Wrapped in Love (Boys of Jackson Harbor 4)

What a slut. Such typical Molly behavior.

Brayden’s attention’s still on his phone, and he doesn’t seem to notice my mood slip. “And Ethan sent a video of my niece practicing her lines for Charlotte’s Web.” He chuckles, and little wrinkles crease at the corners of his eyes with his smile. “Come here. You have to see this.”

Swallowing, I climb out of my seat to take the spot beside him.

He tilts his screen toward me and turns up the volume so I can hear the little girl recite Fern’s lines with the dramatic flair of a Broadway hopeful. When I look back at Brayden, his expression has softened and his eyes are full of love.

“She’s precious,” I say. Then, because it’s so foreign and wonderful, I say, “Family is everything to you, isn’t it?”

He nods. “Everything.”

I shift my gaze back to the screen as another text comes through from Ethan.

Ethan: Hope it’s going well tonight. Do yourself a favor and make your move. You deserve a little fun in

I don’t get to read the rest before Brayden curses under his breath and pulls the phone away. “Sorry.”

“Make your move?” I ask. “On me?”

Red creeps up his neck and into his cheeks, and if he weren’t so fucking sexy, I might call it adorable. “Ethan’s just . . . It doesn’t mean anything.”

I lick my lips. “Liar.”

He swallows and studies my face, then his gaze drops to my mouth. “I wish you didn’t work for me so I could be honest.” He turns away and studies the photograph hanging by our table. “I’ve obviously had too much to drink, or I wouldn’t have even said that much.”

My heart pounds harder. Faster. I’ve had a couple of beers with dinner and a few samples throughout the afternoon before that. My skin is warm, my body relaxed. Maybe that’s why I slide closer. Or maybe it’s just because I love the way he was looking at me before he turned away.

I lift my hand to his face, relishing the brush of stubble beneath my fingertips. With a gentle nudge of my hand, I turn his face back to mine. “Be honest. Pretend I don’t work for you for a minute. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

His gaze drops to my mouth and his tongue darts out to touch his bottom lip. The sight sends pleasure bolting through me. “You want to know how much I want you?”

I cup the back of his neck and lean forward, brushing my lips across his. Just once. “I offered myself to you before, Brayden.”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “You were a kid.”

“I was eighteen. Totally legal.”

“You were drunk.”

I thread my fingers through his hair and keep my eyes on his. “That never stopped anyone else.”

When he rescued me from the party that night, I’d seen him as the cold and hard eldest Jackson brother. All the Jackson boys were and still are gorgeous, but where his brothers were full of laughter, smiles, and jokes, Brayden was always too serious. Too hard. But that night, after he pulled me out of that party and away from those boys who were plying me with shots of cheap vodka and circling me like turkey vultures, there was tenderness in his eyes. I begged him not to take me home. I hadn’t expected compassion from a man like him. I’ve lived a life where I’ve learned not to expect that tenderness or compassion from anyone, and especially not from men.

I swallow hard, thinking of the text Brayden’s brother sent him. “Do you want me?”

He huffs out a dry laugh and searches my face. “More than you can imagine.”

I lean closer. “Then do something about it.”

His hand is hot, his fingertips searing as they find my thigh beneath the table and inch upward under the hem of my dress. “Are you drunk now, Molly?”

My mouth brushes his ear as I whisper, “I’ve had enough to be brave, but not so much that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

One hand grips my thigh and the other plunges into my hair. He turns my mouth to his and kisses me. His lips are soft, coaxing, and I think I moan when his tongue touches mine. He’s heat and hunger, and his kiss lights a fire in me I haven’t felt in years.

I ignore the voice in my head that chants, Slut, easy, whore, the one that whispers all the cruel words they flung at me in Jackson Harbor. I lock that voice away and press into Brayden, loving the feel of his calloused hand inching up my thigh and aching for more, for everything he’ll give me.

Tonight, I’m going to pretend I’m worthy of a man like him, because tomorrow he’ll fly home, and it won’t matter that he deserves better than me. It won’t matter that I can never be more than a one-night stand.