She’d never gone to a psychiatrist to find out why. She’d been too embarrassed. It had probably stemmed from a silly incident in her childhood. Besides, as annoying as the affliction was, it never became a problem unless she was aroused. And up until forty-eight hours ago, she hadn’t been aroused in a long time.
Icy steam roiled out from the freezer compartment as Bev returned to her immediate problem. She hadn’t actually put her finger in her mouth, had she? Not right in front of him!
She slammed the freezer door and picked up the pitcher of iced tea on the kitchen counter, filling the glass to the brim. Maybe he hadn’t really noticed ... or read anything into it.
“Bev?”
She turned and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway, leaning negligently against the doorjamb, his expression subtly alert. Her heart sank. He’d noticed, all right. He had the look of a man whose curiosity had been aroused, among other things.
“Is that what you like to be called?” he asked. “Bev?”
“Actually, my father calls me B.J.” She had no idea why she’d volunteered the information. She didn’t want Sam Nichols calling her that. She didn’t even want her father calling her that.
A smile appeared on his lips and almost drifted to his eyes. “B.J. That’s a name with possibilities.”
“I’ve got your iced tea,” she said, holding out the glass.
“I don’t want any more iced tea.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise her. She clutched the glass in both hands and told herself to put it down. Instead, she watched him push away from the door and stand tall. His head wasn’t half a foot from the top of the doorway, she realized. He was that big a man.
“Have you been thinking about it too, B.J.?” A faint huskiness snuck into his voice. “Thinking about it the way I have?”
“Thinking? About what?”
“The way I touched you yesterday. The way you touched me.”
She shook her head and turned away from him, setting the glass down on the counter too quickly. Iced tea sloshed over and the lemon wedge tumbled off the rim. Bev breathed in so deeply, the sharp tang of citrus burned her nostrils.
“Why would I be thinking about that?” she said, grabbing a cloth to mop up the spill. She sounded out of breath and hopelessly insincere.
“Maybe because it was exciting.”
She heard him come up behind her and sent up a quick prayer for self-control. The other times they’d been together, he’d been shockingly aggressive, and she’d reacted more out of self-defense than arousal.
This was different. He was different. Quiet, smoky-voiced, alive with sexual danger.
“Was it exciting?”
She tossed off an answer that was meant to be noncommittal. “What if it was? Buying a new dress is exciting.”
“I don’t know what you were shopping for, lady, but it wasn’t dresses.” He drew closer, his voice a rough caress. “You gave me one hell of a jolt. And don’t tell me you didn’t know it.”
Bev felt the heat coming off his body. It ran the length of her back, accumulating in all those nerve-rich places where she was anticipating contact. Her calves were tingling, her shoulder blades, even her buttocks. He hadn’t touched her, but he was driving her crazy wondering when he would.
“Stop it,” she said.
“What? I haven’t done anything. Except try to answer your question.”
“What question?”
“You asked me why you should be thinking about yesterday. Why you should remember what we did and the way it made you feel.” He became silent for a moment. “You still haven’t answered my question. Did you find it exciting when I touched you?”
She felt something brush against the back of her thigh, and her imagination went off like a rocket. Was it his knee? His hand? She pressed against the countertop, her hipbones coming into contact with the cold ceramic tile. There wasn’t going to be a repeat of yesterday’s “excitement.” She had no intention of letting him fondle her again.
He let out a low, sexy gust of laughter that lifted the damp hairs on her neck. “I don’t think that counter’s going anywhere. You can relax your grip on it.”
“Stop it,” she ordered, whirling around to face him. “I want you to stop it! Now.”
“Stop what?”
The question threw her into a quandary. “I don’t know. Whatever it is you’re doing.” The problem was he wasn’t doing anything, at least not anything physical. “You’re intimidating me with words,” she said, “baiting and teasing, playing with me. I’m not a child, for heaven’s sake. I can’t be turned on and off like some battery-operated toy.”
“Interesting concept.” He studied her through lowered lashes, his expression flickering with curiosity and a blue-eyed arrogance that was distinctly male, distinctly him. “As for the child business,” he said, “that was the furthest thing from my mind. You don’t look like a child. You don’t feel like a child. If I’m playing with you, it’s an adult game and you qualify.”
He raised his hand, a lazy arc of motion. Bev flinched back, certain that he was going to touch her in some way, perhaps even intimately.
“Don’t try to kid yourself, Lace, or me,” he said, rolling the toothpick between his fingers before he took it from his mouth and flicked it into her kitchen sink. “I’m not calling the shots here. You’re woman enough to have a man if you want one, and simply because you want one.”
“Stop it,” she whispered again. He was so close she couldn’t breathe. She looked down, trying to escape the probing blue of his eyes. What she got for her effort was a breathtaking view of a man’s lower body, muscular and endlessly rangy. Encased in faded jeans, his thighs made her think of the weapon she carried in her purse—a steely blackjack sheathed in soft leather. And because he was standing with one hip cocked, her eyes darted irresistibly to the front of his jeans, where stress lines fanned out from material pulled too tight.
