by Angel Payne
“Speak for yourself, woman.” Sam rocked back on one heel, appraising her with a gaze that had gone the shade of a mysterious sea. Not the dangerous, ship-destroying kind. The tempestuous kind that crashed up against the lighthouse where Jen envisioned him taking her and then fucking her in that hotter-than-hell, better-than-the-pages-of-a-book outfit. “On better thought, let me speak for you.” He dipped a decisive nod. “The dress is sexy as fuck, woman.”
She rolled her eyes. Watched the responding tension at the corners of his own but didn’t let it deter her from muttering, “The dress is meant for a military base accounting office, Sam, not a—”
Her own gasp was her interruption—though it coincided with the one-two swoops of his hands, one at her neckline and one near the hem, each twisting free a couple of buttons. He concluded his “alteration” by grabbing the clip that held her hair off her face and then tousling his long fingers across her scalp, bringing a bunch of her thick waves across her cheeks.
“Errmmm…” She bit her lip but flashed a grin. “Okay, then.”
Sam stepped over, pressing himself against her and nuzzling her neck suggestively. “Not ‘okay, then,’” he rasped into her hair. “You’re not just fuckin’ okay, Jenny Thorne. You’re perfect. Especially right now.”
She sighed. For a moment, just enjoyed the feel of him again, so huge and hard and defined against her…and damn near around her. She inhaled him, forest cedar and ocean spice joined by the starch in his shirt and the musk of his skin.
Holy God, how she wanted him. Yes, this damn swiftly. Yes, this damn badly.
The yearning only got more intense as he cupped the sides of her face and husked, “All better?”
“Hrrrmmm,” Jen mumbled. “Yeah. I…I think.”
“You think?” Sam pressed his fingertips into the indents just below her ears. “Not acceptable, sweet mouse. Come on, now. What is it?”
“Oh, ugh,” she rasped. “It’s really noth—” But she realized writing herself off like that would only darken the tempests in his eyes at this point. “Cripes, Sam. I mean, look at us! You’re…You’re a freaking book fantasy come to life, and I’m—”
“Goin’ to get your arse pummeled a lovely shade of carnation pink, if you don’t stop with this silly mince right now.”
But it was too late to prevent the blush that felt exactly that shade. Jen somehow sucked together the rest of her composure and used the fortitude to push away from the hunk in her arms. Well, to attempt to. When Sam didn’t relent, she protested, “I’ll be fine, okay? Just give me a second to—oh! Sam!”
Sam clutched her waist tighter, securing her balance as he bent to finish what he started with his other hand: whipping her panties down, all the way around her ankles. “Mmmmm,” he rumbled. “Now look at that bonnie sight.” With a sultry look up over his shoulder, he speared her with eyes gone the shade of molten silver. “Still think you’re not ‘hot’ enough now, missy?”
“Sam.” It was a plea, a rebuke, and a gasp in one, the latter happening as he nimbly maneuvered the lace around her heels and then up into his inner coat pocket. “Come on…”
“What? I don’t get to have one of my fantasies come to life?”
“One of your—” Her jaw plummeted. “You’ve had fantasies about me?” She lifted it again, battling to work moisture back into her lips and throat. “L-L-Like…this?”
“Without any panties?” He had to be a Highland god about filling that in, his posture so focused and his grip still undaunted. “In a dress the color of your nipples when I bite and suck them…and the sweet, tender bits between your thighs when I—”
“All right, all right!” She held up a hand, trying to laugh but sounding like a constipated goose instead. “I get the picture!” And dear crap, how that was the truth. She shoved down a deep breath, certain that if she actually wore the underwear now, they’d be soaked. “Can’t say I’m actually comfortable about it, but I’m also not sure I get a choice about that.”
“Of course you get a choice.” He stepped back, already seeming to sense how she needed the space for clear thought. “You always get a choice. Say the word, and the lace is yours again.”
