“Fine. I guess I’ll just finish my shopping.”
Since I was living out of a suitcase, I really did need new underwear. Ducking into Victoria’s Secret wasn’t exactly a ruse to get rid of him. But I figured there was no way on earth Knox Morgan would follow me inside.
I was shuffling through the sale bin when I felt a grumpy, looming presence. He was standing behind me, arms crossed over his chest. I rolled my eyes and decided to ignore him.
What I couldn’t ignore was the fact that every time a woman entered the store, she stopped in her tracks and stared.
I couldn’t blame them. He was unfairly gorgeous. Too bad about the whole terrible personality thing.
I’d narrowed it down to two pairs of normal ol’ briefs but kept coming back to sigh over a silky pair with lace cutouts on the side and back when a sales associate appeared.
“Can I get a dressing room started for you?” she asked.
I thought about it. At least Knox couldn’t follow me into the dressing room.
“She’ll take these,” he said, snatching the briefs out of my hand and pushing them at the saleswoman.
My mouth fell open as he dug into the bin and yanked out three more pairs of the impractical, sexy as hell ones. Pink, purple, and red. Then he grabbed a pair of adorable boxer-style undies with red hearts all over them. “And these.”
He shoved them all at the woman, who gave me a sly grin before marching over to the register.
“Knox, I’m not buying all those,” I hissed at him.
“Shut it,” he said and whipped out his credit card.
“If you think for one second that I’m allowing you to buy me underwear—”
He cut off my tirade by slinging an arm over my shoulder and covering my mouth with his hand. “Here,” he said, sliding his card across the counter.
I was squirming against him until he leaned down. “If this is what it takes to get out of this fucking store without passing out from a goddamn hard-on, I’m buying you the fucking underwear.”
By my count, this was the second time he’d mentioned his man parts having a reaction to me. I wasn’t a big enough liar to pretend I wasn’t happy that he found himself in the same predicament as me: Turned on by the physical, turned off by everything else.
I stopped squirming when he pulled me in front of him. With my back flush to his front, I could feel the irrefutable evidence of his claim. My body reacted entirely without my brain’s input and went into five-alarm arousal. I worried that I was going to need to be carried out of the store.
“That was incredibly inappropriate,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as we left the store, his arm still around me.
“You wanted me to buy something. I bought something.”
“Underwear. For me,” I screeched.
“You look tired,” he said smugly.
“Tired? I’m exhausted. We’ve walked fifty miles in a mall. I spent every dime and then some. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Most of all, I’m confused, Knox! You’re so mean all the time, and then you show up today and buy me nice underwear?”
“Maybe you’ll think of me when you wear them,” he said, his gaze scanning ahead of us.
“You’re the worst.”
“You’re welcome. We got one more stop,” he said, taking my hand.
I was tired. Too tired to fight. Too tired to pay attention to what store he dragged me into.
“Mr. Morgan.” A tall, skinny kid with a dark goatee waved at us. “We just finished up,” he said.
We were in a cell phone store. I dug my heels in, but Knox merely pulled me forward to the counter.
“Good timing, Ben.”