Page 49 of Just a Little Tempted

Raina waved a dismissive hand, her gaze drifting to the steam rising from the water. “Oh, you know Chuck. He was just trying to get under my skin. Making comments about how you needmeto charm Alexander because you couldn’t do it on your own.” She shrugged, but something about the gesture felt slightly off. “Typical insecure nonsense. I shut him down and walked away. It’s not worth dwelling on.”

Her voice was casual, steady. No obvious signs of deception. But there was a tension in her shoulders that hadn’t been there before, a careful quality to her words that made me wonder if she was telling me everything.

Then again, I knew my tendency toward paranoia. And what she’d described sounded exactly like something Chuck would do. Petty jabs designed to rattle her and to create friction between us. It tracked with everything I knew about him.

“What exactly happened between you and Chuck, anyway?” she asked, shifting to face me more fully. The question felt deliberate, a redirection I couldn’t help but notice. “You never told me the full story.”

“You don’t know?” I asked, surprised she didn’t hear anything from her brother.

She shook her head. “Kurt never really talked about it, and I had a lot going on at the time. My mom was sick…”

Right. Of course. My business failing had felt like the end of the world to me, but Raina had been dealing with something far more important.

“You know we sold athletic wear, right?” She nodded, and a strand of hair slipped free from her bun. I reached over and tucked it behind her ear, any excuse to touch her, to feel the soft warmth of her skin. “We wanted to stand out as a company.Part of that was prioritizing high-quality materials—moisture-wicking, fast-drying, soft against the skin. It was important to us that we met those standards.”

“I remember Kurt mentioning that when you first started.”

“We all agreed to it. But Chuck got greedy.” The old anger stirred in my chest, familiar and bitter. “He was in charge of production and quality while Kurt and I handled marketing and finances. He ended up switching our fabric order to something cheap without us knowing, then put impossible deadlines on our manufacturer and ruined our relationship with a reputable company. We were forced to switch to someone else mid-production.”

“You were okay with that?”

I let out a humorless laugh. “Hell no. But Chuck’s a smooth talker and he blamed everything on the manufacturer. By the time we figured out how badly he’d fucked things up, it was too late. Low-quality products had already shipped to stores and customers, and we were still in our infancy. A few bad reviews—including one from a social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers—and that was all it took to bring us down.”

“Chuck is such a slimeball,” Raina said, her lip curling with disgust.

“He is.” I leaned my head back against the edge of the tub, old wounds aching beneath the surface. “And I hate that I once thought of him as a mentor. He’s a few years older than me and Kurt, and he told us he had all this business experience. We were fresh out of college. It seemed like such a good idea to partner with someone who knew the ropes.” I shook my head at my own flawed judgment. “I never should have trusted him. That whole experience taught me that giving up control in business is dangerous. Or at least, IthoughtI’d learned that lesson,” I said, thinking about how I’d trusted my first assistant, Carla, andhow her carelessness had nearly put the investment firm’s entire future at risk.

Raina looked at me curiously, a question forming in her eyes, but before she could ask me to elaborate, the door opened and another couple entered the room, shattering our privacy. Raina and I exchanged a glance, and something passed between us, an unspoken agreement that the moment had shifted.

“What do you think about heading back to the room?” she asked.

There was a sudden look in her eyes that I recognized. A heat that had nothing to do with the water surrounding us. Yeah, she was just as anxious to take advantage of that “one bed” situation as I was.

My pulse quickened, because I was ready to leave the Chuck conversation behind and focus solely on Raina. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

I climbed out of the hot tub first and extended a hand to help her up. By the time we made it back to the suite, anticipation was a living thing inside me, coiling tight, demanding release. I could feel it in Raina too, in the way her breath had quickened, how her eyes kept darting to my mouth, and the way her hand gripped mine just a little too tightly.

Five days.Almost an entire week of restraint, of proving myself, of keeping my hands where they belonged when all I wanted was to touch hereverywhere.

I was done waiting.

“We should shower,” I said, my voice already gruff with desire. “Wash off the chlorine.”

Raina’s eyes darkened. “Together?”

I nodded and smirked. “Together.”

The word hung between us, heavy with promise. She moved first, removing the clip from her hair then reaching for the straps of her swimsuit and peeling it down her body with deliberateslowness. The fabric slid over her curves, revealing inch after inch of skin that I’d been dreaming about for days. Her breasts. The dip of her waist. The flare of her hips. The enticing shadow between her thighs. My mouth watered for a taste ofeverything.

She stepped out of the suit and stood before me, gloriously naked, completely unabashed, and my cock throbbed painfully behind my shorts.

I stripped with far less finesse, shoving my trunks down and kicking them aside, too desperate to bother with a slow strip tease. Raina’s gaze dropped to my erection, and the hunger I saw in her expression nearly undid me. I grabbed her hand and practically dragged her into the bathroom.

The shower was large—a luxury suite perk—with multiple heads and more than enough room for two. I turned on the water, adjusting the temperature until steam billowed through the glass enclosure, then pulled Raina inside with me.

The hot spray cascaded over us as I reached for the body wash. I poured some into my palm and began to lather her skin, my hands sliding over her shoulders, down her arms, across the soft plane of her stomach. She sighed and tilted her head back, and I took the opportunity to cup her breasts as the water rinsed away the suds.

She fit perfectly in my hands. I kneaded gently, then found her nipples and rolled them between my fingers until they peaked hard and tight.