McQueen's Heat

by Harper Allen

  “Try immediately, McQueen,” she snapped.

  “You told me to make you want it. How about you give me that much, dammit?” he said, his voice taking on an edge. “Come on, Tam, one kiss. I might not be able to drive everything out of your mind, but let’s see if I can make you forget just how much you hate me right now. If I can’t, then no harm, no foul.”

  She stared flatly back at him. “I don’t see it happening but just for the sake of argument, what if you can?”

  His smile was brief and humorless. “Now you’re the one playing dumb.”

  She stiffened. Her gaze narrowed. “Fine. One kiss. Rock my world, McQueen.”

  “I intend to,” he said shortly, pulling her toward him.

  When he’d kissed her two nights ago he hadn’t been hesitant or subtle. But a split second before his mouth came down on hers Tamara knew instinctively that what little control he’d exercised then had now been discarded completely. Even as she parted her lips to voice an unsteady protest his mouth was over hers. The words never left her throat.

  His tongue was immediately in her and immediately deep, and immediately she knew what was going on.

  The antagonism that had been crackling between them like a downed electrical wire had finally found something to ground itself in. McQueen had stripped what he wanted from her and what she’d said she wanted from him down to the barest essentials, and he was beyond caring that what was left might be too basic.

  She placed her palm flat against his chest. It felt as if she were pushing against concrete.

  On the job she had to meet the same requirements as any man. She’d gotten used to shoving aside a six-footer who was pounding up a flight of stairs too slowly, of seeing no difference between herself and her fellow firefighters. She wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t helpless. She wasn’t the kind of female who pretended to be.

  Which was why the notion of being protestingly swept into Rhett Butler’s arms and carried up the grand staircase at Tara had never figured largely in her fantasies—or if it had, she would have been altogether too embarrassed and appalled with herself to admit it, she thought dazedly. That wasn’t any woman’s fantasy anymore. Even in their fantasies, women wanted their dream lovers to be gentle, didn’t they? They wanted them to be accommodating, to be considerate enough to curb the rougher edges of their maleness.

  Maybe there was something wrong with her.

  She liked that he was a big man. She liked feeling hard muscle surrounding her. She liked that there was nothing of him that was yielding or accommodating right at this moment, and she liked the edgy thrill that was spilling through her at the realization that his sex was something it would never occur to McQueen to apologize for.

  Casting aside the last of her inhibitions, she let herself sway against him, her fingers curling into her palms on his chest. He lifted his mouth just enough that his kiss trailed to the corner of her lips, to the edge of her jaw, to the exposed line of her neck.

  Raw desire slammed through her.

  And Stone McQueen rocked her world.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tamara gasped as immediate heat lapped at her breasts, licked at her inner thighs, violated the most private recesses of her being. Even as her limbs went completely boneless she felt her feet leave the floor, felt herself being swept up in Stone’s arms, hazily saw that gray gaze, half-hidden behind the dark veil of his lashes, meet hers.

  Her sleep shirt had slid up as he’d lifted her. It was one of her less embarrassing ones, pale pink with darker pink snaps marching all the way down its front. Right now the bottom snap was somewhere near the top of her legs and she was pretty sure she was even more exposed at the back.

  He positioned his grip securely under her. Her suspicion became a certainty as she felt the muscles of his forearm flex slightly against the curve of her derriere.

  “You said one kiss. That makes it your call now.” His tone was edged. “I want to see you on me and under me, honey. I want those gorgeous legs wrapped around me and I want to be in you so badly I can taste it. I want to feel myself going out of my mind while you’re making me prove to you that I’m your man. But it’s your call.”

  Hot desire spilled through her, and with it a jumble of lushly carnal images flashed across her imagination—images that started with the acts he’d just described and took them to the limits of possibility. Vintage McQueen, Tamara thought, biting down on her lip. If his words had been any more bluntly erotic… She bit down harder.

  It was a moment before she could speak.

