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Sloane stretched, treating Gavin to the exact snippet of skin he’d just managed to block from his mind. “Oh, yeah, no. Actually…” She rummaged around on the cushions, milling through several sloppy piles of paper before choosing a stack to hand over. “She did three out of her four missed assignments, and caught up on all of her reading, including this weekend’s passages. She tried like hell to finish that fourth paper, but ended up falling asleep on the book so I cut her a break.”
Hiding his shock was a complete impossibility. “Wait…I don’t understand. Bree didallof her work? In one night?” In spite of Sloane’s matter-of-fact nod, his brain refused to accept the possibility. He’d barely been able to get a list of assignments from Bree, much less get her to sit down and work on any of them. “How did you pull that off? It had to have taken all night.”
“Almost five hours. And I’ve gotta tell you, the fact that she spoke to me as little as humanly possible didn’t make it a walk in the park. But I think she’s got the hang of it now. If what she did isn’t up to snuff with her teacher, then the woman’s crazy.” Sloane scooped up the rest of the piles from the couch and stuffed them into her bag, tossing the legal pad on top of the melee.
A question poked at his conscience, getting increasingly louder until he finally gave it voice. “Look…don’t take this the wrong way, but this is over three weeks’ worth of work. I’ve got to ask, how much help did you give Bree, exactly?”
Sloane made a sound that could only be qualified as a snort and rolled her eyes. “I already passed eighth-grade English, and I’m not exactly eager to do any of the writing on my own again. Bree busted her butt, I assure you.” She started to wad up the discarded pages at her feet, muttering a low oath as the ball got big enough to exceed her hand.
Okay, so that had come out more accusatory than he’d intended. He knelt to help her collect the crumpled pages. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you did it for her.”
“Sure you did. But, like I said, you don’t have to worry. I helped her, but only as much as she’d let me. Once we got started, she really did most of it without even talking to me.”
Now there was something he could relate to. “Yeah, that sounds like her.” The ache in his bones migrated to include everything beneath his sternum, and Gavin let out a tired exhale. He reached for the last scrap of paper at the exact moment Sloane did. Unable to change his course of movement without making contact, his fingertips brushed against the top of her hand as she closed a fist over the page, and the sheer heat of her skin under his hand registered in a jolt.
“Whoops, sorry.” He withdrew his hand and looked up, only to discover his face about six inches from a pair of heart-shaped lips, parted in a look of surprise. “I didn’t mean to…” A quick gesture to her hand completed the sentence. Her skin was so soft, like a stretch of perfectly golden caramel, warm and sweet and utterly decadent.
For a hot, impulsive moment, he wondered if she tasted the way she looked.
“No biggie,” she murmured, not moving her eyes from his.
Up close in the soft lamp light, they looked even prettier, kind of a cross between a summer sky and gathering storm clouds, and the juxtaposition caught him square in the chest. His left knee pressed against her right thigh from when they’d both knelt down on the floorboards, and even through the wool and denim, heat coursed from her body in waves.
He meant to lean back, to correct the mistake of accidentally invading her space and just let her go. Gavin commanded himself to move, to say goodnight and give her enough room to walk out the door.
But instead, he kissed her.
The warmth of Sloane’s body was nothing compared to the rich heat of her mouth, and he fought back a groan as he brushed the surprise from her lips with his own. He traced the lush curve of her bottom lip with his tongue before pulling it between his teeth to savor it, and the softness hit him with a bolt of satisfaction.
His imagination had been spot on. She tasted exquisite, and he didn’t want to stop until he’d tried the rest of her.
As if she’d crawled into his head for a direct read on his thoughts, Sloane angled her body against his, cupping the back of his neck. Gavin’s desire went from slow burn to liquid fire as she parted her lips to deepen the kiss, searching his mouth with growing intensity.
He skimmed his teeth over her now-swollen bottom lip, and the hot sigh it called up from Sloane’s chest made him want to do it until her soft breath tumbled into a scream. Slipping kisses across the perfect swoop of her jawline to taste the divot behind her ear, he coasted lower to sample the column of her neck, then the tight juncture where her collarbone met it.
“Oh.Oh.” Sloane fisted his shirt hard enough to pull the fabric taut over his chest, and the click of a button hitting the hardwood registered in a foggy back hallway of his mind. In one fluid move, she was in his lap, the heated spot between those infernally long legs notched over his cock in a way that left zero to the imagination.
“Gavin.”
The way her voice shaped his name, with equal parts promise and raw desire, smashed into him like a sucker punch, and the undiluted shock of where they were and what they were doing—hell, what theycould’vebeen doing—made him skid to a stiff halt.
“Sloane…Sloane, we’re in the living room.” Was he out of his mind? How the hell had he let lust hijack his common sense so thoroughly?
“Okay.” She lifted her head, fluttering her eyelids open as if she’d been knocked from a dream. Doing his best to ignore the sexy tumble of her hair and the throbbing protest in his pants, Gavin shifted her gently off of his lap.
“Wait, I didn’t mean you should stop. I just…” Sloane’s fingers flew to the bow of her lips, even more full from having been thoroughly kissed, and a flush crept over her high cheekbones. “Ah, I see. But you did.”
Without pause, she stood and put on her coat in one fluid motion, heavy footsteps thumping over the floorboards in time with her brisk strides toward the door.
“Sloane, wait. I should apologize. It was…”
Amazing. Smoking hot. Hands down the hottest fucking kiss I’ve ever had anyone lay on me in all my thirty-two years.
He shook his head. “It was impulsive. I was out of line, and I’m truly sorry.”
She kept her back to him for just a breath before turning to look over one shoulder, throwing him a saucy smile that slapped the chagrin right out of him.
“A word to the wise, boss. If you’ve gotta apologize after you kiss a girl, you might want to rethink your strategy. See you tomorrow.”
