Best Friend Bride

by Kat Cantrell

  Holy crap. Jonas’s eyes burned the longer he stared at the thin straps and drapes of lace. Was that the top? Viv’s breasts were supposed to be covered by that? Something that skimpy should be illegal. And red. But the lace was lemon yellow, the color of the frosting Viv slathered all over the cupcakes she always brought him when they had lunch. His mouth watered at the thought of tasting Viv through all that lace. It would be easy. The pattern would show 90 percent of her skin.

  The little panties lay innocuously to the side as if an afterthought. Probably because there wasn’t enough lace making up the bottom half of the outfit to rightfully call them panties. He could picture them perfectly on his wife’s body and he could envision slowly stripping them off even more vividly.

  Wait. What was Viv doing with such smoking-hot lingerie?

  Was she planning to wear it for him? His brain had no ability to make sense of this revelation. She’d brought lingerie. To wear. Of course the only man in the vicinity was Jonas. Who else would she be wearing it for?

  That was totally against the rules.

  And totally against what he was capable of giving her in this marriage. She might as well drape herself in hearts and flowers. Viv clearly thought love was a recipe for marriage. Stir well and live happily ever after. He wasn’t the right ingredient for that mix.

  The sound of running water being shut off rattled through the walls. Viv had just emerged from the shower. He should get the hell out of that bedroom right now. But before he could stand, she walked out of the bathroom holding a towel loosely around her body. Her naked body. She was still wet. His gaze traced the line of one drop as it slid down her shoulder and disappeared behind the towel.

  “Oh. I didn’t know you’d come back,” she announced unnecessarily as he was reasonably certain she wouldn’t have waltzed into the room mostly naked if she’d known he was sitting on the bed.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and meant to avert his eyes but the towel had slipped a little, which she’d done nothing to correct.

  Maybe she wanted him to catch a glimpse of her perfect breasts. Not that he knew for sure that they were perfect. But the little half-moon slices peeking above the towel flashed at him more brightly than a neon sign, and his whole body went up in flames.

  Anything that powerful at only a quarter strength had to be perfect in its entirety.

  “Did you want to take a turn in the bathroom?” she asked casually. Still standing there. Wet. In a towel. Naked.

  “Uh, sure.” He didn’t stand. He should cross the room and barricade himself in the bathroom, where it wouldn’t matter if she’d used all the hot water because the shower needed to be glacial.

  “Okay. Can you give me two minutes? I need to dry my hair.” And then she laughed with a little peal that punched him the gut. “Normally I would wrap it up in the towel but there are only two and I didn’t want to hog them all.”

  Then she pulled on the edge of the towel, loosening it from the column it formed around her body and lifted the tail end to the ends of her dripping hair. A long slice of skin peeked through the opening she’d unwittingly created and the answering flash of heat that exploded in his groin would have put him on his knees if he’d been standing. Good thing he hadn’t moved.

  “You should get dressed,” he suggested, but she didn’t hear him because his voice wasn’t working. Besides, dressed could have a lot of different meanings, and the frothy yellow concoction in her suitcase appeared to be the next outfit of choice. If she hadn’t been planning to slip it on, it wouldn’t be on top, laid out so carefully.

  Oh, man. Would she have been wearing it when he got into bed later? No warning, just bam!

  He should pretend he hadn’t seen the yellow concoction. How else could he find out if that had been her plan? That had to be her plan. Please, God, let it be her plan.

  He was so hard, it was a wonder his erection hadn’t busted out of his zipper.

  Clearing his throat, he tested out speaking again. “I can come back.”

  That, she heard. “Oh, you don’t have to. Really, I’ve taken way too long already. We’re sharing and I’m not used to that. The shower was lovely and I couldn’t help standing there under the spray, just letting my mind drift.”

  Great. Now his mind was drifting—into the shower with her as she stood there. Naked. Letting the water sluice down her body, eyes closed with a small, rapturous smile gracing her face.

  He groaned. What was he doing to himself?

  “Are you okay?” Her attention honed in on him and she apparently forgot she wasn’t wearing anything but a damp towel because she immediately crossed the room to loom over him, her expression laced with concern.

  It would take less than a second to reach out and snag her by the waist, pulling her down into his lap. That towel would fall, revealing her perfect breasts, and they’d be right there, ripe and available to taste. No yellow concoction needed. But that would be criminal. She should get to wear her newlywed lingerie if she wanted.

  “Oh.” Viv blushed all at once, the pink stain spreading across her cheeks, and Jonas could not tear his eyes off her face. But she was staring at the open suitcase. “You didn’t see that ridiculous thing Grace gave me, did you?”

  She picked up the yellow lacy top and held it up to her body, draping it over the towel one-handed, which had the immediate consequence of smooshing her breasts higher. “Can you imagine me wearing this?”

  With absolute, brilliant clarity.

  “I don’t know what she was thinking,” Viv continued as if his entire body wasn’t poised to explode. “‘Open this with Jonas,’ she says with a sly wink. I thought it was going to be a joke, like a gravy boat, and besides, this isn’t a real marriage, so I didn’t think you’d actually want to help open gifts. Sorry I didn’t wait for you.”

