Show & Tell

by Rhonda Nelson

  There was something so elemental, so raw and intense when it came to sex. Any pent-up emotion could be vented, exorcised, and the simple act made her feel more human, more connected, than any other.

  And it had been too long, Savannah thought with a despondent sigh. She imagined the combined factors of sexual deprivation and Knox were the reason she was so rabidly horny now. She hadn’t made love since Gib.

  Initially she’d been too hurt to even consider building a relationship with another man. Then once she’d gotten past that point, her career had begun to take off and there simply hadn’t been time.

  Savannah didn’t do casual sex. In addition to it not being safe, there was nothing casual about sharing your body with another person. At least, not for her. Her character had not been formed for that increasingly popular pastime and she’d just as soon go without.

  Until now.

  Now she’d become the proverbial bitch in heat. She wanted Knox—had always wanted Knox—but had managed to keep the attraction under control by avoiding him as much as possible and by generally striving to be the most unpleasant person on the face of the planet anytime he was around.

  But she couldn’t do that now. They were here, sharing a room, and while he might sound like Gib, and occasionally act like Gib, Savannah knew her desire to dislike Knox had been more of a defense mechanism than anything else. Just a way to prevent herself from liking him because she didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.

  Knox chose that particular moment to open the bathroom door. Scented steam billowed from behind him as he strolled in all his almost-naked glory to the bed to retrieve his clean kurta. He’d anchored a bath sheet loosely about his waist and a few small droplets of water skidded down the bumpy planes of his ridged abdomen. An inverted triangle of dark brown hair dusted his chest and arrowed into a slim line that bisected that washboard abdomen and disappeared beneath the line of his towel.

  His muscular legs and arms were covered in the same smattering of hair, and had it continued around to his back like a pelt, Savannah might have stood a prayer of not melting into a puddle of panting female at the mere sight of his practically naked body.

  But it didn’t.

  He was perfect, damn him, and she hungered for him as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks and he were a decadent slab of prime rib.

  She swallowed and did her best to rid her expression of any lingering lust. “You’ve been in there forever. I-is there any hot water left?” She strove for a put-out tone, but the sound was more breathless than irritated.

  “Yeah,” he said distractedly. His brow puckered and he lifted the kurta from the bed, tossed it aside and glanced at the floor. He bent over and checked beneath the bed skirt, and then paused, seemingly at a loss. He settled his hands at his hips, causing every well-formed muscle to ripple invitingly. Particularly his pecs. Savannah had always been a sucker for a gorgeous set of pecs.

  “Have you lost something?” Savannah asked.

  “Yeah. My underwear. Have you seen them?”

  He knew perfectly well that they weren’t allowed to wear any underwear. He was simply trying to annoy her, to remind her that he wouldn’t be wearing any. Savannah glanced to the prominent bulge beneath his towel and sighed. As if she’d need reminding.

  “No, sorry. I haven’t.” She smiled sweetly. “I seem to have lost mine as well. While you’re looking for yours, why don’t you be a dear and look for mine, too?”

  Surprised, his patently perplexed expression vanished and he slowly looked up. A playful gleam suddenly lit his gaze. “Sure. I’d be happy to. Er…wanna tell me what they look like?”

  Uh-oh. This wasn’t exactly the scenario she’d hoped for. For some reason, she’d thought he’d feign sudden inspiration and laughingly remember the no-undergarment rule. She should have known better. He rarely resisted a challenge.

  Still Knox needed to know whom he was dealing with, and this seemed to be as good a way as any to teach him, Savannah decided, warming to her tact.

  “They’re black silk. There’s not much to them, barely a scrap of fabric. You might have a hard time finding them.”

  Knox’s eyes darkened and she watched the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed. Feeling decidedly triumphant, Savannah stood and started toward the bathroom.

  “Black silk, eh?” Knox said, his voice somewhat rusty. “Are there, uh, any distinguishing features? Anything that would make them more recognizable?”

