Can't Stand The Heat

by Louisa Edwards

  Miranda’s eyes welled with tears, but she blinked them back furiously. “Jess, it’s okay. But please. You have to come home with me.”

  “He doesn’t,” Frankie said. Try as she might, Miranda couldn’t detect an ounce of smugness in him now, and he seemed to be carefully avoiding touching Jess in any way. Jess looked up at him questioningly. Miranda didn’t want to be aware of the way his entire heart was in his eyes. Her stomach clenched.

  Frankie cleared his throat. “He can stay with me for the night.”

  Jess’s smile was beatific, and for a moment Miranda could only stare. But when her baby brother moved to twine his fingers with Frankie’s, a loud “No” exploded out of her.

  Jess looked at her, his smile turning bittersweet. “This is what I want, Miranda. I know it’s not what you had planned for me, but it’s who I am. Come on, Frankie, let’s go.”

  With that, he turned to leave, tugging Frankie along behind him.

  Miranda couldn’t believe this was happening. “Jess,” she called, but he didn’t turn around.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped.

  Adam stopped her from running after them with a hand on her arm.

  “Do something,” she shouted, rounding on him. “You’re supposed to be his boss—make him leave my brother alone.”

  “I’ve never been able to control Frankie,” Adam said with a grim twist to his mouth. “Not for a second. I wish I could help.”

  Miranda felt her breath coming faster and shorter, the tears she’d held at bay for so long spilling over and searing tracks down her cheeks. Her head throbbed painfully and a harsh, racking sob worked its way up through her chest.

  Adam’s arms came around her, familiar and comforting, and Miranda lost herself in his embrace and in the stormy release of crying.

  “I’m losing my brother,” she sobbed against his chest.

  “Hey, now, no,” Adam said, rubbing his hand up and down her back. “You’re not. It’s only for a night, so everyone can cool off and take a step back.”

  “Ha,” Miranda huffed wetly. “I’m sure it’ll all look so much better after a sleepless night of pacing around my empty apartment.” The thought of Jess’s vacant bedroom made Miranda want to curl over herself in pain.

  “Yeah, I can see how that might make you broody,” Adam said. “Why don’t you come home with me? I promise to come up with something mindlessly entertaining to distract you long enough to fall asleep.”

  Miranda sniffled and pressed her cheek to the somewhat soggy front of Adam’s thin T-shirt. She listened to the steady thump of his heart under her ear and realized how exhausted she was. Nothing like an emotional roller-coaster ride followed by a crying jag. Someone should write a book about it; it could be the new fitness/exercise craze.

  It was blissfully tempting, the idea of curling up in Adam’s brick townhouse and letting him take her away from herself, from her problems, from the world.

  “Okay,” she whispered, raising her head. Adam immediately kissed her and it felt good even through the stuffy nose, swollen eyes, and spiking headache.

  Someone should write a book about that, too, she mused hazily as Adam ran back into the bar to settle the tab and get their things.

  Adam Temple: Miracle Cure for What Ails You.

  TWENTY-TWO

  What a night.

  Adam settled Miranda on his lumpy chenille sofa and moved automatically to turn on the stereo. He hesitated briefly over the music selection; something told him Siouxsie and the Banshees might not be particularly welcome at the moment.

  Rummaging through his CDs, he came up with a Nina Simone album Grant had given him years ago. Seconds later, the low, smoky tones of Nina’s bluesy voice rasped through the air.

  Adam looked over his shoulder at Miranda huddled on the couch. She seemed small and fragile against the overstuffed cushions. Her eyes and nose were red, swollen and tender with the aftermath of tears. She’d appeared shocked by the torrential downpour, as if she weren’t used to letting it all out. Even as he watched, she pressed a furtive hand to her cheeks, the corners of her eyes, and frowned as if dismayed at the evidence of her recent binge.

  “It’s all right, you know,” Adam said. “You can cry some more if you want. I might even have real tissues in the bathroom, so you won’t have to use my shirt.”

