It was crazy. She was a rising star in an impossibly tough industry. She brought fans to their feet every night and this very evening she was to be awarded a prestigious plaque. She was loaded with talent, she was pretty:yet the insecure little girl he'd once known still lurked inside of her.
He rose to his feet, took her by the shoulders and turned her back to face the mirror. The top of her head barely reached the hollow of his throat and she looked dainty and feminine against his more muscular frame. Reaching around, he smoothed her top from just beneath her breasts to the exquisite garment's hem. "Trust me," he said in a low voice as the material pulled tight against her tits, "these are sweeter than sugar. There's not a man on earth is ever gonna mistake you for a boy." The satin under his hands was slippery smooth, the flesh beneath that warm and alive. He watched his hands in the mirror as if they belonged to someone else as they cupped the slight bottom swells, watched his thumbs as they swept like windshield wiper blades from her outside curves to her nipples. He observed those nipples shoot from soft quiescence to hard little bullets beneath the luxurious red fabric. "Not any man with blood in his veins," he reiterated, pressing the stiff crests between the sides of his index finger and the pads of his thumbs.
Her head lolled against his chest and her eyes grew sleepy-lazy as they stared in the mirror at the hands on her breasts. He watched her watching.
Then his brain belatedly kicked in.What the hell are you doing?
He jerked his big paws to her upper arms and stepped back, holding her steady when she staggered at the removal of the support that had been propping her up.
He cleared his throat. "So, we just about done here? It's getting late." He raised his voice. "How about you, Nell? You almost ready to go?" A couple of women had come and gone while they'd been back in this corner, but had he even checked to see if anyone was around before he'd manhandled her? Hell, no.
Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!God, he was a moron.
He did his best to make up for it, however, acting cool and businesslike as he encouraged the women to speed up the remainder of their try-ons, pay for their purchases and climb in the cab he'd called to take them back to the arena. But he had his doubts that his sudden professionalism fooled anyone. He couldn't really say about Peej, he supposed, since she was avoiding eye contact with him as assiduously as he was avoiding it with her. But Nell, whom he'd learned over the course of the day might be quiet but was far from meek and sure as hell didn't lack for intelligence, had a speculative gleam in her eyes whenever she looked at either of them.
Traffic was a nightmare and no one said a word to alleviate the tension inside the taxi as it crawled down the freeway. When they finally pulled up to the tour bus P.J. turned to him and coolly addressed a point beyond his left shoulder. "I'd like you to help take this stuff inside, then come with me to my dressing room."
He did as she asked but walking by her side toward the arena a short while later, he didn't hold out much hope for a pleasant conversation once they reached their destination. They were both silent at the moment, but he had no doubt that P.J. would have plenty to say once they hit her dressing room. And he was pretty sure what he was going to hear.
Hit the road, Jack-or whatever the country equivalent was.
Her posture was stiff as she stopped before the door to her room. Opening it, she waved him in like a grande dame. Gut roiling, he complied with her gesture and she closed the door behind them. Certain that this was the end, he abruptly realized that he wasn't even remotely ready to call this assignment-or whatever was happening between them-quits.
He was even less prepared for her to leap on him, wrap her legs around his waist and rock her mouth over his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
How Faith Hill, Priscilla Jayne and Shania Twain Stay Slender. And How You Can, Too!
P.J. PLUNGED HER HANDS into Jared's hair, held him fast and kissed him as if her life depended on it. And maybe it did, because she'd never felt quite this way-all hot blood, pounding pulses and nerve endings that arced and snapped like a downed power line. Ever since that ended-way-too-soon smooch in the salon she'd been primed. Beyond primed, really. And that business in front of the mirror had merely been gasoline on the fire.
In public.Dear God, she'd been ready and willing to get naked and do the hump-de-hump with Jared Hamilton, the star of her girlhood dreams, in the middle of an upscale department store. His sexual experience was clearly lightyears beyond her own.
But, man, oh, man, was she ever prepared to play catch-up!
