Read Must Be Magic (Spellbound) for Free Online Page B

himself he’d already gone above and beyond anything the truce obligated him to.
    That didn’t stop him from snagging the blanket on the back of the sofa after all and draping it over her. He stared at her for a long minute, half hoping she wouldn’t remember any of this. As much as this might prove to her that he wasn’t the ass she believed him to be, it would probably make things awkward in the morning.
    With one more glance to be sure she looked comfortable enough—there was no way he was taking any of her clothes off—he leaned down to shut off the bedside lamp she’d left on earlier. There was more than enough light coming in through the front window to find his way to the door.
    “Bryce?”
    All the blood in his body slid south, and not because of that sexy take-me-to-bed voice. No, it was definitely because of the finger that hooked the waistband of his pants.
    His gaze snapped to hers.
    Biting her bottom lip, she stared up at him as she found his zipper and slowly tugged it down. Every notch it moved echoed in perfect sync with his suddenly pounding heart.
    He’d barely interpreted the seductive promise in her eyes, and then his zipper was down with her hand slipping inside and promising the kind of down and dirty foreplay that left him feeling half-drunk.
    Jesus, she was awfully coordinated for someone who wouldn’t have been able to walk a straight line. Awfully, wonderfully coordinated.
    His eyes slid shut and for a second he thought about seeing where this went. He’d been hard by the time her palm grazed his cock, making it way too easy for his brain to jump ahead to the part where he joined her on the bed.
    She made a sound of distress and he looked down to find he was just out of her reach. With his blood running hot and the temperature in the room even hotter, he didn’t have a clue how his body had gotten the message to back the fuck up, let alone make it happen.
    Darby sat up, pouting for a second before apparently rethinking her approach and grinning at him.
    He was in serious trouble. And not just because he was fighting the urge to help her out with his pants—and between the two of them his pants could be on the floor in a heartbeat.
    Studying the floor, he tugged his zipper back up, cutting off that last thought before he did something stupid. And anything that involved either of them getting naked would be insanely stupid.
    Darby might have smiled at him more in the last fifteen minutes than in all of the last ten years, reminding him that he’d missed that too, but tomorrow she wouldn’t be smiling if she thought he’d taken advantage of her.
    Even if she wasn’t as drunk as he thought, it would take more than alcohol to overcome their past and all the hostility they’d used to bury it.
    “Night, Darby.”
    Her expression dimmed, and he hated taking that light out of her eyes. He could add that to the list of mistakes he’d made where she was concerned.
    “Have you ever thought about it, what it would be like between us now?”
    Between the wild tumble of hair that had come down to frame her face and the way her dress had slipped off one shoulder, not to mention how she’d been looking at him for the last few minutes, it was all he could think about.
    Answering the question, though, might give her a reason to reach for him, and he wasn’t convinced he could back away from her a second time. Lingering now was a bad idea, and with all the practice he’d had over the years at avoiding her, his ass should already have been on the other side of the door.
    She moved to her knees. “I’m not the same girl you met on a sunny beach.”
    “Yes, you are.” Right now, anyway, when they didn’t have a private investigations case or a family feud getting in the way. “A little older now, more beautiful, but you haven’t changed.” Not entirely. Watching the way she was with her family tonight had proved that much.
    “And you have.” For the first time she sounded a little cautious.