  “I—I think I called it the first time I saw you,” she said unsteadily. “I kept telling myself you were everything I didn’t like in a man. You’re too big. You’re too aggressive. You’re a loose cannon. I think you’d probably be like that in bed, McQueen.” She took a shallow breath. “I think in bed I’d like it,” she whispered.

  “Do you, now?” he said huskily.

  With no visible effort, he lowered her to the bed and himself with her, so that he was kneeling with one leg on either side of her thighs as she lay back against the pillow-cushioned headboard. His expression was unreadable in the shadows.

  “It was the same for me, honey,” he rasped. “One look and I was willing to sell my soul to have a night with you.”

  “It’s night, Stone. We’re both here in my bed.” She reached up to the top snap of her shirt and slowly undid it. “Are you sure you didn’t sell your soul after all?”

  “Hell, I’m pretty sure I did. Maybe you can help me get it back someday.” His voice roughened. “But right now I just want to watch you do what you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?” Tamara breathed. She unpopped two more snaps, her eyes never leaving his.

  “Stripping for me,” he said hoarsely. “Teasing me. Making me wait.”

  That was exactly what she was doing, she thought hazily, unfastening another tiny snap. She saw a muscle jump at the side of his jaw.

  He was the one.

  She’d been certain this evening at the Red Spot, she thought, drinking in the sight of him watching her. She’d been certain, but that very certainty had frightened her. She hadn’t shared her past with Stone, she’d thrown it at him as hard as she could in an effort to prove to herself that she couldn’t trust him.

  And it hadn’t worked because he was the one—the one she could reveal herself to, the one she could trust, the one man she’d been looking for all her life. She hadn’t felt anything like this with Rick—as if she and he had been lovers in another reality, and were just picking up where they’d been forced to leave off a lifetime or two ago. And whatever intimacy she’d had with the man who’d stood in for her groom had come from the liquid drug she’d taken to numb her pain.

  But Stone McQueen was the one. He was the man she could be a woman with—unselfconsciously, unhesitatingly, passionately. Maybe she was drunk, Tamara thought. Whatever was fizzing through her veins felt like champagne.

  “It just feels like I’m making you wait, Stone,” she murmured, her fingers sliding to the next snap. “We both know patience is one of those virtues you don’t possess. This might be a good time to teach you one or two of them.”

  “I’ve always wanted to be a better man, honey. It’s a damn shame you have to be such a bad girl in order to help me out.”

  How did he do that? she thought agitatedly. Her fingers slipped and two snaps popped open at once. How did he switch from that throaty growl to that dangerous purr in the space of a few sentences? Did he know what that did to her?

  She gave a little tug to the edges of her shirt. The row of tiny snaps popped open down to her waist, and she saw his gaze darken. Leaning back a little against the propped up pillows, slowly she slid the two edges of the shirt aside.

  “Uh-uh, no touching, McQueen,” she said reprovingly. “You were the one who first brought up teasing.”

  “You’re going to make me pay for that, aren’t you?” He was still straddling her. Moving forward, he braced his hands on
his knees, as if to keep them occupied. “I dreamed about you last night, honey. You were a whole lot more accommodating, as I remember. You let me hold them and stroke them and kiss them. You begged me to lick those perfect pink peaks, and when I did you arched your back and dug your nails into me. You were a little wildcat in my dreams, and when I woke up I almost expected to see the claw marks to prove it.”

  “That was just a dream. This is real.” She gave him a glance of wide-eyed innocence. “But tell me more, Stone. What happened next?”

  “I was wearing what I’m wearing now,” he said hoarsely. “A pair of chinos and nothing else. You unzipped my fly.”

  “That—that’s within the rules.” Her own voice wasn’t too even, Tamara noted, and no wonder. Heat now seemed to be licking every part of her. Almost nervously her hands went to the zippered front of his pants.

  “Oh.” The shocked gasp escaped her before she could stop it. She looked swiftly up at him, her lips still parted.

