The Thrill of It All

by Christie Ridgway

  “Naah.” Her head wagged back and forth. “Guy like you, you don’ follow rules,” she announced.

  But after what happened to Simon, Magee had vowed to change that. It was the straight and safe for him from now on. “You do.”

  She waved that away, wiggling closer to him as the part of the blanket covering her tits slipped southward again. “Come up with something else.”

  “Because we’re strangers,” he said between gritted teeth. “Because we’ll never see each other again.” A prissy woman like this one, that should change her mind.

  Instead, she sent him a beatific smile. “Even better. Then if you’re lousy I won’ tell anybody you know.”

  He rolled his eyes, but was relieved when she moved back to sit straighter. And even more relieved when, with exaggerated care, she capped the flask and set it aside.

  Then she fell on top of him.

  Magee caught her by the wrists. Her pretty face, her pretty mouth was just inches from his and so—to hell with it—he kissed her.

  Oh, God. She tasted like the best vacation he’d ever had. Four years ago, he’d headed south to cliff-climb in Mexico, but instead spent most of his time lying on the beach, soaking up tequila and spicy food and heat.

  Heat. Burning heat.

  He dropped her wrists and ran his palms up her spine. Then, fisting his hands in her hair, he tilted her head to change the angle of the kiss. This time, her mouth opened more and her tongue slipped out to stroke his.

  On that aforesaid vacation, a rogue wave had swamped him.

  He reacted the same now as he had then, jerking up, jumping away, shaking himself like a wet dog. “Don’t do that,” he choked out.

  She didn’t say a word until he turned and grabbed for his damp jeans.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He refused to look at her as he struggled to pull them on, she was that tempting. “I need to get out.” It had stopped raining. He’d get some air, give the situation time to defuse.

  “Mi-i-i-i-chael.”

  Her voice was a sexy purr that felt like a light scratch of fingernails against his bare skin.

  “Look, you gotta understand something here,” he ground out in warning. “I’m no saint, dollface. I’m just trying to act like one.”

  “Silly Michael. Be brave. I won’ hurt you.”

  Oh, he had plenty of courage. And it was true that he’d never been known for turning down sex. But things were different now. He had obligations to fulfill. Promises to make.

  So he was doing the smart thing. The climbing tribe had nicknamed him “Lucky Bastard,” but his legendary good fortune had never been due strictly to chance. It was in part because he used his brain when deciding between continuing on or bailing out.

  And it was bail time, baby.

  Without even waiting to shove his feet in his boots, he thrust open the back door and leaped from the Jeep.

  The cold swamped him, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The clouds—not that he’d ever seen any before the rain—had disappeared and the moon was out once again.

  Then Magee saw that something else was out, too, creeping up from beneath the sand.

  Somethings.

  He froze, as all around him dozens upon dozens of tarantula spiders—as big as his palm!—emerged from the desert floor and went on the prowl. His skin crawled right along with them.

  Okay. Well. Damn, damn, damn. This changed the danger/courage equation entirely.

  With a sound oddly like Simon’s laughter ringing in his ears, Magee opened the Jeep’s back door and dove back inside.

  Three

  Before disappointment had a chance to sink in, Michael was back inside the car. Felicity smiled. He’d changed his mind!

  Without a word, he leaned across her to swipe up the flask of tequila. A healthy slug went down his throat. And then another.

  They were going to have sex after all!

  She hoped so anyway, because the salsa shooters hadn’t taken the tiniest edge off her need. And oh, did she need. The feeling was exhilarating, exciting, excruciating.

  She didn’t give a hoot if it was survival rush or a reaction to stress or anything else. And acting on it only made complete sense, she told herself. It was absolutely necessary. She’d had that strange, scary sensation of being outside her body, and now she needed something—apparently sweaty sex—to put herself firmly back inside it.

  No, no. Sweaty sex would put him firmly inside her.

  She giggled at the idea, then sobered, a second thought flitting through her tipsy brain. Inside her? She was going to let a man she didn’t know inside of her? That wasn’t what smart, hardworking Felicity Charm would ever do.

