by Alison Kent
The rush that sent her blood pressure soaring had nothing to do with a player’s high over the point. This was about her body reacting to the look in Eric’s eye, to his predatory approach, to the reality of being his prey, and the wrenching desire to be devoured.
How unfair that he’d discovered her weakness, her longing to be the light at the end of a man’s tunnel. Unaware that he’d done so, he’d tapped into her fantasy of being the only thing a man had eyes for.
She barely had time to catch a breath or wipe the perspiration from her forehead before he was there and his arms were around her waist and she was airborne, her hands on his shoulders for balance as he twirled in a circle.
“Eric! Stop!” She dug her fingers deeper, gouging his muscles and loving the feel of his strength beneath her hands, loving even more the tickle and the warmth of his mouth nuzzling the bare skin of her belly. “You’re making me dizzy. I’m gonna lose my breakfast all over your back if you don’t stop.”
Eric laughed. And he stopped, letting Chloe slide the length of his body to the ground, keeping her close and holding her tightly. “I doubt you have any breakfast left to lose, the way you’re playing. You’ve burned off more than a few stored calories.”
Her hands still on his shoulders, she looked into his eyes of beautiful blue. Her breasts tightened in response to his randy grin and the hunger his smile failed to contain. Pressed as she was to his chest, she could hardly hide her body’s reaction. “Are you saying I’m fat? That I have an excess of stored calories needing to be burned?”
“Chloe, I swear. You could drive a marble statue to take up the bottle. I’m complimenting your play, princess. But if you can’t take it, I see no point sticking around…though the points you’re making there beneath your top are just about enough to convince me otherwise.” He left her with a wink and jogged back to position.
Chloe stuck out her tongue at his retreating back. Men. Totally worthless species. Here she was, more hot and bothered over the feel of Eric’s hands on her body than the physical exertion, and what did he do? Left her breathless and went back to playing his game.
And what did you expect? That he’d take you down and rip off your clothes in the sand? This was hardly the beach scene out of From Here to Eternity.
Ridiculous, really, how her thoughts about Eric seemed to be forever turning to sex. She was wondering too much about what he’d be like in bed, when sleeping with him would ruin any fun they might have. She so despised mornings-after.
So she, too, got back to the game, her concentration once again snagged by the strategy and the play. She kept her eye on the ball, on Lizzy’s serves, Eric’s blocks, Jason’s passes, the rest of her teammates’ sets and spikes.
Her feet never stopped moving. She bounced, she shuffled, she jumped. She scooted through the sand. She dived. She assisted, she scored. She sweated until the salt stung her eyes and burned her parched lips.
Then came the final play. She approached the net, crouched, judged her timing and shot into the air for a game-saving block. Scuffed leather hit her palms. Her feet hit the ground.
The ball barely cleared the net and, with the total lack of momentum from her puny impact, fell short of the outstretched hands on the opposite side and plopped into the sand. Cheers went up from her teammates, and Chloe couldn’t help but grin.
Yet for one brief moment she saw nothing but the past—her father in the bleachers, cheering on the sons he’d come to watch play, the sons who’d made him proud, who’d earned his affection with their sportsmanship skills.
And Chloe had sat at his side, the fingers of her right hand clapping against the palm of her left, a good little beauty queen, the perfect daughter, smiling…the dam of her clenched teeth holding back a flood of resentment.
Unladylike resentment she’d buried deep in her heart for fear of losing what attention her father did show. She’d taught herself not to care, told herself she wasn’t missing a thing.
Oh, but she’d been wrong.
This was exactly what she’d missed, this feeling of shared accomplishment, of belonging.
And even more so, this amazing feeling of being true to herself, of damning propriety and going for broke. Her teammates descended and she couldn’t help but smile, her smile broadening at the pride-filled gleam in Eric’s eyes.
Daddy! Look at your little girl now. Dirty and sweaty and a hell of a mess.
