Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,102

wasn’t funny anymore. He lavished attention on her breasts even as he slid in and out of her. The feeling of fullness, of heaviness, started in her breasts, too, and soon she was whimpering because he was back to being too much and not enough at the same time.

He lifted his head and searched her face, probably to check that the mortifying noises she was making weren’t signs of distress. She shot him a little smile and stuck her tongue out. He smiled back and shortened his thrusts so she was getting pressure on her clit. Desire—more desire, which she wouldn’t have thought possible—flooded in suddenly, almost violently. It was like a shove right to the edge of a cliff. She was left panting, teetering, as they stared at each other.

“Oh shit,” he said suddenly, his eyes widening. He lost his rhythm, his hips stuttering. He didn’t break eye contact, though, and he put his hands back on her ribs, where they’d started. They landed on her skin, and she fell off the cliff. She struggled to keep her eyes open as she came—and came and came, shudders racking her. A groan ripped from his throat, but he kept his eyes open, too.

It wasn’t until several seconds had passed, seconds they spent panting and staring at each other, that he rolled off her and onto his back next to her. She looked at the ceiling and pondered the cosmic injustice of the fact that Ben was the best lover she’d ever had. It was going to be hard to pull off this enemies-with-benefits thing.

But she had to. They had to.

It was a terrible thought. It actually scared her as it came over her with growing surety. I can’t give this up.

“I should go,” he said, jolting her from her overdramatic thoughts.

“Really?” She wasn’t sure why she was arguing. It wasn’t like they were going to cuddle. It was just a bit whiplash-inducing to be coming so hard with a guy one minute and then watching him heaving himself out of bed the next.

“I’m always afraid Carter is going to burn the place down when he closes,” he said.

“Carter closes when we watch late-night football.”

“Yeah, but in those cases, we’re in the building.”

“So we can perish when it burns down?”

He smirked. “I’ll throw you out the window. I’m going down with the ship.”

“Well, you can’t stay here anyway. I’m sorry to report that Eve is onto us.”

“Really?” he asked as he dressed.

“Yeah, she and Sawyer caught me coming in the other morning. Man, am I going to be glad to get my apartment back.”

Dressed and put to rights, he paused with his hand on the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She knew what he was really asking. Or at least she thought she knew. She hoped. “I’ll come by after the show?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “You do that.”

Chapter Nineteen

On Sunday, when Maya came into the bar close to closing, Law didn’t even say anything to her, just slipped her the key to his apartment and said, “I’ll be up as soon as I can. There’s a bottle of your wine in the fridge.”

When he arrived thirty minutes later, it was to find her lying on his couch watching soccer in leggings and a T-shirt. She had said she wasn’t going to be wearing her heavy-duty stage underwear this time, but she’d been in costume earlier, downstairs.

“What happened to Beatrice?”

“I brought pajamas to change into.” She’d said she wasn’t a lingerie person, and that accorded with his sense of her, but he had to laugh at the fact that her pajamas were basically the same as her normal uniform, except with leggings instead of jeans. But she was barefoot, which he didn’t think she’d ever been in his house before. Of course, she’d been naked in his house before, but in those instances, by the time she’d gotten naked, he’d been too distracted by other body parts to pay attention to her feet.

She had also never lain on his sofa before. They always sat.

There was something about the combination of her sprawled out, her bare feet poking out of her leggings. She looked like she knew this place. Like it was comfortable and familiar to her. Like she belonged here.

As he approached the sofa, he noticed her toenails were painted. They stopped him in his tracks. Because they were cute as all hell, perfect little glossy pops of lavender, but also because of the mere fact of them. Unless she was in costume, she