Resisting the Bad Boy - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 1 (Can't Resist #1)(14)

He saw her gaze travel down to his lips and it took everything he had not to kiss her right then and there.

“Are you volunteering, Connor? To be that something wild and fast for me to try?”

“No,” he replied raggedly, breathing in her scent. “I’m insisting. Requiring.” He dropped his forehead against hers. “Asking.”

Her eyelids dipped down, veiling her reaction from him.

And so he waited.

“I can’t do a whole month with you.”

He blinked in surprise. That, he hadn’t been expecting. No one had ever asked him for less time with him before. ‘Why not?” he demanded.

“It’s too long.”

Well, he did ask.

A touch indignant, he argued, “You said you don’t do one night stands. Now you’re saying a month is too long?” He knew he was getting overly worked up but he couldn’t help it, she was being irrational. His brain started firing on all pistons, every cell in his body taking a front seat like they did when he was about to do battle in the courtroom. “Or is it just one month with me that’s too long?”

She flinched.

He felt thoroughly insulted.

“It’s not how you’re making it. Being with you would be like…ice cream. The most decadent ice cream I could ever imagine. I’d be hooked after the first bite. And if I didn’t discipline myself, I’d overindulge.”

“Until it made you sick?” He wasn’t really good with metaphors.

A smiled peeked through. “No, until it was all I’d want to eat, all day, every day.”

What the hell was wrong with that?

Her smile broadened. “There’s everything wrong with that,” she continued, somehow reading his mind. “One month will take me right up to the third week of teaching for me, which is generally when my life starts getting busy. That means this month is my only time to really focus on getting a huge chunk of my dissertation written.”

“And if you overindulge on the ice cream…”

“I’d be in a sugar coma, incapable of doing or thinking of anything else.”

Call him a bastard but hearing that felt good. “Fine, I can respect that. How about this? What if I promise to leave you alone all day, every day throughout the week, and only send you into mini ice cream comas at night…as a build-up to one massive, no holds barred night to overindulge until we’re both too weak to move? Would that work for you?”

Hot, slick desire exploded in her expression.

His fingers flexed against her hips in response.

“Stand down, counselor. You made your point.”

If she agreed to this arrangement, he fully intended to have her bring this legal speak into the bedroom—coming from Abby’s lips it was the equivalent of dirty talk.

“How about we reach a compromise?” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Two weeks.”

Two weeks? She was negotiating? He didn’t like it. Not one bit. “Half? You’re only willing to give me half?” Geez, he was doing a remarkable impression of a screech-fest he’d heard in the firm’s conference room the other day.

“What’s the big deal?” Now she looked genuinely mystified. “The one month is your maximum time period, isn’t it? What’s wrong with two weeks?”

Technically, nothing. In reality, everything. Though he wasn’t quite sure why. As he mulled it over, he supposed he could temporarily agree to two weeks and then appeal for an extension…

Why the hell was he strategizing this like it was a court case?

“Will there be a possibility for extension?”

She frowned. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of these relationship parameters of yours?”

It would, yes. “I’ll make an exception…unless you tell me you have a history of flipping out on the guys you date.”

She winged an eyebrow up. “What if I did?”

Hell, he’d probably date her anyway. What was it about her? “I’ll worry about it if it happens.” He smiled when she did. And then renegotiated—an occupational necessity. “How about we do a month, and lessen it to two weeks if you feel you really want to?”

He could tell she was trying not to grin. “Even if I wanted to agree to that, I couldn’t. I’m heading out of town the day after tomorrow for two weeks.”

Something unsettling pricked his heart. Unease? No, it stung deeper than that. Burned, actually. Whatever it was, he wanted to be rid of it. “You’re going on a trip? I thought you said you were busy.”

“It’s not a trip so much as me going home to stay with my parents for two weeks. My—for lack of a better term—landlords are enclosing the huge patio off this living room to make one extra bedroom. They’re slowly making this guest house bigger since I’ll only be living here until next May, and their son is moving in after I’m gone with his small family.”

“So they’re kicking you out for two weeks? They should be providing you with an alternative place to live. It’s standard for a landlord—”

She shot her hand in the air. “Whoa. Don’t turn into Mr. Bigshot Lawyer. I offered to go home to California. Plus, they went out of their way to get a crew that could do the work really quick, specifically in these two weeks to fit my schedule. They even had the builders work out a plan where they all the interior reno work would be completed in the two-week span, and the rest would come afterward, so as not to disrupt my life too much. They really are being great about this. And since all I’m doing is writing for the next few weeks, I can do that in Santa Clara in my old room.”