And happier than she’d been in ages.
CHLOE HAD NEVER BEEN to Eric’s house.
And it was a house, a real house, she noted with approval, setting her knapsack on the antique telephone table in the entryway. Not a condo or a loft or anything equally trendy, though the two-story, wood frame structure was situated in a renovated historical district bordering Houston’s downtown, and qualified as urban chic.
For some reason, she’d always pictured him living closer to Haydon’s, as that area of the city drew young urban singles like flypaper. She liked that Eric wasn’t just another fly, that he was, from all appearances, one of a kind.
Her mind wandered to the upstairs shower and a singularly spectacular soapy body…. Chloe blinked back her lust. So what if the man was built? It wasn’t like she’d never seen abs before. Or like Eric didn’t have an equally attractive brain.
Individuality was an appealing trait, and usually meant a fresh approach, a unique outlook, a sense of contentment, and conformity be damned. Eric seemed to have managed resisting the lemming mentality that made clones of men who might otherwise have potential.
He was also the only man in recent memory who took her crap and dished it right back. Which meant she was working harder than ever to top his wit.
But Eric’s choice of a traditional home, a place where he’d invested a lot of money, a place where he obviously intended to stay, revealed more about his self-assuredness than anything Chloe had learned spending time in his company. He was confident in who he was, and she envied that.
He’d also been the first man ever to convince her to participate in sports of any kind, though not without resorting to a consensual kidnapping as the means to his end. Considering how she felt about sports and why, that was saying a lot.
For seven years—three during junior high, four during high school—she’d brought home forms for her father to sign giving her permission to play volleyball, to compete at the interscholastic level.
For seven years he’d refused, but that had never stopped Chloe from giving her all during intramurals and busting her ass to learn the game. Neither had it stopped her coaches from beseeching on her behalf.
Her father had put his foot down, insisting men preferred their women cultured and genteel, and no daughter of his was going to spout that feminist equality bullshit and display the aggressive nature of a man.
That insistence had stolen her chances for a sports scholarship. And once in college, where she’d pursued a degree in fashion—a feminine calling that met with her father’s approval and terms for tuition—that insistence had hardened her heart toward the opposite sex.
It had hardened her heart, as well, toward anything and everything having to do with sports. Athletic competition represented opportunities lost, reminded her of a dream she’d been forced to abandon.
Until working with Melanie and the other girls at Starbucks during their shared senior year, Chloe had wondered often what was the point…of anything.
She’d kept up her grades to keep her father and his checkbook happy, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to attend a single sporting event during her four years at the university.
Now Eric actually had her playing. And he had no idea what he’d done.
He hadn’t automatically stopped at his place following the volleyball tourney. He’d had the courtesy to first ask if she would mind. He needed to clean up and head on to Haydon’s, to relieve his assistant manager before the onslaught of Saturday night’s madness, he’d explained.
He’d offered to take her back to her car, no
problem, but since he lived between Stratton Park and Haydon’s, stopping for a quick shower first would save him time. He’d left the decision up to her.
And, as she had nowhere to be and was more than curious to see where he lived, she’d done her best to hide her nosy nature and told him to feel free. And now that she was here, with Eric upstairs in the shower, she was the one feeling free…to snoop around his first floor.
The house was large and the layout airy, as if Eric had remodeled a maze of smaller rooms into a windowpane design with four main rooms of near equal size. What Chloe supposed were areas to be used for formal living and dining were remarkably plain.
Both rooms faced the street, the front door acting as a divider between. A staircase rose to the second story from the main hallway cut down the center of the bottom floor. The furnishings were of good quality, but could easily have been purchased from the showroom floor of any department-store display.
Eric had breathed no hint of life, none of his self into either room. That made Chloe curious, even as she recognized that the kitchen and the fourth room were the ones that told her the most about him.
