Too Hot to Touch and Exposed

by LETO, JULIE

  They both had decisions to make. And he figured there was no time like the present to begin the process.

  “What’s to think about with us?” she said flippantly, obviously trying to hide the flustered quiver in her voice with a shrug and a smile. She slipped her arms around his waist and moved to snuggle closer.

  He stopped her with a halting grip on her elbows.

  “There’s a lot to think about, Ariana. A lot to say. You need me to go first? I will.”

  Her eyes flashed with a fiery mixture of vexation and bravado. She tried to pull away, but he held her firm. She didn’t struggle, just lifted her chin higher. “I’m not afraid of you, Max.”

  “Of course you aren’t. You’re afraid of repeating the mistake from your past.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He paused, tilting his head to the side to tell her silently that he didn’t buy her sudden ignorance one iota. But to her credit, she didn’t back down. She countered his expression with an impatient huff of her own.

  Max softened the tone of his voice. “It’s supposed to mean that you have a very clear, very defined mission in life—a mission you’ve already detoured from once with Rick. And here I am offering another side trip.”

  “Just for a week. And, for the record, I asked you.”

  “Yes, you asked for just the week. Now I’m asking for more.” He released her elbows by sliding his palms down her bare arms, twining his fingers with hers and then lifting their clutched hands to his lips. “You fascinate me, Ari. I’ve never felt so alive.” He skimmed his mouth over her knuckles, then tucked her hands beneath his chin. “I can pinpoint, to the minute, the very moment I realized that I couldn’t be poor for the rest of my life. I’ve devoted my life to attaining wealth. And I missed so much in the process.”

  Her gaze softened. She slipped her hands from his grasp, caressing his cheeks to soften the blow of her words. “But now you have your success, don’t you? You have what you wanted. It’s easy to change the direction in your life after if you’ve reached your destination.”

  He fought to ignore the lulling sensation of her warm palms on his face. Her point was valid and difficult to dispute. But he had to find a way, or he’d lose her for sure. “I wish it was that easy. You’re making me realize that money isn’t all I’ve wanted, Ari. Money was just the easiest thing to attain.”

  She shook her head. “Easy? Don’t you think that’s an oversimplification? You’ve worked hard, Max, sacrificed so much.”

  He shrugged, knowing he’d busted his butt to attain all he had, giving up a normal childhood and countless social interactions in the process. Until Ari came along, he’d convinced himself that his single-minded focus had been admirable. Requisite. It had given him an edge over other entrepreneurs and upstarts. And until Ari slipped into his life—his heart—he’d believed he had much more to accomplish. Yes, he had wealth, but he still considered himself just a poor kid from Oakland who had somehow managed to do well for himself. He’d been lucky. Knew the right people. Right place, right time.

  The Pier deal would win him the unqualified self-respect and security he’d truly desired. He wasn’t just making money for himself this time, but for the power-brokers of San Francisco as well. He was creating a playground for them, with their input as investors. And though the scandal with Ariana could cost him that ultimate triumph, right this very minute he simply didn’t care.

  He searched the depths of her dark gaze, not speaking until he was sure she was listening. With her heart. With her soul. “And I’m going to continue to work hard until I get everything I want. It’s just that now I want you, too.”

  Ari sighed, then slipped beneath his arm, darting toward the large washbasin just below the window. She turned the faucets and splashed her face, drawing the moisture through her hair with her wet hands, splattering water across her neck. She sighed again as the cool drops from the tap ran over her skin, though this time the sound resembled more of a coo than an echo of frustration.

  Max watched, enthralled, as the droplets kissed her skin. The running dryer infused the air with humid heat, making his breathing even more difficult when Ari shut off the faucet and slowly turned. Glistening, the water dropped off her eyelashes, flowed down her cheeks, throat, breasts.

  “You want me? Then have me, Max.”

  She tucked her hands in the back of her leggings, just enough to stretch open the top of her oversize shirt. She’d left several buttons unfastened so that her thin silvery bra, now spotted and translucent with water, showed him hard evidence of her desire.

  “It’s hot in here, but we can make it hotter,” she promised.

  Max groaned. “You’re trying to distract me.”

  And her trick was working like a charm. But even her powerful sexuality couldn’t overpower his desire to turn their affair in the direction of something more serious, more permanent. As she closed in, she unbuttoned her shirt completely, allowing him to see precisely where the water had drizzled down, over and through her bra. She pushed her shirt off her shoulders, then pressed him backward until the hot metal casing of the dryer warmed through the denim of his jeans.

  “Looks that way.” She drew her fingers down her chest, her touch manipulating the moisture on her skin, manipulating him just the same. “I’m all wet.” She gripped the dryer on either side of him, trapping him in a box of pure heat. “Maybe we can put this appliance to better use.”

  God, he couldn’t resist her. Not when she moistened her lips so slowly. Not when she slipped her hot, wet hands beneath his shirt and up his chest. He whipped his shirt off in time for her to capture his nipples in her mouth. Moisture and heat assailed him from all angles. She kissed and plucked and bit until the oxygen in his lungs thickened into molten need. She unzipped his jeans and guided him out of them, stripping away his boxers in the process, leaving him naked. He hissed when she pushed him back against the dryer, bare flesh to increasingly hot metal. Her devilish grin heightened the thrill.