  She smiled, as he meant her to, but it was fleeting. Moments later, the pensive look was back.

  Adam didn’t want to crowd her, but he didn’t think she should be alone, either. After some deliberation, he perched on the arm of the sofa, facing her. At first, Miranda wouldn’t look at him, and his gut clenched at the volumes her stubborn solitude spoke about the kind of support system she was used to.

  There had been a moment when she’d leaned on him, though, when she’d turned to him and let him hold her, and he was hanging on to that memory with everything he had. This was a woman coming apart like an overcooked sauce, separating into an ungodly mess right before his eyes.

  “I’m sick of crying,” she said. “It’s an impractical response to a problem.”

  “Maybe, but don’t you feel better after?”

  She blinked up at him. Adam wanted to hate himself for noticing that the tears trembling in her lower lashes made her eyes glitter like sapphires. It was sick to find her flushed, tear-blotched face so attractive. But Adam felt like he was seeing her for the first time, the stripped-down, unadorned woman beneath the put-together image she presented to the world.

  “I don’t know what could make me feel better right now,” Miranda said. “God. Not too dramatic, am I?”

  The rueful curve of her pink mouth made Adam ache to snatch her up and kiss her.

  “No, it’s my fault,” Adam said, swinging off the sofa before his shaky impulse control gave out completely. “I promised you distraction and I haven’t delivered yet.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Miranda asked. Her eyes were wide and guileless. Adam must have imagined the sultry note in her tone.

  “Um. We could watch a movie or something. Except. Damn. My TV broke a few weeks ago and I haven’t had it fixed because I’m not really here enough to watch anything anyway, plus it’s summer so Devon’s show is in reruns, and it’s the one thing I really watch, and only so I can mock him for it mercilessly.”

  Miranda laughed, which shut him up. She looked surprised at herself for it.

  “Who needs TV?” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “You’re the perfect distraction all on your own.”

  She unfolded herself from the couch and approached, her gaze never wavering from his face.

  “Am I?” Adam forced out between suddenly dry lips.

  “Well.” Miranda considered it. “You could be doing an even better job of it.”

  She stepped directly in front of him. Her hands fluttered, then settled lightly on his hips.

  “I don’t want to push you, if you’re not feeling . . .” Adam coughed, then started again. “I mean, this isn’t why I asked you back here.”

  “I know,” she said, pushing her thumbs in circles against his hipbones. The touch rucked up his T-shirt a little, and then her hands were resting on the bare skin of his sides.

  “Is it why you came?” Adam asked, feeling like the wrong answer was a bucket of ice water suspended over his head, just waiting to fall.

  “Not that I’m turning you down, no matter what,” he hastened to add. “If all you’re looking for with me is oblivion, one night to feel instead of to think, I can give you that. But I’d like to know ahead of time if that’s all it is.”

  Her hands stilled on his skin, making Adam wish he’d bitten his tongue and gone with it.

  But as he watched, the lines of tension in Miranda’s face softened, melting like sugar into caramel.

  “That’s not all it is,” she told him. A new wash of pink stained her cheeks as she confessed, “I’ve actually been picturing this moment ever since you hopped up on that stage and started singing, back at Chapel.”<
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  Adam’s heart started to pound, but he managed a cocky grin. “Liked that, did you?”

  “Far more than I expected. I especially appreciated your song choice.”

  He ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders, enjoying the shivery arch of her body into his palms. It was subtle but addictive.

  “One of my all-time favorites,” he whispered. “It’s been stuck in my head a lot recently. For some reason.”

  Now they were both breathing too fast.

  “Want to give me a tour of the rest of your place?” Miranda asked.

  With all their cooking lessons and makeout sessions, they’d never made it past the kitchen to the more private areas of the townhouse.

  Adam sucked in air, instantly imagining Miranda’s dark red hair flowing over the plain green sheets on his low, wide bed.

  “Yeah,” he groaned. “Let’s do the tour.”

