Page 23 of The Love Wager

“Lady’s choice,” I tell her, kicking off my boots and dropping beside her.

I hadn’t realized how close I landed until she turned and threw her legs over mine. The ease with which she does it has me reminding myself it’s all bullshit because it made a giddy knot twist in my stomach.

“Oh, a gentleman tonight, hm?” she teases, clicking onSweet Home Alabamabefore handing me the remote to put beside me on the unoccupied cushion.

“Always.”

“Hah! So, what do you call what you pulled in the bar?” I meet her hazel eyes and stall there.

Now’s my chance. All I’ve got to do is come clean about the bank loan getting denied, tell her I know about her wager with Taylor, and then offer to split the money down the middle if I play along.

“It was an off day,” I tell her pathetically, chickening out.

“I’ll say.” She snuggles into the arm of the couch, her legs shifting beneath my hands, dragging them higher on her thighs when I don’t adjust to her new position.

At first, it’s fine. I’m managing. Then, I register her change in breathing the longer my hands linger mere inches from her center. She wore a dress that hit just above the knee, leaving only the barest amount of skin between the hemline and the top of her knee-high boots. But now…

I swallow.

Now, that dress is touching mid-thigh and is in danger of going higher if I move. While the movie drones on in the background, muted compared to the buzzing energy between us, I turn and look at her while skimming my hand a bit higher.

Testing. I don’t know if I’m testing to see how far she’ll let this lie go or if I’m testing to see if there’s a speck of reality on her beautiful face. Still, either way, I trickle my fingertips nearly to the panty line separating me from her sex, stopping again as her breathing hitches.

Her perfect breasts rise and fall heavily as she reaches down and lifts her dress further. Licking my lips, I shove her panties to the side, taking a moment to run my eyes over the slit of her. Even before touching her, I know she’s wet, and that’s something I don’t think she can fake.

“Brooks—” she breathes, and my name from her pretty lips is the thing that nearly has me confessing what I know.

I can’t, however. I need to know what she feels like, to feel how slick she is. I part her with two fingers, just the tips, running them through the dampness of her arousal as her grip on her dress tightens and her head falls back. Her legs fall lax, and she arches ever so slightly. The small sounds she makes as I continue to coax my fingers from her entrance to her clit, encircling it to draw out the breathy moans, is something I’ll never be able to erase from my memory.

Even when she’s gone. Even when she’s back home safe in California.

“Please,” she whispers, looking at me from beneath heavy lids through blown pupils.

Forgetting myself and my mission, I let two fingers sink into her heat, reveling in how she grips around them.

The heady moan she lets escape is as beguiling as a sunset turned into music.

“Can’t fake that,” I grumble, rubbing my thumb over her clit.

“What?” she breathes, her body still moving in time with my hand.

I lean over, hovering close to her lips. “I said you can’tfakethat.”

Her body stills, her panting breaths wafting over my lips. “What do you mean, fake?”

“I know,” I tell her, and I don’t mean it to come out so snide. Apparently, I have a bit more animosity at being used than I initially thought.

“You know what?”

My fingers tease inside her again, and she moans before I cease. “I know about the deal with Taylor. That you’re using me.”

“I—” she starts, but I pull my fingers out of her and replace her panties.

I should’ve told her earlier, and doing it like this is a dick move, but not knowing if her moans were real did something to me. Even though I saw and felt the evidence, my mind kept reeling at the idea she was doing it for the money.

Tossing her legs off me, I stand, taking my glass off the coffee table to the kitchen as I pace.

“I know what you’re thinking, but that was real…”

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