Can’t Hurry Love, Nadine Millard [10 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

reaching out to run his knuckles over the soft skin. He was playing with fire, Josh knew. A fire that he understood would burn out of control if he let it.

“Good to know,” she quipped. “But I’d still like to make a good impression.”

“Why?” he scoffed. “None of them are good enough for you.”

“Oh? Then who is?”

Me.

He wanted to say that, and he knew that she wanted him to say it. But it would be a lie. He was so messed up he wasn’t good enough for anyone right now.

“Nobody,” he answered finally. Honestly.

Her eyes flashed with — something. Hurt? Disappointment? He couldn’t tell.

She moved to get off the couch and even though he should let her, Josh found himself reaching out to stop her movements. “I don’t want you to go speed dating,” he said quietly. It wasn’t enough. There was so much that he could say. That he should say. But maybe the truth of what he was feeling was stamped in his expression, because the confusion and frustration slowly left her face until she looked just as she had a year ago when he’d started this thing between them.

“I don’t want to go speed dating.”

Seven simple words, but he felt like they opened the floodgates. He reached out lifted Beth, and planted her in his lap. Then he finally did what he’d been dying to do every second that he’d spent with her.

He kissed her with all he was feeling and everything he was too scared to say.

Chapter Sixteen

Beth had a second to wonder if she’d completely lost her marbles and fallen into one of her fantasies.

But no.

Her imagination was good, but not this good. She couldn’t have imagined how incredible Josh’s arms would feel wrapped around her… She couldn’t have imagined the taste of him as he thrust his tongue inside her mouth, igniting a fire that burned into her very soul…

What is going on? She thought, while she still had the ability to think.

But only seconds later, she decided that she didn’t actually care what had brought this on. The only thing she knew for certain was that she didn’t want it to stop.

Beth reached up and gripped Josh’s hair, pulling herself closer. His groan sent a pulse of desire straight to her core, and she knew that the only way this thing between them was stopping was if Josh pushed her away again. Because she didn’t have the strength to do it. She didn’t want to.

With a muffled curse against her mouth, Josh lifted her again until she was straddling him, her body pressed against his.

He plunged a hand into her hair, angling her head so he could deepen the kiss, while the other ran slowly, torturously over her body.

He found the hemline of her shirt and slipped inside, and Beth gasped at the feel of his hand against the thin lace of her bra. Her ankle twinged a little as she pressed herself into his palm, but she didn’t care.

Someone could be sawing the limb clean off right now, and she’d barely notice.

The sudden sound of a phone ringing jarred her senses, and she pulled her mouth from Josh’s, waiting for him to put up that wall again. Waiting for him to send her away. She watched closely as he tensed, obviously realising that it was his ringtone he was hearing and not hers. And Beth tried to steel herself for the hurt coming her way, which was hard to do, with over six foot of solid muscle underneath her.

He stared at her, and she stared right back.

What she should do is scrape her dignity off the floor and hobble out of there before he could tell her to leave. But she was trapped. Not only by that look blazing in his eyes but by the things he was doing to her insides. She was like a puppet on a string, her body only moving in response to his. Beth had no idea how long they sat there, laboured breathing in perfect sync, their eyes clashing blue on blue.

Finally, the shrill ring of the phone stopped, the silence in its wake deafening.

This is it, Beth thought. The moment he says he’s sorry. The moment I’ll have to pretend he’s not tearing me into shreds.

She watched his face and waited.

But he just blinked… then smiled a slow, deliciously wicked smile, and her heart exploded along with other more intimate parts of her.

Without warning, he surged to his feet, one arm wound tightly around her waist to keep her from falling.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and answered his smile with one of her own as he started to move away from the living room and toward what she hoped was a bed.

“You really meant it when you said I should stay off this ankle, huh?” she whispered.

“Doctor’s orders,” he answered with a wink. “And I intend to keep you off it for a very long time.”

The sound of a phone ringing again pierced the silence, causing Beth to stir. It wouldn’t be a medical emergency since Dr. Beech was on call this weekend. Josh held his breath to see if the ringing would wake her, but with a deep sigh, she snuggled back into his side and stilled.

Shocked at how relieved he felt that she stayed sleeping, therefore prolonging the time he could just hold her, he went back to stroking the satiny smooth skin of her back.

He’d had a feeling that sex with Beth would be good. But he never could have imagined how mind-blowing it would be. And he definitely couldn’t have imagined feeling so content, as if everything in his life suddenly made sense because she was in his arms and in his bed.

Damn, he sounded like a character from one of her rom coms.

He lay there watching the afternoon light fade to evening just trying to process all the emotions he was feeling. He knew that sex had complicated everything. That he probably should