  She squeaked when he picked her up, but obligingly wrapped her slim legs around his waist for balance.

  “The kitchen, you already know.”

  “Intimately,” she said directly into his ear, causing a full-body shudder that almost caused him to drop her.

  Adam cursed and firmed his hold on her delectable round ass. Not exactly a hardship.

  “This is the living room,” he recounted doggedly, rounding the corner of the bookcase that screened his bed from the rest of the apartment. “And oh, look, the bedroom.”

  “Fascinating.” Again with the ear, but this time Adam was ready for it.

  He turned her carefully to avoid bashing her head against the bookshelves. Concussion would undoubtedly put a damper on the evening.

  His skin was too tight for his body, all of a sudden, as he laid her down and stepped back to take in the vision made real, Miranda sprawled, boneless and sensual, across his bed. She moved a little on the sheets, a sinuous squirm that should’ve made her look embarrassed or ill at ease, but instead made Adam want to rip her clothes off so he could watch her do it again, only naked this time.

  “Come on,” she breathed, holding out one hand. “Make me forget. Wrap me up until there’s nothing but you.”

  A hard tremor racked Adam from head to foot. Christ, this woman got to him. He reached for her hand and intertwined their fingers, following the slow tug down to the bed.

  She needed this, he thought as he covered her with his body. And it was something he could give her. Okay, let’s be honest here, it was something he was dying to give her. But it wasn’t all there was.

  And as he settled into the curves of her body, his hips sinking into the cradle of hers, that sense of more throbbed between them like an extra heartbeat in the room. He’d felt it earlier, onstage at Chapel, while he was fiddling with guitar strings and drawing breath to sing. The whole bar faded away until there was nothing but Miranda’s expectant face, her eyes shining and full of something hard to name.

  Every beat of that damn song, which he’d meant to be funny and maybe ironic, had turned into a private message for her, tattooed into the air like smoke signals.

  It was too much to hope that Miranda, his observant, detail-oriented Miranda, hadn’t gotten the message.

  And as she pushed up to meet his kiss, Adam wasn’t at all sure he was sorry.

  * * *

  The emotional highs and lows of this insane evening combined in Miranda’s system like a double shot of tequila with a vodka chaser. She felt drunk with the aftereffects of adrenaline, the subsequent crash, and the longest crying jag of her life. There was madness coursing through her blood, her thoughts whirling fast enough that she felt she might fly up toward the ceiling at any moment, pulled apart and flung to the four corners of the room, if Adam stopped touching her.

  This. Just this, Adam’s hardness and heat pressing her into the soft mattress below, surrounding and enfolding her. This was what Miranda needed.

  It had been so long—maybe her whole adult life—since she felt safe enough to let go.

  Adam slanted his wonderful mouth over hers again, banishing all thoughts of brothers and secrets and guilt. Miranda arched her spine painfully, pressing as hard as she could to get as much coverage as she could. It felt like it would be impossible to get close enough to Adam. They were touching from forehead to ankles, his weight solid and reassuring atop her, but it wasn’t enough. She wished he would swallow her in a single bite.

  He opened his mouth, taking control of the kiss with a hoarse curse, and made a valiant attempt.

  His broad chest ground into the yielding globes of her breasts. The thin fabric barrier of their clothes was insignificant in the face of the heat their friction generated. Adam’s hips rocked down in a slow, deliberate circle, teasing Miranda with the growing emptiness inside her. She could feel the hard bulge of his erection trapped in his jeans; it notched in the vee between her legs with short bursts of motion, making her throb with emptiness. And all the time his hungry mouth moved voraciously, sucking at her tongue and tormenting her lips with tiny nips and bites until she could feel the tender flesh puffing and swelling to hypersensitivity.

  Miranda whimpered into him, surrendering utterly. It was like the first time she’d tasted his food: a swift shock to the senses, immersing her entire being in a wash of bodily pleasure. Where there was so much pure sensation, there was no room for thinking.

  “Whoa,” Adam gasped, pulling back. Miranda frowned in protest, prompting him to pet her soothingly.

