He didn’t move, except to shudder in reflex at the endless rolling boom of the thunder.
“The storm’s not moving on.” Her trembling hand reached for him. She was wary, and turned on, and mystified all at once. “It’s too dangerous to stay out here.”
He gave a quick nod. “Thanks.” He stepped through the doorway, ducking sideways to avoid her hand when it hovered between them. She looked curiously at her numb fingers before giving them a shake as she bumped shut the door.
The past few minutes had happened so fast. Her mind was whirling with questions. Who was he? How had he appeared so suddenly? Normal sensations were slowly returning to her body, yet she continued to feel strange. Twitchy and uncertain. Her senses were heightened, but she’d also been numbed, as if her body chemistry had spun off-kilter and she hadn’t adjusted to the new reality.
Merely the storm, she told herself. You had the shit scared out of you.
They stood in the front hall, a fancy term for the narrow passageway beside the stairs. Karen’s stomach went hollow as she felt for the light switch. Futile. No wonder her reactions were off. The entire house had gone as dark and silent as the grave.
The man, too, but she was certain he’d react in an instant if he had to. Kind of eerie, that, especially when lightning flashed and she saw he’d been watching her all along. As if he could see in the dark.
She wet her lips. “Power’s gone out.”
He made a sound of agreement.
Her eyes were adjusting. “Stay there. I’ll get flashlights and candles.”
He took a big step out of her way when she moved off toward the backside of the house where the kitchen opened off the mudroom. Didn’t trust her not to bump into him in the dark?
“I’m Karen Jaffe.” She rummaged in a drawer, adding, “New in town,” in case he was a local who hadn’t heard of her. Which was pretty unlikely, since Kidder’s grapevine yielded gossip like the Loire produced vin. In her first month of residence, whether she’d gone to set up bank accounts or purchase a sack of oats at the feed store, she’d been greeted with, “Yep, I’ve heard about you. Bought the Hanson place, didja.”
“Tomzak,” her mystery guest said from the doorway right behind her. His deep voice went up her spine like a chill.
Karen swallowed. “You scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.” The wide, plank floors she’d adored at first sight creaked badly, but between the thunder and rain—never mind her racing pulse—she wasn’t hearing much else.
“Sorry. I’m Gabe Tomzak.”
Her fingers closed around the slender Maglite she kept in the kitchen junk drawer. She flicked it on, just able to resist an intense desire to shine it full in her guest’s face to get a good look at him. Instead, she followed the path of light to the mud room, where she kept a big, heavy-duty flashlight. Her mouth was as dry as mothballs.
She swallowed again. The sense of onrushing desire rose back up. “You from around here, Gabe?”
“Nope. St. Louis. I’m on … vacation. Staying at a friend’s cabin on Torch Lake.”
A few miles northeast of Karen’s property. She switched on the big flashlight and set it on the counter to illuminate the kitchen. “What were you doing out in the storm?”
Gabe stayed out of the wide arc of light. “It came up fast.”
“Yes.” Her fingers tightened as she swung the weaker beam toward him. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
He didn’t try to avoid her inspection as she played the light across his face. Strong bones, even features. Younger than she’d thought, maybe late twenties.
“I was caught out,” he said, looking at her with a blank expression. “Biking to town for groceries.”
While he seemed trustworthy, she was torn. Her intuition was sending up alarms. The man had a secret. Not a serial killer, turn-her-internal-organs-into-canapés kind of secret, but …
She needed to see more. When the beam of light lowered toward his chest, still heaving despite his otherwise calm, she thought that his eyes flickered. A trick of the light, she told herself, before she caught the fleeting smile.
Aha. He was brash.
Well, so was she. Instead of glancing the light across his body, she let it linger. A vintage Barking Irons tee stretched across his broad chest, topping a white thermal shirt with ragged sleeves. Faded blue jeans sculpted his thighs and a nicely full package. She stared for a couple of seconds, her body turning warm and liquid, before she dropped her eyes. He wore big, heavy work boots with thick rubber soles.
“Biking, huh,” she said. In those boots?
