America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(42)

“Faster.”

The jerk slows down. My nipples go hard. My tongue goes dry. And he slowly peels the shirt off his shoulders in a striptease that’s making me both horny as hell and blotchier than my mom that time she let me put sunscreen on her when I was three.

I swallow hard and twirl a finger in the air. “Turn around. I need to find your off switch.”

“My…off switch?”

“Yep. I know when I’ve been sent a Beck-bot. Where’s the real Beck Ryder? He’s in hiding in Egypt or Australia or somewhere, isn’t he?”

He turns, letting me inspect his back, including that birthmark that really does look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but—to quote a certain underwear model—whoa.

Real skin.

It even pebbles into goosebumps under my fingers as I poke and prod him, looking for evidence I’ve been punked, even though I’m entirely too rational to fully believe he could be a robot.

“Do you really think I’m a robot, or are you just copping a feel? I’m good with either one. Just curious.”

I don’t know what I am, but I know that now that I’m touching the smooth skin of his back, tracing the lean planes of muscle and hard knobs of his ribs, I don’t want to stop.

I haven’t slept with anyone since Trent.

Kinda lost its appeal when I realized I would never be able to put my full self into the emotional component of sex.

“Sarah?” he says, his voice going gruff.

“I’m thinking,” I whisper.

My fingers trail lower to the twin dimples above his waistline.

“I didn’t try to kiss you for the cameras,” he says quietly, something in his voice making me think the confession is just as hard for him as it would be for me. “I just wanted to kiss you.”

“Our relationship is just for show,” I reply, equally hoarse, because my pulse is ramping into dangerous territory and I’m getting a drunken buzz in my nether regions, which are solidly in favor of seeing if he’s even half as good with his equipment as Trent was. “Not for real.”

His ribs are expanding and contracting rapidly. “I had a lot of fun with you tonight.”

“You’d have fun with a professional fun-killer.” Why can’t I stop touching him?

“I want to kiss you again.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“Says the woman who’s stroking me.”

“Your robot pheromones are hypnotizing me.”

“Sarah.”

Oh, crap, he’s using my name against me now too.

But he’s funny. And he’s sweet. And there’s literally not one thing about him—beyond how we met and the fact that he’s a celebrity—that I can find fault with.

He’s apologized profusely.

He adores his mom.

He loses video games to his nephew. On purpose.

And I just like him.

What’s the harm in kissing?

I miss kissing.

And I’ve never kissed a man who knew all of who I was. About my parents. About the Hagrid incident. I’ve never even told a boyfriend about my year in Morocco.

“There’s no off-button back here,” I tell him.

But there is a very shapely ass clad in RYDE-brand denim that I could squeeze, if I was the bold type.

He turns, and I drop my fingers and look down, but my eye catches on the bulge in his jeans, and there’s no freaking way Beck Ryder’s turned on because of me.

Is there?

I go out of my way to not look sexy.

But if he’s stuffing his briefs, he wasn’t earlier, which suggests he’s either turned on by me, or he was thinking about internet porn.

He hooks a finger under my chin and lifts my face so I’m looking up at him.

So tall. So tall, and lean, but also wrapped in a layer of sinewy muscle that I want to trace.

And lick.

I am in so much trouble.

“I like you, Sarah Dempsey,” he whispers.

And those blue eyes aren’t lying. They’re not overflowing with confidence or ego or self-importance.

They’re cautious. Searching. Like he knows he’s sneaking out on a limb that might or might not hold his weight, but that apple at the end is worth the risk.

I’m his apple.

How am I his apple?

“I’m trying really hard not to like you.”

His eyes crinkle when he smiles, like he knows I’m lying and that I’m not trying very hard at all, and I do like him, and I am so done for.

There aren’t any cameras down here. No prying eyes. No reason for him to pretend he likes me when we have a contract that very specifically spells out that this is a bad, bad idea.

But my lips are tingling and my lady bits are stirring and his skin is so warm and soft over rigid muscle right there at his waist where my hand has accidentally fallen, and when he lowers his lips to mine, I don’t fight it.

Because I want to know.

I want to know if this is all a fluke, or if it’s the mint tea talking, or if it’s the weird circumstances, or if he’s secretly that turned on by the fact that I have a replica of the Serenity starship.

“You have the prettiest eyes,” he murmurs against my mouth, his lips teasing mine, his breath warm and sweet.

I’m going to do this.