by Thea Devine
“Okay, Jeannie, your call—where do we go next?”
Jeannie’s eyes lit up. “Lingerie. I want a heap of silk and lace to replace all my cotton and flannel. What do you sleep in?”
Carrie laughed. “An oversize T-shirt. Not very sexy lady, I’m afraid.”
“I bet you have one of those nightgowns—you know the ones—they sell ’em in catalogs and they only fit you if you’re a size two...”
“In my drawer. Still in the box. Don’t go nuts and start romanticizing my life. It’s pretty much been on a career track and there hasn’t been much time for anything else.”
“Except—what was his name? Elliott.”
“We don’t talk about Elliott anymore,” Carrie said brusquely. “That was another life, another place.” And she didn’t want to talk about Truck either. That too was another life, another place. And it was over before it got started while she was panting for more.
“All right,” Jeannie said as she expertly steered into a parking slot close to one of the entrances at the vast Vacationland Mall. She knew when a subject was off-limits. At least for the moment. “Here we go.”
Then it was just one store after another, the packages piling up as if Jeannie was buying Christmas presents,
“You have to buy one of those cleavage bras,” she told Carrie, taking bold charge of the situation and steering them into the store with the lingerie secrets. “My treat.”
“I think I can still afford a piece of underwear,” Carrie said dryly.
They tried on everything—the bras, the little nothing panties in every shape from bikini cut to thong, then all the nightgowns and lacy slips, especially the ones with built-in cups, which Jeannie just adored.
She bought three of the cleavage bras, an equal number of slips, five lace-lavished nightgowns in jewel colors that exposed various parts of her body and satin boudoir slides.
Carrie bought a bra and a nightgown just to pacify Jeannie, then they hit the clothing stores.
“Silk first,” Jeannie said definitively. “The sexy lady wears clothing that makes men want to touch. I read that in the booklet, by the way.”
“I created a monster,” Carrie groaned.
“No. You created a new way of thinking about yourself. For me and how many other women who took the advice in the booklet. You did a good thing.”
“I wonder.”
“Trust me.”
Carrie was still wondering by the end of the day. Jeannie had gone overboard, in her opinion. She’d bought new suits, a dozen blouses, all silk, new casual wear, favoring the long button-front skirts in which she could flash some leg, and a dozen bodysuits with different necklines to show off her new cleavage. Shoes were next, sandals, pumps for work, and slightly-higher-than-that heels to wear with everything else.
“Just think of how many years I wasn’t buying clothes,” Jeannie said cheerfully as they loaded their shopping bags in the trunk of her car. “Do you know how old some of my stuff is?”
“But you’re trying to make up for lost time in one day,” Carrie pointed out.
“No, I’m trying to make up for letting myself become a not sexy lady. And I’m not going to apologize for that. Besides, you have great taste and I really appreciate your reining me in.”
“Not a problem,” Carrie said.
“I wish you’d bought more.”
“That really would have been a waste of money. I can’t wear half the clothes I have now. Plus if I don’t get a job, I think I’m going to have to sell them all.”
“Think positive,” Jeannie counseled. “One small change—it’s just like you said, you know. Change one thing. I can’t believe how different I feel.”
“Only if you’re doing it for yourself,” Carrie warned her again. “Not if you’re doing it for Eddie.”
“I’m not,” Jeannie said defiantly. “I wanted to feel better—no, differently. And I do. So what’s next? Do you think we need to go to Freeport?”
“Only if you want to.”
“No, I think I’d rather go home.”
Carrie thought she would too. She was tired. She was just a little scared that she had unleashed something in Jeannie that would have far-reaching consequences. And she hadn’t yet come to grips with what had happened Saturday night.
While she’d looked forward to the shopping trip to keep from thinking about her encounter with Truck, she found she couldn’t stop thinking about it at all, and that Jeannie’s company was wearing when she was in this mood.
They made the trip back to Paradise in relative silence. Jeannie’s adrenaline rush seemed to have run out. Carrie felt exhausted altogether and drifted into sleep.
Jeannie’s voice awakened her. “Truck’s at your place.”
Carrie bolted into a sitting position. His car was parked on the dirt track to her house. In the distance, she could hear him hammering on the roof, though he was obscured by the heavy foliage.
I’ll see you on the weekend.
She didn’t want this, she didn’t.
Side work. That was all it was. All she was.
She couldn’t let it be anything else.
She took her bags from the trunk of Jeannie’s car, and slowly, she walked down to the house.
6
HE SAW her coming through the trees, a flash of bright blue silk over snug black jeans, her hair piled into a topknot, her arms full of packages. He hadn’t seen her for a week and it felt like a year because he’d only had time to make that one phone call to tell her he would be gone.
It had been a rough week on top of that, thirteen hours a day of laying pipeline then falling exhausted into bed. A man didn’t have much energy for anything else after that.
He’d dreamed about Carrie the way he had on and off for the last fifteen years. And now here she was, looking like a dream, but real. So real he wanted her more than ever. However, as much as Carrie wanted to run, whatever she might say, she couldn’t deny the reality of what had happened between them last Saturday night.
