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Like I was holding flames in my bare hands, and the quicker I could put them down, the less I’d burn us both.

Her heavy breasts were crushed, warm and delicious, against my chest.

I was so hard I was grinding my teeth.

I set her on the bed as gently as I could which meant I practically threw her on it.

She landed on her back and bounced a bit, her pink rosebud nipples still out and teasing me outrageously.

I watched, knees close enough to touch the mattress, hands in my hair.

It was madness.

She was looking up at me, her lush lips quirked enigmatically. “You’re so funny,” she told me. “I think you’re secretly a nice guy.”

“Oh, Ro, you innocent little thing. I am not nice at all. All of the depraved ways I could corrupt you. All of the filthy things I could do to you.”

“You could talk me to death.” It was a taunt, and she had the nerve to giggle after she said it.

“This isn’t a laughing matter,” I told her sternly.

“Sure it is.”

I couldn’t help it, in spite of my discomfort and frustration, I smiled fondly at that. “Even when you’re being impossible, I get a real kick out of you, you know that?” I asked her. “Now do you need anything before I go? Want me to pull your hair? I mean, hold it back while you throw up?”

She was laughing, and I was still smiling as I went into her closet.

It was absolute torture but I determinedly put her into an oversized T-shirt and untied all the strings on her bikini.

I stepped back. “Now throw the bathing suit on the floor. I don’t want you getting tangled up in it while you sleep.”

She obeyed, but in the worst way possible, practically taking off the shirt and giving me a real show that, even trying my best, I could not look away from.

The tips of my fingers were trembling.

When the bikini was a heap on the ground by the bed, I handed her some panties.

“You’re adorable,” I told her softly, tenderly. “Now I need to get the hell away from you.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I DIDN’T SLEEP. I paced the house, jerked off several times, and drove myself crazy until morning.

When she woke up I was there with coffee, and I got the treat of seeing her utterly hungover, paying for all of her sins of the day before.

“Do you remember anything from yesterday?” I asked her, parking myself at her hip.

She was sitting up, looking out of sorts and disoriented. She took a long draw of her coffee and just looked at me. She wasn’t drunk, but she wasn’t quite back to being the Ro I missed yet.

“I remember,” she finally said slowly. “I drank too much, but I didn’t black out or anything. You were being crazy.”

I glared at her. “I was being crazy? I was being crazy? I saw your nipples, Ro, both of them.”

She didn’t laugh but got a vaguely amused look in her eyes, an ironic twist to her mouth that was the most Ro thing I’d seen in almost twenty-four hours.

I loved it. It was a bit worrisome how much I’d missed that look.

“Would it have been better if it was only one?” she finally asked wryly.