Too Hot to Touch and Exposed

by LETO, JULIE

  She nodded, rubbing her tongue-dampened lips together tightly. The fog kissed her bare legs. The chill made her shiver, but the sensation was nothing compared to the waves of want rocking her from the inside out.

  “It’ll only get better, I promise.”

  He tugged the denim off her ankles, then straddled the chair so he could attend to her bare feet. He massaged her arches and toes with a strong pressure that at first made her wince, then he kneaded softly until she sighed. She hadn’t realized how tired her feet were. But with each press and swirl, his hands erased the ache of the workday and enhanced the bittersweet torment of unsatisfied need.

  He inched upward, lifting her left leg and placing an anklet of wet-tongued kisses on her skin, followed by a seam of laving up her calf and behind her knee. She started to slip down the fog-slickened cushion. The plunging sensation made her grab the arms of the chair.

  “Relax, Ariana. I won’t hurt you.”

  “It’s not that. I feel like I’m falling.”

  “You are. You’re falling for me.”

  She shook her head, smiling at his sweet sentiment, but not surprised that he didn’t understand.

  “I’m afraid of heights,” she admitted.

  “Heights of passion?” His teasing tone and sparkling eyes drew her into his double entendre. He scooted forward another few inches, then draped her knee over his shoulder. She held her breath, watching, fascinated and vulnerable and thrilled, as he smoothed his hand from beneath her lifted thigh, down to her nearly bare bottom. Wordlessly, he grabbed an elongated cushion from a nearby chair and placed it behind her hips, securing her in the semi-lifted position. She grabbed the neck roll and slid it behind her head, assisting him as he arranged her body for his full view and complete attention.

  “I wouldn’t know about the heights of passion, Max,” she admitted. She’d avoided them the same way she’d avoided climbing Coit Tower or walking the span of the Golden Gate. The possibility of plunging down, losing herself, was a real one she’d always meant to avoid. “Never really climbed them.”

  He shook his head. “A damn shame, beautiful woman like you.” He tilted his head and kissed her knee. “That will change. I promise.”

  With a glance half skeptical, half intrigued, she surveyed the unusual position he’d sculpted her body into. Her knee remained draped over his shoulder and, with the pillows beneath her hips, he could see all of her, touch all of her while hardly moving.

  “I can see that,” she quipped.

  He chuckled appreciatively, raking his fingers down the inside of her thigh. “This is San Francisco. We don’t do things the conventional way here.”

  Ariana took a deep breath, swallowed the last of her ingrained apprehension and folded her arms behind her head. She concentrated on the sensuous trail Max blazed with his hands, up and down her leg, touching her but not touching her—promising intimacy with a wicked tease.

  “So far, you’re all talk,” she said, biting her lip the moment her provocation lit his eyes with a fire she doubted she could contain.

  “Talk can be good,” he answered.

  “Talk can be cheap.”

  One dark eyebrow tilted, along with the corner of his incredible mouth. “I don’t buy cheap.”

  “You’re not buying me,” she answered, still grappling with the incongruity between her standard operating modes and this incredible dalliance with a stranger. The sensations, the heat emanating from his body to hers dulled reality, but couldn’t erase it entirely, no matter how she tried.

  He kissed her knee again and slid it down his arm so that she straddled his thighs. Scooting forward, he ran both hands up her legs and hips, spanning his fingers inward across her stomach then upward, lightly over her breasts to her neck. He unhooked her hands and pulled her forward until they sat, entwined, his mouth to her ear.

  “There are some highs that can’t be bought, even by men like me.”

  She gasped as he skimmed his fingers down her back and unhooked the back of her bra. The satin loosened as he drew the straps aside, one at a time, releasing her, revealing her. He tossed the lingerie aside, pressing his hands hotly against her shoulder blades so she arched toward him and he could look his fill.

  “Care to borrow a little ecstasy with me?” he asked. His grin was part irreverent, part hopeful.

