Can't Stand the Heat

by Peggy Jaeger

  With her hands flattened on his chest, she nipped at his jaw and worked her way down his shoulders to his pecs. “You’re built like a fortress,” she said as she twined her fingers into the curly blue-black hair cloaking his torso. “Solid and hard.”

  “I’m hard, all right,” he quipped. “Harder than I’ve been in a long time.” She watched his eyes cross again, his jaw slack open as he flung his head back when she wound her hand over the hardest, hottest part of him.

  She hummed her approval while her hand tugged up his length. Her gaze fell to the jagged, raw, and puckered skin traversing his thigh. As he’d done to her, Stacy pressed her lips against the scar and skimmed a gentle kiss over it.

  When she glanced up to see him watching her, her thoughts turned wicked. With a subtle shift in position, she brought her filled hand to her mouth, flicked her tongue once across his tip—rewarded when he hissed, his stomach muscles going concave—and then filled her mouth with him.

  Just as she was delighting in the hot, salty, manly taste of him, Nikko pushed back on her shoulder and lifted her.

  “Sweetheart, I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s been a long time. You keep doing that and it’s gonna be over way too fast.”

  Stacy giggled and scooted back up on the bed.

  Nikko crawled over her, propped himself on his elbows, and nestled himself between her thighs. He scraped his hands along her temples and cupped her neck. “Do you have any idea what that sound does to me?”

  “What sound?” She reached up and nipped at his chin.

  His mouth captured hers, delightfully torturing her for a few moments.

  “When you laugh like that, all free and easy, it settles me, calms me when I didn’t even know I was tense. It’s odd, but the happy sound you make makes me happy.”

  She filled his cheek with her palm. “That’s one of the sweetest things I think anyone has ever said to me.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, his mouth pulling down at one corner. She almost giggled again, but he stopped her by saying, “I’ll show you sweet,” right before he laid claim to her lips.

  After that, laughing was the last thing on her mind.

  How was it possible for such a big, hard, and arrogant man to be so gentle and considerate a lover?

  Stacy felt cherished with every caress of his hand along her bare skin; treasured when he trailed his lips across every inch of her body. And when he slid into her after donning a condom, slowly, gradually, filling her inch by inch, and then slipping out again in the same torpid tempo, she knew for the first time in her life what it truly meant to be made love to.

  This wasn’t just sex, simply two people slaking a need, giving in to a mutual desire.

  This was different. It was…more.

  Better.

  When he trembled above her, she knew he was fighting for control. He wasn’t joking when he’d told her he was hard and wanting. Stacy skimmed her hands down his sweat-slicked back, over the tight and corded muscles, to land on his butt. With flattened palms, she lifted up to him, and wrapped her legs around his waist to keep him secured.

  “Stacy—”

  “Don’t hold back from me,” she whispered. “I can feel you holding back.” She eased up and kissed his lips, tasted salt, and licked it from him. “I want you to come inside me. Now. Right now.”

  Lifting her hips higher with his hands, he buried in deeper, a hot, ragged gasp pulling from his soul.

  He exploded into her, his shoulders and arms shaking with the force of the effort it took not to collapse on top of her.

  What would he think if he knew she craved just that?

  “Come here,” she said, placing a kiss on his cheek and pushing against his back with her hands. “Rest on me.”

  The pulse at his neck thrummed against her shoulder when he placed his head down next to hers.

  With tiny feather strokes, she caressed his back, his shoulders, his waist; until his breathing eased.

  One final, deep exhale against her neck and he rose up on his elbows again. Through eyes that were half closed and totally sated, he looked down at her.

  “You’re a bossy little thing when the spirit moves you, aren’t you?”

  She grinned, her pulse jumping again when he kissed her mouth.

  He levered up and went into the bathroom. She heard him flush the condom, run the water in the tap. Before settling back next to her on the bed, he grabbed the two opened, forgotten water bottles, handed her one, and then took a long, full pull from his own.

  “You look very thoughtful right now,” she said, gazing at him from under her lashes. “Having regrets already?”

  She’d kept her voice light. She didn’t want him to worry she’d suddenly turn into some clawing, clingy coworker. She wasn’t a child or naïve.

  His head shot up, his eyebrows kissing. She’d purposefully kept her face soft, her lips tugging up at the corners.

  “I am thoughtful, but it’s not about regrets.”

  He reached over and grabbed her free hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “It’s about where we go from here.”

  Stacy was astonished she could keep herself in check. His words weren’t what she’d thought to hear.

  “Where would you like to go?” she asked, her heart jumping just a bit when he drew one of her knuckles into his mouth and lazily ran his tongue across it.

  “If I had a say, we’d stay right here until we got kicked out,” he said, shaking his head and grinning at her.

  She pulled her hand from his, leaned forward while cupping his cheek, and kissed him. “Sounds like a plan. Unfortunately, we can’t. You have a show to finish.”

  He settled down on his back and cuddled her next to him. With her head now on his shoulder, her fingers drew lazy circles on his chest.

  He kissed her temple. “I wasn’t lying before when I told you I’ve never been involved with someone while working on the same show together.”

