Page 40 of The Au Pair Affair

And she didn’t want to get stuck. She was just learning to fly again.

“For what it’s worth, she adores you.”

Burgess scoffed, turned his face away.

“She does. It’s hidden under a bunch of angst, but...” Tallulah smiled to herself. “When Lissa says something at the dinner table, she always looks at you first to get your reaction. Did you notice that?”

He looked back at Tallulah, a groove between his brows. “Does she?”

“Yes.”

A long pause. “Huh.”

“I bet the rookies on your team do the same thing.”

“The Orgasm Donor Twins?” Burgess rolled his eyes. “They don’t care about what anyone is saying unless it’s coming out of their mouths.”

“Oh yeah? Watch them next time.”

“No.”

Tallulah laughed.

“You’ve gotten me to agree to too many things tonight. You’ve hit your quota.”

“That’s fair. Thanks for coming to get me. I really appreciate it.” Before she could register her own movements, her hand reached across the center console and squeezed his bicep—and honestly, she’d intended a friendly lil squeeze, but when she encountered pure concrete in the shape of an arm, Tallulah frowned, thinking she must have grabbed onto something else by mistake, because this arm didn’t feel human.

Frowning, she molded the grapefruit-sized lump in her hand, only partially aware of the amused twitch of Burgess’s lips.

“I guess this is another thing I’m going to regret in the morning,” Tallulah muttered.

“Probably.”

Still touching. Why was she still touching? Her fingertips traced the rainbow-shaped bulge, top to bottom, like a kid riding a slide at the park.Wheee.“So this is... a result of the high-protein diet. Good to know. Good. To. Know.”

“Tallulah?”

“Yes?”

Slowly, he leaned in. And oh-so-casually flexed his arm. “I’m like this all over.”

“Oh.”

Their eyes met, locked, their breath accelerating in tandem. “You want to bring me around Boston on your adventures, good. Let’s go.” His face came closer, close enough to feel his warm breath painting her mouth. “You let me know if you want my bed to be one of them.”

Burgess hadn’t been exaggerating.

He really did know how to make a woman wet.

Tallulah had no problem becoming aroused by her own mental fantasies or the occasional trip to the X-rated section of the internet, but it had been a really,reallylong time since a real-life man had inspired that warm spread of moisture between her thighs. That hot, reckless flutter in the lowest regions of her belly. Herpulse thickened and sped up at the same time, that long absent ache of need, the one that required skin on skin, turning sharp and greedy in places that made her squirm... closer. Shewassquirming closer, her hand sliding from Burgess’s troublesome bicep to the collar of his shirt, twisting to drag him closer—

Both of their phones rang at the same time.

The riot of sound was so unexpected in the quiet intimacy of the SUV that Tallulah immediately thought they were being arrested. Surely those were sirens to signal a SWAT team descending on them to demand why she was about to kiss her boss for thesecondtime tonight.

But no. Phones.

Who was calling them?

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