Free Ultimate Engagement by Lydia Rowan Page B

“Besides, he was ogling my fiancée. That’s worth a conversation, don’t you think?”
    The warm feeling that settled over Sloan at Adam’s display of possessiveness was one she wanted to ignore but couldn’t. His words, the look in his eye felt so real that Sloan could almost believe him. She wouldn’t, though, and instead turned to another issue.
    “Are you kidding?” Sloan asked, letting herself smile, a byproduct of that damn nagging happiness Adam’s words had inspired.
    “What would I be kidding about, Sloan?” Adam said.
    “You’re really going to use me as a front to poke around?” she said, looking at him skeptically.
    “What’s ridiculous about that? I’m a man and you’re my woman. Can’t let that stand,” he said.
    Sloan scoffed. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. We are at a couples’ retreat, so I’m afraid you’ll have to find another angle.” She shrugged. “And he wouldn’t be interested anyway,” Sloan said.
    “What gives you that idea?” Adam asked, frowning down at her from what Sloan realized was less than a foot.
    She shrugged again, acutely aware of Adam’s presence now. “Let’s just say I’m not the type of girl to inspire that particular sort of attraction from that particular type of guy. Besides, you were handling me like a sack of potatoes, so I think you pretty well marked your territory,” she said.
    She laughed, but Adam didn’t join in, and instead took a few steps closer, steps that again reminded her of how close he already was. Reminded her of how it had felt to have his hands on her, how her pulse had quickened, how her sex had slickened, gotten heavy with her need.
    “A sack of potatoes?” he said.
    She nodded, words having left her.
    “Why do you say that?” His voice had taken on a different tone, one she’d never heard from him, and certainly not directed at her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
    Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly how she felt. Her insides, which had been trembling with desire, were again set off, and she could feel the heavy pulsing between her thighs, a need only Adam could fulfill. One that he wouldn’t again, even after that mind-blowing encounter in the ocean.
    Sloan tried to laugh it off, waved at him dismissively.
    “Say what? How you were marking territory?” she said, looking at him but keeping her gaze centered somewhere around his throat, though that only gave her the opportunity to look at the strong column of his neck, his throat working as he swallowed…
    She snapped her eyes up, quickly deciding to keep them somewhere around his lips. No, too easy to think of those lips caressing her skin. She settled on his strong jaw, imagined the stubble scrapping against her breasts… She moved her gaze, looking for somewhere safe, though with Adam, there was no such thing.
    “You were saying, Sloan?” Adam said when she finally met his eyes.
    Wrong move, but she couldn’t look away, and instead let out a high-pitched laugh that sounded both nervous and breathless, which she was in no small part because of the fiery intensity with which Adam watched her.
    “You know how you were touching me, handling the goods, so to speak,” she said, shrugging before she quickly covered the motion, not wanting to give Adam a glimpse of the unsteadiness, the nerve-shattering need this conversation, the thoughts it made her think, inspired.
    He chuckled, the sound low, not one of humor but some emotion she didn’t dare try to identify.
    “Is that what you call it? Handling you like a sack of potatoes?”
    “You call it something else?” she asked, breathless now, her nipples tight, her palms sweaty.
    He stepped even closer, and though she wanted to look away from the intensity of his gaze, she had no choice but to keep the connection, stare into his eyes, dark, fathomless, glittering.
    Sloan knew she was reading into this, was letting the desire that pulsed in her like an unrelenting