  “Okay, the freakin’ bet’s off, sweetheart. You win, I lose.” Stone’s voice was strained. “Stop looking at me like that or I’ll totally humiliate myself, honey. By the way, that was cheating.”

  She’d told him she liked big and aggressive. She’d just had very hard evidence that he was the former, and from his tone it seemed as though he’d reverted to the latter. Her laugh was shaky.

  “Just admit it McQueen—you’re never going to be a patient man.”

  “I’m never going to be a patient man.”

  His hands spanned her waist. Almost before she knew what he intended, Tamara found herself being lifted up from between his legs and into a kneeling position facing him. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a shadowy movement a few feet away. Looking toward it, she saw the two of them dimly reflected in her dresser mirror. Stone followed her glance.

  “Now it’s your turn to watch,” he muttered tightly.

  He grasped the two edges of her shirt, not tentatively as she had, but almost roughly. In the same impatient movement, as the rest of the snaps opened and the pink sleepshirt parted completely he slid it over her shoulders and down her arms.

  It fell to the pillows behind her unheeded. In the space of half a heartbeat he’d totally disrobed her. Her stunned gaze flew from the mirror to his face, but at his expression whatever she’d intended to say went completely out of her mind.

  Stone McQueen was looking at her as if he was a blind man who’d just been given back his sight.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed.

  Slowly he brought his hands to the sides of her breasts, cupping their outer curves. Even more slowly he slid his palms downward, his thumbs brushing against her suddenly hard nipples and going past them to her rib cage, her waist, the flare of her hips.

  She was kneeling naked on a bed and allowing a man to touch her wherever he wanted, Tamara thought dazedly. Shouldn’t she be feeling some small flicker of modesty? Shouldn’t she be trying to retain some scrap of demureness?

  And wasn’t it just the tiniest bit sinful to let him make her feel this wanton?

  Maybe it was, she told herself helplessly. But that just made it more exciting.

  She shifted slightly, her legs moving fractionally farther apart. Bringing her arms up, she scooped the weight of her hair from the nape of her neck and piled it carelessly into a dishevelled mass at the top of her head, her breasts tipping upward with the gesture. Slanting a glance through her lashes at Stone, she saw the tanned column of his throat move reflexively as he caught his breath.

  “You’re bad, Tam.” His tone was raw. “You know damn well what you’re doing to me.”

  Even as he spoke he was lowering his head to her, his hands wide and cupping her uplifted breasts, but instead of feeling his mouth on them as she’d expected, with a small shock Tamara realized he’d gone lower.

  She felt his tongue flick into the tangle of curls at the top of her thighs. Immediate, liquid heat poured through her.

  She arched herself toward him, her own hair tumbling free as her outstretched fingers sank into the coarse silk of his, her other hand clenched tightly at her lips to hold back the moan she could feel rising in her throat. She felt his tongue circling slowly downward, felt it move between her parted thighs.

  His mouth opened. She felt him take her gently in, felt the hypnotically circling strokes of his tongue probe deeper, felt it find the sensitive spot it was searching for.

  “Oh, no,” she gasped. “Stone, that’s too much.”

  He lifted his head, and for an instant his gaze met hers. “I know it’s too much, honey. I want it to be too much for you, over and over again. I just love the taste of you, Tam.”

  Without waiting for her response he bent his head again, and this time when she felt his tongue slowly circling and teasing her she didn’t try to stifle the low cry that came from her throat. It was too much, she thought hazily—too much sensation, too much exquisite torture. The rest of her body no longer existed, except as a conduit for the pleasure she could feel mounting steadily in her. Her whole consciousness had focused down to what Stone was doing to her.

  She felt his tongue lick deeper. She felt his mouth open wider. She felt him take her completely in, and as he did an outrageous thought tore shockingly through her mind. It was as if he was drinking her, she thought disjointedly. He’d said he loved the way she tasted, and he’d been telling the simple truth.