Jen smoothed her skirt. Realigned her posture. Neither move compensated for what she’d felt when he was close. The primal sense of being protected. Safe. Cherished. Thoroughly female, balanced out by the massive presence of his masculinity. To be a damn greeting card about it, she already missed him. But the ache was eased by knowing he still carried a little “gift” from her. A token that been cupped around the most intimate part of her…
“No,” she finally rasped. “I…I want you to keep them.”
An extended rumble resonated through him as he reclosed the space between them and dipped a kiss along her forehead. “Tell you what?” he said, deep pleasure threading his voice. “Show of solidarity from the smitten dafty in the room. Tonight, I’ll wear my kilt in the manner befittin’ a proper Scotsman.”
She laughed again. It sounded more human but felt a lot more like it’d come from another creature: a woman much more confident and carefree and sexy than Jennifer Josephine Thorne could have ever considered in her existence. At once, she inwardly blamed and thanked “the smitten dafty”—while acknowledging that could only be the start of what she owed the man, in all his incarnations. The more of him she knew, including tonight’s Dom and dafty, the more she longed to give so much more to him than her damn panties.
Because, she openly admitted, the more he kept giving in return. Like this latest twist—throwing her into incredulity that must have shown on her face, if his resquared shoulders and resecured feet were any accurate reflector.
Into their little moment of shared amusement, she finally charged, “You’re—you’re serious, aren’t you? About us doing this?”
“You’re astute.” He twisted his lips until his dimples were deep accents in his cheeks. “But I already knew that.”
“I’ve…I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“You don’t say.”
Fast glower. “Smartass.”
“Hey, first times are fun to share with friends.”
She pulled in a breath and frowned. But only for a second. His rejoining smile was enough to shred any resistance Jen had left. In that moment, she wondered how the man had really ended up as a pilot. His ability to push a jet to Mach speeds was nothing compared to his ninja mind trick of disguising utter naughtiness as casual conversation.
So what was their “chitchat” going to be like in a real public setting…like the Scene Lounge?
As Jen watched him tuck her panties deeper into his pocket, a polite smile on his lips but silver fire blazing in his eyes, she finally wrapped her head around the fact that she was truly going to find out.
And that the experience wouldn’t be one she soon forgot.
“Sam?”
“Hmmm?”
“What happened to the pact we made in the car?”
“The pact?”
“About being good at least for an hour?”
The assertion seemed in need of a visual jab as well, so she set her wine down and stole a glance up at the man. It was a hell of a dirty job, but someone had to do it. Possibly again and again and again.
She could only hope.
Dirt, mud, sludge, muck… She’d take it all if it looked and felt and smelled this stunningly good.
His scent, all rain and sun and man together, consumed her aroused senses. His size, enforced by the plaid draping one of his shoulders and the vest custom-cut for his chiseled shoulders, welcomed her roving gaze. His formidable profile was given more definition by the bar’s dim lighting against the ginger stubble along his jaw. Despite all that, his face on the whole was open and congenial, even exchanging an approving smile with a guy who’d ordered the same dark ale as him. “Of course,” he murmured. “Good. One hour. I remember.”
“So squeezing my knee under the table—”
“Isn’t bein�
�� good?”
“There’s a difference between being good and feeling good, Captain.”
“But why?” He tilted his gaze in toward her. Gone was the funny guy from his bathroom who used silly Scottish nicknames on himself and smirked while he hid underwear in secret pockets. From the moment they’d walked in here, Sam had become all Dom, all the time—and damn it if that, along with all the kisses of fresh air up her skirt, weren’t turning her most sensitive parts into one mass of bare, quivering arousal. “Besides,” he went on, his gaze lowering and his lips curling, “I’m not squeezin’ your knee. Not anymore, at least.”
He was right. It was no longer her knee. It was her lower thigh and then the middle of her thigh. If he didn’t stop, it’d be her upper thigh and then—
“Sam.”
He set down his beer and laughed softly, as if she’d just told him a private little joke. The gleam in his eyes was brilliant; the focus on his face was indisputable. “How’s that for good, lass?”
