Page 91 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“Tell me you don’t want to,” he whispered, his voice rough.

“I can’t do that. Because I do want to. It’s just that I shouldn’t.”

“Yeah. I know. But you should be with your son for Christmas, and the man who married you should have understood you. Should have wanted to stay with you. And my dad shouldn’t have been such a dick. So here we are, saddled with a whole lot of things that shouldn’t be. Saddled with a whole lot of bullshit. So we can have something that we want. Because I really, really want you, and I tried to talk myself out of it. I’m trying to be logical. I don’t have any logic where you’re concerned Elizabeth. But I do have two weeks. Two weeks.”

Her breath seemed to escape her body in a rush. “Yes. Yes. We can... Take me home?”

“Finally.”

He turned and looked at his brother, who was definitely staring at them. And gave him a wave.

Because he was going home with Elizabeth Colfax.

Thank the good Lord.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IT WAS A MISTAKE. She knew that it was a mistake. She was already a whole lot more attached to him than she should be. Already a lot more attached to him then she had ever intended to be. And now she was going to sleep with him again. Maybe a lot of agains.

But she was just so sad. She had been ever since Benny left, and she was trying to be logical about all of it but she just was having a really hard time.

Brody was gorgeous, and he made her want to feel, not think. He made her want to escape the dead zone that was her heart at the moment because everything just felt so difficult. He was the kind of hard she wanted. Hot and muscular and burning for her.

She needed that. Because today had felt like one long rejection, and even if it wasn’t, this, this man being drawn to her, wanting her, needing her, that meant something. It meant so much. It meant more than she could ever put into words.

“Brody...” She said his name as soon as they exited the tavern, and then she found herself getting pressed up against the side of the building as he kissed her. And it was so hot and wild and unlike anything she had ever experienced. She had never made out with a man in public. They had gone around the back of the barn that time, and that had been the closest she’d ever come. But they were just a few feet from the door, and he was plundering her mouth without any shame. Owning what they were about to do.

And it made her feel giddy. Free.

How much of her life had she spent folding in on herself? Making herself smaller. Making herself acceptable, because that was what you had to do when every situation in your life had been based on someone else allowing you there because of their good graces.

That was foster care. Even when it was good. Somebody was benevolent, so they were letting you live with them. That had been what it felt like the entire time she was with a man that she had thought was too good for her. The entire time. That she had to be on her best behavior, that she had to do the right thing. The best things. That she always had to dress a certain way and talk a certain way and act a certain way, and that she could never betray where she had come from.

This was low-class behavior.

Her mother-in-law would call it that for sure. Carter probably would too. Ashley would probably, literally, clutch her pearls.

There was a time when Elizabeth would have also, but not so much because it shocked her. Because she thought that clutching her pearls was what she was supposed to do.

Frankly, she felt sorry for Ashley, who wouldn’t know what this was like.

Right now Elizabeth didn’t have to care. She wasn’t responsible for another human being for an entire two weeks. All she was responsible for was her own self. She could cook whatever she wanted. Eat whatever she wanted. Have dessert.

And tonight, Brody was going to be her dessert. For the next two weeks, she was going to indulge in him like he was a carton of ice cream.

The perfect place to drown her feelings.

She was so here for it.

And so she let him kiss her like that, in full view of everybody, felt his erection as he pressed against her, hard and glorious, and the memory of it made her shiver.

Yes. She wanted him. She wanted this.

More than anything.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and pressed her breasts hard against his chest, arching into him.

He groaned, his hand sliding down her back, down to cup her ass.

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