Putting his tools down on the edge of the roof, he shifted on the ladder to get a better look at Carrie. “Hey,” he called out.
Carrie shielded her eyes as she looked up at him, even though she was wearing sunglasses. “Hi.” Light and casual. She knew how to play the game. “Want something to drink?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll bring some lemonade out,” she said as she unlocked the door and went inside the house.
Okay, that was easy. She dropped her packages in the bedroom, kicked off her sandals and shoved her feet into a pair of dock shoes, and went to the kitchen to get some lemonade.
He could probably drink a quart, she thought. He’d probably been working on the roof most of the day.
“Come on up,” he called as she emerged from the house. “lt’s wonderful up here.”
Carrie hesitated on the first rung of the ladder he had propped against the side of the house and gazed up at him.
A sun god, she thought, golden and burnished from the afternoon sun. She couldn’t see his eyes, she couldn’t see his face. All she could feel was his intense magnetic pull, and her own reluctant response.
She wanted to be with him.
She was really getting crazy. It had to be the air or the water. This was not in her game plan, making love with Truck McKelvey.
No, but it could be in her afternoon.
Afternoon delight.
Damn, why was she thinking like this?
She shoved the two plastic quart bottles of lemonade in each pocket and mounted the ladder. Truck held out his hand and pulled her up onto the porch roof.
He had made it into a little hidden space for himself. There was a radio softly playing jazz, a blanket on which he’d laid his tools, a lunch box, towels and a bucket of water. To one side, there was a pile of shingles, flashing, roof cement, assorted pipes, couplings, tape and containers of various liquids and pastes. All around them were trees screening out the world and sheltering them from the fierce he
at of the sun. Through the trees, Carrie could just see the pond and the opposite shore. A boat here and there, sailing by. Birds chittering. A woodpecker knocking. Ducks quacking.
She looked back over at Truck, his T-shirt grease-spattered and sweaty, and his jeans riding low on his hips. He dipped his hands in the water, and splashed it on his face and hair in a purely male gesture before taking the plastic bottle from her. He held her eyes as he twisted off the cap, saluted her, lifted the bottle to his lips and took the first draw of the lemonade. Her insides coiled, and she had to look away as she opened her own bottle and drank from it.
There was something so compelling about how contained he was, how calm and competent. Yet there was an aura of danger he always radiated.
Truck was a man who should be doing bigger, more exciting things, she thought. He could command boardrooms, he could manage industries. And here he was, rubbing his arms up and down with water and toweling himself off, perfectly content to piece together waste lines and vents.
Carrie didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to. She felt the drive within her to escape, to live on a larger canvas. She quelled the feeling because there was no escaping the here and now, and if she didn’t think about it, she could appreciate the beauty of this moment and this summer day.
This fantasy...
She felt his arm slide around her shoulders as he came up behind her.
“So, what exactly was Saturday night all about?” he murmured in her ear.
“Sex,” she said promptly, combatively. It was good she didn’t have to look at him, but she was so unnerved by his tanned muscular arm around her, she thought her knees would give out. “You scratched an itch.”
“I did?” He sounded amused. “If that’s all I did, calamine lotion would’ve worked just as well, Carrie.”
He knew damn well that wasn’t all he’d done, Carrie thought. He’d done too much, was what he’d done, and she didn’t know how to cope with it. The feelings he had unleashed in her were too strong, too raw and too tender, and she couldn’t keep the image of them together out of her mind.
There was something about the heat of the sun that was making her hot too. And the sight of him, and scent of him so dose to her. There was danger here, and a subtle enchantment, and she wasn’t immune to it even after all this time.
“Lean against me, Carrie. It won’t kill you.”
“It will demolish me,” she said, knowing it was futile to resist. She was lost already, her whole body shuddering as she backed into the wall of his chest, his erection, the heat of his hunger.
“You’re so fragmented,” he murmured, touching her left earlobe just where she liked it. “Why don’t you let yourself become whole?”
“How?” she whispered, turning her head toward those stroking fingers that were sending little darts of pleasure streaking between her legs.
“Stop fighting.”
“Okay, I surrender,” she murmured breathlessly.
“Nonsense. You wear your resistance like armor.” He moved his arm from around her shoulders to the swell of her breasts and began arcing his fingers over the sensitive curve just above the nipple.
Immediately, she arched her body toward him, demanding more.
Secrets. He knew all her secrets, and he knew exactly how to get past every obstacle, and at that moment, she didn’t care.
“I think you just got past my defenses,” she whispered barely above a breath, lifting her arms and inviting him to stroke her just there still more.
“I like it when you’re soft and willing.” He was rubbing both breasts now over the curve, and she thought she would dissolve right in his hands. An insistent little twinge in her body demanded even more.
Soon, she thought, soon. Her excitement escalated. She wanted to be naked for him, with every impediment out of the way, her silky tank, her jeans, her shoes. Yes, as his wicked hands claimed breasts again, beneath the support of that uplifting bra. Yes, as he tore off her thong panty. Yes, as the sun beat down, sultry and hot, and he gently eased her to her knees on the blanket, then quickly pulled off his jeans and T-shirt.
