AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It didn’t matter that they’d had some seriously hot sex. It certainly didn’t matter that she kind of admired the fact he’d left the riches his family offered behind him and run off to be a cowboy. And it sure as hell couldn’t affect the way she saw him, that he was seriously good at anchoring her when her neuroses got out of control.
It’s the sex making me all crazy. I haven’t had sex in… She silently did the math. Six years. So I guess I’m due a little insanity of the male variety. At least she could be assured that Quinn wasn’t going to go batshit crazy on her like every single one of the guys online she’d contemplated meeting had.
And those were the ones that had passed her background checks.
But knowing that wasn’t going to save Aubry from her hormones betraying her. She breathed a sigh of relief when they walked into the hotel and made a beeline for the elevator. The only problem was that being out of the crowds only brought home the other issues she was experiencing.
Like the fact she was in danger of having…feelings…for Quinn.
Non-hate feelings.
She had to call the whole thing off. Or at least the sex part. They’d proven she could fake—yeah, fake—liking him. That was good enough. It had to be good enough.Chapter TenQuinn could tell there was a difference in Aubry as soon as he closed the hotel room between them and the rest of the world, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. She wrapped her arms around herself and wandered farther into the room, stopping in front of the big windows opposite the door. “We need to talk.”
“Well, hell, no good ever came of a conversation that started like that.”
She ignored his attempt to make light of the whole thing. “I can’t do…this.”
No. He clamped hard against the word, stopping the word before he voiced it. Damn it. He should have seen this shit coming. Things between them had never been anything but complicated, and there was no reason sex would fix that. He should have known it would only make it worse.
He had known. He just hadn’t cared. He’d wanted Aubry, and she’d wanted him, and so he’d thrown caution to the wind and crossed that line. The problem was Quinn wasn’t ready to take a step back into familiar territory. Not yet.
“What’s changed?” He moved closer, but kept an arm’s length between them. Aubry wouldn’t respond well to him crowding her. She might even go for his throat. While there was a time and place to provoke that type of response, it wasn’t now.
“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s been a while for me.”
He’d noticed. He would have had to be exceptionally dense not to have noticed.
She still wouldn’t turn to look at him. “Besides, I thought you had a rule that you didn’t sleep with women you don’t like. We’ve broken it enough times already.”
“I don’t think it’s up to you to decide if we’ve broken my rules.” He didn’t know why he was fighting this so hard. She was right. He might not despise her like he had in the past, but that was still a long way off from deciding they were going to be best friends or hang out for any length of time after his sister’s wedding. They wouldn’t. He ignored the pit in his stomach that opened at that thought. “You like fucking me.”
“It’s acceptable.”
He laughed. “I lost count of how many times I’ve made you come in the last twenty-four hours. Acceptable doesn’t begin to cover it.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder. “On top of all that, I think I’ve more than proven I can act like I like you the way a girlfriend would. So we don’t have to go there again.”
He might—might—have let it go if she’d said she wasn’t interested. But that wasn’t what she was saying. Hell, Aubry was throwing every excuse at him to prove she didn’t want him, each one flimsier than the last. This final excuse was the one he couldn’t let stand, though. Quinn took a step toward her, the light of the room creating a mirror in the window in front of her. He searched her face, not liking how unsure she looked. She’d been fine during dinner—skittish, sure, but fine.
Which meant somewhere along the way, she’d started overthinking things.
“Acting.” He ran his hands up her arms to settle on her shoulders, massaging the tense muscles at the bottom of her neck lightly with his thumbs. “Acting is just another way to say lying.”
“That’s your problem if you choose to see it that way.” Her head fell forward, giving him better access to her neck.
Got you. He kept massaging her shoulders. “I don’t think it’s a problem at all. I’ll tell you a secret.” He moved closer until he was almost pressed against her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I kind of like you, too.”
