by Leanne Banks
His body tightening like an overstretched wire, he sucked in a breath of air and lowered his mouth to that pouting nipple.
Lisa’s knees dipped. His tongue massaged her until she felt the tug in every one of her feminine recesses. It was as if her body knew what her mind denied. Everything Brick did was a call to mate.
He nudged her to the wall, trapping her in the hard circle of his body and arms. “I want your jeans off.” He gripped her hips with his hands. “I want to touch your legs and spread them apart.”
His words thrilled and shocked her. Lisa saw the blatant need in his eyes, explosive and mind robbing, and she wondered if after he kissed her again, there’d be anything left of her but ashes.
But then she didn’t wonder anything, because Brick bent his knees and his full jean-clad arousal found a home between her thighs and his mouth took her around the world with a searing kiss.
Her scent was making him crazy, Brick thought. In his mind, his tongue was his sex and she was open, moist and responsive. He thrust, and she cupped him with her tongue and lips. He rolled against her and she cuddled him with her thighs. Her bare breasts pressed erotically into his chest, and her hair whispered against his throat. But it was her scent that made him feel out of control; it grabbed his gut and heart and made his mouth bone-dry.
He needed to breathe, needed to think, but his hunger for her was a freight train roaring at top speed. He wrapped his hands around her bottom and pumped against her in rhythm with his tongue.
Lisa whimpered and spread her legs.
Brick felt the first scorching rush. He swore. He wanted to be inside her for real, not just in his mind. His body needed the release. His body had been fooled into believing Lisa was slick, open and naked.
He jerked at the force of his climax, and Lisa clung to him with hands that trembled. He tore his mouth from her and they both gasped for air. A breathless little moan escaped her lips, and for a sliver of a moment as he braced his forehead against the cool wall, he wondered if she’d been as caught up as he had. The physical evidence of his release, however, brought him to his senses.
He pulled back, and her hands tightened around the back of his neck.
“Oh, God, Brick…”
The plea in her voice grabbed his heart and squeezed. He sighed and held her close, enduring the torture and sweetness of her partially clad body. He stood that way with her in his arms for several moments until she seemed to catch her breath. Damning his rampant desire for her, he finally took a decisive step away. He felt like a rutting bull and didn’t want to see the look of dismay or censure in her gaze.
“Brick— You—” Her hand on his arm stopped him midmotion, forcing him to turn and look at her. The expression in her green eyes was one of arousal and bewilderment. “I—” She broke off and shook her head as if she couldn’t articulate her thoughts.
Brick could have articulated his, but the words probably would have scorched her ears. Still wrapped up in a ton of different feelings, he swallowed hard. “Don’t try to say anything. Just give me a minute in here, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
Her eyes were wide with confusion. “But—”
“Please,” he said in a rough voice, and turned away.
Lisa stood in the hallway, staring for a full minute after he’d closed the bedroom door. Her legs threatening to give way, she leaned against the wall. Her equilibrium was shot and she felt like an emotional basketcase, but she didn’t call after him. She didn’t try to tell him that her body was still buzzing with arousal, or that she’d nearly gone right over the top with him. She didn’t try to tell him that touching him felt so good that it hurt. Most of all, she didn’t tell him that she loved him. She wasn’t sure he’d want to hear it and ultimately it didn’t matter, because although Brick cared for her and was aroused by her, she knew he absolutely did not love her. At least, not enough to marry her.
The incident made her more cautious with him, Brick noticed a week later as they discussed the possibility of coordinating transportation to deliver unserved leftovers of some of Lisa’s catered meals to homeless shelters in the area. When she’d insisted on meeting for lunch in a public place, Brick knew he’d lost ground, and he damned his unchecked response to her all over again.
She seemed friendly, but a little nervous. They’d managed, however, to firm up the arrangements, and Brick was determined to keep every mutual thread of connection between them.
