by Oliver, Tess
I ran my hands over the flat tufts of bubbles that now looked more like froth than bubbles. "When I was a kid, I used to get out as soon as the bubbles flat-lined. I'd say it's that time."
Holt opened the towel. I pushed to my feet and stepped into the waiting towel. He rubbed his hands over the lush terry cloth to dry me as I leaned back against his chest.
"Every bath after this is going to be a complete and utter disappointment."
His laugh was cool and low like his voice. "That's not good. Guess I'll have to make sure I'm there if you bathe again."
"You have my permission."
He spun me around in his arms. The instant I peered up at him, he covered my mouth with a kiss. I melted against him and parted my lips. His tongue traced a sensual trail around my lips and his kiss deepened. My head was light with it all when he lifted his mouth from mine.
The candles still flickered and gave off the sweet smell of melted wax as the fragrant steam found its way to the cold surface of the mirror and settled there in a haze, a haze like the one in my head.
"I'm going to let you get dressed. I'll meet you out in the hallway in twenty minutes."
9
Holt walked out. I closed my eyes for a second to remember what it felt like to have his hand between my legs. Heavenly. It felt heavenly as if he'd dropped out of some fantasy world where the men were not only beautiful but they knew exactly how to touch a woman.
I picked up my suitcase and now regretted my choice of weekend clothes. Although, in my defense, I thought I was going to be spending most of my time on the slopes with only the occasional stop in at the lodge restaurant. I hadn't even considered packing something pretty. Even if I didn't have much pretty in my closet, I definitely had clothes that were sexier than snow pants and thick wool sweaters.
I walked over to the mahogany dresser in the corner of the room. There was a note sitting under the ornate clock. The top of the notepaper had the Silk Stocking Inn logo printed in pink and a long vine of pink roses lined the paper. The handwriting looked elegant and old-fashioned.
"Jenny, I've put a dress and some shoes in the closet. Thought you might like to dress up for dinner. Hope you enjoyed your bath. Coco."
A blush warmed my cheeks when it occurred to me she might have brought the note in while I was bathing. How was I going to face her?
I considered not going down to dinner for all of a second when an incredible aroma made its way up the staircase and beneath the door to my room. I was extra hungry, but it would have been mouthwatering even if I'd just finished a six course meal. I brushed off my earlier worries about facing Coco. After all, I'd leave here right after my car was fixed, and this place would just be a pleasant but distant memory.
I pulled the dress over my head, feeling doubtful that it would fit or look right. But I was wrong. I stared at myself in the full length mirror. Suddenly, I understood all the hype about owning a little black dress. It fit snuggly over every curve as if the seamstress had sewn it right on me. It was simple yet spectacular. It wasn't something I'd ever consider buying myself, but for the life of me, I couldn't understand why. It had a lacy collar that came up high around my neck, like a choker, but it was sleeveless and cut in sharply at the shoulders. My tattoos were on full display, which worked perfectly with the black dress.
The shoes Coco had left behind were taller than my usual footwear. I slid them on, buckled the ankle straps and took a few practice runs around the room before stepping into the hallway. I passed by the mirror a few times to admire the whole look and then realized that I'd been so enamored with the dress, I'd forgotten my hair. I shuffled on the high heels to my suitcase and pulled out a brush.
The steam from the bath had flattened my hair as if I'd taken a long walk on a foggy day. I had no choice but to sweep it up in a long ponytail. It was a pretty funky hairstyle to go with a little black dress but then so were all the tattoos on my arms.
I stopped once more in the mirror and took a look. It all worked.
Footsteps in the hallway caused me to stop behind my door for a moment to catch my breath. I hadn't been this excited about a guy since I was eighteen and the singer of an alternative rock band at a local venue had asked me out between sets. I'd walked around on music groupie cloud nine for a week waiting for a date that turned out to be a complete bore. The singer looked far less glorious when he wasn't on stage behind a microphone, and his personality was as flat as some of his notes.
But this time was different. I already knew that the man waiting for me in the hallway was glorious without the microphone, and there was nothing flat or boring about him.
Cool air from the hallway brushed my face and bare shoulders as I swung open the door. My dinner partner had opted for a dark green button down shirt, black jeans and black boots. I couldn't have made him more beautiful, even with my magical digital illustrator's tools. He was glistening with perfection.
Holt hadn't said a word but his expression said a lot.
I looked down at my dress, more to hide the blush than anything. "Do you like it? Coco has great taste and an uncanny ability to pick size." I lifted my face and was once again struck by how much he looked like the Ziggy on my computer.
"If you'll excuse my language," he said as he stepped closer, "you looking fucking hot."
"Considering I work with a group of people who use the f-word more than the word the, I think I can excuse you. Besides, somehow it sounds much better coming from you than from a tech nerd."
"Good to know." He lifted his massive arm and I took hold of it. We walked down the stairs toward the incredible aroma coming from the kitchen. "Coco left everything we need in the dining room. I promised her we'd clean up afterward."
"Oh, is she not going to eat with us?"
"No, she left to visit her sister. She won't be back until tomorrow morning."
