She couldn’t hold back a wince.
“Poor pussy,” he said, lowering his head. “I’ll make it feel better.” Gently, he parted the inflamed lips with his tongue. His hands petted and comforted.
The warmth of his mouth felt wonderful. She sighed and spread her thighs, shivering a little at the erotic fever of his tongue spearing through her slick flesh. He hummed sweet praise and hot breath against her blossoming folds. She thought of florists, gently blowing into roses to open the petals.
She drew up her knees. Reached down to stroke his hair.
And there was a loud knock at the front door.
“Oh, God, not now.” She shoved Gabe away, when what she wanted was more of the healing power of his talented tongue.
The knocking had become pounding. A male voice shouted for her. “Karen? Are you home?”
“Damn it.” She scrambled to her feet, gathering Gabe’s clothes off the hearth in one fell swoop, and thrusting them into his arms. “It’s Officer Dan. Go upstairs.”
“What’s an Officer Dan?”
“The town cop. We—we’re friendly.” She yanked at the nightshirt that had become a wrinkled flannel obi around her waist. “I’m sure he’s here to check on me. I’ll get rid of him as fast as I can, but he can’t see you here.”
Gabe’s shoulders broadened. “Why not?”
“Don’t get territorial on me.” She whipped the toile throw off the floor. “This is a small town. I’d rather keep my private life private.” She turned toward the front hall and hollered, “Coming!”
Gabe licked her ear. “Is that what you say to all the guys?”
Ticklish. She batted at him before the shiver became reckless desire. “Please, go upstairs. And for Pete’s sake, pull up your shorts.”
Even though Officer Dan continued knocking, she paused, falling into a brief reverie as she watched Gabe climb the steps with his pale moon showing, as he fumbled with the tangle of clothing and the briefs down around his knees. He had a fine, firm ass. A delectable ass. What a shame that they had so little time to become acquainted.
“Hello, hello? Karen?”
“Right,” she said. “The door.” Still, she hovered at the bottom of the steps, calling sotto voce, “My room is the one on the left. Make yourself at home.”
The image of Gabe waiting for her naked in bed was so strong she had to blink several times to bring herself down to the reality of Officer Dan O’Shanahan standing on her porch, turned out for emergency duty in his blue uniform with visor cap. He really liked that uniform, with its badges and equipment and accompanying air of authority.
She said hello. “Sorry I took so long. I was—” Indisposed was not the word, when she’d been very disposed to appreciate every flick and swirl of Gabe’s tongue.
The police officer looked at her tousled hair, bare legs, and the crumpled nightshirt. “In bed, were you?”
Suddenly she became all too aware of the slick juices leaking out of her. She squeezed her thighs together, forgetting to answer when a telltale trickle still managed to work its way south.
“I heard the storm was real wicked out this way.” Officer Dan surveyed her yard. “Looks like the lightning hit you good. You’ve got a big branch down. The power’s out, heh?”
“So’s the phone.” She stopped, nervously smoothing the shirt. “Isn’t everyone’s?”
“Must be only along this stretch of road.” Officer Dan stepped past her to go inside, craning and swiveling as he checked out the house. He saw the candle stubs. “Haven’t you got flashlights?”
“Actually, yes, but the batteries went out.” Karen was remembering all over again why her fling with the officer had been such a mistake. He’d assumed their one foray into sex was permission to take over her life. And since he was one of those guys who is happiest when he’s busy being useful, what had seemed sweet and thoughtful at the start quickly became bossy and intrusive. Extrication had been complicated. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, since his intentions were good; but she’d also been too embarrassed to admit that she’d gone to bed with him only because phone sex had given her an itch that he’d been handy to scratch.
Officer Dan marched into the kitchen and picked up the large flashlight. He turned it on and the beam cut through the darkness. “Huh, it’s working now.”
He walked to the doorway, holding the light up by his shoulder to illuminate the cozy parlor and dying fire. “How are you fixed for wood? I can carry some in for you, in case the electric stays out.”