  “Look, Lissie…” Michael began, then stopped to take another draw on the flask.

  Lissie? Oh, yes. Lissie.

  Felicity Charm, America’s Sweetheart of Sales, wasn’t going to be doing the wild thing with the wild man who wasn’t her type. It was Lissie. Lissie, who wasn’t the It Girl of anything, which meant she was free to do things that Felicity couldn’t.

  “Look, Lissie, I’m not back…”

  His words drifted off again as she reached up and combed her fingers through his hair. Lissie got to do stuff like that, the lucky girl. “Kiss me,” she demanded.

  And because Lissie wasn’t one for waiting, she yanked on his hair to bring his mouth down to hers. The kiss was hard and hot. His lips moved under hers—oh, nice—but then she realized he was trying to tell her something. She eased her hold on him, giving him half an inch.

  “I still think this isn’t a good idea,” he said.

  But since one of his arms was clamped around her back, she guessed he didn’t think it was such a terrible idea, either. His reluctance, however, was becoming annoying. He was her bad boy! The dark, untamed stranger destined to fulfill this need he’d awoken inside of her.

  Determined to get what she wanted, she reached down and palmed the fly of his jeans, making him groan. “Then you’re thinking with the wrong head,” she whispered. Half-delighted and half-appalled by what she’d said and done, she stroked him once more.

  In response, his mouth descended all on its own and widened over hers, widening hers, so his tongue could thrust inside. The delicious intrusion made her tremble. Then his lips were gone, trailing over her cheek and toward her ear. “Really. I didn’t come in for this, for you.”

  He bit down on her lobe and she squeaked, her fingers contracting on his hard, happy erection. He groaned again.

  “I don’t care,” she answered, not as long as he was going to do something about all these hot, primal impulses clamoring inside of her.

  “We have nothing in common,” he murmured, moving back to her mouth.

  “Who cares about that, either?” They needed nothing in common besides—what did he call it?—wanting to bump bones right here, right now.

  On their next kiss, he dropped the flask. It clattered against the metal floor as he tugged her lower. Then she was flat on her back and he was on his elbows, leaning over her.

  Her palms rested on his wide, naked shoulders. His head lowered, his rain-scented hair the dark curtain that made what they were doing more private, more intimate, more breath-stealing sexy. His lips brushed hers and she moaned, the brief connection flinging heat in every direction over every inch of her flesh. Her fingers clenched onto heavy muscle. She needed his weight, his skin, his taste against every pore.

  “Take me now,” she heard herself pleading.

  But Lissie wouldn’t beg, she realized, Lissie would do the taking herself. The concern cartwheeled away as his tongue twined with hers again. He could take her this time, she consoled herself, then Lissie would take him the next.

  He was kissing down her neck, the stubble of his beard scraping against her skin, teasing more nerve endings to the surface. Then, half-sitting at her side, he hooked his fingers in the blanket between her breasts and tugged, trying to draw it lower.

  She held her breath. Yes. Touch me ther
e. Yes.

  But she was swaddled so tightly, the fabric wouldn’t budge. He tried again, again making no progress. Her focus narrowed to his two fingers, the backs of them hard and hot against her breastbone as his hand worked at moving the stubborn blanket away. Worried he’d give up, she shimmied her hips, trying to loosen the maddening material, but that didn’t help, either.

  His fingers slid out and away and she almost cried, but then he brushed his palm over one blanket-covered nipple.

  Yessss. Lissie was nobody’s sweetheart, nobody’s girl. She was a woman, a needy woman, and she arched her back to get as much of his attention as she could. He laughed, a dark, dangerous sound, and the wickedness of it thrilled her, making her needier, hotter, wetter.

  More demanding.

  Knowing exactly what she wanted next, she sat up. Then, curling her own fingers into the layers of blanket, she yanked them past her breasts.

  He stilled. Her naked skin shone pale in the darkness. She wasn’t very big—no! Lissie knew appearances didn’t matter, only desire. Desire and touch. So, her gaze glued to his face, she palmed her breasts herself. Once, twice. Her hard nipples pulled tighter, stiffened.

