Page 65 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake

An awkward silence snuggled in between them. Lizzie cleared her throat.

“Well, good night, then,” she said, turning away from him and tucking her knees up toward her chest.

“G’night,” Rake whispered back, trying to ignore the odd poking sensation in his gut.

Chapter 29

Week thirteen, baby is the size of a half-eaten corn dog. And has butt cheeks.

About a week later, Rake woke up with a raging boner.

That was torturously cradled by Lizzie’s ass as they spooned.

Which, unfortunately for Rake, was his new disaster of a morning routine.

He always woke before Lizzie for work, saving himself at least a little bit of embarrassment. But the softness of these summer mornings and the sweetness of her skin caused all his common sense to drown in a warm pool of pent-up horniness and tempting bad decisions.

Grappling for self-control, he rolled away from her, sitting up and swinging his legs off the side of the bed in a rush, the sunlight from the cracked window blinds making him squint. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and down his face, begging his erection to leave him alone. He tried to think about work and the big launch party happening that day.

Dominic had been particularly foul and abusive to the team over the past week, everything down to the color of napkins for the event making him bark and snap, commonly stating that they were all tasteless morons dead set on ruining the Onism brandbefore it even gained legs. While Rake was making decent progress on securing exclusive campaigns with key distributors, he was rapidly burning out from being a rat on a wheel in the process.

Lizzie stirred on the other side of the mattress, and he glanced at her over his shoulder. What he saw caused an odd shaky feeling in his chest, his breath catching for a moment in his throat.

She had rolled to face his side of the bed, one arm reaching out into the space he had just left, her hair spilling in red waves across the pillow. A triangle of morning sun sliced across the room and glowed against her skin, a soft pink obvious below her outrageous freckles.

She looked so soft. So lovely. Like an exquisite painting too precious to ever touch.

Which was ridiculous.

Because it was Lizzie. Loud, vibrant, exuberant Lizzie who thrived on human contact, and he needed to stop being so weird about her. Stop being so… damn emotional.

In a flash—because Lizzie seemed incapable of doing anything subtly or slowly—her eyes blazed open, sparking as they roamed around the room before landing on Rake.

“What are you staring at, weirdo?” she said with a yawn, stretching her arms over her head.

“You have a big booger hanging out of your nose,” Rake said, aiming for an aloofness he didn’t feel.

“What!” Lizzie rubbed the palm of her hand against her nose, crinkling it in a way that Rake found disastrously adorable. And arousing. What waswrongwith him?

“Did I get it?” she asked, pushing up to sitting and tucking her top lip against her teeth.

Rake tried to bite back a smile as he pretended to study her nose carefully. “No, still there.”

Lizzie scrubbed again, even using the collar of her shirt to pinch her nose. It should have been gross. It wasn’t.

“Now?”

Rake sighed. “No, it’s… Oh wait. What’s that?”

“What?”

Rake pulled a concerned face. “Lizzie, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but…” His eyes flicked away from her.

“Aware of what?” she said, touching her face all over.

“I hate to be the one to break the news—and please don’t burst into hysterics—but it seems as though you have a little spot on your skin right”—he circled his finger around—“there,” he said, touching the tip of her nose.

Lizzie stared cross-eyed at his finger before jerking back, grabbing a pillow, and flinging it at him. “You mean myfreckles?” She let out a booming laugh. “You had me scrubbing my face over a freckle?”