Free For Seven Nights Only (Chase Brothers) by Sarah Ballance Page B

him feel better. That had to be it.
    “I thought you were spotting me,” she said softly.
    He looked from the television and took in every gorgeous inch of her. “I was.”
    “If you want out of our deal—”
    He stood and pushed the door shut. No need for the whole place to hear this. “Dammit, Kelsie, I don’t want out of our deal.”
    Her brow furrowed. “Then why did you leave me?”
    “Because this is about you meeting someone else, and that’s not going to happen with me staring at your ass.”
    “Has that been my problem all these months?” Her arms flailed, and he had a flashback to the night they met. “The reason I haven’t been able to meet anyone? Not so much my shit cooking or my territorial dog, but you staring at my ass ?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    God, this woman. She couldn’t let it drop, and yet she didn’t understand why he didn’t want a full-time commitment to listening to this kind of crap? “You want to know what I don’t understand?” he asked. “I don’t understand why you care. You tell me not to touch you, then you give me hell when I try to get some distance. What exactly do you want here, Kelsie?”
    A long moment passed without either of them breathing a word. Fine. He put his hand on the doorknob, only to hear her soft voice behind him.
    “You were trying to get away from me?”
    “Yeah,” he said without looking.
    “Why?” She sounded so damned small. And hurt. And she had no right to that because these were her rules, and he was doing his damnedest not to break every one of them, but his thumb flicked the lock anyway. He stared at the knob for the longest time, because he knew that would be his undoing. The sight of her, gorgeous. Wounded. Skin glowing from her workout. Eyes dark because he’d hurt her. He could already see her, and it was too much.
    Something touched his arm. Her hand.
    He turned. Slowly. All the measured control in the world, but it wasn’t enough. Genuine questions darkened her eyes, and he had but one answer. “Because I can’t stop wanting this.”
    He closed his mouth on hers, foregoing the polite nudge for permission in favor of a devastating kiss. All of that sweet, polite shit from the couple days prior was obliterated by an urgency that demanded he possess her, and she responded like she’d been waiting for it. Wanting it.
    In a blink, he had her hoisted against the wall, her legs wrapped around him, her breasts pressed tight against his chest. He held her ass and ground against her while she whimpered his name and clutched his hair. The wall got old fast… He wanted his hands free to touch every piece of her, so he moved her, with extraordinarily bad intent, to the sofa and went down after her. In that moment—the last moment before he kissed her again—he hesitated. He wanted everything, but it started with her permission.
    She immediately dragged him against her mouth, then it was she who tasted him. He caught up quickly, but he couldn’t get close enough. He worked his hand up her shirt, landing on a sports bra. He settled for cupping her breast while she moaned and wiggled and deepened the kiss. Before he had any idea what happened, she was tearing at the elastic of his track pants and with surprising dexterity had her hand wrapped around his shaft.
    He froze.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.
    “If you move any part of your hand even a tenth of a centimeter, there’s a good chance I’ll shoot you in the eye.”
    “In the eye ?” She was bewildered, comically so, and still the spell didn’t break.
    “I’m not kidding.” And he didn’t have a condom, which was probably a good thing. If he ever got the chance to have sex with her, he didn’t want it to be in the employee break room of the fucking rock gym. But if she begged, he’d be toast. He’d also be in the men’s room praying that ancient condom dispenser worked.
    Fortunately, she didn’t beg. And she didn’t listen. Instead, she