Too Hot to Touch

by Louisa Edwards

  “We’re supposed to be practicing,” he purred, drunk on the closeness of her. “So let’s practice.”

  He could hear her swallow. “What … what sort of culinary challenge do you think this applies to?”

  Curling his hands over her shoulders, he smoothed them down over the wings of her shoulder blades, pressing his fingers in to urge her to her feet. She stood shakily, the front of her body brushing his, inch by inch, teasing them both.

  “Let’s see. There could be a challenge about working closely together,” he said, low and soft, his lips skimming her ear. “Maybe in … tight spaces.”

  “Oh,” she said, her hands coming up to rest against his chest, lightly, as if she weren’t sure whether to pull him closer or push him away. “That actually … they’ve done that. A few competitions ago, they put the teams on a sailboat and made them cook a five-course gourmet meal in a tiny galley kitchen.”

  “See? We’re totally practicing.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Jules moaned as Max trailed his hands up her neck to palm the shape of her skull. He pulled the elastic band out of her hair and let it tumble over his fingers in a citrusy wave, soft strands catching on his scarred knuckles.

  “What’s not fair?” he asked, rubbing her head in soothing little circles.

  “Oh … you. This. No flirting for almost a week—I let my guard down! Now here you are.”

  “Here we are,” he agreed, pulling her unresisting body even closer. They were almost eye to eye, except hers were closed, gold-tipped lashes fanning across her flushed cheeks.

  How far would she let this go? he wondered as he tilted her head gently and laid his mouth across hers, dipping deep at once in search of that delicious Jules flavor.

  “This is so unbelievably stupid,” she moaned, and the hands that had been resting against his chest rose to his shoulders and gripped, hard. Evidently, she’d made up her mind not to push him away, because the kiss flashed from sweet to sultry in the blink of an eye. She got her fists into his shirt and tugged so hard he stumbled into her.

  Knocked off balance, Jules fell back but kept her ferocious grip on his shirt, yanking Max with her. And once he got his feet under him again, he decided she was on to something, because with a few more steps she’d be up against the wall and they wouldn’t have to worry so much about equilibrium.

  He maneuvered them past the table and pressed her back to the lovely, solid wall, letting one leg slide between her thighs to pin her there.

  Not that she was struggling—at least, not to get away. If anything, Jules seemed to be trying to climb through him to get to the other side, and her frantic, clutching fingers and soft, throaty noises were driving Max out of his mind.

  “So be stupid, for once,” he gasped against her neck. “Quit thinking and live.”

  Her breathing was harsh and erratic, puffing into the hair at his temple. “Once,” she echoed. “Just this once.”

  She hooked one long leg around his hips, tilting her pelvis that extra, perfect, amazing, magical little bit—and suddenly his aching erection was notched tight against her softest place.

  He couldn’t resist grinding into it, and even through the heavy denim of their pants, it felt insane. The inseam of his jeans rubbed him in a way that was almost painful, sending electric bolts of sensation straight up his spine.

  Jules tilted her head against the wall, eyelids fluttering, and Max slipped his hands under the hem of her shirt. They both gasped when his fingertips found the warm satin of her skin, and Max thought, What the hell, and pulled the shirt off over her head.

  Blinking dazedly, Jules emerged from the fabric with her hair a tousled honey-blond crackle of static around her head. Max took in the long smooth lines of her torso, his hands mapping the lean muscle at her waist, strong from all the bending and turning and lifting that came with being a chef.

  Keeping up the calm, slow petting at her sides, Max let himself enjoy the sight of her, arched against the wall and bare to his gaze, the swells of her pretty, round breasts peeping golden and succulent over the top of her white cotton bra. Glancing up to meet her hooded gaze, he said, “You’re gorgeous.”

  He’d never meant anything so much in his life.

  She blushed a darker shade of red, the color washing from her cheeks all the way down her neck, and looked away.

  “You don’t like hearing that?”

