by Dawn Atkins
JACKSON GRABBED THE GROCERIES, three plastic sacks to a hand, and hip-checked his car door shut. He’d bought every frickin’ thing Heidi had written down, including twelve-grain bread, fresh spinach—bleh—and vitamins. He was pussy-whipped and he wasn’t even getting any. But he wanted to make it up to her for turning her down.
He shook his head. What the hell had happened to his manhood? Jackson McCall didn’t turn down sex that hot. He’d lost interest the past year or so, but with Heidi he’d been exercising restraint muscles he didn’t know he had. It wasn’t healthy to want a woman this much. Something could get permanently strained…or, hell, broken.
From the garage, he heard music playing inside. Sax. Loud and heavy on the downbeat. Didn’t sound like Heidi to him. She was more of an easy-listening kind of girl. Not this hot, sultry beat. What was going on? He turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door and carried the bags into the town house.
“Hey, there, big guy,” Heidi called to him in the voice of a woman thinking about doing thangs. He moved forward and saw that she’d positioned herself against the support beam between the rooms, one knee bent, foot braced on the post, and she looked downright eager to do thangs. She was all covered up, but she wore Gigi’s do-me heels and her face said do-me, too.
Good lord.
Something was wrong, though. Her hair was pinned up crooked and her right cheek sagged. Plus her lipstick didn’t quite match the shape of her lips.
“Are you all right?” he asked. When uncertainty flew across her face, he corrected himself. “I mean you look…different.”
“I am different,” she said, smiling a slow cat smile and pushing away from the pole. She swayed and her ankles gave way a little in the spike heels. She was loaded? “Different than you think I am.”
Then he remembered. “Did Dr. Dave fix your tooth?” he asked her gently.
“Yes, he did.”
“And did you take something for the pain?” He tried not to smile.
She frowned, reading his meaning. “The shoes are big, that’s why I’m wobbling.” She strode firmly forward and her feet snapped in and out of the heels like they were flip-flops. Gigi had big feet.
He just stood there, sacks dangling, caught by the look in her eyes.
She came right up to him and put her small hands on his chest, fingers spread. She smelled so good. It made him think of spring flowers and sweet cries of pleasure. “You’re exactly what I need, Jackson.” Her words spun through him, her gaze tore him open and he rocked in the white-hot breeze of raw desire.
Behind her, the saxophone moaned like a beast in heat.
Heidi slid her fingers under his T-shirt and stroked his chest. “You feel good,” she whispered.
He fought his reaction, noticing that her lipstick line was definitely crooked and the mole on her cheek had smeared? It was drawn on? Her right eye was bloodshot as hell and both lids sagged. The woman was high as a kite.
“I think you’re the one who feels good,” he said, his blood thudding in his ears. “Feeling-no-pain good.” He dropped the groceries to the carpet, cans clunking together, and grabbed her wrists, stopping her lovely fingers mid-stroke.
“You think I’m not the kind of woman you have sex with,” she said, her eyes sparking at him like an acetylene torch, “but I swear I am. Let me show you.”
It was tough not to smile. Even harder not to kiss that crookedly painted mouth. “Heidi, listen—”
She shut him up with a finger to his lips. He wanted to suck it until she moaned. “Not another word. Just watch.” She backed away, swaying to the music while she slowly, slowly pulled the strings of her shirt, one by one, until the sides fell away, revealing a shiny strapless deal covering her breasts.
Shit. She intended to strip for him. “Really…you don’t need to. I get the point.” He stepped toward her.
She held up a hand. “I practiced. Just stay there and let me do it.”
So he did, groaning inside, not sure he could bear what he could tell would be alternately funny and insanely arousing.
She fixed him with a stare that made him feel like something she’d caught in a trap and intended to eat raw, then yanked her shirt off her shoulders and he wanted to offer himself up for exactly that. She let the shirt fall off her arms, then caught the edge of it so she could tease the floor. He felt the move as though it was his skin she was brushing with the flimsy fabric.
