The Heart of a Hero

by Janet Chapman

  He made it as far as the rug in front of the fireplace, then merely dropped to his knees and lowered her to the rug. And since he no longer had to worry about holding her up, and she no longer had to worry about holding herself up, Julia immediately unzipped his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders, then headed for the buttons on his shirt, making him have to finally overpower her in order to undress her instead.

  Nicholas had a moment’s hesitation when he got her stripped down as far as her turtleneck, however, and fought to keep his wits about him, only to have the lovely lady reach down with crossed arms, grab the hem of the jersey, and pull it off over her head—her fingers apparently snagging her bra on their way by, making her totally naked from the waist up as she tossed the garments away. But before he could even catch enough of an appreciative glimpse in the stingy light, she caught hold of his neck and pulled him down as she strained upward, her mouth capturing his with another sweet little noise as he pressed her back onto the rug.

  Settling between her restless legs, Nicholas once again fought for at least enough control to slow her down. But Julia was having none of it; her tongue going in search of his as she arched up with a soft moan when he cupped her small firm breast and gently raked his thumb across her hardened nipple.

  He broke the kiss and settled lower, capturing her other nipple in his mouth, only to have her cry out as she planted her feet and lifted her pelvis into his. Her hands left his shoulders a heartbeat before he felt them wedge between them, and he was just about to stop her from pushing him away when he realized she was actually unfastening her pants and lifting her hips to shove them down.

  He rose to his knees and finished stripping off her pants along with her shoes, then managed to unbuckle his belt and push down his own pants just as she reached up to pull him back to her. “Inside me,” she rasped raggedly. “Now. Hurry.” Her hands tightened when he once again hesitated, her legs wrapping around his thighs as the strength of her apparent urgency tugged him down. “Please, Nicholas, I really need to feel you inside me.”

  Reassured that she at least knew who she was exploding all over rather than just being in a passionate frenzy, he settled intimately against her again—closing his eyes on a groan when he felt the heat of her bare skin against his. He leaned away, unable to stifle a grin when her protest turned into an approving moan the moment he reached down between them and moved himself through her slickness. She suddenly stilled when he pressed into her slightly, then protested again when he retreated—which once again became a sweet little sound of pleasure when he in turn pressed deeper.

  Feeling her trembling with building energy as her fingers dug into his, Nicholas captured her hands and pinned them above her head, resting his weight on his forearms as he kissed her again and slowly pressed deeper, retreated the moment he felt her resistance, then pressed forward again; gaining a bit more ground with each slow, gentle thrust until he was fully seated inside her.

  He then stilled except to lift his head, enough moonlight streaming through the windows to let him see her eyes suddenly close with a long hum of pleasure. “Damn, that feels good.” She looked at him and smiled. “It would feel even better if you . . . ah, moved,” she said huskily, lifting her hips as if to show him what she meant. “I’m not fragile, Nicholas.”

  She wasn’t subtle, either; her eyes suddenly widening when he still didn’t move. “I’m sorry, am I scaring you?” she drawled.

  He dropped his forehead to hers to hide his own smile, and retreated and pressed forward again, slowly increasing his thrust until he found a rhythm she seemed happy with—for some reason not surprised that it was somewhere near ninety miles an hour. That created a bit of a problem for him, though, as her body responded with shuddering bursts of unbridled energy and her vocally impassioned pleas to go faster brought him right to the edge of his control.

  Sweet Prometheus, he couldn’t believe how wild she became, having wrestled her hands free to rake her fingers up his arms to his neck, her heels digging into the back of his thighs to stop him from retreating too far before pressing him deeper with each surge. “Come for me, Julia,” he tightly growled when he felt himself slipping.

  “Nooo,” she keened. “Later. Or . . . next time,” she said in ragged pants. “Come, Nicholas. Show me . . . what I do . . . to you.”

