Time to Pretend (6 page)

She wore, as she frequently did, a grey skirt that reached to her calves and a white blouse. In deference to the heat, it was short-sleeved, the neckline plunged, and it pulled tight enough to outline her breasts.

She was so different from the women he usually dated, women who had no problem wearing clothes out of which they needed to be peeled.

Shockingly, Alaina wore heels instead of flats. Daniel tilted his head, estimating them to be a whole two inches high. His jeans were growing tight. It was time for that inevitable confrontation that would make them loose again. He hated arguing with her, but every conversation they had tended to end that way. At least she hadn’t thrown his apology in his face and stalked away Saturday.

He climbed down the ladder and rounded the corner in time to meet her at the back steps. She jumped. A little yelp escaped before she could cover her mouth with her hand.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Daniel knew her growled question was more a reaction to the surprise than indicative of true anger. He smiled, hoping the
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expression that charmed hundreds of women would work on the only one who mattered. “You said you lost some shingles.” The smile must have mollified her a little. She stammered, looking from him to her roof and back before gathering her wits. “I didn’t mean for you to replace them. I called the insurance company.

They sent out someone this morning. That’s why I was late to work.” Daniel’s smile didn’t fade. God, but she was beautiful. Those almond-shaped brown eyes were tilted up at the corners, making them catlike. Feline was a good description of his Lainie. She was smart, sleek, and skittish. He knew she had claws, and he longed to sandwich her between him and Evan and make her purr. “Who put the tarp up there?”

A breeze lifted a strand of hair from her ponytail, blowing it across her forehead. She brushed it away with an impatient hand.

“That’s the blue thing?” At Daniel’s nod, she continued. “The man who came this morning. He wrote up an estimate, and now the insurance company must approve the claim. He covered up a section.

He said it would do the trick until he could get his company out here in a few weeks.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped. “A few weeks? That damn tarp was flapping in the wind when I got here. It wouldn’t have held for more than a day. Idiot didn’t even nail it down. What’s the name of the company? Did you get the name of the guy who came out?” He was angry. She knew nothing about building, and now some dickhead was taking advantage of her. He’d beat the shit out of the bastard before he’d let him scam Alaina. Plus, he wouldn’t trust anyone with the repairs except for Evan. One look at the magnitude of what needed to be done and Evan would certainly agree with him.

That carefree, relaxed expression Evan usually sported would tighten and crumble. His mouth would compress to a grim line, and he would set to work.

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Alaina stepped back, distancing herself from his anger. She shifted her shoulder bag to the other side. “I fail to see why any of this concerns you.”

He held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. He didn’t want to fight with her. She was so sensitive to hostile moods. “Lainie—” She stalked up the three steps and unlocked her back door. “I didn’t ask you to come here, Daniel. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself and of my house. I don’t need a man to come over and show me how it’s done.”

Shoving the door violently, she set her bag inside and whirled on him. He mounted the bottom step, which put them face to face.

“Alaina—”

She jabbed an angry finger into his chest. “You think wearing a tool belt that pulls your pants down so they ride extra low and placing a phallic symbol in plain sight right there in your groin area is the kind of advertisement that will make me swoon at your feet and worship your male superiority, but you’re wrong! I’m not stupid, Daniel. I can see through your posturing and your accessories, and I’m not impressed!”

He adjusted his opinion of provoking her temper. With those light brown eyes flashing, she was a feast for the eyes. The tightness in his jeans wasn’t going away. He climbed another step, forcing her to tilt her head back to look up at him. Her chest brushed against his.

“You’re not?”

She crossed her arms, barricading her breasts from him. “No. I’m not.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, running a hand through his hair and hiking up his tool belt, which he had never before considered a seductive accessory. “I wore it just for you.” Her mouth opened and closed, but she didn’t move, not one inch.

He wanted to kiss her so badly, but he wasn’t going to make the first move. He couldn’t give her that ammunition to throw at him later.