  Stacy shifted and tossed her top leg over his, the gesture intimate and arousing. “I can’t say the same because I did, once. When I was working on Kandy’s show.”

  “Obviously, it didn’t work out,” he said, snaking a hooded glance at her, “because you’re here. With me.”

  She kissed his pec and said, “Yeah, but not for any reasons you can come up with. I found out the guy was using me to get to Kandy.”

  It still stung to this day to admit she’d been so blind and naïve during that time.

  When Nikko asked for details, because of course he wouldn’t just let it go—no surprise there—she told him about the assistant director who’d stalked and terrified her cousin for weeks in a feeble attempt to get her show canceled so he could take advantage of a film-directing offer. Kandy’s staff contracts were ironclad and anyone who wanted to leave the hit show had to pay out half to three quarters of their salaries for the time left on the contract. For an assistant director like Mark Begman, who’d made 90,000 a year, he had to come up with almost 200,000 dollars to be set free of his work obligation. Money he didn’t have and couldn’t get.

  He’d started paying attention to Stacy over a course of a few weeks, wined and dined her, and then just as quickly let the relationship drift. Only after he’d been arrested did the private investigator hired to look into Kandy’s stalker discover Begman had targeted Stacy because she was a direct link to her cousin. He wanted to get information to use in his campaign to drive the cooking-show host to a nervous breakdown, thereby canceling her show.

  “Luckily, the PI I hired, Josh Keane, figured it all out before Kandy or anyone else could be seriously hurt.”

  “Wait…Keane? Isn’t that Kandy’s married name?”

  Stacy smiled and nuzzled his neck. “Yeah. Josh proposed the second the case wrapped up.”

  He didn’t say anything. After a few moments, Stacy rose up on her
elbow. “Nikko?”

  He turned his gaze to her. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by my first name. I like the way it sounds on your lips.” He gave the spot in a question a quick buss. “As if it belongs there. Call me that from now on. No more of this Mr. Stamp crap, or waiting until I look at you for you to speak to me.”

  Because that’s exactly what she’d done, she couldn’t help laughing. “Ah, there’s the arrogant Dominick Stamp the world is used to.”

  One eyebrow crept up to his uncombed hairline. Mimicking her position, Nikko settled on one elbow and traced a finger from her temple to the point of her chin. “Here’s some more arrogance for you,” he said. “I don’t want this to end when I leave this bed, Stacy. We started something tonight, something… I don’t know. Special, maybe?” He shook his head. “Different? I can’t find the right word, but I don’t want it to end. I want to keep seeing you and not only when we’re on the job. Off it too. How do you feel about that? Do you want to continue this?”

  Without a moment’s thought, she said, “Yes.”

  “Good.” He kissed her again. “Good.”

  With a nimble move that belied his bulk, he had her pinned under him, his mouth doing wild and wicked things to hers. Against her thigh she felt him grow, her own desire drenching within her again.

  She widened her hips and let him nestle in the cradle she’d made for him. Just as she could feel his desire pulsing against her, she knew he could feel hers as well.

  As his mouth dragged a sweet line down her throat, she mumbled, “There’s something to be said for arrogance.”

  He laughed against her skin and made her tremble.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Please God, deliver him from pain-in-the-ass chefs and their explosive personalities.

  Nikko blew a thick stream of air out through his nostrils and crossed his arms over his chest as he watched two of the contestants shouting at one another on the monitor.

  “What caused this blowup?” he asked Todd. “I was watching the MacNeill kid on the other screen when this started.”

  The camera chief shook his head. “Cayman wanted Chinese-five spice for his recipe and Burbank allegedly took the only sample we had in stock.”

  The sound of raised and heated voices blared through the tent.

  “Should we stop rolling and get someone over there to break it up before it comes to blows?” Todd asked, his eyes nervously darting across the monitor as the two chefs stood, toe to toe, hands fisted at their sides, continuing to shout at one another.

  Nikko considered for a half second before saying, “No. It won’t come to that. Burbank’s a dick, but he likes his pretty face too much to stick it out and potentially get it smashed.”

  A strangled giggle came from behind him. Nikko glanced over his shoulder at Stacy, who quickly bent her head, her gaze intently focusing on her notebook. A ghost of a smile played across her mouth.

  It gave him a warm and calm sensation just knowing she was settled behind him.

  “My bet is he’ll charm his way out of this in about three more seconds,” Nikko predicted, turning his attention back to the ruckus.

  As predictions went, it was fairly accurate. The crew watched as Clay Burbank grinned and then handed something to Alonzo Cayman. Cayman took it, his mouth pulled tight and his body language still on the defensive. But he’d stopped yelling. When Clay held out his hand, the other chef took it, reluctantly if Nikko was to guess, pumped it once, and then stormed off back to his station. The camera stayed fixed on Burbank, his grin turning cocky as he went back to preparing his dish.

  “See?” Nikko said. He leaned back in the chair and took a hit from the water bottle he knew Stacy had placed on the console. “Guy’s a class-A chef, but a douche, just the same.”