Since he knew her work schedule, he made a habit of calling her during her off-hours every day to ask how she was and to talk. It was amazing what he learned in those conversations simply by listening. Her voice had the power to turn him on, but Brick concluded wryly that his body must have realized that some things simply couldn’t be done over the phone.
With every conversation, he gleaned a new little fact about her. Like the fact that white roses were her favorite flowers, and that she kept a secret stash of fruit-flavored candy. She’d never gone “steady” with a guy in high school. The confession had made him want to dig out his high school ring. Steady he could do, marriage he could not.
He noticed that she often spoke of her family, leading him to believe they were very important to her. And she worried about her friends. She was a nurturer, he realized, and though he fought the reality, it was logical that a nurturer would want babies.
He wondered why the thought of babies didn’t shake him as much as marriage did.
The phone rang later than usual on Thursday. Lisa had begun to think of her conversations with Brick as the one forbidden pleasure she allowed herself these days. Dates with a mission were such a drain.
She and Brick didn’t usually discuss anything all that intense, but their little talks made her feel cared for. And since they were separated by miles, she didn’t have to worry about doing anything foolish, such as asking him to kiss her again. Instead, she could just wish it, she thought darkly as she picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” she said, expecting Brick on the other end of the line.
“Hi. Howyadoin?” he replied in a slurred voice.
Lisa frowned. “Brick? You sound strange. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just a little headache.”
His words were running together. She felt a flutter of concern. “Are you sick?”
“No, no, no.” He gave a long sigh. “You’re not s’posed to be talkin’ ’bout me. I called to hear about you.”
Her heart twisted. “I don’t want to talk about me. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really, except for my head. Feels as if a demolition team got inside and stripped it.”
“Have you been to the doctor?”
“Yeah. They gave me some medicine at the emergency room. That’s probably why—”
“Emergency room!” she nearly shouted.
A long silence followed. “Lisa, please don’t yell at me right now.”
She took several deep breaths to stem the panic. “Why did you go to the emergency room?”
“S’not that bad. I took a little spill and scraped my head.”
Lisa’s gut instinct told her that Brick’s definition of a little spill and hers were miles apart. “What did you fall off?”
He gave another heavy sigh. “A twenty-foot ladder, but I didn’t get that many stitches, and, Lisa, you know how hard my head is.”
Every new piece of information she pried out of him only made her feel anxious, and he was still running his words together.
“I’ve got my alarm set to wake me up every couple of hours, so—”
“I’ll be over in ten minutes,” she firmly interrupted.
“You don’t need to. This’ll pass.”
Lisa felt a strange burning sensation behind her eyelids. She couldn’t explain her relationship with Brick to anyone, let alone herself, but she knew she couldn’t leave him alone after he’d been hurt. “Ten minutes,” she said, and hung up the phone.
Brick winced at the loud click reverberating through his mind and gi
ngerly lowered his head to the pillow. If he hadn’t looked in the mirror an hour before, he would have sworn his head was the size of a watermelon. The doctor had preferred for Brick to remain at the hospital overnight, but Brick hated hospitals, so he’d used all his persuasive abilities to get released. His foreman had given him a ride home and promised to stop by later.
Brick had taken a shower, called Lisa, and now he was worn out. He would close his eyes for only a minute, he told himself. Lisa would be there soon.
Somebody was thumping the watermelon, he decided moments later. The pounding he heard seemed to penetrate his blood vessels and bones. A feminine voice called out, and he realized it was Lisa.
He dragged himself to the door and opened it. Everything seemed a little fuzzy to him except the concern he saw on Lisa’s face.
She shook her head and entered the room. “Oh, Brick, you should be in bed.” Dropping her purse on a chair, she set down a package that smelled suspiciously like chicken soup. She took his arm and gently guided him down the hall. “Come on. You have no business being up.”
“I couldn’t open the door from my bed,” Brick grumbled, but allowed the fuss. Her scent swam around him, making him feel more dizzy than he already was, but it was a good kind of dizzy. He breathed in deeply. “Lord, you smell good. I’m buying a warehouse full of your perfume. What kind is it?”
