Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(54)

“Thought you might be too tired to come in today.”

She turned to find Donovan leaning in the doorway separating the kitchen and dining room. “That’s the second time you said that.” She walked a few steps closer to him, his magnetic pull too much to resist. “I can’t help but think you might be referring to what happened”—she tilted her head toward the direction of the utility room—“ yesterday.”

A sinister, downright sexy smile curled his lips. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” Oh yeah, her resolve was melting like ice cream under hot, hot fudge.

He pushed off the door frame and came to her in three strides.

Really hot.

When he reached her, he dipped his head, capturing her lips in a brief, sweet kiss. And sweet was just about the only thing she didn’t think she could handle from this man. She didn’t have a category to file it under in her head.

“You got me,” he murmured, and for a second her heart stopped. Because that’s what she wanted. Him. He hooked a finger under her chin. “I like thinking about what we did yesterday. I liked doing it more.”

His fingers left her chin to graze her neck, his body heat radiating and mingling with hers, the smell of his sweat-and-sunshine-soaked skin tickling her nose. The fight—not that there was much of it left to begin with—drained out of her.

Donny was more fun to kiss than he was to fight. She tipped her chin to accept the next kiss he offered.

“Probably don’t appreciate me this close to you after working outside. Other than yesterday, been a while since I’ve been this close to a woman.”

She felt one of her eyebrows raise. “What constitutes ‘a while’ in Donny Pate’s world? Seven days? Twelve days? Don’t tell me it’s been three whole weeks?”

His lips twitched. “When’d you get that smart mouth?”

He winked again, and her knees melted. Or maybe her knees were melting because his fingers had left her neck and were currently toying with the low neckline of her shirt.

“Bit longer than three weeks,” he said, fingers trickling over her collarbone. He bent to give her another kiss. Then his hands left her and he walked into the foyer. “Gonna grab a shower. Assume you’ll be here a while?”

Well. She wasn’t leaving now. Surely, there was something else she could do here. Too bad it wasn’t within the vicinity of Donovan’s shower. His eyes went from her face to her shirt, and she felt her nipples tighten as if he’d touched her.

“I’ll be here,” she promised.

“Good,” was all he said.

She bit her lip and listened to his heavy footfalls on the stairs.





He should’ve invited her to join him. A shower wasn’t just a shower with Sofie Martin in his house. Now that he’d stripped her bare and had driven inside of her, being under the hot water was distracting to the nth degree. Not like he’d never taken care of himself in the shower before. Sometimes he had to clean the pipes, if for no other reason than to get blood pumping back to his brain.

His stint of celibacy over, all he could think about was sex. Not just sex, but sex with Scampi.

Right about now, felt like he’d lost fifty IQ points.

He scrubbed quickly, ignoring the twitch of his dick, attempting to keep his hands moving rather than settle on any one area. A swipe here, a wash there, just enough to get himself soaped up and wiped down.

Old habits died hard.

Once there, he wrapped his hand around his shaft. He squeezed, giving himself one slow, sudsy stroke… then another.

Thoughts of Sofie filled his mind. Her parted lips, sensual sighs, the way she’d made s’mores sound sexy in the wrongest way…

He blew out a breath and flattened both palms on the back wall of the shower. When he bent his head into the stream, he took in several deep breaths through his mouth. Hot water streamed down his face, flooded over his eyes, and soaked his hair.

Suck it up, Pate.

But that thought introduced new imagery into his head—a head already filled with images of Sofie. Memories of her bare nipple tightening on his tongue, the way she moved like silk beneath his hands, sinking into her warm, wet puss—

A sharp knock on the bathroom made him jerk.

He pulled his face from the water. “Yeah,” he called, wiping his eyes and pushing his hair back. “Hang on.”

One last rinse, and he turned off the shower. He stepped out, running the towel over his hair quickly, over his body just as quickly, before wrapping it around his waist. He pulled open the door, the lust he was feeling a second earlier evaporating into the atmosphere.

“Connor,” he said flatly.

His buddy gave him a knowing grin. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

Donovan pushed past him and stepped into the master bedroom, digging in his dresser for fresh clothes. He’d given up the suitcases earlier this week. Seemed ridiculous to continue digging through bags when he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. He pushed the drawer shut. “Get it straightened out?”

“Ant doesn’t want paid,” Connor said.

Ant had come by to help remove some of the brush and dead tree limbs for the campout the night before the charity dinner. Connor was only one guy, and clearing a big enough space for that many kids required more manpower than just him and Donovan.