“Wait a minute. You’re blaming me for this?” Maggie asked, incredulous.
Jake shrugged. He was tempted to take the mischief his nephews had started one step further, if for no other reason than to give Maggie a way to use up all the adrenaline that was obviously coursing through her veins. “Makes about as much sense as you blaming me for something they thought of and did all on their own,” he drawled. “Not that I’m disparaging my nephews entirely, you understand. I can see how this would be fun to smear on someone else.” Demonstrating what he meant, Jake smeared the ball of shampoo down one side of Maggie’s face, then the other.
Her cheeks, already pink, grew even pinker.
She scraped the shampoo off her cheeks and flung it to the floor. To his disappointment, she was clearly not amused.
“I am not going to play this game with you,” she said stiffly.
“Sure?” Jake taunted with a smile. He filled his palm with another ball of mousse. Before she could dart safely out of reach, he smoothed a big gob of shampoo onto her golden hair. Then, for emphasis, worked it in.
Maggie drew a very deep, very long breath. The movement lifted her breasts beneath the clinging fabric of her cropped T-shirt. “Jake MacIntyre, I am warning you, this is a fight you do not want to start with me.”
Judging by the excited glitter in her blue eyes, she was wrong about that, too.
“It isn’t?” Jake took a third gob of shampoo and, slipping his hand beneath the hem of her T-shirt, smeared it across her bare midriff and into her warm, silky skin. “’Cause I gotta tell you, Maggie, it feels very right to me.”
Her gaze remained stern and uncompromising but her stomach muscles quivered sensually beneath his questing hand. “Put the can down, right now,” she ordered.
Jake shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes from hers. “I don’t think I can do that,” he teased playfully, as he continued to rub the shampoo into her trembling middle. “Not when there’s so much shampoo left and so little time.”
The next thing Jake knew, Maggie had picked up a can herself. She had aimed it straight at his collarbone, not stopping until she had filled the open V of his blue chambray work shirt with puffy white foam. Finished, she covered the foam with his shirt collar and smeared it in with the flat of her hand.
“Feel better?” she asked brightly, her eyes still holding his cheekily. “’Cause I know I do.”
No, but he was about to. Jake grinned, inverted the can, pulled her cropped T-shirt out by the neck and sprayed a generous amount of foam in the direction of her breasts. The only sound from Maggie was the sharp intake of her breath.
Knowing it had become a contest of wills between them, to see who could keep from losing it the longest, he kept going until the can hissed, announcing it empty. Still smiling, he set the can aside with a gentle thud, returned his hand to her chest, and proceeded to run his hand across her front, smearing the shampoo between her shirt and skin, until her chest rose and fell with the sudden ragged intake of her breath and her nipples pressed urgently against the heel of his hand.
Swearing in a decidedly unladylike manner, she plucked his hand from her chest and pushed it away. “You are going to be sorry about that,” she told him slowly and deliberately, still holding his gaze.
Able to see where this was going, Jake grabbed his jeans by the waist, and pulled them out an inch or so, giving her ample access to the most intimate part of him. “You want to spray me?” he taunted. “Spray away.”
Maggie regarded him with scathing amusement, knowing he was taking this one-upmanship to new heights. “You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?” she demanded, giving him a censuring look.
Jake shrugged indifferently. “Considering that wherever the shampoo goes, your hand is going to go, too…no, Maggie, I don’t.” She wouldn’t dare.
“Well, then, you’re wrong.” Her expression defiant, she filled the front of his jeans with mousse shampoo, continuing until the can hissed and sputtered.
Finished, she put the empty can aside, pushed the front of his jeans against his skin, and with the heel of her hand worked it in, in the same way he had worked it in across her breasts.
Jake didn’t know which was more exciting, the pressure of her hand, or the gasp of dismay… excitement…when she discovered, quite inadvertently, what her actions had wrought. He was hard as a rock, and bound to get harder still before this was all over.
