Free High-Stakes Playboy by Cindy Dees Page A

don’t break innocent hearts. Stop flirting with this girl...
    He answered, “You and I were in an outdoor hot tub. And it was snowing. The stars were out and we were naked. And then we...”
    Her soft fingers pressed frantically against his lips, halting the tale. “Someone will hear you!” she whispered in panic.
    Damn, she was beautiful. Mesmerizing
.
Irre-freaking-sistible
.
    “Tell me about your dream,” he murmured against her fingertips, “or I’ll keep telling you about mine.” He touched her fingers with the tip of his tongue. She jerked her hand away like he’d burned her with a hot iron. He was being a jerk. He should get up from this table and walk away right now, and instead he was flirting in the most openly sexual way with her. He wasn’t her type any more than she was his. They really, really shouldn’t do this. And yet, he wasn’t standing up. Wasn’t walking away. Correction: he was an idiot and she was...not.
    “Um, I dreamed we were camping,” she stammered. “In the woods. And there was a tent.”
    “Were we in it together?” She was too innocent for him. Deserved a real relationship to go with her first sex.
    She nodded.
    “Inside one of those double sleeping bags?”
Shut. The hell. Up.
    “No. On top of one.”
    “Naked?”
Stop leading her on.
    She looked around the dining room guiltily.
Hah.
She’d
so
dreamed about the two of them together. His mouth curved up into a knowing smile. “We were making love, weren’t we? Was it hot? Wild? What did we do? I’ve got a few things I’d like to try with you...”
    “Hush!” she whispered urgently.
    She was breathing fast and her tongue kept darting out to moisten her lips. She was rocking her hips forward and wiggling in tiny little pulses she probably wasn’t even aware of. Triumph roared through him at how bad she wanted him. Nearly as bad as he wanted her.
Double jerk.
    Gritting his teeth against the lust pounding through him, he changed subjects. “Are you shooting this afternoon?”
    “Yes. We’re finishing the close-ups and then we’re shooting stills of the fake city that’s getting blown up tomorrow.”
    “What time will you be done?”
    “Around dark, if I had to guess.”
    “I’ll pick you up at eight, and we’ll go somewhere private so you can tell me the details of your dream.”
You did
not
just ask her out again.
    “Are you for real?” she asked earnestly. She sounded like she couldn’t believe he was actually attracted to her.
    Smart girl. Run away, Marley. Far, far away as fast as you can go.
Jesus, he felt like a tennis ball bouncing back and forth between lust and sanity. And unfortunately, lust was a much better tennis player.
    “Why are you the slightest bit interested in me? You barely know me, and Lord knows, I barely know you.”
    Good thing.
If she did know him, she’d leave him, just like every other woman he’d ever given a damn about. Ouch. Sanity had just served an ace. The thought was a bucket of ice water on his raging libido.
    “How do you suggest I remedy that, other than spending time with you?” he asked reasonably.
    “I just don’t get what you see in me.”
    A thousand deeply sexual images flashed through his mind, but what came out of his mouth was, “Let’s find out together, shall we?”
    She shook her head and finished her meal in frustrated silence. He could relate. Honestly, he didn’t have the faintest idea why he was so attracted to her. For years, he’d honed his expertise at spotting the kind of woman who just wanted empty sex. The kind who would treat him with as much indifference as he treated them. Marley Stringer was emphatically not one of them. No matter how hot she was, she would want the whole ball of wax. Sex. Romance. Intimacy. Hell, a real relationship.
    Granny Minerva used to talk about kismet, and he’d always thought it was a load of crap. But maybe she’d known what she was talking about, after all. Fascinated, frustrated and thoroughly appalled