“And now do you know what to do?” she asked.
His smile twisted into a cringe. “Sorry. Still a virgin.”
Caught off-guard, she was powerless to neutralize her reaction, on the remote chance he was being honest. Instead, she was so startled that she laughed. “You are not!” Realizing how rude she was being, she clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. “Are you?”
This time, his smile was rascally, and his shoulders shook with a chuckle. “No. Not since I was twenty. With my first serious girlfriend.”
Her first time, she’d been fifteen, and she’d hooked up with a senior at their school while pretending to be more experienced than she really was. She went through with it because she didn’t want him and his friends to know he was her first. It wasn’t bad or painful or anything, just not . . . good. Or something she could be proud of. “And was it worth the wait?”
He gave a slow nod. “It was incredible. I’m glad I waited until the time was right.”
Lucky girl. Kelly’s heart contracted with an ache that felt a lot like the envy of a woman she’d never even met.
“What about you?” Paul said.
The real story of her first time would kill the mood tonight, but she still found a way to tell part of the true story. “Well, like you, the first time sex was incredible for me was in college, too.”
He took a drink of his wine, his eyes narrowed slightly as though he was trying to see the inside of her heart. So she let him see a little glimpse of her sadness, how much she regretted the way she’d treated him, how confused and screwed up she’d been. How hard her high school years had been on her. She might have a lot of regrets at the beginning of her romantic life, but she’d figured herself out eventually. Sort of. Except for this past year.
After a long beat, he said, “High school was a fucked-up time.”
The words were like a pressure release valve opening. She felt herself relax all the way down to her bones. He got it. He got her. “High school was so fucked up.”
“Which brings us to tonight,” he said, placing his hand on the bottle again.
The charge in the air turned thick with anticipation. If the bottle didn’t land on her this time, she didn’t think she could stand any more waiting for something they both wanted, something she’d been readying herself for in the weeks since she’d landed this job at the resort.
With a now-practiced flick of the wrist, Paul set the bottle spinning again.
Before it’d even slowed down, he rose from the bench and backhanded the bottle off the table. “Enough of that.”
And then she was in his arms, pressed against his solid body. His hands splayed over her back as his gaze roved from her eyes to her lips and down her body.
She lifted a hand to his face and grazed her fingers over his bearded cheek. Her thumb brushed his closed lips, a touch that brought his attention back to her face. The look he gave her was pure heat, pure need.
Against the pad of her thumb, he rumbled, “Come with me.”
Chapter Five
Paul wanted Kelly in a bad, bad way. It was a truth that he hadn’t let himself fully embrace until the moment he took her in his arms and felt every soft curve of her body pressed against his and her mouth only inches away. How many times had he dreamt of this moment? Of Kelly Sawyer’s lips parting for his kiss? Of the arousal she revealed in her flushed cheeks and labored breaths?
Yet there he was, thirteen years after their first Seven Minutes in Heaven disaster, guiding her by the hand through his home to the closet in the hallway near his bedroom. It was hard to accept that it wasn’t a dream, he was so dizzy with sensation.
Only minutes earlier, when spinning that bottle the first time, he’d been taken aback by a sudden tidal wave of performance pressure to make their Seven Minutes in Heaven exactly that. Heavenly. He hadn’t been able to suppress flashbacks to the last time, when that same pressure had been on him. It had been damned frustrating, re-experiencing that teenage anxiety, but then he’d taken a long, hard look into Kelly’s eyes.
In them, he saw the same ache of memory, the same nerves. Knowing she, too, was anxious about what would happen next made all his fears vanish. She had nothing to worry about because he had everything under control for both of them. Whatever expectations she’d set up for this seven-minute necking marathon, he planned to far exceed them. He knew how to kiss a woman so that she felt it all the way to her toes. He knew how to kiss Kelly Sawyer—he’d been doing it in his dreams for years.
