The Ashtons - Cole, Abigail & Megan

sex?
    And just looking at her told him the sex would be incredible.
    His body went hard and tight and he had to fight for control. Something that hadn’t happened to him since he was a kid. Simon Pearce wasn’t a man to be led around by his hormones for God’s sake.
    When he finally spoke, his voice was harder than he’d planned—but hell, it was her own fault. Why’d she have to look so damn good?
    “I’ve got a cook, Megan. I didn’t marry you for your culinary talents.”
    The smile faded from her face and she took another drink of beer before setting the bottle down on the blue-tile counter. Picking up a wooden spoon, she stirred the egg mixture until the vegetables were evenly distributed, then turned the fire down and faced him.
    “If you’ve got a cook, why am I doing this?”
    He scowled and took another drink of beer, hoping the cold, frothy liquid would wash away the knot in his throat. “Because I gave her and the housekeeper two weeks off. I was supposed to be in Fiji, remember?”
    “Oh. Right.” She glanced at the pan on the stove and, apparently satisfied, left it and walked toward him. “So for the next two weeks, it’s just you and I in this house?”
    “Yep.”
    “Alone.”
    “Yep.”
    She sighed. “Well, I hope you know how to call out for pizza.”
    Simon smiled. “I think I can handle that.”
    Megan nodded. “Then we should survive.”
    Megan lay in the dark and watched moonlight play on the ceiling.
    Weird.
    She tugged the hem of her short silk nightgown down over her thighs, turned her head on the pillow and stared into the shadows, trying to make out Simon’s profile in the gloom. But since he was clear on the other side of a bed the size of the European continent, it wasn’t easy.
    She wondered if he was still awake.
    Wondered if he was wearing pajamas or—gulp—sleeping nude?
    She wondered why she was wondering.
    She wondered if you could go crazy just from thinking too much.
    “You’re awake, aren’t you?”
    His deep voice shattered the quiet and startledMegan enough that she gasped in a breath. “Sorry. You scared me.”
    “How?” he asked, and she heard the amusement in his voice. “You knew I was here.”
    “Yeah, but the bed’s so big, it sounded like your voice was coming from the next county.”
    “I like plenty of room,” he said.
    She kept her gaze fixed on the moonlit ceiling and told herself she really shouldn’t think about why he liked all that room. Had he had teams of cheerleaders in here? All at once?
    As if he could hear her thoughts, he said wryly, “I move around a lot in my sleep.”
    “Uh-huh.” She wasn’t convinced.
    The silk sheets rustled and she felt a tug, so she clamped her arms at her sides to hold the slippery sheets in place.
    “Worried?” he asked.
    There was that amusement again, Megan thought and scowled to herself.
    “Should I be?” she countered, shifting her gaze from the ceiling to the bank of windows and the starfilled sky beyond. “I mean, you did promise to give me a week.”
    “I did.”
    “Is your word any good?”
    “It is,” he insisted, despite the fact that the silk sheets moved and pulled again.
    He was coming closer.
    She knew it.
    Even though, with a bed this size, it might take him all night to edge his way over to her side, Megan sucked in a deep gulp of air and held it.
    “So you’re not sneaking over here in the dark, then?”
    “Sneaking?” he repeated, and didn’t his voice sound a lot closer now? “No. Moving, yes.”
    “Well, cut it out.” She inched a little bit more toward the edge of the bed. Much farther though and her whole right side would be hanging off the mattress, and wouldn’t that make a pretty picture?
    “Nervous?”
    Oh yeah. He was definitely closer.
    She could smell his cologne again.
    And his musky scent that was somehow comforting and mysterious all at once was doing something very strange to her insides. Because it’s dark, she told herself. Everything is different at night. Sights. Smells. Instincts.
    She knew this because her instincts were, at the moment, screaming at her to turn toward him, not away. She’d been getting those little spirally feelings about him ever since dinner. Sitting across from each other at a granite counter and sharing beer and omelet had somehow been…cozy. And every time he smiled, she felt the same punch of something dizzying sweep through her.
    And now that they were alone. In a bed the size of an ocean. Well, instincts