LITMIR.BIZ

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on his thighs.

      ‘You do that,’ he said in that deep, resonant voice that had become so familiar. Everything was beautiful about Jesse. His face. His voice. His hands—especially his hands. She moaned again as he massaged the pain away so that now his touch brought only pleasure.

      She closed her eyes, zoned out into another world that focused on the rhythmical stroking of Jesse’s hands on her feet; the scent of peppermint mingled with the faint aroma of coffee that clung to him; the sound of their breathing, his strong and steady, hers becoming slower, calmer. She could hear the tick, tick, tick of the kitchen clock in the silence of the apartment. Please don’t stop—don’t ever stop.

      Eventually, when her feet felt utterly boneless, he finished by stretching out her toes one by one, squeezing her feet one final time, then stroking right up to her shins. ‘Done,’ he said.

      ‘Mmm...’ she murmured as she drowsily sat up, swinging her feet away so she sat near him on the sofa. He might have been massaging her feet but her entire body felt relaxed. ‘You’re a man of many talents, Jesse Morgan. I guess that’s “thank you number gazillion and three”. I...’

      Her voice got lost in her throat at the intensity of Jesse’s expression. She gazed into his face for a long moment, those incredible blue eyes fringed with black lashes, the dark eyebrows, his chiselled mouth. She knew she shouldn’t use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe a man but there wasn’t another word that worked as well. Handsome. Good-looking. Striking. He was more than all of those combined. A wave of intense longing for him surged through her.

      Now was her chance to move away. To get off the sofa and make an excuse to go into another room. Even to yawn in an exaggerated manner and tell him she needed her beauty sleep and it was time for him to go home.

      But she didn’t. Instead she reached out her hand and explored his face with her fingers, stroking the tousled hair from his forehead, tracing the line of his thick brows, the ridge of his sculptured cheekbones, the roughness of the dark shadow of his beard, until she reached his mouth. His lips were smooth and warm, the top one slightly narrower than the bottom. His eyes stayed locked on hers. He caught her fingers with his strong white teeth, nipped them gently and she gasped at the unexpected pleasure-pain.

      She leaned forward and caressed his mouth with hers. His lips parted under hers and she gave herself over to the sensation of lips, tongue, taste in a slow, easy tender kiss. When he pulled her to him she sank into the embrace of his strong arms around her.

      But what had started as gentle rapidly deepened into something more passionate, more demanding that had her winding her fingers through his hair to bring him closer, pressing her body to his hard strength, her heart hammering.

      She had been so long without the touch of a man, of skin on skin, the heady delight of breathing in a man’s scent. And this was Jesse, who she liked so much, who she was growing to trust, who had appealed to her from the get-go. She wanted so badly to be close to him.

      They were alone in the apartment. Anything could happen. But it shouldn’t. Not now. Not yet. Sex too soon with Jesse was not a good idea.

      She harnessed all the willpower she could muster and pulled away from him. ‘That...that wasn’t a friend kiss,’ she said when she got her breath back.

      ‘No. No, it wasn’t,’ he said, his voice husky, his breath ragged. ‘I like you as much more than a friend, Lizzie. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.’

      She shifted a little further away from him on the sofa. With their thighs touching she found it difficult to keep her thoughts straight. ‘Me too. I mean...there was a spark between us at the wedding. Now it...it’s grown.’

      ‘We got off onto a bad start with each other. You thought I was a guy who picked up and then discarded women just because I could.’

      ‘And you thought I was a...I don’t know what you thought I was. Someone too quick to jump to the wrong conclusion?’

      ‘Someone who’s trying so hard to protect herself she might not see what could be there,’ he said.

      She paused to let the implication of his words sink in. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

      ‘You seem to have a distorted idea of who I am based on gossip and innuendo. I want to prove to you I’m a decent guy.’

      Again she realised that some of her reactions to him might have hurt him. She hastened to reassure him. ‘You’ve shown me that in so many ways. The fact you went off and trained to be a barista just to help me is the latest example.’ She looked away and then back. ‘It’s just...just the other women thing.’

      Jesse sighed. She didn’t like the sound of it. ‘I saw the way you watched me as I talked to Evie’s friend.’

      ‘Dell.’

      ‘Were you jealous?’

      ‘A...a little. She’s very attractive.’

      ‘Is she? I didn’t notice. She’s friendly, pleasant.’

      ‘How could you not see how cute she is?’

      ‘Contrary to that bad old reputation of mine, I don’t look with lust at every female I meet because I want to bed her and run.’

      She managed a weak smile. ‘I never thought that for a minute.’ Though she’d certainly been told that was what Jesse was capable of. She was beginning to realise the gossips had got him wrong.

      Jesse shifted on the sofa, a movement that brought him closer to her. ‘I haven’t spent much time in Dolphin Bay in recent years. I don’t like people knowing my business. It’s suited me to let them think Jesse the player has waltzed through life unscathed. If I’d brought Camilla home to marry her it would have been a triumph. But when it turned out such a disaster I was glad I’d never mentioned her. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been brought down so low.’

      Lizzie was shocked at the slight edge to his voice. ‘Camilla?’ she asked.

      ‘She was a photojournalist who came to do a feature story on our team. We were rebuilding tsunami-ravaged villages in Sri Lanka a few years back. I wasn’t attracted to her at first but she singled me out for a lot of one-on-one photography.’

      ‘I bet she did,’ Lizzie murmured under her breath.

      ‘What was that?’ asked Jesse.

      ‘Nothing,’ she said and decided to keep her comments to herself. She couldn’t be jealous of someone in Jesse’s past and it sounded petty to criticise the unknown woman.

      ‘I spent a lot of time with her being interviewed, being photographed.’

      ‘And you fell for her.’

      ‘Hard and fast.’

      Lizzie jumped down hard on an unwarranted twinge of jealousy. Her imagination was running crazy wondering what kind of photos Camilla had taken of Jesse and whether he’d been wearing any clothes. But she couldn’t ask.

      ‘Her time with us was limited,’ Jesse continued. ‘It was a pressure cooker environment. I managed to get hold of a sapphire ring. I proposed. She laughed. Then turned me down.’

      ‘She laughed?’ Indignation for Jesse swept through Lizzie.

      ‘Seemed what I’d thought was a serious relationship was a casual fling to her. She already had a fiancé at home in London. That was the first I’d heard of him. She had never told me she was anything other than single.’ The delivery of his words was matter-of-fact, emotionless, as if he didn’t care. But the rigid line of his mouth told Lizzie otherwise.

      ‘You must have been devastated.’

      He shrugged. ‘You could say that.’

      ‘So what happened?’

      ‘She went home to London to marry the poor sucker.’

      ‘And you never saw

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