  She could only nod.

  He skimmed his hands up her sides and cupped her breasts.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said.

  She licked her lips. “This.”

  Tracing a lazy circle with his thumbs, he skimmed the full circumference of her breasts, spiraling inward until he reached but didn’t touch her nipples. Round and round and round he traced tight, grazing rings that never made contact with the sensitive centers, but eased them into a taut, hungry pucker that made her coo.

  “Now what?”

  “Kiss me.”

  “Your breasts?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced up and captured her gaze from her half-closed eyelids.

  “Offer them to me,” he said.

  She blinked, uncertain. He took her hands and guided them up her own rib cage, until she cupped herself.

  He met her stare with sweet challenge. “Offer them to me,” he repeated.

  She smiled and did as he commanded, lifting her breasts high and arching her back. She closed her eyes tight in anticipation, dizzy from the sensation of taking control of her own pleasure.

  He didn’t disappoint. Splaying his hands beneath her bottom, he lifted her the last inch he needed to take her fully into his mouth. His lips were cool from the breeze, his tongue hot, alternating between soft and stiff as he pleasured her with a sweet attendance to detail.

  Max the stranger became Max her lover with each and every intimate kiss.

  He cupped her with his hands, flicking his thumbs over her moistened flesh while his kiss wandered across her collarbone and up her neck. Their lips clashed in a hot, breathless battle. She touched him everywhere, down his back, up his arms. Fingers crashed through his hair, dipped into his boxers. Learned him as he learned her.

  He lifted her as he stood, letting her feet touch the ground long enough to remove the last scraps of clothing between them, then he wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the ledge.

  Max set her down and turned her so her half-closed eyes could see the glorious view of the bridge and the bay drifting in and out of the fog. Lights twinkled in the distance as he pressed against her back and enveloped her with his heat. The flashing lights appeared behind her heavy eyelids when he slid his hand down her belly through her dark curls to test her need.

  He nestled his cheek to hers, stroking her gently with one hand, caressing a breast softly with the other. “Open your eyes, Ari. I promised to show you the view.”

  Swallowing deep, she managed to form a coherent sentence as her mind drifted in and out of utter ecstasy. “Don’t wanna see. Mmm. Just feel.”

  He tugged her earlobe with his teeth. “Do both. Don’t settle for less when you can have it all.”

  Have it all. Ariana grinned and forced her eyes open. Swirls of whitish gray fog shifted and drifted on the other side of the Plexiglas wall, allowing her glimpses of the city she hardly knew but loved anyway. The irony didn’t escape her. She felt eerily the same about Max, a stranger who touched her with such tenderness, and who was slowly becoming her most intimate lover.

  “Are you watching?” he asked.

  The question may have been meant to distract her from the fact that he’d stepped away to put on the condom, but she felt his absence so deeply, she grew chilled.

  When he returned, his first order of business was reigniting her warmth.

  “I’m looking,” she said, bracing her hands on the brass railing as he kissed and caressed her, rubbing her arms, nuzzling her neck, grinding his stiff sex against her bottom. “I’m not seeing much with this fog.”

  “Look closer,” he whispered, touching her
ear with his tongue.

  She blinked and refocused, noticing with a gasp that with the light bouncing out from the bedroom behind them and with the thick fog, their images were reflecting back from the Plexiglas like a bathroom mirror steamed from a hot shower. She could see his hands easing from her hips to her belly to her breasts. She watched, enthralled, as he plucked and stroked her. Electric sensations drew her lids down with a magnetic pull.

  “I see you touching me. Feel you…”

  Her voice drifted into the fog and disappeared as images, opaque and erotic, rode across her vision. He pressed closer, slipping his sheathed sex between her legs, teasing her with a gentle friction, while his hands tilted and guided her.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said again, and she couldn’t imagine why.

  “Make love to me,” she answered.

  “That’s what I’m doing, sweetheart.” His fingers dipped low. Jolts shook her.

