Page 71 of Driven Daddy

I could feel her urge to move.

To slip off me and retreat.

Instead, I laid a possessive hand on her surprisingly firm ass. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She stilled. “Nowhere,” she said huskily. “As if I have anywhere to go.”

“And yet, you’re so tense.”

“I’m naked with a stranger, of course I’m tense.”

I lifted my shoulder to urge her to turn and look at me. “Rita.”

Stubbornly, she kept her face turned away.

“So, we only can talk with our bodies then?”

“Seems like it.” This time, she slipped out of my arms. Her lithe body was slight and curved in all the very best ways.

Marks from my teeth and beard marred her fair skin. A dusting of freckles spread across her chest and back until she pulled a robe off the chair near her bed.

Then she was fully gone from me.

Both her glorious skin, and the woman who’d come apart for me so wildly. The silky Kimono was as effective as an armadillo shell. She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door with a quiet click.

I dragged my fingers through the tangle of my hair. I desperately needed a shower. I rolled to sit on the side of the bed and winced at the pull along my side.

I glanced down to find a new war wound along my ribs from when she’d dug her nails into me as she climbed on top of me.

The flash of a memory made my dick twitch with renewed interest even if it was half strangled by the used condom.

Quickly, I disposed of it thanks to a box of tissues on the bedside table and hiked up my jeans, but I left them unzipped.

I shook my head. Hell, I hadn’t even gotten my boots all the way off.

I wandered over to the French doors in her room and opened the door for some air. I stretched out the kinks in my back as the breeze off the water kicked out the last of the post-sex haze.

The sound of the shower prodded me to go find out how she felt covered in suds, but the closed door definitely felt like the walls were firmly back in place.

One more fortress between us.

I wasn’t even sure how it kept happening. I was a relatively easygoing guy for the most part. All the Masterson men were, to be honest.

Well, maybe not Christian.

I was pretty sure his uniform baton was located up his ass most days.

But that wasn’t me. I was well-versed in conversational skills. More importantly, I was actively interested in Rita’s brain, regardless of her romance author status.

I’d had plenty of people give me a similar dismissal for my work, so I should know better.

And yet, I’d blundered ahead like an idiot. I was so very off my game in all ways. And I still had to work on my next volume, no matter what kind of behind-the-scenes hell I had to deal with for the publishing house.

The volume with the suspiciously empty pages. I’d done plenty of sketches, but they were vague and useless as a fleshed-out story.

I stepped out on the balcony. A huge, circular chair took up half the space with a hood against the sun. A book and blanket were discarded on the wide cream cushions.

Idly, I pushed aside the throw to see what she was reading, surprised that it was my own.

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