Working Stiff(39)

Cash said, “The surgeon said I could stop bandaging it at my last appointment a week ago.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you tell me?”

He laughed, rolling away from her and clutching his stomach as he did so.

Rox picked up the gauze and flogged him with the trailing end. The gauze unrolled like a streamer and skittered off the side of the bed. “Cash Friso Amsberg! I declare, you will be the death of me! This is just like you, too.”

He rolled to his knees, bracing himself and laughing at her. “How is it just like me?”

“Taking advantage of my kind and caring nature! You’re a cad!” Even though she was laughing, she crawled backward off the bed. “Is the cut on your face healed up, too?”

Cash grabbed the white bandage on his cheek. “No.”

Decision: joke about it or be real?

Now. She had to decide now.

Joke.

Rox vaulted across the bed, scampering on her hands and knees to get at him. “Gimme that!”

Cash stepped backward. “Rox, no.”

She launched off the side of the bed and flung herself against his chest. “Come on! Let’s see it.”

“No!” He tried to step back, but she was already falling with him.

They ended up in a heap on the floor, but dirt wrassling comes far more naturally to Southern kids than it does to men raised in Swiss boarding schools.

Rox wound up on top. She elbowed away his defending hands and reached, careful about her nails, and pinched the end of the tape that had already peeled up.

Cash blocked her hand with one arm, knocking her fingers loose, and his other hand slid around her.

As soon as his strong arm slid around her waist, Rox knew that she had made a mistake. He wasn’t joking around anymore, and he was a lot bigger and stronger than she was.

His arm settled on her hips, and he pushed up, tipping her over.

The look on his face wasn’t angry, not at all.

He rolled with her, pinning her arms to her sides. In a second, he was on top. His strong, half-naked body pushed between her thighs.

Indeed, it appeared that they had ended up in one of his most accustomed positions.

She yelled, “Hey! Get off me, you big lunk!”

His hair, shaggy from not being cut for weeks longer than normal, flopped over his forehead and around his ears, those natural blond streaks running through it. The heat from his body seeped through her clothes, and when she shoved at him, her weak attempt at a push felt a lot more like she was grabbing his strong shoulders.

His strong, naked shoulders that were rounded with hard muscle.

Between her legs, his waist was lean, a hard line of muscle and sinew.

He froze, staring into her eyes.

His green eyes flicked back and forth, searching for something.

He had pushed himself up on his arms, strong muscles straining, and he hovered over her, still looking into her eyes.

A lingering whiff of his soap and a faint scent of his natural musk—a clean, male scent—drifted to her.

Rox knew she should be pushing him off of her, that she should tell him to get off, but she stroked up his shoulder, up his neck, and cupped his cheek in her palm.

He turned his head slightly, almost touching his lips to her wrist, but he kept watching her.

Everything that the other girls had warned her about Cash turned nebulous and fled, and Rox could see only his dark green eyes, so conflicted, so oddly vulnerable.

He said, “Say yes.”

Rox’s fingers trailed up into his hair, feeling the short silk between her fingers. She whispered, “Yes.”

He dipped like a push-up and took her lips with his.

Oh, God.

His warm mouth caressed her, encouraging her to open her lips, to let him stroke her tongue with his, let him kiss her more and more deeply until he was slanted across her mouth, braced on his elbows, his body pressing hers. He was still between her legs, and he moved, just a little, just a press of his jeans against her.

Rox tightened her arms around his neck, and she gasped at the slow friction between her legs.

She hadn’t been kissed at all for months, at least ten and a half months, and she had never been kissed like that. His mouth stroked and sucked her lips, his tongue rubbing hers, and everything he did made her think of what his mouth and tongue could do to other places on her body. He didn’t hesitate at all, and he coaxed her, seduced her, until she was breathless and mindless, desperately wanting more.

He slowed, sucking gently at her lips, until he rested his forehead against hers. His breath was restless in his lungs, and his eyes were closed. He turned his head slightly so that the gauze bandage didn’t brush her face.

He whispered, “When is your husband getting home from Thailand?”

Every cell in her body wanted to tell him the truth, to open herself to him and beg him to wrap his arms around her and take her. His hard body was so warm against hers, and she trembled inside.