Down for the Count by Christine Bell Page B

perpetual horniness to the surface. Beanpole or not, she was still a teenage girl, and he was a mass of hormones writhing under the paper-thin wrappings of a teenage boy. While he sat and suffered, two minutes into the trip—yes, before they’d even left city limits—she was snoring, with her face pressed against his shoulder.
    For four hours, she tortured him. Her leg, bared to the thigh in her white cotton shorts, rubbing against his with every turn. Her nearly nonexistent breasts jiggling, just a little, every time his father hit a pothole. Her hand, flopping to his lap, so close to the mother lode he was reduced to gritting his teeth. And on she slept, like a rock, sawing wood as if she didn’t have a care in the world. A teenage sleeping Lacey. While the boy in him had found her hard to resist back then, in spite of his every effort to hide it, the man in him now was in far worse shape.
    The memory had him grinning like an idiot as he stared down at grown-up sleeping Lacey. Now he was in a jam, though, because he wasn’t sure if he should bring her into the bedroom for a comfortable night’s sleep or if he should leave her on the couch. That morning, they’d called and asked for extra bedding from the concierge and had set up the small spare room for him to sleep in, so it was easy to take his own feelings out of it. Sharing a bed with her again wasn’t an option.
    A puff of cool air from the vent above hit him on the back of the neck and it was settled. She was still in damp clothes and the room was chilly. She really needed to change. He knelt beside her and shook her shoulder gently. “Lacey, wake up.”
    “Go ’way,” she mumbled before flipping onto her side with a snuffle.
    He grinned and tried again, shaking a little harder. Nada . With a sigh, he bent low and scooped her up. Immediately, her arms circled his neck and she pressed closer. He steeled himself and crossed the room, trying to ignore the softness of her breast branding his chest as he walked. Jesus, maybe it was because his body was still in hyperdrive from their petting in the pool, but by the time they reached one of the bedrooms, he was sporting a full-blown hard-on.
    Not bothering to flick on the light, he set her gently on the bed. He tried to disengage himself, but she would have none of it. She kept her arms locked around his neck and yanked until he was sprawled on top of her.
    “Don’t wanna be alone,” she murmured, burying her nose into his throat. He rolled to the side, tugging her along with him until she lay in the crook of his arm. With a contented sigh, she snuggled in deeper and hooked her thigh over his hip. Hot blood roared to his cock. What the fuck was he going to do now? Over the past two days, he’d seen a side of Lacey he’d never seen before and, if he was being totally honest with himself, he’d thought she was pretty great before. Now he knew that, on top of her kind-hearted if not somewhat neurotic nature and smoking-hot body, she’d also been hiding a well of untapped sensuality. It was a lethal combination. He couldn’t remember ever wanting to touch someone so badly he could taste it.
    She’d made herself clear, though. She wasn’t about to go there with him. Not right now, anyway. And maybe now was all they had. Maybe this was a fluke, an anomaly created by the perfect storm of events that would subside once they left the island. Then they’d go back to their regularly scheduled program. A program that didn’t include him wanting to tear off her clothes and make her scream his name over and over.
    Then again, maybe this was always the way it was meant to go. Maybe the timing had never been right. There had been a short period in grade school where he thought she might have a crush on him, but he’d been far too old for her. When they finally bridged the perceived gap, they were in high school. He was way too cool to hang out with his little sister and her friends, and she certainly hadn’t seemed