Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set

by Julie Ortolon

  He ground out something he wasn’t sure made any sense and yanked down the rumpled bedspread, far enough that it slid slowly off the foot of the bed along with most of their purchases.

  “Later’s good,” he got out as he reached for her. With a smile that managed to melt his bones and harden his muscles, she sent the gown spinning in the same general direction.

  “Later,” she agreed on a breath shivered against his neck.

  They stripped each other of their remaining clothes with fervent, unsubtle movements.

  Her hands were cold at first, with the lingering chill of outdoors and perhaps nerves. Don’t rush her, he reminded himself. Then gasped at her fingers’ contact against his stomach, his abdomen, his hips. But it was a gasp of pleasured torture.

  Who was rushing whom? He figured it was only fair her hands and her feet were cold, because the rest of her was burning up. He could feel the heat of her under his hands, like waves off a sunstruck sidewalk in July. And he craved it, absorbed it, matched it with his own.

  With her hands and feet like small, smooth slips of ice being dragged along his skin, he relished the contrast to his own temperature. Told himself that maybe this way he’d slow down enough to have some control. And when her hands and feet passed the comfortable stage and became coals, stoking the fire that already raged in his flesh, he knew he’d never needed anything the way he needed that stoking.

  Still, he wasn’t fool enough to have her help with the contents of the packets spilled on the nightstand. A fire stoked too high could burn itself out.

  They tumbled across the bed, a tangle of arms and legs that drew a dual chuckle reverberating into a groan of need. A hip grinding into a hip, an elbow catching across a shoulder, a knee digging into a thigh. But then, somehow, amid the sounds of frustration, amusement and passion, the parts came into alignment.

  It wasn’t the slow, tender introduction he’d envisioned in aching detail for days, weeks on end. But it was right. Utterly, undeniably right.

  He thrust into her welcoming warmth, faster than he’d intended, slower than he wanted. He went still, his eyes squeezing tight in an exultation he’d never known. Then the pressure inside forced him to move.

  He felt her body adjust, accept, and another wave of sensation struck him. It flashed across his mind that this sensation flowed not from his nerve endings to his brain, but from somewhere deep inside him to where his skin met hers. He opened his eyes and locked with hers.

  They were deep, deep blue. Bottomless and soft. The way they tugged at him took him off balance. No way to hold back against them … no way. He could fall into those eyes and keep falling. He was falling.

  “Bette.”

  He whispered the name as his hips surged against hers, the pull of the rhythm too strong to resist, the beat that guided than too insistent to ignore. It rocked them when they strained together, it echoed through them as they slipped away from each other, it amplified as they rushed together once more, closer, ever closer. They pulsed with it. It might have been a heartbeat of something alive, magnified to roar in their ears.

  He heard other sounds added to it. Her voice, stripped of the crisp coolness, only the spice and fire remaining. Cries to him, for him. His own call of her name, encouraging, invoking.

  He cupped her buttocks, drawing her closer, straining to have her take all he had, to fill her ever more completely. Her cry turned sharp and triumphant. The thundering beat shuddered again through his taut-strung muscles one last, frenzied time.

  *

  IT WAS QUIET. Except for their breathing. He heard his own harsh intake and her no steadier exhalation. She’d have an easier time if he took all his weight off her instead of remaining half-covering her the way he’d collapsed.

  He didn’t move. Not sure if he could, and certain he didn’t want to. Macho, maybe, but even after what they’d just experienced, he relished the continued sense of possession from being connected this way.

  What was this feeling, this draw to her, this need for her?

  It frightened him - he admitted that - but it also attracted him, a magnet bringing him nearer to something he’d always avoided. Now, too weak with satisfaction and contentment to fight the idea, the suspicion floated into his mind that as much as he might try to dig his heels in against it, he wouldn’t be able to stop his progress toward the pole she represented. Right now, he couldn’t even find it in himself to care.

  Soft and even, her breathing soothed him. She was asleep. A powerful sense of protectiveness swept into him; she trusted him enough to give herself up to him, then to give herself up to sleep in his arms.

  He recognized the dangerous, sharp edges of this emotion. He even knew, at some level, how it could shred his independent life.

  So where shall we stay? One question, five words. That was all it had taken to blow his control to hell. So much for waiting until he knew what he was getting into. He was in, and he still didn’t know.

  He shifted slightly. Not away, but freeing her ribs of all but the weight of his arm. He thought that under the sigh of skin against sheets, he detected a breath from her. Perhaps relief, but he wanted to think it was also regret at even this minute distance. He pulled the rumpled covers over their cooling bodies.

  The emotion he’d reined in from the time she’d said yes in his office was loose. He might soar with it now, but could he haul it back under control later?

  *

  BETTE WOKE UP with no confusion. She didn’t even need to open her eyes to know where she was or whose arms held her, whose legs weighed hers down, whose breath stirred her hair and whose shoulder pillowed her cheek.

  She knew.

  A powerful, potent drug this lust could be. It lulled her from the tenets of a lifetime, so that as she rested in the circle of Paul’s arms, she found herself thinking not of the future, but of the past. The immediate, incredible past.