Finally, she settled on something. “You’re impossible to talk to.”
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His arms itched to hold her close. The grin that wouldn’t leave his face had everything to do with the fact she wasn’t retreating. If she truly didn’t like him, she would have moved away by now and slammed the door in his face. “I only asked who your contractor was.

You’re the one who brought up sex.”

“Oh, hell,” she said. Reaching up suddenly, she fisted his hair and yanked his lips to hers. Before Daniel could process anything, her tongue was in his mouth, introducing him to her sweet brand of heaven.

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Chapter 5

Alaina had lost her mind.

Arriving home to find Daniel at her back porch wearing jeans that showed off every sinew and bulge, after pictures of him wearing that tool belt and no shirt haunted her dreams for the past two days, his proximity had proved too tempting.

From the moment she saw Daniel, she had wanted him to pull her close and kiss her breathless. The sharp tone of her initial question was purely defensive. She was glad he only seemed amused by something that was essentially bitchy.

Those arms closed around her now. A strong, wide hand gripped her ass as the other did something to her hair. She was too preoccupied with enjoying the fact he was kissing her back to give much thought to the disarray that couldn’t help but result from what he was doing to her hair.

He lifted her through the open doorway and into the house. The door closed behind him. Alaina couldn’t get enough of his kiss. She clung to him, too hungry to be gentle. She’d waited far too long for this. His lips were firm, commanding, but they gave just as much as they took.

They stumbled farther into the house, until the massive Shaker dining table halted their progress. He lifted her onto the top, shoving at her skirt and working his thigh between her legs. Those firm fingers caressed her face and fanned through her hair. It was loose now.

He broke the kiss, turning her head to the side to access her neck.

She had no need to breathe, but he gave her oxygen just the same.

Shivers raced through her body, and she trembled. She knew he
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wouldn’t be the one to stop, and she desperately didn’t want him to stop, even if that meant she joined the ranks of his conquests.

“Lainie.” He whispered the word, her name, the name only he used, against the heated and sensitive skin just below her ear. Two hands tilted her head back as his lips found her throat and he kissed lower. One hand followed his lips, freeing buttons to open her blouse.

Her hands had yet to release his hair. They did so now, falling to his shoulders. She wrapped her legs around him, vaguely wondering where his tool belt had gone. Her shoes were in the way, and so she kicked them off. They fell to the laminate wood floor with a sharp thud that probably meant another dent in the damn thing. She didn’t care.

She wanted to push at his shirt and do the things to him that he was doing to her, but her precarious position on the edge of the table put him in charge. “Dan?” She managed the word as more than the moan and sigh it wanted to be.

His lips stopped working their magic on the valley between her breasts, but his head didn’t move. Beneath her hands, his shoulders tensed. “Yeah?”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

He relaxed, his muscles once more fluid and firm. “Point the way, sweetheart.” Hiking her legs more firmly around his waist, he cupped her ass with one hand and pressed her chest against his with the other.

Her bedroom was at the top of the stairs. She’d left unfolded laundry on the chair and a box of paperback novels she had picked up at a garage sale in the middle of the floor. Daniel stumbled over the box, falling onto the bed. Alaina broke his fall. Air whooshed from her lungs, but when he tried to lift himself from her, she tightened her arms around him.

He stared down at her, a frown pinching between his dark brows.

“Did I hurt you, Lainie?”

Shaking her head, she dismissed his concern and tugged at his shirt. They were pressed too close together for it to move much. Heat
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fueled her, and months of desire spurred her to action. She pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips.

Looking down at him was a dizzying thing. Daniel was in her bed, lying on top of her rose coverlet and letting her undress him. His hands, knowing and rough from use, caressed her thighs from knee to ass. Those warm brown eyes gazed at her in wonder as she finished unbuttoning her blouse and shrugged out of it.