  Her laugh was short and choked off. “It’s usually a warning sign that a guy’s about to ask for something I don’t want to give.”

  A dark undercurrent throbbed through her voice, pressed into his shoulders in half-moons of pain from her unconsciously tight fingernails, and Max frowned.

  Someone had hurt her. The knowledge crashed over him in a wave of shockingly violent anger. Max tried to breathe through it, tried to keep his heart going in the wake of the sudden understanding of his own limits when it came to peace, Zen, and avenging Jules Cavanaugh.

  “Max?” She sounded uncertain. Max immediately leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the flushed skin of her neck. It was hot enough to make his lips tingle.

  “Max,” she repeated, in this small, throbbing voice that just about killed him. Her hands opened and closed on his shoulders, and she gave one tiny, abortive squirm with her hips that was enough to make him grunt and shift her leg higher around his waist.

  “I want you,” he told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as much. But if you don’t want this, say the word, and I’ll never bother you again. Because it’s no good if we’re not both in it.”

  An emotion came and went, flitting across her mobile features in the amount of time between one gasped breath and the next. “I want you, too,” she said, her voice raspy with desire. “I guess it would be kind of ridiculous to deny it, at this point.”

  “I don’t know. You could be standing on one leg because you’re part flamingo, and I just happen to be in the way.”

  Her laugh did crazy things to Max’s insides. “Right. And I’m not wearing a shirt because I’m practicing cooking topless, in case the judges give us that as a challenge.”

  He ran his palm along her uplifted thigh, cupping the shapely curve of her hip before gliding onto her inner thigh and nudging the heel of his hand into the moist heat at the notch of her legs.

  Her eyes flickered shut again, and her hips hitched when Max moved his hand in tight little circles. “And you’re all hot and bothered because…”

  “Because … because…” She rolled her head against the wall, pretty mouth going slack.

  “Because you want me,” he whispered triumphantly into the soft, bitable skin of her neck.

  “Because you’re touching me,” she countered weakly, clutching at him and wobbling. “Oh, touching me. Keep touching me, Max…”

  Forever, he wanted to say, which was weird enough to almost make him pull up short in the middle of some of the hottest sex he’d ever had in his life.

  To distract himself, Max opened his mouth and bit down gently on the slope where Jules’s neck met her shoulder. Jules made a high-pitched keening noise and Max just about broke a finger trying to get the button of her jeans undone.

  He had to shift back to get her pants open and pulled down enough to fit his hand inside, and the way she looked—utterly luscious and abandoned, better than the best porn he’d ever imagined—made Max squint against a sudden fear that if he kept looking at her, he’d shoot before he even got his dick out of his pants.

  Unacceptable. Max got back down to the business of working his hand under the elastic leg of her underwear.

  Because the only thing he wanted more than to come with her hand on his cock was to make her shiver, writhe, and fall apart on the tips of his fingers.

  * * *

  Was it possible to surrender her body while protecting her heart?

  Jules moved and shuddered against Max, his skillful fingers easily manipulating her responses and sending flashes of pure pleasure to cloud her already whirling m
ind.

  This wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her evening. She could only thank whatever god looked out for women who couldn’t be bothered to listen to their own very sound advice that she was wearing matching, if boring, bra and underwear.

  Every tiny shift of his fingers sent an overload of sensation to her brain, confusing messages that were half blinding pleasure, half jumpy pain from being so swollen and sensitive. Max did something fast and dexterous that her brain was too awash in lust to figure out, and suddenly there was lovely, firm pressure right where she needed it, while two of his strong, rough-knuckled fingers slid into her aching opening.

  “Oh there,” she stuttered out, her inner thigh muscles twitching with the need to clamp down on his maddening, teasing hand. Tension coiled tight at the base of her spine, and when he bent forward to bite at her neck again, shivers wrapped around her entire body and suddenly she was coming, hot and shaky, bursts of color exploding in the darkness behind her closed eyes.

  He groaned against her throat, the sound of a man in torment, and said something vehement in a language she couldn’t place. From the tone of voice, she’d bet it was a swear word.

