Page 66 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake

“I told you not to get hysterical.”

“You’re right, this does come as a shock,” she said, rolling her eyes and getting out of bed. “I only have 4.2 million freckles on my body, but I didn’t know there was a booger-shaped oneright there.”

She moved toward the kitchen, and Rake’s legs twitched with the bizarre impulse to trail after her.

She had on tiny cotton shorts that barely covered her generous hips, and a thin tank top that would likely kill him. Any progress he’d made on controlling his erection was shot to hell, and he tried to adjust himself without her noticing. God, he desperately needed a wank.

But there was no damn privacy in their place. It was moments like these that hehatedhimself for getting an open floor plan apartment. What a fuckingidiot. It wasn’t like he jerked off with a great deal of regularity before all of this. He’d lived in such a gray hole of self-pity that masturbation often felt like more work than it was worth, but he’d had no way to anticipate just how potent Lizzie’s presence would be.

He imagined little blood ever reached his brain with howfrequently and furiously she turned him on. And she didn’t seem to have a bloody clue. He’d seen her in her seductive mode, and he’d thought that was irresistible. But Lizzie in the morning? In her tiny scraps of pajamas, moaning over a cup of coffee?

Or Lizzie in the evening, home from the bakery smelling like sweetness and sin as she pulled off her work clothes in the middle of the goddamn apartment to change into her “comfy clothes” and ridiculously thick glasses?

Or Lizzie atnight? Her body so close on the bed, he could feel the heat of her? Hear her soft breathing? Smell the traces of sugar on her skin?

Thosethings were the definition of irresistible.

And yet, he resisted.

“Why are you just standing in here?” Lizzie asked, padding toward him with a proffered cup of coffee. He took it, and she used her free arm to wrap him in a little hug. Rake reflexively shifted his hips away.

While Rake didn’t cross the touch barrier, Lizzie sure as hell did with stunning frequency. She touched and hugged and reached out her hand like human contact was essential to her existence—like she had so much energy, her body couldn’t contain it all and she needed to pass on the warmth of it to whoever was near.

It did odd things to Rake’s composure.

“Shower,” Rake said gruffly, disentangling himself from her warmth and her smell and her damn hair and making a beeline for the bathroom.

Slamming the door, he pressed his back to it, squeezing his eyes closed and trying to think of anything,anything, that would remove the imprint of her touch from his skin. He brought his coffee mug to his lips and took a scalding sip. Burning off the roof of his mouth seemed to help take his mind off Lizzie’s body, so he gulped down a bit more.

After feeling as though he’d properly collected himself, he opened his eyes and flicked on the lights.

And what he saw almost caused him to faint.

Panties.

Pantieseverywhere.

Andbrasfor Christ’s sake.

He was surrounded by a sea of red and pink and blue and black lace. Straps and strings. Bows and the random rhinestone. A bra here, a thong there.

It wasn’t often that Lizzie did laundry, but when she did, the results were almost more of a mess than what needed to be cleaned. And apparently her delicates were no exception.

She had bras draped over the shower rod. Frilly underwear hanging on the edges of the mirror and on the towel hooks. Two pairs were draped over the back of the toilet, another hung from the vanity knob. It was like walking through a maze in her underwear drawer.

It was hell. Absolute torture.

Rake did what he could to ignore them. He descended deep,deepdown into one corner of his brain that was still able to find cool indifference to the world around him. But that tiny corner wasn’t a great match for the burning flame of his heated blood, the pounding of his pulse in every inch of his body as he maneuvered around Lizzie’s most intimately acquainted articles of clothing.

With shaky hands, he pulled the bras from the shower rod, trying his best to gently stack them together before placing them on the washing machine in the closet. He pinched only a millimeter of lace as he lifted a pair of underwear and retrieved his towel from the hook below, replacing them as though they’d burned him. He gingerly transferred the panties sitting on the toilet to wait with the bras so he could put down his towel.

After being certain he’d cleared a decent path, he turned onthe shower, pushed the curtain aside, and stepped under the spray. He closed his eyes and tried to let the water relieve the tension in his shoulders, the pounding of his pulse.

He couldn’t keep doing this, keep thinking like this. Neither of them wanted a relationship, and marriage had been swiftly rejected, but they both needed to be in their child’s life. And Rake recklessly hoped that they would do such in camaraderie. As a team.

But a team wasn’t performing at its best if one of the players desperately wanted to fuck the other.

Rake scrubbed the water from his face and opened his eyes, looking for his shampoo. But a tiny scrap of red lace on the edge of the tub caught his attention instead, just an inch peeking out below the wrinkled edge of the curtain liner. Slowly, so slowly one would think he was about to reveal a severed head, he pulled the curtain back.