  She felt her cheeks warming, not in embarrassment but in renewed desire.

  He wasn’t a smooth lover, or particularly gentle. But he was thorough. And powerful. The glimpses she’d had of his sensuality hadn’t prepared her for the whole. She was honest enough with herself to admit that if they had, she might still be running.

  Although he’d given her chances to run. She thought of the moments he’d hesitated long enough to let his eyes ask her if she wanted to back out. Not once, but twice.

  A slight frown of concentration tightened muscles in her forehead. She had the impression a pattern was there somewhere, a pattern she hadn’t recognized yet. What was it?

  Still sleeping, Paul shifted, drawing her closer and making a low sound against her hair. Her eyes opened, the frown disappearing as her mouth curved.

  Patterns and contemplation could wait. If she’d learned one thing tonight, it was the power of the moment. Under Paul’s touch, now was the only time that existed for her.

  The room was softly aglow from a single shaded lamp on the nightstand. Sometime while she slept, he must have gotten up and switched off the other lights. How long had she slept? She really didn’t care. Still night, she thought. The drapes showed no crack of morning light and the city seemed hushed beyond them.

  The light burnished his skin and the blaze of hair, darker than on his head and arms but still with a glint no one would confuse with brown. It trailed the valley between his ribs only to disappear under a tangle of covers at his waist. Their earlier urgency had left no time to contemplate and explore his body.

  Her fingers lightly dusted along the tickling cover of hair. She lifted her head, and considered the form that had pillowed hers.

  He was beautiful.

  His eyes still closed in sleep, his personality for once stood second to his physical presence. His shoulders were broad, his torso narrowed to taut waist and slim hips, though she knew the power those sleek lines could produce. A swimmer’s body, rather than a weightlifter’s, she thought. Strength without bulk, hardness without display.

  She bent, putting her lips
to the flat brown disk where the dusting of hair grew thinner. She let her tongue taste it, taste him, and felt the response - in him, and in herself.

  He muttered something she chose to take as encouragement. When her stronger ministrations brought his hands to her hair, holding her tightly against him, she knew she’d been right. Tension hummed along his skin, a vibration that communicated itself to her through her tongue and lips.

  His hands tugged at her, drawing her over his body, holding her shoulders above him.

  “Bette, let me kiss you. Open your mouth to me.”

  The kiss started as a gentle one, then deepened and quickened to pulse with a beat she recognized and welcomed. Paul’s hands clenched hard around her upper arms, then purposefully loosened, and the kiss eased back to tenderness.

  He parted their mouths, and hitched himself to a sitting position against the padded headboard. Still lost in the kiss and her sense of loss that it had ended, she allowed herself to be twisted and adjusted until she sat back against his chest with his arms around her, the covers up to her shoulders.

  “Are you okay?” His lips followed the question with a whispery touch to her temple.

  The question and the concern of voice and touch surprised her.

  “Fine,” she said first. Then amended it to, “Wonderful.” And turned to kiss his chin.

  “Really? I was rather rough. And in a hurry.”

  She tilted her head to see his eyes. He wasn’t searching for reassurance on his performance, but was truly concerned.

  “Yes, you were,” she answered slowly, remembering. “And it was wonderful.”

  The concern in his eyes lessened, but didn’t leave.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  She kissed his throat, just under his jaw, then nipped at it before kissing the spot once more. “I’m sure. Though I might be a little sore …”

  He grinned. “You know what they say is the best cure for sore muscles?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Use them.”

  “Ah, why’d I have a feeling you’d say that?”

  “Because great minds think alike?”

  “I don’t think that was it.”

  “Because you’d heard that wisdom before?”

  “Not that, either.”

  “Because you’ve known that I’ve been fantasizing about you for nearly a month now?”

  It was odd the things that could catch you off guard. “Fantasizing? About me?” She wasn’t a woman to spark fantasies. Respect, yes. Maybe even admiration. But fantasies?

  He must have heard her disbelief. He placed a hand on each side of her head and turned her so she had to see the utter conviction in his eyes. “You better believe it, Bette Wharton. Fantasizing hot and heavy.”

  Feeling part of him harden against her hip lent credence to his statement.

  “Like what?” She could feel her cheeks burning under his hands, and this time there was embarrassment mixed with the desire. She couldn’t believe she’d asked the question, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop the answer.

  “I have one where you come to my office.” His voice sounded husky, but his eyes didn’t leave hers. He cleared his throat. “It’s late. The building’s empty. And you walk in the door, unexpectedly and …” His hesitation let her heated imagination fill in details that gathered her blood, hot and heavy, in her breasts and loins. “And we make love on the couch. Long, slow, lingering love.”

  “I have one too,” she murmured. “A fantasy.” She didn’t know where she got the bravery. Unless it was from him.

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s a boathouse where my parents live. They bought the house years ago to retire to. We used to go there for vacations, even when I was a girl.” She was explaining too much, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t accustomed to this. “I’ve fantasized about making love in this tiny, private boathouse. It would be warm and dark, and so beautiful. But I never could see the man’s face.” Still, she’d known it would be the face of the man she’d love for all her life.

  “Can you see the man’s face now?”