His hands flexed, hanging at his sides.
“I didn’t see a bike,” she added with a level calm to match his own, even though her libido was spiking off the charts.
“I left it behind when the lightning started. Metal.”
“The tires are rubber.” She moved the light across his boots.
He didn’t reply. Didn’t move. Except for a tightening in his abdomen, plainly evident under the thin skin of the wet shirts. And, again, the flicker of something secretive in his eyes.
She mused over the swell of his chest for another few seconds before a cold rivulet trickled down her nape and brought her back to the present. “We need to warm up.” Ignoring that she was already warm enough, she grabbed candles off the top of the refrigerator and set them near the flashlight. “I’ll go get towels. You’ll find matches in the—”
A bolt of lightning cracked nearby. They both flinched. “Damn,” Karen said. “The storm’s still so close.”
She leaned over the sink to see out the window. The flames were out. The rended tree smoked in the rain, raw and blackened where the branch had split away. The barn was barely visible through the downpour.
She snatched up the big flashlight and thrust it at Gabe. He fumbled, resisting. She pushed it on him. “Here, take this and go into the living room. There’s a fireplace. We can—”
The flashlight crackled, then sputtered out.
“Shoot,” she said. “I don’t know if I have more batteries.”
“It’s not—” He stopped.
She aimed the Maglite at him. “What?”
“Nothing.” He hit the back of the plastic flashlight casing against his palm, jiggling the batteries inside. “Nope. It’s dead.” He set the light on the counter. “Sorry.”
“Take this one.” She pressed the other flashlight on him.
“No, you keep it,” he said, thrusting it away as the beam blinked out. A spark shot between their hands.
Karen let out a squeak and jumped away. The flashlight hit the floor with a crack.
For a moment, beneath the drumming rain, they stood unmoving in a black and total silence. Then thunder rumbled and lightning crashed, still dangerously close. Every hair on Karen’s body rose in tingling warning. She’d seen in the flash of light that Gabe was shivering with tension, his eyes squeezed shut. Almost as if in pain.
Curious and curiouser.
He sucked in a breath and swayed away when she bent to retrieve the light. She straightened, tempted to touch a fingertip to his arm to see if another spark would fly.
But she didn’t have to. The air around him crackled with energy.
She felt her eyes growing wide. “What are you, some kind of lightning rod?”
2
The question hung between them, zinging like electricity coursing through a high tension wire.
“Not—that is, no.” Gabe paused. “It’s just the storm.”
Karen squinted at him. Her hands were shaking. She shoved them into the pockets of her windbreaker and swallowed until she was able to laugh. “I was only kidding.” She felt along the countertop for the candles. There were matches somewhere in the junk drawer, if she could find them in the dark. “What do you mean, ‘just the storm’?”
“The electricity in the air.”
“Right. Maybe we should rub against each other to light some sparks so I can see what I’m doing.”
/> “That might be more of a distraction than a help.” She couldn’t see his face, but there was a smile in his voice.
“I could use a distraction.” Especially that kind.
Even with all the weirdness going down, the chemical attraction between them was palpable. But when he didn’t take her up on the hint, she made herself focus on the task at hand. Her fingers skimmed over a cat leash, foil yogurt tops, a gazillion garbage-bag ties, and an unused hole punch before she found the box of kitchen matches.
“Here we go.” She struck a match, grateful for its meager illumination. If they weren’t going to grope in the dark, she’d rather be able to see.
Farmhouse kitchens were supposed to be roomy, but hers had bad space planning and too many doors. Gabe had drifted toward the round drop-leaf table butted up against the wall between the fridge and the wide opening that led to what the real-estate lady had called the back parlor. Karen had furnished the small space with a big comfy armchair, a secondhand couch, and bookshelves, making it the coziest room in the house.
“Take a candle,” she prompted. “You’re not combustible, are you?”
His features knotted into a grin that was half grimace. “Not so far.”
Not so far…? She tilted her candle and peered at him. “What is it you do in St. Louis?”
“I was a linesman for a utility company.”
