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  Heat pools between my legs. Okay, the wine has to be the problem because I could swear this feels like attraction and I'm not attracted to guys like this – big, muscle-bound guys who look like they could pick me up and toss me over their shoulders and carry me up to their bedrooms…

  I clear my throat. "I'm not into that kind of thing, for the record. Those are your sex dolls. Like I said when I buzzed the gate. They were misdelivered to me. See? Right there?" I point at the address label on the box. "Mr. Dick Balsac."

  He glances down and chuckles. "Heh. Dick Balsac. Awesome." He looks up. "Who brings fruitcake to a neighbor?"

  "Huh?"

  "You said instead of fruitcake you were bringing sex stuff. Do people even eat fruitcake?"

  I exhale heavily. "Fruitcake, Bundt cake, whatever."

  "Bundt cake?"

  "I said whatever. I don't know what people bring to their neighbors."

  "A cup of sugar," he suggests, then pauses for a beat. "Or sex dolls and condoms."

  "You know, I usually try to not take my lessons in social etiquette from naked men with bongo drums."

  "Hey, you're the chick who showed up at my house with two girlfriends, bringing me condoms and – I'll admit, the blow-up dolls are new for me. I've never had a girl try to pick me up using inflatable –"

  "You think I'm trying to pick you up?" I ask in disbelief. "We've already established that you're the pervert ordering blow-up dolls. I'm just being a courteous neighbor and delivering your box. I have zero interest in picking you up. Less than zero, actually. I have negative interest in picking you up. And those aren't my friends."

  Mr. Dick Balsac steps forward, and even with the box between us, I smell him – masculine, like soap and cologne and - Oh God, I need to stop smelling him. He's an arrogant ass who clearly thinks he's God's gift to women, and just because I had two glasses of wine and apparently lost all sense of reason doesn't mean I should stand here sniffing this guy. "Zero interest?" he asks, looking down at me. "You sure about that, sugar?"

  I swallow hard. I wish he didn't smell so good. Has it been that long since I've smelled a man that my body is going haywire over one whiff of him? "Zero," I reiterate firmly. I clear my throat. "Less than zero."

  My body betrays me by sending goose bumps rocketing over my skin. I can feel my nipples harden under my bra.

  “Negative,” he says.

  “That’s right.”

  "That's too bad, because I'm definitely interested in picking you up." He pauses, and I suck in a breath of air between my teeth, my breath hitching in my throat. My heart pounds furiously in my chest. "In fact, I'd be very interested in picking you up, throwing you over my shoulder, and carrying you right into my bedroom."

  My God, he's brazen. No one has ever spoken to me like that. Hell, no one would ever dare speak to the President's daughter like that – certainly not the far-too-appropriate men I've dated, the ones who wear suits and have the best educations money can buy.

  This man is in no danger of being one of those too-appropriate men.

  His gaze doesn't waver, his eyes on mine as he speaks. "I'd pull up that conservative little mom suit you're wearing and yank your panties down your thighs – you are wearing panties, aren't you? If you weren't, well…" He makes a sound low in his throat, feral like an animal.

  That's what this guy is: a brute. An animal who just said he wants to throw me over his shoulder and pull off my panties. I open my mouth to tell him exactly who he can go screw (himself) after talking to me like that, but instead I hear myself whimper.

  I actually whimper.

  A small, self-satisfied smile spreads across his face, and I'm instantly mortified by my attraction to him. I should be absolutely repulsed. I should be high-tailing it out of here. This man has “bad choice” written all over him.

  I clear my throat like I didn't just practically moan at his filthy words. "I am not wearing a mom suit. What the hell is a mom suit?"

  He chuckles. "I just made it up now. It's like mom jeans, but a suit."

  I swallow hard, suddenly self-conscious. So my work clothes aren't sexy. I'm a professional running a foundation. I didn't think I looked frumpy, though. I smooth out my skirt with my palms. Why does the fact that he implied I look frumpy – a mom suit?! – make me embarrassed?

  "Some of us work," I say, my voice curt. "In professional jobs. Where we have to look appropriate and not run around naked with bongos."

  "Oh, so you think I'm not a professional?" he asks, smirking.

  "You're the one with the nudity and sex toys." I find myself acutely aware of the fact that this guy totally thinks I'm uptight, then irritated with myself that I care. "I'm leaving now," I announce primly, except I can't seem to make my feet move.

  "Obviously the box is a gag gift. Clearly, with all of this manliness I've got going on, I do not have to resort to inflatable pussy."

  I roll my eyes hard. "Whatever you tell yourself. Dick."

  "Dick Balsac isn't my real name, by the way. Just to be clear."

  "Oh, I wasn't calling you Dick Balsac," I clarify. "I was just calling you a dick."

  "Hilarious," he says flatly. "So you're a comedian. I assume that's the reason for your entourage over there?"

  "They're - wait. You don't know who I am," I say, suddenly realizing.

  He raises his eyebrows. "I don't know who you are? A little full of ourselves, are we?"

  "You're one to talk, Mr. I-Have-All-This-Going-On."

  "Well, that's not being full of myself. That's just a fact, sugar tits."

  "Excuse me?" Irritation surges through me. No matter how good-looking this man is, he's totally a pig. Then I stop. "Wait. What are you doing?"

  He's bending over, that's what he's doing. He's bending over right in front of me. "I'm setting this box down."

  "I don't need to see your -" I avert my gaze as he turns to set the box on the driveway, giving me a view from the side of his perfect naked ass. Okay, I didn't avert my gaze. I wanted to. I intended to. But it was so muscular and perfect and… biteable.

  Did I just think of this man's ass as being biteable?

  I quickly look away before he stands, but he laughs anyway. "It's an ass, sugar,"

  My cheeks warm again. He totally knows I was looking at it, but I interrupt him before he can call me that name again. "Yeah, there's definitely an ass in front of me."

  "I showed you mine. Maybe you'll feel more comfortable if you show me yours. Then we'll be equal."

  "I'm not aiming to be equal with a man who just referred to me as sugar tits, thanks anyway." No matter how perfectly muscular his ass – and the rest of him – is. "I'll see you later, Dick." I pause, my back turned to him, and take a deep breath. This caveman is not getting under my skin. "And enough with the bongos already."

  "You want me to get rid of the bongos?" he asks. "All right. If you insist."

  Brooks and Davis, both still facing him, don't crack a smile, but I can tell by the way their eyes widen what he's doing.

  "He set down the bongos, didn't he?" I ask them.

  "Yes he did, ma'am," Brooks answers, her gaze focused behind me. "Yes, he did."

  "Right, then." It takes everything I have not to turn around and satisfy my curiosity. Then I remind myself that a guy who calls me "sugar tits," threatens to throw me over his shoulder and pull down my panties, and plays the damn bongos is not a guy I need to see stark naked.

  Definitely not.

  4

  Aiden

  "What's that?" Noah plods down the stairs, his steps heavy. Being a six-four, two-hundred-and thirty-pound safety, he looks out of place in this historic house. Actually, both of us are fucking out of place in this house, but Noah is a savant when it comes to real estate – actually, he’s a savant when it comes to most things financial and political and generally nerdy. Not what you'd expect from a football player. He bought this place as an investment property because he said it was a steal and he was tired of living in the neighborho