  “You are so damn sexy,” he said thickly, withdrawing his hand from her oversensitized flesh and petting her gently. “Like no one else, in the whole fucking world. Please. Tell me I can have you.”

  Still lost in the aftershocks of pleasure, Jules barely registered it when his hand left her and moved to fumble at the fly of his jeans. The sound of the zipper shocked her back into her head, though, and her eyes popped open.

  Do I really want to do this?

  “Wait.” She put out a hand instinctively and encountered gaping denim, the cotton boxer-covered push of his thick cock spearing up from between the flaps.

  He dropped his head to her shoulder, breathing hard. “Waiting,” he gasped. “It’s killing me, but I’m waiting.”

  Jules’s brain stumbled into action. This was it. If she did this, she couldn’t take it back.

  She wasn’t really worried about keeping Max’s respect in the kitchen—he’d made it clear he didn’t want to take her place as team leader, and his behavior over the last week proved his point. Unlike Phil the Phucktard after they’d started dating, Max didn’t undermine her authority, didn’t contradict her, didn’t act like somehow the fact that he had testicles made him a better chef.

  He pushed her, prodded her, challenged her—but when she started to crack, he didn’t try to break her. He stopped and made sure she was okay.

  No guy had ever done that for Jules before. Ever. And it was dangerous, so dangerous, because it made her want to trust him with everything.

  But when Max left in a few weeks, she’d be here. Alone. With nothing but the memory of his touch to keep her warm at night.

  Would one hot memory be enough to compensate for the lingering chill of missing Max Lunden?

  Trying to buy a little time, she let her fingers wander up and down the throbbing column of flesh. It felt good under her hand, even with his underwear dulling the heat of his skin. Apparently, it felt good to Max, too, because he pressed an openmouthed kiss to her shoulder, licking the patch of sore, tingly skin he’d bitten before, and said, “Okay, I could wait a little longer, if we spend the time like this.”

  Max nuzzled into her, his body covering her protectively as if he were shielding her from the world, and Jules melted a little.

  Enough thinking. Enough worrying about the future. Max leaving again was going to suck, whether she took this moment with him or not.

  At least this way, she’d have the memory.

  Chapter 12

  Summoning all the strength her delicious orgasm had drained from her limbs, she pushed away from the wall and spun them so that Max stood, blinking in surprise, with his back braced against the white plaster.

  “What are you— Oh, sweet fancy Mary on a cracker.”

  Jules sank to her knees in front of him, wincing at the cold, hard linoleum. She looked all the way up his body to where his eyes were nearly popping out of his head, and told him the truth. “I’ve been wanting to do this ever since you came back. Let me?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed and he made a quick gesture with one hand. “Uh, yeah. Sure. You know, knock yourself out.”

  She kept her gaze locked with his, and the way he avidly ate up every slight move she made started to rekindle the heat in her belly. Reaching up, she carefully freed his erection from his boxers, pulling them and his jeans down below the lean cut of his hips.

  His cock sprang out at her, eager and flushed red at the tip, where a bead of moisture welled temptingly into his slit. Jules licked her lips, flicking her stare back up to Max’s eyes when he growled.

  “You look good like that,” he rasped hoarsely.

  Jules shivered at the compliment, a mix of her usual discomfort and a new, swelling sense of her body as an instrument of pleasure. She leaned in to draw her tongue up the underside of his penis, swirling over the head to capture the salt-smoke taste of that one clear droplet. When he was done gasping, she said, “You taste good like this.”

  His head knocked back against the wall, rapping hard enough to almost make her worry for his brains. Staring at the ceiling, he said, “I’d really like to last longer than fifteen seconds. But you’re not making it easy.”

  “That’s my job, though, right?” She licked him again, enjoying the silky skin under her tongue, and the way his belly muscles jumped and quivered. “To make it hard.”

  Max made a strange noise, half grunt, half snort. “Don’t make me laugh when my bits are that close to your teeth.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll be gentle with you.”