God, what was she doing cornered in her own kitchen by a man like him? He was sex personified. And why was she letting him talk to her about such private things? Even she and Paul didn’t discuss the way they touched each other. Obviously, she hadn’t weighed the consequences of bringing Sam Nichols to her house.
“I think it might be a good idea if you left,” she said without looking up.
“I think it might be the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
She felt him touching her hair and realized he was removing her headband. As dark waves tumbled around her face, he eased his hand to her nape, gathered a fistful of locks, and slowly drew her head back, willing her to look up at him.
“Something tells me we’re just getting started, Lace.”
His voice was soft, but Bev could feel the force behind it. Inexplicably, she didn’t fight him. Not because she was startled into submission but because looking up and meeting his eyes had a slow, paralyzing effect on her. There was a natural gauntness in his features that spoke of hunger and dark impulses. He wasn’t the kind of man who seduced a woman for hours and hours, she realized. She couldn’t imagine him waiting patiently until a woman was ready, or putting a woman’s pleasure before his own. There was a roughness in him, a simmering promise of violence. He was a throwback to primitive times when survival depended on raw, brute strength. When Sam Nichols wanted something, he didn’t wait to be invited, he took it.
Bev realized all that in the matter of seconds, and with the flood of information came another awareness. She wasn’t breathing. Her whole body seemed to be caught in a spasm of expectation, waiting to see what he would do next.
“I want to touch you again,” he said. “I want to slip my hand inside your blouse and feel your breath catch.”
He freed the top button of her blouse and Bev let out a sound that made him smile.
She clutched at his hand. “That was a gasp! People gasp when they’re being physically assaulted. It has nothing to do with arousal.” Who was she kidding now? She was so shocked and excited she could hardly st
and up. Her blood didn’t know which way to rush.
He brought her hand to his lips and bit down gently on the knuckle of her forefinger. The message in his eyes was explicit and unmistakable. He wasn’t playing anymore. He wanted a woman and he meant to have one before he was through today. He meant to have her.
If she didn’t stop him now, she would never summon the strength. He was too powerful, too physically overwhelming. But what disturbed her even more than the inevitability of his seduction was her own reaction. Some errant part of her wanted him to touch her again, to make her gasp.
She tried to deny the raw excitement that was coursing through her, but she couldn’t close the floodgates. It was as though something wild and sweet inside her had been cut loose from its bonds, a trapped energy set free. She seemed to crave the dizzying, shocking feelings he evoked, as rough as he was, as primitive as he was. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, unless it was the result of being emotionally immobilized for so many years. She was being catapulted back into life, into feeling things again.
He relaxed his fist and let her hair fall free, his fingers warm on her neck. “Have you ever made love on a kitchen countertop?”
“No,” she said quickly, shaking his hand away.
“That’s a serious gap in your education. Lace.”
Before she could think of an argument, he’d picked her up by the waist and set her on the countertop. The chill from the tile penetrated the fabric of her slacks, and she reacted as though it were some kind of warning. She locked her legs together, shielding her breasts with her crossed arms.
“I’ve always thought the kitchen was the sexiest room in the house,” he said, ignoring her defensive posture. “There’s something basic and earthy about all the food, the stove, the sink ... the water.”
He reached around her and turned on the faucet, letting warm water bubble, trickle and run in a slow stream. Bev felt her stomach turning to liquid as she listened to it. Did he know she couldn’t resist running water? She closed her eyes, trying to ward off the answering warmth that was stirring inside her. “You’re not playing fair,” she complained faintly.
“I’m not playing.”
He ran his thumb nail slowly down the outside seam of her slacks. Bev felt her skin heat and blood race to the surface. A thrill of anticipation shot through her.
“Open your legs for me, babe,” he said softly. “I want to get close.”
Even the thought of opening her legs touched off an aching tightness in Bev’s thighs. She could hardly move for the sudden, debilitating effect it had on her muscles. It was crazy what he did to her. He put her in a trancelike state every time he got near her. Her mind went into neutral and her body went into fifth gear. She was all raw nerves and stripped-down senses, vibrantly tuned in to her surroundings on some primal level. She could feel his hand resting near her knee, she could smell the crisp tang of lemon and hear the warm tap water running slowly, whirlpooling in the sink before it gushed down the drain.
He covered her knee with a hand large enough to completely engulf it. “What’s it going to be, Lace? Are you going to unlock these beautiful legs anytime soon? Or are you waiting for me to do it?”
“No,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes and push his hand away. “Nobody’s unlocking these legs.” The effort it took to resist him drained every last bit of strength right out of her. His features were so mesmerizingly dark, so demonically handsome, she couldn’t have rallied the energy to hold him off again if she’d wanted to. She half expected him to pry her legs open himself and have his way with her right there in her kitchen. And maybe she half wanted him to! She didn’t know what she wanted anymore, or even what she should want. Her thoughts were scattered and confused and she was shaking with excitement. All the fight had gone out of her. Surely he could see what he was doing to her?
Whether he could see it or not, Sam didn’t act on it.
He shifted back, his hands still on her knees, and stared at her with powder-blue eyes that said he didn’t know what the hell to make of women in general, this one in particular.
