The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            After they killed the food and started getting tired, she led him to the bathroom, where they brushed their teeth side by side because Hallie was convinced the vinegar and sugar in ketchup would rot their teeth while they slept.

            Every time she tried gargling, she got the giggles because Jack was watching her and then she choked on the mouthwash. They were both laughing their asses off by the time he threw her over his shoulder and hauled her over to the bed, and when they finally lay down and shut their eyes, he couldn’t remember a time he’d been that fucking happy.





Chapter

TWENTY-SEVEN



Hallie


            “Hal.”

            She opened her eyes, and there was Jack, smiling down at her. Sunlight was coming through the window, but he was still buried underneath the covers beside her, like he had been all night. His hair was a mess, his eyes were tired, and he was so gorgeous it was almost hard to look at him.

            “Good morning,” she said, reaching up a hand to touch his jaw.

            “Good morning to you,” he said, and the way he looked at her made her feel adored. “You told me to wake you up at seven, and it’s seven. But I’m about to hop in the shower, so if you want to snooze, I’ll wake you up when I’m done.”

            “No run today?” she asked.

            “I’m too pathetically into my fake girlfriend to leave for an hour,” he said, kissing her forehead before getting out of bed. “Go back to sleep, and I’ll wake you when I get out.”

            She watched him walk across the room and she thought you could probably bounce a quarter off that tight, muscular ass of his. She’d probably test that later, just to make him laugh and get naked again.

            God, how was she having those thoughts? How was she suddenly thinking that she and Jack would move forward as more than friends? She could still hear his sexy growl when they’d been going wild in the bed—nothing has ever felt as good as you—and she almost had to pinch herself to believe it was real.

            She was in love with Jack, and things were looking incredibly promising.

            She giggled, the noise echoing off the wood beams of their room, and she felt like singing.





Jack


            He stuck his head directly under the spray, letting hot water slide down his face and neck.

            Jack was exhausted in the best possible way.

            He pushed his hair back and squirted body wash into his hands, rubbing them together before lathering his hair.

            “I can’t believe you use body wash as shampoo,” Hallie said, and Jack felt a pinch in the center of his chest as he turned around in time to see her stepping into the shower. She was so fucking hot, his naked dream girl with the wild red hair, but it was the smile on her lips that made him melt for her.

            She grinned at him like she knew him better than anyone else in the world, like they shared a massive secret, and there was something about the look that almost dropped him. It was everything, and he wanted to keep her with him in that hotel room forever so only he could enjoy it.

            “It’s all the same,” he said, but his throat was dry and scratchy. “Soap is soap.”

            Her hands reached for his, her fingers sliding through his to steal the lather he’d built. She tilted her head up, waiting for him to kiss her, as she set her slick hands on him. His breath whooshed out of his body—shit shit shit shit—and he covered her mouth with his, voraciously devouring her as she moved bubbly fingertips everywhere he’d ever dreamed about her touching.

            His fingers speared through her hair as her mouth became his feast, became the centralized spot for him to unleash his passionate response to her wicked hands. He scraped his teeth along those sexy lips, desperate to consume every single bit of her.

            His legs were shaking as she kept sliding those slippery fingertips over him, and when it was too much, too close, he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her. Startled, she stilled her hands as he hauled her out of the shower.

            Steam filled the bathroom as hot water continued falling from the rain forest showerhead, and Jack set a towel on the vanity with one hand before lifting her on top of it. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, like she was struggling to keep them open, and they fluttered closed when he stepped between her legs and slid inside her.