She took a quick turn around the pole, then did a sinuous slide down and back up, mimicking the strippers, but with real feeling in her face. The contact with the pole seemed to arouse her. She took a harsh breath, then bent toward him and wiggled, which made a pale crescent of one breast pop out of the top, revealed almost to the nipple. Lust thudded through him, making him sluggish, unable to hold a thought except that he wanted to touch, to hold and have her.
His reaction must have been obvious, because her face went pink and her eyes shone with triumph. She might be loaded, but she wasn’t numb and she looked like a woman on a mission. Maybe she wasn’t quite as innocent as he kept telling himself she was.
Or maybe his lust was taking over, making it all right to drag her into his arms and do all the things he wanted to do—take her, make her cry out in helpless pleasure.
Then she slowly slid the shirt between her legs, rubbing it against herself so that the contact registered in her eyes. She cupped herself through the fabric and rotated her palm over the mound of her sex. This wasn’t the fake self-touch the strippers performed. She felt it and so did he.
A groan escaped. How could he endure this to the end?
She smiled a smile that lit her eyes, enjoying torturing him, swung the blouse over her head like a cowboy’s lasso, then released it. It landed on his shoulder and he got a whiff of his own deodorant, which on her somehow smelled better, sweeter.
Then she tugged at the strings on her pants, swaying her hips to the throbbing music. Oh, God, now what? Inside, he moaned along with the sax.
The pants shivered down her legs, snagging at her knees, revealing tiny red shorts so tight they made little sausages of her trim thighs and outlined the split in her sex. This was torture. He wanted to clutch her hips, fall to his knees and kiss her through the fabric, please her with his tongue.
She stomped the pants the rest of the way down, her body jiggling firmly, then she stepped out of the silky puddle and stood there, a little uncertain, looking hot and sweet in that crooked tube top and those crotch-pinching shorts and oversize shoes. Her thigh muscles rippled as she swayed from the pain meds and nerves. He watched a continent of blush spring out above her breasts and flood the creamy ocean of her neck.
“Very nice,” he said, applauding softly, his palms clammy. “Thank you.”
“But I’m not done,” she said, as if she’d just remembered something else. She reached into her hair, tugged, grimaced, then managed to release the pins so that her hair sank to her shoulders in haystack tangles. She shook her head to settle it, then began to dance, rocking her body in a wave that ended with soft toe kicks. Her face showed that she felt the friction of the shorts against her sex, where he wanted to be right now.
She picked up the discarded pants and rubbed them across her ass while she shimmied in a classic burlesque move. Then she dropped the pants and backed against the pole and slid slowly down to a squat, her knees angled outward, a muscular move popular with the dancers, which had the effect of pointing him to her spot, inviting him in, to touch, to taste, to enter.
He took a step forward, unable to stop himself. He longed to explore her softness, see how wet she was, and how swollen, touch her just so. He dragged his gaze upward to her face, where her eyes echoed her body’s message. Do it. Take me. Make love to me. Please.
He wanted that, to push and thrust into all that softness, all that woman, to let her calves lock around his ass, hold him in place, make him give her all the pleasure she wanted.
Now she pushed to her feet, trembling from the strain—that
move took conditioning—and spun herself around the post, leaning her head back…which made the breast slip out completely, so his eyes feasted on the small brown nipple. She spun again, evidently not noticing. “Whoa,” she said, and staggered, off-balance.
He rushed to catch her.
“Thank you,” she said, standing into his arms, the heels bringing her nearly to his height. The smeared lipstick made her look like a kid who’d been sloppy with a strawberry popsicle and perspiration had smeared the drawn-on mole even more. Her freckles glowed through the overdone makeup and her powder-soft scent was as innocent and fresh as a spring breeze. Her body felt good against his. Taut and firm, but also soft as fruit, pressing against him. He knew that if he reached down, her ass would be perfect against his palm, round and ripe for a taste.
“How am I doing?” she whispered, her warm breath teasing him.
“Great,” he ground out roughly. “Except for…” He used his thumb to wipe away the lipstick smear.