  Despite realizing she wasn’t even going to try, he might have been able to at least last longer if Julia hadn’t brought one of her hands to her mouth, her eyes locked on his as she slipped two fingers inside and suckled them. Nicholas surged into her, his last coherent thought that of wondering when the last time was he’d flat-out stormed a castle and found not only the gate open but that the prize he’d been after had actually surrendered without his even asking.

  * * *

  Well, this was awkward, Julia decided as she lay staring up into the shadowed darkness, trying to catch her breath, uncertain if she’d just had the best sex of her life or the worst. She definitely felt more alive than she had in . . . forever. But then, that might be due to the fact she could actually hear her blood rushing through her head with every beat of her pounding heart. As for it possibly being the worst sex, Julia suspected Nicholas had just ruined all future sex for her, because she had never, ever felt so wild and out of control like that before. In fact, she was worried she may have left claw marks on his big strong shoulders. And he wasn’t moving, so she may have also given him a heart attack. Well, he couldn’t really be dead, because he was breathing as hard as she was, but he was still inside her and didn’t seem in much of a hurry to move.

  Wow, that had been fast. They had to have just broken a speed-sex record or something. One minute he’d been kissing her—or had she been kissing him?—on the front porch of her new home, and suddenly here she was, lying naked on the floor, staring up at her new ceiling with an almost complete stranger lying on top of her.

  He was very kindly not crushing her, though, so his brain cells must still be firing. But hers must still be zinging out of control, because she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how to extricate herself from this awkward position. Not the physical position, because she probably only needed to give him a nudge to get him to roll away, but how was she going to get up, find her clothes in the dark, and make her escape without his noticing she was utterly and completely mortified?

  Then again, why wasn’t he making the first move? Surely a chick magnet had more experience than she did when it came to this . . . after-wild-sex stuff.

  Nicholas slowly began to stir, and Julia stopped breathing, only to have to start up again because she really needed to get some oxygen to her brain. But she stopped again when he smoothed her sex-tangled hair off her face and kissed her sex-dampened forehead with a—Wait; when had her hair gotten unbraided?

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been more pleasantly surprised,” he murmured. He lifted his head to smile at her—at least she thought he was smiling. “Although I suspected you’d be an energetic lover,” he continued thickly, “since you’re always racing around at ninety miles an hour, I wasn’t expecting you to explo—”

  Julia covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish what she hoped to Hades had been a compliment. “Um, do you think you could . . . I really need to . . .” She flashed him a really big smile that he couldn’t miss in a pitch-black cave and used her hand on his shoulder to give him a friendly little pat and then a slight nudge. “Could we continue this conversation after I make a quick trip to the . . . um, powder room?”

  He hesitated, apparently having to think about that. So she tried a bit firmer nudge, then silently sighed with relief when he gave her forehead another kiss, gently pulled out of her, and moved away. Julia was on her feet before he’d fully straightened to his knees, and gathering up her shoes and clothes before he was standing and pulling up his pants—that he’d apparently pushed down only enough to . . . free himself.

  Oh yeah, they’d definitely broken a speed-sex record.

  Not w
anting to spend any more time looking for her bra, Julia inconspicuously snagged her tote and hid it in the clothes, then forced herself not to run toward what looked like a hallway that she hoped led to a bathroom. “I’ll only be a minute,” she promised brightly, skirting an end table just before she smacked into it.

  Julia breathed another sigh of relief when she stepped into a small powder room, softly closed the door, and even more softly locked it. She felt for a light switch and turned it on, then gasped when she saw the wild woman in the mirror. “I really don’t remember unbraiding my hair,” she muttered, dropping her clothes and then rifling through them for her panties. She stilled with one foot in one of the legs when she realized she was only wearing one sock—which had a hole in it.

  How sexy was that?

  She set another speed record dressing and putting on her shoes, then slowly opened the window, climbed up on the toilet, lowered her tote to the ground, and crawled out as quietly as one of Nicholas’s six cats. She hiked her tote over her shoulder, looked toward the end of the cabin with another sigh of relief, then scurried toward the woods and ran straight into a big broad unmovable chest.