  She rolled her eyes with another laugh that did not help things down below.

  “That’s okay. Next time.” What was he saying? Sure, I’ll help open future gifts full of shockingly transparent clothing that would make a porn star blush? “Your sister meant well. She doesn’t know we’re not sleeping together.”

  Or rather they weren’t yet. In a scant few minutes, they’d be in the bed. Together. Maybe some sleeping would occur but it wasn’t looking too likely unless he got his body cooled down to something well below its current thermonuclear state.

  “Well, true. But obviously she expects us to be hot and heavy, right? I mean, this is the kind of stuff a woman wears for a man who can’t keep his hands off her.” Suddenly, she swept him with a glance that held a glittery sort of challenge. “We should probably practice that, don’t you think?”

  “What?” he squawked. “You want me to practice not being able to keep my hands off you?”

  Actually, he needed to practice self-control, not the other way around. Restraint was the name of the game. Perfect. He could focus on that instead of the fact that the lingerie had been a gift, not a carefully crafted plan to drive him over the brink.

  It was a testament to how messed up he was that he couldn’t squelch his disappointment.

  She nodded. “My sister just got married not too long ago and she’s pretty open with me about how hot the sex is. I think she envisions all newlyweds being like that.”

  “That doesn’t mean she expects us to strip down in your parents’ foyer,” he countered a little too forcefully. Mostly because he was envisioning how hot this newlywed couple could be. They could give Grace and her husband a run for her money, all right.

  No. No, they could not.

  Viv was not wearing the yellow lacy gateway to heaven for him tonight or any night. She wasn’t challenging him to out-sex her sister’s marriage. There was no sex at all in their future because Viv had a career she cared about and really didn’t have time for a man’s inconvenient attraction. Even if the man was her
husband. Especially if the man was her husband who had promised to keep things platonic.

  Of course he’d done that largely for himself. He’d never experienced such a strong physical pull before and he wasn’t giving in to it no matter how badly he wanted to. There was a slippery edge between keeping himself out of trouble so he could honor his promise to his late friend and maintaining his integrity with Viv and his family about the nature of his marriage.

  On that note, he needed to change the subject really fast. And get his rampant need under control before he lost everything.

  * * *

  Viv couldn’t quite catch her breath. Her lungs ached to expand but the towel was in a precarious spot. If she breathed any deeper, it would slip completely from her nerveless fingers.

  Though based on how long it was taking Jonas to clue in that this was a seduction scene, maybe throwing her boobs in his face would get the point across.

  God, she sucked at this. Obviously. The girls on TV made it look so simple. She’d bet a million dollars that if this scene had happened on Scandal, the seductress would already be in the middle of her third orgasm.

  Maybe she should have opened the wedding gift with Jonas instead of laying it out so he could find it. For some reason, she’d thought it would give him ideas. That he’d maybe take the lead and they could get something going while they had the perfect setup to indulge in the sparks that only burned hotter the longer they didn’t consummate their marriage.

  How was she supposed to prove she could be the opposite of clingy with a man she wanted more than oxygen if he wouldn’t take her up on the invitation she’d been dangling in his face?

  “Instead of practicing anything physical,” Jonas said, “we should get our stories straight. We’re not going to be hanging out with your family anytime soon but mine is just on the other side of the door. I don’t want any missteps like the one at dinner where we didn’t plan our responses ahead of time and somehow ended up promising to go to Korea.”

  “I don’t mind going to Korea, Jonas. I would love to see it.”

  He shook his head with bemusement. “It’s a sixteen-hour trip and that’s only if there’s a not a horribly long line in customs, which even a Kim cannot cut through. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor by not taking you.”

  How had they shifted from talking about hot sex to visiting his grandfather? That was not how this was supposed to go.

  “Well, we have plenty of time to talk about our stories, too,” she said brightly. “And the good news is that my hair is almost dry so the bathroom is yours. I like to read before going to sleep so I’ll just be here whenever you’re ready.”

  “Oh. Um...” Jonas glanced at the bed and back at her. “Okay. I was thinking about sleeping on the couch and setting an alarm—”

  “You can’t do that,” she cut him off in a rush. That would ruin everything. “What if someone gets up for a midnight snack? Also, the couch would be so uncomfortable. Sleep here. I insist.”

  She shooed him toward the bathroom and the moment he shut the door, she dragged air into her lungs in deep gulps as she dropped the towel and twisted her hair into a modified updo at her crown, spilling tendrils down her cheeks. Then she slithered into the shameless yellow teddy and panties set that she’d picked out with Grace yesterday. Strictly so she could rub it in that she had a hot husband to wear it for, of course. And then she’d had Grace gift wrap it. The sly wink had been all her sister’s idea, so she really hadn’t fibbed much when she’d related the story to Jonas.

  The lace chafed at her bare nipples, sending ripples of heat through her core. The panties rode high and tight, the strings threading between her cheeks. Not a place she was used to having pressure and friction, but it was oddly exciting.

  No wonder women wore this stuff. She felt sexy and more than a little turned on just by virtue of getting dressed. Who knew?