Karen cringed. The room reeked of sex, even with the masking scent of wood smoke in the air. The number of dishes on the coffee table were another dead giveaway. “Thank you, but I’m fine.” Firmly, she took the flashlight from his hand.
He nudged too close, examining her face in his forthright way. Probably hoping for signs she’d become a damsel in distress. She prayed he wouldn’t pick up on the braless signal instead.
“I don’t like you being out here all alone.”
Her smile was a reflex. “A little thunder and lightning can’t hurt me.”
Officer Dan frowned. He was suspicious. “I found a bike on the side of the road, not too far away. Didn’t appear to have been struck or in an accident, so that means there’s a stranger wandering out there somewhere. He didn’t show up here, did he? I should go and check out your barn.”
Karen shrugged. “If someone was there, he’d be welcome to the shelter.”
“But you’re an attractive woman, all alone…”
She quelled him with a look. They’d been over this.
Officer Dan clamped his jaw. His nostrils flared.
“Thank you for the concern,” she said carefully, “but there’s nothing to—” A soft thud from upstairs interrupted her dismissal.
“The cats,” she said, not very subtly urging him to the door. “I’d better go see what they’re up to.”
“You’re sure there’s nothing you need?”
Need? That answer would be an emphatic no. She was finally completely satisfied.
“Don’t worry about me. Go take care of the little old ladies and maybe a few of the younger ones, too.”
Determinedly, she waved him off. Officer Dan was considered a catch around town. He was decent, ultra-competent, even handsome in a fortyish, thickening-around-the-waist way. He also had an ex-wife, two kids, an on-call work schedule, and an embattled township board to pacify. Too many complications for Karen, when she was looking for—for—
Peace and quiet, the freedom to work without being hassled. Or so she’d been saying.
Surely one rousing electric fuck hadn’t changed that, no matter how eager she was to get upstairs to Gabe.
5
Gabe had become accustomed to not feeling like himself. After the lightning strike, when he’d first discovered his freak-show abilities and the doctors were equally baffled and skeptical about his apparent electromagnetic sensitivity, his family had reassured him that he wasn’t changed in any way that was important. They said his affliction would pass with time, and meanwhile he was handy to keep around as a night light and fire starter.
But as the days and weeks went by, the burn marks faded, and still he remained a veritable lightning rod, he’d begun to fear that he might never be normal again. Of course, his family was accepting. They loved him.
The rest of the world was different. There, he was a medical oddity. A nuisance. Even a danger.
The getaway at a friend’s hunting cabin was supposed to clear his head. He’d intended to come to grips with the facts, strange as they were, and make a decision about how to proceed. What to do with the rest of his life.
Now, he also had to figure out what to do with Karen Jaffe.
Other than that …
She trotted up the stairs with a beam of light bouncing before her, and entered the bedroom. “The flashlight’s working again.”
Gabe put out his hand. He might as well show her what it was like, being him.
She t
urned over the flashlight, watching curiously as the beam flickered, then died. “Wow.”
“Something in my body chemistry reacts with batteries and electrical systems. Which is why your watch and clock stopped. I can’t even use a remote control.”
“That’s got to be a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah.” The darkness felt safe to him. He’d become used to that, too. “I can’t drive either. Or even ride in a car for very long.”
“For real?”
“Not reliably. The systems don’t conk out as quickly as flashlight batteries do, but sooner or later they’ll malfunction. Makes it almost impossible to get around.”
Her eyes were wide, all iris black in the unlit room. “What about airplanes?”
“I haven’t dared try.”
“Then how did you get to Iowa?”
“Bus. I found out that if I sit in the back, buses are good, even for a long trip. Otherwise, I bike or walk everywhere I want to go.”
She seemed fascinated by his quirks, as most were, but not to the point that he felt like she’d paid her buck to examine a sideshow exhibit. “A bike’s got metal parts,” she pointed out. “But I did notice how you wouldn’t pick up that soup spoon.”
