“Sit down,” he told her. “I’ll deal you in.”
Because she couldn’t think of a single reason not to, Layla did as he directed. He handed her a slide and the required tiles. She quickly examined her letters and then the board. “What did you just play?” she asked, clearing her throat.
This was surreal. Utterly surreal.
“Delicious,” he told her, pointing it out for her benefit. He looked at her mouth and absently licked his lips.
Had she been drinking anything, she would have choked. “Definitely not a four-letter word,” she muttered, feeling her face flame even more.
He laughed. “You okay, Layla? You’re looking a little flushed.”
So that’s how he wanted to play it, huh? He wanted to kiss her, spell suggestive words on the Scrabble board and then pretend she was the only one who’d been affected. Layla inhaled deeply.
She thought not.
She’d felt a definite bulge against her belly and he sure as hell hadn’t had to greedily grab her ass to get her attention. “I’m fine,” she said, putting her own word onto the board.
He grunted and his twinkling gaze met hers for the first time over the table. “Lick?”
“Don’t forget my double word score.”
Smiling, he bit the corner of his lip and jotted down her points. After careful consideration, he quickly played again.
Nuzzle.
Suppressing a grin of her own, she commended him on the use of his two z’s, then set about making her own word. I’ll see your nuzzle and raise you a massage, Layla thought. Gratifyingly, Bryant’s eyes narrowed and he shifted covertly in his seat.
“Have you always had stage fright?” he asked. He played a caress.
It was her turn to shift. Her nipples tingled and her breasts felt as if they were going to plump right out of her bra. “I have,” she admitted. “Made the whole Cole Family Chorus experience quite miserable, I can tell you that. I try to avoid the stage, stick to the studio.” She laid suckle on the board and waited for his response.
“I can hear you, you know,” he said, his lips twitching when he saw it.
She frowned. “Am I shouting?”
“No, I mean, I can hear you in the music. When I’m listening to the radio, I can always tell when you’ve collaborated, when you’ve laid the track. You’ve got a unique sound. It’s beautiful. Haunting.”
Surprised, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and felt her middle warm with pleasure. “There are several mandolin players in Nashville.”
“True, but none of them can pull the sound from that instrument the way you do.” He played slow and leaned back in his chair. She liked the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt, remembered how his firm waist had felt beneath her hands.
“Thank you,” she murmured, adding hot to the board.
He looked up and his gaze tangled with hers. “Three-letter words?” He tsked. “Are you even trying?”
She grinned and gave a shrug. “I thought I’d stick to our theme.”
“In that case—” He quickly arranged his letters, using the t in her hot to make wet. “I’ll follow your lead.”
Layla felt her nether regions weep and a deep, dark throb built low in her loins. She chuckled softly, then chewed the inside of her cheek. She looked at her tiles and tried to come up with something equally depraved. She settled for nibble and imagined doing just that to him. Where would she start? she wondered. Shoulder? Neck? Ass?
“You’re up,” he said.
She glanced at him. “What?”
“Time to go back onstage.”
Panic hit her anew and her palms slickened. She felt her heart accelerate, her breathing go shallow and the tips of her fingers become numb.
He shook his head and sighed, and the sound had as much resignation as anticipation. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that, but knew it wasn’t entirely flattering. “Clearly I’m going to have to distract you again.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He stood and tipped her chin up with a single finger. His touch sizzled through her. “Better safe than sorry,” he murmured.
He kissed her again…and she was neither safe, nor sorry.
Which didn’t bode well for the rest of the tour.
Or maybe it did, depending on how one decided to look at it.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING to plant your dogwoods and sweet peas?”
Layla looked up from the bizarre book she’d been studying—it looked like a scrapbook of some sort—and her confused gaze tangled with his. Bryant slid into the seat across from her. The bus was rapidly closing the distance between themselves and Fort Lauderdale, and though he’d managed to stay away from her for several hours in this confined space, he’d just given up.