TEMPERATURE'S RISING

by Donna Sterling

  "Polite?" he managed to whisper, his attention again caught elsewhere. Her lush, hard-tipped, satin-clad breasts now hovered before him, eye level.

  Mouth level.

  Heat engulfed him.

  "Don't even think about it, Jack." Her whispered command stopped him before he'd consciously realized he'd moved, and her elbows trapped his hands on their slide up her slender rib cage.

  Frustration lurched in his gut. What the hell was she doing? Did she intend to kiss him, and hold him, and let him do all the things he wanted so damn much to do … or not?

  With his muscles tensed, his arousal hard and his pulse pounding relentlessly, he lifted his eyes to hers and focused his attention entirely on her explanation.

  "Before you make a move," she whispered, gazing down at him with heated sensuality and the slightest glint of mischief, "and I do mean any move, you'll have to say, 'Callie may I.'"

  He stared at her, too stunned to think clearly, let alone reply.

  "I might give you my permission." She tilted her head judiciously. "Then again—" her breasts brushed close enough for the body-heated satin to whisper across his face "—I might not."

  * * *

  7

  « ^ »

  She hadn't put much thought into her impulsive taunt. He'd pushed her into it, actually, with his provocative recollections and blood-stirring gazes and whispered confessions. I never made love to her, Cal. It wasn't Meg I was kissing.

  He'd lifted a weight from her heart, and she suddenly felt light and free. He'd thrown pebbles at her window, and she'd come out to play. He'd empowered her.

  That in itself was a turn-on. The balance of power between them had always seemed tipped his way. He'd been older, stronger, intrinsically virile. She'd been a renegade tomboy. He'd playfully lorded his mastery over her for too long.

  She would lord over him now for the sheer fun of it. She'd go as far as her naughty whim would take her. She hadn't decided yet how far that would be.

  Not very far at all, of course, if he couldn't bring himself to say "Callie may I."

  With a heady rush of delight in her feminine power, she'd laid down the rules, thrown down the gauntlet. She'd virtually brushed her breasts across his face!

  Warm tingles of physical reaction spiced the thrill of her own boldness. Her blood sang in her veins as she ran her hands over his mountain-hard shoulders and peered expectantly down at him. She anticipated at least a trace of a grudging smile. He gave her no smile.

  That fact gave her pause. She really had expected a smile.

  Other than a subtle squaring of his jaw and a slight throb at his temple, he sat perfectly still, his muscled body rigid, his color high beneath his tan, his large hands gripping her sides where she'd trapped them.

  His gaze, at first clearly stunned, left hers to pore over the breasts she'd thrust so near to his face. Her heart skittered and spun with sudden qualms as she watched from above, feeling her nipples tighten under the slow sweep of his visual exploration. He seemed so very serious. Perhaps she'd been too hasty.

  "Callie." His eyes returned to hers with a hot, glazed intensity that set off alarms inside her. Hoarsely he whispered, "May I?"

  Her knees went weak. Her heart fluttered in her throat. She supposed she should make him state his exact intentions, in keeping with the game—her game—but she squeezed out a barely audible "You may."

  He exhaled a hard, torrid breath and slid his strong hands over the satin, up and down her rib cage, his thumbs brushing only the sensitive side swells of her breasts.

  The feel of his hands on her and the intensity behind his caresses sparked flames in her blood, and he'd done little more than look her over.

  "Callie." He brushed his face lightly against the side of one breast. "May I?"

  Her heart tripped into double time, and through a thickening haze of sensuality, she tried to anticipate his next move. "You may."

  Splaying his hands around her rib cage, he held her firmly captive and rubbed his face across her breasts, back and forth, slowly and deliberately. His beard stubble rasped against the satin, and his lips grazed her hardened nipples with every languorous turn of his head.

  Callie reflexively arched, astounded by the keen pleasure shooting through her, and by the iron-strong tension in his hands, his arms, his body.

  She sensed he held a savage power barely in check. She felt as if she'd taunted some powerful beast who now had her trapped between his paws.

  The idea frightened her. Thrilled her.