  Savannah paused with her hand on the doorknob and turned around. Her amused you’re-playing-with-fire gaze met his and held it. “Yeah. They’re thong underwear. Black lace with little black pearls.”

  Silence thundered between them at this glib description, then, his eyes never leaving hers, Knox casually dropped his towel. The sheer power—utter perfection and beauty—of his nude body rooted Savannah to the floor.

  Seeing an outline of his penis hadn’t prepared her for the actual article. He was only semiaroused, yet huge and proud—as he most certainly had every right to be—and every cell in her body responded to the blatantly virile part of him. She couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to.

  Knox picked up the kurta and, with a sexy grin, said, “Pity we can’t wear underwear this weekend. I’d love to get a peek at that particular pair of panties. If you find them, why don’t you show them to me?” He paused and his voice lowered to a more intimate level, sending a chorus of shivers down her spine. “I’ll bet you look great in them.”

  Savannah determinedly ignored her initial impulse, which was to walk across the room, drop to her knees and suck him dry. Another talent of hers, if she did say so herself.

  However, she would not let him win this little scene.

  She’d been prepared for a battle royal and the smug devil thought he’d gotten the better of her with this little display. He’d best think again. She’d seen a dick before. Granted not one as splendidly formed as his, but she was familiar enough with the male anatomy not to look like the shocked little virgin he apparently expected.

  Savannah shot him a confident grin. “Not nearly as good as I look out of them.”

  With an exaggerated swing of her hips, she sauntered into the bathroom and shut the door.

  Then she ran her bath, settled into the hot fragrant water, and imagined a naked Knox on the other side of the door…imagined everything she’d ever wanted to do with him and to him and everything she’d ever wanted him to do to her….

  With a frustrated groan of the hopelessly, futilely aroused, she spread her thighs, parted her curls and, with a whimper of satisfaction…pulled a Chuck.

  7

  SAVANNAH APPEARED considerably less tense after her bath, Knox noted. Her movements were languid, leisurely and there was something altogether relaxed about her. She’d towel-dried her hair and the blue-black locks curled madly around her face, sprouting up in chaotic disarray all over her head like little question marks. She looked charmingly unkempt as always. He grinned. Even wet, she looked messy. She’d removed her makeup and her pale skin glowed with health and vitality. Her cheeks held a rosy hue and that plump bottom lip looked a little swollen, as though she’d been chewing on it.

  Knox felt his eyes narrow and suspiciously considered her once more.

  Relaxed, rosy and a swollen bottom lip. She’d obviously had more than a bath, Knox realized, astonished. He knew perfectly well what a woman looked like after release and clearly, by the sated look of her, she’d had a damn good one. He didn’t know whether to be irritated or pleased. Irritated because he would have gladly taken care of her—would have loved to have brought her to climax—or pleased because she’d been so hot for him she’d had to take care of herself.

  He decided to be pleased and covertly considered her once more. It was a rare woman who felt comfortable enough with her body to tend to her own needs. In his experience, women loved to be touched but didn’t necessarily enjoy touching themselves. Clearly Savannah didn’t suffer from any such inhibition. A sna
ke of heat writhed through his belly at the thought. But that’s the kind of woman she was. She would never rely solely on a man to get what she wanted, Knox thought with reluctant admiration. She had to be the most self-reliant woman he’d ever known.

  Once again Knox wondered about her past. Just who exactly was Savannah Reeves? What had made her so independent, so determined to be an island unto herself? What had made her into this distrustful, autonomic loner? He knew absolutely nothing about her, he realized. Where she’d grown up, whether or not she had any brothers and sisters—nothing.

  What was her story? he wondered, and felt a familiar nudge. Knox didn’t know, but he firmly intended to find out before this weekend was up. Right now, however, they had other issues to deal with.

  Like dinner.

  A wonderful spread complete with all the romantic trimmings had arrived just moments before she’d walked out of the bathroom and distracted him. Knox had had a moment to peruse the instructions and he strongly suspected that Savannah would not enjoy their next assignment.

