Velvet, Leather & Lace: A Man's Gotta DoCalling the ShotsBaring It All

by Suzanne Forster

Then she felt his hand on her arm, and he turned her to face him. “Well?”

  “My God, Jake. It’s…amazing.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then let out a breath. “Yeah. It’s coming along.”

  “More than. It’s perfect.” You’re perfect. “Jake, I can’t believe it, but this is really going to happen.”

  “I told you it would.”

  “Yes, but…”

  Another smile. “Have some faith, woman.”

  The sun had kissed him all day long, leaving him deeply tanned. He wore a blue polo shirt with a rip on one sleeve and a streak of dirt across a pec, jeans that had faded at the stress spots—of which there were an impressive amount—and work boots he hadn’t bothered to lace all the way up. His arms were bare and sinewy, his hands ropy with strength. His jaw had a day’s growth and another streak of dirt. Fine laugh lines fanned out from the corners of his mouth and eyes, giving him a mischievous, disreputable, almost cocky air, and yet he was looking at her with those see-all eyes filled with a startling clarity and depth.

  Not cocky. Just confident and easygoing enough not to care what anyone thought of him.

  A shockingly arousing trait.

  “Jake!” One of his men stood on the stage, gesturing him over.

  “Go ahead,” she told him, shading her eyes from the brutal sun beaming down on them, watching as he easily leaped up onto the back of a seat, effortlessly vaulting to the stage. Once there, he spoke to the man who’d called him over, and then turned and directed another crew member, while simultaneously speaking into his walkie-talkie to someone suspended high above the stage working on lighting supports.

  Mesmerized by the goings-on, and sapped by the sun, she sank to a seat and took a few minutes to take it all in. Still, her eyes kept drifting back to the tall, energetic authority figure center stage.

  Jake.

  Kneeling now, by a pile of tools, he eased out a cord. Rising again, he uncoiled the cord, plugged it into what must have been an electrical source and then tossed the other end to the guy up on the ladder. Then Jake moved back to the pile of tools, lifting some sort of electrical saw, just hoisting the big thing into his arms, carrying it across the stage to yet another member of his crew. He spoke for a moment, then went back for a nail gun, which he took to a stack of lumber. There he began shifting the wood around before finally hunkering down and putting the nail gun to work.

  His back was to her now, the material of his shirt stretched taut across his shoulders and back. His jeans were low-slung but unlike the obnoxious Todd, Jake did not expose any unnecessary body parts.

  Not that she’d have minded.

  “Stop it,” she told herself firmly. The man was working, and working hard. Sheesh. Surreptitiously, she swiped at her hot, damp forehead. The heat was killing her. She could only imagine how hot the guys were, working in this weather all day long.

  And indeed, Jake stretched out an arm, reaching for his water bottle. Tossing back his head, he took a long pull, then swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She sensed his sigh when his thirst was quenched, but rather than setting the bottle down, he tipped it over his head. Water ran down his hair, his face and onto his chest and shoulders, soaking into his shirt. Tossing the now empty water bottle aside, he went back to work.

  Mia let out a long breath, suddenly even hotter than she’d been a moment before. She fanned her face, then went utterly still when Jake craned his neck and unerringly found her gaze. Time seemed to stop, which was ridiculous in Mia’s opinion. She’d stared at him hundreds of times. Thousands. So why today it felt…different, she had no idea.

  Jake rose to his full height, and with his gaze still locked on hers, made his way to the edge of the stage, then expertly balanced across the wall of the orchestra pit and hopped down.

  About ten feet in front of her.

  She imagined him taking those last few steps, imagined him kissing her, a thought that brought her out of her trance and made her want to thunk her head against something hard to shake it off.

  “Mia?”

  “I’ve…got to run. Yeah. I’ve got to…” What? She had to what? Every single rational thought had vanished right out of her head.

  Jake just looked at her from eyes that were male and very aware.

  “Work,” she managed to say. “I’ve got to get home and do some more…”

  “Work.” He let out a slow smile that upped her body temperature even more. “Are you sure? Was there something you needed first?”

