get this turned on when one was not wearing any panties. “How is getting a tattoo on your arm more work than getting one on your back?”
“No. For work. When I’m a stunt double, it’s best if I don’t have a lot of visible ink that would require a lot of makeup or need to be edited out in post-production.”
“That makes sense.” Her stomach chose that moment to let out a ferocious growl. Sadie glanced around, looking for Clark, wondering if she could get away with blaming the cat. No such luck. Besides, by the look on Bo’s face, he’d heard her loud and clear.
“Wow. I better get started in the kitchen before you really do try eating Clark’s food.”
“Ha.” Sadie followed him out of the bedroom, pausing by the bathroom. “Um, you don’t happen to have a spare toothbrush, do you?”
“Just use mine.”
“Yuk.” She recoiled.
“Are you serious?” Bo looked up from pulling ingredients out of the fridge. “Do I need to remind you what else of mine
was in your mouth recently?”
“That was different.”
He heaved a sigh that clearly said, You test my patience, woman.
“Never mind, I’ll just use my finger.” She escaped to the bathroom and closed the door. Sadie knew she was being a little ridiculous, but this wasn’t about her being difficult—this was about doing something as domestic and personal as sharing a toothbrush. And what that meant. To her.
But she sure as hell wasn’t going to explain that to Bo. It was bad enough he was making her breakfast. She squirted toothpaste on her finger and scrubbed her gums. Better to let him think she was acting like a spoiled princess. It wouldn’t be the first time someone accused her of it.
After washing her hands, Sadie finger-combed her hair as well, which basically amounted to rearranging the spiky locks into a different yet equally messy formation. She took stock of herself in the mirror and shrugged. It would have to do.
By the time she returned to the kitchen, Bo had already started coffee and arranged two place settings on the island. Butter was sizzling in a pan on the stove and he was busy cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Wow,” Sadie murmured. “Impressive.”
“Welcome to Bo’s Bed and Breakfast.” He grinned, swinging a towel over his shoulder.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Make some toast?” he suggested, pointing to a shelf.
“I can handle that.” Sadie reached for the loaf and pulled out a few slices. “There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“Just one?” Bo cocked his brow.
“For now,” she said, popping two pieces of bread in the toaster.
He poured the egg batter into the pan, and then turned his attention back to her. “All right,” Bo agreed, tone wary. “One question.”
Sadie wondered if he was worried she’d ask that question. The one she’d wanted to ask last night. She still burned to know the answer, to understand why, in a blink, he’d decided they were over. But she would play it safe today. Keep things close to the surface.
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