Damn, it was stuffy in here. Coop raked both hands through his hair clear to the back of his neck, where he gouged his fingers into the knotted muscles at the base of his skull in an attempt to work out the kinks that had him all tied up in knots. He wanted out of here, wanted to be out where he could breathe real air. He had to get his head back on straight, and a little cold, crisp air would do the trick. All he had to do was hold on for five more minutes. Hell, he’d once lain patiently behind a sand dune in the desert for seven hours until it was safe to resume a reconnaissance mission—how hard could it be to hang tough for five lousy minutes?
Veronica finished policing her station and, placing her hands in the small of her back, stretched out her tired muscles. It had been a long if fairly fun night, and she felt an abrupt loss of the steam that had powered her all evening.
Her attempt to up Coop’s awareness of her tonight had been a total bust, and all she wanted now was to cash out her box and head home to bed. Or maybe, if she could manage to stay awake long enough, she’d indulge herself for fifteen minutes with a nice hot soak in the old clawfoot tub on the second floor.
This burning the candle at both ends by getting up early with Lizzy and then staying up late to close out the Tonk was beginning to take its toll. Every morning she made bargains with herself in order to drag her tired bones out of bed. She held out the lure of taking a catnap during the day to catch up on some of her missed sleep, but somehow never quite got around to it. She kept getting sidetracked by other things.
She collected her tray and cash box, then headed for the bar. Cooper ignored her just as he’d been doing all night, and determined to be equally aloof, she silently reconciled her receipts.
It therefore startled her when, out of the blue, he demanded, “So what’s the story with Marissa and your boyfriend?”
“Instant and total chemistry.” Looking up, she found herself directing her reply to the back of his tanned neck. Teeth tightening over his refusal to even face her, she added with hard-won equanimity, “And Kody’s just a friend—I don’t know why you’d think otherwise.”
Especially after seeing the way he and Marissa had taken one look at each other and all but gone up in flames. They’d sat with their heads together talking in low, intense voices; they’d slow-danced in a wide spot between the jukebox and the crowded tables. Then, about an hour ago, they’d left together, and Marissa couldn’t have looked more stunned if she’d taken a direct hit of sheet lightning when she’d come to Veronica to inform her she was leaving and taking Kody home with her—something that wasn’t at all like her. When Veronica had pointed that out, she’d merely said, “I know,” and smiled a carnal little smile.
Veronica didn’t mind admitting that knowing what they were most likely doing at this very moment gave her a fair surge of envy. It had been way too long since she’d felt any kind of chemistry with a man, and unconsciously she sighed. “I’m glad someone’s getting lucky,” she murmured to herself. “God knows it’s been forever since I have.”
Coop slowly turned. His high cheekbones stood out in sharp relief in the light from the liquor shelves as he took a step toward her, and his voice had an edge that rasped over her nerves as he demanded, “Would you like to?”
Yes. She stared up at Cooper, at those dark eyes that promised all manner of sexual satisfaction, at that pale hair that looked even spikier and more exotic than usual. Oh, yes. She’d like to very much.
But sometimes she felt like driving down the freeway at a hundred miles an hour, too. It didn’t mean she’d actually do it. She grabbed on to her resolve with both hands. “No.”
Every muscle in his body tensed, and for a minute he looked downright dangerous. He was a full head taller and half again as wide as she, and goose bumps raced up her spine at the knowledge that if he took it into his head to press the issue she’d be utterly outmatched. What truly terrified her, though, was the feminine thrill the image of him doing so gave her.
Then he stepped back. One wide shoulder twitched, and he gave her that heavy-lidded, I-like-my-sex-raw look he did so well. “Your loss, Princess. I could’ve made you feel real good.”
That’s exactly what scared her. Her chin went up. “Bully for you. So can BOB.”
Coop’s black eyebrows snapped together over his nose, and he suddenly seemed even larger yet. “Who the hell is Bob?”
“My battery-operated boyfriend.”
