Blazing Bedtime Anthology
Page 4
But perhaps not worse than seeing a…a man. Just a man who ran supersonically fast!
“Scarlett?” a voice called.
Hunter. Oh, thank God. She almost cried in relief.
True, he was still a stranger. But she’d take her chances with the one who’d stripped her and yet managed to remain a gentleman—which hadn’t exactly thrilled her at the time, to be perfectly honest—over the guy she’d just glimpsed through the trees.
“Here! I’m over here.” She darted toward the sound of Hunter’s voice, so glad he’d come back, she couldn’t even worry about his anger that she’d disobeyed his order to stay put.
Bursting from the shadows, she spied him running toward her, the cabin silhouetted beneath the rising sun directly behind him. She stumbled a little over her own injured feet, pain giving way to just a bit of awed lust at the way the golden morning framed his big, tough body.
She hadn’t imagined it. He really was that handsome.
And furious.
“What happened? Why did you leave the cabin? Why did you scream?” She almost flew into his arms. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to catch her. Instead, he grabbed her, and shook her lightly, the way a parent would after a kid ran out in front of a car. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack.”
“I almost gave myself one, too,” she said, gulping in deep breaths of refreshing morning air. It was almost too refreshing—she wasn’t used to it. Give her the pungent scents of beignets and booze and the Mississippi over the great outdoors any day. All this pine, flora and fauna was making her dizzy.
Pine. Flora. Fauna.
No swamp.
She tugged away, her eyes narrowing. Slowly turning in a circle, she ignored his questions, focusing only on where she was. She’d barely even noticed her surroundings in the darkness when she’d wandered away from the cabin, but there was no creepy road, no bayou, no Spanish moss or skeletal oaks.
That road. It had been so strange. She hadn’t been able to decide, when driving through it, whether she was traveling through a forest or a bayou. It had seemed to be both. Now, there was no bayou at all.
“Where did you bring me?” she whispered.
“What?”
She cleared her throat. “This doesn’t look familiar. Just how far are we from where I crashed?”
She turned around in time to see the way his eyes shifted as he answered. “Not far.”
Scarlett crossed her arms, knowing he wasn’t being completely honest with her. “So take me back.”
“Back to your car? You bet, darlin’. Have fun digging it out of the muck.”
Narrowing her eyes, she ordered, “Take me to civilization.”
He shrugged. “Can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got work to do. I lost enough time taking care of you. You’re going to have to wait here with me until I finish what I came here to do.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re kidnapping me?”
His unconcerned shrug told her just how worried he was about that. “So much for the ‘thanks for saving my life.’”
“You saved my life. That doesn’t mean you get to run it.” Unable to help herself, Scarlett cast a quick, worried glance over her shoulder. Those damn woods looked Hansel-and-Gretel innocent now, unlike the trap they’d become when she’d been racing through them. Remembering what had happened to that mischievous twosome, and how close they’d come to being dinner, she snapped, “I want to go home.”
He frowned, pushing a weary hand through his hair. “I’d like to accommodate you. But I can’t. Give me one more day, all right? Then I promise I’ll get you back where you belong.”
One more day. She didn’t want to be here for one more hour. But she couldn’t deny the idea of spending another whole day with Hunter didn’t exactly break her heart.
Swallowing and forcing the thought of the shadowy figure from the woods out of her mind, she nodded. “Okay. But you…you’ll be nearby, won’t you?”
She should have kept her mouth closed. Because the quiver in her voice and her quick glance at the woods reminded him of what she’d kind of been hoping he’d forget.
“Why did you leave when I told you not to?”
“Like I said. You don’t run my life.”
His jaw tightened, fire snapping in those green eyes. “I warned you it was dangerous.”
“No,” she replied, “you didn’t. You told me there were temperamental dwarves, and ‘tings’ out there. Not dangerous things.”
His voice low, intense, he asked, “What did you see?”
She shook her head, wanting nothing more than to go inside and crawl into that soft bed. She didn’t hurt—the magical tea still had a good grip on her pain—but some of the energy had waned and she almost felt as if she could drop where she stood.
The other side effect had, thankfully, disappeared, too. Right now, what she most wanted to do with the man in front of her was punch him and make him take her home.
Okay, okay. He was still incredibly hot. And maybe, once she got him home, she’d want to keep him for a while. But the sexual urge wasn’t quite as intense as it had been during the night when sensuality and lust had filled every cell of her body.
“Damn it, woman, tell me what you saw.”
Woman? Woman? “Don’t call me woman.”
“You sure ain’t a man from where I’m standin’,” he said, raking a hot gaze from the top of her raggedy hair to the bottom of her…. “Aww, hell, cher, what’d you go and do to your feet?”
Before she could answer, he swept her up. But not at all like Rhett Butler had swept that Scarlett up the stairs. Instead Hunter hoisted her over his shoulder and dumped her there, hanging like a big sack of dog food. With one hand wrapped around her thighs, the other on her bottom, he kept her where he wanted her. Humiliating. But oh, lordy, did the position give her a great view of his strong, muscular back, lean waist and a tight butt she wanted to grab with both dangling hands.