  He tipped her back, pressed her down against the curved arm of the sofa and relentlessly roused her nipples through the satin with his stubbled chin and firm, wide mouth. He kept his lips taut and parted just wide enough for his breath to steam in tingling paths, just wide enough for the sensitized peaks to catch between his lips and drag fleetingly across his tongue.

  She whimpered and arched higher, pressing herself against his mouth, aching for hotter, longer contact.

  He raised his head and stared at her with eyes of smoldering amber. "Callie…"

  "You may, you may."

  He swept the camisole down, out of his way, and filled his mouth with her breasts. Hot, swirling suction propelled her deeper into pleasure. Silky hair brushed across her jaw and throat. Lightning spears of sensation flashed to her innermost depths as he sucked and tugged on the pebble-hard tips.

  She dug her fingers into his sinewy shoulders and held on tightly, feeling caught up in a gale-force storm of lusty pleasure. His hands pushed the crumpled camisole farther down her body, then coursed along her bare, heated skin from one curve to the next.

  His mouth soon left her breasts and followed his hands with long, hot, savoring tastes.

  "You may," she breathed, though he hadn't asked. She wove her fingers into his thick, golden hair as he passionately kissed, licked and swirled his way across her abdomen and down the curve of her hip. She writhed beneath his mouth and hands, adrift on a sea of heat and pleasure and restless need.

  "Callie may I," he rasped, and before she'd recognized the words, he'd tugged her panties down. "Callie may I," he breathed, and brushed his mouth in a hot, lingering path above her curls.

  Through an onslaught of sensations, she realized the profound intimacy of what he intended to do. Emotion gripped her heart with a tensile strength. She wanted this. Longed for this. Not only for the pleasure, but for the intimacy.

  Panic flurried in her chest.

  She gasped and reached for him with both hands, forcing his head up to meet her gaze. "I didn't give you permission," she whispered somewhat frantically.

  His golden-dark brows converged, his hands tightened on her hips and wildfire leaped into his stare. Between ragged breaths, he forced out, "Callie may I."

  She shook her head, giving way to the panic. She'd meant to play a game—a sexual game, yes—but somehow she'd forgotten how to win. She'd lost control, not of him, but of herself, and didn't know how to reassert it.

  He expelled a forceful breath, then another, and for a moment, looked dangerously mutinous. But then he rose up onto a muscled forearm beside her, brushed her hair from her face and searched her eyes with tender, heated longing. "Are you good and ready to pay me that kiss now?"

  That kiss. Lord, yes. Surely she could handle a simple kiss. She nodded, grateful for the relatively tame suggestion.

  He angled his face across hers, paused, and invoked in a slow, lingering whisper, "Callie may I."

  A moan escaped her as she met him in an irresistibly tender foray. He delved with moving thoroughness, leaving no room for reflection. Her panic soon ebbed, and before she knew it, the passion flowed again, carrying her in its wild currents.

  Their kisses grew harder, deeper, more frenzied. They tumbled together from the sofa to the carpeted floor. He struggled out of his clothes, and she helped him, craving the feel of his skin against hers. The pleasure of that stunning, full-bodied connection pulsed through her like strong, hot emotion. He lulled her a
way from that thought with a particularly voluptuous kiss.

  At sporadic intervals, he panted, "Callie may I."

  She whispered just as randomly, "You may."

  His hands flowed over her—kneading, caressing and molding her to his honed, muscled nakedness. An astonishing column of hardness burrowed against her abdomen. She couldn't help undulating her hips in an instinctive desire to slide it firmly into place.

  Groans vibrated in his throat. Fever burned in his skin. His fingers surged between her legs, through the hot, damp curls, into her intimate heat.

  She sucked in an audible breath. Her hips bucked. He wedged his knee between her thighs to part them farther, and then persisted, his fingers gliding, stirring and probing until fire danced in her loins, stoking her into a swelter of need.

  She'd never felt such a mindless compulsion to draw a man inside her. Never wanted to make love as desperately as she wanted him now. The sheer intensity of her desire alarmed her.

