Page 46 of Training the Heart

“You probably don’t even try. You probably just wake up like that,” she rambles.

“Don’t give much thought to a beauty routine,” I tell her.

“Exactly, and you still look like that.Infuriating.” She throws her hands in the air in drunken animation.

Upstairs, I reach into my wallet and pull out our room key, swiping it over the lock and pushing into our room.

“Well, I’m not a heathen. I do use moisturizer, and a good shampoo and conditioner,” I tell her as I take my hat off and run my hand through my hair, before dropping it on a nearby chair.

She giggles and doesn’t miss a beat. “Well, duh … gotta keep yourself smelling all delicious and whatnot,” she says as she waves a hand over me and kicks off her sandals, pops her suitcase on the bed and reaches back to unzip her dress right in front of me.

As she does she mutters something that sounds like, “It’s fine … we’re all adults here.”

Jesus Christ.I look up to the ceiling and will myself to wait for her to enter the bathroom before I look back down. That was my plan, but when it comes to her, I have no willpower, so when she turns to look back over her shoulder and says, “I think it’s stuck. Can you help me, Wade?” I get to her in less than one second flat.

“You’re gonna get all this hair caught,” I tell her as I pick the long ponytail up off her back and bring it to my nose, breathing her in, reminding me of her scrunchie that was wrapped around my dick only hours earlier, then I place it over her shoulder.

I stare down at her from my full height. She’s so unspeakably close to me. It would take so little to bend her over the bed, flip her dress up and give in to whatever the fuck this is. I take a breath to steady myself but that doesn’t work. She smells toofucking good and her skin has a sort of dewy shimmer I can’t explain. As I fiddle with the zipper and pull the caught fabric out of it, I almost stop myself from freeing it just to get one more second of breathing her in, but the temptation of undressing her wins.

I pull the zipper down to her waist and her entire back is exposed. Inked vines dance down her skin from her shoulder blades along the column of her spine, etched with words so tiny I’d need to be a lot closer to read them. They’re Ivy vines. They spread out over her tailbone and disappear into her black lace panties that I currently can’t stop staring at.

Blink, Wade. Blink.

“All done?” she asks so sweetly, I instantly sober myself up.

“Yep,” I reply, clearing my throat.

Ivy spins around, holding the structured top of her dress up over her full breasts, and smiles up at me. Somehow, my hands are on her shoulders, she’s warm and so fucking soft under them. I let my eyes trail over her, her collarbone, the curve to her ear, the pulse that beats there, her full lips, and when I land on her eyes, they’re glassy.

She smiles at me. “Wade, we agreed you wouldn’t look at me like that,” she says, a little slurry, reminding me how much she’s had to drink. Way too much for me to touch her like this. It makes the decision slightly easier for me to slide my hands down her arms and let go.

“Thanks for your help,” is all she says, way too innocently, before she spins around and heads for the bathroom, her entire silky back on display, screaming at me that she never had a bra on under that dress all night before she disappears behind the bathroom door.

When she comes out, she’s dressed in another Eric Church tour t-shirt, this one cut at the neck into an off-the-shoulder version, and those little shorts she wears just to torment me. I’ve gother suitcase away, her bed turned down, and water on the bedside table for her, but I am already changed into my sweats and tucked in—crammed in, really—on the sofa beside the window. The only light is the one beside her bed.

“Drink some of that water before you go to sleep,” I tell her as she pulls her ponytail out, her long hair tumbling down over her bare shoulders, and she yawns.

She lifts the bottle up, looks at it and then looks back at me, and suddenly I feel very much on display, with no shirt on the sofa. The way her eyes hungrily roam my body is like a shot straight to my groin.

“Have to be in control of everything at all times?”

I lie back on the sofa to break her gaze, extending an arm behind my head.

“Just drink the water.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, not realizing how those words from her lips affect me.

As she shuts out the light, I can almost hear her smile as she says, “Night, Chief.”

I feel my jaw tense as I try so hard to keep myself on this couch, I’m afraid I may pop a tendon. I close my eyes and will myself to sleep. Because we both need it. She is probably going to be hungover tomorrow, and I’m going to be exhausted from staying up all night thinking of the way she looked holding that dress up with one hand as the outline of her perfect tits were on full view.

I focus on her breathing as she drifts off to sleep, thinking that will be less of a distraction than the images in my head, but I’m wrong. The throaty little sounds she makes while she dreams have me bricking up ten feet from her. Everything about Ivy Spencer distracts me, and I’ve been doing my best to fight it for way too long.

I just don’t know how much fight I have left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ivy

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