“Why?” Alex frowned. “Why can’t I?”
“Because I told you not to. And I’m in charge right now. So you have to do what I tell you, or else.”
Her body began to throb. The thought of touching herself was tempting. “Or else what?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Or I’ll have to punish you. And you don’t want that, do you?”
He let her hands go, and she dropped them obediently at her sides. She’d be obedient—for the moment. “I don’t know. What does the card say?”
He picked it up off the nightstand and read it to her. “Let your partner undress you.” Then he dropped it.
“That’s it?” She tried to cross her arms over her chest, but he grabbed her wrists, holding her arms at her sides. “How come you get to use your hands?”
“Because I’m not using my feet.” He leaned forward to nip at her neck. “That was a different card.” Zach trailed his tongue across her collarbone; goose bumps patterned her skin, and her breasts ached for the moist heat of his mouth.
She tried to distract herself. “The card doesn’t say you get to…do…that.” She shivered as he moved between her breasts; his scruff-rough cheeks made her skin tingle.
“The cards are supposed to help couples do activities which lead to other things. That’s where your imagination—and our research—come in.” He leaned back to slide her panties off her hips and down her legs. “Step out,” he murmured, helping her take them off over the heels of her boots. “Very nice. Love the knee-high boots, Al. Very sexy.” His breath rolled hot over her skin, and she shivered. He gazed up at her through heavy-lidded eyes and gestured with a twist of his head. “Sit on the other bed.”
Alex hesitated. Wasn’t he going to bend her over the bed and just…do it? Tim never asked her to do anything else, especially wait. Neither had any other man.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”
Zach gave her an exasperated look, pushed his hat back on his head, then put his hands on his hips. “Listen. If you were a hook—er, soiled dove, you wouldn’t argue. You’d just do what I ask so you could make more money. Right?”
“I don’t think I want my heroine to be motivated by money.” She sat down, put her hands in her lap, and looked up at him. “It would make her seem cheap, wouldn’t it?”
Zach’s mouth twitched. It looked like he was about to laugh, but then his gaze dropped to her breasts. He licked his lips with the tip of his tongue in a way that made a hot twitch bubble deep inside her body, spreading from her pussy up to her breasts. They suddenly felt hot, achy, and heavy. She inhaled a shaky breath.
She could feel his eyes on her body as if he were touching her; she began to tremble.
He fell to his knees before her, leaning close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off of him. “You. Are. Beautiful,” he breathed, inches from her mouth. His eyes—blue as flame—bore into hers, and he drew his index finger across her mouth, down her throat, between her breasts, over her stomach. She leaned back, opening her primly closed thighs so he could access her most intimate place. Her slit grew slicker, spreading for him.
But then he stood and turned away, leaving her breathless with need, aching for him to touch her.
“How about this? For every card the hero pulls, she gets paid more.”
Gah. She swallowed. He’s going to kill me. She sat upright again, pressing her thighs together to try and relieve the unfulfilled pressure of her throbbing pussy. Okay. Research. Book. Character. Motivation. Money? No.
Zach, with his back to her, began stripping off his shirt. She’d seen his back countless times; the broad hard planes of his shoulders, the bunching muscles, the arc of shoulder blades, all narrowing down to his waist. He was perfectly sculpted, as beautiful as a statue. It was enough to send a girl over the edge of sanity—or into an orgasm.
Alex took a deep breath and clenched her fists on her thighs. Research. Book. Motivation. “If she wants the hero to keep pulling cards, then she’d be motivated by money. I wish there was something else.”
Zach turned around, lifted his arms over his head in a stretch. “She needs the money. To keep her little brother and sister alive. Her parents were killed by…cholera. Or maybe…Oh.” His eyes gleamed. “Her father was a minister. He died giving The Word to injured Union soldiers. And then her mother died of grief. Or maybe a cold. Or both.”
Perfect! Suddenly, Alex could see her character in her mind’s eye, instead of the living Apollo with the broad, flat pecs and rippled abs. “Ooh. That’s good. I want to write that down.” She got up and hurried to her pile of tote bags to grab a notebook and a pen before the ideas that suddenly flooded her brain dried up.
Zach bit his lip to keep from laughing. Okay, Tim. I can see how this might have gotten on your nerves. One minute, he knew, Alex had been at the brink of orgasm, as tight as a guitar string. The next, she was aflame for her book, oblivious to the fact that she was completely naked except for those sexy knee-high boots. She bent over her tote bags for a pen, her ass, lips, and clit exposed in a way that screamed, Fuck me!
It took every ounce of his willpower not to vault over the bed, grab her by the hips, and bury his stiff cock into her. Though the fact that he was still wearing jeans helped. A bit.
This was so—her. One of the things he loved most about Alex was her intensity about her work. Her imaginary people and places were as real to her as the place where she now stood, and when she visited with them, she sometimes didn’t want to return to reality.
Which was why, he knew, they were going to have an incredible time. As long as he could keep her from thinking about the cheating Asshole.
Nope, he was going to do better. He’d make her forget Tim even existed.
He grinned and undid his belt buckle.
