Neither time had been an accident.
And it had taken all the self-control she could muster not to give in to her urge to back up against him – the tiniest bit – when he’d put his hand on her stomach in the store.
He could not have been any more different from Kent.
And Kent was the only man she’d been with in over fifteen years!
Penny hadn’t had any boyfriends in high school, and the relationships in college before Kent had been more about experimentation than anything else.
She’d never even had the chance to consider what it would be like to be with somebody like this Chaz kid.
Except… he didn’t seem so much like a kid anymore. There was something in his eyes – not sadness but wisdom.
Which made no sense at all.
She needed to stop thinking about him. Of course, he was only playing with her. He was a pilot – or had been anyway.
Pilots were the cockiest species of man that existed.
And he was a flirt.
Oh, yeah, he’d wanted to have a little fun. He’d mentioned he was bored, hadn’t he? Nothing like stirring up the old girl next door.
Penny stripped off her clothes and climbed into the shower.
She rubbed the soap over her neck and arms and let the hot water cascade over her.
Closing her eyes, she couldn’t help recalling the moment they entered the store. It had felt so very, very good when he’d put his hand on her back. When his fingers caressed her stomach… He’d done it so tenderly…
She hadn’t imagined the heat coming from him, his strength and what had felt like protection. He’d stirred more than sexual arousal in her. He’d awakened her need for human contact, damn him.
Inexplicably, she choked on a sob.
Being touched, barely touched like that, ought not to have affected her like this.
Crumpling under the weight of unwanted emotion, she slid down the tile and then huddled on the floor.
Water pelted her from above.
Another sob, another.
And suddenly she let out a wail.
She’d put all of that behind her. Feeling like a woman, feeling just a little bit beautiful, worthwhile… like she mattered.
It shouldn’t hurt like this.
Feeling again.
But she was. Both hurting and feeling. She let the water roll over her. She’d not cried in a lifetime. She’d been pretending everything was okay, living the only way she could.
Weeping pitiably, she didn’t stand back up until the water turned cold.
“Fuck!” She fell forward and crawled out from under the spray. “Fuckity frick flipping frack!”
Nothing like a cold shower to bring her to the end of her bout of self-pity.
She shampooed, rinsed, scrubbed, and climbed out as quickly as possible. By the time she wrapped herself in her big towel, she was shivering.
She was okay though.
Now that that was over.
As she padded, barefoot, across the old wooden floors toward her bedroom, she bit her lip and then changed her route to head for the office. Shadows filled the room, light from outside barely filtering in through the curtains and the blinds. She didn’t flip the light switch on.
Was he in there now? She adjusted her towel.
Probably sleeping. He’d probably come home, taken a pain pill, and passed out on the bed.
She peeled back the curtain just a few inches and peered through the bent slats of her blinds.
Not sleeping.
He was sitting on the bed, kind of sideways, but away from her, wearing…
Nothing!
The only thing covering the lean sinews of his muscles and all that beautiful skin was that damn bandage.
He stood up and lifted one foot to the bed. Long and powerful, the muscles in his legs were just as defined as his chest, and arms, and abs…
Penny slid the curtain open wider and pushed the blinds aside. His head bent, his face was turned away from her.
He could not see her from where he stood. She was safe.
And then he reached down. What on earth? Oh, God, he’d taken hold of himself.
A cloud moved and the sunlight hit him perfectly. His manhood jutted out and upwards. Penny swallowed hard and shifted uncomfortably.
Was he doing what she thought he was doing?
Just then his head tilted back and his arm began moving in a suggestive manner. Penny froze. She should step away from the window. She should let the window coverings fall back into place and leave the office.
Right now – this very instant!
But she couldn’t.
Her feet refused to step back. Her hand refused to release the blind.
She just stood there, watching the muscles of his arms and throat as he tensed and stroked.
She imagined his cock, purple and angry, straining upward beneath his hand. He might be moving his thumb in tiny movements around the tip. Feeling a little short of breath, Penny shifted again and her towel loosened.
She ignored it.
Heat spread to her center and an urgent pulsing between her legs grew in intensity.
Almost without thinking, she allowed her hand to drift downwards – past her belly – into the soft tuffs of her hair – lower.
The sensitive flesh there was already wet and swollen.
Next door, within the room across the way, his movements quickened.
She licked her lips and began rubbing herself, slowly at first – and then faster. It didn’t take long for her strokes to match the rhythm he’d set.
Gazing into the window from beneath heavy lids, Penny could barely focus now. And then his hips jerked forward. Her towel dropped to the floor but she didn’t care. He couldn’t see her. It didn’t matter that she was standing, naked, leaning into the glass.
The light was off in the office. This wasn’t real. It was as though she didn’t exist.
She didn’t want to stop.
She didn’t want him to stop.