At the hall’s closet door, he cupped her cheek in his hand. She melted into his touch and parted her lips as though in preparation for a kiss, but he simply nuzzled her hair and opened the closet door.
“We’re here,” he whispered with his lips against her ear.
“Where?”
“Heaven.”
Her foot crept up the back of his leg. “We don’t have to use an actual closet. I mean, your bedroom’s right there.”
Tempting. So damn tempting. But a deal was a deal. He had four weeks with Kelly and he planned to take his sweet time. He pulled her into the darkness and pressed her against the wall. Their shoulders nudged the row of coats and jackets hanging on the rod and his leg bumped against a plastic storage bin, but he couldn’t imagine a more perfect location for their first make-out session—the two of them in the darkness, with no sounds, no interference, and nothing for their senses to focus on except each other.
He’d no sooner had that thought than he heard the jingle of a dog collar. So much for them in the darkness alone. “Just a sec.”
He groped around near his knees until he hit fur, then went in search of her dog collar. “Sorry, Sadie Girl. You’re going to have to sit this game out, remember?”
He opened the door and tried to scoot her out with a push to her hindquarters, but she dug in her paws and sat. Too bad for her, Paul knew her greatest weakness. From his pocket, he pulled a dog biscuit. Sadie stood, her ears perked. She was already running down the hall in anticipation as Paul tossed it all the way through his bedroom door. The biscuit exploded on the hardwood into little pieces. “That ought to keep her busy for a few minutes.”
Back in the closet, he found Kelly exactly where he’d left her. “Sorry about that.”
“Now I can see why you always carry doggie treats in your pocket.”
“Coonhounds will do anything for a treat.” He pressed up against her sweet body again, one hand braced on the wall above her shoulder and the other on her hip. “But enough about her. Are you ready to start the timer?”
“What?” Breathless.
“This is called Seven Minutes in Heaven. We don’t want to get the time wrong and screw up the whole atonement plan you’ve got going.” Like sticking to the concept of making out in the closet, there was something about adding a timed element that cranked up the exquisite tension of the experience even more. Seven minutes wasn’t much to work with, but if he could leave her wanting more when the timer sounded, then he’d consider it a success.
Her phone glowed blue in the darkness like a moon in the palm of her hands, illuminating the hollow of her neck and the swells of her breasts. While she set the alarm, he traced the edges of the shadows on her skin with his fingertip, watching an outbreak of gooseflesh erupt with a shiver.
Then everything went dark again as the phone returned to Kelly’s pocket. Drawing a trembling breath as she touched his arm, she traced the curve of his muscles. She pushed her fingers beneath his sleeve, and his whole body lit up with fire. God, he couldn’t wait to kiss her.
He pressed his parted lips to her neck and breathed her in. So damn sweet. With a faint moan, she clutched him tighter and tipped her head back. Paul seized the opportunity to feast on her neck with his lips and tongue and teeth, tasting the sweet spice of her skin from her collarbone to the hollow below her ear while she shuttered and arched into him, as wild as a stormy sea.
He had maybe six minutes left. Six minutes holding heaven in his arms. Kelly Sa
wyer, the girl of his fantasies. He almost couldn’t kiss her lips because it would make the fantasy real, breaking the fragile glass divide that had separated them all these years.
“Paul,” she whimpered. Her body undulated. Her hands cradled his cheeks, urging his face up.
“Not yet.” He slipped his hand beneath her shirt and dragged his palm and fingers up the soft swell of her belly, bumping slowly over ribs and up her sides. He stopped at the base of her bra, careful not to cheapen the moment by cupping her breasts. He didn’t want to be that clumsy asshole pawing at her tits in the dark, like he imagined she’d endured from high school and college fuckboys she’d given her time to.
She kissed a path along his cheekbone, then bit down lightly on his earlobe, a move that went straight to his dick. He had maybe two minutes left. Time to kick it up a notch. He captured her leg behind the knee and brought it up to wrap around him, then thrust his hips into her hot center, letting her know loud and clear the reaction she was having on his body.
