Her Husband's Best Friend's Secret Touch

The sun hung low over the backyard, casting long golden shadows across the grass as laughter and the sharp scent of charcoal smoke filled the air. Elena moved through the small gathering with a pitcher of margaritas, her yellow sundress clinging to her curves from the late-summer heat. At twenty-eight, she still turned heads without trying, her dark hair swept up off her neck, a few loose strands sticking to her damp skin.

Mark was at the grill, beer in hand, arguing good-naturedly with two other friends about college football. He hadn’t looked her way in nearly an hour. That was fine. She was used to it.

Jake leaned against the open sliding door as she stepped into the kitchen to refill the ice bucket. He was taller than Mark by a good four inches, broader through the shoulders, with the kind of rough, unshaven jaw and dark eyes that always made her look away too quickly. He’d been Mark’s best friend since freshman year, the one who showed up for every holiday, every crisis, every backyard barbecue like this one.

“Need help with that?” His voice was low, almost intimate in the relative quiet of the kitchen.

Elena set the pitcher down. “I’ve got it.”

But he didn’t move out of the doorway. Instead he stepped closer, close enough that she caught the clean, masculine scent of his skin mixed with the faint trace of bourbon. His eyes locked on hers, steady and far too knowing. When she turned to reach for the ice tray, his hand settled on the small of her back—innocent enough to anyone glancing in, but the way his fingers spread, the deliberate press of his palm just above the curve of her ass, sent a hot jolt straight between her legs.