Red Hot Santa

by Cherry Adair

  It looked as if a million fistfights had beaten the place down. Chairs with missing arms stood around wobbly Formica tables, a few of those tables occupied by leather-clad bikers, most of whom preferred metal chains and steel-toed boots to other accoutrements. It was the kind of bar with a long counter on one side and a jukebox to her right, the source of AC/DC (or some other rock band). A pool table sat in the back; a stained-glass bar light with many, many missing pieces of glass hung over it. Two men played pool—both wore NBA-sized rings, only theirs were made out of sterling silver and were skulls instead of diamonds, and both had hair longer than her own. They looked up when she walked in, one man’s pool stick shooting skyward in a very phallic way. She wasn’t naÏve enough to think that he wasn’t checking her out. His friend must have noticed the expression on his face because he suddenly turned toward her. His pool stick stabbed skyward, too.

  “Hot damn,” he said.

  Obviously, they didn’t get much action if they were gawking at her.

  Chance stepped in front of her. Kait thought the move tantamount to lifting his leg and peeing on her. Really. But it worked. The two men looked away.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t know she had a hot body. She’d always been dramatically shaped. It had happened late in her life—when she was seventeen. She liked to tell her friends it took her a lot longer to develop because there’d been a lot to develop. But her body was something she tended to hide. Oh, there was the odd occasion when she let her hair down and let her breasts out. But doing so always made her feel uncomfortable—men constantly gawking, women continually glaring. It was easier just to cover the damn things up.

  “Over here,” Chance said, grabbing her by the elbow and leading her to the bar. A woman stood behind the counter, her face looking like an apple that’d been left out in the sun too long. She was supposed to have blond hair but the bleach hadn’t taken, and so it was the yellow of a cheap doll, the ends as frayed as a scrub brush.

  “Stan here?” Chance asked.

  The woman flicked her chin to the left. Kait assumed Chance must know where she was pointing because there was no one at the bar, just a bunch of empty wooden stools that had seats worn smooth by chaps and jeans and who knew what else.

  She followed Chance, bracing herself for the lascivious stares of the pool players. She wasn’t disappointed. Lord, what she wouldn’t give to be able to flick them on the nose like one of her canine patients and give them a stern Bad dog.

  They stopped before a door. Chance knocked.

  “Come in” came from the other side.

  Inside a bunch of men played poker, and if the front room patrons of Hog Heaven hadn’t scared her, the four men playing poker surely would have. She would bet not even a shark would take a bite of those four, all of them looking like escapees from Sing Sing complete with tattoos, earrings, and water-balloon beer bellies. One of them had gray hair, which made Kait think he should be long past the age of playing with motorcycles.

  “Well, if it isn’t Stonewall Owens,” the gray-haired man said.

  That made Kait’s brows rise. Stonewall? Granted, the man had a chest wide as a Mack truck, but Stonewall?

  “Need the room out back,” her rescuer said.

  “How long?” The man’s eyes flicked to her.

  “A night. Maybe two.”

  The old man thought about it for a second or two, then looked back at his cards. “You know where the key is. Just clean up after yourself.”

  “C’mon,” Chance said, heading toward an exit sign.

  The room, as it turned out, was a shack out in back of the bar, where the smell of rotting garbage and old beer filled the air. Overhead, the sky had gone black in typical desert fashion, suddenly and completely black. A fluorescent light on a large pole bzz-bzz-bzzed as it tried to come on. Chance retrieved a key from under a worn and frayed fake-grass mat with WELCOME pressed into the middle. The door looked as if it might come off the hinge when he pulled it open. Air at least twenty degrees warmer than outside drifted toward them.

  “Go inside,” he said, flicking a switch. “I’ll go get the phone.”

  “You mean there’s no phone out here?”

  “No,” he said sharply. “Bathroom’s in the back, that door to the left there.”

  And when he turned and left her standing there sweltering in the too-warm air, Kait had a sudden moment of panic. What was she doing here? But the strangest thing was that she felt . . . safe. That man out there. Chance “Stonewall” Owens. He made her feel safe. And, obviously, he was on her side. If he was a bad guy, he wouldn’t let her call the police.

  Closing the door, she took stock of her surroundings. A single bulb spilled burnt ocher light around the interior of the room, revealing walls painted white, the stucco missing or cracked in numerous places. Dead flies coated the bottom of the fixture, causing Kait to grimace. In the center was a bed with a chipped and rusted brass frame and a black comforter over the top, the orange Harley Davidson logo in its middle faded to the color of a peach. The place had been a storage shed at one point; she was certain of it because there were no windows, and the only way in or out looked to be through that front door.

  “Here,” her rescuer said a moment later, causing Kait to start. He handed her a phone so chipped and battered it looked like it’d been used as a hockey puck. “Don’t call nine-one-one,” he said. “The owner doesn’t want a rescue crew showing up. Bad for business. And don’t call anyone else. They might be tracing your boyfriend’s line.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “No?” he asked, and did she imagine the flicker of interest she saw in his eyes?

  Nah.

  “No.”

