Page 59 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake

She glanced down at herself, then snorted. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? It feels like a sausage casing. I always tell myself I should stop wearing them, but I’m a tragically vain creature and like the smooth lines.” She plucked at the nylon on her stomach, and it made a slapping noise when she let it go.

It shouldn’t have sounded erotic. But it did.

“Plus, they help prevent chub rub,” she said.

And now he was picturing rubbing.

Lots of it.

Her thighs pressing together with his hand between them.

His chest moving against hers.

Her hands scratching down his back.

His cock—

“What’s chub rub?” he asked, his voice three octaves too high. For the four hundredth time that day, he told himself to get a grip.

“Thigh chafe. I get a heat rash from my inner thighs rubbing together with enough friction to start a bonfire,” she said with a laugh, getting on her knees to dig through her garbage bags of clothes, the material stretching so hints of her skin showed through the dark nylon. “But the thigh fabric on these helps, and it doesn’t ride up much. Indira and I call them full-body condoms.” She laughed again, and Rake swallowed down a groan at the way it made her overspilling breasts bounce in her bra.

“So, pizza?” she repeated. Lizzie pulled out a T-shirt and workout shorts, then pivoted a bit, still on her knees with her back now to him. She reached her arms behind her and undid the clasp of her bra, and Rake made a strangled, choking noise.

“What was that?” Lizzie asked, throwing the large T-shirt over herself and turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.

Her oversized T-shirt and extra-tight bicycle short–looking things should not have made him even harder than he was. But they did.

He scoured her face, trying to find any hint that she knew what she was doing—that she was the single most tempting creature he had ever seen and he wanted to devour her. There wasn’t any indication she knew. She was sexy and beautiful in her ridiculous outfit without even trying. And she wasn’t his to touch.

“Pizza sounds great,” he said, whipping around and heading for the bathroom. “Get whatever you want. I’ll leave my wallet on the table.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, and Rake could hear more plucking at the spandex.

“Shower,” he croaked out, moving as fast as he could toward the bathroom, for the coldest, longest shower of his life.

Chapter 27

LIZZIE was learning all sorts of interesting things about her baby daddy. For starters, he took exceptionally long showers.

The pizza had been delivered over twenty minutes ago, and she waited impatiently for him to emerge. Lizzie sniffed at the closed box, salivating like a dog. She glanced at the firmly shut bathroom door then lifted the lid. It wasn’t like he’d know if she ate some of the toppings. Maybe she could even convince him the pizza was delivered with a missing slice. She didn’t want to be rude and eat without him, but the water had stopped some time ago, and at this point she assumed he was either jerking off or had diarrhea.

Either way, she didn’t want to knock and interrupt him, but she was also close to perishing from starvation.

She walked over to the door, about to press her ear to it so she could gauge how much more time he’d need to take care of business, when it was pulled open.

She jumped back, looking as busted as she felt. But her guilt of being caught was quickly replaced by one single thought.

Body. Body. Body.

Rake stood in nothing but a towel, his skin still damp from the shower. Little droplets of water kissed and hugged the muscles of his torso and traveled down to his navel and below thetowel’s edge. Ah, to be a drop of water resting between that V at his hip bones to then slip down below and caress that lovely dong.

“What are you doing?” Rake asked, retreating a step into the bathroom like she was going to pounce on him.

Lizzie cleared her throat, trying to drag her eyes from the planes of muscles up to his face, but her vision got tangled in the wet mess of his hair, looking boyish and beautifully mussed from the towel he must have run through it.

“Are you sick?” she asked, her voice sounding too sultry, even to her own ears.

His eyebrows pinched together. “No? Why?”