“We have wine, too, if that’s your thing.”
“And why on earth would I drink wine when you have microbrews named for dogs? How about a Chihuahua?” she said with a smile. “I’ll take my chances even though I have no idea what kind of beer the Chihuahua gave its name to, but those are some seriously fine-looking little dogs.”
“One raspberry ale coming up for the woman who doesn’t like crowds, who thinks bras suck, and who believes owls have deeper meanings.”
Whoa. In five minutes he already knew more about her than most people did. And she’d been trying so hard to keep everyone out.
Chapter Two
Perhaps retreat had its rewards after all. Look what it had brought tonight in the form of Megan. She was devastatingly beautiful and had a lush little body he could wrap his hands around, but looks alone had never done him in. The fact was, she had a dry sort of charm and a bit of an edge, like she was the kind of woman who didn’t take shit from anyone. And there was something else, too. Almost a distance, as if she had walls up.
He understood walls. They made sense to him. They protected him from getting too close.
That’s why he told Megan he owned the bar but said nothing of his work moonlighting as the local fire captain. It was the truth, but it also guaranteed she wouldn’t be into him for the whole stereotype. He’d been there, done that, had an ex in Chicago who’d been far too interested in the job title and parading around the fireman she’d nabbed, like he was some sort of trophy. With Megan, he was Becker the bar owner, and he liked the fact that she was new to town, so there was no history, no expectations. She wasn’t a local, so she thought of him only as maybe someone she wanted to spend the night with, because that’s what he wanted, too. The way she’d said “Mr. Becker” sure as hell made him think about lifting her up and hitching those legs around his waist.
He walked quietly into the noisy bar and poured the beers, including a porter—dubbed the Great Dane—for himself. He returned to the back porch, drinking in the view along the way. The glow of the streetlamp along with the crescent moon bathed her face in soft light as she swiped a finger across the screen of her phone. He could tell she was reading a book rather than texting, and there was something hot about a woman who didn’t need the distraction of checking her online status or sending emoticon-laden messages in a spare moment, but who instead chose the company of words to pass the time.
He joined her, and she tucked her phone away.
He handed her the beer. Their fingers touched, and she tilted her head, meeting his eyes. She didn’t look away, just held his stare head-on, without shyness, without fear, and so he leaned closer to her and said, “To anti-crowds.”
They clinked glasses.
“So you don’t like crowds, but you own a bar. What’s that all about?”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said and raised one eyebrow playfully. Then he shifted to a more serious tone. “I’m fine with people. I just don’t like scenes. But I like it when people are happy, and most people seem happy enough in a bar, especially this kind of a microbrewery in this kind of a town,” he answered, giving her the simple truth. He might not have that kind of lightheartedness in his life, but he could serve it up. That was as close as he could get to it.
“And they’re happy, but you’re not with them.” The noise of a busy evening of drinking filtered out, along with the sounds of the Black Keys on the bar’s sound system, as Megan took a sip of the beer.
“So it seems.”
“Do you wish you wanted to be a part of it, though? Do you wish you wanted to be in the middle of all that?” She leaned forward, waving her hand in the general direction of the Panting Dog, all while keeping her eyes fixed on him, as if she were keenly interested in his answers.
“Maybe someday,” he said truthfully and was surprised at his ability to answer honestly. Not that he preferred lying; he simply preferred not answering. Only one person in town truly understood—his good friend Travis, not just because they played poker together every week and worked together on many shifts, but because Travis knew the same pain he did. He’d lost people close to him in the line of fire. Literally. They’d connected over that—a fireman’s way of life, and a man’s need to keep some things to himself.
But Megan’s directness in asking him questions had an unexpected appeal. She seemed truly interested in knowing more, without needing to know everything.
“For now, you just escape from crowds?”
“Sometimes. It helps if there’s a gorgeous woman who stumbles upon my back porch,” he said, laying it out for her. To hell with holding back. He held so much inside, kept so many of his thoughts locked tight in his head. This was one he could set free.
“Lucky you,” she said drily, but with a sexy glint in her eyes.
“Am I? Lucky?” he asked, leaning closer, eager for her response.
She scoffed, but her expression was still playful. So was her body, as she crossed her legs, angling them nearer to him. Exactly where he wanted them to be. “Are you asking if you’re getting lucky? ’Cause that’s a bold question for so early in the evening,” she said, her words seeming to suggest there would be a later to their evening.
“Trust me, I would never use a line like that and definitely not on a woman like you.” He paused, looked her straight in the eyes, then added, “Unless it’s later in the night.”
“What would you use on a woman like me, then?” she asked, tracing her finger around the edge of her glass.
“I wouldn’t use lines,” he said confidently, never taking his eyes off her. He liked walls, but he didn’t like games. “I would use words. All sorts of words. For now, I’d use direct ones. Tell me something about yourself, Megan.”
“What do you want to know?”
As much as he was contemplating how she’d feel pressed up against him, he was curious about who she was beyond the owl tattoo and leather bracelet. He didn’t need to know her plans for the future—hell, future was a four-letter word—but he wanted to know more about what mattered to her. Since she’d already mentioned her art, he’d go with that. “You’re a freelance artist. What kind of art?”