Looking more than a little disconcerted by what she’d so sensually discovered, Maggie stepped back, cheeks flaming. “Now that we’re even—” she said.
“Whoa.” Flattening his hands on either side of her, he caged her in his arms, and backed her up against the side of the glass-walled shower stall. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Maggie twisted in his arms, trying in vain to propel herself in the direction of the door. “To wash this off, that’s where.”
“And drip it all over the carpet, so someone’ll have to clean it up?” Jake asked, parroting her earlier— albeit justified—complaint. He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Maggie.”
“What are you planning?”
Mischief surged through him, completely unchecked by the cool warning in her wide blue eyes. “That we rinse off right here.”
Maggie’s breath hitched in her chest. “Jake, no—” she protested.
Too late, he had already moved her slightly to the side, and backed her into the ceramic-walled shower stall. Switched on the water. Pulled her underneath the warm, invigorating spray. “Damn you—” she sputtered, even as he dragged her against him and positioned them length to length.
“That’s right,” Jake muttered back, knowing—as she did—this reckoning had been coming from the first moment they had met and clashed. “Damn us both,” he whispered.
Then his lips met hers, and all was lost in the sweet, tender glory of the kiss. He expected her to fight him, not surge against him wildly. He expected her to cry foul, not to drag him even closer. But drag him closer she did, burying her hands in his hair, and opening her mouth to his. She kissed him fiercely. Avidly. Until the once-familiar surge of need came rushing through him. Until all the walls he had erected around him to keep the hurt at bay came tumbling down, and he was reaching for her, too, not with just his body, but with all his heart and soul.
MAGGIE HAD NOT expected any of this, but she couldn’t fight it, either, not when the mere touch of his lips to hers, the soft brush of his dark mustache, and sweeping urgency of his tongue sent ripples of desire flowing through her in undulating waves. Longing swept through her as she boldly met him kiss for kiss, until she was aching and filled with a need unlike anything she had ever felt before. And still the water sluiced down on both of them, warmly drenching their clothes, taking all pretense of modesty away. Like it or not, Maggie thought, feeling him grow rock-hard against her, he made her want as fiercely as he did. He made her react, with everything that was feisty and feminine within her.
“Maggie—” he whispered her name as her knees gave way and she collapsed weakly against the tile wall. Her clothes clung to her body, her soaked T-shirt clearly outlined her throbbing breasts. And they were only just getting started, she knew.
“Maggie, I want to touch you.” His mouth moved on hers effortlessly, demandingly, taking complete control of the kiss with ease.
Maggie groaned, knowing she wanted him to touch her, too. “Now you ask permission,” she lamented with playful abandon, knowing he had already made her feel every bit as wild and reckless in affairs of the heart as he was.
“Tell me you want to touch me, too.” His low voice burned with a quiet urgency that had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with desire. He positioned her toward the spray and rinsed off the fragrant shampoo they’d smeared all over each other.
“Oh, Jake,” Maggie sighed and shut her eyes, as his hands swept the last of the bubbles away. With his gentle ministrations, the way he was turning her back around to face him, he was tempting her to
believe this incredible feeling inside her was real, that theirs was a love that could actually be…
“Say it, Maggie,” he commanded gruffly, still holding her close as he fit his lips over hers once again.
His arms were sure and strong, his kiss soft and warm and oh, so tempting. Maggie sighed again as his persuasive kiss came to a halt, every ardent sense in her aroused by his unwavering determination to make her his. There was no sense denying this was so, not when he already knew the truth.
“I want to touch you, too,” she confessed with a soft ragged breath, washing away the soap on him, too. Maybe such close contact with each other would even help, she reasoned innocently enough. After all, what could it hurt? she wondered. Just one touch, intimately given, intimately received…
“Then show me, Maggie.” Holding her close, he pressed a kiss into her hair as the last of the shampoo on them was sluiced away by the shower.