  “Ready to finish our conversation?” Nicholas asked, a definite edge in his voice.

  “No, actually,” she said, tugging down the hem of her jacket as she inched away. “I was thinking we might finish it another time. Soon. Yeah, maybe tomor—”

  He caught her face in his big strong hands and bent until his nose was only inches from hers. “Are you upset, Julia? Or disappointed?”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe angry?” He brushed a thumb over her lips. “I’m sorry for not seeing to your woman’s pleasure before I . . . well, I’m sorry.”

  Darn, she’d hoped he hadn’t noticed that. “Oh no, I had a really pleasurable time. Really,” she assured him, nodding in his hands for emphasis. She gave his arm a pat and stepped back from his grasp, hiked her tote higher on her shoulder, and turned and entered the woods at a different angle now that she realized she had to go up the mountain to reach her apartment. “But I really need to get going, because I have to be in my new office bright and early in the morning,” she said brightly, only to be gently but firmly pulled to a stop again.

  Julia exploded—and not with sexual energy. “Okay, listen up, because I’m only going to say this once. I don’t know who that was back there,” she growled, pointing toward the cabin, “but it wasn’t me. Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t sleep around and I sure as heck don’t explode like some sex-starved woman.”

  She poked him in the chest when he tried to say something, knowing if she didn’t get a handle on this she was going to finish humiliating herself by bursting into tears. “I’m talking,” she snapped, “and you’re listening. As far as I’m concerned and you are concerned, this never happened. Everyone’s entitled to one really dumb mistake in her life, and mine was tonight. And I swear, if you stop me again or try following me, I’m going to bludgeon you to death with my brand-new soft leather tote. Got that?” she finished with one final poke to let him know she wasn’t bluffing.

  And then she bolted into the woods, not waiting around to see if he believed her. Of all the stupid, outrageous, suicidal things she could have done, what had possessed her to have sex with Nicholas?

  Talk about disasters!

  Julia ran through the forest until she got a stitch in her side, then stopped and slumped against a tree and buried her face in her hands. But the really scary part was, hadn’t her mom always said things came in threes? So if in just one day she’d been blindsided into accepting a position she knew absolutely nothing about and had had wild passionate sex with a man she knew even less about, what was next?

  She suddenly straightened with a gasp. Holy Hades, what if she’d just gotten pregnant? That would definitely qualify as disaster number three, wouldn’t it?

  No. No, she firmly scolded herself, she wasn’t going there. Having sex one time didn’t automatically translate to baby. And she and Clay had had unprotected sex lots of times after they’d gotten married without her getting pregnant.

  But really, what had she been thinking? Well, other than how good it felt to be kissed and touched and . . . Julia leaned her head back against the tree with a groan. At the time all she’d been thinking about was how feminine Nicholas was making her feel, how he was kissing her as if she were beautiful and sexy and desirable, and how he’d been pursuing her as if she were some wonderful prize.

  It had been a close call afterward, though, but she’d managed to escape before he could get too carried away about her not having found her woman’s pleasure. What was it with men, anyway? Did it threaten their manhood or something if a woman didn’t have a stupid orgasm?

  Julia started in the general direction of the apartments again, figuring she couldn’t get lost if she kept going uphill. So she’d had sex with Nicholas—so what? She was a healthy thirty-year-old woman; wasn’t it time she started acting like other divorcées and had herself a little sex once in a while? Yeah, maybe she’d even start carrying condoms in her beautiful new tote, just in case she felt like having sex again.

  She’d go on the pill, too, for added insurance, remembering how she’d had really nice boobs when she’d been on it before. Nicholas hadn’t seemed to mind that she was lacking some anatomy, but the next guy she went crazy over and had a one-night stand with might be disappointed.