  The sound of running water drifted through the walls as Jonas went through his nightly routine. She dove into bed and pulled up the covers until they were tight around her shoulders. Wait. That wasn’t going to work. Experimentally, she draped the sheet across her chest like a toga, and threw her shoulders back. Huh. The one breast looked spectacular in the low-cut lace teddy, but the other one was covered up, which didn’t seem like the point. Inching the sheet down, she settled into place against the pillow until she was happy with how she looked.

  That was a lot of skin on display. Much more than she was used to. The lace left little to the imagination.

  Surely this would be enough to entice Jonas into making the most of this opportunity to share a bedroom.

  Light. She leaped up and slammed down the switch, leaving only the bedside lamp illuminated and leaped back under the covers. The doorknob to the bathroom rattled and she lost her nerve, yanking the sheet back up to cover the yellow lace until X-ray vision would be the only way Jonas could tell what she was wearing. He strode into the room.

  Oh, God. Was a more delicious man ever created in the history of time? He’d untucked his button-down and the tail hung casually below his waist. Plenty of access for a woman to slide her hands underneath. There was a gaping hole where his tie had been. A V framed a slice of his chest and he’d rolled his sleeves up to midforearm. It was the most undressed she’d ever seen him and her pulse quickened the closer he came.

  This gorgeous creature was about to strip all that off and get into bed. With her. This was such a bad idea. Alluring and aloof was not in her wheelhouse and at that moment, she wanted Jonas with a full body ache that felt completely foreign and completely right at the same time.

  “I thought you were going to be reading,” he said, and stopped in the middle of the room as if he’d hit an invisible wall.

  So close. And yet so far.

  She shook her head, scrambling for a plausible excuse when she’d just said that was what she planned to do. Couldn’t hold an e-reader and pretend you weren’t wearing sexy lingerie that screamed put your hands on me at the same time.

  In retrospect, that might have been a nice scene. She could have been reading with the tablet propped up on her stomach, which would have left her torso completely bare without making it look like she’d set up the scene that way. Dang it. Too late now.

  “I couldn’t find anything that held my attention.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  And then the entire world fell away along with most of her senses as Jonas started unbuttoning his shirt. It was a slow, torturous event as he slipped the buttons free and each one revealed more of his beautiful body.

  Thank God she hadn’t stuck a book in front of her face. Otherwise she’d have missed the Jonas Striptease.

  She glanced up to see his dark eyes on hers. Their gazes connected and she had the distinct impression he hadn’t expected her to be watching him undress. But he didn’t seem terribly unhappy about the audience, since he kept going. She didn’t look away either.

  He let the shirt fall, revealing first one shoulder, then the other. It shouldn’t have been such a shock to see the indentations of muscles in his biceps as his arms worked off the shirt. She knew he hit the gym on a regular basis. They’d been friends for a year and talked about all manner of subjects. Sometimes he told her about his workout routine or mentioned that he’d switched it up and his arms were sore. Little had she realized what a visual panorama had been in store for her as a result.

  “I feel like I should be wearing something sparkly underneath my pants,” Jonas said with wry amusement. “Would it be possible for you to not watch me?”

  “Oh. Um...sure.” Cheeks on fire, she flipped over and faced the wall, careful to keep the sheet up around her neck. With the motion, it stretched tight. More mummy than Marilyn Monroe, but this was her first seduction. Surely even a woman like Marilyn had a few practice runs before she got it right. This one was Viv’s.

&nbs
p; And she needed a lot of practice, clearly, since she’d been caught staring and made Jonas uncomfortable at the same time. The whisper of fabric hitting the carpet made her doubly sorry she hadn’t been facedown in a book when he came out of the bathroom because she could easily have pretended to be reading while watching the slow reveal out of the corner of her eye.

  The bed creaked and the mattress shifted with Jonas’s weight. “Still think this is a good idea?”

  “I never said it was a good idea,” she shot back over her shoulder. “I said our friendship could take it.”

  Which wasn’t a given now that he was so close and so male and so much the subject of her fantasies that started and ended in a bed very much like this one. And she’d been forced to miss half of it due to Jonas’s inconvenient sense of propriety. Well, he was done undressing now, right? This was her seduction and she wanted to face him. Except just as she rolled, he snapped off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

  “Good night,” Jonas said, his voice sinfully rich in the dark.

  The covers pulled a little as he turned over and settled into position. To go to sleep.

  As mood killers went, that was a big one. She’d totally botched this.

  Okay. Not totally. This was just a minor setback, most likely because she was trying to play hard to get, which was not as easy as it sounded, and frankly, not her typical method of operation. Plus? This was not a typical relationship. Jonas needed to keep her around, so by default this wasn’t going to go like it had with her ex-boyfriends.

  She had to approach this like a new recipe that hadn’t quite turned out because she’d gone against her instincts and added an ingredient that she didn’t like. And if she didn’t like it, what was the point?

  This was her cupcake to bake. Being the opposite of clingy and needy had only gotten her a disinterested husband—and rightfully so. How was he even supposed to know she wished he’d roll back over and explore the lingerie-clad body she’d hidden under the covers like a blushing virgin bride? Viv wasn’t the kind of woman to inspire a man to slavish passion or it would have happened already.