  He had needs, too. If she hadn’t known it before, if he’d tried to hide it before, it was there between them now. Could she say no, and hurt him that way? Could she say yes, and hurt herself?

  “I -” Paul’s face swam before her in a shimmer of tears. “I think maybe I can.”

  Their lips met.

  This time he wasn’t rough. Or in a hurry, though she witnessed the cost of his patience in muscles that quivered and tendons gone tense. She would have spared him that, in fact tried to tempt him beyond it, rolling her hips in invitation. But he resisted, tempting her instead.

  His mouth and hands and skin were a sensual abrasion, traveling lower and deeper across her sensitized skin. And in the end, she succumbed, falling first and fast as he found her moist warmth and brought there the beat they’d perfected before.

  She fell a second time when he joined her, but this was slower and deeper, and all the more wonderful because she watched him, his face rapt and taut, follow her to the ascent, and then over.

  They lay as they had collapsed, too exhausted, too sated to move. When his voice came, it seemed to float between them.

  “I have one question.”

  “Hmm?” Forming a word took too much energy.

  “Don’t your parents live outside Phoenix?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A boathouse? In Arizona?”

  She poked at his ribs and got a muffled chuckle in reward. “Shows all you know. Yes, a boathouse in Arizona. There’s a lake with sailing and swimming and everything. Mom and Dad have lakefront property, and a little, enclosed boathouse.”

  He seemed to accept that. After a minute or two, he mentioned in an offhand way, “You know I have this other fantasy, too.” He stroked his palm over her skin, from hip, over fanny, waist, back, shoulder and neck, then back down. “And for this one we don’t have to go to Arizona, or even leave the hotel. We only have to move about ten feet to accomplish it.”

  He drew her up, disregarding her halfhearted protests, and she saw they were heading for the bathroom.

  “It has to do with being hot and wet and close,” he murmured into her ear before stooping to snag the bath sheet from the tumble of objects at the foot of the bed. A froth of royal blue wove in among the other items. “Are you ever going to show me this nightgown?”

  She stifled a throaty chuckle. “I did show it to you, remember?”

  “I meant on you, this time.”

  “I thought you had a fantasy you wanted to show me first.”

  He looked from her to the gown swirled at their feet, then back to her.

  “Will you promise to show it to me later?”

  “Later,” she promised. “Much later.”

  Chapter Nine

  *

  SINCE HIS PURCHASES hadn’t run to such necessities as a clean shirt or a change of underwear, their first stop late Saturday morning was Paul’s Evanston apartment.

  Bette immediately liked the four-story red-brick building with the general air of solidity. At this time of year, with the leaves gone from the neighborhood’s many trees, his top-floor apartment’s bay window gave a glimpse of the lake a few blocks away.

  But the view was one of the few things that could be said for the near-barren living room. A door topped a pair of file cabinets and held a computer and accoutrements. Brick-and-board shelves for books, an old TV and mismatched stereo equipment. A rugged old couch and one side chair. That was it.

  A leaden mass formed in her stomach. It was all too clearly a reflection of the resident. The landing place of someone who wanted to be prepared to take off again.

  “Not quite as homey as your place, huh?”

  He sounded almost defensive as he stood just inside the door and waved her in, and she didn’t have the heart to agree as wholeheartedly as she might have otherwise. “No.” Searching for something else to sa
y, she added, “It’s a nice neighborhood, Paul.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, brightening. “It is. Here’s the kitchen.” His gesture took in a cubicle as Spartan as the living room, although its 1940s-style appliances looked considerably less used than the living room furniture. “I eat out a lot,” he explained.

  “And the bath.” It was mostly screened from view by towels and shirts hanging from door corners, shower curtain rod and doorknobs, but it appeared to be the same vintage as the kitchen.

  “And the bedroom.” A king-size mattress and box spring sat on the bare wooden floor with the pillows and comforter rumpled from the last time he’d used them. A canvas-covered director’s chair at one side held a clock radio and a stack of books on its seat. She suspected that under the pile of clothes on the opposite side of the bed resided the chair’s twin. A tiny dresser stood next to a closed closet door. “Not much storage space,” he muttered. “Closet barely holds the suits and stuff, so the other things …” He shrugged.

  “That’s the tour, complete in thirty-four seconds, no need to tip the tour conductor.”

  He smiled a little lopsidedly, and she couldn’t resist leaning in as they stood in the doorway of his bedroom and kissing the corner of his mouth. Immediately, she felt embarrassed by the gesture. They’d shared a night of passion, but affection was something else.

  “I’ll … I’ll wait out here while you get your things,” she said, trying to make her retreat to the living room seem less like scuttling than it felt.

  “I kind of thought -” He broke off, but she saw him glance from his rumpled bed to her and back, and she had a pretty good idea what he’d thought. She didn’t mind the thought, but hadn’t a clue how to express that. But he obviously took her hesitation as a no. “Okay. This shouldn’t take long. I’ve just got to find some clean things.” He turned into the bedroom, then back. “I ought to stop by the cleaners and take some of this stuff in, too.”

  She hid a smile. The cleaners were going to make a small fortune. “Okay.”