He ripped his mouth free. "Wait:no:wait," he panted. "We can't do this." But his hands gripping her bottom flexed and kneaded and pulled her in, undulating her against a hard-as-hickory baton that pushed beneath her rucked-up skirt and settled between her legs to tell a different story.
A story that had her body singing the give-it-to-me song. She licked her lips and nodded earnestly. "Uh-huh. We can."
"God, yes, maybe." He drew in a deep breath. Blew it out. Then his heavy-lidded eyes, which burned with green fire between dense, tangled lashes, cooled the tiniest bit. "But we do it my way."
Her own eyes narrowed. "Your way doesn't include things like whips or chains, does it?"
"Nope."
"Anything painful?"
A rusty-sounding laugh escaped him. "No pain, baby-only pleasure."
"Well, alrighty then. But I want more kisses."
"Oh, I'll give you kisses."
Why did that sound almost like a threat?
She didn't have time to pursue the question because Jared, true to his word, lowered his head and kissed her again. He kissed her with such adroitness, with such skill, that she was barely even cognizant of being carried across the room. All she knew or cared about was that his mouth was hot and his lips exerted an exciting suction and his tongue set a languid, carnal rhythm that drove her to the edge of sanity.
That caused her breath to hitch and her lips to cling helplessly.
That made her arms drop limply to her sides even as her heels dug into his muscular rear to hold him in place.
The dressing room's acoustical-tile ceiling took a sudden twirling spin when he lowered her onto the day bed in the corner. He came down on top of her and, linking their fingers, pressed the backs of her hands into the thin coverlet on either side of her shoulders. Pushing up onto his forearms, he flung his hair out of his face. Several strands promptly fell forward again and his dark eyebrows snapped together, patently displeased with the insurrection.
P.J. wanted to laugh out loud. Given the slant of his lower lip, the streaky disheveled hair refusing to conform to his command and those broad shoulders in their richly textured heavy-cream-colored cotton, she thought he looked like a sulky fallen angel. She half expected monstrous feathery wings to unfold and rustle with disgruntlement.
Lifting their connected hands, he hunched a shoulder and bent his head to swipe the fallen locks out of his way with his raised forearm. They fell right back out of alignment. His mouth still retaining its sullen cast, he shrugged and resettled their twined hands back onto the spread, staring down at her.
"Frigging hair," he growled. Then his gaze sharpened on her and it was as if every bit of his concentration suddenly refocused. "God, you're sweet."
She grinned up at him. "Aren't I a peach?" she agreed, wiggling pleasurably beneath him. "And you're-oh God, Jared, you're so hot."
His mouth finally crooking up, he settled a little deeper atop her. "Yeah?"
"Oh, yeah." It gave her palpitations just thinking about it. "All that's missing is Josh Turner crooning from the stereo." At his baffled look, she sang in the lowest register she could manage:
"Baby, lock the door and turn the lights down low. Put some music on that's soft and slow."
In her conversational voice she admitted, "'Course, it's not quite the same when I sing it. He's got that wonderful deep voice going for him. And okay, it's a couple of years old. But ever since the first time I heard it playing on the radi
o I've thought of it as the ultimate makeout song."
"Well then, baby, lock the door and turn the lights down low."
Laughing, she disentangled her fingers from his grasp to cup the back of his head and pull him back down for another kiss. One touch of his lips, however, and her laughter faded as jangled nerve endings that had temporarily settled down jitter-danced back to life. He'd lowered his head to comply with her unspoken demand for his mouth, but a space of several inches still separated their upper torsos. Finding the distance unacceptable, she moaned and lifted to press her breasts against his chest.
As if someone had kicked the slats out from under him, he collapsed on her, thrusting the hands he'd been using to prop himself up into her hair. His sudden weight drove the breath from her lungs, but she didn't care. Breathing was overrated. His mouth was savage, passionate, and, loving it, P.J. dove headfirst into the madness.