She threw her head back. “You’re driving me crazy,” words were little more than rasps of sound said on a moan.
On his next breath, he took hold of her standing leg and brought it up so that she was off the ground, her legs and arms wrapped around him and her back braced against the wall. He clamped his mouth against her neck again. This time, when she moaned his name, he felt the vibrations against his lip.
Impossible need flooded through him. There was nothing to sate it but to kiss her lips. He lifted his face. On another thrust, he said, “Say my name again. Who are you with? Who’s making you whimper like that?”
“It’s you, Paul. It’s always been you,” she breathed. She curled around him, clinging for all her worth.
His heart ached with triumph. He was a goddamn king, the luckiest man in the world. “Damn right, it has.”
Then he dropped his lips over hers and plundered her mouth, demanding her complete surrender. She opened for him, giving as good as she took, matching his hunger.
It was fireworks, as he’d known it would be. He’d wanted to kiss this girl since forever, since they’d been children and all through the years. He’d never stopped wanting her. What a joke that he’d convinced himself he didn’t care that she was single. What a joke that he’d convinced himself that his life was perfect without her.
“It’s everything I’ve dreamed of . . .” he heard himself murmur, though the words sounded as if they were from somebody else, the rawness of his voice so foreign a sound. Soon, he would carry her to his bed. He would lay her down and make her his in a real way. He’d rock her all the way to the heaven promised in the game.
A robotic wind chime noise jolted them apart. The alarm. A growl of frustrated need rumbled through his throat. Contrary to his original goal, though, he was the one left breathless and needing more. So much more.
“Shit,” she said. “Set me down so I can turn it off.”
He did as she commanded. The glow of light was blinding this time, and when she shut off the screen, they stood in stunned silence, close but not touching, breathing hard. Paul blinked, trying to acclimate to the dark again.
Then the door handle rattled and the door cracked open. “I . . . just . . . I need a minute,” Kelly said. “Excuse me . . .”
Before he could find the words to reply, she’d slipped out. Then, the bathroom door locked.
Paul’s heart sank. Had she not had the same otherworldly experience that he’d had? Had he gotten so caught up in his own pleasure and fantasies-come-to-life that he missed her cues that he’d gone overboard? He tugged on his beard, digging through his memory of the past seven minutes for clues. Had he made a fool out of himself? Or worse, had he assaulted her?
The mortification had him closing his eyes, but the jingle of a collar and a playful bark had him opening them again. He looked down to find Sadie down on her front paws, her butt up, tail wagging, and her big brown eyes pleading to him for attention.
“What the hell just happened, Sadie Girl?”
With a whine, she flopped to her side, then rolled to her back, paws in the air, playing dead—which, to Paul’s thinking, just about summed it up.
Chapter Six
Cold water hit Kelly’s face with a bite that shocked her mind out of its lusty haze. She gripped the edge of the sink and stared at her dripping wet face in the mirror, watching rivulets of makeup-tinged water slide down her cheeks.
“What the hell just happened?”
It was the only question she could coherently form, though the answer was clear in the tenderness and deep pink color of her lips, in her tousled hair and rumpled shirt . . . and the bite marks and faint red dots of a hickey on her neck. She’d been ravished.
It’s everything I’ve dreamed of, Paul had whispered. Same for her, except not like this. In her dreams, she’d been the alpha. The seductress. In her dreams, she hadn’t been reduced to a puddle of lust at the mercy of a hard-bodied, bearded sex god who used to be her sweet, scrawny, nerdy friend named Paul.
She used to love the irony in his last name, Savage, because the boy she’d grown up with was anything but. Except—hello. The name sure as hell fit him now.
How stupid that she’d assumed he’d remained that awkward teenager while she’d changed so much? She’d trapped her memory of him in amber, while the real deal was so much more intimidating and sexy—and everything she wasn’t ready for so soon after her breakup.