“Hmm.” She laughed a little. “Makes sense. That’s why electricity likes you so much.”
“I guess you could say that.” He turned suddenly. “I heard something moving in the other room.”
“My roommates.” She lit another candle, sticking it in a water glass because she was out of candleholders. “Two cats,” she explained at his questioning sound. “Shadow is shy. She probably ran from your voice. Or if you heard scurrying, it might’ve been the mice.”
He looked back over his shoulder. “If you have mice, what good are the cats?”
“Bed warmers.”
“I’m a dog man. Bigger bed warmers.”
“But cats vibrate.” So do other things, she thought, thinking of The Probe. In Gabe’s hands, it would either short out or rev so fast she’d come like a burst dam. She felt herself blushing and was grateful that he probably couldn’t tell. “Anyway, you haven’t met Kong yet. He’s the king of the house, a twenty-pound fur ball.”
Gabe extended his arm toward the back parlor, trying to light the black hole. He seemed nervous about the cats.
She crept up behind him. “Looking for ghosts?”
At once, he moved off—practically bolted—into the darkness. He really didn’t want her near him. “I see the fireplace. Have you got wood?”
“There’s some stacked on the hearth and more in the mudroom off the kitchen. Here, catch.” She tossed him the box of matches. “Don’t forget to open the flue. I’m going upstairs to change. I’ll bring you back a towel.”
“Thanks.”
“For matches?”
“And for giving me shelter.”
She paused, resting a hand on the doorway molding. “You’re welcome. I suppose I could have sent you to the barn to bed down in the manger, but that’s far too Old Testament for me.”
There was a beat of awkward silence. He slicked back his hair. “I don’t plan on bedding down. The storm’s sure to subside.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.” She cocked her head to listen. Rain drummed the roof and pelted the windows. The violence of the lightning strikes—talk about biblical—had finally lessened, but the rolling thunder continued unabated.
“There are more candles on the mantel,” she said, before returning to the hall. A twisty shadow with reflective eyes shot up the staircase as she climbed. At the top, Shadow twined herself around Karen’s legs. She scooped up the cat one-handed, burbling soothing nonsense about the storm passing soon, as she went into the bedroom.
Shadow leaped away, disappearing under the bed. Karen lit a couple of votives on the dresser and plopped down with a jounce of the bedsprings.
Holy crap.
She had a capital M-A-N in the house. Who’d appeared out of nowhere. Gorgeous and vulnerable, veritably begging to be seduced out of his wet jeans.
She exhaled a shaky breath. Chafed her hands. Anticipation had made her giddy. This was Christmas morning and she was getting her reward for being very, very good the past months.
All right, there was one problem. She’d dropped a pretty broad hint about being open to a move, but he’d remained standoffish. And maybe, just maybe, he was a bit too freaked out by the storm.
No maybe about it, considering the way sparks flew from his fingertips. That was some weird juju.
Never mind. Karen sprang up, dismayed to see she’d left a damp, muddy patch on the quilt. Gabe’s arrival had made her forget that she was wet and dirty to the bone.
She stripped off the jacket, then stopped with her shirt raised mid-bra. Wet and dirty to the bone. Why had everything suddenly taken on a new meaning?
“Because you’re way too sexed up,” she whispered, ripping off the rest of her clothing. Granted, this was the perfect setup for a one-night stand. A rural farmhouse, a lonely divorcée, a sex-charged vacationer dropped from the sky. Cue the porn music!
She grabbed a candle and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower while the tank still held hot water. The lack of local prospects, combined with the strangeness of her secret life as a phone sex operator, had resulted in a fallow period in her love life. Even before that, she hadn’t been fully satisfied. Her ex-husband had declined from an attentive young groom to a La-Z-Boy potato who thought that five minutes of perfunctory foreplay was enough to get her in the mood. She’d muddled along, living a half life in the Jersey suburbs, until the day that Chad had come home to say that he’d fallen in love with a pharmaceutical sales rep named Jenna Christine. She was wannabe actress/model, of course, who thought that Chad was connected because he owned a Manhattan limo company and had the cell numbers of celebrities. What a ditz.