His words were still running together, Lisa noticed. “Obsession,” she absently answered, still nudging him toward the bed.
“That’s me, obsessed.” He stopped, feeling a momentary discomfort over her caring for him. “Waitaminute. Do you want something to eat or drink? I’ve got—”
“Would you please stop being polite? If I want something to drink, I’ll get it. Right now I’m worried about you. I don’t like the looks of those stitches. I don’t like your color. And I don’t like the way your sentences keep running together.”
Brick hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and frowned. It was, she thought, the sexiest frown she’d ever seen. “Is there anything you do like about me?” he asked.
“Too much,” she muttered to herself, taking in his appearance. True, he did look pale beneath his tan, and the doctor had obviously been forced to shave part of Brick’s hair to put in the stitches. Compassion for those less fortunate could almost always be found in Brick’s eyes. Lisa had learned that fact over the last year. His square jaw advertised his determination. And the strength of his body was revealed in shoulders that she would swear could withstand the weight of the world. The only burden he couldn’t stand, she reminded herself, was marriage.
Yes, she admitted glumly, there was too much to like about Brick. She leaned closer to him and gently pushed at his broad shoulders. “Lay down,” she whispered.
His eyes nickered with heat, and his lips tilted into a bad-boy grin. “You wanna help me?”
Lisa felt that unwelcome flip in her stomach again, and considered turning around and leaving until she saw his grin turn into a wince of pain. He sank down on the bed and groaned. “I’m completely at your mercy,” he muttered, and slowly eased his head onto the pillow. “I’ve got you here in my bedroom, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.”
Lisa’s lips twitched as she shifted his feet on top of the coverlet. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t do anything unseemly.”
“That’s a shame.” He closed his eyes. “I prob’ly wouldn’t remember it anyway, though.”
Lisa ignored that statement. “What did the doctor say?”
“I’m supposed to wake up every hour till tomorrow,” he said, his tone low and drowsy. “Don’t get the stitches wet. Drink plenty of fluids,” he recounted. “Rest.” He gave a long, heavy sigh, as if he were exhausted. “I told you I feel like crap,” he warned, his voice fading. “I think…I’ll…goto…”
“Sleep,” she finished for him, and checked the clock. In sixty minutes she would wake him. Lisa stroked his forehead, pushing a strand of his hair aside. His stubby eyelashes were light at the tips, she noticed, a result of all the time he spent in the sun. He looked like a rough-and-tumble boy who’d finally surrendered to the human need to sleep.
She wondered what kind of child he’d been. She wondered if he would ever have any rough-and-tumble sons of his own. Her heart squeezed at the thought. Brick didn’t want the responsibilities of marriage and children, so she shouldn’t grow accustomed to touching him, she decided, and pulled her hand away. She shouldn’t let her mind dwell on him too often. And she should do her very best to get her heart back from him, so she would be able to give it to someone else.
After an hour had passed, she gently touched his shoulder. “Brick,” she said. “Brick, wake up.”
When his even breathing didn’t change, she nudged him more firmly. “Brick, wake up.”
His eyelids fluttered, and he lifted his elbow to shield his eyes from the bedside lamp. “Lisa?”
She felt a sliver of relief. “Yes, I have to wake you up. Remember?”
“Am I dreamin’?”
She smiled. “I don’t think so. Want some ginger ale?”
He nodded and slowly pushed himself up to lean against the headboard. Accepting the glass, he drank down the iced beverage in nearly one gulp. “When my mom was alive, she always gave us ginger ale and graham crackers when we were sick.”
“My mom gave us ginger ale and saltines.”
“Yeah. My mom was fun, but sometimes she did some crazy things.” He shook his head, and Lisa noticed his eyes were bleary. “Did I ever tell you that she wanted to be a country-music singer?”