  And he was loving it.

  The sensations building in her exploded into shattering, overwhelming ecstasy. From somewhere far away she heard her own slurred voice calling out his name, and then she felt him holding her and repeating hers in her ear.

  A shudder ran through her, and then another, like tiny aftershocks.

  “Tamara, honey, Tamara, sweetheart, Tamara, baby.” His whisper seemed to wrap the endearments around her. With an unsteady hand he stroked her hair back from her closed eyes, his murmur barely audible. “Sweetheart, you’re perfect. Honey, I’m yours.”

  It couldn’t be McQueen holding her, Tamara decided hazily—not the tough, abrasive McQueen she knew. Whoever this man was, he sounded as if he’d found his heart’s desire, and was determined to keep it at all costs. Slowly she opened her eyes and met Stone’s smoky gaze.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  “I was loud.” It was the first foolish thing that came into her head, but somehow she didn’t feel foolish saying it. He lifted a strand of her hair to his lips.

  “I like you loud.”

  A final tremor ran through her, and her fingers curled into fists on his chest. “You drove me crazy,” she said softly. “I didn’t know anything could be like that.”

  He was pressed hard against her. She felt him harden even more. Uncurling one fist, unhurriedly she let her fingers trail down his ribs and past the washboard tautness of his abdomen to the button at the top of his zipper. She undid it, and heard his suddenly indrawn breath.

  “What did I taste like, Stone?” Her fingers found the tab of his zipper. Gently she drew it down a quarter-inch or so, conscious of the pressure straining against it. She saw his eyes glaze slightly.

  “Like jasmine, honey,” he said hoarsely. “Like jasmine and sex. You’re all over me.”

  Earthy carnality. Unexpected romanticism. The first ambushed her, the second totally disarmed her. The fact that they’d both been delivered by the man the rest of the world saw as hard-living, hard-bitten Stone McQueen conquered her completely.

  Slowly she slid her palm over the straining seam beneath her hand. Through the heavy cotton of his chinos she felt the outlined shaft bulge more turgidly until it seemed to be overflowing the cup of her palm.

  “Oh, no. Honey, that’s too much.”

  The low gasp sounded as if it were being torn from his throat. Raising her eyes from his obvious need, in the half-light, half shadow she saw that McQueen’s eyes were closed and his bottom lip was cruelly caught between his teeth. The heavy sheath of muscle that defined his neck and bulk
ed out those broad shoulders was accentuated by a gilding of moisture.

  “I want it to be too much.” Even to her own ears, her whisper sounded ragged. A frisson of desire ran through her, dangerously close to the core of her being. “But I want it to be too much in me, McQueen. I want you in me now.”

  Her fingertips closed over the tab of his zipper once more. As she slowly and carefully drew the metal slide downward his grasp on her shoulders tightened convulsively. She bent her head to focus on her cautious task, and her hair swung forward to brush against his belly.

  She heard him inhale sharply, saw the flinching shock that passed through him. She had the power to do that to him, she thought with sudden fierceness. He had the power to melt her, but she had the power to bring him to this. From now on, wherever they were, whatever they were doing, she would be able to look at him and know that Stone McQueen’s one weakness was her. Anytime she wanted to, she could remind him of that with a glance.

  Because he knew it, too.

  He moved. The zipper was forced fully open. He was in the circle of her hands, and he was far too big.

  She swallowed dryly, her mesmerized gaze travelling along the length of him, taking in the size of him, finally coming to rest on the dark tangles spilling forth from the tightly stretched vee of the chinos, the shadowed fullness nestled close to the base of that shaft.

  “This—this isn’t going to work, Stone,” she murmured unsteadily. She felt his grip slide from her shoulders to her arms, and then his hands were around hers and around himself.

  “Trust me, Tam?” His question was terse, as if even the act of speaking held potential risk. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. I’ll make it good for you, honey.”

  She raised uncertain eyes to his face. His sheened gaze met and held hers.