Page 63 of Naughty or Nice

Leave her the fuck alone.

And she really thinks that talking to her family, her father talking to Nate, is going to fix this?

Like hell it is.

I grit my teeth and close my eyes, riding my shoulders into the soft upholstery, seeking comfort, seeking the blissful ignorance of sleep. But my conscience laughs at me. There’s no way sleep will be forthcoming when I know she’s lying in the room next to me. Wanting me.

I know she’s pissed off with me. My rejection has goaded her. And I can’t blame her—not when it comes so soon off the back of that kiss, when all my good intentions disintegrated, incinerated in the heat of a need that won’t shift.

I’m torn between doing what I want and encouraging her down a path that she might regret.

If I’d told her one of my messages was from Nate—the first message I’ve received from him since I changed my number all those years ago—would she still have tried to jump me?

It’s a question I can’t stop tossing around—have been for the last two hours, since closing the door on her.

I swing from wanting to send an equally angry retort to her brother and then taking what’s on offer in my bed, to protecting her from herself...from me. I’m not blind to the anger that still bubbles beneath the surface. The resentment. It fizzes in my blood at every mention of her family. But my need for her, my love, swamps it.

Or maybe it feeds it?

Maybe there is an unconscious need to have what I shouldn’t—to have what pisses them off the most.

I force my hands to relax and shimmy my shoulders further back—sleep, just sleep.

Logic tells me to get the deal signed, get her in my life and then go after more. Not to jeopardise the business by encouraging a relationship I’m not sure she can accept. Not when her family are so against it.

But the alternative—the platonic route—is impossible. No matter how short-term. I need her as much as I need my next breath.

And then I hear it: the soft glide of the door.

My fingers twitch; my chest tingles.

‘Lucas?’

Her voice is soft, whisper-like. Has she just woken up?

I try to appear asleep. I can’t begin to imagine how she looks right now, dishevelled by sleep. Or, if she hasn’t slept, from tossing and turning. Either way my body heats at the very idea.

‘Are you awake?’

Her feet pad towards me and I try to even out my breath, relax. The room goes quiet and I know without looking that she’s studying me.

One breath in. One breath out. In—

Her fingers brush gently over my forehead, taking back my fringe, and then her lips are there, soft, caressing.

‘Lucas...’

Oh, God.

Her fingers slide down over my front and I realise how stupid playing asleep is. Awake, I can stop her. Awake, I can stop the progress of her fingers...

‘Lucas, I know you’re awake.’

My lips curve in a lazy smile. ‘Not one to be easily fooled, are you?’

‘No.’

‘What gave me away?’