The thought made her shiver. Not so much in lust, but fear. Paul might not be the same person that he used to be, but she was nowhere near that perfect dream girl he’d thought she was—Ms. Popular, up on a pedestal.
It’s everything I’ve dreamed of. Maybe so, but whatever dreams he’d had had been with his fantasy Kelly, not her. There was no way she measured up to the fantasy he’d constructed, which meant it was only a matter of time before she burst his bubble the way he’d burst hers. The thought of seeing disappointment in his eyes . . . she wasn’t sure she could take it. All she’d wanted in coming to Briscoe Ranch was an easy seasonal job and an easy yes from Paul. But nope. The universe really was out to get her.
She folded over the sink in defeat. “Karma, you are such a stinkin’ bitch.”
She could pack up and leave. It wasn’t too late. The Santa booth didn’t open until tomorrow. Wouldn’t be the first time that she’d quit a job before it’d begun. But she couldn’t afford to.
And besides, if she flaked out now, then the perfect image Paul had of her would disappear along with her. She liked his image of her. It was the version of herself that she wished she could be. Since she had to stay to earn rent money anyway, what harm would it do to play the part of his fantasy girl for the holiday season?
She could do this. There was no reason he needed to know what dire straits she was in, and there was no chance of him finding out the truth. After a fortifying breath, she blotted her face dry, then opened the door.
The closet was empty, as was the bedroom. She found Paul was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter next to an open beer bottle. He looked casual and confident, the exact opposite of the ball of nerves and insecurities she’d become.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then slid onto a chair at his kitchen table.
“Beer?” he said.
“No, thanks.” Remember Kelly. Alpha seductress. You’re a badass fantasy babe. “Sorry about that, back there, bailing on you like that. I just needed some space to catch my breath so I didn’t take advantage of you past that seven-minute mark. Sometimes I don’t know my own power of allure.”
The slightest hint of a smile graced his lips. “I’ll bet.” He took a swig of beer and made careful work of placing the bottle back on the counter.
“But, um, thank you. That really was seven minutes in heaven.”
“I aim to please.”
Holding his gaze, she stood again and feigned a confident swagger in his direction. Yep, that was her, an alpha seductress with all her shit together,
wrapping men around her little finger with every swish of her hips. “I remember that about you. You always did want to please me.”
The cut of his jaw hardened as his eyes swept over her. “Is that an invitation?”
When he looked at her like that, confident and knowing and familiar, it was as though he could see right through her bravado. So much so that she nearly lost her nerve. Remember, you’re the alpha. If anyone was going to be the one holding the proverbial riding crop in this brief affair, it would be her. But not tonight. Tonight, she was going to leave him wanting more, like a proper seductress.
She fingered the button on his collar. “No, soon. Tonight I’m going to sleep in your bed. Alone. You can take the couch.”
“Yes, ma’am.” In a flash, his arm was around her waist. He brought her hand to his lips and placed lingering kisses on the tips of each finger. She was powerless to do more than feel his touch and gawk at his long, full eyelashes.
Sweet Jesus. Was there nothing about this man that didn’t make her weak in the knees?
The better to strut with, she decided as he released her.
She did just that, making a show out of her walk across the kitchen. She paused at the edge of the hall and swept her chin over her shoulder to offer him her best sexy pout. “Sweet dreams, cowboy.”
* * *
Kelly’s blocky, red and green elf costume was definitely not part of her alpha sex vixen wardrobe. At least the red lace lingerie beneath it was. She’d woken to a note on the kitchen counter that he was on a morning hike with Sadie, so she’d taken the opportunity to order a cab and slip out before he returned, making use of the one credit card that wasn’t completely maxed out, because there was no way she’d be able to face Paul while she was in unsexy elf mode. Not until they were at the resort and on more equal footing, with him in his equally unsexy Santa costume. What a pair they’d make.
If Santa Were a Cowboy Page 4