Stop it, Maggie. Stop it now, before it goes any further. Maggie paused and raked her teeth across her lower lip. “Jake, I—” She tried to find the words that would put an end to the outrageous pleasure and predictably came up with zilch. Meanwhile, Jake was very busy, kissing her temples, her eyes, her nose and, finally, her mouth. Especially, Maggie thought with another languorous sigh, her mouth.
“Show me how much you want to touch me,” he urged seductively, when her entire insides had gone soft as butter.
Feeling wicked under his spell, she unbuttoned his drenched shirt, parted the edges of the fabric and pushed them aside. Her palms slid over the silky damp mat of hair, and the smooth warm muscles beneath. He shuddered at her touch. She liked his response so much, she explored his flat male nipples with her fingertips until he groaned.
“My turn.” Hands cupped around her waist, he turned them both so his back was to the wall, and the water sluiced down on their sides. His hands slid under her waist, beneath the hem of her cropped T-shirt, over her ribs, to her breasts. One quick motion, and her lacy bra was unsnapped. Before she could do more than draw a gasp of delight, her breasts fell free.
He cupped the weight of them in his hands, with infinite slowness brushed his thumbs across the tips. Once, and then again, and again and again. Nothing had ever felt so wonderful. Maggie moaned as her nipples budded tightly and fire swept through her middle, pooling low.
Not content with tactile exploration, Jake lifted the hem of her T-shirt and bared her breasts to his rapacious view. Hands cupped around her rib cage, holding her apart from him, he bent his head and circled the pale pink aureole of her breast with his tongue. Brushed it with his mustache. Then suckled her tenderly again. When her knees weakened treacherously and she thought she could stand it no more, he turned his attention to her other breast and did the same.
Lightning zigzagged through her, further destroying her resolve not to become involved with this wild cowboy. Aware she’d never experienced anything sweeter or more erotic, Maggie cupped his head with both her hands. Darn his mischievous soul, he made her want…so much more than she had ever dreamed possible.
He smiled at the restless way she trembled, looking as if he had always known they would end up this way. And somewhere deep inside Maggie, she had known it, too.
“Again?” he asked softly, dutifully returning his attention to her other breast, caressing and suckling at will, over and over, until at last she went wild, moaning impatiently and arching against him.
“Or perhaps you want this—” Jake suggested sensually. Pushing her back against the wall, he divested her of her shirt and bra, tossed her clothing aside and dropped to his knees. Unsnapped and unzipped her shorts. Cupped his hands in the waistband of her shorts and slid them down to midthigh. Thumbs slipping beneath the elastic of her bikini panties, he kissed the golden nest of curls through the transparent wisp of ecru lace.
Maggie shifted positions with a mixture of anticipation and desire, even as she lovingly whispered his name. “Jake—”
“You’re right.” He grinned. “I guess I better dispense with these, too.”
Thanks to some quick action on his part, her delicate panties went the way of her shorts. With the expertise of a born seducer, his hand slid between her thighs and he parted her legs the few inches the shorts would allow. Maggie moaned as his fingers found her first, then his lips. Then his hands again. She lifted herself against him, pleading for a more intimate union, aware even as she moaned that she was on the brink. And then his mouth was on her again, in the most intimate of kisses, and she was gone. Floating. Free.
A SATISFACTION DEEPER than any he had ever known coursed through him, Jake held Maggie until she stopped trembling, then stood. Cupping the silken warmth of her rounded buttocks in both hands, he began to think about his own needs as he brought her against him.
Her blue eyes so misty with pleasure, Maggie gazed up at him. He looked into her eyes and the depth of her yearning shook him to his soul. He didn’t want to be involved, not the way she wanted, but he feared he already was.
“My turn?” she whispered shakily, already reaching complaisantly for the zipper on his jeans.
Jake nodded.
As a lover Maggie was both far more innocent and sexier than he had imagined her to be. Guilt and regret flowed through him. He was going to have to be careful not to hurt her, to let her down easy when their impetuous affair ended.
