Give Me More--A Sexy Billionaire Romance by A.C. Arthur (detective books to read txt) 📕

so Grace was on his team. He’d convinced himself that it did make sense for Grace to participate in Riley’s itinerary, as had been pointed out the other night at dinner. As a result, he’d seen her every day for the past few days. Often that was due to their story status updates, but on other occasions Riley and his mother had invited her to join in whatever they were doing. And he was okay with all of that. He could be around her and not want what they used to have. Or at least he was trying his best not to.

She wore a coral one-piece bathing suit today, as evidenced by her low-riding denim shorts. Her sandals had been dropped into that mammoth bag she always carried, and she was now barefoot as she unhooked the stack of buckets they’d been given.

“Let’s get started,” she said. “What type of design do you want to make?”

He frowned. “It’s a sandcastle. We’re making it look like a sandcastle.”

She glared at him then with her lips turned up. “Are you serious? That’s not gonna work. We have to have a game plan. Are we going for a real royal castle, or something brooding and creepy?”

Each team was spaced about ten feet apart down the beach and the others were already packing sand and getting started with their structure. “We’re doing whatever’s going to win,” he replied. He wasn’t prepared when she scooped up a handful of sand and threw it at him.

Stunned for a few seconds, he contemplated what his next move should be. Yet his teammate had just done the unspeakable so really there was only one option. He tossed a handful of sand back. She frowned and then brushed the sand off the front of her. Bits of it had fallen between the lovely cleavage she was sporting today.

“Need me to help you get that?” he asked with a sexy grin.

The way her eyes cut over at him after that question was a cross between hilarious and deadly, so he held his hands up in defeat just in case.

“What I need is for you to get out of my way. I can do this,” she said after brushing away the rest of the sand and picking up a bucket.

“Wait, we’re a team. We’re both supposed to be doing this.”

“Then you need to get yourself together and stop fooling around,” she said sternly.

He nodded. “Okay, well, for the record, you started it.”

She cut another raised-brow look at him and turned over the bucket she’d just filled with sand. He’d better get started doing the same—so he did. In no time they had a semblance of a castle under way. When Grace leaned over to use a tool that looked like a spatula to carve into one of the mounds they’d created, he couldn’t help but follow her movements.

Her shorts weren’t just low riding, they were also very short. After seeing her these past few days, he wondered if she had any shorts that came below her upper thigh. Probably not, and for that he should definitely thank every deity there was. But the way she was leaning over today he could see a bit more of her cheeks than he suspected anybody else could. More like, he hoped nobody else could. The thought of another man looking at her and thinking the things he was thinking right now didn’t sit well with him.

“Taking another break?” she asked without moving from her spot.

“Nah, just enjoying the view.” It was the truth.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I think the correct word is horny.”

With that Grace turned to look over her shoulder at him. He winked at her and grinned. They hadn’t been physical since the night of the pool party. Considering how awkwardly that had ended, they seemed to have made a conscious effort not to touch each other since then. Not that he didn’t want Grace—he did, there was no doubt about that. He just wasn’t sure what sleeping with her now would mean once this island trip was over.

“I’m really confused,” she said, and continued her work on what he now saw was going to be a fin. “You want to win this competition. You want to win every competition, actually, yet you haven’t been working very hard over here.”

He reluctantly grabbed another bucket. “Something’s distracting me,” he told her as he stuffed more sand into it. He really didn’t like this activity and planned to share those thoughts with Riley when it was done. She wouldn’t care—she’d just laugh at him as she’d been doing a lot these days.

He knew his sister had spoken to Grace but when he asked Grace about their conversation, she’d only told him about the parts that were related to the feud or his family. Nothing about their breakup, even though RJ was certain that would’ve been one of the first questions Riley asked. His sister had been really upset when he’d announced that Grace was gone. So much so that he’d been tempted to reach out to Grace just for the purpose of telling her she needed to talk to Riley, but he hadn’t. And in time, just like him, Riley had moved on without Grace. Now his sister looked almost elated anytime she saw the two of them together.

“Are you calling me a distraction?” she asked without even looking at him.

The way she was able to control her feelings, whether it was desire to have sex or tension about their past, was unnerving to him. He was certain she was feeling the pain of withdrawal the same way he was. Last night when he’d been sitting on the balcony in her room, he’d caught her staring at his crotch. His dick had never gotten so hard so fast, but as soon as it did, she looked away.

“No, I’m calling this weird sexual truce we seem to have initiated a distraction.”

She paused then and pushed up from the sand to sit back on her legs. “What are you