Yes to whatever he wanted...anything he wanted—as long as he kept up the rhythmic stroking over the swell of her breasts.
He came behind her, on his knees. She felt him probing, pushing slowly slowly slowly into her hot center so that she felt every hard inch of him as he entered. She could hardly breathe, she didn’t want to move ever again. She felt strong, sexy, invincible.
Truck rocked against her gently, testing her need. She pushed back against him. Stay there, just there...just—
She caught her breath as he boldly grasped her hips and thrust himself into her, riding her hard, hot and heavy, mastering her very soul
And she loved it. She wanted it. Under the hot haze of the summer sun, she couldn’t get enough of him, and she teased him and enticed him to give her still more. She was the temptress and he was at her feet, and she would give exactly as much as she wanted to, and take everything she could—
Sexy sexy lady...
Lush sensations unfurled deep within her core—
He is at your mercy—
...almost there, almost there, from the erotic pressure of him pushing, goading, demanding she come...almost there—one last thrust, hard, high—and then a stream of sensation that skeined through her body and pooled at the very center of her being.
Just there, just waiting, until the moment he stiffened and surrendered to his need.
Her knees gave out, and he followed her down to the blanket.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he murmured, levering himself onto his knees so she could move. “Look at me.”
She rolled over and he covered her with his hot body, his hot erection, his heated mouth, his inexorable tongue.
“Did you think it was over?” he whispered, a breath above her lips. “Did you think I got nearly enough of you?” He pulled at her lower lip. “I’m really ready for you now.” He claimed her mouth then, overpowering her, as hot and hard as the sun.
She felt the length of him flexing against her bare skin, and she gave up and went under, pulled by the relentless tide. He surrounded her, enfolded her; his body covered her, his legs entwining with hers, his merciless mouth demanding her complete surrender. She felt him testing her, insinuating those devastating fingers between her legs to feel her hot pliant flesh.
“Open yourself to me, Carrie. We’re not done yet, you and L Give yourself to me.”
She made a low keening sound as she yielded herself to him and he took her. “That’s the way I want you. Just like that—” he explored her, touched her in the most intimate way possible “—unfurling like a flower...” He rolled over purposefully, bracing himself as he drove into her with one powerful thrust.
Carrie wrapped herself around him. She wanted every part of him covering her. She wanted his heat, his heart, his soul
Truck rocketed against her, feeding hungrily on her mouth, engulfing her with his need to possess her. He burned for her, he felt as if they were Adam and Eve, as if he had waited a lifetime for her, as if he could sustain himself within her forever. But even he had his limits. He lost himself in her kisses, her body that met him thrust for thrust, and he lost it altogether as he swallowed her long low sexy growl as she reached completion, and pitched headlong into his own.
Then there was silence. A wafting breeze cooling their heated faces. The sounds of birds, cicadas, ducks, the low roar of a motorboat. Otherwise, not a movement, not a word. Just the sun, still burning hot, beating down on his nude body, heating him up again, and Carrie, naked in his arms, siren of his dreams.
“Carrie...?” He was kissing her swollen lips idly, playfully, nipping here, sucking there.
“Mmm?”
“I think we should go out on a date.”
She barely heard him. She was drowsy with lust and satiation, and she didn’t want him to move one inch. “Mmm.”
“How about tonight?” He nuzzled her m
outh, licking around the tender flesh inside her lips.
“Mmm...what?
“Dinner.”
“Where?”
“Out. With me.”
Her forehead creased. “Like, going out out?”
“Like that. I just want to buy you dinner.”
Dinner? Dinner out was a date, she thought. It meant people would see them together. People would assume things and make connections she didn’t want them to make. Small towns were notorious for doing that.
“Not tonight.”
“Why not? You have to eat dinner.”
“I’m dieting.”
Truck made a face and ran his hand down her sleek legs. “Try another excuse.”
She struggled up onto her elbows. Dear God, I am up on my roof, in broad daylight where anyone can see us. What is wrong with me?
“Okay. How about we’re not dating. We’re having sex. And I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea? And that would be what? You’re hungry.”
“We’re a couple,” she said succinctly, feeling distinctly uncomfortable now that she had defined the reality, at least as she saw it.
“Okay. We’re not a couple. Let’s grab a bite to eat.”
“I’m not your bowling buddy either.”
“You could be.”
“Don’t joke about this,” she said sharply, struggling now to get away from his overwhelming presence. Why did I do this, why did I leave myself open to this? Why does he have the power to do this to me?
He levered himself upward immediately, and she looked up at him and felt every resolution dissolve into a swamping feeling of desire.
I can’t fight this. Her throat got dry; she licked her lips.
The motion of her tongue arrested him. If she got on her knees, she would be at just the right height to taste him; she could own him with her mouth and hands. She was so beautiful, kneeling there. Truck watched her face, watched her response, edgy with the need to have her again. He wanted to feel her hands cup him, caress him, take him home.
Heat rose all around them. She swallowed hard. How could she let him go when he was practically begging her to feast on him?