The speed of his motions increased in vigor and intensity. Penny could barely stand up. Her legs had turned to jelly and her knees were about to buckle, but she was so close. She continued watching him, touching herself, moving in concert with his pace.
Penny imagined it was him touching her, and her touching him. Tension grew. All of her energy, all of her concentration, focused on the touch of her own hand and the vision that was Chaz.
She reached up with her other hand and rubbed, squeezed, and then pinched her breast.
At the same time, he jerked fast, fast, and then hard forward, the muscles in his neck straining.
She fantasized him coming inside of her, his cock reaching for her womb, spreading her, filling her.
She pressed hard against herself and rubbed at her breast frantically.
As the tension exploded, she panted and strained. She didn’t want to close her eyes but couldn’t keep them open a second longer. Too much sensation!
Wave after wave swept through her.
Holy heck! This was… crazy.
And then, breathing hard, she realized she was leaning heavily against the edge of the window.
What if the glass had broken? Shattered, causing her to tumble to the ground below?
Guilt seeped in slowly. Was she really this deprived? This depraved? She’d acted like some sort of a nymphomaniac!
A boneless, exhausted nymphomaniac.
She dropped to her knees on the towel and peered across to the other window again.
Chaz was bent over, resting his good arm along his raised knee.
Penny watched him, just a second more, and then allowed the curtain to fall back into place.
Chaz smiled to himself as he watched the blinds and drapes drop back into place, covering her window once again.
The angle of the mirror provided him a perfect view of her.
Absolutely perfect.
He’d just been about to lie down when he’d caught her peering through the
blind again. She’d looked all dewy, obviously fresh from a shower. Her hair was wet, falling in glistening spirals over bare shoulders, and her feminine curves were barely covered by a miniscule towel.
He couldn’t help himself.
And holy hell but apparently neither could she.
He’d been right. Miss Penny the Divorcee most definitely needed to get laid.
Even with the painkillers he’d taken lately, he’d had no problem jacking off. Not with her standing there – watching him, moving with him, touching herself. The more she’d gotten into it, the more of the blinds she’d inadvertently pushed aside. After a few minutes, he could see from the tops of her knees to the top of her head.
When that towel had dropped, it had revealed skin that was creamy and pink, and oh, so wonderfully woman.
Such a fucking turn-on!
Chaz hadn’t known where to look. He loved watching the expressions cross her face but he couldn’t help but focus on her hand reaching between her legs. He could imagine her thumb swirling around her clit and her fingers reaching higher inside of that wet velvety comfort he wanted to plunge into.
And when she’d reached up and touched her breast, he’d lost it. Gone right over the edge.
His climax had shaken him in its intensity.
He cleaned himself and climbed into bed. With his sexual energy spent, the pain throbbing in his shoulder demanded his attention again.
This time, though, when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see flashes of flames and dust and smoke and body parts flying through the air with metal artillery.
He didn’t dwell on the fact that he’d possibly never climb into the cockpit of a fighter jet again.
And he didn’t find himself fighting the desire to take another painkiller to make it all just go away.
No, he pictured a woman with curly blond hair and eyes that flickered green one second and brown the next.
Feeling relaxed and sated, a few of his demons fled.
No problem falling asleep this time. No problem at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Caught
Penny stayed up late that night to finish one of the more difficult editing assignments she’d taken on. Everybody thought they were writers these days.
They poured their life stories into their laptops, paid an editor, a cover artist, and a formatter, and then stuck it up on Amazon. And those who didn’t write stories were philosophers, people with deep, intense, profound messages they thought the world needed to hear.
With hopes and dreams of saving the world with their sermons, they paid people like Penny to clean it up so it could be packaged and marketed and listed with all the other books just like it in the vast marketplace of the internet.
Most never sold more than a hundred copies. Many never sold more than ten.
But people had dreams and she would do her best to help make them come true. Within reason. She wasn’t a miracle worker, after all.
She preferred suspense and coming of age. Edgy stories written in a powerful voice.
She hated the romance novels. She used to enjoy them, before… They contained too much hope for her now-jaded outlook on life.
Penny couldn’t appreciate hope. She’d hoped once and look where that had gotten her.
Looking at her screen, the memory of the afternoon’s… encounter, prevented her from accomplishing much of anything. Despite the countless times she’d pushed it aside, she couldn’t help conjuring up what had happened with Chaz…
…over and over again.
Well, not with Chaz.
They’d not done anything together – not really. In fact, he’d been very much alone and she’d been… She didn’t like to think about the truth of what she’d done.
She’d invaded his privacy. She’d… Oh, hell.
She would never look into his room again.
Ever.
Except… she wasn’t hurting anybody, was she? They’d both been doing some serious fantasizing. It surprised her that such a good looking guy had to resort to, er, taking care of himself that way.
Surely, any woman he wanted would willingly take care of his needs! He was a pilot, after all.
While Kent had been in medical school, Penny had tended bar at one of the hotels out by the airport.
