Listed: Volume II by Noelle Adams Page A

makeup, and bare legs above her high heels. The sight of
her so sexy that evening in New York had been like a hard kick in his gut.
    Other
parts of his body had reacted too.
    Then
he thought about her a few nights ago in the kitchen, when she’d woken him up
in the middle of the night. She’d been wearing what looked to him like
underwear, although maybe they were supposed to be shorts.
    Whatever
they were, they’d displayed more of her luscious ass than he could handle. Then
she’d stroked the scars on his back. There was something about her deep
sympathy and tenderness that he’d wanted, he’d needed. But his body had
infuriatingly misinterpreted the stimulus and had leapt into eager arousal.
He’d been achingly hard, from just a few brushes of her fingers on his back and
the knowledge of how little she'd been wearing. He’d panicked when he realized
that his pajama pants wouldn’t hide anything.
    He’d
used the refrigerator door as some sort of barrier, and he didn’t think she’d
noticed his response.
    Paul
took a deep breath. He was over that now. He wasn’t going to react that way to
her again. She was sick and only seventeen years old.
    For
thirteen more days.
    He
stared at the big bed, the only bed in the suite. He imagined Emily climbing
into it with him tonight, wearing next to nothing. He imagined rolling over and
feeling her lush curves pressed against him in the dark. He imagined her hands
on his skin, stroking him, caressing him. He imagined her looking at him the
way she was looking at the view, with the same uninhibited passion.
    His
body clenched with the kind of deeply physical interest that was supposed to
have been snuffed out. He felt a familiar tightening in his groin.
    He
swallowed hard.
    Maybe
he would just sleep on the couch.
    ***
    Paul was propped up on
the bed with his laptop in his lap. He was pretending to work, but he was
mostly just waiting for Emily to come out of the bathroom.
    He’d
suggested he sleep on the sofa in the sitting room, but Emily had been
astonished and appalled by the idea because the antique sofa was too short for
his height. He’d had to drop the subject completely when she started to make
noises about sleeping on the couch herself, if Paul was so uncomfortable about
sharing the bed with her.
    After
a delicious dinner from room service on the terrace, Emily declared herself
exhausted. She was going to take a bath and go to bed.
    He’d
tried to busy himself in the sitting room, thinking it might be easier to come
to bed much later than Emily, when she would hopefully already be asleep.
However, she’d apparently found his procrastination strange and asked again if
she should just sleep on the couch.
    Paul
was not about to let Emily sleep on anything except a bed, so he’d told her he
was coming into the bedroom momentarily.
    She’d
been in the bathroom for twenty-five minutes now, evidently enjoying a
leisurely bath, and Paul was having a very hard time not imagining what she
looked like, naked and sensual, relaxing in hot, fragrant bubbles.
    When
he heard her moving around behind the closed door of the bathroom, he knew
she’d gotten out of the tub. He felt his heartbeat speed up a little, and his
skin broke out in a faint sweat. He tried to force down the reaction. His body
was responding as though he were about to have sex as soon as Emily got into
bed with him, when he knew very well that wasn’t going to happen.
    He
stared fixedly at his laptop as the bathroom door opened and the spicy,
pleasant scent of ginger and vanilla wafted over to him.
    “Do
you always work in bed?” Emily asked, stopping in the middle of the room to
look at him.
    At
the sound of her voice, he couldn’t help but shift his gaze over to where she
stood. His body tightened with interest as soon as he saw her.
    He’d
been hoping she would be a little self-conscious about sharing the bed and
would thus choose one of her less revealing sleep outfits. No such luck. She
looked