  Which meant he wouldn’t either because he would starve.

  “Did you enjoy your bath?” Knox asked lightly.

  Savannah pilfered through her toiletries until she located a bottle of moisturizer, uncapped the lid and poured a little into the palm of her hand, then began to massage the cream onto her face and neck. “Immensely,” she all but sighed. “That’s a great tub.”

  “Yeah, it is,” he agreed, imagining her naked in it, her little fingers nestled in her curls and her head thrown back in orgasmic wonder.

  Savannah’s gaze lit upon the dining cart and a smile bloomed on her slightly swollen lips. “Oh, good. The food’s here. I’m starving.”

  Knox smiled knowingly. He’d just bet she was. Having a bone-melting climax typically did that to a person. Still, he had a feeling she was about to lose her appetite.

  Savannah made her way across the room and inspected their meal. She took a deep breath, savoring the hickory scent of grilled steak tips with sautéed mushrooms, au gratin potatoes and steamed asparagus. “Oh, this looks heavenly,” she groaned with pleasure.

  Wondering how long it would take her to figure out what was wrong with the heavenly meal, Knox started to count. One…

  She moved things around on the tray. “I love steak. And this looks wonderful.”

  Two…

  “And I haven’t had it in a long time. What a treat.” Her brow wrinkled. “Hey, where’s the—”

  Three.

  “—silverware?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  Her head jerked up and her delighted expression vanished. “What?”

  “There isn’t any,” Knox repeated. He rattled the instructions for their meal in his hand meaningfully. “Here’re our instructions. Would you like to read them yourself or would you rather I summarize them for you?”

  Predictably, Savannah marched across and the room and snatched the sheet from his hand. “I’ll read them myself, thank you.”

  Three beats passed before she’d gotten past the mystical mumbo jumbo and found out why they didn’t have any utensils. Her outraged gasp sounded, and then she glared at Knox as though it were his fault. As though this were his idea. Hell, he hadn’t made the rules.

  “Feed each other?” she growled with a lethally icy look. “It’s not enough that you’ve hauled me across the country to this godforsaken workshop, that I’ve had your tongue down my throat all blessed day, and now—now—if I want to have anything to eat it has to come from your fingers?” she asked incredulously. Those chilly blue eyes blasted him with another arctic look. She crossed her arms over her chest and, with a grim disbelieving look, she shook her head. “This is insane and is so not going to happen.”

  Knox shrugged. “I thought it sounded fun.”

  She snorted. “You would.”

  “And I’m hungry.”

  She hugged her arms closer around her middle and gazed longingly at the tray. “I was.”

  Knox paused, then said, “I agree that the shared bath was an unreasonable expectation, one I would have done had you been willing. But surely we could at least make an effort with this exercise.” He lifted a shoulder. “Like you said, we’ve been kissing all day. How could me feeding you be any more personal? We’ve got to participate in as many of these exercises as we comfortably can to lend credibility to our story, to do our best work. What’s the big deal?”

  Indecision flashed in her eyes. She fidgeted and glanced back at the dining cart with another woebegone look. He knew he had her when her stomach rumbled. Knox suppressed a triumphant grin.

  “Oh, all right,” she finally relented. “But no funny stuff, Knox. I’m hungry. I want to eat, unblock a few chakras and go to bed.”

  Savannah pivoted, stalked back to the dining cart and swiftly began to move the plates and glasses onto the table. She didn’t bother with the fresh-cut flowers and bent over and extinguished the candle with a determined breath.

  Knox waited until she’d finished arranging things to her satisfaction and then joined her at the table. “What would you like to start with?”

  “Oh, no,” she said with a calculating grin. “I’ll feed you a bite first, that way you’ll understand exactly how I want you to feed me.”

  Knox knew he was going to enjoy this too much not to be at least a little accommodating. He nodded. “Fine.”

  Her cheeks puffed as she exhaled mightily. “So, what do you want to start with?”

  “Steak.”

