Free Rules of Entanglement by Gina L. Maxwell

The moonlight slid over his bare chest, tempting her to reach out and feel if it was as smooth as it looked.
    Her gaze drifted lower. She tried using the Jedi mind trick to move his hand from his stomach, but it didn’t work. Shocker. With most of his washboard abs covered, she realized his hand was sexy in its own right. Strong with long fingers and sprinkled with a few white scars. Only hours earlier that hand had squeezed her breast and the mere memory of it had the butterflies kicking up dust in her belly.
    A trail of dark hair beneath his belly button gained her attention. He didn’t seem to be an overly hairy man, but he still had a light path that led to the— Whoa . Her eyes settled on the maroon pair of underwear. Or rather, what was inside the underwear. She told herself to look away. This bordered on inappropriate and could arguably be violating the man on some subconscious level. And still she stared.
    Lying in a hammock, sleeping as peacefully as could be, was a giant of a mostly naked man who was undeniably, and quite impressively…hard.
    The tight material of his boxer briefs didn’t allow it the full northerly direction it wanted, but it didn’t let that hinder it. At some point her mouth gaped. She clamped it shut again with a snap of her teeth. Then she spun on her heel and raced to the bedroom.
    She took a long shower and then hopped into bed, but every time she closed her eyes she saw Jackson’s hard-on on the inside of her lids. After an hour of lying there, she’d resorted to popping a Benadryl for a pleasant eight-hour coma. By the time she’d awakened, Jackson was gone so she met Robert to go over centerpieces and linens by herself.
    Vanessa looked up from her laptop when she heard a key in the door. Jackson walked in with a brilliant smile, freshly shaven and showered, it seemed, in a yellow pair of board shorts—she wondered how many pairs of those he had—and a T-shirt that said, Let’s do stuff tonight that makes tomorrow awkward.
    “Good morning, beautiful. Sleep well?”
    The cheerful attitude threw her for a loop, but only briefly. She offered a small smile in return—she wasn’t sure what his game was yet, but she’d be damned if she let him be the only “bigger person”—and said, “Yes, I did, thank you. Of course, I had the most comfortable bed in the world, whereas you slept all night in a hammock. How was that?”
    He set the large duffel he’d brought in on the floor and sat beside her. “Are you kidding? Sleeping in a hammock that sways in the breeze underneath the stars? I loved it.”
    She picked up her coffee mug and mumbled, “You clearly loved something.”
    “What was that?”
    “Nothing. So what time did you leave this morning? Where did you go?”
    “Am I being examined on the stand, Counselor?”
    “Just making conversation. Believe me, if I were examining you on the witness stand, you’d know it by the fear clawing your gut.”
    “Only the guilty have claw marks in their guts. What makes you think I’d ever be guilty of something?”
    She shrugged a shoulder. “You’re a man. That’s already a huge strike against you, since men find it almost impossible to behave like decent human beings for very long. Eventually you all screw up big.”
    “Ouch. That’s a huge generalization, don’t you think?”
    “Yes, I do. Unfortunately, I haven’t been proven wrong yet.”
    “So you’re telling me I’m guilty until proven innocent. Is that it?”
    She stood from the couch and crossed to the small kitchen to refill her coffee. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘Expect the worst and hope for the best’?”
    “Yeah, but that’s for things like planning parties. You hope for great weather but still set up a tent in case it rains. It’s generally not used in relation to people. That’s downright cynical.”
    “True. But the best prediction of the future is looking at the past.”
    She hadn’t heard him cross the room, but suddenly he