Her body was small, and it was curvy. She thought he might see her imperfections first, but he appeared to not notice anything displeasing. Hot hands spanned her waist and caressed upward, thumbs pausing just under her breasts.

Impatience set her in motion. Reaching into the waist of his jeans, she found the edges of his shirt and shoved at it, pushing it up and out of her way. She wiggled down his body to put her mouth in the same area as her hands. Daniel lifted his hips and shoulders to help her remove his shirt.

Alaina was in heaven. Her hands explored every inch of his chiseled chest, and her mouth followed, drinking in his male scent and the surprisingly silky feel of his skin under her lips. Her forays led her to his side, and she shoved at him until he turned over onto his stomach.

She kissed and licked him, finding the valley of his spine irresistible. Tracing a path to his neck, she found how to make him quiver beneath her lips.

With a groan and a well-executed arm movement, he drew her beneath him. “Lainie, you’re going to kill me if you keep that up.” Before she could think of anything clever to say, he devoured her lips.

His hands were everywhere, touching and stroking. Her skirt disappeared, as did her stockings.

Tension marked the lines of his body. One of his thighs burrowed between her legs and pressed against her core. She moaned and rocked against him.

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He reached beneath her and unhooked her bra with practiced precision. Leaning up, he peeled the white lace away from her breasts as if he was opening a long-awaited gift. His eyes never left those round globes. Daniel, she concluded, was definitely a breast man. She was glad genetics hadn’t skimped in that area.

The fingers of one hand circled her left breast, slowly winding their way to her nipple, which was already pebbled in anticipation. He rubbed his thumb lightly over that peak before taking it in his mouth.

Almost viciously, he sucked at her nipple, drawing it into his mouth to stretch and bite the tender skin.

Alaina’s moan came out more like a shriek, a louder noise than she’d ever made in bed with a man, and she lifted from the bed, arching into his face. Never had anyone treated her so roughly, and she loved it. Her senses were already alive, awake, but he shot liquid heat straight from her nipple to her vagina. What had been moist became a flood.

His other hand closed around her right breast, teasing and plumping it to the same rhythm his mouth used.

Alaina dug her fingernails into the pillow beneath her head and tightened her thighs around Daniel’s, pressing against the rough denim even harder.

By the time he switched breasts, she was kindling, smoking, in need of just a few strokes to break into a full-out blaze.

Frantic, she shoved against him. She pulled and pushed, writhing and squirming, but she was unable to go anywhere. He held her in place with his hips and the hands that cupped her breasts as his mouth alternated between the two peaks begging for more.

“Danny!” She cried his name, a nickname she had never used because it implied affection and familiarity.

His head lifted, and he regarded her with eyes heavy-lidded with desire. That lazy, knowing smile lifted the corners of his lips. “I’ve waited a long, long time for this, Lainie. I’m not going to rush.”
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He’d
waited a long time? He hadn’t even noticed her for the first two months she counseled women at his studio. Alaina had been forced to join the ranks of women gazing lustfully and longingly after his retreating figure when Sophia finished using him as her punching bag. The six weeks after their date hadn’t been any different.

Using strength she didn’t know she had, she flipped him onto his back and wrestled him naked. The chuckles issuing from him died down to nothing when he looked up to find her kneeling between his legs, studying him with a predatory gaze. She felt like a hawk in the midst of a spectacular dive. She could only imagine how her expression might worry him.

He leaned up on one elbow. “Alaina?” This wasn’t real. Her eyes roamed up his legs to his hips, up his chest to his face and back down, finally stopping at his erection. He was magnificent. She wanted to touch and taste everything. The voice inside her head warned her that Daniel was a one-shot deal. She wanted to have no regrets.

Trailing her hands lightly up his inner thighs, she ignored his question.

“Lainie?”

One hand pushed at his chest. “Relax.” Her head bent to his cock.

She licked her lips as she fixated on the glistening head. “I won’t hurt you.”