“Want me to show you?” she asked, arching an eyebrow suggestively.
He had no clue what she was going to show him, but he liked her boldness. Heat rushed through his blood as she inched closer. “Yes,” he said, swallowing thickly.
She reached inside her purse, rooting around till she grabbed a blue ballpoint pen. “Give me your hand, please.”
He went along with it, offering her his open palm. She wrapped her slender fingers around his hand. Her touch was something he could get used to.
“I like to draw illustrations of animals, and I’m going to take your request now, sir,” she said playfully.
He crinkled his brow, as if he were in deep thought. Truth was, he needed to devise a clever answer. If he said dog or cat, she’d probably thank him for the beer and be on her way. She liked to tango, to play, so he needed his request to be a good one. He wasn’t going to ask for a snake or a lion. Nothing too obvious or tacky. He needed an animal that threw her off, made her think, made her laugh. Maybe an ostrich? How about a giraffe? Then he hit on it.
“I’ve always thought it a shame that they’re not terribly domesticated because their masks are damn cute. So I choose raccoon,” he pronounced.
“Raccoon masks are awesome,” she said, then bent over his open hand. Her long hair inched dangerously close to his arm, the sweet, citrus scent of her shampoo permeating his senses. He toyed momentarily with the image of her head dropping farther and the things she could do in that position, but then he forced that thought away or else he’d be hard as a rock the rest of the night. Though he had been since he first saw her—he probably would be the whole night anyway.
She stopped drawing, wrapped his fingers into a fist to hide the graffiti, raised her head, and declared, “Done.”
He opened his hand and burst out laughing. She’d drawn
a cartoonish face of a raccoon, bandit mask and all, but then had circled him and penned a slash mark across the creature. The words “Anti-Crowd Raccoon” were written underneath in bubbly ink.
“Our mascot,” he quipped. “Maybe someday I can convince you to take it to the next level with the raccoon. Give him a proper body, turn him into a tattoo for me.”
“Any time you’re ready for a raccoon tattoo, you let me know.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, as he tapped her almost-empty glass. “Want more?”
“One’s my limit. My ex was a total party boy. That’s why I’m not into crowds.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He was an internet start-up guy. Entrepreneur type, but he basically blew all his money on—” She stopped and tapped the side of her nose.
“Glad to hear he’s the ex, then. Not only because a woman like you doesn’t need to be around that shit, but because it means you can be here with me tonight.”
She smiled sweetly, and it was one of the first traces of softness he’d seen in her. She’d been like a good sparring partner so far, but now she showed a hint of vulnerability. Then she finished her glass. “And, as I said, I’m one and done.”
“So is that it?”
She gave him a seductive look. “That’s it for drinks…” She let her voice trail off.
“I take it you’re open to other things?”
She shrugged with a grin. “What sort of other things?”
“This,” he said, and stood up, pulled her from her chair, and put his hands on her cheeks. He looked deeply into her eyes, meeting her gaze, full of want. “I told you I’d be direct, and I’ve got my mind on kissing you right now.”
“Do it,” she said, confidence in her voice.
Damn, this woman knew what she wanted, and evidently, she wanted him.
He moved closer, capturing her mouth with his, sliding his tongue across hers. The first taste of her was intoxicating. She was sexy as sin; she didn’t hide it and she didn’t flaunt it, she just was it. She tasted like a woman who knew her mind, and knew her need, and wanted to be touched by him as much as he wanted to touch her.
She trembled against him, so he tugged her closer, letting her feel what it would be like if their bodies were aligned. She responded instantly, angling her hips against him as he crushed her delicious mouth. If you’d have asked him an hour ago what the chances were that he’d run into a gorgeous woman on his back porch, enjoy talking to her, and then tell her he planned to kiss her, he’d have scoffed.
Not because women were hard to come by, but because women like Megan didn’t come around often, and as he kissed her more deeply, he was consumed with one thought—get her back to his place, strip her naked, and take his time getting to know every inch of her body. As he moved a hand down her side, she shivered and arched into him, her luscious lips pressing harder against his, the taste of her mouth heady. She didn’t just let him lead, though. She grabbed the back of his head, her fingers diving into his hair, and kissed hard with a kind of fearless abandon, a confidence that was damn near dizzying and left his head foggy as the heat flared between them. The way their bodies responded to each other, it was as if this whole day, whole week, whole year had been leading up to this night, to the possibility of this sort of instant chemistry.
His hands found their way under her tank and up her chest. She breathed harder, moaning appreciatively as he cupped her breasts; they felt as good as they’d looked. Round, full, and real. He broke the kiss. “Glad that bra was giving you problems,” he said in a low voice.
“Yeah?”
“You looked hot taking it off, and you feel amazing in my hands.”
She answered him with another kiss. Hard, hungry, and devouring. He inhaled sharply as she raked her fingernails against his scalp, picturing how she’d twine those hands in his hair as he buried his face between her legs. As soon as the thought had touched down in his head, there was no room for anything else in his life right then. He pulled apart for the briefest of seconds. “I live two blocks away. Let me undress you. Let me spread you out on my bed. Let me taste you,” he said in a low, raspy voice, his tone conveying his desire.
