Keeping His Promise: A When It Happens Novella, Book 2 by Rhyannon Byrd

blinking at him. “Wait—what? How did you do that? Your condo is across the way from his!”
    “His patio faces the beach. Mine does too,” he explained, smirking at the too-cute-for-words expression of outrage that was spreading across her face. “So when I have my patio doors open, I can pretty much hear anything you guys are saying.”
    “You sneaky eavesdropper!” she huffed, smacking his chest.
    “Hey, I can’t help it if you’re loud,” he shot back, laughing as he blocked her next playful hit.
    “I’ll show you loud,” she warned, going for a clump of his chest hair. He stopped her just in time, capturing her wrists in his hands.
    “Good.” He couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he pinned her wrists behind her back, while she wriggled against him, her gorgeous breasts pressed hard against his chest. “Be as loud as you want. I love it when you’re coming and screaming your head off.”
    She stuck her tongue out at him, and he swore he could feel his hunger for her roll through him like a physical thing, his cock giving a hard pulse against her hip that had her eyes going wide.
    Voice low and rough, he said, “You have a sexy little pink tongue, Natalie Richards. I’ll put it to good use if you don’t get it back in your mouth.”
    She licked her lower lip, and he sucked in a sharp breath, feeling every muscle in his body go tight with anticipation. Christ, if she ever sucked on his cock, he’d probably enjoy it so much it stopped his heart.
    Bringing her captured wrists up to his chest, he held them there, his heavy gaze locked tight with hers. “As I was saying, I know a lot about you. And I like it all. You’re sharp. Classy. Beautiful and exceptionally sexy. And despite what you want people to think, you’re kind.”
    “Kind?” She shot him a skeptical look from under her lashes. “Where did you get that ?”
    Stroking the pulse points at her wrists with his thumbs, he said, “I’ve watched you while you were working, remember? You talk to the sad men and women who find themselves sitting at your bar. You listen, and when they’re genuine, you care. Hell, you’ve even personally kicked out a group of asshole frat boys when they started messing with one of the servers who’s homosexual.”
    Confusion creased her brow. “How could you possibly know that?” she whispered.
    The corner of his lips twitched. “You aren’t aware of how much Sophie likes to brag about your awesomeness when you’re not around?”
    She drew an unsteady breath, then caught her lower lip in her teeth, and he thought she looked too fucking beautiful for words. Her face was free of make-up, what little she’d had on washed away by the rain, and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward and pressing a kiss to the delicate line of her nose. Then across the innocent freckles that dotted her cheeks.
    “So, yeah, I know a lot about you,” he murmured, releasing his hold on her wrists as he leaned back again, wanting to give her some space. To give her the chance to come closer to him, if that’s what she wanted. “And when you take it all and combine it with how fucking sexy I think you are, it should be fairly clear that I’ve wanted to touch you, any way I could, for a while now.”
    She turned her head, looking away from him, and he could feel a subtle thread of tension seeping into her. “There’s still a lot you don’t know,” she said quietly, her tongue flicking nervously across her lower lip. “Stuff that might not have been a big deal to some people, but…” She trailed off with an awkward lift of her shoulders. Then she sighed, and brought her shadowed gaze back to his. “But it was a big deal to me, even though I wasn’t the one it happened to. I don’t trust easily because of it.”
    “Tell me,” he said simply, wanting to know what had shaped her. What had hurt her.
    “It isn’t easy.”
    He lifted his hand, smoothing her hair back from her brow. “Neither was telling