She’d learned to spot pilots from a mile away. They carried themselves with a certain swagger, an arrogance, unlike other mere mortal men.
And military pilots. They were the worst.
She wondered why she hadn’t pegged Chaz as a pilot before he’d told her. It must have been his injury. It had robbed him of his normal cockiness.
But then she laughed out loud. Of course! Recalling how his fingers had dipped into the back of her shorts. And then the second time, putting his hand on her backside had been no accident!
Definitely a pilot move.
So much sexual confidence!
Her resolve to ignore the window was fading fast. It was right there! Just a few feet from her desk! No, Penny. No!
She subtracted seven commas from the last page, reformatted a paragraph, and then clicked save. It was a relief to be done with this one. It had been rough.
Closing her laptop, she stretched and glanced at the clock; 2:49 in the morning.
Over the past few months, caught up in her isolated lifestyle, time had ceased to matter. She ate when she was hungry, slept when she was tired, and did other things… well, when she wanted to.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t her vibrator beckoning her tonight.
She clicked the overhead light off but then tiptoed back inside the room, to the window.
Lamplight glowed from across the way.
His sleep schedule was apparently as messed up as hers.
Missing a beat, her heart responded when the door swung open and he stepped into his room. He must have woken up to get something to eat, or go to the bathroom maybe, but as he entered, she could see his face.
And without warning, his eyes caught hers. Should she run? But no! That would be even worse.
He lifted one hand and waved. Penny froze. What should she do? Holy crap!
Caught in the act.
Even using one hand, he had no difficulty sliding his window open. Was he going to confront her for watching him?
She had to do something. She was a fricking adult, for Pete’s sake.
It was nothing. She was just looking outside, looking at the…moon?
Penny pulled on the blind string and pushed her curtains out of the way. She couldn’t very well ignore him now!
She opened her window, all the while hoping he didn’t intend to call the cops. “Hey,” he said.
He didn’t speak loudly; in fact, his voice was little more than a whisper.
“Hey,” she said back. “Trouble sleeping?
She pulled up a stool so she could peek out without bending over.
He sat down, too. There must be a bench there that she’d not seen. “Sleeping too much in the daytime – Vicodin. What’s your excuse?”
Penny tucked her knees under her chin.
What was her excuse? That she’d stopped living like a normal person? That she’d given up on life when her marriage had fallen apart? “I don’t know.” She’d not meant to sound forlorn. “Just kind of messed up, I guess…”
He rested his arm along the sill. The darkness lent an intimacy she’d not felt with him in the car.
“How come you’re messed up?” His voice rumbled across the darkness. The low-pitched gravelly tones surprisingly soothed her.
With the lamplight behind him, she couldn’t make out his features any longer.
And that had been a loaded question. “I kind of, well, I guess I’ve sort of lost track of… stuff… since my marriage fell apart.” She’d lost her dignity, her pride, her self-worth… Why would she tell him this?
“How come your marriage fell apart?”
This night was beginning to feel surreal. His question didn’t make her squirm. It just felt like she was t
alking to a sympathetic voice in the darkness, in the night. If felt safe.
“He cheated.” But there was more to it. “We’d drifted apart before that. And I didn’t do anything to try to fix things. I guess I kind of just thought our marriage would fix itself.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No.” She’d not wanted to accept any of the blame though. Kent had been the one to break the vows they’d made to one another. He’d met somebody else, wooed her, and then brought her into Penny’s own bed.
“He slept with her. I caught them. And her butt was on my pillow!”
That really bothered her. Nearly as much as the fact that she’d discovered her husband having sex with another woman in their bed. The fact that he’d not respected Penny enough to keep his mistress’ butt off her pillow!
Chaz wasn’t laughing. Maybe, by some strange freak of nature, he understood why that would hurt.
Or maybe he’d think she was crazy.
“Man, that does suck.” He understood! This almost brought tears to her eyes. Such a simple statement.
“Right?”
“I mean, your face was on that pillow, right?”
“Yes!” Oh, bless his heart.
“And this was the man who should have respected, should have thought about how that would make you feel. It would have meant he was at least a little remorseful.”
“Yes!” Oh, God, she was pathetic. “Sorry to dump all this on you… You probably want to get back to sleep.”
“No.” She could barely make out that little hitch in his smile. “I want to talk to you.”
“Why?” She couldn’t help but ask. She knew she wasn’t a total uggo but, heck, she’d forgotten what it felt like to have a man even pretend to find her attractive. And flirting? What was that?
“Can’t you figure that out?” The quality of his voice had changed. The rumble goaded her.
It sent a thrill down her spine.
“Are you flirting with me?”
Sexy male laughter drifted through her window. “Would you like that?”
How did this work? Was she supposed to admit that she would? That she’d like more than that? “I did mention I’m thirty-six, didn’t I?”
Mile High Madness: Six Colorado Contemporary Romances Page 44