She Thinks Her Ex Is Sexy...

Yeah, and they were still totally true. So why was she up in arms about him thinking she couldn’t play the kind of role some would believe she’d been born to play? But then, she’d always been the feeler, reacting on instinct, while Romero was the thinker. Maybe he had a point. And she would have some input into a film about her mom? She hadn’t even considered that, yet it could be a chance to add some substance to the popular vision of her mother.

But that realization didn’t stop her from being just a smidge miffed that he thought she couldn’t carry off the role of a screen siren.

“Then maybe I need a little more practice being sexy.” A flash of indignation had her stepping out of his reach to peel off her satin blazer. The slick fabric was soaked anyhow. Or maybe she was just looking for a way to make Romero suffer the way she suffered around him.

Shannon let the jacket drop on the ground, where she stood and faced the rainstorm in her lavender-colored tank top. Let him feast his eyes on that for a little while and tell her she wasn’t sexy enough.

HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN able to look away if it hadn’t been for the rhinestone bra strap.

He’d been semiprepared for the unveiling of those incredible breasts that she’d inherited directly from her bombshell mother. Shannon had one of those bodies that made men go dumb with sex thoughts—it was just an immutable law of nature. She often wore jackets and blazers or the occasional sweater to deflect the inevitable head-turning stares her body brought her way, so Romero had forced himself not to look south of her chin when her little satin jacket came off.

But damned if the glitter of a cheeky bra strap didn’t catch his eye. It peeked out from under the cotton tank top now molded to her skin, the shimmering stones wrapping around her shoulder and disappearing under the top just above the start of a bra cup. And, yeah, he could see that, too, since her tank top had turned utterly transparent with the rain.

With an effort he raised his eyes, since he’d never been the type to ogle a woman. He’d been brought up better than that, for one thing. His family may have driven him crazy with the constant bickering, but at least they’d instilled good manners. Plus, he’d been solicited by enough beautiful women over the course of his lifetime that he considered himself fairly immune to something as fleeting as looks. But Shannon had always had a unique effect on him. He’d wanted her for reasons that included sex, yet went above and beyond.

When he met her gaze, her blue eyes flashed with a laser intensity he could only describe as insolent. She’d pushed him and pushed him to fight with her—for the past few hours, three months ago, all freaking year. And now she wanted to taunt him with something he craved very, very much.

Big. Mistake.

He shrugged his bag off his shoulders and stalked toward her, rainwater pooling around his feet before being absorbed by the sand.

Her eyes widened.

Two more steps brought him toe to toe with her, invading her personal space and making his presence damn well-known.

“Romero?” She bit her lip as she peered up at him. Her breathing came hard, each inhale bringing her breasts into the barest of contact with his chest. A teasing caress that only added to the fire inside him.

A fire she’d damn well started.

“I don’t think being sexy is your problem.” His hands gravitated to her waist. He knew the layout of her body better than his own, having memorized the spatial relationships of her curves long ago.

He noticed she didn’t have one of her smart-mouth comebacks for him now. A good thing, since he had a better idea for putting her mouth to work.

Inhaling the scent of her, which was intensified by the combination of rain and heat, he bent forward, brushing his lips against hers. He speared his hands up the back of her tank top, splaying them over her skin. Her eyelids fell to half-mast and he moved in for the full taste, his mouth as hungry for her as every other part of him.

If she wanted to play sexual instigator, he planned to show her exactly what she did to him.

4

TOUCHING SHANNON TRIPPED a switch inside him.

No, her peeling off her clothes was what had done him in. The challenge in her eyes as they’d stood in the desert downpour had proved even more difficult to resist than her body, and that was saying a lot considering the woman in his arms.

Her flesh felt hot against him, the warmth of her skin coming through her clothes despite the cooling rain streaking over them. She wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing him close while she arched up on her toes. Her hips gravitated to his, his blood running thick and hot through his veins at the feel of her soft curves against him.

He wanted to take her.

