Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  His voice was almost unrecognisable when he finally came back with, ‘How not quite?’

  ‘Underpants.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Bikini brief.’

  ‘Colour?’

  White cotton didn’t exactly ring exciting, so she took liberties. ‘Burgundy with gold lace.’

  Her quivering knees belied her true nerves. She finally gave in and sat on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs to quell the heat already slicing through her centre. ‘So what are you wearing?’

  ‘I’d love to say I was standing outside your apartment right now wearing nothing bar a bunch of roses and a smile, but unfortunately, unlike you, I am still at work.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘As far as I know,’ he said.

  ‘So-o-o …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s only fair that if I’m freezing my butt off in nothing bar a tiny sliver of rather flimsy translucent lace that barely covers half my butt cheeks that you do some undressing too.’

  The pause was significant as he took the time to add her latest descriptions to his vision. ‘But I’m imagining you in your natural environment. Snug in your lovely warm home. Curtains drawn. Locks bolted. Alarm system activated. Killer cat next door to protect you from prying eyes.’

  She pumped a coin-sized blob of moisturiser from her bedside table into her palm and began running it up and down her legs, ankle to thigh. The stretch felt good. But it did little to nothing to ease the sexual tension radiating through her. Making her feel wanton. Uncharacteristically reckless.

  ‘Damien,’ she purred.

  ‘Yes, Chelsea.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re playing the same game here.’

  ‘We’re not?’

  She shook her head, the feel of her hair tumbling down her naked back unbelievably erotic. It was as though every nerve ending were suddenly alight. Every sensation heightened.

  She turned and lay down on her stomach, her knees bent, feet in the air rubbing one another. ‘My hair is down. My bedroom lights are low and I am naked bar tiny triangles of fabric. And the only way I am getting any more of my kit off is if you do too.’

  ‘Is this really how this is going to go?’

  ‘Things have changed somewhat since Dean Martin ran with a pack. We have equality of the sexes. Or at least wherever we can get it. And two places I insist on it are in the workplace and in the bedroom.’

  ‘How convenient.’ This time his pause was momentous. ‘You really want me to strip?’

  ‘I really do. Perhaps my imagination isn’t quite as good as yours.’

  Which was rubbish. She was well and truly in the middle of a great big fantasy about finding a man who craved her so deeply he was willing to get naked, physically and emotionally. And who made her able to feel the same way.

  But even now as her feet tingled as they rubbed against one another, as her bare breasts pressed into the quilted comforter, as she kept a man of Damien’s calibre on tenterhooks with not much more than a few sharp one-liners, that thread of doubt and mistrust that kept her company on countless lonely nights seeped in beneath the pleasure.

  If her upbringing had taught her anything it was that big dreams never really came true. They lingered, they tempted, they dangled just out of reach. What if he was merely setting her up for a one-night stand as he did with every girl whose phone he stole? Normally she’d be able to handle it, but this guy felt … different. He made her feel different. She barely knew him and already she wanted more.

  But then Damien Halliburton of the broad shoulders and deep bass voice said, ‘Fine,’ followed by the sound of his phone hitting wood with a thunk.

  She pressed her phone to her ear to better hear a rustle of cotton, the slide of satin lining, and the distinct whir of a zipper, and felt as though everything she’d ever believed about men like Damien, who’d so obviously had advantages and experiences she could never dream of, was slowly but surely turning on its head.

  ‘Right,’ he said a few moments later, his voice a tad breathless. ‘I’m down to my jocks.’

  A bubble of laughter gurgled up into her throat and out her mouth.

  ‘Are you laughing at me now?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Not really. I.’ By now the bubble had burst and she was really laughing, lying back on her bed with her legs dangling over the side, holding her stomach. ‘I’m just picturing you in some great hulking swanky up-town office with the city sprawled out dark and twinkly behind you, and you in Y-fronts, brown socks and black shoes.’

  His pause spoke volumes. As did the clunk, clunk, that accompanied his shoes as he kicked them off.

