Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(53)

They stood there for a moment, as a sea of people parted around them, moving along with their day as if Lizzie and Rake didn’t hold the single most precious photo of the most gorgeous smudge in the history of the world in their hands.

Rake couldn’t say what came over him, whether it was the way Lizzie’s tongue darted out to lick her lips, or how his blood heated and his pulse quickened with the enormity of the moment. But he had to touch her.

He crushed his mouth to hers, wanting to imprint her happy smile onto his heart. And, Lizzie being Lizzie, she didn’t act surprised at all. She molded into him as if it was the most natural thing in the world for Rake to kiss her like his life depended on it. And that’s what it felt like.

Happiness and one hundred other unnamable emotions flooded him so sharply, so painfully, he needed to anchor himself to the moment, to her, or else he quite simply might die from the feelings. He hitched her body closer, one hand cradling the back of her skull while the other snaked around her waist. She twined her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss, her tongue sliding over his in a way that drew all his attention to the silk of her mouth.

She pulled him toward her, causing them both to stumble until her back met the building behind her. Lizzie let out a soft groan that echoed in his bones, static electricity humming just beneath his skin, against her lips. He wanted her. Badly.

And that thought was enough to make him realize he needed to stop.

He tore away from the kiss, turning his back and rubbing his knuckles across his lips in a vain attempt to lose the feeling of her on them.

“Fuck,” he said, dragging his hands down his face then turning back to her. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

Lizzie was panting, her cheeks and nose burning with color. Rake didn’t miss the flash of vulnerability in her eyes after his words, but she straightened her spine, brushing a hand over her hair and down to her stomach.

“It’s fine,” she said, plastering on a teasing smile. “I know even on my worst days I’m nearly irresistible, and what with you having the emotional range of a caveman, it only makes sense that you would get all primal after seeing proof of your giant spawn in me.”

Rake let out a hollow laugh, still trying to get a grip on his pounding heart.

They made their way back home, opting to walk while Lizzie kept up her usual stream of observations. Rake listened to every word, seeing hundreds of beautiful things he never would have noticed without her clever eye.

When they finally made it back to the apartment, the air conditioning was a relief from the raging humidity.

“So,” Lizzie said, patting her hands awkwardly against her hips and looking around. “We’re going to be parents … It seems more real now.”

Rake ran his hands through his hair. “It does.”

They stared at each other, small bricks of shyness and intimacy and lust stacking up between them. In typical Lizzie fashion, she bulldozed through them.

“Wanna order some pizza?” she asked, kicking off her heels and fumbling for the zipper on the back of her dress. After a moment of contortion, she dropped her arms and backed toward him. “Will you unzip me?”

Rake swallowed, his whole body heating and throbbing as if she’d just asked him to bury his face between her thighs. Doing as she asked, he pulled down the zipper, the scratch of its teeth from her neck to her hips reverberating around his skull. The dress dropped in a red wave, pooling at her feet. She stepped out of it and moved toward the bed area, completely unaware of the impending physical crisis she just thrust upon Rake.

He stared, all her luscious curves hugged by black nylon shorts that covered her skin from mid-thigh up to the edge of her strapless bra.

It shouldn’t look sexy. But it did.

“What are you wearing?” he asked, his voice coming a little hoarse.

She glanced down at herself, then snorted. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? It feels like a sausage casing. I always tell myself I should stop wearing them, but I’m a tragically vain creature and like the smooth lines.” She plucked at the nylon on her stomach, and it made a slapping noise when she let it go.

It shouldn’t have sounded erotic. But it did.

“Plus, they help prevent chub rub,” she said.

And now he was picturing rubbing.

Lots of it.

Her thighs pressing together with his hand between them.

His chest moving against hers.

Her hands scratching down his back.

His cock—

“What’s chub rub?” he asked, his voice three octaves too high. For the four hundredth time that day, he told himself to get a grip.

“Thigh chafe. I get a heat rash from my inner thighs rubbing together with enough friction to start a bonfire,” she said with a laugh, getting on her knees to dig through her garbage bags of clothes, the material stretching so hints of her skin showed through the dark nylon. “But the thigh fabric on these helps, and it doesn’t ride up much. Indira and I call them full-body condoms.” She laughed again, and Rake swallowed down a groan at the way it made her overspilling breasts bounce in her bra.

“So, pizza?” she repeated. Lizzie pulled out a T-shirt and workout shorts, then pivoted a bit, still on her knees with her back now to him. She reached her arms behind her and undid the clasp of her bra, and Rake made a strangled, choking noise.

“What was that?” Lizzie asked, throwing the large T-shirt over herself and turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.