  “Um…” She racked her brain for what she could possibly need besides his body over hers. “What are they doing?” She hitched her chin toward the two guys on ladders stage left, trying to be cool, trying to distract him.

  “Setting framework for the hanging plants.”

  “And for the lighting? We’re all worried about how that’s going to work.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve solved all your problems,” he promised, his eyes still on hers. “You were looking at me, Mia, like you wanted to gobble me up.”

  So much for playing it cool. “I was?”

  “Oh, yeah.” His eyes were full of a sexual hunger that would have buckled her knees if she’d been standing.

  She firmly ignored that and the flutter in her belly. “Are you going to be ready for the prop delivery tomorrow?”

  “We’re starting at 5:00 a.m., so yes. We’ll be ready.”

  “So early?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Nothing keeping me in bed.”

  The air seemed to hum around them as he held her gaze for a long beat. “You sure there wasn’t anything else?” he asked softly. Edgily.

  “No. Nothing.”

  With a nod, he turned away. Again he agilely climbed the framework back to his crew, his shirt clinging to his damp, hard shoulders, his well-worn Levi’s cupping his extremely fine rear end—

  She was staring at his rear end. At the realization, she jerked her gaze off that part of his anatomy, but it was too late—he’d looked back over his shoulder.

  And caught her.

  His eyes shuttered. She figured he was amused.

  Then she looked again, and she realized that, no, that wasn’t amusement in his gaze, but arousal.

  It should have embarrassed her to the core, and as the blood rushed to her face, she acknowledged there was some of that.

  And also more.

  Her skin felt…tight, as if a size too small. Her heart pounded, echoing between her ears and at all the pulse points. And beneath her sheer blouse and opaque camisole her nipples tightened.

  Inside her purse her cell phone began to vibrate again, and yet she still stared at Jake, locked in some weird twilight zone where the majority of her brain cells seemed to have vacated the premises. “I have to go,” she murmured, and though he couldn’t possibly have heard her, she turned and practically ran up the center aisle toward her car.

  THAT NIGHT, she lay alone in her bed, wearing a fall sample of VLL’s newest silky nightie. She was hot and clammy and aching and unfulfilled.

  Maybe it was the nightie. In the catalog they’d described it as heaven on earth, irrevocably sensual and guaranteed to change the night.

  She ripped it off over her head and, nude, lay back down.

  Nope, not the nightie. She was still hot and clammy and aching and unfulfilled.

  She knew what it was. Or who.

  Jake.

  It was hours before she finally drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING Mia found a note on her car in Jake’s broad scrawl.

  Come see the progress tonight.

  Yeah, she’d go see the progress. And Jake. Probably there was nothing that could have kept her away.

  At the office, she got swamped the moment she arrived, and she didn’t manage to get out of there until nearly seven. A part of her was glad that Jake would certainly be long gone from the theater.

  But when she got there, one lone man stood onstage.


  Jake.

  The night was unseasonably hot, even hotter than yesterday. He was in his customary polo shirt, jeans and unlaced boots, crouched low beneath the frame for the hanging garden, hammering away at something. The hammer rose and fell with easy precision. Bang, bang, bang.

  Her heart picked up the beat. The long lines of sinew in his back worked rhythmically with the muscles in his arm as he lifted the hammer again and again, mesmerizing her. Then, as if he scented her, he raised his head, and across the thirty feet between them, looked right at her. “Hey.” He tossed aside the hammer as he straightened.

  “You’ve had a long day,” she said, noting the frame of the catwalk jutting out from the stage.

  “Yeah. I sent the guys home—it’s just too hot.” He swiped his arm over his forehead. “I was getting ready to leave, too.” He spread his arms, gesturing to the set around him. “Everything to your liking?”

  She tore her eyes off him. The frame for the hanging garden and archway had begun to resemble its final form. She could see the catwalk’s width and length, and the proper scaffolding above it. Yes, everything was to her liking, thank you very much—and she stared at all he’d done, stunned. “It’s going to be beautiful. I really owe you, Jake.”