  ‘My socks are black, thank you very much.’

  ‘Well, then, either you have a very involved mother or a woman organises your sock drawer.’

  His voice was dry as he said, ‘I haven’t worn brown socks since grade school.’

  ‘Meaning no interfering mother or girlfriend to speak of?’ she asked, then she bit her lip and scrunched up her eyes.

  ‘My mother is too busy interfering in my father’s life to worry about mine,’ he said. ‘And no. No girlfriend.’

  She let out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.

  ‘You?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No mother. No girlfriend.’

  ‘Funny. I’ve found myself a funny girl. Tell me there is no man in your life whose sock drawer you organise on a regular basis.’

  His demand was so serious the tension coursing through her slid away until she rolled over and let her spare arm flail sideways. Loose. Warm. Limber.

  ‘No man,’ she said. ‘Not a single one.’

  ‘Good to know.’

  This was getting ridiculous. She was practically naked, and lolling about on her bed as if she were a teenager, hoping the boy she had a crush on might like her back. But this was no boy. This was a grown man with the knowledge and confidence that came with being an honest to goodness walking aphrodisiac.

  ‘So are you wearing Y-fronts?’ Her voice was little higher than a vibration.

  ‘Boxers.’

  ‘Cotton?’

  ‘Silk.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Black.’ Then after a pause, ‘With little pictures of ducks all over them.’

  Chelsea laughed again, amazed that he was being truly honest. Amazed and a little taken aback. While she was in the middle of a ‘close your eyes and think of goose-down pillows, king-sized sheets, and the first touch of a beautiful stranger’ fantasy, everything he had said and done so far pointed to the fact that he was utterly present.

  She rolled over and sat up, crossing her legs and biting at her fingernail. Unless…

  ‘Take a photo,’ she demanded.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re not sitting there in your big plush office unzipping pencil cases and tapping pencils on your desk to sound like buttons popping.’

  ‘Now what have I done to make it so hard for you to trust me so quickly?’

  ‘Don’t take it personally. I don’t trust anybody. I want proof.’

  ‘Fine. Ditto,’ he shot back.

  Okay, so that had backfired. ‘I’m not sending you a picture of me half naked!’

  ‘No trust. So sad. Yet you desperately want a naked picture of me. Interesting.’

  ‘Not interesting, I just don’t want a photo of me to end up on some Internet porn site where my sister’s kids can find it.’

  ‘They are allowed to browse porn sites? That’s some forward-thinking sister you have there. Maybe I want her phone number instead.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘And she’s married. Happily. And pregnant.’

  And would die laughing if she knew her intractable little sister was on the verge of engaging in phone sex with the hottest man on the planet, yet finding myriad modes of sabotaging it every step of the way.

  ‘But you know how kids are.’

  ‘Act
ually, I don’t.’

  ‘No nieces or nephews?’

  ‘Nope. One sister, Ava. Perennial student. Studying at Harvard this year. Not the lay-down-your-hat kind at all. Therefore no kids.’

  ‘That’s a pity. They’re a riot.’

  ‘And sneaky, so it seems.’

  It hit her then that somehow she’d found out more about this guy in one phone call than she had about her last three dates collectively. She wondered just how much she’d inadvertently given away in turn.

  ‘Now, tell me,’ he said, ‘did you turn the conversation because you are trying to avoid me seeing you half naked? Or is there something else you’re trying to avoid?’

  How did he know? ‘Maybe I’m just not in the mood any more.’

  ‘Meaning you were?’

  ‘Meaning … I’m not sure.’

  ‘About what exactly?’

  ‘This.’

  ‘And what is this?’

  ‘I don’t know. You rang me. You tell me what this is.’

  Again the pause. Which was the one thing she hated about having spent so much time on the phone with the guy while she found herself getting deeper and deeper into some potent, totally crazy, out-of-control attraction towards him: she never got to see his expression, the look in his eyes, to know the nuances of his voice. If she’d read him wrong from the beginning.

