After All (Sapphire Falls After Hours)

Excerpt

Copyright © Erin Nicholas

“Sit down before you fall over,” she finally said, moving toward him.

He assumed that she meant to help him to the couch, but he couldn’t handle having her in reach. “I’ve got it.” He moved swiftly toward the sofa, ignoring the twinge in his leg that said he’d gone too fast.

Of course, once he was down with his leg on the coffee table and the crutch propped next to him, it was a lot harder to move fast. Which was how he found himself with Peyton sitting right next to him, looking like a goddess and smelling like everything he wanted all rolled into one delicious, lick-able package.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the cushion behind him. “Fuck.”

He felt her shift on the cushion beside him.

“So, we pretty much laid out how this was going to go at the hospital, right?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Keeping his eyes closed was kind of working. He couldn’t see all that gorgeous skin and those tempting curves. But he could feel her. And smell her. And his whole body hardened anyway. He heard her drop her shoes one by one onto the floor and imagined her with her legs curled under her, sitting sideways facing him. That meant her bare legs were right there…

He wasn’t going to survive two weeks.

Not without throwing her down and taking her over and over and-

“You want to play house, right?” she asked. “Take this chance to show me how wonderful a relationship could be. Tempt me to make it real and long-term.”

He rolled his head and opened his eyes. Yeah, she’d caught on to that at the hospital all right. It had seemed like a great plan. He wanted to date her. Hell, he wanted to live with her. So why not force her into it?

He gave a little laugh at that thought. Very romantic. “Yeah, okay, I thought this would give you a taste of what you’re missing.”

She nodded. “And you figured out that I also intend to use these two weeks to seduce you, right?”

He took a deep breath. Yeah, of course she did. Hell, she used every minute they were together to try to do that. “And how would that be different than every other time we’re within ten feet of one another?”

She smiled. “Oh, you’ll see how it’s different.”

Yeah, he was a dead man. He was either going to die of lack of blood to his brain, or because he took Peyton to bed and couldn’t move for food or water afterward.

“So this is a game of chicken—we both bring it on and see who gets their way?” he asked.

She smiled. “Pretty much. I mean, if you’re not smart enough to avoid playing chicken or truth-or-dare with me, then you deserve the consequences.”

Well, she had a point.

“Think you’re a tough girl, huh?” She was. On the surface. He was sure that there had never been a dare Peyton hadn’t taken with a big old loud “hell yeah”. But she wasn’t totally tough. There were moments when he caught glimpses of what he could have sworn was wistfulness—like she wanted so much more than she was letting herself want. “You think you can be with me for two weeks and then want things to go back to how they were?”

She wet her lips and shrugged. “I think that the sex is going to be so good that you won’t be able to go back to how things were.”

He focused on her mouth. Her sassy, sexy mouth that he wanted to see smiling, wanted to hear saying things like “you make me so happy”, and that he wanted to feel doing…

“For two weeks, I’m going to sell the relationship idea, you’re going to sell the sex idea, and we’re going to see who caves first?” he asked.

She nodded her head slowly, her long black hair falling forward and brushing against the upper curve of her breasts, half of which were peeking out of the deep V in the front of the dress. “May the best man, or woman, win.”

He studied her. Her cheeks were a little pink, her pupils were wide. She was excited.

Hell, he was too.