“I’m not always this sensitive,” he explained. “Sparks don’t shoot from my fingers on a daily basis. Lightning storms bring it out in me—all that electricity in the air. That’s when I really have to watch myself.”
She stood unmoving beside the bed. He wanted to reach for her, but he couldn’t, even now. Especially now. The current was still running inside him. He could feel the higher voltage in his prickling hair, his sensitive skin, the way his balls had drawn tight into his body at the thought of laying his hands on her luscious body once more.
“Oh. Okay.” She put the flashlight on the bedside table, then she lifted the covers and slid inside.
He balanced on the far edge.
After a moment’s hesitation, she rolled toward him, splaying a hand over his ribs. A small shock passed between them, subsiding to a staticky warmth, as her palm coasted upward across his chest. “So when you said I was your first…?”
“My first during a storm.” He’d had a girlfriend at the time of the accident. She’d been great during his recovery, but the lingering aftereffects had alarmed her. When he’d seen how skittish she’d become around him, he’d done what she was too nice to do and ended the relationship.
Since then, with the few women he’d approached—or had been approached by—he was a curiosity. The worst was the woman who’d boasted in his favorite local bar about fucking the neighborhood freak.
Karen wasn’t like that, but Gabe told himself to expect nothing from her beyond tonight. For all he knew, she’d had sex with him only to satisfy a kink in herself.
“Does that give me a special status?” Humming with pleasure, she stretched out alongside him. Her pinkie ticked his nipple. “I must at least qualify as legend, since I took a blow from Thor’s hammer and lived to tell. I’m sort of the Energizer Bunny of sexual relations.”
“Shut up.” They laughed while they kissed. He found great delight in the simple gestures of being able to run a hand along her arm, sink it into her thick, brown hair. He kissed her chin, her nose. Maybe …
No. He would just enjoy her while he could.
Her fingers had found the scar on his shoulder from the accident, but she asked no questions. Just as well. He remembered little of the incident, except the sudden shock and a momentary sense of being lit up and torched from the inside out, then waking a day later in the hospital. The lightning had come out his feet. His soles had been burned so badly he hadn’t walked for weeks.
Karen sat up and slipped off her nightshirt, then snuggled in again. “Umm,” she said, nosing against his shoulder, smiling with her eyes closed.
He kissed them. Her lashes fluttered. “Who was at the door?”
“Office Dan, checking up on me. He’s so predictable. Not,” she added, “that I didn’t appreciate it, except for the bad timing.” Even in the dark, he could see the glow her face took on, thinking about what the cop had interrupted.
“He’s got a thing for you?”
“How’d you guess?” She thumped him in the chest with a fist. “We heard you up here, you know. Did you purposely make noise?”
“That was Kong, I swear. He jumped off the bed when I got on.” Gabe reflected. “Why? Did Officer Dan figure out that you had a man in your bed?”
“He’s suspicious. But that doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, yeah? You seemed pretty set on hiding me.”
“Like I said, I’m not fond of being an object of curiosity for the tongue waggers. But I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings. If it bothers you, next time you can wave your naked wing-wang out the window and—” She stopped abruptly and bit at her lower lip. “I don’t mean to assume that there will be a next time. Probably not.” She worried the lip some more. The bridge of her nose creased as she squinted at him. “Right?”
“Right.” He hadn’t realized how badly he wanted the other option until right then. Karen was quirky, unpretentious, independent, and damned cute. Aside from the mind-blowing sex, he hadn’t enjoyed a woman’s company this much in months. Best of all, she’d accepted him, not without question, but certainly without making him feel like a Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit. Even in the most incredible of circumstances.
She was a rare find. He could easily come to treasure her.
But he’d withdrawn into himself since the accident. It wasn’t easy to put an offer out there.
“Unless…,” he said.
Karen looked up. Her body, so warm and pliable, stiffened.
“Unless we—you know. See more of each other.” When she hesitated, still brittle, he backpedaled, saying fuck fuck fuck in his mind. “While I’m here, anyhow. A temporary arrangement.”