  “Don’t call any friends, either. When you’re done, I brought you your clothes. You can change back into them.” He held up the black saddlebag.

  “Thanks,” Kait said. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought his eyes darted down, thought they lingered for a second on her breasts before she took the bag from him.

  Not him too?

  “Here’s the bar’s phone number,” he said. “Give it to them in case they need to call you back.”

  “Aren’t you worried about a trace?”

  “Why would the police trace your call?”

  She supposed he had a point, and so Kait took the piece of paper, setting the saddlebag down just inside the door. First things first.

  Chapter Three

  IT TOOK LESS THAN A MINUTE TO GET THE NONEMERGENCY number to the police station; then she waited another second or two while being transferred around. When she’d been connected to the officer in charge, it took considerably longer to explain everything that had happened, and even more time to make the man understand that she wasn’t doing drugs, and then a moment or two longer to explain why she hadn’t immediately called 911. She knew she’d muddled it even before she gave the officer the bar’s phone number.

  “I sounded like an idiot,” she said when she hung up, handing the phone back to Chance.

  “You’re upset. It’s understandable.”

  “That man probably thinks I’m a crackpot.”

  “No. He probably thinks you’re on crack.”

  Which made her look up. He gave her a teasing smile.

  Be still my heart.

  He had razor stubble covering a truly square chin, the type of chin you only ever saw on action figures. There was a dent in the middle. His lips looked too pretty to belong to a man. Eyes as dark brown as well-worn leather peered down at her gently. Despite his size she found herself thinking he had kind eyes, maybe even gentle eyes.

  She looked away. “Maybe I should go to the police station.”

  “No,” he said. “Bad idea. They’ll have someone watching for you.”

  And that made her shiver because she couldn’t deny that someone had shot at her today. And while she had a hard time swallowing the reason why, she was smart enough to realize she’d best err on the side of prudence.

&n
bsp; “I’ll wait until they call back.”

  “Good,” he said. “In the meantime we’ll hang out here.”

  “We’ll? Where will you stay?”

  “I’ll be outside, watching for bad guys.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay. Do you, um, do you have a weapon or something I could keep nearby?”

  “Do you know how to shoot a pistol?” he asked, his eyes clearly curious.

  “No, but I know how to pull a trigger.”

  He smiled again. And there they were, those dents on either side of his mouth. My, my, my.

  “I don’t like the thought of being in here alone.”

  “You won’t be alone.”

  And as she looked into his dark brown eyes, she believed him. This man cared. For some reason, he wanted to keep her safe.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Will you tell me now what organization you work for?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “In the event you’re captured.”

  That had her forgetting what a handsome hunk of a man he was. Well, at least for a moment or two. “Is there a chance of that?” she asked after forcing moisture back into her mouth.

  “No,” he said firmly, emphatically, the brown flecks around his pupils seeming to go black. “You’ll be taken to safety tomorrow. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “Then tell me who you work for.”

  “Negative,” he said. And then the look on his face softened. “I can’t risk someone getting their hands on the microfilm.”

  “What micro—” But then she realized he was teasing her about the comment she’d made earlier, when they’d been standing outside the bar. She shivered, and before she could label her reaction as illogical, her body began to . . . to tingle, her pulse rate rising the longer he held her gaze. And he held it a long time, long enough for her to know he felt something, too.

  And then he straightened, his big body backing out of the doorway like a squirrel down a hole. “Lock the door after I’ve gone.”

  He closed the door.

  What the—?

  Kait pressed her hands against her cheeks, feeling the heat in them, the unmistakable evidence of her body’s reaction. She stood there for a full two minutes before she remembered to do as he asked and lock the door. And then she turned, aimlessly heading for the bed, which creaked like a trampoline as she sat down.

  What the heck was wrong with her? It wasn’t as if she found big, burly men attractive. Usually she favored the intellectual types, definitely not guys who rode Harleys.

  She lay back on the bed, arms splayed out, staring up at a ceiling coated with spiderwebs and spotted with something else, something that she didn’t want to think about. Maybe she’d reacted the way she had because he’d rescued her. Yeah. That must be it. She’d heard of that happening before. A woman got carried off by some handsome guy, and the next thing she knew, she wanted to have his babies. It was biological, she reasoned. Some preprogrammed response women were wired to feel when a male specimen arrived to protect her from prey.

  Then why didn’t you feel that way when Frank Draper chased that bear out of your tent when you went camping?

  And why didn’t you feel that way when that Timothy Johnson stopped you from falling off that roof?

  Granted she’d only been twelve years old when Timmy rescued her, but she remembered very clearly turning her head when he’d tried to kiss her later.

  She heard a light knock. Kait sat up. “Chance?” she called out.

  “I brought you something to use as a weapon,” he said.

  Oh. Okay. She went to the door, unlocked it. He held out his hand, Kait noticing absently that he had little round scars on them.

  “Here,” he said softly.

  A beer bottle.

  And for some reason she wanted to laugh. “What am I supposed to do? Clout the bad guys over the head?”

  “No. You break it first, then use the jagged edges as a knife.”

  “Oh.”

  Their eyes met. She froze.