  “Not going anywhere,” he said, out of breath and husky. “Just. Damn. We need to slow down a little. We’ve got all night, don’t we?”

  A hint of vulnerability shone in the darkness of his eyes as he gazed down at her. It was like he half expected her to toss him out of his own apartment once she was through with him.

  Making a sincere effort to curb her own pounding heart and runaway libido, Miranda tilted her chin back and ran a hand up Adam’s strong neck and into the soft curls at his nape.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she told him. Relief, and something stronger, glimmered through his expression before he smiled.

  “Damn right you’re not.” With a triumphant growl and a lightning-quick maneuver, he trapped both her hands in one of his big fists and pinned them to the bed above her head.

  “At least, not until I finally get to see you naked,” Miranda said.

  Her own boldness turned her on, and from the dazed look on Adam’s face, it had a similar effect on him.

  That’s right, she mused. He likes the way I talk.

  Improvising, Miranda put on her best sultry voice, drinking in every flicker of expression that crossed Adam’s face as she began to speak.

  “I want to take off your clothes and taste every last inch of you. You can tell a lot about a person by taste. I can, anyway. It’s that overdeveloped, exceedingly discerning palate of mine, I expect.” She inhaled deeply, the sharp aroma of masculine sweat and heated flesh rising to her nose.

  “Even the way you smell,” she went on, forgetting to monitor Adam’s reaction and losing herself in the delirium of the moment. “You smell like sex, all musky and warm.”

  “God, Miranda,” Adam groaned, dropping his head in supplicating defeat against her shoulder. “You’re killing me with this stuff. The way you use words . . .”

  He trailed off helplessly, but Miranda could feel the truth of what he wanted to say in the quick, hitching breaths being panted against her abdomen. In the frustrated thrusting of his hips.

  Miranda was making him lose control, driving him out of his mind with desire. The knowledge sent a sharp spasm of excitement straight to her center, and she swallowed against the liquid rush of it.

  “So do something about it,” she demanded, spreading her legs wider and locking them around his narrow waist.

  Adam sank deeper into the cradle of her pelvis. Groaning convulsively at the increased pressure of his sex against hers, he let go of her hands and raised himself up on trembling forearms to stare down at her.

  The move bowed
his body into hers slightly, jostling them together. The way his denim-clad erection rubbed across Miranda’s tight, swollen folds made her shiver with longing.

  “Miranda.”

  She met his eyes. Her head cleared enough to register the seriousness of his expression.

  “What?”

  “You know I love it when you use those ten-dollar words and make sense out of everything in my head.”

  Miranda smiled. “I do.”

  “Wonderful. But unless you want this night to be over before it begins, could you do me a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Shut up.”

  Miranda felt his lips curve against the shell of her ear at the same moment as she felt his hands drift to the hem of her shirt. She moved to help him, and they divested themselves of their clothes in a breathless rush.

  In some corner of her brain, Miranda acknowledged that as much as she’d imagined this moment over the last few days, she’d pictured a slow, anticipatory revealing, every inch of newly bared skin kissed and worshipped in a graceful dance toward completion.

  It was nothing like that.

  This was exuberant and fun, a mad dash toward nakedness. It was like they were in a race, falling against each other, gasping with laughter, hands hot and frenzied on each other’s bodies. It had never been easier to be naked in front of someone else.

  Miranda wasn’t a prude; she’d had her share of boyfriends. Six, to be exact, none lasting more than a few months, but all of them serious enough at the time to warrant sexual intimacy. Not a single one of them had prepared her for this.

  Adam tumbled back down on the bed, pulling her atop him. The coarse hair on his arms and legs abraded her skin gently, heightening every movement, however tiny. Surprisingly soft black hairs swirled around his flat, brown nipples, meeting in the middle and narrowing suggestively down his ridged abdomen. Miranda tangled her fingers and smoothed them down his front, compulsively following the trail to the patch of coarser hair nesting Adam’s erect cock.