Lisa shook her head.
“The urge hit real bad when she was pregnant with me. That’s why she named me what she did,” he said in a tone that indicated he still didn’t believe it.
Lisa’s curiosity was spiked. “What did she name you?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Oh.”
He looked at her then, his gaze questioning. “You have to swear you won’t tell.”
Lisa lifted her hand in a silent oath.
He grimaced. “Elvis Pendleton.”
Lisa stared at him in disbelief. A choked snicker escaped her throat. Her first instinct was to howl with laughter. When she saw the brooding expression on Brick’s face, though, Lisa bit the inside of her cheek so hard, she wondered if she’d drawn blood. She cleared her throat. “I didn’t think Elvis was considered a country-music singer.” Her voice sounded unnaturally high to her own ears.
“That’s what I told her,” he said glumly.
Lisa could imagine a young Brick trying to correct his mother’s point of view. Young Brick? Young Elvis. Her eyes burned with the effort she made to hold back an unladylike guffaw. “Your, uh, your family doesn’t call you Elvis.”
“Not if they want to live,” he said in a mild, yet lethal voice. “The last time Troy did, he was six and I relieved him of his two front teeth.”
“Brick, a hundred lines of Elvis songs are running through my mind,” she confessed, contorting her lips to keep them from twitching wildly.
“Lisa,” he said, his voice weary, “I’ve heard them all. You can laugh all you want after I go back to sleep.”
“I guess that means you don’t want me to sing ‘Love Me Tender’ for a lullaby.”
Chapter Eight
Twenty minutes later Lisa stood in Brick’s den and nearly burst her sides with the laughter she’d been holding back until “The King” went to sleep again. She wiped tears of hilarity from her eyes. The name certainly explained a few things. Now she understood why he’d gotten into so many fights as a youngster. She also guessed the origin of his nickname, since he’d adamantly refused to use his given name to the point of shedding blood over it.
Sniffing back another snicker, Lisa eyed those photo albums covetously. What she wouldn’t give…
Absolutely not, she told herself as she marched toward the kitchen. She heated up the chicken soup instead.
As the night wore on, every time
Brick woke up, he told her something new about his family or himself. It was as if for a short window of time he was more vulnerable, more willing to disclose. She wondered if that was part of the reason he’d never stayed until morning with her.
Certain he would never have shared all this without the bonk on the head, she also wondered if he would regret it when he realized what he’d done. She cringed at the thought, but realized he probably wasn’t going to be pleased.
When she woke him around three o’clock in the morning, he rubbed his face and shook his head from side to side. “I wish I had a dozen white roses for you,” he muttered. “You’re missing a whole night’s sleep for me.”
“It’s no big deal,” she protested, moved by the mention of flowers.
Muttering something unintelligible, he rolled to a sitting position and frowned. “It’s nothing you’ve never seen before, but you might wanna turn your head.” The warning was stamped across his face. “I’m ditching these jeans. I don’t usually wear anything to bed.”
Lisa froze as she watched him stand, unbutton and unzip. He pushed the denim material down over his bare hips and thighs. Despite his injury, the beauty of his nearly naked body made her breath hitch in her throat. His broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips. A spray of brown hair on his chest was echoed in the nest that cupped his masculinity.
Brick had always seemed to give little notice to his impressive physique. Tonight was no exception.
Lisa, however, had always been extremely impressed by Brick’s body. Tonight was no exception.
She drew a breath and made the quick prudent decision to leave his bedroom.
He lifted a hand to his forehead and swore.
Her prudent intention disappeared into thin air. “Sit down,” she murmured, coming quickly to his side and kneeling.
“I’m tired of this headache,” he growled.
Trying to keep her touch as impersonal as possible, Lisa pulled the jeans past his knees down to his feet. The hem was great for tucking into work boots, but a pain for pulling off. He lifted his foot, and she squelched the scandalous urge to tickle the sole. She must be getting punchy, she thought.