The desert fell away along with the rain, the cacti and the totaled car. All that mattered was getting Shannon out of her clothes and all over him, quenching the burning that fired his skin.

He deepened the kiss and lifted her off her feet, needing to touch every part of her within his grasp. She made a hungry sound in her throat, a soft cry that he recognized all too well as her personal litany of desire—a precursor to a sweet chorus of sighs and moans that were better than any music he’d ever written.

“Shannon.” Her name fell from his lips between kisses, as if he needed to confirm the fact that the woman coming undone against him was the same one who’d churned up more emotions in him in a year than he’d experienced in a whole lifetime before meeting her.

“You make me crazy,” she whispered back, clutching his T-shirt in one hand and a fistful of his hair in the other.

She edged back to look at him while he still held her in the air, suspended off the ground a good couple of inches. His heart slugged hard against his chest, against the softness of her breasts pressed against him, the heat steaming off them where their bodies melded together.

“You make me want to have sex in the middle of the desert.” Which was the same as making him crazy, since he’d never do something like that out here in the open during the middle of a flash flood.

He leaned in to kiss her, to take that mouth of hers and have the last word in this argument between them that never ended. At the last second her hand reached up, applying the slightest pressure to his chest.

“I know it’s no business of mine now that we broke up. But since you just kissed me, I have to ask—did you sleep with that groupie from the wedding?”

It took him long, drawn-out seconds to process her words, since he was so hot he thought he’d explode. When the meaning finally sank in, the icy chill of reality forced him to set her on her feet.

“What are you talking about?” He shook his head, wondering what had happened to the self-confident, devil-may-care woman he’d fallen in love with. She’d never been the jealous type, leaving him to pursue his interests while she went after hers.

Did she honestly still care who was in his life?

“You danced with her a lot last night.” Her eyes were no longer passion-fogged, but clear. Worried. “I saw you walking down to the beach—”

“To get away from all the questions I fielded about you the whole day.” He released Shannon completely, his hands twitchy with sexual frustration, especially when he considered how he’d feel if the tables were turned and it had been her dancing with some other guy the night before. Ouch. “And even though you haven’t asked, I’m going to tell you—there hasn’t been anyone else for me since we split up.”

Plucking his bag up off the ground, he turned on his heel and began walking, figuring any direction was a far cry better than being next to a woman who tempted him beyond reason. A woman he hadn’t come close to forgetting.

“NO ONE?” Shannon couldn’t resist asking for a small point of clarification as she hurried to catch up with Romero, shocked that he had confided something so personal. Something that touched her in spite of everything they’d been through.

“You’re a tough act to follow.” He didn’t even turn to look toward her, his feet trudging to the northeast as the rain pelted him from the right. “And give me credit for having a little more respect for you than to pick up a stranger and take her back to my hotel room when I was staying right across the hall from you. After what we shared.”

Shannon didn’t know if she felt more relieved that he hadn’t been with anyone else or sad that she’d blown an opportunity to get naked with him herself. Probably a mixture of both.

Adjusting the strap of her bag, she followed Romero, her thoughts confused. Her feet sank in the mud as she walked, the skinny heels of her shoes disappearing into the wet sand and somehow becoming vacuum packed into the muck so that the earth made a sucking sound each time she pulled her foot out.

“Well.” She didn’t have a clue what to say to him, her heart still skipping wildly from his touch even while her brain told her she ought to have a little more restraint where he was concerned. He had wanted to separate from her, after all. “Thank you for that. I haven’t been dating, either, but I know men seem to rebound faster.”

Excluding her mom, who had gone through men as fast as she made movies. Maybe that’s why Shannon wanted so badly to get her relationships right. She’d seen firsthand how much it hurt her mother to lose each consecutive boyfriend, never realizing how her own actions had played a role in the revolving door in her life.

“I think that’s just an illusion.” Romero didn’t even look back, his long strides eating up the rain-soaked sand. “And I never pictured you as the type to jump into new relationships anyhow.”