Haven had not prohibited Mark from bringing up or discussing sex, so he did it as frequently as he thought he could get away with. Which was pretty much all the time. That meant he couldn’t get it off his mind, either. While he was trying to make her lose control, while he was indulging his fantasy that he would say just the right thing to convince her that she needed to go shut that door right now, he was also making himself rock hard and totally frustrated.
Once he’d lowered his voice to a whisper, leaned in, and said, “I was just thinking about the way you looked spread out for me on your bed.”
She’d rolled her eyes, but the fierce blush that rose in her cheeks gave her away. “We’re not doing this, Mark.”
She’d probably said that to him a hundred times since the night and morning they’d spent at her place. One of his only sources of consolation was that she sounded less and less sure each time she said it.
She was not very good at hiding how she felt, which was the only thing that made this period of celibacy bearable. That and sexting.
Okay, it wasn’t exactly sexting. It was texting that slipped over the line into flirting and then, just once or twice, over the line into something that didn’t quite entirely count as celibacy. Those texts required him to perform marvelous feats of coordination, during which he used his right hand for the purpose for which God had so deftly crafted it, and his left hand to keep the conversation going.
Haven had apparently not been able to stop herself from engaging with him via text. She’d said one or two things in texts that he couldn’t imagine her saying in real life, things about body parts of his that she particularly liked, and where she would like him to put them, preferably as soon as possible. Afterward, after she sent him a lot of nonsense characters to indicate the heights to which sexting had taken her, she also denied that it counted as sex and exhorted him, once again, to be discreet. (Exact words: “Don’t you dare lose your phone.”)
But what she hadn’t said was where this was all going, and that was the part that was killing him.
And speaking of killing him, a man had just materialized at Haven’s side. A tall, dark, handsome man who looked completely at ease in their posh surroundings. The bastard was laughing and taking Haven’s arm and making small talk and—Goddammit—feeding Haven an hors d’oeuvre.
Mark went hot with jealousy at the sight of that man’s fingers in Haven’s mouth. Jealousy and totally inappropriate lust, because he’d been in Haven’s mouth in every way it was possible to be there, and if that guy didn’t keep his hands to himself, in about thirty seconds Mark would cross the room, wrench her out of the man’s grasp and kiss the hell out of her in front of everyone.
Ironically, Cindy chose that moment to feed him, her slim fingers lingering a tiny bit too long on his lips and tongue. He chewed and swallowed and said, “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Cindy.”
“Haven told me we’re just having fun. But no point in not having all the fun we can, right?”
“Look,” he said. “I really appreciate your helping me out with this. But I’m actually not even in the market for fun right now.”
Which was crazy. When hadn’t he been in the market for fun? And why was he refusing an offer like this out of loyalty to a woman who had put him on a hiatus of an indeterminate duration and, when he thought of it, an indeterminate nature, too?
“Mark,” said a female voice at his elbow. He jumped, but it wasn’t Haven. It was Becca Steele, who did PR for Noteworthy. “They’re ready for you on stage.”