“Ready to go back in?” he asked her.
She shook her head again and kept her eyes closed tight. “No.”
“What if, as part of my apology, I order pizza and you and the kids can join me for dinner?”
He glimpsed green through her lovely, long lashes as she opened her eyes and studied him. “You’re lucky that I’m avoiding complications for the foreseeable future, because you’re very tempting right now,” she told him in a husky whisper.
“Temptation is bad,” Beckett said, stepping in until his shoes brushed her bare toes.
“This would be such a bad idea,” Gianna said, bringing her hands to his chest. But instead of pushing him away, her fingers gripped the lapels of his jacket. “I have kids.”
“I’m your landlord.” He lowered his face to hers stopping just a millimeter above her fully, rosy lips.
“Our parents are —”
He cut off her reply by bringing his lips to hers. Softly, sweetly, he felt her mouth come to life under his. Experimenting, tasting, teasing.
Beckett brought his fingertips to her neck, cupping her face he tilted her head back. She opened her mouth for him on a sigh and he took advantage of the invitation. His tongue swept in to taste her and the second it touched hers, the playfulness disintegrated.
He was hungry for her. Starving. Beckett didn’t realize he was shoving her back against the plywood wall, didn’t know that the hands that gripped her slim, strong arms were bruising.
Those sexy little whimpers Gianna was making had him fully hard in the space of a heartbeat. She tasted exotic, dangerous. Addicting. He flexed his hips into her, and groaned as she instinctively pressed back against him.
Beckett felt a growl rumble low in his throat and pulled back. He had to hold Gianna against the wall to keep her from following his mouth. Her hands were fisted in his jacket. Her lips were swollen from the aggressive assault on her mouth. And those eyes with all the depths of the oceans were glassy and dazed. Even more tendrils had escaped the hair band to hang down, tempting him.
He was honest enough to admit that he wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting any woman.
“What was that?” she whispered, trying to catch her breath.
“That was a mistake,” he said, dropping his forehead to hers. A shed. He’d kissed her in a shed. Where had his moves gone? He was king of the seduction. But with Gianna he was dissolved into a man with a hard-on in a garden shed.
A man with a hard-on in a garden shed kissing a woman he had no intention of seducing, he reminded himself.
“We can’t do this,” Gianna said, shaking her head to clear it.
“No. We can’t.”
He would have stepped back, would have released her from his grip, but she brought her mouth to his. Again, twin passions ignited and flared. His hands traveled from her shoulders to her hips. Cruising over those dangerous curves, they moved higher, skimming her ribs to rest under her soft breasts.
He was losing himself in the heat. “Baby,” he whispered against her busy lips. “We have to stop.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured, stealing his breath without backing off.
“Gianna.” Beckett brought his hands to her face and gently forced her back.
“I’m sorry. What were we talking about again?” she asked breathlessly.
Beckett yanked her against him for a hug, crushing her to him. “We were talking about how we aren’t going to do this.”
“Right. I forgot,” she said, snuggling into his chest. “I have kids that I need to think about. I’ve made too many mistakes already and they’re depending on me to make this work.”
“Too many complications for both of us,” Beckett agreed, dropping a soft kiss on the top of her head. Her hair smelled like eucalyptus and lavender. “I’m not looking for anything serious.”
“And two kids means serious. They’d get attached.”
“The town would be booking wedding space if we started dating. Blue Moon would take it harder than the kids if we didn’t work out,” Beckett sighed.
“And it wouldn’t work out. I’d do something stupid or —”
“I would say something stupid and then we’d end up seeing each other all the time and it would be horribly awkward and —”
“I’d have to break my lease with you so I wouldn’t have to watch you mow the lawn shirtless, because that’s what you do in my fantasies. Plus, you don’t like my father and that’s a deal breaker.”
“I may have slightly misjudged your father, but that doesn’t mean I like him dating my mother.”
“That makes us practically brother and sister,” Gianna said. “That’s gross.”
“Really gross,” Beckett agreed.
She sighed and tilted her head back to look at him. “This doesn’t mean I’m not insanely attracted to you,” Gianna clarified.
“Right back at you, Red. If those two kids weren’t next door, you’d already be naked.”