  The lean angles of his bad-boy face sharpened. “Do that again,” he ordered roughly.

  In their cocoon of fogged windows, his breathing sounded loud and harsh. “Again,” he commanded, his voice hoarse.

  Watching him, Lissie slowly moved, reaching up and behind to find the cold glass. She dragged the flat of one hand down the wet surface. His breath hitched as she slowly drew that same hand across the heated skin of one of her breasts, letting it catch on the nipple and then letting the nipple pop free.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “I was nuts not to come back for this.”

  She’d never felt so liberated from her inhibitions—and her image. Her hand made a languid pass over her other breast. “So,” she said softly, prolonging the anticipation, “why did you come back?”

  Her hand stretched back up toward the glass. He tracked the movement with his eyes, and she thought he’d forgotten her question. Her palm flattened, then inched down the slick glass.

  “You’ll laugh,” he finally said.

  This time she brought her cool, wet hand toward his chest. His skin twitched. “I won’t laugh,” she replied, her palm hovering near one of his dusky nipples.

  He was breathing harder.

  “I’d never laugh,” she added, still delaying the touch. Making him wait. Anticipate. “Tell me.”

  The power was in her hands. It was her hands. She allowed her damp thumb to edge closer to his nipple, pause again. He groaned.

  “Tell me,” she insisted, just for the wicked, naughty fun of having him at her mercy.

  “Because the tarantulas scared the shit out of me.”

  Felicity froze. Tarantulas? “Tarantulas?” Her hand dropped and her legs jackknifed toward her chest, the blanket restricting her movement to a spastic kick.

  He stared. “What’s wrong with you?” His eyebrows rose as she desperately yanked at the part of the blanket caught beneath him.

  “We have more in common than you thought.” With the end free, she threw it over her shoulder, toga-style, then arranged the rest of it to re-cover her breasts. Pressing her spine against the side of the car, she tried making herself smaller as she peered about. “Did one get in? Could one be on you?”

  “Lissie—”

  Something touched her foot and she shrieked. “Get it off! Get it off! Kill it!”

  “Take it easy. That was my hand,” he said. “Jesus, you really are scared.”

  She wanted to slap him. “Of course I’m scared.”

  “Don’t you think—”

  “I don’t want to think. If I think I’ll hear them. I’ll hear their long fangs clackety-clacking and their fat hairy legs rub-a-dub-dubbing my way.” She shivered.

  “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “Shut up, shut up.” There was no way to explain her irrational fear. There was no way to explain her equally immense regret, either. Thanks to him, she’d lost her chance to experience purely physical passion. “I could kill you for this!”

  “You’ve had your shot at that once tonight already,” he said dryly. “But now I take it the mood is dead, too?”

  She shot him a dirty look, then scrubbed her face with her hands. As illogical, but certainly as real as her spider fear was that notion that she’d needed sex. Right now. Tonight. Sex to cement herself back inside her body.

  Remembering that sensation of floating above the scene of the accident, she shivered again. Damn him for leaving her hanging like this!

  “Lissie, I…” He studied her in silence for another moment, then scooted nearer. “I’m going to get close enough to touch you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m trying to save you from another bump on the head. When I brushed your foot a second ago you nearly hit the roof.”

  “Hah-hah,” she said, eyeing him as he settled beside her again. His bare shoulder jostled hers and her stomach jumped. “Are you certain you didn’t bring one inside with you?”

  “Chill, dollface.” He turned toward her, laying a soothing stroke to her jaw with the back his hand. “Why don’t we talk about something else?”

  She appreciated the calming caress and then the next one after that, but relax? No. “Have you ever seen tarantulas migrate?”

  He shook his head. “Lissie—”

  “They come out of the ground and start walking. They stop at nothing. They’ll crawl over things in their path rather than going around them.”

  “Gotta admire their determination,” he murmured, stroking the other side of her jaw. “Where are they heading?”

