Holy shit. Her pulse picked up, and she almost dropped her hand down to her lap.
His larger hand engulfed hers before she could pull it back. “Deal.”
All of the you’re-in-danger-girl alarms went off in her head at the same time that her body was sending oh-yeah-scoot-closer vibes. When she was back home, she was definitely going to have to give herself a stern talking-to about the realities of the situation, which was that this was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Nothing more.
Riiiiiiiight, Fallon.
And that was the moment when she realized she just might be well and truly fucked, which meant there was only one thing to do now. Get the man out of her system so she could do this whole Lady Luck thing without losing her head—or her heart. Her panties, however? Those white cotton briefs were goners.
…
Taking Fallon on a tour of the kitchen so she could see the guacamole being made hadn’t been his idea. Mama had insisted after the two women had started talking about the restaurant’s food. And that was how he’d ended up squashed in a corner with Fallon directly in front of him—her ass practically pressed against him in all the very right wrong places—as one of the line cooks showed them how he made the guacamole.
It wasn’t a fast process. Okay, maybe it was, but it felt like forever when Zach had to keep his hands mostly to himself—and he did. She was Lady Luck. He was a loser with mountains of debt. Remembering that, though, got harder the longer he stood there, his fingers resting lightly on her hips because there was nowhere else to put them in the cramped quarters.
Really, perv? That’s what you’re going with?
Yeah, he couldn’t even lie to himself about it because they might be putting in anchovies and ground-up mouth guards in the guacamole and he wouldn’t notice. All he could take in was every single little detail about Fallon, from the curve of her hip to the fact that her breath hitched every time a busboy walked by and she had to step back closer to him so the employee could get by with his tub full of dishes.
“And that,” the cook said with a final sprinkle of cilantro. “Is how you make Mama’s guacamole.”
Zach hoped Fallon had gotten the recipe because he’d missed all of it.
“Excuse me,” a busboy coming in from the dining room said almost at the same time as another busboy coming from the opposite direction said it.
They met in the sliver of space between Fallon and the prep table. The resulting face-off meant she had to scoot back against him while he tried to make his six-foot-three-inch frame fit in a space so tight a gymnast would feel squashed. And since he was good but not so much so that he could subvert the laws of space and time, there was nothing to be done but try to angle so his dick wasn’t pressed right up against Fallon’s high, round ass.
Still, she brushed against his cock, which was pretty much all the encouragement it needed to start to stiffen against his thigh. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. The fact that this was the first time in his life he’d ever hoped a woman didn’t notice his junk didn’t do his ego any fucking favors.
“You really like guacamole, huh?” she asked as she looked back over her shoulder at him, her voice huskier than it had been moments ago.
Busted. He searched her face for signs of her being offended. Instead of shock or annoyance, though, there was nothing but heated curiosity mixed with lust in her gaze, which made his blood rush south.
“Yes.” He shifted his stance so he was more directly behind her, while still keeping an inch or two of space between them. “It’s totally my kink.”
The right side of her mouth curled up in a half smile as she took a half step back, so they were pressed up against each other again. “Brings new meaning to food porn.”
He sucked in a quick breath and prayed for the strength of his zipper. “Did you have to say porn?”
It was bad enough that her jeans didn’t do a damn thing except make him imagine all the dirty nurse fantasies he’d never had until he’d met Fallon. The last thing he needed to be thinking about was what she watched or read when she wanted to get off. He clenched his teeth together, hard enough he might have to go see the team dentist, in a vain attempt to get that mental image out of his head.
“Why?” The tip of Fallon’s pink tongue snuck out and wet her full bottom lip as she looked back at him. “You don’t like porn, or you don’t like women who like porn outside of a male-gaze type thing?”
The pained groan that escaped from him said everything he couldn’t at that moment because they were in the middle of Mama’s kitchen as the cooks, the busboys, and the waiters sped around in organized chaos that reminded him of a hockey game. Not even the reminder of all that was on the line for him could bring his dick back under control, though. Not when Fallon was pressed up against him and asking him about porn.
“I’ll take that as a you like it a little bit too much.” She grinned, turning her attention back to the activity in the busy kitchen, but she didn’t reverse that half step she’d taken earlier, even though the busboys were long gone.
Instead, she stayed there pressed against him, the back of her thighs against his, the roundness of her ass pressed against his dick, and her back touching his chest. If he wanted to, he could have dipped his head just the slightest bit and whispered in her ear. But that’s not what he wanted to do. What he had in mind was much louder. He wanted to make her scream as she came all over his dick.
It wasn’t fair. He was trying not to fuck this thing with Lady Luck up—and with him needing Fallon to win games, banging her would definitely screw them over no matter how bad he wanted to (and damn did he want to) because the one thing he still excelled at was pissing people off. He couldn’t afford to make Fallon mad—too bad it was hard as hell to remember that when she was this close.
“I’m trying to be good,” he said, almost more to himself than to her.
She leaned back against him, tilting her chin upward so that braid of hers slid down his chest. “And here I’d heard you were very good at being the best kind of bad.”
The comment delivered with just the lightest increase in pressure of her ass against his cock was more than he could take. He was weak. He was horny. He wanted to fuck her six ways to Sunday and had pretty much since the first time he saw her when she walked into that bar to relieve him from being Lucy’s wingman with enough attitude to make the chip on his shoulder seem small in comparison. His resolve snapped in two like a pencil, and he tightened his grip on her hips, pulling her back against him. It was almost enough.
“If we walk out of here together right now,” he