“You want it too, don’t you?” His voice was as rough as sandpaper, the same whiskey rasp she remembered from their first meeting in the bar.
“I don’t know,” she said, completely sincere. She lifted a trembling hand to her throat. “Look at me, I’m shaking, I can hardly breathe. Maybe you should take me to a hospital.”
“There are places I’d like to take you, babe, but a hospital’s not one of them. Come here,” he said, reaching for her.
Bev’s arms shot up to stop him, but the rest of her body betrayed her. Her legs went tingly and weak as he hooked her by the back of the knees and brought her forward. She watched helplessly, knowing what was about to happen. A soft moan caught in her throat as he pressed into the V of her thighs and her legs opened automatically to accommodate him.
Cool air burned her warm, damp skin, and the sudden intimacy of the situation sent a shock of desire through her. She wanted desperately to slow him down, to regain some semblance of control, but she was dazed by the stormy excitement of it. The feelings intensified with every brush and jolt of his body against hers. And then, as his hips forced her legs to open even wider, the sensations became so sharp and exquisite, all she could do was gasp.
“God ... you are sweet.” He cradled her face in one of his huge hands, his fingers combing her hair as he bent to kiss her. Bev closed her eyes and felt his lips meld with hers in a throb of contact that deepened quickly into something heavier, hungrier. In the heat of the kiss he cupped her hips with his hands and scooped her forward. A low growl of pleasure came out of him as he brought her close, nestling her softness against his own burgeoning hardness.
Bev felt a shock wave roll over her. It flared up from that tender place where he was rocking against her, and then it ricocheted along her spine like the tremors of an earthquake. The sensation was fierce and dazzling, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. It was pure, raw, physical sensation, and she lost touch with everything else but the staggering pleasure. She hadn’t known that a physical sensation could seize hold of a woman so completely. No one had ever told her that the touch of a man’s clothed body could sap a woman of willpower and drug her with the need for more.
“Dance with me, babe,” he said softly, rocking against her. “Be my private dancer.”
He slid his hands up her thighs, and the stimulation was so intense that Bev nearly fainted. She felt herself swaying backward, heard her own throaty laughter as he caught her by the arms and jerked her forward. Her head fell back, exposing her throat, and she knew instinctively that it was a sign of surrender.
“Dance with you?” she whispered, crazy for the sting of his lips on her throat. A strange urgency gripped her as she felt the pressure of his hips against her legs, felt the sweet, hot ache of her own thighs. Each thrust of his hardened body promised a deeper, more vital connection. She yearned for that connection; she burned for it.
Bev understood what was happening to her now. Finally she understood it completely. The sheer intensity of her responses to him had swept away any confusion. Trapped in an unresponsive body, her physical needs had broken free. They’d taken control of her senses, demanding nothing less than total abandon. She was making up for lost time, for years of denial and deprivation.
“Yes, dance with me,” she breathed. “Now, here, wherever you want.” She wanted him to tear off her clothes and make urgent, violent love to her, on the countertop, on the table, the floor....
“Easy,” he said, gripping her arms and holding her back. “One thing at a time, Lace.”
Bev stared at him, confused. Her thoughts were spinning out of control. Had she been talking aloud? Had she actually said any of the things that were stampeding through her brain?
“The floor looks a little uncomfortable, but if you insist ...”
His voice was stripped raw with desire, and his eyes seemed like black pools rimme
d with silver. Taken altogether, he was the sexiest thing that Bev had ever seen. She felt a clutch of fearful excitement in her stomach, and she might easily have spun out of control again if it hadn’t been for the faint smile pulling at his lips. Did he think this whole thing was funny? Was he laughing at her?
“I didn’t actually mean the floor,” she said, averting her eyes. “One tends to use figures of speech when one gets ... carried away.”
He brought her chin up, forcing her to look at him. “I like it when you get carried away.”
The smile was gone, and his mouth was very near hers. For one fleeting second Bev wanted that fine, sensuous mouth on hers again—She tore her eyes away before the thought could take hold. On the floor? She’d begged a near stranger to have sex with her on the kitchen floor? Two naked people, writhing on her newly waxed linoleum? That wasn’t possible.
The absolute certainty she’d felt in the throes of wanting him were drummed into submission by the guilty jolts of her heart. The urgent heat of her passion was cooling rapidly, leaving her shaken at what she’d done, and increasingly bewildered by why she’d done it. She stared into his turbulent blue eyes and felt as though she were sinking in a quagmire of confusion again. She barely knew who he was. She barely knew who she was.
“What are we doing?” she said breathlessly. “I met you only yesterday.”
“Damn, I knew this was going to happen.” The smile tugged at his lips again, and his voice went husky. “Lace, baby ... don’t go decent on me now.”
“But I am decent.”
“Yeah, but not too decent. You’ve got a wild streak in you, and I love it.”
His fingers hardened on her face, refusing to let her turn away as he bent and brushed his lips over hers. “You wanted it, Lace,” he whispered against her mouth. “You wanted it wild. And you wanted it from me.”
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