“Thank God for the ditz.” Karen stuck her head under the spray. Without Jenna Christine, she might never have had the nerve to change her life from top to bottom.
The doubter inside her spoke up. Like living with two cats in a dumpy farmhouse, being little more than a wannabe artist, is so much to brag about?
But I’m happy. That makes all the difference.
Happy except for …
Karen swiped a sudsy hand across her breasts. Her nipples sprang to diamond tips. The splash of hot water was luxurious and arousing, inspiring a liquid warmth inside of her.
She’d been celibate too long. Two, three, no—almost four months. In fact, she’d been laid only once since she’d moved to Kidder almost a year ago, and that had been a big mistake with the town cop.
A moan escaped her lips. Her palms slid over wet skin, cupping her breasts to lift them to the drumming water. Not enough. She ached for a man’s touch. A man who would lock his mouth around her nipples and draw pleasure through her body. Sensuous pleasure. Hot, irresistible, completely shocking pleasure.
Gabe, of the electric touch.
Who’d avoided her.
She would have to seduce him. Lure and provoke him with her feminine wiles.
“I can do that,” she whispered, ignoring the fact that she was a thirty-five-year-old with a “cute” face and childbearing hips that had never borne fruit, even when she’d suggested inventive food play to her ex. Ever dense, Chad had eaten the banana from the peel rather than out of her.
She stuck out her tongue and licked at the warm droplets that rained down. Would Gabe like it if she peeled off his wet clothes and slathered her tongue over his bare chest? She’d be mortified if he rejected her, but there had been that naughty gleam in his eyes.
He’d like it. And her hands would lower to his jeans. His cock would jump at her touch.
Yes. It could be so good.
Her fingers had dipped between her thighs. She parted herself, tilted her hips toward the
shower spray to cool the hot flesh. No use. She was wet, hungry, aching.
Bracing one arm against the wall, one foot up on the tub surround, she angled to stroke two fingers back and forth over her clit. Her inner muscles tightened spasmodically, searching, grasping. She extended a finger and slid it past the soft folds, into inflamed flesh. Pushing, pressing, rocking her hips, her upturned face running with water. Harder, faster.
She whimpered. Harder. Faster.
Her sharp cry of release bounced off the tile walls. She smothered it, gritting her teeth as a sweet warmth spread through her belly. Mmm. Nice enough to take the edge off, but not what she really needed.
Quickly, self-consciously, she rinsed and shut off the shower. Wrapped in a towel, she listened for Gabe from the top of the steps. The scent and crackle of a wood fire drifted through the darkness.
She bit her lip. Bringing herself off like that, with a stranger downstairs? Either she was a daring woman, boldly taking control of her own sexuality, or she was just plain crazy and more than a little desperate.
Back in the bedroom, she stepped into a pair of bikini panties and a thick flannel nightshirt that hung to her knees. White wooly socks to keep her feet warm. She hesitated over a pair of pajama pants. Bottoms or no bottoms? The latter might give him ideas.
She grinned. Definitely no bottoms.
Next was the top drawer for one final detail. She mused. A condom tucked in her shirt pocket? Now that was blatant.
She took the condom.
A woman in control.
* * *
“Here’s your towel—oh.”
Gabe had stripped. His clothing was spread out on the fieldstone hearth and draped from the mantel. He stood beside the fire, toga-wrapped in the throw from the couch.
Karen clutched the towel to her ribs.
He looked at her, utterly composed, his eyes the bright, hot blue of a summer sky. “I hope you don’t mind. I was really wet.”
“Me too.” And I still am.
“You’ve warmed up.”
She mumbled something unimportant, too dazzled to listen to herself. Additional candles had been placed all around, giving the room a glow straight out of a romantic movie. Gabe was certainly worthy of being the star of the show. All buff and manly, rippling with golden tan muscles sprinkled with brown fuzz. Only a confident guy could pull off a yellow toile toga with tassels.
Real Men Do It Better Page 2