For several long minutes she burned out of control. Her skin felt hot and tight, her pulse pounded in her throat, her wrists, her nipples and deep between her legs, and her only thought was that she wanted to tear Jared's clothes off and rub her body all over his. She'd been turned on a few times in her life. Never, however, had she experienced anything close to this level of unrestrained need. She felt as if she'd literally die if she didn't get naked with the man soon.
Jared seemed every bit as crazed. His fierce kiss pushed her head into the mattress, his hands gripped rather than seduced and he breathed like a bull maddened by a matador's cape.
Then he suddenly raised his head and pushed up on his palms. Breath sawing in and out of his lungs, he hung his head and stared down at her. After a moment he cleared his throat. "We've gotta slow down or in about four minutes there'll be nothing left but a pile of ashes."
Notslowing down seemed like a better plan to her. She'd never been the recipient of a burning-out-of-control-until-there's-nothing-left-but-the-ashes kind of passion. It sounded exciting. "And this would be bad because:?"
"Because our first time ought to last more than a couple of minutes."
She was marshalling an argument for a longer, slower second time when he lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck. "Because I wanna watch you come undone," he murmured into her ear, his voice a harsh growl that raised a fine wash of goose bumps down her entire left side. Moving a little lower, he used his lips, his tongue, to even more devastating effect. "But I can't do that if I'm racing to the finish line, can I?" he demanded. "And I'm dying to watch you come, P.J.-at least once, maybe two or three times-before I really cut loose."
Okay, it was official, she was about to have an orgasm from his words alone. She would have sworn that wasn't possible but his firm, I'm-in-charge mouth that was lightly sucking, licking, biting its way down her throat was almost redundant.
Well, maybe not.
She clenched her thigh muscles to keep from squirming and cleared her throat even as she tipped her head back to give him more room to maneuver. "Hearing a lot of words here, Hamilton. Where's the action that goes with it?"
Oh, thank you, thank you, Jesus, for not letting my voice crack.It was bad enough she had the chest of a fourteen-year-old boy without sounding like one as well just when she most needed to sound like a woman.
"You want action, honey? I can give you that." Jared's hands left a wash of heat the length of her throat and across the expanse of her chest, which was bared by the wide peasant neckline of her red dress. He stroked its gathered edge. "Did I tell you how much I like this dress?" he murmured. Long fingers lazily brushed back and forth, back and forth, from the crest of her nearly bared shoulders to the spot where his fingertips met at the bow between the slight rise of her breasts. Then they glided back up her to shoulders and his eyelids drooped and his head lowered, allowing his lips to follow the trail his hands had forged.
Pushing up on her elbows, P.J. watched his fingertips pinch the drawstrings that held the bodice together between her breasts.
"I've wanted to do this all day," he said. And, his gaze on the slender cords of fabric in his hands, he pulled the ends, slowly untying the bow as if he were about to unveil a great work of art instead of a barely there set of boobs.
The neckline widened in a V down to the smocking that hugged her midsection from beneath her breasts to her hips, where the skirt, which under ordinary circumstances would have fallen to calf length in three tiered flounces, was bunched above her knees. Only her nipples preserved her modesty-and that by the barest of margins. Distended with arousal, they hooked the bodice in place. She watched Jared gaze at them as if weighing the merits of scooping the soft red fabric to the far side of the thrusting points. Apparently deciding to leave her covered, he rolled off her onto his side.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he reached out to smooth his free hand up her thigh. Slowly he bent his head over the cotton that covered her left nipple. Almost before she had time to register his mouth's amazing warmth and dampness, he looked up, met her gaze, and sucked. Hard.
It was like being hotwired to lightning and, breath exploding from her lungs, she arched into his mouth. Unharnessed power shot straight through her from the nipple he worked with such craft and skill to the tight, wet, aching spot deep between her legs.
Elbows melting out from under her, she found herself flat on her back once again, thighs sprawling wide until her right knee nudged up against his hard stomach. It occurred to her then that she was just lying here accepting everything he did as if it were her due. Thinking to offer a little reciprocal attention, she tried rolling to face him.
