vexing.”
“Huh?” He sat forward, clasping his hands tightly between his knees to keep from touching her legs.
Her robe had fallen open again, revealing inch upon inch of silky, soft skin. It was taking everything he had not to stare. And drool. If he touched, there would be no hope for him.
She blew out a breath, and he would swear he felt it moving over his body. Just like that he was hard.
Alex had done that to him from the start. Turned him into a fourteen-year-old boy with no control over what happened in his pants.
“You make it impossible to stay mad at you,” she grumbled, but he was pleased to note her normal expression, one of good humor, played around the edges of her face.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Yes!” She tossed exasperated hands in the air. “I want to be mad at you.”
He jerked back his chin. “Why?”
“Because…” She started and stopped and tried again. “Because…” This time when she stopped, she scrunched up her nose in frustration. Finally, she staunchly declared, “Because!”
“Right.” He used her own words against her. “Very articulate.”
She blinked and he was sorely tempted to remove her glasses so he could stare into her eyes until…well, until he got tired of it, which he thought might be never. “Did you just make a joke?”
He shrugged. “Two in one day. Must be some sorta record.”
“Oh my god. A joke followed by sarcasm.” A delicate hand landed on her chest. “Who are you? And what have you done with the real Mason?”
His lips twitched. Sparring with Alex always made him a bit giddy. “So glad you’re enjoying yourself at my expense.”
“Is it just my imagination, or have you decided to pull the stick from your ass?”
“Maybe.” He waited a tick before adding, “So I can beat you with it.”
“Three! Three jokes in a day!” She laughed, and it was a sweet, tinkling sound that burrowed under his skin. Her smile was enchanting and so guileless. Just like the woman herself.
What must it be like to live life so free and open? To have nothing to hide? To not couch every word or worry about every move for fear one slip would tell the world just how abnormal you really were?
“Let me see if I have this straight,” she said. “You think if we sleep together, it’ll be so good we’ll be flooded with hormones. Which will either (a) have you falling in love with me.” Her quirked brow could only be described as coquettish. “An outcome I could definitely see. Because even though I haven’t done it before, I’ve been studying up. I think, given a little practice, I can master most of the skills. You’d be putty in my hands.”
He refused to let his mind dwell on what she meant by studying up.
Or at least he tried not to let his mind dwell.
Against his will, images of her flipping through the pages of a sexy novel or glued to a screen watching X-rated videos flashed through his head.
Putty? Shhyeah. If by “putty” she means “painfully, achingly hard.”
“Or (b) it’ll have me falling in love with you,” she continued, oblivious to his brain having spontaneously exploded to leak gray matter from his ears. “Which is probably a little less likely. Because while I think you’re an exquisite example of male prowess, you talk too little. You’re alone too much. And you have the most annoying habit of leaving dental floss half-dangling out of the bathroom trash can. I mean, seriously? Why can’t you get the whole piece of string in?”
One of the many drawbacks of living at the beach house was there were only two bathrooms. Privacy wasn’t a concept anyone on Wayfarer Island held dear. At least not if they wanted to keep their sanity.
Mason opened his mouth to point out that good oral hygiene should be applauded, not berated. But she went on before he could get a word in.
“But regardless of who falls in love with whom, I’m assuming your contention is that the other party will end up hurt. And you’d rather head that eventuality off at the pass. However, what you’ve failed to account for is what would happen if we fell in love with each other.”
Someone shot a cannonball into his throat. The sucker lodged directly beneath his Adam’s apple, so his voice was barely a whisper. “That’d be the worst outcome of all.”
She blinked in confusion.
“Then we’d both end up hurt,” he explained.
For a couple of seconds, she said nothing. Then