Fiona Brand - His Not-So-Blushing Bride - Marriage with Benefits / Improperly Wed / A Breathless Bride

“I tried to tell you.”

For the rest of the day, in between Lucas’s shower, lunch, grocery shopping and an unfinished argument over what Cia proposed to wear to dinner, they shot questions back and forth. He even followed her to her room, refusing to give her a minute alone.

Exhausted, Cia dropped onto her bed and flung a hand over her eyes. “This is a disaster.”

Lucas rooted around in her closet, looking for an unfrumpy dress. So far, he’d discarded her three best dresses from Macy’s, which he refused to acknowledge were practical, and was working up to insulting the more casual ones in the back.

“I agree. Your wardrobe is a cardigan away from an episode of Grandmas Gone Mild.” Lucas emerged from her closet, shaking his head. “We gotta fix that.”

“Nowhere in our agreement did it say I was required to dress like a bimbo. You are not allowed to buy me clothes. Period.” Knowing him, he’d burn her old outfits, and then what would she wear to the shelter? BCBG and Prada to work with poverty-stricken women? “That’s not the disaster.”

“You dressing like something other than a matronly librarian is for my benefit, not yours. What could possibly be more of a disaster than your closet?”

It was disconcerting to have that much Lucas in her bedroom, amid her familiar mission-style furniture, which was decorating an unfamiliar house. An unfamiliar house they would share for a long six months. “Do you realize we have nothing in common other than both being born in Texas and both holding a business degree from SMU?”

He leaned his jean-clad rear on her dresser, and Dios en las alturas, the things acid-washed denim did to his thighs. Not noticing , she chanted silently. Not noticing at all.

But therein lay the problem. It was impossible not to notice Lucas. He lit up the room—a golden searchlight stabbing the black sky, drawing her eye and piquing her curiosity.

“What about bourbon?” he asked. “You drink that.”

“Three things in common, then. Three. Why didn’t I look for someone who at least knows how to spell hip-hop?”

His nose wrinkled. “Because. That’s not important. Marriages aren’t built on what you have in common. It’s about not being able to live without each other.”

First clothes. Then declarations à la Romeo and Juliet. “Are you sure you’re not gay?”

“Would you like to come over here and test me? Now, darlin’, that’s the kind of exam I can get on board with.” His electric gaze traveled over her body sprawled out on the bed, and she resisted the intense urge to dive under the covers. To hide from that sexy grin.

“Save it for tonight, Wheeler. Go away so I can get dressed.”

“No can do. You’ve maligned my orientation, and I’m not having it.” He advanced on her, and a dangerous edge sprang into his expression. “There must be a suitable way to convince you. Shall I make your ears bleed with a range of baseball statistics? Rattle off a bunch of technical specs for the home theater system in the media room down the hall? Hmm. No, none of that stuff is specific to straight men. Only one way to go on this one.”

In an effortless move, he tumbled onto the bed, wrapped her up in his arms and rolled, tangling their legs and binding her to his hard body. Heat engulfed her, and that unique, woodsy Lucas scent swirled through her head in a drugging vortex.

When his lips grazed the hollow beneath her ear, she gasped for air as the world ignited around her.

Lucas’s fingers threaded through her hair, and his mouth burned down her throat. The impressive evidence of his orientation pressed against her thigh, and she went liquid.

The plan to ignore her feminine parts for the next six months melted faster than ice in the blazing sun.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening, this flood of need for a man who did this for sport. She was smarter than that.

He hadn’t even kissed her yet.

“Stop,” she choked out before surrender became inevitable.

No doubt he could make her body sing like a soprano with little effort. But intimacy at that level was never going to happen for her. Not with anybody. She’d learned her lesson the hard way in college, and it still stung.

He took one look at her face and swore, then rolled away to stare at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. That was juvenile, even for me. Please, let’s pretend I’m not such a jerk.”

She jumped off the bed and backed away from the slightly rumpled and wholly inviting male lying in it. “It’s not a big deal. I know you were only messing around.”

“It is a big deal. You’re skittish enough already.” He glanced up at her, and darkness dawned in his eyes. “Oh, man, I’m slow, I’ll admit, but I shouldn’t be that slow. Some guy beat up on you, didn’t he? That’s why you’re so passionate about the shelter.”

“What? No way. I teach self-defense. Any creep who laid a hand on me would find his balls in his back pocket. If I was in a good enough mood to return them.”

“Then why are you so scared of men touching you?”

“I’m not scared of men touching me.” Just you. History proved she couldn’t trust herself, and she didn’t plan to test it.

She shrugged and prayed her expression conveyed boredom or nonchalance or anything other than what she was feeling. “I’m just not interested in you that way. And that little interlude was four exits past practicing. We’ll never have a public occasion to be lying in bed together.”

Her tone could have frosted glass, and he didn’t overlook it. In his typical fashion, he grinned and said, “I might have missed the exit for practicing, but the one I took had some great scenery. Meet me downstairs at six?”

She tried to be irritated but couldn’t. He’d apologized and put them back on even ground effortlessly. No point in sulking about it. “I’ll be downstairs at six. I’ll expect you about ten after.”

Chuckling, he left and shut the door behind him, sucking all the vibrancy out of the room. She took a not-so-hot shower and washed her hair twice but couldn’t erase the feeling of Lucas’s fingers laced through it. The towel scraped across her still-sensitized flesh, and she cursed. She couldn’t give him any more openings. It was too hard to fake a nonreaction.

In deference to Lucas’s parents, she spent an extra couple of minutes on her hair and makeup. Lucas would likely complain about her lack of style regardless, so it certainly wasn’t for his sake. The less she encouraged the trigger on his libido, the better.

With a small sigh, she twisted Lucas’s diamond ring onto her finger, the only jewelry a man had ever bought her, and pretended she hated it.

After firing off at least half a dozen emails and scheduling a couple of walk-throughs for early Monday afternoon, Lucas descended the hardwood and wrought-iron stairs at six sharp. Dinner was important to Mama, which meant being on time, plus he’d already done enough to provoke Cia today. Though she should be apologizing to him for the solid fifteen minutes it had taken to scrub the coconut and lime from his skin.

Why did that combination linger, like a big, fruity, tropical tattoo etched into his brain? Couldn’t she wear plain old Chanel like normal women? Then the slight hard-on he’d endured since being in Cia’s bed, her luscious little body twisted around his, would be easy to dismiss. Easy, because a blatant, calculated turn-on he understood.

This, he didn’t.

He shouldn’t be attracted to her. Keeping his hands to himself should be easy. Besides, he scared the mess out of her every time he touched her. That was reason enough to back off, and there were plenty more reasons where that one came from. He’d have to try harder to remember them.