AllFreeNovel
Share Us
things to flutter inside that had no business with fluttering. “No thanks. But I will play regular Scrabble with you.” He opened his mouth as if to protest and she gave him her stern teacher face. “Take it or leave it.”
He sighed dramatically. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Having seen him in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, Tamara was pretty damn sure she knew exactly what she was missing. But she had to keep this on track. “Afraid I’ll beat you fully clothed?”
“Beat me? Ha! I am a champion Scrabble player.”
“I’m a teacher,” she countered. “Words are my thing.”
“Trust me,” he said, hunkering down on the rug that covered the wooden floorboards in front of the fire and removing the lid of the box. “You’ll be taking your clothes off just to distract me.”
The oxygen in Tamara’s lungs thickened at the wicked visual. “Don’t hold your breath,” she said, smiling sweetly despite the riot happening in her erogenous zones.
He handed her a plastic letter stand, oozing confidence and testosterone from every pore. Tamara inhaled it and actually felt dizzy. “We’ll see,” he murmured.
And midnight suddenly couldn’t come fast enough.
The game got under way, but it was really Luke who was distracted and his score suffered. Her toenails were painted a pearly pink and she kept wiggling them as she studied her letters. And no matter how clothed she was in her black skinny jeans and gray turtleneck, it was her thermal underwear and the faint outline of her nipples that he kept imagining.
In less than an hour he was going to be kissing that mouth and little else mattered.
Ten minutes in and she was whooping his ass—ahead by thirty-eight points. Then she placed the word sheikh on a triple-word score with the k falling on a double-letter score. She lifted that cute little face of hers and shot him an impudent smile. “That’s sixty-three points,” she said. “In case you’re having difficulty adding as well.”
Okay. He was officially turned on. More turned on.
He shook his head and laughed. She thought she had him on the ropes and while she could have him any damn where she pleased, he wasn’t just going to throw in the towel. Time for a lesson in Jackson determination. Time to play dirty.
“I can’t believe,” he said as he laid his five tiles against the k, “you haven’t been kissed,” he emphasized as the tiles spelled out the word, “in a whole year.”
Her gaze flew to his. The triumphant sparkle had disappeared as her eyes went all smoky—simmering with a heat that he figured had precious little to do with the fire.
“Oh they’ve tried,” she murmured as she dragged her attention back to her stand and he watched as she used his d to make the word.
He grinned. “I bet they have.” He used the t from tried and scored cool double points on the b.
“Hey,” she protested. “No three-letter words. They limit the possibilities on the board.”
Luke tutted. “That’s a shame, there are so many great three-letter words,” he smiled. “Like...sex and...yes,” he suggested. “What about four-letter words? Are they allowed? I know a few really good four-letter ones, too.”
She shook her head. “I’ll just bet you do.” Then she sighed and he could see the conflict turning her gaze from smoky to stormy. “I have an f word,” she murmured. “Don’t flirt,” she lay the tiles down using the i in tried, “with me.” She crossed her arms. “I warn you, I obviously have no standards at the moment.”
He grinned. “Ah, easy,” he teased. “Another great four-letter word.”
She looked insulted for a moment but then she smiled, a sparkle coming back into her eyes as she leveled a playful punch on his shoulder. Which wouldn’t have been too cataclysmic had she withdrawn her hand right away and not looked at his shoulder like she might like to lick it. But her fingers lingered, and even through his shirt he could feel her touch right down to muscles deep inside his belly. They pulled at invisible strings that led directly to his groin.
He drew in a ragged breath as time seemed to stop. His dick, still on army time, stood instantly to attention. He was thankful for the overhang of his T-shirt because his track pants sure as hell hid nothing. Then she dragged her hand away and the moment passed, but things had definitely shifted and he couldn’t help thinking they’d turned in his favor.
Tamara struggled to keep the game clean as the clock above the mantelpiece marched toward midnight, but it was difficult when her opponent seemed to find a suggestive word on his stand every round.
Come, breast, touch, and moan were all on the board taunting her. When talk and dirty followed each other in quick succession, she glanced at him sharply and the sudden smolder in his gaze seemed to have leaped directly from the fire. Her throat was parched and she pulled at the material around her neck as the air around her grew thick and sludgy. Thank goodness she’d shed the lei before they’d begun.
“Hot?” he asked, and she wasn’t fooled by the innocent inquiry.
Tamara slapped an n next to an o on the board and glared at him as she said, “No.”
“Hey, two letters.” There was a smile in his eyes and he looked so damn sexy she wanted to grab his face and lay one right on his mouth, midnight be damned. “That’s no way to build a board.”
Tamara didn’t care. She was hot. Very hot. So help her, she wanted to strip all her clothes off, and the glint in his eyes told her he knew it.