  But then he once again pulled the perfect words from thin air, saying, ‘This was meant to be me finding a way to be with you again as soon as I possibly could.’

  ‘You’ll see me in two hours.’

  ‘I couldn’t wait two hours.’

  That one deserved a gulp. If he was straining that badly at the bit she was kind of terrified about what might happen when they did meet; terrified that the sparks would make them both combust on the spot and equally afraid they wouldn’t.

  She’d never been this messed up about seeing a man before. But he made her feel as if the world were rushing so fast beneath her feet it was passing by in a blur. She needed to get her feet on solid ground again.

  ‘Damien—’ she began.

  ‘Chelsea,’ he warned, cutting her off. ‘I want you to know that I’m normally extremely content with the headlong daily routine that makes up my life. But from the moment you landed in my arms.’ He took a breath that could have come from her own over-taut lungs. ‘Let’s say I’ve ended up standing still in my office in my boxer shorts and I’m beginning to notice there is a draught.’

  ‘So get dressed,’ was the only thing she could think to say.

  ‘I plan to. But I also need for you to make me one small promise.’

  She dug her hand into a fist, biting into the back of her thigh. ‘Okay …’

  ‘I’ll get dressed if you promise me you won’t.’

  ‘Ever?’

  He laughed. She liquefied.

  ‘Not for the next hour,’ he said.

  ‘So your imagination doesn’t stretch as far as you thought it did.’

  ‘My imagination stretches plenty far, and I want you to slide off that bikini brief, throw it over your shoulder with no care as to where it lands, then I want you to lie back on that large soft bed of yours and let me show you just how far my imagination can take you.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘LIE BACK,’ Damien insisted.

  ‘Come over,’ Chelsea said, rashness searing her veins and making all sense flee. ‘Let’s forget Amelie’s.’

  ‘Ain’t gonna happen.’

  Hot, then cold. He was driving her crazy. Making her reckless. Making her want to try harder, gamble more, do whatever it took to get what she wanted, which was to release this agonising pressure that had her pinned, half naked, to her bed.

  ‘Now do as you’re told, and lie back. Make yourself comfortable.’

  She wanted to. More than almost anything she could remember wanting in her life she wanted to give in to the firmness in his deep voice. But the yearning to have him there beside her, to watch his eyes turn dark with pleasure, pulsed through her like a drug. An addiction. ‘You are driving me crazy, Damien.’

  ‘Welcome to the club.’

  ‘So why won’t you come over here and do something about it that will satisfy the both of us?’

  If it’s to be a one-night stand, she thought, then let it be that.

  ‘Because that’s not all I want from you.’

  It wasn’t?

  ‘What else can you possibly want?’ she asked, her voice weak as a kitten.

  ‘I want dinner. I want conversation. I want to watch you over the top of a stubby candle, a couple of wineglasses and a half-finished steak.’

  ‘Can’t you use that renowned imagination of yours to imagine that part instead?’

  He laughed, the sound warming the various minuscule bits of her that weren’t already burning hot. ‘Are you trying to make my unusually gentlemanly behaviour even more difficult?’

  ‘Well, yes, actually.’

  He laughed again. And since her skin was saturated with sensation, this time she felt it deeper inside. Just behind her ribs and a little to the left. She pressed her hand to the spot as though needing to check it was really real.

  ‘You, Chelsea London, are some woman.’

  ‘I’ve always thought so.’

  ‘Which is why I am putting my clothes back on right now, and hanging up and not calling you again before nine regardless of how much I might want to. Unless …’

  ‘Unless I let you seduce me over the phone line.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  His murmur was almost enough to put her over the edge into acquiescence. But not quite. She knew in her heart of hearts it would be far more sensible to talk to him face to face over the top of a stubby candle before she let him into her bed, or any deeper under her skin.

  Chelsea grabbed an angora throw rug from the end of the bed and wrapped it around herself as though it would somehow make her seem more demure, less like the raging sexpot she had been a minute before. ‘So nine o’clock?’