In what had to be the space where Eric spent most of his time, the only room on the first floor that looked lived in, a plush sectional in brushed blue corduroy formed a half-moon in front of a big screen TV.
The walls displayed a dozen framed prints, brightly colored abstract visions of sports figures in action, computer enhanced to simulate motion. Copies of Sports Illustrated and Men’s Health were fanned haphazardly over the surface of a low, square coffee table.
Behind the curve of the sectional sofa was what had to be Eric’s home gym. A space-age treadmill and all-in-one weight-and-resistance apparatus faced a massive stereo system. Chloe smiled, because she could so relate. Blasting music made it a hell of a lot easier to force the body through the burn.
But the kitchen where she now stood wasn’t what she’d expected to find in the home of a guy Eric’s age. Though, for Eric, the stainless-steel luxury made perfect sense. She knew he was responsible for a lot of the specialty items served on Haydon’s menu, though he continually tried to talk everyone he knew into doing his cooking for him. So, picturing him in this room, slicing and dicing, simmering and frying, required no stretch of the imagination.
It was a chef’s wet dream—gleaming silver-toned appliances, cabinet and drawer fronts in shiny black, countertops in white marble. It was also unbelievably spotless. Chloe wasn’t sure even her kitchen would measure up, though she rarely used the grand space she did have for more than toasting bagels and chopping fresh veggies. Her food routine could use a little shake-up; she just never seemed to have the time.
She’d have to see about talking Eric into cooking for her one of these days, she thought, peering into his refrigerator to check out the contents. She had skipped lunch, after all, burning the energy of a carb bar while on the volleyball court. A little nourishment wouldn’t hurt. Especially with her body screaming, “Feed me!”
“See anything you’d like?”
At Eric’s question, Chloe slowly straightened and turned. She’d been about to ask if he had time to whip up a late afternoon lunch, or an early evening dinner, but he stood there wearing nothing but a head of wet hair and a knee-length towel around his waist.
Her hunger shifted, stirring her blood and her interest.
She saw a lot worth liking. He was fantasy delicious, with his hair endearingly spiky and messy, as if he’d tumbled straight out of bed. His chest was lightly sculpted and bare of hair, with more than a few drops of leftover water she longed to lap from his skin.
That reaction surprised her, coming as it did from a place she hadn’t thought she was ready to visit. A place, in fact, she’d told herself to avoid. But now that he was standing here half-naked, she had trouble remembering why enjoying his body was such a taboo.
His towel was actually nothing more than a wraparound length of terry cloth held in place by a wide strip of Velcro. The imaginary rip of the two sides separating zipped down nerve endings already tingling and charged.
She gestured at the refrigerator, the door standing open, the air cool on her back. Cool was nice. Cool she needed. “A couple of things look pretty good. I could go for that lemon cheesecake.”
Or the bottle of chocolate syrup and your skin.
Eric moved a step closer, his smile white and beaming, his bare feet a sexy slap against the floor’s black-flecked white tiles. He kept his gaze locked on hers, the distance between them growing sliver-width slim until with every breath she inhaled Chloe learned Eric’s scent.
Beyond soap and shampoo, she smelled warmth and the intimate essence of skin. He lifted a hand, reached behind her into the fridge, so close she could count the freshly scrubbed whiskers he hadn’t bothered to shave and, when she looked down, the thatch of hair in his armpit.
He grabbed the bottle of water he was after, his mouth lingering near her ear to say, “You smell great.”
“Oh, please!” She smelled like stink and sweat. “You’re out of your mind.”
Grinning, he shook his head, regarding her while holding the bottle in one hand, twisting the spout with the other. “You smell like fresh air and sunshine.”
“And salty sticky skin.” She was glad, at least, that she hadn’t played in her jersey. It still smelled marginally clean.
“You know, princess, when you were learning all my secrets during Macy’s scavenger hunt, you should’ve asked about aphrodisiacs.”