  “I’m going to come. Too soon.”

  Fighting the sensation was fruitless. Fruitless and senseless and entirely out of her control when his hands still stroked her, played her, building the madness to an unbearable peak.

  “Not too soon. Don’t fight me. Let me.”

  With the hand that wasn’t driving her wild, he swept her hair over her shoulder so he could suckle her from the tip of her shoulder to the pulse at the base of her neck. His fingers probed deeper, stroked harder until the image she saw in the misty glass was a woman driven completely wild. She bucked, but he held her fast. She screamed, and he cheered her lack of inhibitions, demanded she hide none of her rapture.

  Just when she started on the downward side of ecstasy, he pushed inside her, stretching her with one, slow thrust.

  She gripped the handrail so tight, her fingers ached. She couldn’t. Not again.

  But when he smoothed his palms over her hips in lazy, gentle circles, she knew he would wait. And the wait would be worth her while.

  “Max,” she started, nearly breathless, completely un sure what she had to say to convince him that she’d never experienced something so incredible, something she most certainly wouldn’t experience again until after a good night’s sleep.

  He caressed her softly, teasingly, up her sides, beneath her arms, then guided her arms upward, placing her hands firmly on the Plexiglas. She stared into her own diaphanous reflection. Even amid a cloud, the undiluted satisfaction in her eyes was impossible to miss.

  “That’s one way to enjoy the view,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her so he could love her breasts again. “Wanna try another?”

  Ariana swallowed, forcing herself to inhale and exhale, forcing herself to accept that her body, her mind, her soul wanted this man inside her—wanted to share the incredible fantasy again and again and again in every way imaginable. The feel of him, slick and hard, taut and silky, penetrated her, enveloped her in a heat that was inherently pure, amazingly simple. Like a beating heart. Like a breathing soul.

  “I trust you, Max,” she admitted, not meaning to say it aloud, but glad when she did.

  He stopped his sensual assault long enough to give her the sweetest, softest embrace, topped with a touch of a kiss on her cheek.

  “I won’t let you down.”

  5

  “DID YOU GET IT?”

  Jangling the change in his pocket, Leo Glass hooked the receiver of the pay phone beneath his chin. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean not exactly? Photographs are photographs. What did you do, put your thumb on the lens?”

  Leo bit back the urge to tell the jerk on the other end of the line exactly what he could do with his condescending attitude. But he needed the cash the man was supplying. And the revenge wasn’t so bad, either. “I’m not that stupid.”

  “Remains to be seen.”

  “I heard that!”

  “I wasn’t exactly whispering, was I? There’s only an hour left. Did you get pictures of them or not?”

  “I got ’em. But the damn fog…”

  “They were outside? How disgusting.” After a pause, the man snickered. “But interesting, for my purpose.”

  “Might have been, if you could see anything.”

  “So you didn’t get the photograph?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You can’t exactly tell who’s who, but the two figures in the shot are definitely doing something interesting on that balcony.”

  The next pause nearly drove him insane. Leo shook his pockets again, annoyed at the sound of four quarters, two dimes and three pennies swirling around with nothing green to keep them company—at least, not yet.

  Finally, the bastard with the cash to make his future easy gave him the answer he wanted.

  “Bring them in, with the negatives. With the right spin, we might be able to use them to our advantage.”

  I TRUST YOU, MAX.

  The voice, soft and feminine, was familiar, stirring a misty memory Max struggled to stay asleep to relive. The tone was deep, sultry, exotic. Impressions fleeted by. Abandon. Rapture. Release.

  Freedom.

  I trust you.

  “Max?”

  His eyelids snapped open at the crisp sound of his name, this time as real and strong as the sunlight streaming into his bedroom. Who left the drapes open? He never left the drapes open.

  “Who?”

  A figure stepped over to the window and pressed the button that drew the drapes closed with painful slowness. In the meantime, he fell back onto his pillow and laid his arm across his eyes until the sickening swirls of oranges and reds and purples dancing in his eyelids faded away.