The tension left him, and he gave her a head-to-foot appraisal, his gaze pausing on the neckline of her sweater for an instant before raising to meet her eyes. “I’ll be damned. So Aunt Ronnie’s got herself a little vibrating toy, huh?”
Feeling flushed and cranky, she uttered a rude sound. “There’s nothing little about it, bub.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and the tension seemed to dissipate a fraction. But before she could wonder if he might outright smile, he’d turned his back on her again. The cash register opened with a ping, and Coop began emptying its contents into a bank bag. He shot her an expressionless glance over his shoulder. “You got that cash box tallied yet?”
She looked down at the slip in her hand and silently separated out her tips, which she pocketed before passing the box and tally to him.
“Good,” he said gruffly. “Get out of here and go home.”
Veronica looked between the tray still in her hand and the angle in the counter beneath the bar where she stored it every night when she was through. Cooper was once again blocking her way, and for about two seconds she considered asking him to put the tray away for her. But the edgy set of his shoulders discouraged the idea. She didn’t think teasing him was such a hot idea now.
She eased as close as she could get without touching him, then reached around Coop to slide the tray into its usual resting place.
Unfortunately, she’d underestimated the sheer amount of space he took up, and she found herself plastered against his back for a nanosecond as she strained the last couple of inches. She slammed the tray into place and jumped back, highly aware of his heat radiating through her thin sweaters. Aware, too, even in that briefest of contacts, of the sudden rigidity in his muscles as he stilled.
“All right,” he growled, “that does it!”
He spun on his heel to face her, and the next thing she knew, his big hands were wrapped around her hips and he was swinging her around and lifting her to sit on the counter. Her head whirled, and she grabbed two fistfuls of his sweater to anchor herself, tilting her chin up to stare at him.
“I was a good soldier,” he said in a raspy voice, an unholy fire burning in his eyes as his hands slid from her hips and came up to frame her face. “Even when your eyes, your body language, told me something else, I respected it when you said no. But you sure as hell don’t get to tease me, lady. You can’t say no in one breath, then rub yourself all over me in the next.”
“All over you! I didn’t mean to touch you at all—I misjudged the stinking distance between you and the—”
He slammed his mouth over hers, cutting off her explanation, and, with a rough sound in the back of his throat, invaded the slick interior of her mouth with one sure stab of his tongue. In contrast, the thumbs beneath her chin keeping her face tilted up, and his long fingers wrapped around the back of her head, were amazingly gentle.
Veronica barely registered the delicacy of his grip, however, for the urgency of his mouth made her feel as if she’d just thrust a finger into an electrical socket, and every cognitive ability she possessed blew its circuit. Stunning sensation shot from her lips to her nipples, then shimmered along nerve endings to her fingertips and toes, leaving a feverish flush in its wake before settling with sweetly insistent pulsations between her thighs. Caught with her eyes wide open, she vaguely noticed the black crescents of Coop’s lashes where they fanned against the upper thrust of his cheekbones, and his dark eyebrows as they furrowed above his nose.
Then her eyes fluttered shut. She felt the heat of his body, tasted his flavors with e
very assured glide of his tongue, and heard her own needy moan as her fingers tightened on his sweater and her tongue came up to tangle with his.
He responded with another rough sound, and the intensity of his kiss shot up several degrees. For a man who was so hard-mouthed all the time, his lips were surprisingly soft as they pressed and pulled at hers, but his tongue was take-no-prisoners aggressive. His thumbs slid up onto her face, where they stroked first the hollows of her cheeks, then her cheekbones from the apples to her temples.
A moment later, he drew his mouth away from hers with a leisurely, soft suction that kept their lips clinging until the very last second. Veronica’s lips throbbed and her eyes felt weighted down by the sheer hunger pulsing through her. Slowly prying her eyelids open, she found Cooper staring down at her. His eyes, too, looked heavy-lidded and slumberous, the irises nearly black with an intensity so sexual it curled her toes inside her shoes.