Again he leaned in close, this time nuzzling the patch of skin beneath her ear. His breath warmed her there, where he lightly blew on her neck. Then he pulled away, winked and squirted a mouthful of water from the bottle.
Oh, but this was so unfair. Chloe hadn’t yet recovered from the brush of Eric’s hair beneath her chin, or the smell of all that clean male skin as he’d reached beyond her for the water. And now he was teasing her, heightening her senses unbearably with a touch she knew meant nothing.
What she did know was that she really needed to shut the refrigerator door before the food inside suffered from exposure to the room’s temperature and that of her body. But the cold air at her back was like the touch of an ice cube on sizzling skin, and she needed to ease the burn.
When the water spilled from Eric’s mouth before he could swallow, when the trickle ran from the ridge of his chin down his neck to the hollow of his throat, when a single rivulet squiggled down the center of his breastbone to his belly, Chloe could barely find her voice to echo, “Aphrodisiacs?”
“I like a woman who’s not afraid to sweat. I like the taste of salt on her skin.” Eric drank again, dribbled again, again drew Chloe’s gaze down his nearly nude body to where the terry fabric at his waist soaked the drizzle from his abdomen.
She refused to allow her gaze to dip any lower. “You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”
“What?” He asked the question with all innocence, then poured a stream of water into the corner of his mouth, where it wet his lower lip and a whole lot more.
Chloe wet her own lower lip with a flick of her tongue in an effort to slake her uncommon thirst. “Doing that. With the water. Like you think I’m going to clean it up?”
He set the water bottle on the kitchen counter and tore a paper towel from the roll mounted on a silver rod set into the countertop next to the stainless steel stove.
She took the towel he offered, thinking she was tempting fate way too much, with their obvious mutual attraction and her body being so hungry and Eric having so many qualities that belonged to Cary Grant.
But still she beckoned him closer and, with the towel folded into fourths, patted him dry, keeping her fingers from coming into contact with his skin.
It was hard to maintain control, especially when she wanted to touch the flesh she’d felt in the past only through his clothing. She handed him the used paper towel.
He took it, but then grinned and audaciously added, “The towel was for you. In c
ase you needed to dry your mouth. After drinking.”
“If you want me to clean you up with my tongue, you’ll have to provide a more appetizing enticement.” She couldn’t help herself. And even after she’d delivered the dare, she felt no need for repentance or for taking it back.
So when Eric once again reached beyond her into the fridge and came away with the same bottle of chocolate syrup that had starred in her earlier fantasy, she didn’t say a word. She only lifted a brow and glanced from the bottle, which Eric set on the counter, to his guilelessly wicked blue eyes, before returning her attention to the contents of the fridge.
Without a word, she added a can of whipped topping and a colander of freshly washed strawberries to the syrup sitting on the countertop. That ought to do it, she mused, breathless, finally closing the refrigerator door. After all, she’d always wanted to act out her own food fantasy à la 9½ Weeks.
Eric briefly took in her additions to his enticement, then leaned his backside against the counter, his hands curled over the edge on either side of his hips, his feet crossed at the ankle. “Strawberry shortcake?”
Chloe took more than a slight pleasure in the labored rise and fall of his chest. Eric was doing his best to appear calm and collected, at ease, but she wasn’t fooled. His hunger was stirred, and the terry wrap at his waist no longer lay flush against his thighs. His excitement was evident, and Chloe’s belly clenched and released. Her thighs grew warm and heavy.
She reached for the can of whipped topping, shook it longer than required. But then the point of taking her time was not about ensuring the texture of the cream as much as it was about making Eric wonder and wait.
She squeezed a dollop onto her finger, then licked it clean with the tip of her tongue. Her gaze remained locked with Eric’s as she repeated the process, only this time she offered the dessert to him.
He parted his lips and she dragged the flat of her finger down his tongue, leaving the sweetness behind. His eyes flashed at the contact, and again as she returned her finger to her mouth to lick it clean.