“Temporary.” The way she mulled the word, with her lashes lowered, he couldn’t tell whether she loved or hated the idea.
But what woman wanted a clock-stopping, battery-frying, jobless bum around on a permanent basis?
“I can do temporary,” she said, and reached between his legs.
Despite the sense of disappointment—of loss—his body sprang to life. He throbbed, the electric pulses gathering in the tip of his cock as she rubbed and squeezed through his briefs. In no time, without the extra charge of the lightning storm to blame, he felt as if he could shoot a thousand volts into her when he came. Her already tender pussy couldn’t take that—not a second time.
“Let me.” He removed her hands from his dick and levered them up above her head while nudging her onto her back. The prickly heat of his body blanketed hers. She arched against his weight. Her soft groan welcomed his mouth to her breasts as he nipped and tugged, rolling his face between the full orbs, going from one pebbled nipple to the other.
She tugged against his restraint, but he wouldn’t let go. With his mouth and delving tongue, he hushed her complaints. She responded by wrapping her legs around him, thighs spread wide apart as she squirmed into fiery contact with the ridge of his erection. Making small whimpering sounds, she rubbed against him. Tempting him to take her. Teasing him when he refused.
He ran his tongue over her lips. “Minx.”
“I don’t like being held down in place. I need freedom to move.”
“No? I bet I can make you like it so much you’ll stay exactly where I put you.”
She huffed. “Yeah?”
“Easy,” he boasted.
Her eyes gleamed. “Put your money where your mouth is.”
“Not a good idea, unless you want to be squeezing coins into your panties for the next week.”
She laughed, flashing teeth. “At least I’d always be able to make change.” Her thighs squeezed his hips. “You’re something else, Gabe Tomzak. Who knew Thor would be such a wise-ass?”
He began kissing a path to her navel. She quivered when he tongued it, then sucked love bites int
o the soft skin of her belly. “Who knew a mere mortal woman could hurl thunderbolts with the best of them?”
She purred, coiling against him. “I don’t know about hurling them. But I am a pretty good catcher.”
Raindrops pattered the roof. He used a light touch to part her swollen labia, easing his way with the liquid that had collected there like morning dew. “You sting, don’t you?” He traced the small wet opening. “Right here.” Inserted a finger with a ticklish delicacy. The slick walls tightened. “And inside.”
She nodded, tilting her head back as a tremor emanated outward from her core. He’d released her hands, but all she’d done was grab fistfuls of her pillow while sensations rippled through her, making her body twist and turn and arch, every movement a plea for more.
“I can help you.” He slid lower, between her thighs, put his hands under her bottom, lifted her to his mouth, and puffed a warm breath against her reddened sex. “I’ll make you feel better.”
She gritted her teeth. “Then your tongue isn’t a conductor? Sure felt like it when we were kissing.”
He licked her. “How was that?”
Her body softened. “That was wonderful.”
“And this?” He licked again, letting his tongue slowly unfurl inside her.
“Mmm.”
“How about…” The tip of his tongue teased at her clit before he enfolded the nub in a gentle, sucking kiss.
Her ass had flinched in his hands. “That,” she said, rising up a little as her muscles clenched. “Umm, m’God. I really felt that. But how am I supposed to know what’s electricity and what’s natural chemistry? Is there any difference?”
A warm pleasure opened in Gabe’s heart, putting out searching tendrils of wonder and gratitude. He kissed the inside of Karen’s thigh, where her skin was satiny smooth. This woman is something special. She’d known him for mere hours and already she’d made him believe that maybe he didn’t have to be defined by his condition, that what they were experiencing might be a true attraction. Even something a little like love.
“With us, there may not be a difference.” He put his mouth on her, wanting to bestow all the bliss she deserved, but the low-level current had seemingly gained energy from his emotion. He could do nothing to stop it as the charge passed through his tongue into her open, defenseless body. She yipped and slammed her fists down on the bed.
Real Men Do It Better Page 5