Page 70 of His Best Friend's Baby

She pulled his shirt up his back and he lifted away from her enough to let her yank it over his head. He put his hand under the hem of her shirt, rested his palm against the tight trembling muscles of her stomach.

For a second, the magnitude of what was happening here, this leap off a high cliff, hammered home. This was Julia. Julia, Mitch’s widow. Julia who owned nothing but the shirt on her back. And there was Mitch’s son. He had no—

“Hey.” She reached up and forced him to meet her eyes. “It’s just you and me, Jesse.” She smiled, part vixen, part angel. “And I really need you right now.” She arched again, pressing the damp heat between her legs against him. The simple movement pushed away all doubt, all regret. He let himself get burned by her fire.

He slowly pulled her shirt off her body. He kissed the tight knob of her belly button as he passed it. He greeted each thin rib. And finally her small breasts, the nipples drawn up hard with obvious want. He licked them in warm welcome, bit down lightly until she gasped. He smiled and kissed his way to her beautiful lips.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him so tightly he could barely breathe.

And he was fine with that.

Just once, he thought. I’ll have her just once and then I’ll let her go.

THE PLEASURE WAS THICK, like syrup, filling her body until she felt full, ripe, swollen with need and want and a feminine power she’d never known existed in her.

She stroked his erection between her hands, ran her thumb over the smooth head until he shuddered and jerked away from her.

He’d already ruined her with his mouth and hands. He’d given her all she thought she could take and then coaxed her to the edge one more time. And now suddenly, here she was hungry once again.

“Make love to me, Jesse,” she whispered.

He fumbled at the table in his shaving kit and turned back to her with a condom in hand. He smiled at the incredulous face she made.

“Government issue,” he said before ripping the package open with his teeth. He slid the sheath on and was again over her. The solid warmth against her breast and between her legs was a drug she couldn’t get enough of.

And then he was inside of her, pushing against walls and muscles and nerves that rang like bells through her body and her heart.

She licked sweat from his shoulder and then bit where she licked, he growled and pushed harder, higher inside of her. She had a sudden appetite for more. She arched, lifted her knees. His hand found its way in between them, stroked the hard ridge of her clitoris and somehow not even that was enough.

She pushed against his shoulder, forcing him to his back and she climbed on top of him. She straddled him like some kind of amazon warrior. A woman staking her ground. Claiming what was hers.

She ran her hands up his wounded chest and felt the hard beat of his heart under her hand.

This is where I belong. Where I was meant to be.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HE WOKE UP SLOWLY, Which was strange. Different. Usually he woke up on the razor’s edge ready for battle, but today he rode a sweet updraft toward consciousness.

The air smelled like Julia. Julia and sex and he wanted to linger in the warm sheets, in the memories of last night, in that sweet woman smell.

But someone was singing off-key in the kitchen and the smells of coffee and pancakes beckoned. Those homey scents brought reality crashing in on him, shoving aside all trace of dreams.

The world was up without him and there was no time like the present to see the damage he’d done. He didn’t know what to say to Julia, how to correct what he’d done last night.

He pulled on a pair of pants and a T-shirt and padded out into the kitchen where Julia had her son tucked into a high-back chair. Ben wore a dish towel for a bib. She sang something to him about wheels on the bus and he shouted something back at her. She danced and twirled to the stove where she flipped a pancake onto a plate.

It was like walking into a scene from a fairy tale. The Dance of the Pancake Fairy or something.

“Good morning,” he said into the happy scene.

“Look, Ben,” Julia said with a twinkle in her pretty eyes. “It’s a bear!”

Ben, as if cued, did his bear impression and Julia came over and pressed a quick kiss to Jesse’s cheek. He put his hands on her delicate waist before she could run off.

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