Fall Into Temptation (Blue Moon Book #2)(25)

She didn’t stop him, merely watched him curiously.

“I knew something — besides me on an elliptical — must have upset you Monday,” she said, drawing his attention back to her face, her mouth.

“It was my father’s birthday, and, at the time, I thought I was the only one who remembered.”

He saw it then, the rush of compassion in her eyes, the softening of her face. “Oh, Beckett. I’m so sorry. That must have hurt.”

“It was a false assumption that had me remembering how lucky I am to have my family. Now, let’s talk about you. What brings you to the shed today? And don’t think that I’m going to let the irony of the yoga instructor beating the shit out of a punching bag slide by.”

Gianna sighed again. “If I were a camel I’d be covered in straw.”

“An interesting way of saying lots of little things upset you?”

“Leading the witness,” Gianna teased. Her wry smile loosened some of the knots he’d carried in his gut for the past few days.

“I’m a good listener. You can tell me and I won’t judge — because I can’t, I’m just a lawyer. I won’t tell anyone either, because I think this counts as attorney-client privilege.”

She took another deep breath and he thought she might be brushing him off again, but she surprised him by relaxing in his arms.

“I was upset already by a conversation with the kids’ dad this afternoon. And when I brought them home, Aurora announced that So-and-So’s mommy lets her have a cellphone and an iPad and by that logic I’m mean and she hates me because I’m not running out to the store to buy expensive technology for her five-year-old self. Then I get an email from Evan’s teacher who tells me he hasn’t bothered turning in his homework two days in a row. And this is after he’s told me that he finished it in school and that ‘everything at school is going fine.’”

“Monsters,” Beckett said, shaking his head. She rewarded him with a small smile.

“So I put Aurora in time out and gave Evan a homework assignment that he has to do for me before he can start on his school work, which I will now be checking every night. And then I came out here to release my aggression so I don’t maim my children.”

“Do they know they have a heavy bag to thank for a life free of maiming?”

“They think I’m meditating.”

Beckett chuckled. “Do you want to talk about your conversation with your ex?”

Gianna shook her head. “It will all work out. It always does.”

She closed her eyes and took another slow, deep breath. Beckett was so close he could see the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose.

“Ready to go back in?” he asked her.

She shook her head again and kept her eyes closed tight. “No.”

“What if, as part of my apology, I order pizza and you and the kids can join me for dinner?”

He glimpsed green through her lovely, long lashes as she opened her eyes and studied him. “You’re lucky that I’m avoiding complications for the foreseeable future, because you’re very tempting right now,” she told him in a husky whisper.

“Temptation is bad,” Beckett said, stepping in until his shoes brushed her bare toes.

“This would be such a bad idea,” Gianna said, bringing her hands to his chest. But instead of pushing him away, her fingers gripped the lapels of his jacket. “I have kids.”

“I’m your landlord.” He lowered his face to hers stopping just a millimeter above her fully, rosy lips.

“Our parents are —”

He cut off her reply by bringing his lips to hers. Softly, sweetly, he felt her mouth come to life under his. Experimenting, tasting, teasing.

Beckett brought his fingertips to her neck, cupping her face he tilted her head back. She opened her mouth for him on a sigh and he took advantage of the invitation. His tongue swept in to taste her and the second it touched hers, the playfulness disintegrated.

He was hungry for her. Starving. Beckett didn’t realize he was shoving her back against the plywood wall, didn’t know that the hands that gripped her slim, strong arms were bruising.

Those sexy little whimpers Gianna was making had him fully hard in the space of a heartbeat. She tasted exotic, dangerous. Addicting. He flexed his hips into her, and groaned as she instinctively pressed back against him.

Beckett felt a growl rumble low in his throat and pulled back. He had to hold Gianna against the wall to keep her from following his mouth. Her hands were fisted in his jacket. Her lips were swollen from the aggressive assault on her mouth. And those eyes with all the depths of the oceans were glassy and dazed. Even more tendrils had escaped the hair band to hang down, tempting him.

He was honest enough to admit that he wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting any woman.

“What was that?” she whispered, trying to catch her breath.

“That was a mistake,” he said, dropping his forehead to hers. A shed. He’d kissed her in a shed. Where had his moves gone? He was king of the seduction. But with Gianna he was dissolved into a man with a hard-on in a garden shed.

A man with a hard-on in a garden shed kissing a woman he had no intention of seducing, he reminded himself.

“We can’t do this,” Gianna said, shaking her head to clear it.