Page 26 of Magnus
“How long have you been standing there?”
Sapphie’s eyes widened and her cheeks heated with color when she realized she had been so mesmerized by Magnus’s muscular body she’d had no idea he’d stopped punching the leather bag and was now staring ather, his eyes both fierce and hungry.
Magnus had deliberately putsome space between himself and Sapphie after witnessing Angel bursting into tears because she wanted her damned spider. It had been even more distressing to watch Sapphie try, and fail, to soothe and comfort her very upset daughter. He knew that part of the little girl’s meltdown had to be because of all the sudden changes in her life these past twenty-four hours. The missing spider from her bath had obviously become the catalyst for all that emotional upheaval.
He’d really hoped that an hour’s workout in the gym, followed by a cold shower, would help to ease some of his tension. Or at least tire him so much, he wouldn’t have the energy to walk around with a constant hard-on to touch and caress every inch of Sapphie.
One glance at Sapphie standing in the doorway of the gym and wearing only a purple camisole that clung to the plump and erect nipples beneath, the matching shorts just as revealing and leaving the whole length of her slender legs bare, and Magnus knew he’d only been kidding himself.
His cock was once again as hard as fucking rock.
Proving he’d need to be six feet underground and no longer breathing to stop desiring her.
His cock gave an eager throb as he watched Sapphie’s tongue tentatively moisten her lips before she spoke. “You said I could go into any of the rooms in the apartment.”
“You can.” Magnus turned away to untie and remove his boxing gloves, needing to look away from her before he spontaneously combusted in his bloody boxers. “I just thought the apartment was so quiet that you must have gone to bed too.”
“Thought or hoped?”
He turned sharply. “What the hell does that mean?”
She swallowed. “We’re in your way, Magnus?—”
He crossed the room so quickly, in just two strides, that he was standing in front of Sapphie seemingly before he was aware of having made the conscious move to be closer to her. “You are not in my way,” he growled.
She looked up at him with wide eyes that had deepened in color to the same purple as her camisole and shorts. “We’re obviously inconveniencing you if you have to escape to your gym just to avoid being anywhere near us.”
He breathed out noisily. “I’m not avoiding you. Either of you. I just needed some exercise to—to work off some of my tension.”
Tension that had now returned tenfold, first from just looking at Sapphie, now from being close enough to smell the citrus shampoo she had obviously used to wash her hair and the more subtle scent of her floral body wash from taking a shower.
The thought of her standing naked in one of his showers was enough to cause his cock to throb and pre-cum to leak from the tip, making his boxers uncomfortably wet.
A frown creased Sapphie’s brow. “Why are you tense?”
Fucking hell, this woman was going to be the death of him! “Two reasons.”
“Which are?”
He released a heavy sigh. “How the hell can you stand watching Angel cry as if her little heart is breaking?”
Sapphie chuckled. “Got to you, huh?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “I hate to see her crying too. Hate it. But I also know that, with the resilience of the very young, she’ll recover just as quickly. For example, she fell asleep in the middle of the story I was reading to her with a smile on her face because she had Angus curled up on the bed beside her.”
Magnus felt some of the tightness ease from the knots in his chest.
Until Sapphie asked her next question.
“And the other reason?”
Magnus thought about lying to her and then instantly dismissed the idea. This woman had already been lied to and deceived enough in her life: she really didn’t need him doing it too. “Sexual,” he grated.
“Sexual?” she repeated huskily, the color deepening in her cheeks.
He nodded. “I want you so bad, I can’t fucking think straight.”
