Most Valuable Playboy(56)
She brings her fingers to her lips in an oops gesture. “I think so.” Her expression turns serious. “He doesn’t know about this?”
I step closer, and plant a kiss on her neck. “You mean that?”
She shivers. “Yes. That.”
“Of course not. Besides, there’s nothing to tell, right?” I wink. She laughs, but the sound fades quickly. “Did you mention anything to him?”
“God, no.”
“What about Holly, though?”
“Holly honors the girl code,” Violet says.
“Are you sure?”
She gives me a look as if I’m nuts. “She hasn’t said a word.”
“And you do know he’s her husband?”
She stares at me. “Yes, I am aware. And she didn’t take a vow before God and family to tell her husband all his sister’s secrets. Like I said, she honors the code.”
“But she knows that I’m here?”
Violet sets down her fork. “Are you asking me if I specifically texted her and told her hey, guess what, Cooper’s coming over tonight? The answer is no. If she knows generally that you gave me several stupendously magnificent orgasms, the answer is yes,” she says with a proud lift of her chin.
I smile. “Stupendously magnificent?”
“I might have mentioned your talents.”
“Excellent.”
Violet laughs. “If my brother knew about your skills, that would be an issue, but as long as I’m praising your oral and manual talents to my sister-in-law, it’s all good?”
“I’m simple like that.” I take a beat. “Besides, it’s different with Trent.”
“I know,” she says, her tone slipping to a more serious note.
It’s different because I have no clue how he’d feel about me being here. I don’t know how he’d react if he knew my relationship with his sister has sailed into uncharted waters. And I have no idea what he’d say about the way my heart seems to take on a different shape when I’m near her. A new and wholly unfamiliar shape.
But I know this much—I don’t want to think about Trent tonight. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“Funny, I don’t, either.”
She leans over and drops the Tupperware in the sink and glances at the clock on her microwave. “Ticktock. Bedtime approaches.”
I put my hands on her thighs, nudge her legs open, and wedge myself between them. “Yes, and I need to do bad things to you before I leave for the coldest place on earth.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Is Baltimore that cold?”
“Hell if I know. It’s not California, that’s for damn sure. All I can say is thank the good Lord for domed stadiums or I would be screwed in the NFL. I’m too warm-blooded.”
She runs a hand down my arm. I’m wearing a black T-shirt. “You are. Also, do you know it kind of turns me on to know that I’m touching the arm that everyone is going to be talking about on Sunday?”
I laugh. “You can lick it and kiss it, too.”
She purses her lips. “I’m so lucky.”
I mimic throwing a football, and she grabs hold of my upper arm. “Seriously,” she says with a sigh. “You’re a gunslinger.”
I puff up my chest. “Why, yes, please inflate my ego more.”
She runs her hand from my bicep down to my forearm. “I’m not trying to inflate your ego here. I’m honestly just amazed at what you can do with this simple body part.”
“Wait till you can see what I do with other ones.”
Instead of tossing a zinger back my way, she presses a kiss to my bicep and lets her soft hair fall against my skin. Goosebumps rise on my arm. This woman. I run a hand through her hair. “What are you doing to me?”
She meets my eyes. “I don’t know. What am I doing to you?”
She waits for me to answer.
I brush the backs of my fingers along her cheek, answering in my head.
Everything. She’s doing everything to me—hitting me everywhere—mind, body, and straight in the heart with an arrow I’m not even sure she knows she’s aiming in that direction. But only a few hours ago, she made it clear we needed boundaries. Our playbook should be simple, not complicated. This isn’t a quarterback option; this is an easy down-and-out pass.
That’s why I turn her question around on her. “What I’m doing to you,” I say as I scoop her up, wrapping her legs around my waist, “is taking you to your bedroom.”
She squeals and ropes her arms around my neck, holding on. With her hooked around me like a koala, I carry her out of the kitchen and turn down the hall.
“Bedroom is that way.”