He’d probably drop her.
He kicked the door open with the toe of one boot, carried her across the room and dumped her onto her back on the bed. She bounced twice, then collapsed back into the pillows.
“No sense,” he mumbled. “I shoulda hidden your clothes.”
“Like you hid one of my shoes? Were you planning to play Prince Charming and present it to me when you got back?”
“Musta come off when I carried you here, Cinderella.”
She rolled her eyes, not entirely believing him.
“I didn’t know I had to play tricks to make you stay put.”
“I had to use the freakin’ john, okay?” she snapped, unable to stand it anymore.
He stared down at her, the anger fading from his eyes. A twinkle appeared there, a twinkle of laughter. Damn. She should have let him stay mad. This was so embarrassing. Far beyond run-in-your-hose embarrassing and into fall-on-your-ass-in-public territory. Embarrassment to the nth degree.
“Sorry,” he said softly. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
“I didn’t need an escort.”
“Yeah, seems like you did.” He turned his back on her, crossing to the wood stove, on which sat an old-fashioned, wrought-iron kettle. Picking it up with a thick pad, he poured water into a large ceramic basin, then carried it over.
She had no idea what he was going to do until he sat on the end of the bed and pushed her calf-length, flowing skirt up and out of the way. Then he lifted one of her feet into his warm, solid lap. Surprised, she could only gasp as he took a rag and soap from the bowl and began to wash her dirty, torn-up foot.
Oh, my God. She loved having her feet pampered. She had a standing weekly pedicure appointment and she considered it one of her few true indulgences. But nobody—not the pricy salon she usually went to, or the massage therapist she occasionally visited, or any spa employee—had ever handled her with such tenderness and care as this man did.
She closed her eyes and settled into the pillows, a smile on
her lips. His strong hands provided intense pleasure as he slowly and deliberately cleaned her wounds, just as he must have done the night before when she had been unconscious.
Oh, what she wouldn’t have given to be awake for those ministrations! Especially since she’d noticed the flecks on her chest where the glass had gone down the neckline of her blouse.
Maybe the tea’s effects hadn’t worn off after all. She was once again falling into that strange place where sanity gave way to impulse and desire overpowered common sense.
Stray. Go someplace even wilder this time.
Though she barely knew the man, at this moment, she’d gladly pull him down to join her on the bed. Well, after he’d finished the lovely foot massage.
Almost cooing with the pleasure of it, Scarlett closed her eyes and relaxed, feeling the press of his strong fingers in the arch of her other foot and around her ankle. His hands were magnificent and every inch of skin covering her bones wanted to be touched by them.
“Better?” he asked, his tone husky.
“Mmm-hmm.” She opened her eyes to smile her thanks, but he was still focused only on the task at hand.
Setting the bowl down, he reached for a jar. “This’ll help, too,” he said before slathering some kind of thick salve from her toes to her heels. It smelled unfamiliar. Nice, but not an obvious scent like peppermint or jasmine. It was earthy, spicy, but not anything she could put her finger on.
And it felt divine. Cooling and soothing, it removed any lingering sting from the scratches and blisters until she couldn’t even remember they’d existed. “How amazing,” she murmured as she stretched in physical contentment.
“It’s good stuff.”
That, too. But she hadn’t been referring to the salve. “I bet it would really help my legs.” Had that sounded hopeful or merely pathetic? “They got pretty scratched up in the accident.”
She was such a liar. Whatever the shattered glass had done to the top half of her body, her lower half had been spared by the spread of her billowing coat across her lap, and her skirt below that. She did, however, have one scrape up the side of her left thigh. Probably from where he’d hauled her out of the car.
He might have cleared his throat. Or that might have been a low rumble of laughter. Whichever it was, he scooped another dollop of the white, pasty salve into his hands and moved them to her ankle. Sliding them around her calf, he began to gently massage her, kneading the muscles there, running the tips of his fingers all the way up until he reached her knee.
That was when sensual awareness and lazy desire turned into heat. The tender skin on the backs of her knees had always been an erogenous zone, though only one of her lovers had ever been around long enough to figure that out.
This guy seemed to realize it right away. She must have gasped or something, because he shifted his gaze, watching her through half-lowered lashes as he caressed her.
She bit her lips, trying to remain still and silent, as if simply appreciating the care and not getting off on the feel of his hands on her body. Fat chance of her managing that for long, but it was the best she could do.
So tell him. Or better yet, show him.
She could. But he’d proven last night that he was noble and a gentleman. He’d probably think she was still suffering the effects of the tea, or that she’d consumed more of it while he was gone.
She wasn’t. And she hadn’t. Frankly, this wasn’t even just about pure desire. It was about the edgy need she’d been feeling ever since she’d left the bookshop the evening before. The need to do something different, to veer from the path. To stray from the familiar into something dark and dangerous and terribly exciting.
Like sex with him.
He shifted, as if about to stop, and Scarlett sat up in the bed, resisting the urge to clamp her thighs together and keep his hand right where it was. Instead, she offered him a smile.