  Something flared in his eyes and he stepped closer. “You keep saying that, and I just might try to collect.”

  Oh boy. As it had yesterday, and the day before, the air around them heated. Hell, it practically burst into spontaneous flame.

  He stroked a damp strand of hair from her forehead. “You’re warm.”

  “It’s a million degrees out here.”

  “It’s not just the air.”

  She caught his hand in hers because she’d just discovered she couldn’t think when he was touching her. “Jake—”

  “Let’s go cool off.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Really? I’m talking about going swimming. What are you talking about?”

  She felt herself blush. “You know what I was talking about.”

  “Ah.”

  “I mean it—you’d just be disappointed.”

  “Right. Because you don’t like sex.”

  Damn him, his mouth quirked when he said it. He was making fun of her.

  And it didn’t help that she’d lied to him. She liked sex just fine, more than fine.

  What she didn’t like was how none of her sexual relationships had ever worked out, not a single bleeping one of them. Maybe that was her own cynicism, maybe not, but fact was fact.

  Once she slept with a guy, he waltzed right out of her life.

  She cared about Jake, deeply. Watching him walk away would hurt, too much. So she’d let him think she didn’t like sex. So what. It was an easier explanation than the truth, that she wouldn’t screw their friendship up for a Jake-made orgasm, no matter how promising such an orgasm might be. “Look, it’s no big deal. I just don’t get what all the fuss is about.”

  Now he let out a full-fledged grin and stroked her temple with his finger again, tracing her hairline. “You have no idea what you’re missing, do you?”

  “Let me guess. You’d be willing to show me.”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  Her engine revved. Yeah, he definitely could show her. She needed a cold shower just thinking about it. “Go home, Jake. The heat is going to your head.”

  “Is it getting to you, too, Mia?”

  Was he kidding? Couldn’t he see that her nipples got happy at just the sound of him, or that she broke out into a sweat at the mere mention of sex?

  Yes, hell yes, it was getting to her. “No.”

  “Liar,” he chided softly, and pulled her out of the sun, around a set of curtains and into a small alcove where they were protected overhead by staging, but also from anyone happening to walk by.

  They were still onstage, with hundreds of empty seats facing them, and yet not a soul could have seen them. It gave the air a shocking intimacy, and every sensual nerve ending hummed with anticipation.

  Then he stepped close. Their toes brushed. His breath mingled with hers, and his eyes, good Lord, those eyes. “Jake, honestly.” Her laugh sounded a little breathless even to her own ears and she hoped he didn’t take it as an invitation. “If this is how you think I’m going to repay you—”

  He was slowly shaking his head. “No ‘repaying.’ What I do for you, what you do for me, comes without a price. Always,” he said, and then backed her against the wall and leaned into her with that hard, perfect body. “This is something else, something separate. And it has to be done.”

  And then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JAKE KISSED Mia because he had to get it done, had to in the same way that lungs needed air and French fries needed ketchup. There wasn’t much conscious thought about it, other than his hands on her arms, hauling her up closer, and kissing those lips he’d been wanting beneath his ever since his first taste of her the other day.

  Mia went utterly still for a beat, and then her hands were fisting in his shirt, whether for balance or because she had to touch him, he had no clue, but he liked it. Liked, too, the helpless little murmur she let out, and the way she clung to him like Saran Wrap.

  When he pulled back, he was breathing hard and unsteady, and he was gratified to see her in the same condition. Staring at him, she licked her lips, as if to taste every last drop of him. “Oh, baby,” he whispered, and lowered his head again, kissing one side of her mouth and then the other. He was working his way along her jaw when she grabbed him by the hair and brought his mouth back to hers.

  And then she was kissing him, her mouth opening to his in a way that had him groaning. She tasted hot and yet somehow sweet at the same time, and he couldn’t get enough. Slipping his fingers into her hair, he changed the angle of her head to better suit him and came at her again, pressing deeper, loving the feel of her hands holding him tight as if she couldn’t stand the thought of him pulling back.

  Fat chance.