Her lips were parted and her eyes were filled with lust. “I’m just going to tell my friend I won’t be meeting her,” she said, sending a quick text, then turning her phone off. He liked that she powered it down. She could live in the moment, not in what she might be missing.
He didn’t bother saying good-bye, or locking the back door, or grabbing anything from the Panting Dog. He had his wallet and his keys and the sexiest woman who’d come through Hidden Oaks in the whole year he’d been here. She was someone who didn’t know who he was. Someone who didn’t have the time for more than the here and now. With her, there was no past. There was only the present.
That was all he wanted, and all he was good for.
Chapter Three
Megan had never imagined last night when her brother pulled up in the driveway of their childhood home, dropping her off after having covered miles and miles of highway from Southern to Northern California, that she’d walk into the town square the next evening and find a man like this.
He was the type of man who made a woman nearly catcall like a construction worker. With a chest she could tell stories about for the rest of her life, every square inch of his body defined and cut, he could easily grace the pages of the fireman’s calendar she’d start shooting in two days. The eye candy she’d never let herself have.
Wrapped up in each other in the entryway to his house, he kissed her deeply while skimming his hands down her back, racing over her hips, angling her close. His touch possessed an ownership to it, as if he could do things to her, take her places she’d never been. She ached between her thighs, desperate to know his body better. Running her hands across his gray T-shirt, her fingers mapped the perfect outline of his pecs, then his waist. “Do you have any idea how ridiculously perfect your body is?”
He smiled sweetly, then shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about me. What I want is to see all of you.” He nodded to the top of the stairs.
She kicked off her boots, not wanting to scuff the hardwood floors.
“Megan, I would have been totally fine if you left those on. Even if you scratched my floors, I wouldn’t care,” he said with a laugh. It was as if he could read her mind.
The house was dark, his home cast in shadows as they walked through the dining room, then the living room. But the dim light seemed fitting for tonight. She didn’t even know his last name, and she was 100 percent okay with that. Darkness, namelessness, and his body pressed against hers were all she wanted right now.
He led her to his bedroom, to a king-size bed with a dark blue comforter and one lone pillow. There was a nightstand on each side of the mattress, but only one was brimming with books.
“Nice bed,” she said.
“What would make this bed look really good is you on it,” he said, and then lowered her to the soft comforter and ran his hand down her legs. She was grateful she’d shaved today; her legs were smooth and still faintly smelled of the vanilla-sugar lotion she’d smoothed on earlier tonight. “Your legs are spectacular,” he said, with an appreciative groan as he trailed his hands along her skin.
“Why thank you. Now let’s even things up a bit and get that shirt of yours off.”
He reached for the underside of his T-shirt and started to remove it, but Megan held up a hand.
“Wait. I want to.” She sat up and took over the T-shirt-removal reins, inching it up slowly, enjoying every moment of the reveal. As she reached his carved pecs, her fingernails trailing his skin led him to hitch in a breath. Then she tugged off the shirt. He was a beautiful sight indeed, made of the finest muscle, and skin, and hardness. A heady wave of anticipation rushed through her as she explored his chest thoroughly, her hands finding their way to his waist.
His perfect fucking waist dipped seductively into those jeans, hanging low on his
hips. The best part was the way the pants couldn’t mask how much he wanted her, too. She pressed a hand against his erection, narrowing her eyes and giving him a very knowing look as she felt how hard he was. Yes, this man wasn’t just strong and tall; he was the whole package, including the package. Megan could tell he’d fill her in a way she’d never been filled before, and the image of him inside her was so powerful, so enticing, that she grabbed his shoulders and yanked him down on the bed with her. She wanted him to touch her, to feel what he’d done to her.
“Damn, woman. You’re a feisty one.”
“I’m a woman who knows what she wants,” Megan said, and she did, especially now that she’d extracted herself from a bad relationship. She’d moved with her ex all the way to L.A., tied to the back of his entrepreneurial dreams and eager for a new adventure in Southern California, only to watch him turn into someone she no longer knew—an addict.
Their relationship had been unraveling over the last few months, which meant they hadn’t had any moments like this. There had been no tangling of arms and legs and lips in the bedroom of their apartment. She’d laid down the law with him—there would be no coming together when he was high, and Jason had made it clear that he preferred that feeling to her. She’d tried so hard to help him get sober, to clean him up. But he loved a substance more.
After those last few painful months with him, she was finally free. She hadn’t originally planned to come back here on her way to Portland, but right now, Megan was sure this night with Becker was one of the things she’d remember most fondly about her brief return to her hometown. One night without drama. One night with only pleasure. One hot night with Becker would erase all the bad. She danced her fingers across his sexy waist, the hard planes of his abs, enjoying his reaction as he drew a deep breath.
“And what do you want, Megan? Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”
“You. Inside me,” she said, as she let go, then wrapped her legs around his waist. His reflexes were quick. He reached back with one arm, grabbing her calf and holding her tight, then rocking against her, showing her how he would take her. “Like this? You want me to take you like this?”
Melt For Him Page 2