We headed down the hallway and into a formal dining room. With its richly colored wallpaper and ornate Victorian furniture, it looked as if it had been preserved from the nineteenth century. Even the light fixtures looked as if they had at one time held candles instead of glowing light bulbs.
The sideboard was covered with white linen and an array of food. We walked over to serve ourselves.
I cut a piece of cheesy lasagna out of the casserole dish and placed it on his plate. "Now, I grew up with two older brothers, who both played football, and they would be able to eat three of those squares. Something tells me you’ll need at least three too."
"Three works. I have two brothers too. Growing up, my mom never seemed to be able to keep the refrigerator filled."
"Are you the biggest?" I cut another two squares for him and placed a square on my plate.
"Do you mean oldest?"
"No, I mean biggest."
"Second biggest. My brother, Max, is a few inches bigger." Holt popped the wine open and poured us each a glass.
I stared up at him. When he stood close by, I had to tilt my head back as if I was looking up to the top of a tall tree. "A few inches bigger—that is almost scary to imagine."
We carried our glasses and plates to the table and sat in chairs that overlooked the snow covered front lawn. Icy crystal prints bordered the leaded glass windowpane making it look like a picture off an old-fashioned postcard. The only thing not the least bit old-fashioned was my dinner date.
The lasagna tasted as delicious as I'd expected. "This is so good. Coco is magical. In every sense of the word."
"Yeah, I noticed that too. In fact, I sort of stopped questioning all the unexplained stuff. It's more fun just to accept it and move on." Holt buttered a piece of bread for each of us. "So, I know a few intimate details about you." He winked and grinned at the pink he'd produced in my cheeks. "But other than knowing that you have a job as a video game creator, you have two brothers, you have a nice array of tattoos and that you like lasagna and sugarplum cupcakes, I don't know much."
"Sadly, there isn't much more than that. I do have three goldfish named
Larry, Moe and Harpo." I pointed at him. "You thought I was going to say Curly, didn't you?"
"Sort of goes with Larry and Moe."
"Yep, I know, but the third fish just reminded me more of Harpo. Anyhow, I've been working at Phantasm Game World since right out of college. They actually came looking for me after they saw my portfolio. So I got lucky."
"That's not luck. That's skill."
"Thanks. Sometimes I'm not great at giving myself credit. What about you? So far I know you also have two brothers and one is a giant, you race snowmobiles, you are a forest ranger who doesn't hang out with Yogi Bear and you are way better than a loofah sponge in a bath."
The last item on the list made him laugh. "I'm glad to know my skills top a loofah. Like you, not much more to tell. When the snow season is over, I'm still a ranger, but I switch to downhill mountain bike racing. I'm kind of a speed junkie. Plenty of scars and titanium plates in my body to prove it."
"Titanium?"
"Yes, that's the metal they use to bolt bones back together."
"I know. It's the metal in the armor my latest video game character wears." I stopped short of listing all the other similarities he had with my digital hero. I would have sounded like a lunatic. I decided to change topics but didn't really think about the switch until I asked it. "So, no girlfriend? Or fiancé?" I stopped short of wife, not wanting to know the answer to that one.
He leaned back against the chair with his wine glass in hand. "There are women. But there is no one woman. If that answers your question."
"Pretty much."
"What about you?" I could feel the heat of his gaze on me as he waited.
I thought briefly, almost with a laugh, about Stan and how lackluster he seemed now, after my short time with Holt. Of course, none of it mattered because both men were out of reach and not in the market for one woman. Holt had just admitted himself that he was a player. Typical.
I decided to throw his own cryptic answer back at him. I shrugged and picked up my wine. "There are men but no one man." Unless you count a certain video game character, I wanted to add, but once again, decided to keep it to myself at the risk of seeming crazy.
I drank some wine for fortification and set it down. I'd made my mind up to have a good time since nothing about this weekend would follow me back home, and I decided to move forward with my plan. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I was sure there was only a billion to one chance of me ending up in a cozy, out of the way inn with a gorgeous man. Trillion to one if you added in the unlikelihood of me meeting a man who looks, sounds and even acts just like Ziggy Holt of Hell's Rangers. I didn't want to blow those odds.
I took another long sip and set down the glass. "Now that we've both established that we are players and not stayers, how should we occupy our time in this big empty house?" I glanced out into the hallway. "We are alone, right?"
"Unless there are some unhappy spirits lingering around the place, which I wouldn't doubt, knowing Coco, then we are completely alone." He turned his chair toward me. "What do you have in mind, snow angel? And please tell me it has something to do with that black dress."
"You approve of this dress?" I asked and turned my chair so that we were facing each other.
His legs were so long that our knees touched. I scooted the already short hem of the dress up higher on my thighs, stopping just before exposing my underwear. "Tell you what, if you can tell me what color my panties are, then I'll take them off before we do the dishes."
There was just the slightest nod of his head. "Well, I never shy away from a challenge. Especially if it involves panties, or the removal of said panties." He leaned an elbow on the table and rested his chin on his fingers in thought. "You don't seem like the lavender or yellow type. I'm going to go with green."
My eyes rounded. "You must share psychic abilities with Coco."
