In Name Only. Kat Cantrell

wanted to. Always.

      Dinner hadn’t changed that.

      “The thing is, Jonas,” she said. “I’ve had some thoughts, too. And if yours are the same as mine, I’m trying to figure out why they’re inappropriate.”

      She flattened her hands on his lapels. The pressure sang through him and it would feel even better if he didn’t have a whole suit jacket and two shirts between her palms and his skin.

      The direction of this conversation floored him. And if she kept it up, the floor was exactly where they were going to end up.

      “What are you saying, Viv?” he asked hoarsely, scrambling to understand. “That you lie awake at night and think about that kiss, aching to do it again?”

      She nodded and something so powerful swept through his body that he could hardly breathe. This was the opposite of what should be happening. She should be backing off and citing her inability to focus on a man and her career at the same time. She was too busy, too involved in her business to date. This was the absolute he’d banked on for long agonizing hours, the thing that was keeping him from indulging in the forbidden draw between them.

      Because if he gave in, he’d have no control over what happened next. That certainty had already been proven with what little they’d experimented so far. More would be catastrophic.

      And so, so fantastically amazing.

      “After tonight, I’m convinced we’re missing an opportunity here,” she said, her voice dripping with something sensual that he’d never have expected from his sunny friend Viviana Dawson. Kim.

      Viv wasn’t his friend. She was his wife. He’d been ignoring that fact for an entire day, but it roared back to the forefront with an implication he couldn’t ignore. Except he didn’t know what it meant to him, not really. Not just a means to an end, though it was an inescapable fact that she’d married him as a favor.

      And he wanted to exploit that favor to get her naked and under him? It was improper, ridiculous. So very illicit that his body tightened with thick anticipation.

      “What opportunity is that?” he murmured, letting his gaze flick over her face, searching for some sign that the answer about to come out of her mouth was not a green light to get naked.

      Because he’d have a very difficult time saying no. In fact, he couldn’t quite remember why he should say no. He shouldn’t say no. If nothing else, taking this next step meant he wasn’t lying to anyone about their marriage.

      Her limpid brown eyes locked on to his. “We’re both too busy to date. And even if we weren’t, I have a feeling that ‘oh, by the way, I’m married’ isn’t a great pickup line. You said it yourself. We spark. If our friendship can take a kiss, maybe it can take more. We should find out.”

      More. He liked the word more a lot. Especially if her dictionary defined it as lots and lots of sex while maintaining their friendship. If things got too intense, he could back off with no harm, no foul. It was like the absolute best of all worlds.

      Unless that wasn’t what she meant.

      Clarification would be in order, just to be sure they were speaking the same language. “More?”

      “Come on, Jonas.” She laughed a little breathlessly and it trilled through him. “Are you going to make me spell it out?”

      “Yes, I absolutely am,” he growled, because the whole concept of Viv talking dirty to him was doing things to his insides that he was enjoying the hell out of. If he’d known dinner was this kind of date, he’d have skipped dessert. “I want to be crystal clear about what’s on the table here.”

      Instead of suggesting things Jonas could do to her—all of which he’d immediately commit to memory so he didn’t miss a single one—she watched him as she hooked the neckline of her dress and pulled it to the side. A flash of yellow seared his vision as his entire body tensed in recognition.

      “I’m wearing my sister’s gift,” she murmured, and that admission was as much of a turn-on as any dirty talk. Maybe more so because he’d been fantasizing about that scrap of yellow lace for a million years.

      “I bet it looks amazing on you.”

      “Only one way to find out,” she shot back and curled her fingers around his lapels to yank him forward.

      He met her mouth in a searing kiss without hesitation. All of his reservations melted in an instant as he sank into her, shaping her lips with his as he consumed her heat, letting it spread deep inside.

      Why had he resisted this? Viv didn’t want anything from him, didn’t expect an emotional outpouring or even anything permanent. This was all going to end at some point and thus didn’t count. No chance for romantic nonsense. No declarations of love would ever be forthcoming—on either side. Jonas’s sense of honor would be intact, as would his sworn vow to Warren and Hendrix.

      Instead of two friends pretending to be a married couple having sex, they were going to be married friends who were having sex. Living the truth appealed to him enormously. Desire swept through him as he got great handfuls of Viv’s skin under his palms and everything but his wife drained from his mind.

      * * *

      Viv would have sworn on a truckload of Bibles that the kiss outside her bedroom last week had been the hottest one she’d ever participate in.

      She’d have been wrong.

      That kiss had been startling in its perfection. Unexpected in its heat. It had gotten her motor humming pretty fast. She’d been angling for another one just like that. Thank God she hadn’t gotten her wish.

      This kiss exploded in her core like a cannon. Desire crackled through the air as Jonas backed her up against the wall, crowding her against it with his hard body, demanding that her every curve conform to him. Her flesh rapidly obeyed. She nearly wept with the glory of Jonas pressed against her exactly as she’d fantasized hundreds of times.

      He angled her jaw with his strong fingers until he got her situated the way he apparently wanted and then plunged in with the wickedest of caresses. His tongue slicked across hers so sensuously that she moaned against it, would have sagged if he hadn’t had her pinned to the wall.

      His hands nipped at her waist, skimmed upward and hooked both sides of the neckline. The fabric tore at the seams as he separated it from her shoulders, and she gasped.

      “I need to see you,” he murmured fiercely. “I’ll buy you two to make up for this one.”

      And with that, the dress came apart in his hands. He peeled it from between them, following the line of the reveal with his hot mouth, laving at her exposed flesh until he caught the silk strap of the yellow teddy in his teeth, scraping the sensitive hollow of her shoulder.

      The sensation shot through her center with tight, heated pulls. Oh, my. His fingers tangled in the strap, binding his palm to her shoulder as he explored the skin beneath the yellow lace with his tongue, dipping and diving into the holes of the pattern. Then his lips closed around her nipple through the fabric and her whole body jerked. Hot, wet heat dampened the scrap between her legs. The awareness that Jonas had drenched her panties so quickly only excited her more.

      What had happened to the kind, generous man she’d been so intent on seducing? He’d become a hungry, untamed creature who wanted to devour her. She loved every second. His tongue flicked out to tease her nipple, wetting the lace, and it was wickedly effective. Moans poured from her throat as her head thunked back against the wall.

      All at once, he sank to his knees and trailed his lips across the gap between the top and the bottom of her sexy lingerie set, murmuring her full name. Viviana. The sound of it rang in her ears as he worshipped her stomach with his mouth, and it was poetry.

      Her thighs pressed together, seeking relief from the ache his touch had created, and she arched into his lips, his hands, crying out as his fingers worked under the hem of her soaked panties. The gorgeous