She pushed her legs together to keep his hand from sliding higher. He chuckled quietly again, finally withdrawing it—
Only to replace it with the other one, meaning he was now fully turned, nearly blocking her view of the glamorous place with his shoulders. The Scene Lounge was a round room, where old Hollywood glam had been masterfully meshed with a Marrakesh brothel. The designers hadn’t skimped on the red leather, gold tassels, ornate accents, and nuanced dimness of the ambiance.
Sam smiled down into her face. Jen pressed her legs harder and attempted to glower back. For a moment, he looked adorably nonplussed, as if they were standing in her office and she’d cut him off in the middle of a one-liner, ordering him to sign off on flight assignments. She refused to remember that in most of those moments, she’d yearned to have him in this kind of a moment.
Different times, different circumstances.
Much different.
“Okay now. Stop.” She would’ve attempted to squirm free, but where did that take her crotch except closer to his fingers? Her utterly naked pussy…his completely determined hand…
To her shock, he acquiesced. “You win, beautiful.” Dutifully, he even tugged her skirt back into place. “For now, at least.” One swig of his drink later, he added, patting his pocket, “But only because I’ve got the bargaining chip.”
She sipped at her wine, a Cabernet as wonderful as the one they’d started back at his place, before returning coyly, “You going to reveal another fantasy involving my panties, Captain? How many of those do you have waiting in the wings?” She cocked her head, battling to copy his slick seduction though she was sure she probably came off more like the socially awkward Muppet who just said “meep” over and over again.
“I’ve tried not to dwell too much on my fantasies about you, mouse.” Though he leaned over close enough to grate it into her hair, his gaze struck out across the room again. “Mistakin’ one’s cock for the control stick can be a fatal mistake in sixteen tons of speedin’ steel.”
She clutched her wineglass. Hard. “I was seriously just kidding.”
“I wasn’t.” So gruff. Heavy. A sough of pure lust.
“So…you really do have fantasies?” she managed. “I mean, the kind that…”
“Fairly soon after the first moment I met you.” He dipped his head, peering closely at her again. “That’s fashin’ you fiercely. Why?”
“Why?” She arched both brows. “Because I’m a dweeb, Sam. I walk around with my nose in books and my head in the clouds.”
“But I like you that way.”
“I like me that way too—except when I’m yanked out and have to be reminded that I can’t take three steps in dress shoes without falling flat on my face. That sometimes—most times—I have the social graces of an orangutan. Like when I can’t stop babbling stupid shit like this, around someone like you, and—”
He borrowed her move from his place, flattening several fingers across her lips. “Haud your wheesht, darlin’. Someone like me? What the bloody hell does that mean?”
She turned her head, freeing her lips. “Sam…please. Don’t even try to tell me that you’re unaware of it.” She arced a finger, encompassing the room. “You turned every woman’s head—and half the men’s—just by striding in here a half hour ago.”
“And your point is what? That I inherited great bone structure and have decent hair?”
“It’s a little better than decent.” Much better, actually, but she didn’t push the subject. He’d started to steam about this. “But no, that’s not my point. It’s not what you have here.” She relished the chance to glide a touch down the side of his face. “It’s what you are in here.” She dipped her caress to the middle of his chest. “You’re something special, mister. People see it, know it, everywhere you go.”
He lifted a hand to cover hers. “And you’re not?”
His words still sounded like an accusation. Beneath their weight, Jen squirmed. “I don’t light up rooms everywhere I go. I don’t fly to the stars and then bring them back down for the earth to revel in.” The glow from a wall sconce was a perfect fixation, invoking a vision of Sam’s jet against a sunset sky. “That’s another fantasy of mine, you know,” she said wistfully. “To know what it’s like to fly with you.”
“Don’t change the subject.” His retort was instant. Too much so. Her confession had touched him a little, and Jen was glad of it. It was her honest assessment, not some ploy to get him up her skirt—despite how he’d already been there once tonight already. Besides, he was right. She nodded quietly, conceding to that.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “You’re right.”