  She broke her mouth away from his kiss with a panicked gasp. "I…I didn't say you could." Urgently she sought his eyes, needing the connection. "You didn't—"

  "It's okay, Cal," he gruffly interjected, his sweat-beaded face dark and intense above her, his gaze hot with persuasive emotion. "Don't be afraid. It's only me."

  Only me. Only Jack. He'd meant to reassure her, she knew. He'd meant that he'd known her forever, and that he'd never hurt her, and that she risked nothing at all by making love to him.

  None of those things reassured her. They only scared her more. But she didn't stop his large, hard, blunt-tipped fingers from their swirling invasion. She didn't slow her hips in their compulsive undulations.

  Her eyes closed, her lips parted. A groan of helpless pleasure rolled from her throat. He wedged his fingers in deeper and pumped in a languid, maddening rhythm. His thumb worked the outside, catching her in an awesome pull. The most incredible pleasure built and spread, until she climaxed in great, shuddering contractions. Her thighs squeezed together, trapping his wrist between them. Her shoulders curled up off the floor. He caught her against his chest and held her as she quivered and quaked and fought for breath. Slowly, then, he inched his embedded fingers from her, sending renewed contractions through her loins.

  Before those contractions had fully ended, he rolled her out beneath him, captured her mouth with another tumultuous kiss, and pushed himself slowly, deeply, into her.

  She cried out and arched against him as his throbbing hardness filled her, stretching her to capacity. A whimper rose in her throat, and in an instinctive move to adjust to his size, she wrapped her legs around his lean, powerful hips.

  And he began to move in slow, subtle thrusts and gyrations. Pleasure radiated through her core like molten heat.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  A loud, urgent, intrusive knock. "Ms. Marshall?"

  Callie stiffened; Jack paused. They stared at each other in sweaty, panting confusion.

  The knock came again. "Callie?" She recognized the feminine voice as Dee's, the innkeeper. "Are you in there, honey?"

  "Y-yes," she stammered.

  Jack closed his eyes briefly and rocked into her again. She drew a quick, reactive breath and met his heated gaze.

  "Sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night like this, but we had a call from the people in the room beneath yours."

  Callie strained through the sensual fog surrounding her brain to understand what the woman was saying. Jack had tightened his hold on her and thrust deeply into her again.

  Her mouth opened in involuntary response.

  The innkeeper outside her door rambled on, "They thought they saw someone climbing up onto your balcony. My husband's not home, so I called the sheriff."

  "Tell her it was me," Jack rasped in a hot whisper against Callie's ear. "She'll go away."

  She widened her eyes and shook her head as the ramifications of the situation sank in. She couldn't tell anyone she had Jack in her room! The news would spread across the Point by morning! "I … I didn't see anyone," she called, her voice weak and unsteady.

  Jack cursed beneath his breath, his rugged face glistening with sweat. "Tell her, Cal," he insisted with gruff desperation.

  She arched into another of his forceful thrusts. When she could speak again, she whispered, "I can't, I can't! No one can know you're here with me."

  "Ms. Callie, this is Sheriff Gallagher," said another voice from the hallway.

  Panic stirred in Callie's breast. Jack forced himself into stillness, shut his eyes and groaned. "Shh!" she said into his ear. "Be quiet, or they'll hear you."

  "Good. They'll go away."

  "I don't mean to scare you, ma'am," continued the sheriff, "but I found a bench pushed up against the house, directly below your balcony. I shone my light up there and didn't see anyone, but I'm concerned that the prowler might be hiding in one of those little alcoves on the sides."

  "I'm sure he isn't," Callie assured him in a pitifully shaky voice.

  "Prob'ly not. I'll bet it was just kids, playing around. We don't have much crime on the Point. But I can't take a chance with your safety, ma'am, or anyone else's. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to take a quick look at that balcony myself."

  "You mean you … you want to come in?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Won't take but a minute."

  "Get up, Jack!" she frantically whispered, wriggling her hips and twisting her body to disengage herself from him.

  "God, Callie, don't do this to me." He grabbed for her hips to stop her from pulling away, but he was too late; she'd squirmed free. "Damn it, Cal, let me tell him I'm here, and explain why I—"

  "Don't you dare!"