“Thank you so much,” she murmured. Then, as if simply wanting to reiterate the thanks, she leaned close, until their faces were inches apart. She let herself study the depths in those dark-green eyes—not to mention the surprise there—before pressing her lips against his for a soft, gentle kiss.
It was just a kiss of thanks. If it happened to turn into something else, well….
His form remained stiff for an instant, then, with a deep groan torn from somewhere within him, he thrust his hands into her hair.
And it turned into something else.
Cupping her head, he turned her so that their lips could part and mate more fully. It was Scarlett’s turn to groan. With pure, deep pleasure.
He tasted hot and spicy, and kissed the way a man should kiss. Forcefully. Deliberately. Their tongues met and entwined, and their breaths joined as well. Her thighs trembled and she longed to shift them apart, inviting him between them.
Before she could do it, he ended the kiss. Yanking his hands from her hair, he muttered a curse and jerked to his feet.
“Hunter…”
“What’d you see in the woods?”
He busied himself putting the salve away, not looking at her face, so he probably didn’t see her start of surprise. Though she’d lay money he knew there was one.
“Trees,” she snapped, almost choking on disappointment. He’d changed the subject, caught her by surprise intentionally. That kiss might even have been his way of setting her up. And here she’d been priding herself on initiating it. Now she had to wonder if he’d been playing her all along.
Damn, he was good.
“Trees made you scream like that?”
She flushed, deliberately looking at her own hands. No way was she going to tell Hunter she thought she’d seen a man with amazing speed, reddish eyes and more thick, dark hair than any guy she’d ever seen.
“Scarlett,” he said, staring at her face, “I need to know what you saw.”
She waved an airy hand. “It was dark.”
He frowned, but slowly nodded. “Yes, it was.”
“I’m sure it was nothing. Just an overactive imagination.”
He stared into her eyes for a moment longer, then nodded. “You’re probably right. You had quite a knock. I’m sure whatever you saw out there was just your imagination, almost like a dream.”
A dream? Maybe a nightmare. But she didn’t say that. It sounded stupid enough in her own mind. She wasn’t about to voice the words. Especially not when the dreams she could fulfill here—inside this cabin, with this incredibly sexy man—were so much nicer to contemplate.
She only had to figure out a way to make those dreams come true.
CHAPTER 5
HUNTER NEEDED sleep. Badly. It had been a rough week, and last night he hadn’t even tried to close his eyes. The bone-deep weariness was going to catch up to him, probably at the worst possible time—like when he finally came face-to-face with Lucas—if he didn’t do something about it.
But he didn’t know that he could trust her. Scarlett. His unwelcome, unwanted, unbelievably sexy guest. Despite her scare, he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t up and leave the minute he nodded off, if only to prove to herself that she wasn’t afraid to.
She could get into real trouble here. Or, at the very least, see things that would make her question her own sanity. He hadn’t been joking about that damn dwarf from up the road, whose No Trespassing signs were backed up by his ax.
God knew, the first time Hunter had crossed the border—not even sure he believed there was one, despite what his dying mother had told him—he hadn’t believed his own senses. And he’d been prepared. Scarlett wasn’t.
He should never have brought her here.
She’d been bad enough when woozy and hyped up on tea. Now, with all her faculties firmly in place, and that mouth giving back as good as she got, he found her even more distracting. More frustrating.
More damned attractive.
In silence, she was completely sexy. Conscious and aware, she delighted him.
Still, kissing her? Dumbest thing he’d ever done.
He should have handed her the water and ointment and let her take care of herself. Then there would have been no soft whispered, “Thank you,” followed by a kiss of gratitude that had turned into one of pure carnal pleasure.
If she hadn’t set out to make it that way, he’d give up his truck. And damn, he loved that truck.
“Yeah,” he said, remembering her question. “I guess it fell off your foot when I carried you here.”
“How far did you have to carry me again?”
The softness of her query didn’t disguise the sharpness of her interest. The woman was thinking about leaving, trying to find her way out all on her own. He was never going to be able to get any sleep.
“A long way,” he told her, hoping to discourage her. And it wasn’t a lie. Maybe they hadn’t gone far in conventional distance, but metaphorically, they’d gone over the freaking rainbow. There was a dusty, gold-tinged paved road not five leagues from here that proved it.
“We went over some pretty rough terrain,” he added, “so don’t get any ideas, shoeless.”
Her lip curled in derision. “And somehow we left the Louisiana bayou and ended up in something resembling Carolina woods.”
She wasn’t too far off, really. Everything was smaller over here, not just time. If he walked to the next border crossing over, maybe half a day away on this side, he’d come out several states away from where they’d entered in Louisiana.
Choosing to ignore her skepticism, he said, “I’ll rig up something for you to wear on your feet when we leave.”
“You’re a cobbler too, huh?”
He shook his head, unable to resist smiling a little. The woman was just too damned cute when she was being snarky. “Actually, I think there might be something in that trunk you could use.” He crossed the small cabin, opening the big wooden chest where he, and other travelers who used this place, left the basic supplies and stuff they no longer needed.