She grasped his thumb between her teeth, gripped his hand and sucked it into her mouth.
He fought for air. “Maybe you’d better lie down,” he forced out.
She released his thumb. “With you?”
Oh, yeah. His cock surged. He was about to buckle and drop.
She blinked at him, a slow flicker of lashes heavy with gunk. Bul-ink, bul-link. Round as a baby doll’s eyes, a Bombay Sapphire blue with a dark edge, and they sparkled with desire.
She put her arms around him, pressed herself against him, breasts to thighs, and looked up into his face. “Take me to bed.”
Then she rose on tiptoe and kissed him, pushing her tongue right where he couldn’t do anything but take it in. He was only human, dammit. He grabbed her and kissed her back, lost for a moment in the softness of her flesh, the overwhelming need she started up in him, like revving an engine, grinding its gears, burning out all the oil in the machinery of it.
She trembled against him, tilted her mouth to grant him better access and he tasted the soft tissue just inside her lip, felt the hard smoothness of her teeth, the heat of her eager breath.
He was really getting into it when he tasted medicinal clove and brushed the rough surface of what had to be a temporary crown. She’d been to the dentist, he reminded himself, and she was high on meds. He shouldn’t be messing around in her mouth.
He broke off the kiss.
“Don’t stop,” she said, going for his lips.
“You need to sleep this off.”
“No, I don’t.”
He knew what he had to do and did it. He squatted just enough to grab her by the upper thighs and haul her up over his shoulder.
She shrieked. “What are you doing?”
“Putting you to bed.” And getting the hell out. If he’d carried her face up, he’d never be able to resist her mouth. This way, he only had to deal with her sweet behind against his cheek.
She pounded his back with her fists and kicked, catching him in the ’nads with one pointy toe.
“Ouch. Damn. Watch it.”
“Serves you right, you big gorilla.”
She was good and mad. At least that. He burned with the awareness that all he had to do was turn his head slightly and he could put his mouth on her butt, sticking out of the tiny shorts. His palm cupped her upper leg. If he slid his fingers upward, he could slip so easily under the fabric. The idea made him ache all over. He’d captured her like some caveman and he could hold her down and stroke her to madness.
Nope. No. No way. He closed his eyes against the curve beside his face, so firm, so close, so willing.
Though probably not now that he’d tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of shapely potatoes. In her bedroom, he whipped down the covers, bent forward and let her fall onto the bed.
“That was totally uncalled for,” she said, blinking up at him, banging her heels against the mattress.
He sat beside her and had to touch her, so he settled for taking off her shoes, letting himself enjoy the smoothness of her foot, elastic with muscle, familiar from the other night. She had those great round toes he wanted to taste. One small breast was still showing and he fought to keep from staring at that rebellious little cupcake with the tempting cherry on top.
“I’m not that buzzed. Why did you stop?”
To distract them both, he massaged her instep, pressing down hard.
“Oh, that’s good,” she moaned. “You have great hands. I want them on me. Everywhere.” The last word was a hungry whisper.
His cock surged against his zipper, wanting out, wanting in. He knew if he kept up this innocent rub, he’d soon be sliding up her calves, thighs and higher.
She pushed up on her elbows. “You think you know me, Jackson, but you don’t. Maybe I’m not wildly experienced, but I’m no virgin and I won’t get weird on you afterward, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Don’t think this isn’t hard for me.”
Her eyes took on a smart-ass glint. “Is it? Is it hard for you?” She leaned forward and pressed her hand against his zipper, where he was indeed hard as a pole at Moons. Her eyes widened. “Very.” She hesitated for a second, then she seemed to force herself to act and she tightened her grip on him, watching his face.
He groaned and closed his eyes while she slid her fingers around his cock, testing, exploring a gift through its wrapping.
With everything in him, he wanted to rip open his zipper, tear off his boxers and get those sweet digits doing some serious stroking.