“God, this skin,” he said in a low, gravelly voice and, loosening his grip on the back of her neck, dragged his rough-skinned fingertips around to the front. Veronica shivered as he stroked them down her throat, over her collarbones, and across her chest to the scooped neckline of the thin camisole sweater she wore beneath its matching cardigan. “I thought only babies had skin this soft.”
She blinked, trying to summon an ounce of concentration. But his touch set off shock waves of sensation that traveled outward from his fingers to all sorts of interesting places, and her focus fragmented. She rallied enough to murmur, “I’m a long way from being a baby.”
“Oh, yeah. I know.” He insinuated a fingertip beneath the shell’s neckline and trailed it along the satin edge where her breasts rose out of her demi-cup, tracing the bra’s outline from shoulder strap to shoulder strap. “A fact for which I’m eternally grateful.”
Then he leaned down and bit at her mouth, and Veronica’s head fell back in helpless surrender. His hands dropped down to her knees and heat burned through the fabric of her jeans as he pulled them apart and promptly insinuated himself into the space he’d created. Her thighs bracketed his hips, but he didn’t close the scant distance that would press his sex between her legs. And suddenly she wanted that more than the air she breathed.
She tilted her hips up to his, but he ignored the invitation and continued to kiss her as if he had all night. Wiggling her bottom against the counter in frustration, she unpeeled her fingers from the front of his sweater and slid her arms up to wrap around his neck. His hands tightened on her legs, his mouth lost its leisurely expertise and ground against hers, and with a needy sound ululating in the back of her throat, Veronica scooted forward to align the heavy denim seam that ran between her legs with the hard, thick ridge threatening the fly of Coop’s jeans. Inhaling sharply at the contact, she locked her ankles behind his thighs.
Coop ripped his mouth free and swore. He slid his hands around to grip her butt, and his head fell back. His eyelids slid closed as he rocked his hips against her, and Veronica could only hang on and press back, moving mindlessly.
Abruptly, his eyes opened and he looked down at her. “I want you naked,” he growled. “Now.”
It never even occurred to her to demur—she unhooked her arms from around his neck and shimmied out of her cardigan. Stepping back, Coop peeled off his sweater and the white T-shirt underneath it with one economical move, and Veronica froze with her hands crossed over her stomach, the hem of the shell held clenched between her fingers momentarily forgotten.
Holy Mary, Mother of—All the moisture abandoned her mouth for parts farther south. His body was beautiful. The stuff from which classical statues were created, except instead of cold white marble, it was golden-skinned with the unseasonable tan she’d noted on his face and hands.
His chest was smooth and hard, with small, flat, coppery nipples, and his abdomen was a study of rigidly defined sinew. His shoulders were broad with a sharp ridge of bone and lean bands of muscle, and powerful biceps stood out round and hard in his upper arms, while the longer, leaner muscle of his forearms shifted fluidly beneath his skin as he reached for the button on his Levi’s.
A tiny trickle of insecurity cut through the hot, pounding haze of her arousal. Her own curves were a far cry from voluptuous. In fact they barely curved at all. Before she could work herself into a state about it, however, his big, rawboned hands paused, and she looked up to see him watching her. The look of the hunger on his face decimated every doubt.
“You’re way behind, Ronnie.” He nodded at the shell. “Take that off.”
She fumbled its removal, and still had her arms over her head fighting her way out of the camisole when she heard Coop’s breath hiss in. In the next second her bra was unhooked and peeled away and hot hands enveloped her breasts. She pulled the sweater away from her face.
Coop handled her breasts as though they were Fabergé eggs, fragile and priceless, and he stared down at them nestled in his hands with riveted absorption. “Damn,” he whispered. “These have got to be the tiniest breasts I’ve ever seen on a grown woman.”
“Why, you sweet-talker, you.” Veronica battled her way past the befuddling sensations his touch produced and said dryly, “That’s just what every woman wants to hear—a testimony to the inadequacy of her attributes.”