  She thought she’d conceived the perfect means to keep them from talking further, but Max had learned several important things about Ariana in the past few days. One of them was that she was a woman of action. To tell her he cared for her was one thing. Rick had told her, her parents had told her…and then they’d let her down.

  To convince Ariana that he was different, he’d need to show her. And he’d use their intense physical attraction as his medium.

  “Too hot for you?” she asked, challenge lilting her voice and lighting her dark eyes.

  “With you? Never.” He snagged a towel from her laundry basket and spread it on top of the dryer. Bracing his hands on either side, he lifted himself up, breathing out loudly as the heat rumbled beneath him. She wanted to have sex? Fine with him. But he’d turn this into a lesson in trust and sacrifice she wouldn’t forget.

  Hurriedly, he snared her bra strap with one finger and tugged her between his thighs. “But if you don’t hurry up, some very important parts of me—two parts to be exact—might get scorched.”

  “Aw,” she said with an exaggerated pout, cupping and kneading him softly, melding the heat from the dryer with a warmth all her own. “I wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  She pushed his knees farther apart with her other hand and then brazenly cooled his hard sex with a wicked lick, followed by a breathy whistle. The contrast of temperatures—fire beneath him, humidity around him, the chill from the fluttering wind from the window and the gentle warmth of her mouth—clashed into a perfect storm of pleasure.

  When she took him completely into her mouth, the tempest raged. He gripped the dryer, then grasped her shoulders, branding her with the heat of his hands, making her gasp even as she brought him nearer and nearer to the edge.

  “Ariana, no. Ari, I’m…”

  His restraint was tentative, and some of it slipped before he could push her away. He wondered then who was teaching what to whom. She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t stop loving him until she cl
aimed the prize she wanted. Stubborn as she was giving, she took all he offered, then caressed him back to earth.

  He made a move to slide off the dryer, but she stopped him with her palm on his belly. “Let me.”

  She snatched a condom from the pocket of his discarded jeans, the precise place he’d promised her he’d keep protection during the duration of their affair. She tore open the packet then set the circle of protection on the washer. With little fanfare, she ripped away her bra, leggings and panties, upended the wicker basket and climbed onto his lap.

  With the towel safely beneath him, he scooted back to give them more room, capturing her breast in his mouth, loving the feel of her hardening nipple against the softness of his tongue. The gentle reverberation of the laundry spinning below them thrummed straight through his flesh, coupling with the feel of her wrapping her legs around him until he was quickly aroused again. She slipped the prophylactic on in one quick tug, then moved to help him inside.

  She wanted the passion quick. The act fast and frantic and ultimately meaningless. No time to allow the sexual connection to reach her heart. No time for the depth of his passion to touch her soul.

  Maybe that’s how they’d made love the first night—the night he couldn’t remember. But since then their loving had become slower, more attentive, mirroring what he knew was scaring her most.

  “Slow down, sweetheart. It’s not often I have a beautiful woman straddling me on a dryer. I want to enjoy this.”

  She bathed his face in a splash of insistent kisses. “Someone could come in and find us.”

  He stopped her passionate assault by bracing her cheeks in his hands. “No one is going to find us here. It’s two o’clock in the morning, the doors are all locked and that window is too small and high for any photographer to peep through.” With his thumbs, he stroked from her cheekbones to her lips, skimming her moist mouth, savoring the eroticism of the simple touch. “It’s just you and me.”

  So he took his time, placing sweet, butterfly kisses just above her eyelids, on the tip of her nose, at the lobes of each ear. He stretched her arms across his shoulders, where she laced them behind his neck. Holding her bottom with splayed hands, he kissed a path from her collarbone to her breasts, alternating his mouth from one nipple to the other while his fingers teased and tormented her down below.

  “Max, you’re killing me,” she murmured, only half teasing as he licked a luscious path back to her mouth. He claimed her lips with ravenous want, pulling her closer so he could feel the slick throbbing of her need against his.

  “Then we’ll both die happy, sweetheart.”

  God, he wanted to be inside her. Here, now, forever. Blood raged in his ears, louder and hotter than the roll and tumble of the dryer beneath them. Still, he waited, focusing on the textures and tastes of her mouth and skin, biding his time just a minute longer.

  She lifted herself and forced the tip of his sex against her, grinning as she realized that unless he moved, her position allowed her ultimate control. He witnessed the flash of power that lit her eyes, the curl of triumph that turned her pouting mouth into a grin.

  Sliding one hand between them, she held him stiff against her, both of them breathing in sharply as the sensations rushed and spiked.

  “You can have me right now,” he told her, making clear the conclusion he needed her to see. Holding out hadn’t been easy, but he trusted her to follow his clues to this sweet resolution. “You can have me whenever you want me, Ariana. Wherever. Tonight.” He shifted, just enough to slide ever-so-slightly inside her. “Tomorrow.” He drew her knees up so her feet were flat against the dryer’s control panel, giving her all the leverage, allowing her utter power over their coupling. Utter power over him. “Anytime you want me, I’ll be right here.”