"No." His hands, gentle but firm, held her in place and his lips upped the suction on the damp fabric rapidly turning transparent over her nipple.
Omigawd, Omigawd.It took everything she had to pull herself back from the edge long enough to pant, "But you're doing all the work."
He mumbled something she didn't catch. "What?"
Raising his head, he shot her a wry smile. "Sorry. Talking with my mouth full. I said I'll get mine in due time. But if all those prep schools I got bounced out of taught me nothing else, they at least drummed one rule into my head. Ladies first."
He bent his head over her again, but this time he tugged on the little cap sleeves until they slid off her shoulders. "Well, look at this," he said, gazing down at her breasts, which had escaped their tenuous imprisonment, and at her arms pinioned to her side by the narrow sleeves he'd pulled midway down. "A two-fer. Your breasts all bare and pink, and a little light bondage allowing me do whatever I want with them." His gaze flashed up, pinned her in place. "With you."
Blushing, she tried to free her arms. The neckline with its loosened drawstring gave her some leeway, but still she could only widen the distance between her arms and her torso an inch or two before the material held firm. She began plucking at the midriff smocking in an attempt to tug the bodice to a point where she had a prayer of shedding it.
Rising onto his knees, Jared threw a leg over her hips to straddle her, effectively pinning the dress in place. "You claustrophobic, baby?"
"No."
Easing down to make room for himself between her legs, he lapped her shallow cleavage, gazing up at her as he did so. "Then why not just go with the flow?"
"You said you weren't into chains."
"And you don't see me using any, do you? I just want to make you feel good. And you've got such sensitive little tits I think we ought to see if I can make you come just by playing with them."
"What?" A laugh escaped her, but to her embarrassment it cracked right down the middle. "Of course you can't!"
"Bet I can. They're so responsive."
P.J. snorted. "They're so little they barely exist," she said flatly, giving the tiny offerings under discussion a disgusted look. Being flat on her back sure didn't improve their stature.
"The hell they don't. They're nearly a handful and that's all I need. They're gorgeous, so quit putting them down." He licked his way up the slight slope toward the center of her left breast
. "And these aren't little at all, are they?" He blew on her nipples before pinching them between his thumbs and forefingers.
She bit her tongue to keep from mewling like a cat in heat. But God, that felt good! And he was right. She rather liked her nipples-they were the most prominent part of her boobs. Pale pink protuberances that thrust skyward from puffy areolae, they were quite long when cold or excited-and God knew they were excited right now. Not to mention really, really receptive to the way he kept alternating the force of his clasp on them from the lightest pressure to an almost but not quite painful compression.
He seemed to know it, too. "I think all your nerve endings in these babies are right on the surface." Giving the morsels in his fingers a tug, he lightly bit first one tip then the other.
A single quick, hard contraction deep between her legs made her cry out.
"Jesus." Jared clenched his teeth to keep his head from blowing off his shoulders. "You really did get off. Not a real big one, maybe, but an orgasm's an orgasm." Oh, man, he was hanging by a thread here. Moving up her lithe body, he planted a fierce kiss on her lips. "Again," he demanded the instant he came up for air. He was determined to concentrate on her pleasure. He had to in order to keep from burying himself in her receptive body with one savage stroke and driving toward his own satisfaction like a freight train jumping the tracks. It wasn't only that he prided himself on being a thoughtful lover. He never relinquished control. Never.
Well, okay, eventually he did. But not until the last possible moment.
And he wasn't about to let little Priscilla Jayne Morgan be the exception to his rule.
He was hard-pressed to keep that affirmation in the front of his mind where it belonged, however, as he slid his hand up under her dress and finally brushed his fingertips against the lacy panties stretching the thinnest of barriers between him and a little slice of heaven. They came away damp with her arousal and it didn't matter what he did to keep hold of the situation-he could feel his grip slipping another degree.
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