  He pressed her back against a wall, losing himself in the moment, as she slid her arms up his chest and wrapped them around his neck. His hands still held her head, his fingers tangled in her soft, silky hair, which fell over his forearms like teasing little fingers, smelling like some exotic scent he couldn’t place.

  When they tore apart to breathe, he inhaled her, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “God, you smell good. I could just eat you up.” He took a little hot bite out of her, making her shiver, and then he licked the spot with his tongue.

  “Jake—” she choked out, and her head fell back, hitting the wall. “Hold on.”

  He had one hand gripping the back of her head, the other low on her spine, which he slid down to palm her sweet ass. “I am.” New goal, he thought. Get her in his bed, yes, but to make her want it, crave it, as much as he wanted and craved her. Just the thought of her sprawled on his mattress, sighing his name, made him hard.

  Or maybe that was the feel of her pressed between him and the wall in a way that had her breasts, her belly, her thighs, everything, all mashed up against him.

  In either case, time to back up and give her room to think. And to let it build more for her, to let her become even half as sexually frustrated as he was.

  “I have to go,” she whispered.

  Bending, he put his mouth to her ear. “’Kay.”

  “Jake.” She shivered again and clutched at him. “I have to go.”

  IN TRUTH, MIA DIDN’T actually know where she had to go, only that he’d whipped her world into frenzied motion. She felt as if she’d gotten on a roller coaster and couldn’t get off.

  “Not yet.” He slid a thigh between hers, exhaling against her skin. “Mmm.”

  “Jake—”

  He moved against her with that rock-solid body. He was aroused, which sent an all-powerful sort of hunger skittering through her veins. How could this feel so good? she wondered wildly, pressed against the hard wall a
nd the harder wall of Jake’s chest, hot as hell, skin sticking to skin, and yet…and yet she squirmed to get even closer.

  “Yeah.” Lowering his head, he kissed her again—a long, hot, wet, deep kiss that had her lost in him, completely lost.

  When he pulled back this time, he cupped her face and stroked his thumb over her lower lip. “Did you dislike anything about that?” he asked.

  She stared down at the hands she’d fisted in his shirt and visibly forced herself to loosen her grip as she slowly shook her head. “Don’t tease me.”

  “I’m not teasing, I want to know.”

  “You know I didn’t dislike it. In fact, you know exactly how much I liked it.”

  He shot her a bone-melting smile. “You’d like the rest, too, Mia. I promise you.”

  She opened her mouth but he put a finger to it and slowly shook his head. “You’ve got to go,” he reminded her. And at that, he simply walked away, back to the stage. There he picked up some sort of electric tool as he crouched down and began working, whistling.

  Whistling, while she stood there weaving from her overheated internal system, a desperate overload, a malfunction. Befuddled, aroused and pissed off all at the same time, she was torn between calling him back over here to finish what he’d started, and running like hell. Instead, she feigned calmness and dignity and walked slowly, purposely away.

  Silently cursing him all the way home.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS HOTTER, if that was even possible. Jake started his crew at dawn and after a long hot day at work, they were indeed right on schedule. Mia might well have that last day for rehearsals as she wanted.

  After his crew left late afternoon, Jake ran through the plans one more time, checking the materials list to what they physically had left, making sure they had everything they needed.

  Alone with his work and thoughts, he yawned. He’d stayed up late last night at his office, catching up on his billings and estimating for the other jobs he’d delayed in order to do this one.

  He wouldn’t be working tonight, though. Tonight he had other ideas.

  When he left the theater, he made a quick stop. By the time he got home with the makings for steak and potatoes, Mia was home, too. A rarity for his workaholic neighbor. Her bedroom lights were on, and as he barbecued, he pictured her up there, getting ready for bed while still obsessing about work, as she always did. She’d be taking her nightly bubble bath with the wild sexy scents that helped her relax. She’d be waxing or shaving or whatever it was women did to feel feminine. She’d probably paint her toenails the pale peach color that seemed to be her favorite. Any of her hundred little rituals he’d come privy to over the past few years, all the things that made her so uniquely Mia.