  When he looked up, he knew she understood. Her pupils swelled completely into her irises; her lashes fluttered, polishing her ebony eyes glossy and glossier. Her bottom lip quivered. He hungered to alleviate the shiver with his mouth on hers, but instead he pressed a single kiss on her cheek, drawing his lips upward so he could whisper in his ear.

  “Think you can handle all that power?”

  With a narrow-eyed gleam that combined determination with desire, he eased inside her. She urged him to thrust and touch her with hot, demanding cries—thrusting and touching him with equal abandon. Hands reached and grasped. Lips clashed. Tongues mated. In a wild instant, they crossed over the edge, her first, then him.

  And yet, when the insanity ebbed, Ariana hardly moved. Cradling her cheek on his shoulder, she crossed her legs behind him, drawing her completely against him. He drew his knees up, balancing his feet on the dryer’s edge, to brace her back, completing the intimate ball of bodies they formed. And for a long while they sat there, quietly cradled, until a sharp bell signaled the end of the cycle.

  ARIANA SNUGGLED INTO the warm sheets on her bed and breathed in the nearly overpowering scent of fresh fabric softener. Without opening her eyes, she grinned. Max didn’t know a damn thing about laundry, but he made up for his heavy hand with the Downy by doing delightful deeds with the warmed pillowcases and towels. Yet, as she turned and allowed the morning light to assail her eyes, she remembered the significance that Max’s soft ministrations had held. He hadn’t just made love with her last night in the euphemistic sense. He’d shown her his love. Lived it. Without the words, yes—he was sharp enough to know that such a declaration would send her running—but he felt the emotion just the same. He’d opened his heart and shown her the contents, forcing her to look inside herself and gauge the depth of her feelings.

  And in the bright morning light, she didn’t like the results one bit.

  She shook her head as she checked the clock at her bedside. Nearly eleven. She groaned, trying to remember when she’d last allowed herself the luxury of sleeping past eight o’clock, even on a rare day off. But Max wore her out. And she’d enjoyed every minute of it. She knew without a doubt that she could sneak back under the covers and fall instantly asleep.

  But at eleven o’clock, the morning papers had been on the stands for nearly half a day. She decided to focus on Max’s potential trouble with his investors and his Pier deal rather than on her feelings for Max. She would leave that minefield for another time.

  She didn’t want to love him, dammit. But as she threw on her favorite pink robe, she had a hard time ignoring the cut-and-dried fact that she most probably already did.

  The scent of hot coffee wafted from the kitchen and she found Max there, a barely touched mug chilling in front of him. He looked up from The Bay Insider spread out on the countertop. The rage in his eyes answered her question.

  “How bad?” she asked simply. She reached for his cup and found it stone cold. He’d been staring at the paper for a long, long time.

  “I called my attorney.”

  “That bad?” She shot toward the paper, but he stopped her by standing and bracing her shoulders with his hands. “I…”

  She jabbed a finger into his chest, hoping a good fight would alleviate the nauseating pit of dread rolling in her stomach. “Don’t apologize again, Max. Just let me see.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t need—”

  She exhaled. “Don’t tell me what I need and don’t need, Max Forrester. You’re my lover, not my protector. It’s me they got this time, isn’t it? You think I’m not going to see it? You think my not seeing it is going to change anything? You called your attorney, for God’s sake. Now give me the paper.”

  In the seconds it took for him to turn around and retrieve the offending page and hand it to her, none of the horrific images that flashed through her mind were as shocking as the actual photograph.

  This one wasn’t grainy. The black-and-white reproduction was crisp and clear. Her, sitting on the windowsill, rapture overwhelming her features, a man’s hands—Max’s hands—braced on her knees.

  She couldn’t read the caption. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. The paper fluttered from her fingers. Her
stomach clenched into a tight stone and her lungs seemed to reject the small amount of air she managed to pull inside.

  “Ariana—” Max reached for her, but she stepped out of range, out of the kitchen. In the living room, her gaze darted to the window. She marched over and flung the curtains aside, nearly tearing the material from the rods. When she spun back around, Max stood at the threshold, his hands clenched in fists within his pockets.

  “That picture was taken from across the street.”

  He nodded. “I know. I visited there this morning. For two hundred dollars, Ty Wong gave me the name of the man who paid him exactly the same amount to let him use his window—a kid with a telephoto lens.”

  She tugged in some air to control the rage boiling inside her. “Who?”

  He shook his head, as if the name was insignificant. “Some guy he knows from rave parties. Leo. Red hair. Three lightning-bolt earrings in his left ear. He didn’t know his last…”

  “Leo?” She couldn’t believe this was happening, but the description had been too precise to be anyone but the Leo she knew. “Leo Glass? Leo did this to me?”

  “You know him?”

  She stalked across the room, pushing past him in her search for the phone. “I should. I sign his damn paychecks.” She found the handset and dug her address book out from behind her cookie jar. She flipped to the G listings and was about to punch in Leo’s number when Max stopped her.

  “Wait. I don’t understand.”

  “Leo is my backup bartender. One of the guys who covers for me when I’m out or in the kitchen or working the dining room.”