Page 3 of Treat

“I don’t,” Brynn said, swiping at her cheek. “I’m dog-sitting.”

Then she winced and lifted a hand to the back of her head, and he remembered how hard she’d hit the floor.

“You’re hurt,” he said, and with all thoughts of her tits and thighs forgotten—or at least shoved to the background—crouched in front of her.

“I hit my head when I fell,” she confessed, looking up at him, and he realized she didn’t have her glasses on.

He’d never seen her without her glasses.

He knew her eyes were brown, of course. She had what his dad called Bambi eyes, big and velvety soft, and they’d starred in his dreams almost as often as her tits and thighs. But he’d never seen them naked before, with no glasses or makeup, so he hadn’t known that her thick lashes were only a shade or two darker than the hair on her head, or that they could look this vulnerable, this helpless. They were a little unfocused, too, and he wondered if that was the pain or if she couldn’t see.

“Can you see me?” he asked. “Without your glasses?”

“I’m nearsighted.”

He didn’t know if that meant she could see or she couldn’t, but decided it didn’t matter. “Let me check your head.”

Her eyes widened, and she blinked. “Oh. Um. It’s fine.”

“Humor me.” Ignoring her protest, he braced one hand on her shoulder to hold her still and slid the other into her hair.

Brynn was dying.She wasn’t sure if it was from humiliation or lust, but either way, she was about to shuffle loose this mortal coil, and she had regrets.

She’d never been to Paris. She’d never seen the Tigers win a World Series. And she’d never ridden Jude Bessonnette’s dick like a Grand Canyon mule.

Which had seemed like the smart thing to do—or the smart thing tonotdo—but with death staring her in the face and Jude wearing nothing but blue boxer shorts, she was having a hard time remembering why she’d wanted to be smart.

He was so pretty it almost hurt to look at him, even when her head wasn’t throbbing from violent contact with the floor. His hair was a deep, burnished gold, currently sporting some lighter blond streaks courtesy of his summer at the lake, and he had a mustache that hadn’t been there when he’d left town. It was thick and lush, almost totally obscuring his upper lip, and seeing it did things to her insides that she was all too familiar with. He was tanned, too, his usually pale white skin a sun-kissed bronze. She wanted to scold him about sunscreen because what the fuck, but his biceps were bunching as his fingers carefully probed the back of her head, and she was a sucker for biceps.

And thighs. Jesus God, the thighs.

He was crouched in front of her with his feet flat on the ground, which was impressive. She’d played catcher on her high school softball team all four years, and she knew the burn of the flat-footed squat. But his legs were rock steady, not a tremble or a quiver in sight—not from him, anyway. She was quivering plenty, because she was all but caged in by those thighs, close enough for her to see the dusting of blond hair covering them, to feel the body heat radiating off him like a furnace.

She drew in a careful breath to steady herself—a mistake, because with oxygen came his scent.

He smelled like toothpaste with faint hints of sunscreen and sweat, a combination that no one ever had described as sexy, but her heart was hammering like he’d bathed in pheromones andfresh basil, and if she was going to die anyway, what was she waiting for?

She could fuck him now. He was only wearing boxer shorts—the ones she’d bought because they matched his eyes—and she was only wearing panties and a T-shirt, and the bed was right there. But with her luck she’d live, and then she wouldn’t be able to work for him anymore, and her already considerable financial problems would be even more dire.

She let out a groan, part despair and part lust and all raging disappointment, and the hand carefully probing the back of her head stilled.

His gaze dropped to hers, concern darkening his cornflower blue eyes. “Does it hurt?”

It didn’t, not really. But since pain explained the groan a lot better—and with less humiliation—than the truth, she nodded.

“There’s a bump, but it didn’t break the skin,” he said, and to her combined disappointment and relief, pulled his hand away to hold up two fingers. “How many fingers do you see?”

“I don’t have a concussion,” she told him, trying to sound confident. It was tough because the toothpaste/sunscreen/sweat combination was really very nice, and the mustache was still wreaking havoc on her hormones, and all of that combined with the thighs was making it hard to concentrate.

“Okay, then tell me how many.”

Deciding to humor him, she focused. “Two.”

“Any nausea? Dizziness?”

“No.”

“Who won the Stanley Cup last season?”

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