“Like this?” Maggie asked.
He tensed as her warm soft hands closed around him, then trembled on the edge of release, as her bare breasts brushed against him.
“Or like this?” she queried softly, stroking him tip to base then circling gently.
Much more of this and he knew he really would explode in her hands, instead of deep inside her, where he desperately needed to be. But first, reluctant as he might be to consider them, there were essentials that had to be taken care of.
“Protection,” Jake rasped impatiently in her ear, as he struggled to retain control of a situation that was desperately close to becoming unmanageable in the way only a hot, passionate love affair could be.
“Do you have any here with you, Maggie?” Jake asked.
Maggie blinked, stunned.
“Are you using any contraception?” he asked gently, afraid he already knew the answer to that, just by the stricken way she was looking at him. “Because, if not…” he let the thought trail off, knowing enough had been said. Damn it all, he disparaged himself silently, he should have thought of this earlier, should have made a run to the store, but he hadn’t, so it was his fault they were not going to be able to progress to the next stage of lovemaking.
“No. I’m not on the Pill and I don’t have a diaphragm or anything,” Maggie admitted. “Nor do I have anything for you.”
“So much for that then,” Jake said grimly, turning off the shower with a swift jerk of the knob. He sighed heavily and could not have looked more disappointed. “As much as I want to be inside you tonight, it’s not worth the risk of you getting pregnant. Like it or not, Maggie, we’ll just have to wait.”
ALTHOUGH MAGGIE doubted it was his intention, Jake couldn’t have cooled her ardor any more effectively had he thrown a bucket of ice water on her.
And it was not just because she would have preferred not to have anything synthetic between them when they did finally consummate their passion, Maggie realized, stunned. It was because at that moment tonight, when all the barriers between them had come down, when she had given herself to him unreservedly, and they had been on the verge of making wild, wonderful, magnificent love, she had wanted nothing more than for Jake to father any children she might have—whether they ever married or not! But he did not want that; he couldn’t have made that more clear. And that, in turn, dictated what she had to do. Like it or not, she told herself, ignoring the sizzling aftershocks still coursing through her body, she had to call an end to this madness, and go back to her original plan.
“But there are other ways of pleasuring each other,” Jake continued, beginning to cheer
up slightly as he reached for her again.
“No, Jake.” Hands up in a halting gesture, Maggie pushed him away. There was no way she could pretend this discussion hadn’t happened and simply pick up where they had left off, on the brink of soulshattering ecstasy. “No.”
His hands stilled. He was silent a long moment. Dazed, almost. Which was, as it happened, Maggie thought furiously, almost exactly the way she felt. Who said turnabout wasn’t fair play?
“No?” he finally said, stepping away from her.
“No,” Maggie repeated, even more firmly, aware she was so frustrated and disappointed at having their impetuous tryst cut short she was on the verge of bursting into tears.
Yanking her shorts up, grabbing her T-shirt and bra, she pushed by him. She wasn’t sure who she was more disappointed in, him or herself. Because, darn it all, she scolded herself emotionally, she knew better than to get involved with someone who couldn’t, wouldn’t, give her what she wanted and needed most. “We shouldn’t have started this,” she told him firmly. Especially since she knew he was not the least bit interested in marriage.
He grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him, the silkiness of her breasts collided with the hairwhorled musculature of his chest. “Correction, Maggie,” he said as the warmth of his skin brushed hers with sizzling and undeniable intensity. “We shouldn’t have stopped.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look, I agree that a monkey wrench has been thrown into our plans and that a discussion of contraception devices is uncomfortable, but the bottom line is we don’t have to let the evening end this way.”
Unable to hide the hurt and confusion his attitude had caused her, Maggie stepped back. “Don’t we?” she countered cooly. “I want to be married, Jake. I want children.”
“I know that,” he said simply, as if he had accepted that about her, even though he did not feel the same. His expression gentled. “It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
One Hot Cowboy Page 12