“Damn right I’m right.” Though returning her gaze to his face yielded the fast recognition that they still weren’t on the same page. Sure enough, he growled out in challenge, “How the hell can you not see what I do in you?”
She pursed her lips. Tried not to get pulled back in by his stare, which was filled with the fiercest predator focus she’d seen in it yet, to the point that her inner radars were already screaming with the man’s missile lock on her. “Whoa.” She used both hands to T-stab the air. “I thought we were here to find the secret dungeon.”
“First things first.” He pushed in closer. Issued a low growl so close to her ear, it trailed shivering heat down her neck, between her breasts, and straight into the enlivened nerves at the crux of her thighs… “Answer me.”
“First things first?” She twisted her head to find him waiting with obvious expectancy. “I thought the dungeon hunt was the first thing…”
“You’re evading.”
“You’re evading.” But when he didn’t let up on his solid silver scrutiny, she dug in her heels on her own stare—though, just thirty seconds later, became the first to relent, diving her gaze back toward her wine. She didn’t want to admit to the subtle shift that had just occurred between them, although every hormone in her body wasn’t so forgiving. So many instincts screamed at her to turn and duck her head against him and then just pour out every misgiving and insecurity she’d ever had to him. But her will held out, at least long and strong enough to keep her head up and her voice steady as she declared, “You know what? We’ll have to agree to disagree on this, buddy. You’re a damn good man, Sam, but you can’t change what simply is. Even if we didn’t live halfway around the world from each other, we’d be living in different circles. Different worlds.”
His lips twisted as if he contemplated having to kiss a snake. “What? So you think a woman like Mattie belongs on my arm instead?”
Jen grasped his hand between both of hers, an unspoken plea for calm. “Maybe not her, exactly,” she conceded. “But…someone like her.”
“Like her?” He leaned away. Yep. Avoiding the snake.
“You know what I’m trying to say,” she snapped. “Why are you making this so hard?”
His eyes bugged. “I’m makin’ this—” He interrupted himself, inhaling sharply. Finished with just as harsh a nod. “All right, then.
If I belong with someone like Mattie, who do you belong with?” He swept an arm out. “Go on. Here’s a nice room, full of chaps to choose from. Who among them is like the guy you need to be with?”
Jen flinched. What other choice was there, in reaction to the venom in his voice? “Who the hell poured salt into your beer, Mackenna?”
His gaze narrowed. “Excuse the fuck out of me?”
“You heard me,” she countered. “Why are you acting like I black-eyed your ego? You’re a hell of a lot sturdier than this, Braw Boy.” Okay, using his call sign was aiming a tiny bit under the belt, especially in the same sentence she’d mentioned the strength he was more proud of than his looks, but he really was behaving like a bruised boyfriend instead of an out-of-her-league lover. So logically, that led to a pair of conclusions. Either he’d been truly hiding one hell of an ego over the last two weeks, or—
Or the guy really did care for her beyond the realm of just a couple of friends with epic benefits.
As they said where he came from: horse shite.
There had to be some other explanation.
“Okay, Captain Mackenna,” she finally mustered the courage to charge. “What the hell’s going on?”
Sam finished off his ale. Pounded the glass to the table. “That wasn’t an answer to my question.”
Fine. Two could play this game.
Jen scooped up her glass and chugged the rest of her wine.
And instantly regretted it.
After crashing into her empty stomach, the wine was instantly shot into her racing nerves and whipped into a cyclone in her head. “All of them.” Liquid courage, don’t fail me now. “There’s your answer, Captain. Because every man in this damn room wants to be with a cute little catch like me, right?” Her throat snagged on the sarcasm, making it possible for her pain to seep through. She pushed on, having no choice if she was to save any kind of face. “Damn. I’m so glad you’re here, because I’d be beating them all off with sticks if that wasn’t the case. Story of my life. Men, men, men. Everywhere I turn, it’s—agghh!”