  ‘Outside Amelie’s,’ he said. ‘I’ll be the one with the rose in my lapel.’

  ‘I thought we’d already agreed that was the mark of a date.’

  ‘So we did.’

  ‘So this is a date?’

  Again the pause, and again she wished she could see the look in his eyes to know what it meant.

  ‘So it seems,’ he finally said. ‘See you soon, Chelsea.’

  ‘Bye.’ She hung up. Slowly. And let the warm phone rest against her lips for a few moments as her heart rate slowed, and her nerve endings stopped overreacting to every sound, thought and movement.

  She glanced at the other side of the bed. Empty, pillow long since undisturbed by a friendly head. And her heart twisted.

  ‘Careful,’ she warned herself out loud.

  Damien hung up the mobile phone and slowly pulled his clothes back on realising he had actually turned Chelsea down.

  The second she’d offered he should have been over there in a flash. God knew he’d be kicking himself ten ways from Sunday as he railed against peak-hour traffic while driving back to Caleb’s.

  He’d convinced himself it was all he wanted. But as it turned out he could wait. He was a sophisticated man, not some creature controlled by nothing but his basest needs. He wasn’t Caleb.

  As he fixed the knot of his tie he stared at the sleek black and silver contraption lying, oh, so innocently on his large desk. ‘Hold me. Use me,’ it called to his subconscious.

  But some other part of him spoke louder. His instincts told him that ravaging Chelsea senseless might well give him some relief, but he had no idea how it would affect her. And after how effortlessly he’d hurt Bonnie he had to keep that in mind if he was ever to look himself in the mirror again.

  He could back up a step. He could sit down to dinner with Chelsea. And in doing so he could test the waters more thoroughly to see if a wild night wrapped in her lean limbs was still on the cards.

  The very thought had him jerk
his tie knot until it almost strangled him. He eased it back, then shut down his computer and, seeing his reflection in the dark blank screen, said, ‘Just be careful.’

  At nine that evening Chelsea stood outside Amelie’s, her gloved hands holding her old pink tartan coat tighter about her body.

  The footpath was bustling as the weather was as good as could be expected for a Melbourne autumn night: breezy cool, starlit, yet giving people ideas about getting indoors and getting warm however they could.

  An extra several layers beneath instead of her chocolate crossover wool dress would have been more sensible. But at least it didn’t smell of mothballs, and it was the most date-worthy thing she owned.

  She rubbed her arms as she scoured the crowd while trying not to look as eager as she felt.

  Damien stood at the end of the block, hands deep in his trouser pockets. His eyes were zeroed in on the slender caramel-blonde struggling with her coat, her fly-away hair, and the jostling crowd outside Amelie’s.

  Again she was like a burst of sunshine amidst the river of Melbourne black. And again she infused him with as much energy as though she’d hit him with a stun gun.

  A gust of wind whipped down the street, ruffling his hair. It whipped her glittery gold scarf from around her neck, sending it fluttering to the ground with the grace of an autumn leaf. She forgot her coat, which split open as she leant over to pick up her scarf revealing a glimpse of lean honey-golden leg curving in and out in all the right places and feminine curves poured into some stretchy brown fabric that hid just enough and hinted at everything.

  Her dress tipped forward and Damien saw a hint of bra. Pale pink. Half cup. He could barely suppress his groan.

  She stood, wrapped herself up tight and looked at her watch and he took it as a sign that he’d better get a move on. He cleared his throat, ran a quick hand through his hair, checked his breath on his palm and headed down the street towards the hopeful release of a month’s worth of holding back from what no man should rightfully have to forfeit if he could possibly help it.

  Chelsea watched as the fiftieth dark suit in eight minutes rounded the corner.

  But this one was a half-head taller. A couple of inches broader. Dark hair gleamed under the lamplight. And the length of his strides meant that people simply got out of his way. She wasn’t sure it was Damien, but at the same time she just knew that it was.