  Stacy’s walkie-talkie sounded. Nikko turned again to see her lift from her chair and move out of the truck. His gaze settled on her cute, tight butt as she left the area and for a hot moment he remembered how it had felt, naked and perfect, in his hands.

  Since coming back from Big Sky three days ago, they’d gone back to their pre-intimacy professional relationship while production was underway. Stacy had assumed her executive producer role without pause, putting out fires when she had to and keeping him apprised of problems both real and potential along the way. He was sure no one in the crew or cast suspected anything had changed between them.

  But it had.

  After he was assured Melora was asleep each night, Nikko would leave the cabin and take the back path up to the main house. Amos Dixon never locked the front door, so he was able to sneak up the stairs and to Stacy’s wing unseen. He felt like a teenager again, slipping out after curfew, exhilarated at the prospect of spending a few stolen hours with her.

  A swift rap on her door and he’d have her in his arms within a heartbeat.

  Everything he’d fantasized about doing to her, and for her, during the hours they were enslaved with the production, he now gave free vent to. Stacy matched him, passion for passion, peak for peak, giving as good as she got.

  Stacy Peters was a different woman from any and all he’d known before. She asked nothing of him and gave him everything. There was no hidden agenda with her, something common with so many other women he knew. Unselfish was the term he thought best to describe her. She never lost her temper in situations he knew would have caused him to explode. She was kind, but firm in her dealings with the producers and the other crew, and once she was brought into a situation, it was usually resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

  After those all-too-swift hours alone together, where Stacy would fall asleep, cradled in his arms, Nikko, with a heavy heart, would leave her with a kiss on her brow and head back to his own bed.

  In the morning, he would hear Melora trying her best to be quiet while getting ready for her dawn workouts with Stacy. They mutually decided to keep their relationship a secret from his daughter for a number of reasons. Since coming back from the production shoot, the teen seemed happier than she had in quite a while and he knew a big part of the reason was his executive producer. He didn’t want anything to jeopardize her recovery—Stacy agreed—knowing that any little blip could send her off the deep end again emotionally, and the mutual agreement to keep their budding relationship from the girl seemed sound.

  A sudden realization he too was happier than he’d been in years, radiated through him as he watched the chefs scramble to finish. And it wasn’t just the fact he was getting laid, although the sex was phenomenal all by itself. For all her spit and polish, cool and controlled demeanor, Stacy Peters was an uninhibited and thoroughly sensual lover. He’d shown her that her physical scars in no way detracted from the fact that he desired her. Once she was convinced of his sincerity, she’d given herself completely to him without reserve.

  No, it was the woman he was rapidly coming to view as important in more than just her professional capacity that he could claim made him happy.

  He regretted treating her so horribly when she’d first arrived. The look of fear on her face when he’d railed at her the day she’d taken Melora to the airport still haunted him and he vowed he’d never make her frightened of him ever again.

  “You lucked out, you know,” Todd said from next to him, pulling him back to the production.

  “What do you mean?”

  Todd pointed his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Having Stacy Peters as your EP. You lucked out.”

  He knew it, but he was interested in why his camera chief thought as much, so he asked.

  “Smart as they come and she’s hard to ruffle. Plus, she’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.”

  Nikko nodded.

  “Having said that,” Todd said, chuckling, “she’s also kicking my ass into shape. Did you know she’s now leading a yoga class at sunrise down by the lake?”

  “I’d heard that
. I saw it for myself when we were in Big Sky.”

  “Yeah, but the class has grown since word got out. She must have twenty people every day now. A few of my crew, and a bunch of the chefs, our wild child Burbank among them.”

  Shit.

  The way Burbank had blatantly flirted with Stacy came back to him in a nanosecond. As did the conversation he’d overheard between them before filming began. The chef was obviously interested in her. Nikko recalled hearing of Burbank’s man-whore rep prior to being chosen as one of the contestants. Back then he hadn’t given it second thought.

  That changed the moment he’d taken Stacy to bed.

  “He’s such a tool,” Todd said with a droll grin and a shake of his head. “Drives Stacy nuts with all his questions and requests.”

  “Requests?”

  “Mainly about how to get into some of the stances. ‘How far do I spread my legs?’ and ‘This is gonna make my abs irresistibly touchable to the ladies.’ Shit like that. Like I said, the guy’s a tool.”

  Nikko bit down hard on his immediate response. So hard, he felt his back molars shift.

  “Is it bothering Stacy? Making her uncomfortable?”

  For the first time Todd turned, full face, to him. Nikko couldn’t quite read the expression on the man’s face.

  “No-oooo,” he drew the word out. “She can handle herself. Puts him in his place more times than not, making him look like the jerk he’s acting. Nicely, of course, ’cause it’s Stacy.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  His gaze flicked to the chef in question, who was currently putting the finishing garnish on his challenge dish. Nikko could feel Todd’s gaze still on him. “What?”

  A heartbeat passed before Todd asked, “I’ve known you, what? Eleven, twelve years?”

  “About that. Why?”

  “In all that time, through all the shows we’ve worked on together, you’ve never given one thought that wasn’t a pissed-off one about any producer, executive or otherwise. Usually you just ignore them and act like they don’t even exist.”