She hadn’t been ready for the sight of him, the rush of warmth between her legs that had come from watching him take off his clothes.
Goose bumps broke out across her décolletage as Vivienne removed her bra, and her breasts tingled at the memory.
She’d been mesmerized by his body, his shoulders thick with muscle, his hands, roughened by work and tanned by the sun, veins prominent along the backs of them, and up his forearms. He used to landscape back then, to help take care of his mom and his little sister and to fund his dreams of world domination, and the hours of manual labor showed in all the best ways. His abs were a masterpiece, and while his chest was smooth, there was a trail of hair that drew her eyes downward from his navel toward the bulge of his erection.
Vivienne let her hand wander down past her own navel, watching the flush of her skin in the mirror as her fingers trekked lower. She licked her lips as she breached the gathered waistband.
He’d touched her like he knew what he was doing, like he wasn’t in a hurry, like she was safe with him...but not too safe.
That edge of danger was like catnip. Addictive. She’d tried to make it into a cliché in the intervening years, tell herself it was nothing more than dating a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. The thrill came from the fact that her father wouldn’t approve...or at least he wouldn’t have if Harold Grant had cared enough to notice anything going on in her life. If he’d cared about something besides his eponymous law firm. If he’d looked up from work for even a second to see how much she’d needed him, needed someone to help her through the loss of her mother.
But it had been a long time since she’d given a damn what her father thought.
Then again, she’d thought it had been a long time since she’d given a damn about Wes, too, and look how that had turned out.
That try as she might, she couldn’t banish Wes from her body, let alone her brain. Which, she thought wryly, might have something to do with the fact that she was touching herself to a mental highlight reel of their greatest orgasms.
The elastic snapped against her abdomen as she yanked her hand free.
She needed a goddamn drink.
Viv stalked over to her dresser and grabbed an oversize T-shirt from the drawer, tugging it over her head as she headed for the door.
She wasn’t some starry-eyed, hormone-infused college junior anymore, she reminded herself as she headed for the kitchen, doing her best to wrestle her weird sexual obsession with Wes into submission through sheer force of will. They’d lived separate lives. They’d grown into different people. They had nothing in common anymore, no ties to one another.
“Is that my shirt?”
Vivienne started at the sound of his voice, swearing as her hand flew to the base of her throat and she whirled to face the couch. “God! You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.”
But he didn’t look sorry, propped indolently on her designer couch, his back against the armrest, his beautiful chest bare, and the blanket pulled up just high enough to make her wonder if he still slept in the nude.
In the interest of distraction, she focused on his original question and glanced down at herself.
Wes’s shirt. One she’d stolen from him a lifetime ago.
Considering the name of the landscaping company was emblazoned across the front of it, she figured plausible deniability had left the building.
Hoping the blush prickling up her neck wasn’t visible in the dimness of night, she lifted her chin to an angle that was all bravado. “As for this being your shirt, I guess that depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you subscribe to the idea that possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
Wes’s deep chuckle raced along her skin as he threw back the blanket and planted his feet on the plank flooring.
Boxer briefs.
White.
And tight.
He’d always had the sexiest thighs.
Viv cleared her throat. “Sorry I woke you up.”
“You didn’t.” He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it sexily disheveled. And right then, in the intimacy of the shadows, the living room lit faintly by whatever moonlight managed to join the light pollution of Los Angeles at night, it was easy to slip back to a time when midnight conversations with Wes, her in his T-shirt, him in his boxers, had been normal.
And all she had to do to maintain the illusion was ignore the electronic monitoring device blinking on his left ankle.
He stood up, stretching, and Vivienne took a step backward in self-preservation.
“This couch sucks.”
Glad for the distraction, Vivienne frowned, taking more offense than his words warranted. “It cost ten grand.”
“Well, none of that cash was funneled into adding cushioning to the cushions, I’ll tell you that much.”
She stared at the mod-style cream monstrosity, realizing for the first time that she didn’t really like it. Funny that she’d never noticed before. “Is it that bad?”
“Back in the day, you dragged me across the entire city, made me sit on fifty-seven couches before you would commit to one, and now you’re trying to tell me you’ve never sat on this overpriced torture device once?”
“A designer picked it out.” She glanced around the pristine, muted apartment, suddenly aware of how blank it was. “When I’m not at Whitfield, I’m sleeping. And if I can’t sleep, I’m in my home office. Working.”
That was her life since she’d come back to LA. And if she were being honest, she liked it that way. Being busy with work was much safer than being alone with her thoughts.
“So what are you doing out here now?” Wes’s voice sounded deeper in the dark, and the question stymied her for longer than it should have.
“Alcohol,” she blurted, remembering herself. “I need alcohol. Do you want a beer?”
He cocked