  And with that, she took him all the way into her mouth.

  She played with the head at first, sucking lightly, then harder, hollowing her cheeks to make him moan. When she scooted forward to let him drive deeper, Max’s hips bucked uncontrollably. Jules reached up, curving her palms over the jut of his hipbones, and pressed him back into the wall.

  “Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry, sorry…”

  Jules let him know it was okay by going down farther until the head of his cock tickled the back of her throat, then pulling up, sucking strongly. They fell into a rhythm, in, out, lick, suck, push, pull, and every move seemed to tug at things low in Jules’s body, the parts of her that were still thrumming with arousal.

  Max’s hot eyes staring down at her, the hardness filling her mouth, the slick, salty taste of him. Even the sharp throb of pain in her knees somehow added to the heat of the moment.

  She could feel it building, sweeping higher like a bank of storm clouds rolling in to cover the sky and turn everything dark and electric. Taking one hand off his hip, she twisted it around the base of Max’s erection and bobbed her head down to meet it, sucking furiously. She wanted everything he would give her, and she did her best to pull it out of him.

  “I’m close,” he gasped out after a moment, his hands moving to her head to try and gently dislodge her.

  Jules pulled off his cock with a wet pop, and shook her head. “Go ahead,” she said, her voice raw. “I want it.” Then she dove back down.

  His eyes widened, pupils dilating until only a slim ring of silvery blue showed, and he shuddered, pulsing over her tongue. Jules swallowed him down and felt the moment stretch taut between them, connected and alive.

  She kept sucking, drawing it out, until he made a high, thin noise and put his hands back on her head. Letting him slip from her mouth, she rested her head against his thigh to catch her breath and try to make sense of the emotion welling up in her chest.

  Dangerous, she thought again. Because maybe Max didn’t look at all the places where she was cracked and broken, and pick up a hammer to finish the job—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to shatter her, all the same.

  But here, now, in this moment, with him panting and writhing under her mouth and this deep, glowing connection arcing back and forth be
tween them like a current of electricity, Jules couldn’t make herself care.

  She’d lost the self-preservation instincts that had been an integral part of her since she was seventeen years old, cold and shivering and hoofing it away from her mother’s apartment.

  It was official. She was fucked.

  Max stopped the rising tide of panic by hooking his hands under her arms and pulling her up to lean against his chest. He mouthed softly at her chin, little shivery nips and licks that had Jules tilting her head for more. She sighed into the kiss and wound her arms around his neck.

  “You’re incredible,” he said into her mouth. “Seriously, I think you sucked my brains out.”

  She snickered, breaking the kiss. “Is that what that was?”

  Max laughed and bent down to pick up her discarded T-shirt when she shivered, suddenly aware of the fact that she was half naked in his parents’ kitchen.

  Grabbing her shirt, she struggled into it so quickly she almost fell over. “I can’t believe we didn’t even make it to your bedroom. Your parents could’ve walked in anytime!”

  “The possibility of discovery gives everything a little extra spice,” Max said, tucking himself away and doing up his jeans with lazy fingers.

  She snorted. “I’m not thinking we needed too much extra spice.” Jules tried to smooth her hair down; a hopeless task without a mirror or a hairbrush. Whatever happened to her ponytail holder?

  His eyes glittered with remembered pleasure. “Yeah,” he sighed. “We were in danger of getting over-spiced there, if anything. But spice is always hottest when it’s a surprise.”

  He was looking at her far too closely. “I don’t see what’s so surprising about it,” she bluffed. “You’ve been after me since you got home. Now you’ve had me. We can get back to normal.” Jules ignored the way her heart clenched at the thought. Stupid heart.

  “Normal. Huh.” His voice sounded carefully neutral, and he’d ducked his head so she couldn’t see the look in his expressive eyes.

  “Yeah,” she said, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to lean on him. “We got it out of our systems, so now we can work together. Keep it strictly professional.”