He raised his eyes. “Aw, no, I never said inadequate. Tiny, yes, but mighty. They’ve sure as hell got the power to bring this boy to his knees.” Without relinquishing his hold, he bent his head and kissed her, and she immediately tumbled back into the roiling cosmos of screaming nerve endings he seemed to engender in her without even trying. She felt his thumbs stroking down the slight slopes of her breasts to capture her nipples against his forefingers, and she strained closer. He tugged, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
Raising his head, he gave her a crooked, carnal smile. “Ah, you like that.” He glanced down to where the pink tips of her nipples poked through the prison of his fingers and tugged again. A high-pitched moan purled out of her throat and the smile dropped away from his face. He released one breast and grabbed her by the back of the neck, clamping his mouth down on hers. His kiss was almost rough, and moving back between her thighs, he ground his erection against her as though he could work his way inside of her despite the layers of material separating them. Yet he manipulated the breast he still cupped in his hand with incredible tenderness.
He was reaching for the button on her jeans when the phone suddenly rang. To Veronica’s overstimulated system, it sounded louder than the alarm bell in the fire station over on Fifth Street, and she jerked in Coop’s arms, then pulled back, heart pounding, to blink up at him.
“Let it ring,” he growled and reached to draw her back against his chest, but she leaned away from him until the edge of the bar biting into her back prevented her from withdrawing any farther.
“It could be about Lizzy.”
Coop swore softly but snatched up the receiver. “The Tonk.” He listened a moment and then said, “Yeah, she’s right here.” With clear reluctance, he extended the receiver to her. “It’s Mrs. Martelucchi.”
Instant fear clearing the haze of arousal out of her brain, Ronnie snatched it out of his hands. “Mrs. M? Is everything all right?”
“The girls are fine, dear. I didn’t mean to worry you—it’s just that you’re usually here right at two-oh-five and I began to worry when you didn’t come home. Sometimes there’s a rough element out there when the bars close.”
“I, um, got busy here. But I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem, dear, so long as you’re all right.”
“I am. I’ll be right over so you can get home.” Avoiding Coop’s eyes, she hung up and reached self-consciously for the cups of her bra, bringing them together and fumbling with the catch between her breasts. Cold, hard rationality had returned while she was on the phone, and she froze miserably when Coop’s long, tanned fingers came into her line of sight and brushed hers aside to finish hooking her up.
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What had she been thinking? She didn’t care how hot he made her—and oh, God, she had a feeling that neither a cold shower nor squeezing her thighs together until her knees cramped was going to put out this fire. But having sex on bars—or the closest thing to it—was not her style. She wasn’t getting involved with a self-professed drifter with no more ambition than to work the Tonk until the urge hit him to move on. How on earth had it come to this?
She glimpsed the tangle of black hair in Cooper’s armpits as he raised both hands and shoveled his fingers through his hair. “I guess this means we go to bed frustrated tonight, huh?” he said and his voice was raspy, barely more than a whisper. “You okay?” He bent his head as if to kiss her.
“Don’t!” Veronica jerked her head back.
He stilled, and slowly she raised her head to meet his gaze. His eyes still burned with dark fires, but his face was expressionless as he looked at her. “You’ve had a change of heart, I take it.”
“Yes.” Veronica reached for her shell and yanked it on, then snatched up the matching cardigan and slid off the counter onto her feet. “This was a mistake.”
“A mistake.” The flesh over his cheekbones tightened. Then his eyes went cool as they traveled all the curves and planes of her upper torso. “You just keep telling yourself that, Princess. You keep telling yourself that whenever we get too close. Because, lady, I want you and you want me, and that’s an imperative that sooner or later you’re not going to be able to ignore.”
“You think not?” Because she was deathly afraid he might be right, and she would not end up like her mother, working her fingers to the bone for an unmotivated, lazy man, Veronica made her voice, her posture, her demeanor, extra confident. She grabbed her coat and purse and sailed, head held high, for the door. “Watch me.”
Head Over Heels Page 11