He grinned proudly as if he'd just solved a huge math problem in front of the class. "You mean I'm right?"
I inched my dress up to flash the green and then pushed the hem down.
"That was too fast. But I guess that doesn't matter." He held out his big palm. "Hand ‘em, over. I just won the game."
"Well, the first level anyhow." I turned my legs back to the table to shimmy off the panties, but his giant foot shot out. His boot curled around the leg of the chair to yank me back to face him. "I want a front row seat. I won, after all."
"You are one cocky winner. You just guessed the color of my panties. You didn't win the Boston Marathon."
"Actually—" he started.
"No, don't tell me. You've won the Boston Marathon."
"Nope. I came in second."
"Kind of surprised."
"I think you're making small talk to distract me because I'm still waiting for those panties."
"Possibly." I lifted a finger in the air to signal just a minute. Then I finished the rest of my wine and set the delicate glass down just a little too hard. "Oops." I took a deep breath. "All right, I think the wine is making its way north to my head." I looked up as if I could see the inner workings of my brain. I was absolutely feeling a little light up there but it was more because of Holt than the glass of wine.
"I'm ready." I shifted in my chair as if that was something that was necessary.
Holt rested his forearm along the edge of the table and drummed his fingers. "You realize this gets less and less sexy with each of your stalling tactics?"
"Right. No more stalling." A sound coming from the kitchen drew away my attention from the task at hand. "Did you hear that? Maybe Coco came back."
"That was the ice in the refrigerator. Coco is forty miles away at her sister's house, no doubt stuck there for the night until the snowplows come through. Now—panties, or I will take them off myself."
"Not only are you a cocky winner, but you are rather impatient." Without giving it another thought, I reached under the dress and pulled off my underwear, carefully moving them past the high heels one shoe at a time.
I dropped them on his palm, and suddenly, the light, comical mood in the room shifted completely. Holt's teasing smile disappeared and his green eyes darkened with a serious case of desire. And for me, sitting in a formal dining room with a tall, dark semi-stranger and no panties between me and that stranger made me feel just a little naughty and extremely horny. My dinner date seemed to read my mind.
Holt shoved the green panties into the pocket of his jeans and took hold of my hand. He whipped me up from the chair. We traversed the hallway and the flight of stairs in record time. He stopped at his own room and threw open the door before pulling me inside.
"One pair of panties," he muttered, seemingly to himself. "Just one pair of panties." He continued his one-sided conversation. We stopped mid-room, and he spun me into his arms. "Don't know what you've done to me, Jen, but you slipped off those green panties and—" He kissed me before he could finish.
His powerful arms tightened around me. The thought that he could easily crush the life from me with those arms crossed my mind. What a way to go. But there was no crushing, only firm, sweet caresses as his hands swept beneath the dress and covered my naked bottom. He lifted me up. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist as he carried me to the bed, our mouths still locked in a kiss.
He lowered me into the center of the bed, which wasn't quite as frilly or pillow-flooded as the bed in my room, but it was still cozy. The entire room had a much more masculine feel to it, as if one room had been set up for women and the other for men. But that would be an odd way for an inn to operate. Of course, this inn was different in so many ways, why not that?
Holt stared down at me as he stood like a towering giant over the bed. He had a glint in his eye that sent a warm surge of heat through my body. He looked every bit the part of a Hell's Ranger, dark, dangerous and desirable.
"Scoot that dress up, so I can see your pussy," he ordered in a smooth, low voice.
I reached down, took hold of the hem and scooted the dr
ess up slowly. A little too slowly. My tall, impatient friend was having none of the slow tease.
His dark brow arched in annoyance. "If I help, I don't make promises about the dress surviving in one piece."
I yanked it up quickly. The cool air in the room mixed with the heated air coming from the man. The combination of cold and hot tickled my newly exposed skin. Assuming he wanted the dress completely off, I shifted around and continued with its removal.
"Stop." His booming voice bounced off the walls. "Leave it on. Just like that. I've got just what I need for now."
I might have bristled if another man had been so demanding, but his commands seemed to have the opposite effect. I was putty in his hands, willing to do anything. I wanted to do anything he desired because I knew it would fulfill my fantasy as well. I was a captive of a Hell's Ranger. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
Holt stared down at me with such interest I could almost feel it, as if he'd stroked me with just his gaze. Instinctively, I spread my legs wider, giving him an even better view. A groan rolled up from his chest as he unzipped his fly. His gaze didn't stray from me, as if I had some magnetic hold on him, as he kicked off his boots. His pants and underwear came next.
As he straightened, I sucked in a shocked gasp. Once again, I was working hard to believe what I was seeing and what I was seeing would have been exaggerated even with a digital artist's pen. The size of his erection sent me back a few inches on the bed.
He grinned at my reaction. "Are you still game, my hot little player?"
I laughed. "Gamer's dirty talk, huh? I can join that. Hell yes. And I have a feeling getting to the last level isn't going to take too much effort. I'm half way there just looking at you." I stopped and looked up at him. "Not as stimulating as I expected it to be. I think I prefer the old fashioned, less techie dirty talk."
