“Is there a bull’s-eye here, too?”
“Yes.”
He nibbled the spot on her back thigh closest to him, right below her panties. Then he pulled his hand back and spanked her, right on that front target, cupping her after the blow.
She gave a cry of shock.
Heat poured out from beneath her panties.
“What was that for?”
“For suggesting you wouldn’t look good in a teddy or a thong.”
“It’s true.”
Houston held her there, his thumb marking the imagined dead center of the bull’s-eye, and he ignored the sharp pain in his calf. “When was the last time you put one on?”
“I don’t know, maybe when I was eighteen.” She tried to wiggle away from him.
He wanted to hold her, to keep her there, to feel her panties grow moist beneath his hand. But a sharp stab in his calf had him swearing silently.
Letting her go, he sank back onto the couch, wishing his leg to hell. God, the way it pulsed, hot and itchy, made him furious. But he hoped Josie had no indication how much pain he was in.
“Then you don’t know whether you look good in something sexy or not.”
Josie turned around and plopped on the coffee table again, making sure she didn’t hit his leg with her knee. “Why are we always talking about my body?”
Because he was obsessed with it. Because it factored heavily into the majority of his dreams every night and because she looked like an Italian master had painted her in curvy perfection.
“What else should we talk about? You’re the one who came here with the offer to have wild sex whenever we want, with no commitment, for the next few weeks.”
That had her rubbing her hands on her knees and her skin flushing in ruddy, uneven patches of pink so that if he didn’t know better, he’d think she’d come down with a fever.
“I don’t like the way you do that,” she said with a frown.
“Do what?” Between the need for a painkiller and the memory of those bull’s-eyes, he had no energy left for deciphering that statement.
“Make me deliberately uncomfortable whenever you’re uncomfortable. And the way you have to keep reinforcing to both of us that you’re always in charge.”
Josie watched Houston’s eyes, which had been filled withpain and lust, murk over with confusion. “I don’t do that,” he denied, shoulders stiffening at her suggestion.
“Yes, you do. You’re always catching me off-guard with suggestive comments, teasing me about spanking, complimenting my body. It keeps me off-balance and you in control.”
He scoffed. “It’s called flirting.”
The words were spoken to the ceiling as he shrugged, sounding casual but looking anything but. He looked ticked off. He looked like he knew she was right. And she was. Houston Hayes was a control freak.
But she was a people pleaser, and she wanted to see him happy—truly, deeply content in a way he just wasn’t. And she knew now what she wanted. She wanted Houston, not just his body, but all of him, his heart, his soul, the intimacy he had hinted at when he was lying on her table, drugged up.
An affair wasn’t enough for her, she realized, and she wasn’t a woman who could walk away, heart intact. If she had a fling with Houston, her heart would be squashed like an orange in a juicer. Unless she could convince Houston to give a real relationship a try.
Unless she could reach inside his heart, past the rigid aloofness, past the mentor-student relationship they had, to the real Houston Hayes. The one who wanted children and cared about the pain of his geriatric patients.
She wanted that Houston, and she wanted him to care abouther.That didn’t seem likely, but heck, she’d never know unless she tried.
“You know, Houston, I’ve changed my mind.” The way to his heart wasn’t through his pants. She didn’t know which path to take instead, but she just knew instinctively that if she wanted something more she had to be his friend first.
Not an easy task, but she had always been friendlier than she was sexy, yet he seemed to have no problems getting turned on. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to resist her cheerfulness either. She’d wear him down with perky instead of passion.