The Three-Week Arrangement (Chase Brothers)

She barely heard the music, even though it was one of her favorite songs. She was too intoxicated by the sweet torture of his body as he held her. There was no way that kind of distance—or lack thereof—was mandatory for a public event. Hell, it wasn’t even appropriate for public. But it was so wholly, sweetly him. He really did pour his heart into everything he did, and she hoped one day he’d find a way to move on. He deserved that happiness more than anyone she knew.

Even if it would never be hers. Maybe especially so.

And he didn’t step on her feet. Not once.

“You clearly haven’t forgotten a thing,” she said, looking up at him.

“Actually, I’ve never gotten through a single dance without some sort of assault to a foot.”

“Maybe you just needed a break.”

“Maybe I just needed the right dance partner.”

Idiot. Wisely, she didn’t say the word out loud, but damn it all to hell. She took a step back, slipping from his arms. Gulping for air. “Look, while I absolutely love that you’re getting the hang of this woman in vicinity thing, you’re killing me. You’re making me ache in spots I didn’t know I had, and you’re setting fires I don’t know how to put out.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could speak. “And trust me when I say I’m really enjoying it, but you don’t want pity, Ethan, so I’m not giving it to you. I’m not going to stand here and fall apart for the greater good, because when the week is up, I’m going to have to find a way to pull myself together and get on a plane and leave all this behind.”

“Rue—”

“I know we had an arrangement,” she ranted, “but this isn’t Broadway. We don’t throw down our scripts at the end of the week and just walk away. At least not me, because I—”

He silenced her. He silenced the hell out of her with a kiss that went way past sweet and had them heading straight to the bedroom.

Literally.

And then he shut the door.

Chapter Ten

Holy. Shit.

She’d been in his bedroom before, and on his bed, and with need tearing through her. But not like this. The click of the door latch seemed to echo forever, and in the silence that followed, strains of music found her, but they sounded a million miles away.

He didn’t say a word. Just cradled the back of her head with one hand and rested the other against the small of her back, and he kissed her so deeply, so thoroughly that he had to have been holding her up. Her knees were useless, and gravity had ceased to exist. The earth could have folded beneath them, and she wouldn’t know anything but the exquisite torture and taste of him. He was impossibly hard. Impossibly gentle. Not possibly real. But there was no denying anything about him, from the deep, tender kisses to the quiet sigh of her name on his lips.

Her name.

He walked her backward to the bed, never breaking the kiss as he lowered her to the mattress and crawled down after her, nestling between her thighs, leaving her caught between the thick bedding and utter ecstasy.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she managed.

“It’s been a while,” he said softly, his lips tickling hers and setting off a shower of sparks that would have the fire alarms wailing any minute now. “But I’m confident I’ll figure it out.”

Not what she meant. She had no question that he’d figure that part out. Before she could correct him, he kissed her again, and the very splendid pressure of him, rock hard between her thighs, obliterated rational thought.

Almost.

Because this was just too important—too big—to get wrong.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Maybe she shouldn’t have questioned him—she was definitely treading into crazy woman territory now—but despite the obvious temporary nature of this thing they were doing, she didn’t want him to see her as a mistake.

He stilled the motion of his hands, one caught in her hair and the other on her hip, and all of a sudden she could see this spectacle they made. Two train wrecks—one who couldn’t stop running and one who couldn’t let go. Only he had let go enough to bring her to his bed, and she’d stopped running enough to realize that, for once, there was nowhere else she wanted to be.