Chapter Five
She stood up; she’d slipped her glasses on. She looked like a sexy, naked librarian with her hair spilling around her shoulders in a caramel-colored wave. Zach sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his spurs and boots, never taking his eyes from her.
She chewed on the end of a pen, her tongue slipping around its tip. Zach shivered. “She’s got a little brother and sister…I wonder where they live?”
“In a shack at the edge of town.” Zach stood, unzipped his jeans—with difficulty—and slid them off along with his briefs. God, he was as hard as a rock. He’d never been with a woman who was oblivious to his naked body before. This was a first.
It was a relief. Freeing.
There she stood gazing off into space, in her own little world, chewing on her pen.
Oh, how he wanted to be that pen.
Zach took the few steps it took to reach her. “Listen, sister. Pay attention. I’ve been riding the range for months. Draw me a hot bath.”
She looked up at him and blinked. “You would have stopped at the bathhouse before coming to see me.” She waved her pen like a baton. “I need to find out how much that would cost. What services they provided.” Alex straightened. “You would have shaved! Go shave. And put on some bay rum cologne.”
“I have incredibly fast-growing facial hair. I don’t feel clean enough. I want you to wash me.”
“Is that in a card?” She craned her neck to look at the fanned cards on the bed. “If it’s not in a card, I’m not doing it. I need to make money. I’m not here to waste my time unless you’re going to pay for it.”
She was in character. Nice. Well, two could play this game. He tried to imagine himself. Was he a cowboy? A gunslinger? A bounty hunter? “What’s your name, girl?”
She blinked. “My real name is Caroline. But I don’t want to use the name my parents gave me…I need a stage name. They’d be so ashamed of me.” She bent over her pad and began writing. “I need a last name.”
“Sweetwater. Caroline Sweetwater.”
“Ooh, that’s good.” The tip of her tongue slipped out at the corner of her mouth.
Her concentration face. Even in junior high, that little show
of tongue had inspired some of his hottest adolescent fantasies. Among other things. “You’re not ashamed of yourself, though. You’re doing what you have to.”
She lifted her head to blink at him, still deep in her character’s head. “Yes. I am. But…I’m going to meet a man who’s going to take me away from this life.”
“And that would be—me?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “That’s you. You’re not really a cowboy—you were in the war. You’re emotionally scarred. Your wife was killed by the Yankees and you’re bitter. You never expected to fall in love again.”
Oh, yeah. Good. That worked. “Right. Damn Yankees.” He realized his hard-on was fading. Time to ramp it up, again. He swung around. “Oh. But you’re a Yankee.”
“Perfect! Oh, yes, Zach. That’s perfect. I’m going to pay for the damage done by my people to your people. You’re going to punish me, humiliate me…but you’re a decent man. You’ll remember how gentle you were with your wife…” Behind her glasses, her eyes sparkled in that intelligent way he loved. It made his waning hard-on begin to stiffen once more.
He reached out to lift her pen and paper from her hands. “Right now, Yankee Girl, you’re drawing me a bath. It’s right here, on this here card.” He picked one up and pretended to read it. “Give your lover a bubble bath.”
She frowned. “They didn’t have bubble baths in the Old West.”
“We’ll use French-milled soap. You can rub it all over me and we’ll make our own bubbles.”
“That’s indecent.” Caroline, the soiled dove, gasped.
“And being a prostitute is akin to going to church on Sunday?” He steered her toward the bathroom and flicked on the light. What he saw made him fall out of character and gape.
Holy crap. “You weren’t kidding about the size of the tub. We could float the Titanic in here!”
“The Titanic wasn’t built until nineteen—”
Zach silenced her protest with a kiss and pulled her against him so they were skin-to-skin. God. She was so small and delicate, he was afraid he’d break her. But when her soft, round tits and her hardened nipples pressed into his stomach, it was enough to make his dick stand at full attention.
He splayed tiny kisses along her jaw to her ear, then nibbled on her earlobe, thankful she didn’t have multiple piercings. He always worried he’d crack a tooth on an earring.
She wore tiny diamond studs. Simple. He drew her lobe into his mouth, smiling to himself when she shuddered and gasped. When he pulled away, she stood still, staring at him, looking dazed.
“Fill the tub,” he ordered, his voice tight with need.
She nodded, moving about the bathroom, self-consciously peering over her shoulder at him. For so long he’d wondered what she looked like without clothes, and now—he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of watching her. He couldn’t wait to touch her again. She was all shell pink and pearly white, round in all the right places with no sharp angles or ridges. So many women thought they had to be skeletal to be sexy. But Alex had curves that begged exploration. It made his mouth water.
“You’re gorgeous, Alex.”
Alex spun around to stare at him through fogged eyeglasses. Her face was red. “I’m fat.” She pulled off her glasses and dropped them on the edge of the sink counter. “Tim wanted me to lose weight. He was always trying to get me to go to the gym with him when I needed to work.” Her boobs jiggled. “You don’t have to tell me I’m pretty, Zach.”
“You’re right. I don’t have to. I want to.” Zach took a step toward her. She didn’t move away. “Because you are.”