  Savannah picked up a steak tip. “Okay. Open up.”

  Knox did. Her fingers stopped just shy of his lips and she tossed it into his mouth so hard it bounced off the back of his throat and almost back out of his mouth. Knox managed to hang on to it and, smiling at her ingenuity, chewed the tasty morsel. This was not going as he’d planned. Next she’d be catapulting potatoes into his mouth and throwing asparagus at him like javelins.

  And she looked so damned pleased with herself, Knox thought. Those clear blue orbs sparkled with unrepentant laughter.

  Knox finally swallowed, cleared his throat and gave her a droll look. “I’ll need to see you balance a ball on your nose before I feed you like a seal.”

  Tongue in cheek, her lips twitched. “I didn’t mean to throw it quite s-so hard.”

  “Right.” It was his turn. He selected a steak tip and held it up for her inspection. “Ready?”

  She nodded and hesitantly opened her mouth. Knox fed her the bite without incident and was careful not to let his fingers linger. He wanted her at ease, not guarded. This, too, was another trust builder and Savannah so desperately needed to learn to trust someone.

  Knox had decided that person should be him.

  He didn’t know when he’d come to the decision or, for that matter, even why. But he wanted to be worthy of her trust. Wanted to be the person who brought her out of her isolated existence. He supposed he’d fully realized the extent of her distrustful nature this afternoon when they’d been practicing another faith-building exercise. It should have been simple. All Savannah had to do was stand in front of him, fall backward and allow Knox to catch her.

  She couldn’t do it.

  Just as she’d start to fall backward, she’d abruptly stop and right herself. They practiced over and over again. But for all that work, she still hadn’t been able to trust him enough to catch her. As a result, they were supposed to practice that exercise tonight, too. An idea occurred to him.

  “Why don’t we look at that chakra homework while we’re eating dinner?” he asked.

  Savannah nodded. “That’s a good idea. Don’t touch anything. I’ll get the book.”

  She double-timed it back and opened the volume to the appropriate page. “Give me another bite of steak, would you?” she said as she perused the page.

  She absently opened her mouth for three more bites before Knox finally laughed and said, “Hey, what about me?”

  Distracted, Savannah picked up a bite of steak a
nd placed it on his tongue, then unwittingly licked her fingers.

  His dick jerked beneath the kurta.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll pass this book back and forth. I’ll start with the first one, which is the perineum chakra or root chakra,” she said. “Then you can take—”

  “Er…why don’t we skip that one?” Knox suggested. He knew all he needed to know about that particular chakra.

  “Consider the story, tight-ass,” she said with an infuriating little grin. “We’d hate to mislead our readers by not having all the facts.”

  “I’m not a tight-ass,” Knox growled.

  She grinned. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

  “I’m driven. That doesn’t make me a tight-ass—it makes me a professional.”

  She tsked under her breath. “A professional wouldn’t balk at learning about his root chakra…unless he was a tight-ass.”

  Knox heaved a mighty sigh. “Fine. Gimme some potatoes, would you?”

  Savannah tensed but loaded the requested side dish onto a couple of fingers and gave him a bite. Knox wrapped his lips around her fingers, sucked the potatoes off and sighed with satisfaction. “Mmm,” he groaned. “Those are good. Want some?” he asked innocently.

  Her shoulders rounded and she shot him a put-upon look. “Oh, hell. Why not? Yes,” she sighed. “I do.”

  Knox curved a couple of fingers and scooped up a generous bite and ladled it into her mouth. Her eyes rounded with delighted wonder. “Oh,” she said thickly. And then, “Ohh, these are great. More, more.”

  Laughing, Knox scooped up another helping and she wasn’t so quick to avoid his fingers this time. She actually licked off a hunk of cheese that she’d missed on the first go around from his index finger. The slide of that tongue felt great and it didn’t take much imagination to picture her lips wrapped around another prominent part of his anatomy. Still, she’d just begun to marginally relax, so Knox tried to appear unaffected.