Friction. Samantha Hunter

assistance when she finally popped the contraption open, the sudden jolt of energy propelling her backward toward him.

      He braced himself for impact, but she regained her balance at the last moment, though the halting action kicked sand up into his face, fortunately missing his eyes. He sputtered, wiping the grit from where it stuck to his damp skin. The beauty returned to her spot about ten feet away without so much as a second glance, sinking down into the chair, unaware she’d plastered him with sand.

      He watched her stretch out and start to read, and figured the show was over. Moments after he lay back down and started to reenter that fuzzy stage of napping he’d worked hard to attain, an odd mumbling sound disturbed his concentration.

      It was coming from the woman in the chair. He propped himself up on one elbow. Was she talking on a cell phone? Sitting up, curious just because, he got just close enough to hear….

      “…and he laid her back, gently, as if she was the most treasured thing he’d ever had in his possession, and stared into her eyes as his long, thick hardness throbbed inside her.

      “‘I want all of you, Rose, and I want you to take all of me….’”

      Whoa! What the heck? Then Logan realized she was reading aloud to herself, a racy novel, apparently. She wasn’t speaking loudly, but in a soft, throaty mumble that certainly made him want to hear more. He leaned in and listened a little more closely.

      “‘Please, Russell…I love you. I need you. I need…more!’”

      Russell? Russell and Rose? Logan quirked a grin. This was pretty good.

      “She tightened around him, waves of pleasure crashing through her though she tried to hold back, but Russell wouldn’t let her. He thrust himself into her, pushing red-hot pleasure through her like a sword that pierced her completely and took her breath away—”

      “Okay, now that just doesn’t sound like fun.”

      He didn’t realize the comment had actually come out of his mouth until the sexy mumbling ceased. The woman swung her incredible legs over the side of the chair, peering at him over the same stylish sunglasses she’d been wearing earlier that day when he’d met her by the door of the inn. He hadn’t recognized her from the rear view, nice as it had been.

      “Pardon me?” The sexy whisper she’d been reading in shifted to a cool interrogative, and he cleared his throat. There was something about when a woman peered over the top of her glasses that was so totally sexy and completely intimidating. Especially when paired with the high cheekbones and those amazingly shaped lips. She caught his gaze and held it. Not that he was intimidated, even though her tone remained cool and challenging.

      “You have an opinion you’d like to share?”

      He smiled in what he hoped was a friendly and charming manner. “I thought the whole sword piercing thing didn’t sound very…romantic. Or pleasurable. I wouldn’t want a woman to feel like that when I was, uh. You know.”

      A delicate eyebrow raised, and her head cocked sideways as she blinked at him.

      “When you were…what?” Her tone was innocent, but suddenly he felt like a mouse being batted around the kitchen floor by a cat. He leaned in a little more closely, softening his own tone, meeting the challenge.

      “When my thick, throbbing hardness is buried inside of her.”

      He’d give her credit; she didn’t even blink and didn’t back down. She looked back down at her book, studying it for a moment, then looked back at him.

      “Actually, it was his long, thick hardness throbbing inside of her.”

      “Sorry, you’ll have to speak up a little more next time, so I get it right.”

      “Maybe you should be minding your own business.”

      “Hey, you were reading out loud—Sarah, was it?”

      “Still is.”

      “Well, I was sleeping, but you kicked sand in my face when you stumbled back from that chair, and you’ve interrupted my nap—twice. I couldn’t help but listen in, you were reading aloud for everyone to hear, and since I couldn’t sleep…” His words were accusatory, but his tone wasn’t, and her smile twitched then widened as she shook her head, giving in.

      “Sorry. I didn’t realize you could hear me. When I pulled up you looked dead to the world. I would have sat farther away, but I really wanted to find a spot that was out of the way of the action.” She looked out at the busy beach, her beautiful blue eyes drifting over the children playing and a group of teens playing volleyball.

      “No problem. What are you reading?”

      “A book I found in the room.”

      “You like romances?”

      She shrugged. “Sometimes. I like romantic suspense more than this kind of thing. This is pretty boring, really.”

      “Even with all the sword-piercing pleasure and such?”

      She smiled again, looking at him fleetingly then turning her gaze toward the water of the Bay. He sensed that she wasn’t really seeing him or any of the beautiful scenery around her. She’d retreated, and he could feel the distance between them in her next words.

      “I’m sorry I disturbed you.” She started to swing her legs back over the chair, but he didn’t want to let her go just yet.

      “Why do you read out loud like that?”

      She looked back, obviously wishing she’d been able to succeed with her abrupt dismissal, but then stopped and shrugged.

      “I spend a lot of time in front of a computer. Sometimes the surroundings are noisy, so I read out loud while I work, it makes it easier to concentrate. I guess it just got to be a habit. I never really noticed.”

      “That makes sense.”

      She tipped her sunglasses back up on her face, fully covering her eyes. “Sorry again for bothering you.”

      “No problem.”

      When he lay back on his towel, all he could hear was the slosh of the waves and the voices of the volleyball players. He almost asked her to start reading again.

      SARAH HELD her book in front of her face, but she couldn’t concentrate on Rose and Russell’s antics anymore, not that she had been all that into it in the first place. The sex being described on the page had heated up considerably when the man behind her had decided to share his opinion on what a woman felt when a man was inside her.

      It was something Sarah tried not to think about too often. She knew a lot about sex, more than she wanted to. She was exposed to the seedier side of it as part of her job, and suffice it to say it was nothing like what Rose and Russell were experiencing.

      She snorted softly to herself. Nothing about sex was like what Rose and Russell were experiencing. Sex could be fun and relaxing at best, and as for the worst, well, she wouldn’t go there. She saw too much of it in her work. Her job allowed her to think she’d made a difference in the world, but along the way, she knew something inside her had been irrevocably lost.

      That sense of loss, combined with scars from her past, had left her sleeping alone for several years now. She’d gotten used to it and even preferred it; she knew how to take the edge off when she really needed to. Men were an unnecessary complication, and sometimes a dangerous one.

      So why, when the gorgeous man sleeping on the sand behind her had looked at her in just that particular, teasing way, and had offered her a smile that made her toes dig down in the sand, had she not shut him down as hard as she usually did? Why had she talked with him—even flirted a little—and felt a…tug? She wanted no part of tugs.

      Tugs led to pulls, and pulls led to grasping, which inevitably led to sliding, pushing, rubbing and thrusting—ahhhh!

      She