“If I were an Old West prostitute, I probably wouldn’t be pretty. For starters, I wouldn’t have all my teeth.”
“But you’re not an Old West prostitute. You’re you. And you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Zach decided now wasn’t the time to point out there wouldn’t have been an Olympic-sized walk-in tub in an Old West brothel, either.
She colored. “That’s…you’re just saying that because you have to. Because we’re going to… Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”
Quick, stupid. Damage control. Before she gets dressed and you blow the opportunity of your lifetime!
“Caroline!” he snapped, putting his all into a Civil War-type drawl. “If’n you don’t get my tub ready before I finish this here cheroot, I’m going to have to complain to the madam. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
She drew her lips into a thin line, dropped her hands from her hips, and finally…her eyes from his. Her gaze slid down over his body, but then she looked quickly over to the side, and turned plum red. She spun around. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll—I’ll get your bath ready right away.”
“See to it,” he drawled, and leaned against the cold counter to watch her bend and stretch over the tub, turning on the taps, running her hand under the water to adjust the temperature. When she was satisfied, she turned.
“There’s a bottle of bubble bath in the basket on the counter,” she said. “May I have it, please?”
He lifted the basket and handed it to her. “Take it. And listen. Do what I say.”
She plucked a bottle from the basket, then placed it on the wide edge of the tub. “Sir?”
“Sit on the edge of the tub.”
She did, hissing a bit. “The marble is cold.”
Zach knelt in front of her, lifted her foot, and unzipped the side of the boot. Gently, he tugged it off, then reached for the other. When she was barefoot, he stroked her slender ankles and said, “Get into the tub.”
She swung her legs out of his lap and stood up in the water.
“Turn around and look at me.”
She did, meeting his eyes with a shy smile. Zach clenched his fists and stopped himself from leaping into the tub with her.
“Take that bottle of shower gel and pour it over your body. I want you to wash yourself with your hands.”
She swallowed, reached for the bottle, and poured it slowly over her body. The thick liquid trickled slowly over her breasts in a shining sheet.
It was his turn to swallow. Zach leaned back and gripped the edge of the counter. His legs felt weak. “Now, wash yourself. Rub that soap over every inch of your body.”
She lifted her hands and stroked, sliding them over her rounded breasts, stopping to circle her nipples, and even daring to caress them; she gave him an insolent pout.
He couldn’t stop the groan that erupted from his throat. “That’s it. Stroke yourself. Show me what you want me to do to you.”
Alex smiled then; he could see her growing more confident and comfortable with their new roles. Good, he thought. That’s what I was waiting for.
She moved her hand down between her legs and slid her finger between her furred lips, arching her head back, thrusting her hips forward, pleasuring herself. Her swollen pink flesh disappeared behind a froth of white foamy soap.
“Rinse it off,” he said, his voice husky. He was hard again, harder than before, watching Alex stroke her body this way. She bent and rinsed, bent and rinsed, bringing her cupped hands up and spilling water over her body so that the soap trailed over her in sparkling rivulets. He couldn’t stand it. He needed to touch her.
He needed to be touched.
Chapter Six
Alex could feel Zach watching her intently; it was as if his gaze was as tangible as his touch. She opened her eyes to look at him in all his magnificent maleness, all hard muscle with a thick, jutting cock that strained up and out at her. He was beautiful. Of course he was. And twice as gorgeous naked as he was clothed.
She splashed another handful of water over her body, trickling it over her breasts. It tickled.
She wished it were Zach’s touch. Maybe his tongue. Alex shivered and slid her hand down between her legs. If she could just come…
“Hold it right there,” Zach croaked in a voice tight with need. “Don’t do anything until I tell you.”
She sighed. “You’re so bossy.”
�
��It’s my money.” He climbed into the tub beside her, bumping his hip against hers. Her skin flushed and she trembled.
“Zach…”
He sat in the now soapy water and pulled her down with him. “Hey, are there water jets?”
“We shouldn’t.” They didn’t have water jets in the Old West.
“We should.” He hit the button with his elbow, and the tub began bubbling with a roar; foaming, sizzling water splashed up over their bodies, making it impossible to see what was under the surface. Zach sighed and leaned back against the tub’s back. “Come wash me, sweet Caroline.” He winked. “I’m still not done with this here cheroot.”
She moved up beside him; try as she might, there was no way to avoid slipping and sliding against his slick skin. She couldn’t stop the flood of desire that rippled over her again and again. She tried to lighten the mood a bit. “I feel like I’m in a boiling pot of soup,” she joked, pushing alongside him. “You know, I didn’t realize how big you are. You’re taking up a lot of room in this tub.”
“Thank you, miss…I consider that a compliment, coming from you. Though most of the ladies have commented on how big I am.” He grinned at her.
“I’m talking about your ego, Mr…whatever your name is. Nothing else.”
“Sure you are, darlin’.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “You can call me…Rhett. Rhett Butler.” He leaned back against the edge of the tub. “Tonight, I’m Mr. Butler. And your name—your working name—is Scarlett. Miz Scarlett, of the Gilded Cage Saloon.”
In The Cards Page 3