Sun-Kissed by Laura Florand Read Free Book Online Page B

should never have the nerve to do. His thigh pressed against hers a moment on the next turn, and now his damn pushy thoughts were thrusting a thigh up between her legs, pulling her in to ride on it, spreading her legs for him.
    She wanted to slap him, or better yet hit him, knee him as she’d threatened, fight him to protect herself from the invasion without her permission, and yet he hadn’t said one damn word. He hadn’t made one inappropriate touch. He hadn’t even flicked that intense blue gaze of his down over her breasts in a lewd way.
    For all she really knew, his thoughts could be analyzing the latest stock reports by now, and everything else was in her own head.
    She tried thinking about the latest stock reports, too. Numbers blurred in her brain, columns dissolving in a wash of black and white, and she gasped with the sense of vertigo that left in her.
    Maybe she needed to buy a new house, make it an even two dozen. Or redecorate one of the ones she had. She grasped onto that, calming, and ideas flooded her brain instantly, driving out his persistent thinking. Yes. Maybe she would do something very small. That would be different. Take on that “reduce” movement and show how small spaces could be made workable. Something quiet and private, in some gentle, intimate landscape, low, old mountains, maybe. Maybe she would have the house built from repurposed material. Five hundred square feet, no more; she needed to show she could handle the space challenge better than anyone else.
    She’d need to use her outdoor area well, with a space that size. A porch or a patio, a swing for two, canvas loungers. And inside, something delicate to separate the bed from the living area, without reducing the sense of space. It would be a white bed, a queen or a double, maybe, big enough for two people who were comfortable with each other. This fragile white fabric, more a suggestion of fabric than anything else, would drape from a centerpiece above it, like old mosquito netting maybe, and the couple could just reach out and brush fingers across it to release it, let it float down and turn the bed into their little room for two.
    The sheets would be old Egyptian cotton, washed so many times there was nothing left in them but softness and comfort, and the two people would stretch out on those sheets and—
    Her body flowed into a dip, a hand firm under her waist, her body tucked in safe against hardness, blue eyes holding hers.
    Lowering her at just the angle she might be lowered onto a bed.
    Sure and strong that arm, suspending her just on the edge of something, her position so entirely precarious and entirely safe. She stared up at him, her heart beating hard.
    The song had ended. He straightened her effortlessly, and she took a breath to step back, to say thank you, to mention she needed to check on the caterer, as notes to a new song started.
    That firm, strong hand tucked her right back up against him. He set her hand onto his other shoulder. And then he wrapped that arm around her, too, snuggling her in close. His freed hand came to rest on her nape.
    Big hand, covering all of it, pulling her head close to his chest. It was like being in a spa. Between the warm firm hand on her nape and the warm firm hand on her lower back, her whole spine wanted to dissolve. Just…sink into him. Let him carry her. Just be weight against weight, body against body.
    Think about that bed. That quiet, private bed in the little space for two with those sheets that had been slept on so many times…
    His hand rubbed over her nape, gentle but firm. Here you are. I’ve got you.
    Her neck unstiffened before she could think, her head sinking against his chest. It was a slow dance, one of the love songs Jaime and Dom had chosen. Couples shifted around them on the dance floor, some leaving before they could be forced into too much intimacy, but more filling the floor, all those couples who said, Even we can dance a slow dance. Wives tugging on