  His knuckles played across her bottom lip, but she pretended not to notice. “Not where, but who. They’re looking for babes.”

  His hand halted. “Babies?”

  “Chicks.”

  “Chicke—”

  “I mean women.” She batted his distracting hand away. “No, I mean lady spiders.”

  “Now I get it.” Michael leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth. Then he kissed her again. This time, despite herself, her lips clung to his, but he lifted his mouth and went back to stroking her face. “They want to mate.”

  “They want to mate,” she agreed.

  His lips touched down again, finding the corner of hers, and one of those wonderful hot shivers rolled over her. Oh, maybe she still wanted to mate, too.

  “Hmmm. I think I’m starting to understand those guys,” he said, working his way toward her ear. “They’re not so different from you and me, right?”

  Not so different from you and me. Maybe she could forget about them, she thought, as his lips settled against hers again. Her knees were still plastered to her chest, but her tense muscles were warming, loosening, wanting him once more. When his rough-surfaced palm slid between the blanket and her breast, she gasped. When he took the kiss deeper, angling his head to thrust against her tongue with his, she slipped her hand beneath the waistband of his jeans.

  He groaned into her mouth, the sound making her light-headed with lust. His fingers kneaded her breast and she went to work on the buttons of his fly so she could knead him, too.

  Incredible, she thought. It was incredible that she could get this far with a total stranger despite tequila and tarantulas and the image she’d been working on for a lifetime. But then it hit her. Of course. It was because he was a total stranger.

  A woman who’d almost died deserved a dark stranger and a solitary night of unbridled sex. Felicity unfastened the last button and pulled apart the edges of his jeans.

  Just that made him groan again, and she almost lost it. Oh, yes, with him she could let go and discover pure, physical passion. It was a woman’s secret dream, the fantasy that had been described years ago in the book Fear of Flying, a book she and some boarding schoolmates had found tucked behind a drawer in an old unused dresser. Felicity remembered that the author called it
the zipless fuck.

  She reached in and palmed his hot, smooth skin. Inside her own body there was softening, heating, all the preparing necessary to take in the hardness she cradled in her hand. More shivers rolled over her sensitized skin. She’d never been so turned on by touching a man! The moment was priceless.

  “Jong,” she murmured against his mouth. “It’s so Jong.” Erica Jong’s zipless fuck.

  “Thank you,” he whispered back, pushing up against her hand.

  She lifted her head to explain. “No, I mean—” Then she saw a strange expression cross his face, and she stilled. “What? What is it?”

  “Tell me more about these eight-legged friends of yours.” He took his hand off her breast and slid away from her.

  “What? More about tarantulas?” She glared at him, her body wet and ready, her pulse pounding for that dark-stranger-solitary-night-of-passion. “The females kill their mates after sex. Sometimes before sex.” Her hand grabbed his, ready to place it right back where she wanted it.

  “They don’t knock?”

  Her eyes widened. “No.” Then she heard it, the knock on the fogged-over back window. “No.”

  “Well, then, dollface, I guess we’ve been caught red-handed, or, should I say, with our pants down.”

  As the sky turned pink with dawn, Magee stood alone in the desert. The tarantulas had returned to their underground homes after the rainwater had drained, and the tow truck operator was just now driving away, hauling the convertible Thunderbird behind him. Through the truck’s rear window Magee had his last glimpse of Lissie—the back of her head, anyway—shrouded sari-style by the survival blanket.

  She’d left him behind without a backward glance, let alone a goodbye kiss. It was as if they were complete strangers.

  Which, of course, they were.

  Thank God.

  He’d done his part to keep it that way, refusing to exchange insurance information. Repairing the Jeep’s bashed headlights was on him, an object lesson in what could happen when he deviated from the straight, narrow, safe course he’d assigned himself.

  Last night he should have been making a marriage proposal instead of making out with a feathery-haired woman whom fate had pushed into his path. Shaking his head, he climbed into the driver’s seat of his Jeep. She had her regrets, too, he knew, because with the tow truck driver on scene she’d kept her head down and her voice hushed.