  This was ridiculous, she told herself. You just met the man. Sure he’s hot, but not that hot.

  Yes, he is, a voice insisted. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. And c’mon, Kait, when are you ever going to meet a man this hot again?

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the bottle from his hand. Their fingers brushed.

  She looked up, couldn’t stop her eyes from darting to his.

  Black lashes narrowed, giving him a gunslinger’s glare.

  “You know, I think I need to—”

  He pulled her to him.

  She felt her head snap back. She opened her mouth to protest, but his lips covered hers so fast there wasn’t time. It was a hard kiss. A punishing kiss. A kiss meant to show her he wanted her.

  Lord help her, she wanted him, too.

  Her arms wrapped around his neck. He was big, so big, and her nipples peaked in instant desire. His tongue slipped into her mouth, swiping against her own tongue, stroking it over and over again until she decided she could stand there all night.

  Stop him, Kait. This is out of line. Way out of line.

  But the whole damn day had been out of line and bizarre and strange. Oddly enough, this didn’t feel strange. This felt . . . right.

  And then his hand touched her side, his hand slipping beneath her T-shirt and cupping her breast. That made her go weak. When he pinched her nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, she just about fell. He held her up.

  You shouldn’t let him do this. You shouldn’t, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t.

  His hand dropped and suddenly cupped her.

  Never mind.

  Oh, Lord. Never mind.

  She groaned, her legs parting as he stroked her. His finger found the perfect spot, the spot that grew flush with heat and moisture as he pressed against it.

  Somehow they moved as one, the back of her legs coming up against the wall. His hand left her for a second to clasp her left side, his right hand doing the same on the other side. Before she could blink, he’d lifted her, bracing her against the wall with his body, her legs automatically wrapping around his hips, arms doing the same around his shoulders. Then his hand slid inside her jeans. She wondered how he’d gotten them open. But she didn’t care how because he was spreading her, opening her. . . .

  Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez, jeez, jeez. She shouldn’t let him do it, but she did anyway, encouraging him to dip his fingers inside, even as a part of her said no. No, no, no. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. . . .

  He unsnapped his own jeans.

  She let him go, one arm hanging around his neck like a monkey, the other sliding down. . . .

  No. You are not going to stroke him. You are not going to touch him. . . .

  She wrapped her hand around him.

  They both arched, Kait wanting to position her body on top of him. But he was stroking her again and it felt so good. They kissed, his hand down her pants, her hand stroking him. She wanted to suck on his tongue. No. She wanted to suck on him. She wished he’d throw her down on the bed and replace his fingers with his tongue.

  As if he read her mind he turned, and Kait felt the dizzying sensation of being spun around. There was a moment of sanity as he all but threw her down on the bed, his big erection jutting out toward her.

  What was she doing? What was she thinking?

  And then he pressed his hot mouth against her.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned.

  She wanted him. She wanted this. She wanted sex. Now. With him. Hard and fast. Sex, sex, sex.

  “Yes,” she moaned.

  Yes.

  She was having a wet dream.

  Chance stared down at the writhing woman on the bed and realized she was having a wet dream. Thank God, he told himself, his heart still pounding in his chest. When he’d heard her moans he couldn’t open the door soon enough, couldn’t flick on the light fast enough.

  Only
in some respects what he found was worse. Much, much worse. She was having an f-in’ wet dream.

  About him?

  God, wouldn’t that be some—

  Totally out of line, Chance.

  He knew that. But damn it, he couldn’t move as she lay there, moaning, her head thrashing from side to side, the word “yes” being hissed from between her lips.

  His dick got hard. He went back to the door, firmly telling himself to step out of the room. But he paused, deciding to take one last look.

  That was when she opened her eyes.

  She froze. So did he.

  And he couldn’t resist. He really couldn’t resist. “Pleasant dreams?” he asked.

  She scrambled up like he’d pulled a gun on her.

  “What the hell?” she asked, her nipples so hard beneath her BOOBALICIOUS shirt that she looked like a walking advertisement for a porn flick.

  “I was . . . I was . . . .” She pulled the pillow out from behind her, shielding her face with it. “I was dreaming about horses,” she said suddenly, the pillow dropping, her chin flicking upward.

  “You were dreaming about riding something, all right.”

  She threw the pillow.

  He laughed. Laughed.

  While on a mission. With a woman who, if he didn’t miss his guess, had just had a wet dream.

  About him?

  He spied the blush on her face.

  Oh, yeah—about him.

  “You always have such an active fantasy life?”

  The look she gave him was filled with humiliation.

  “Go away,” she said. “Just go away.”

  “Look,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been imagining what you look like without that top of yours all evening.”

  And now why’d he go and do that? Why’d he try and make her feel better? She didn’t need to know that. God, all it’d do was cause friction between them. Sexual friction.

  “It doesn’t make me feel better. Not at all.”

  He crossed his arms. He had to cross his arms because if he didn’t, he had a feeling he’d touch her—and that was bad.

  “We’re attracted to each other, Dr. Logan. It’s nothing to get upset about.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he heard her mumble. “You didn’t just have the wet dream.”