  “Are you okay? Max?”

  “My head is pounding. My mouth feels like I swallowed a sheep,” he answered to whoever the hell was asking the question. A woman. A woman he highly suspected he should know.

  A woman with a sultry, exotic voice.

  Her laugh was light and might have annoyed him under other circumstances. He pressed his hands against his temples, surprised to discover he wasn’t wearing a football helmet that was two sizes too tight. Actually, he realized, drawing his arm aside, if her laugh didn’t piss him off in his current misery, which it didn’t, the buoyant sound probably never would.

  The room was a cloud of shadows, but he felt her weight when she sat on the bed beside him.

  “If you sit up, you can drink my special blend. It may not make you feel a whole lot better, but it most definitely won’t make you feel worse.”

  Sit up. She may as well have asked him to shoot up the steepest part of Lombard Street on in-line skates.

  “I can’t move.”

  “What a shame. Your moves last night were incredible.”

  It may have been a while since he’d heard the distinctive purr of a woman just recently satiated and satisfied, but the molasses-sweet and sun-warmed sound was impossible to forget. He pushed his physical discomfort aside long enough to prop himself up on his pillows.

  His eyes adjusted. The skylight in his bathroom threw just enough glow into his room to let him see what he was certain was a dream.

  Ariana Karas? Offering him coffee? In his bedroom? Wearing his Stanford T-shirt?

  She placed the hot mug in his hands, then curled her legs up onto the bed.

  Bare legs. Bare to the thigh. Bare beyond the thigh.

  “You going to drink that, or is there something else you’d like better?”

  He took a long, deep swallow of coffee. The liquid scalded his tongue and throat, but he didn’t flinch.

  Ariana Karas was sitting half naked in his bed, her dark eyes and soft mouth plush with the warmth of a woman well loved and he had absolutely no idea why.

  “Thanks,” he said after his throat cooled.

  “Right back at you.” She scooted off the bed and shuffled toward the drapes, testing the thick folds for the opening. “You might want to turn away from the light, but I have some things on the balcony I need before I can leave.”

  “Leave?”

  She let out a
soft “Aha!” when she found the opening, twisting her body through so that the sunlight didn’t flash his sensitive eyes. He took another sip of coffee—prepared just the way he liked it with one sugar and a heavy dose of cream—and wondered what in the hell she’d left outside. He didn’t remember going outside. Hell, he didn’t remember coming home.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. A few vague images answered his desperate summons, but most placed him at Athens by the Bay. A match. He remembered something about…lighting a fire?

  When Ariana reentered wearing a pair of unzipped and unbuttoned black jeans beneath his T-shirt, his hold on the recovered memories slipped away. A bra and panties, pink and satiny, dangled from her hand alongside a long-sleeved turtleneck.

  “Ariana?”

  She looked up at him expectantly and he realized he hadn’t really said her name for any other reason than to reassure himself that she really was in his room.

  “Max?”

  The staring game that followed lasted several seconds. Max watched the expression on Ariana’s amazing face progress from boldly flirtatious to slightly shocked.

  “You don’t remember last night, do you?”

  He’d never heard a question he wanted to answer less. “Not yet,” he admitted, hoping that once the two-ton fog lifted from his brain, maybe after more coffee and a hot shower, he’d regain whatever he’d lost.

  And from the look in her eyes, he’d lost a great deal.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t think…you seemed all right by the time we…” She huffed in frustration, but until she completed a sentence with information he could use, Max was sure he had the market on confusion.

  “Memory loss is a side effect,” she finished.

  “Side effect of…?”

  Ariana folded her undergarments into the turtleneck and rolled them into a ball she twisted tight between her hands. She shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, then strode boldly forward and sat on the bed again, this time at a greater distance than before and without the fluid grace and sensuality she’d shown him when he’d first awakened. She was all business.