Page 31 of Seducing Cinderella

“About time you woke up, sleepyhead.” Lucie froze in mid-tiptoe as his strong arms banded around her from behind. She knew he was shirtless by the way his chest warmed her upper back not covered by the blanket. “Why did it look like you were trying to sneak by me?” he asked before nudging her hair aside with his chin so he could place moist kisses along her neck.

“I…um…”What did he ask? Crap.

Suddenly his body tensed. “Do you regret last night, Luce?”

Before she spoke Lucie prayed her damn nerves stayed out of her voice. “Do you?”

He turned her around and tipped her chin up. His eyes looked more on the light brown side in the morning light. “I’m not going to lie. The sex was amazing, and Ineverregret amazing sex with an amazing woman.” He gave a small sigh as he studied her face and tucked her hair behind her ear. “But I don’t want to compromise our friendship either.”

“No, of course.” She cleared her throat and tried to keep her eyes from shifting away as they rejected the coming lies. “I mean, it’s definitely best we keep it to a one-time thing.”

“Right.” His eyes fell to her lips. He licked his own with the flick of his tongue. “We don’t want to make things weird between us. After all, you’re on your way to dating your doctor and soon I’ll be back in Vegas.”

The shine on his lips transfixed her gaze and the rhythm of her pulse kept time with the seconds that passed before she remembered it was her turn to refute the idea of a phenomenal no-strings-attached sexcapade with one of the hottest men in sports, not to mention her childhood crush. But she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Luce,” he rasped, his hands settling on her hips, his eyes never leaving her mouth. “We shouldn’t…right?”

She tried to respond, her mouth opening several times to say something, anything. Finally, she gave up and settled for grabbing the back of his head in one hand and kissing him senseless.

Reid responded in kind, yanking her into his body and taking control of the kiss with a simple angle adjustment and thrust of his tongue. It was a well-coordinated attack she had no defense for, even if she’d wanted one.

He pushed her back against the wall, grinding his body into hers, which skewed the blanket into a bunched-up mess between them. Reid, being the gentleman he was, helped her with her creative wardrobe mishap by shoving it to the floor. Problem solved.

Breaking the kiss, he moved his mouth over her jawline, following it back to that sensitive spot behind her ear. One hand cupped a breast; the other squeezed her ass like he was holding on for dear life. His thick erection rubbed against her clit through the mesh of his shorts creating delicious friction and making her lose her mind.

“Oh, God, Reid,” she panted. “What are we doing? This is crazy.”

“No,” he argued, biting her earlobe and making her gasp from the strange pleasure-pain she was only beginning to learn about. “Thisis foreplay.” He sucked her earlobe into his mouth for a brief, hot moment, and then said, “The fact that I can’t keep my goddamn hands off you is crazy.”

“That too.” Just as they were about to lose their minds in each other, her cell phone started playing “Jackson”by Johnny Cash. “Shit! It’s my brother.”

Reid pulled back and gave her a you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me look, but Lucie snatched the blanket off the floor and tucked it around her as she raced for her phone. Her brother was worse than a mother hen and if she didn’t answer, he’d be calling her grandmotherly neighbor to come and check on her.

Sliding her thumb across the screen to accept the call, she said, “Hey, Jackson. What’s up?”

“Since when does something have to be ‘up’ for me to call my little sister? And why do you sound like you just raced to the phone?”

“Uh, because I did. I’d forgotten it in my room, so I ran to get to it because I know how you are. I didn’t want you to have to call the cavalry for no reason.”

“I’d hardly call Mrs. Egan a cavalry,” he answered wryly. “Besides, the last time I asked her to check on you she brought you fresh brownies. I can see how that’d be a huge burden to bear for your brother’s peace of mind.”

“Fine, I suppose you have a poin—ah!” Reid’s large hand had startled the crap out of her when it reached under the blanket to her stomach, and now it was snaking its way toward her breasts.

“What’s wrong?”

She slapped Reid’s hand and pushed it away. When he chuckled in amusement she glared at him in warning, but it didn’t seem to faze him in the least. “Nothing, Jax, I just, um…”Think, girl, think.“…stubbed my toe on the coffee table.”

Jackson’s smile came through the telephone. “Still as klutzy as ever, huh? Good to know some things don’t change.”

Her hair was moved to the side before a hot mouth seared her neck with moist kisses and the occasional scrape of teeth. A throbbing deep in her core sent shockwaves of tingling through her body with every beat. Her limbs weakened. Her arm didn’t want to hold the phone up to her ear, and her legs didn’t want to hold her up at all. And what the hell had she been saying?Klutzy! That’s it.“Yeah, well, it would be nice if that…you know…ah, thing…could change, er…whatever.”

“Hey, are you feeling all right?” Jackson asked. “You sound strange.”

Reid licked the shell of her ear and whispered, “Get him off the phone, or I’ll getyouoff with him on it.”

The idea of messing around while listening to her brother was like standing under a bucket of ice water balanced on a ledge with a string that said Pull Here. Nooooo thank you.

“Actually, Jackson, can I call you back later? I really did a number on my toe and I need to go put ice on it and stuff.” She did the requisite pauses and “uh-huhs” as he wrapped up his brotherly advice on how to care for a sprained toe and how to know if it was broken, yadda yadda. Finally, he finished, and she was pulling the phone away from her ear before she even gave him a rushed, “Okayloveyoutoo.”

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