sashayed all the way back around the pool without ever looking back.
* * * *
Kristen breathed deep and told herself it was all right. She was right to stand up for herself and her new friends. Still, her stomach was rolling, her pulse racing, and her knees quaking beneath her with every step. It was exhilarating, and the look on Dylan’s face had been priceless.
She’d left him staring after her, a fact that Kristen didn’t need to look back to find out. Cybil was waiting to fill her in on the details.
“Oh my God, honey. You should see the look on Dylan’s face.” Grinning from ear to ear, Cybil shook her head at Kristen. “It’s priceless but don’t look. It’ll ruin the moment.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Kristen admitted as she settled down on the foot of Cybil’s lounger. “I’ve never been that…that honest before.”
“It’s liberating, isn’t it?” Cybil asked with a knowing look.
Over the past two days, the older woman had taken Kristen in under her care, helping her relax at her new job and settle in enough that Kristen considered Cybil a real friend. That was something else Kristen had never had before.
“Oh, my mother would be so ashamed,” Kristen whispered, wondering if that were true. After all, her mother never hesitated to stand up for what she thought was right. That, of course, led to an even more horrifying thought. “Unless, of course, I’m turning into her!”
That had Cybil laughing once again. “Oh, please. You are way too young to start worrying about that. Besides, Dylan Singer is a player, and it’s about time a woman told him no.”
That might be true, but Kristen still didn’t feel like a woman. She felt like a child. That was what came from keeping her clothes on. While she might have let Gwen force her into wearing a bikini, Kristen had sworn there was no way anybody would get to see her in it, but as the day warmed up and everybody else stripped down, including her friends, she began to feel a little like a sore thumb sticking out sitting there in an oversized T-shirt and shorts that went all the way to her knees.
That, of course, might have been a justification for the tempting little voice whispering through her head, leaving her wondering what it would be like to be so unclothed around so many people.
Chapter 6
Brandon smirked as he watched Kristen all but dismiss Dylan. The woman had some spunk in her. More than that she was the first woman to ever turn Dylan down, which explained the boner tenting his swimming trunks. That was bad news, but mostly for Dylan unless he actually figured out he needed to lighten up his approach.
Brandon had already figured that out, and he was plotting his move when Kristen surprised him. After exchanging a few quick comments with the older lady Brandon recognized as one of the clerk’s down at the city offices, Kristen stood up and finally reached for the hem of her shirt.
Silently placing a wager on a one-piece with a skirt, Brandon felt his breath catch as her shirt slid up to reveal a creamy, smooth stomach and unleash a set of breasts bigger than he’d imagined, barely contained by the two tiny cups strung together with a whole lot of string.
His Miss Kristen had been hiding a whole lot in those oversized outfits she’d been wearing. Hiding a whole lot, and Brandon’s mouth was beginning to water. There was no way a woman who looked that good should be saving herself for anybody but him. Something primitive and possessive stirred within him as he watched Kristen accept a bottle of lotion from her friend.
That was his woman…and Duncan was making a move.
Without paying any attention to the woman sitting beside him prattling out some boring story, Brandon just got up and started around the pool. He hadn’t even made it halfway through the throng growing bigger by the minute when Duncan lifted her right off her feet and sent her flying, screaming, into the pool.
She hit with a splash,
Ginger Garrett
Katie P. Moore
John Buchan
JoAnna Carl
Janel Gradowski
Hao Jingfang
Melissa Macfie
Marie Donovan
Scarlett Rhone
Robert Charles Wilson