But she wasn’t herself. She hadn’t even noticed one breast was hanging out. Well, not hanging—peeking. She’d feel like an idiot when she emerged from this drugged funk. He put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her onto the mattress. “You need sleep.” He got to his feet.
“You’re so…infuriating. Stop telling me what I need.” But her voice was soft and her eyelids sagged. She was dozy. He watched as she stretched out her legs, pale and inviting against the midnight blue sheets. She was a delicious dish spread before him.
He pictured himself tasting her, touching her. Could he ever get his fill? He rocked on his heels, tempted to fall on her, forget all these heroic impulses and go with what his parts were yelling at him to do.
“Rest up,” he choked out and got the hell out of there, his hands shaking, his cock aching. In the kitchen he threw cold water on his face, rubbed it onto his neck and took a deep steadying breath. He’d just passed up the hottest sex of his life. This better be the right thing to do.
It was. She was out of it. And for all she claimed that she just wanted sex, he didn’t believe it. He couldn’t bear the possibility of screwing up again. Sex was great and all, but there were more important considerations.
Right now they were damned hard to remember. He headed to his room to lock the door and lift some weights. Heavy weights and lots of them. And then a shower—a cold, cold one.
7
HEIDI WOKE TO SUNLIGHT in her eyes and the sound of the shower running. She’d slept through the night, evidently. What had happened? Her fuzzy brain chased memories until it hit the mark. Oh, yeah. The striptease, after which she’d been summarily tossed over Jackson’s shoulders and put to bed like a cranky child. How frustrating. How demoralizing. She’d even grabbed him there and he’d stopped her hand. Was she that talentless, that unappealing, that resistible?
No. He’d stared at her, eyes gleaming with primal desire, hungry to have her. He’d thought she was high on pain meds and didn’t want to take advantage of her. He’d been heroic, dammit.
Her jaws and thighs ached like she’d worn them out with hours of great sex. Instead, it had been dental work and a squat-thrust against the beam. She was as sexually frustrated as ever.
Now Jackson was taking a shower—again, it seemed, since she had a vague memory of waking from her post-striptease nap to the sound of water running before falling off for good. Now he was scrubbing all that muscular terrain and that impressive-feeling member. He was whistli
ng the music she’d played for her woozy dance. Was he thinking of her?
She was perfectly sober now. What if she joined him? Ripped off this tube top and shorts and ducked under the water? A charge of adrenaline made her pop out of bed and onto her feet. She moved fast, scared she’d lose her nerve, and was soon at the slightly ajar bathroom door. She listened for a second, her heart beating fast. Jackson’s whistle mixed melodically with the running water that splashed from his body to the shower floor in lush blasts.
She pushed the door more open. The small room had just enough space for the sink, toilet and shower stall, which Jackson’s broad frame seemed to fill to the corners. Through the frosted glass, she made out his tan back and perfect behind, the muscles swelling and subsiding as he soaped his chest.
All she had to do was strip and offer herself to him.
Wait. Not offer herself. Take him. Touch him in a way that convinced him they both wanted the same thing. That sounded so damned assertive. So confident.
She took a half step forward, but the sight of herself in the partially fogged mirror stopped her dead. She looked horrid. Her foundation was too heavy, her eye shadow garish, the waterproof—and evidently sleep-proof—mascara had clumped and her lipstick line was crooked. The beauty mark looked like a smudge of dirt under one eye and her hair was a tousled mess. She’d slept like the dead on her back all night, but the tube top had somehow slid down, revealing a breast. She yanked it up.
She’d tried to seduce Jackson looking this way? How had he kept from laughing? She remembered how he’d wiped her lipstick as though he were cleaning up a child who’d gone wild with ice cream. All she needed was a fright wig, and two pink balloons stretching her top and she’d make a fine sexpot clown for Barnum & Bailey.
Embarrassed heat blended with the humid density of the room so that she could hardly draw a breath. She was a silly woman who’d pulled a silly stunt. She had to get out of here before Jackson caught sight of her. She backed up, but her arm caught the door. It creaked, then banged softly against the wall.
