He groaned.
He swore.
He ran shaking hand through his long, damp, hair.
When she reached for the waistband of her skirt, he growled like an animal. Her long hair hung in dripping ropes, snaking across her breasts. Breasts that begged for his mouth. For his tongue. For his hands.
Her waist dipped in like a woman’s should, her hips were rounded, her stomach soft—not hard and flat like most of the workout queens he knew.
“Betty, this is…” Insane.
“I want you,” she said with a grin that should have warned him. It should have sent him back to the old bald guy at the front desk. It should have made him demand a separate room for himself because he was screwed.
Christ was he screwed.
Beau Simon had never wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Betty Jo Barker. Not even that first time. Back then he’d barely known her. He’d acted on the physical attraction they’d had because he’d wanted to teach her a lesson.
But now? Now he wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted more than just sex. He wanted some of that other stuff too.
Emotion. Connection. Commitment?
What. The. Hell.
Her hands started tugging on her skirt, pulling it down so that he saw the tops of her panties.
“Betty, we shouldn’t…this will complicate things and fuck, we don’t need any...”
The skirt was on the floor beside her wet tank top.
Complications.
She stood, inches from him, wearing nothing but a pair of plain cotton panties. She didn’t wear a G-string or those boy panties that left half of a woman’s ass hanging out. She didn’t need those trimmings.
Nope.
Betty Jo Barker was rocking a pair of plain, white cotton bikini panties and Beau was dying to rip them off.
She took a step toward him. “Haven’t you heard? I like things complicated.”
Her fingers twisted inside her panties, dipping below to the one place he was aching to see. Aching to touch and taste.
“Besides, it’s just sex between two consenting adults. You can handle that, can’t you?”
Beau didn’t say a thing mostly because he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t brought her all the way out here because he thought they would end up in some backwater motel.
He couldn’t say that he was sorry to be here. Couldn’t say he was sorry that she was nearly naked. But could he handle her? Could he handle sex with no strings? He had no idea, and for that reason alone he should have turned his butt around and left her there.
Instead he said nothing. Instead he watched with bated breath as she tugged on the elastic waistband, and slowly slipped her panties down over her hips.
And just like that, Beau Simon sank like the Titanic.
Chapter Twenty-three
BETTY DIDN’T GIVE a rat’s ass about the li
ttle voice inside her head that was shouting at her to back off. The one that said she was about to make a big mistake.
The one that said, Beau Simon was more than a complication. So much more. The one that said, remember…remember what he did to you.