Naturally Naughty - Leslie Kelly [36]
“I’ll be fine. I can open a window.”
“What about the vandals?”
She shrugged. “My mother told me the sheriff caught the kids who sprayed her house. They’d apparently hit a lot of other houses in town with the paint cans, and now they’re doing five hundred hours community service each.”
“Good. Still, you don’t need to stay here. Come on, it makes sense. Your mom’s place is furnished, and lit. Aren’t you achy from your drive? Don’t you feel like taking a long shower?”
“I know what you do in showers,” she snapped, remembering his comment from the theater.
He thought about it and chuckled. “I just moved in today.”
“Doesn’t take too long for some men.”
“Zing. Was that another comment about how quickly it was over the first time?”
Quick? Ha! In her memory she could still feel him making love to her. Riding her, filling her, rolling orgasm after orgasm over her body. She’d felt him inside her for weeks.
“No,” she finally replied. “And I think you mean only time. First implies there could be a second.” Or a twentieth.
But there wouldn’t!
He ignored her comment. “I promise the shower’s clean, Kate. As for anything happening between us…”
She waited, wondering if he’d make some flirtatious, sexy suggestion that they pick up where they’d left off weeks before. If he did, she’d have to kick him, she really would.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry. Strictly platonic.”
She found herself wanting to kick him anyway.
As if his silence in the past weeks wasn’t bad enough, now he’d basically admitted he didn’t want her even though she’d practically fallen right back into his arms? She hated to admit it, but her femininity took a definite hit.
“Well, maybe a shower would be nice,” she mused out loud, suddenly wanting some payback, wanting to remind him what he was missing out on. She tilted her head from side to side to work out some imaginary kinks in her neck, then raised her arms above her head to stretch. Arching her back so her breasts pushed tight against the cotton tank top, she hid a look of satisfaction as Jack stared, long and hard.
“Okay,” he finally said, his voice low and shaky. “Do you need any help with your stuff? A suitcase?”
“No, thanks. I’ll only need my purse and my toiletry case.” Some devil made her add, “I don’t wear anything to bed, anyway.”
He closed his eyes.
“It’ll be funny, going back to sleeping in my old room for one night. At my place in Chicago, I have a huge California King bed.” Liar. She had a queen. “With black satin sheets.” Double liar. They were percale. And pink.
Rather than looking even more hot and bothered, as she’d hoped, Jack gave her an amused look. Finally he said, “Sorry, Kate, your room’s taken. ’Fraid you’ll have to take the master bedroom…or the foldout.”
“You’re staying in my room? Why?”
He nodded. “You’re not the only one who remembers everything we talked about that night at the Rialto.”
She didn’t follow.
He stepped closer, invading her space again so their bodies were separated by only a bit of air and moonlight. “You might know what I do in the shower,” he whispered, reaching out to scrape the tip of one index finger along her shoulder, playing with her bra strap, which had somehow slipped out. His touch made her shake and she could barely keep herself focused on his words.
“But I also remember what you did in your old bed.”
By the time she understood, and felt hot blood rush into her cheeks, Jack had already turned and left the room.
6
OFFERING A SHOWER and a bed to a woman he couldn’t have—but wanted so much his nuts ached—had to rank up there among the stupidest things Jack had ever done in his life. Maybe not as stupid as the time he’d tried bungee jumping off a bridge in California, or when he’d scuba dived with sharks in Australia, but pretty stupid all the same.
The house had only one bathroom. It was upstairs, between the two bedrooms, and he listened to every move Kate made in there. He could