Page 25 of A Favor Owed

“No doubt.”

“Why do you ask? Have you been chased from some girl’s place by an angry boyfriend before or something?”

“No.”

That’s a suspiciously brief answer for Brady. I force myself out of my haze of drowsiness and alcohol and sit up to look at him. He’s staring at me.

“Why would you want to make a move on me, anyway?” I ask.

“I didn’t say I did,” he says, but his eyes give him away.

“Okay…” I say, calling him on his bullshit.

“If I did,” he continues, “it would be because I need something from you that I can’t get from anyone else.”

That cryptic remark is the absolute last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. “You’re hot,” or “You’re cool,” or something generic like that is more along the lines of what I was thinking. I’m momentarily stunned.

“And what would that be?” I’m finally able to make words come out of my mouth.

“I don’t know yet,” he says. “But when I look at you, I feel like you’ve got answers to stuff I didn’t even know I had questions about.”

I realize with a shock that he’s being serious. Funny Brady is attractive as hell. But serious Brady has me trembling from my head to my toes.

“Looks can be deceiving,” I say.

He shakes his head. “It’s not your hair. It’s not your eyes. It’s not even your gorgeous body. It’s something else, Angie Pines, and I can’t put my finger on it.”

I swallow. “What are we going to do about that, then?” I ask, barely able to breathe.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll think of something.”

He doesn’t seem so far away now. Our legs are long enough to touch across the pool, and he hooks his ankles around mine. A pulse of heat burns through my body. The hot water has made me weak and languid, but Brady drawing me to him with his legs wrapped around mine burns away the weakness, leaving me with only heat.

Before I know it, I’m standing before him, his legs on either side of me. His hands come up to rest on my waist, long fingers gently grasping, then sliding down to my hips, his thumbs caressing my bare stomach. His pressure on my hips increases slightly as he pulls me down toward him.

“C’mere,” he whispers.

As I straddle him and sink down onto his lap, my breath is coming in small gasps and my heart is beating like it’s going to explode. One of Brady’s hands comes up to my face and holds it, his thumb brushing across my parted lips. I close my eyes as his hand goes to the back of my neck, drawing my face closer to his. I feel his lips against mine, warm and gentle but decidedly not innocent.

My mouth melts into his, gently exploring, waiting to see what he’ll do. He’s not aggressive, shoving his tongue down my throat like most guys I’ve kissed. He’s taking his time, like he wants it to last forever.

I open my eyes briefly to see that his are closed, those long, coppery lashes resting against the freckles under his eyes. I close my eyes again and kiss him, my entire body trembling despite the heat. His tongue gently sweeps across my bottom lip. My hands go into his hair. All tentativeness evaporates as our mouths crash and our bodies press together and our hands anchor us to each other.

Brady McDaniels can kiss like he can throw a party.

I’ve imagined his mouth all over my body, but now that I know what it can do, imagining isn’t enough. I want him to kiss every inch of me. I need him to kiss every inch of me. I willnot be satisfieduntil he kisses every inch of me.

As if he’s read my mind—shit, I hope I didn’t actually say what I was thinking—his mouth begins to move from mine to my cheek, my jaw, my ear, my neck. Every kiss is slow and perfect and tailored to the part of me he’s kissing—a little bit of teeth for my ear, a little bit of sucking for my neck. He tilts my head back so he can reach my throat, and I almost moan with the pleasure of it. By the time he reaches my shoulders, I’m practically panting.

And apparently, that’s just the warm-up.

Up until now, his hands have remained on my waist and neck, hips and shoulders. Erotic but relatively safe. But when his hand cups my breast and his thumb brushes across my nipple, I go from having fire in my veins to feeling like my entire body is molten lava. Then that warm, perfect mouth is where his thumb had been, lightly circling with his tongue through the fabric of my bikini. And I see stars.

“Brady,” I whisper.

“Hmm.” The vibration of his voice against my nipple makes me gasp, and then he moves on to the other breast.

Everything is slow, unhurried, perfect.

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