Seven Day Seduction by Emma Shortt

up!
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “Louise, I am perfectly serious,” Jude said.
“God, do you have any idea what you do to me? Any idea what I’m
thinking when I look at you? You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever
met, and you don’t even know it do you? You don’t realize how badly
I want to peel your clothes off and have you panting underneath
me.”
    “Stop…”
    “I wouldn’t stop, Louise,” Jude promised.
“Not for many, many hours. Jesus, the things I am going to do to
you.”
    Her heart pounded, adrenaline flooded her
system, and Louise dropped her spoon. It hit the table with a thud,
the noise seemingly louder than it should have been.
    “I think it’s time I went home
    ***
     
    “I’ll follow you back,” Jude said, flagging
the server over. “Make sure you get home safely.”
    Louise picked her spoon up—the very one
she’d dropped at his suggestive words—and shook her head. “I think
I can manage. I’ve lived here a long while you know.”
    “Strange to think we’ve never met before,”
he said as the server approached.
    “Is it?”
    “Yes…anyway I will see you home,” he said as
he inserted his card into the server’s portable payment machine. A
moment later and she passed across a receipt, thanked them for
their custom, and bustled off to one of her other tables. “It’s the
gentlemanly thing to do,”
    “You’re no gentleman, Jude.”
    He laughed, taking her arm—this time she did
not shrug him off—and guiding her from the room. “You’d be
surprised, Louise.”
    “Really?”
    The temperature had dropped whilst they’d
been inside, almost like summer would stretch into the fall days,
but stop as night rolled around. Jude saw Louise shiver in her thin
shirt. He didn’t even think before shrugging of his sweater and
passing it across.
    Her eyes widened as he held it out, first on
the sweater, and then on him. Jude grinned, knowing that—whether
she admitted it or not—Louise liked his body. He worked out every
single day, it was a habit he’d gotten into when he was in his
teens, and Jude knew that his physique was something women found
attractive. He’d always sort of taken that fact in his stride, but
the way Louise looked at him, the hunger in her eyes, the way her
fingers almost twitched. Fuck, he’d pump iron all day, every day,
to have her look at him like that.
    “You only have a tee shirt on,” she
whispered.
    “Take it,” he insisted. “I bet your heater
doesn’t work, and I want to know your warm on the drive back.” And
didn’t part of him quite like the idea of her having something of
his? Of walking around in fabric that had recently lay next to his
own skin?
    Jesus, he was pathetic, and yet...
    “But—”
    “Louise, I insist. Don’t make me come over
there and put it on you.”
    “Okay…I’ll get it back to you tomorrow,” she
said, placing her satchel between her legs and pulling the sweater
over her head. The action dislodged her bun slightly, and tendrils
of hair fell over his sweater, curling around her chest and
shoulders. Jude itched to reach out and capture one, to twist it
around his hand, pull her towards him…
    “I should get going,” she said.
    And though it was the last
thing he wanted Jude found himself nodding. His control was on the
thinnest of knife edges, soon he would pull her to him, there was no
doubt about it. “Maybe you should,” he agreed, “before my
gentlemanly impulses leave me completely.”
    “Gentlemanly,” she sighed, swinging her
satchel back on her shoulder, and turning towards her car. “Of
course.”
    “I know the way I’m behaving with you is
wrong,” he admitted. “I know there are lines that shouldn’t be
crossed, and three days ago I would never have imagined chasing an
engaged woman.”
    His honesty made her pause, and she turned
back to look at him, shock obvious in her gaze. “Then…”
    Jude crossed his arms over his chest, and
shifted a little, shocked himself that he was being so