  The sheriff cut into their whispered, wild-eyed confrontation. "Is everything okay in there, Ms. Callie?"

  "Yes, yes, everything's fine," she cried. "Just give me a minute to … to find my robe. You … you woke me from a sound sleep."

  "Sorry about that, ma'am. Just take your time."

  Her panic grew as she thought about how Meg and Grant Tierney would take the news that she'd been caught with Jack Forrester in her room late at night. Pushing at Jack's chest, she rolled to her knees and scrambled to her feet.

  Jack remained on the floor, half kneeling, half sitting, his erection huge and glistening, his eyes tightly shut, his jaw clenched.

  She yanked at his muscled arm. "Get up, get up. You've got to hide."

  He shot her a disbelieving glare. "Hide?"

  "In the bathroom. No, no, someone might have to use it. Then what would I say? The closet. Hide in the closet."

  "Hell, no, I'm not hiding in a closet."

  Desperation forced her back down to her knees, where she gazed at him imploringly. "Please, Jack, please!"

  Their gazes locked and shifted, while the sheriff called out in a voice suddenly gruff with suspicion, "Ms. Callie, is someone in there with you?"

  "No! No, of course not."

  After a tense, reflective pause, the sheriff drawled, "Just in case that prowler's holding you at gunpoint or some such thing, I want you to tell me your daddy's first name. Give me the right one, and I'll know you're fine. Say the wrong one, and I'll have every man on the Point surrounding this building before the bastard can make a break for it."

  Callie's eyes widened. Jack rolled his.

  "My daddy's first name?" She choked, her throat suddenly tight with panic. At the vision of every man on the Point invading her room in the next couple moments, her mind had clouded over and she couldn't think of any name but "Colonel."

  "Henry," Jack whispered.

  "Henry!" Callie yelled out.

  "Henry," repeated the sheriff. "Yeah, that's right. Henry." He sounded somewhat disappointed.

  "There's no one in here with me, Sheriff," Callie emphatically assured him. "You probably hear the television. I fell asleep with it on. I'll turn it off, as soon as I find my robe." Frantically she tugged and pulled at Jack's arm until he grudgingly rose and allowed her to push him toward the close
t.

  "For God's sake, Callie," Jack whispered, "at least give me my clothes."

  "Oh my God … your clothes!" She whipped around and searched the room wildly until she'd found his jeans, shirt and underwear. Piling it all into his arms, she yanked open the closet door and motioned him inside.

  "If the sheriff opens this door," Jack grumbled, "he and Dee will both go into cardiac arrest. Then won't I look cute, trying to tend to 'em buck naked."

  "Shh!"

  Tight-lipped, grim-faced and as splendidly naked as a Greek god, he held his wad of clothes beneath one muscled arm and allowed her to shut the door in his face.

  With her heart thudding, Callie snatched her bathrobe from an armchair, shrugged into it and hurried to the door. By the time she greeted the sheriff and the stout, motherly blonde in a flannel bathrobe, Callie was out of breath and flushed with heat. "Come in, come in. Sorry I took so long. I—"

  "Calm down now, Ms. Callie." The sheriff patted her arm as he strolled past her and into the suite. "I know I gave you a fright, waking you from a dead sleep and carrying on about a prowler, but you're safe now."

  Dee followed him in, gazing at Callie in concern. "I'm so sorry about this. We've never had a problem with prowlers before, I swear. My husband will be home from his shrimping trip tomorrow, and he'll put an extra dead bolt on all the doors."

  "Oh, Dee, I don't think that will be necessary," Callie said, watching the sheriff with a good deal of guilt as he stealthily approached the French doors, flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other.

  "You ladies had better stand back, just in case."

  Callie bit her lip as Dee grabbed her hand and held it tightly in both of her own.

  "These doors aren't locked," the sheriff noted in a voice of stern disapproval. The squat, ruddy-faced lawman then flattened his back against one French door, pushed open the other and shone his flashlight out into the darkness. After a cautious pause, he ventured farther out.