  But she couldn’t ever have sex with Nicholas again, because that would really compound tonight’s disaster. And now that she thought about it, she should probably make one-night stands a permanent rule. She might be able to bluster her way out of not experiencing the big O as nervousness the first time she was with a guy, but when it still didn’t happen times two and three and ten . . . well, then it would turn into a problem.

  And wasn’t it programmed into men’s DNA to fix problems?

  And anyway, the director of special events couldn’t keep having sex with the director of security, because they’d keep bumping into each other at work and she really didn’t think she’d be very good at pretending there was nothing going on between them. And besides, Olivia probably had a policy that prohibited employees from getting sexually involved.

  Yes, she would definitely have wild passionate sex again, Julia decided just as she caught sight of the barn, because she really couldn’t remember ever feeling this wonderfully alive. And now that she knew what she’d been missing trying to prove to everyone that she wasn’t the town slut, she was suddenly eager to explore her apparently passionate nature. Too bad, though, that it couldn’t be with the mysterious man with no last name and compelling blue eyes and magnetic muscles, Julia thought with a sigh as she finally caught sight of her apartment, but she truly didn’t want to be found dead on a cart path.

  And now that Nicholas had caught her, he’d probably stop chasing her, anyway.

  Because for sport fishermen, wasn’t it all about catch and release?

  Chapter Eleven

  Julia was indeed up bright and early the next morning, but instead of sitting behind her new desk in her new office, she was sitting on Peg MacKeage’s pontoon boat tied at the dock of the Nova Mare marina. Sipping her coffee and occasionally eyeing the bag holding the two still-warm cinnamon buns, Julia watched her friend waiting for the bus with her little tribe of heathens, along with Henry and Sophie and the horse wranglers’ son.

  Julia sighed, remembering how it had taken her half an hour to work up the nerve to actually get in her new pearl white SUV—with her name on it—this morning, then another fifteen minutes to figure out all the buttons that apparently did everything but make it fly. The steering wheel alone had more buttons than the entire dash of her old truck, and when she’d finally decided to just drive the darn thing, she’d expected the guard at the top gate to pull out his gun and accuse her of stealing it.

  But the big, burly guard had merely asked her to make sure the resort radio mounted on the dash was on as he’d tapped some keys on
a computer inside the booth, then given her a warm smile and waved her through. As for the SUV’s dash, it was computerized, which is why Julia had gotten halfway down the mountain before realizing that instead of indicating how fast she was going, the display was stating she was getting nineteen-point-three miles to the gallon. And then that number had dropped to fifteen-point-eight when she’d sped up as the road had leveled out along the ridge.

  Having absolutely no idea how fast she’d driven into Spellbound Falls, she’d parked at the post office so if anyone saw her they’d think she’d been given a company vehicle to get the resort’s mail. Then she’d spent another ten minutes figuring out how to get her cell phone to display a keypad so she could call Peg and ask if they could meet at the marina when she brought her kids over to catch the bus, and have a little bun-fest on the boat and . . . chat.

  Julia wasn’t sure, but there was probably still an open line between her phone and Peg’s, since she never did figure out how to end the call because the screen had gone blank when her thumb had touched . . . something as she’d pulled the phone down from her ear. So she’d slipped it in her beautiful tote, gotten out of her beautiful truck, pushed the button with a closed padlock on the key fob—jumping when the vehicle beeped at her—and walked to the Drunken Moose as if this were just any ordinary day.

  Thanking her lucky stars that Vanetta was busy out back in the kitchen, Julia had ordered two large coffees and two cinnamon buns to go, then sprinted back to her truck when she’d spotted Janice Crupp and Christina Richie barreling into town in Christina’s now-classic red Impala. Knowing the octogenarians were headed to Vanetta’s for their biweekly breakfast date, the last thing she’d wanted was for them to see her driving a resort vehicle. She wasn’t ashamed of her new job or anything, but she would like to get used to the idea of being a director of anything before she shared that fact with the two biggest town gossips and they shared it with the entire world.