Waking Up Pregnant(54)

                He was giving her all the time she needed. Letting her know he’d seen what she was going through. And it wasn’t running him off.

                Drawing her balled hands from where they rested at her own chest, Jeff brushed his thumbs in circles over her clenched fists and the sensitive skin at her wrists. “Open up, honey. Let go and try to relax a minute.”

                His touch was light, a graze, and yet the barely there quality of it drew her focus completely. It felt good, those slow, soft circles a balm to her battered soul.

                Her fingers unfurled, leaving her palms open to his touch.

                To the same slow, soft circling attention pulling the tension from the farthest reaches of her body. Her toes and calves, the backs of her knees, deep in her belly and down the length of her spine.

                Then he was resting her palms against his chest, pressing his hands over hers for a single beat before moving on, following the line of her arms up to her shoulders and then—

                Her lips parted on a stunned breath at the feel of his knuckles brushing the sensitive skin between her breasts, at the cool air spilling over the deepening V of skin exposed as his long fingers deftly worked each delicate disk free from its catch.

                She shouldn’t be letting him do this, only she couldn’t find the words to tell him to stop. She didn’t want to.

                His gaze skimmed slowly up her body and, meeting with hers, held as he helped her out of the shirt and gently set it aside.

                It was so intimate. Standing there in nothing but a bra and panties, the only changes to her body since the last time Jeff had seen her bare were the ones he’d caused. Her breasts were swollen, her belly thickening in a soft and mushy way that wasn’t yet round enough to be beautiful for what it was.

                While Jeff was everything he’d been from the very first. His body displaying the kind of clean chiseled perfection his too-rugged face lacked. Tall and broad, tapered and taut, it made her want to step closer and take shelter against him. From the solitude. The cool night air. The exposure of her changed body.

                From being alone for so very long.

                Because this man could make her feel good. Like no one else ever had.

                Her gaze drifted to where her hands rested against the banded terrain of his abdomen and then slowly, it drifted up, her fingers following.

                “Here, let’s get this on you,” Jeff said in a tight voice, holding up the white T-shirt he’d stripped off to pull over her head. The cotton was soft, still carrying his body heat, and once it billowed around her thighs like a dress, he took a step back to remove himself from the intimate little bubble of insanity that surrounded her.

                What was she thinking? While she’d been eating up the expanse of his body with her eyes, he’d been offering a public service by helping her out of her shirt. He hadn’t even looked below her chin.

                Because that’s not what it had been about for him.

                Jeff had been rescuing her. Talking her down from the ledge and resolving the most immediate problem at hand. A scratchy stitch in her shirt.

                And resolve it he had, because nothing in all her years had ever felt better against her skin than the T-shirt she was currently draped in.

                But, holy cow, she was pathetic.

                “Thank you for this,” she muttered, barely able to meet Jeff’s eyes.