by Cathie Linz
She could feel the magic of it in the very center of her being. He didn’t take any untoward liberties, made no crude advances. He simply touched her as no one had never done before, as if she were a priceless treasure.
Once her stockings were gone, Jason explored her now bare foot. She could feel his body’s warmth radiating into her. She’d never known that the inner arch could be such an erogenous zone. He moved his fingers in a slow, sensuous circle across the sole of her foot. Her sensitized nerve endings vibrated with awareness from the tip of her toes to the back of her heel.
He was nothing if not thorough in his approach, drying each toe, his fingers sliding between each one, making her shiver with sensual hunger. When he set her foot back onto his thigh, her toes were within greeting distance of his zipper placket and his swelling masculinity.
If she moved her foot a little higher she could practice that move she’d seen Meg Ryan use in the movie Restoration. If she shifted her foot just a little…and gained twelve tons of courage. A move like that was more in Nita’s playbook than Heather’s. She could practically hear her producer’s voice saying, “Go for it, girl!”
By the time he’d finished the clean-up operations, Heather was breathless and ready to throw caution to the wind. Boldly moving her foot, she inched her way higher up his thigh, only to end up nearly kicking Jason in the crotch as he suddenly stood up.
Talk about a close call!
Jeez, wouldn’t that be just her luck, to debilitate a man when she was trying to seduce him. Sneaking a look at his face, she was relieved to see that he had no idea how close he’d come, one way or the other, to heaven or hell.
Her quick glance lingered, caught by the emotional intensity in his dark eyes. There was no escaping the fierce passion. Did her expression reflect the same hunger his did as he gazed down at her?
Eye sex. She’d heard the phrase but never experienced it before. The look he gave her was smoldering, showing her that he found her attractive. No, more than that. Showing her that he wanted to rip her clothes off and steam up the windows by making love to her right there in the front seat of his car.
She couldn’t believe he was looking at her, Heather couldn’t-get-a-date-to-senior-prom Grayson, that way. It was intense, it was raw, and the unexpected delight of it made her breath catch in the back of her throat, as if she were a child making a wish on her birthday candles.
The headlights of another car pulling into the lot finally intruded on the moment, startling Heather and Jason, bringing them both back to the reality of their surroundings.
As Jason straightened up and closed the passenger door, Heather tried to regain her senses. By the time he’d joined her in the car, she’d tucked her ruined stockings and her ruined self-control out of sight. Heather tried to act as normal as possible given the fact that she was no longer a visual virgin. She’d been ravaged in a single glance. And damn, it had felt good!
Mae West was right. It was better to be looked over than overlooked.
Jason didn’t speak until they’d driven out of the lot and had stopped at a red light several blocks away.
“I meant to tell you that I heard part of your show this afternoon,” he said, looking over at her.
“What did you think?”
“That you’re good at what you do.”
“Just like you.” The best eye sex she’d ever had. “It seems like you have a reputation.”
“For what?” he asked suspiciously.
“A number of things. Being a very good prosecutor. Being a very good saxophone player. Being one of Chicago’s sexiest bachelors.”
“The first statement is true. The second isn’t. I’m not as good as I’d like to be. The third I keep telling you I’d rather forget,” he reminded her.
“Poor baby.” If they knew what the man could do with a single, long, hot look, women would really be mobbing him. Heather certainly wasn’t about to share the secret.
As luck would have it, a parking space in front of her building became free just as they arrived. When Jason came around to open the passenger door for her, she’d stepped out before realizing her feet were still bare. Doing a fair imitation of someone walking on hot coals, she hopped a few steps before he took things into his own hands, literally.
Scooping her up in his arms, he gallantly carried her to her front door before she could voice a protest. Once there, he carefully set her down, letting her body slide against the entire length of his, making her very much aware of every single masculine inch.
What now? Should she invite him in? Ply him with drinks and seduce him?
No. Absolutely not. She’d made enough of a fool of herself for one night. Time to say “Good night, Gracie,” and send him on his way.
Would he kiss her good-night? The anticipation was kissing…uh, killing her. This was ridiculous. Was she a wimp or a woman?
Enough was enough. Just hug the man and give him a friendly peck for the road.
“Thanks for brainstorming with me tonight, Jason.” A natural-born hugger, she gave him a quick squeeze and brushed her lips across his.
Heather had meant the kiss to be teasing and fun. And it was. It was also like stars colliding, showering light and magic. His lips were warm. She hadn’t expected them to be so soft, or so capable of doing such wonderfully unexpected things to her. Then Jason began adding his own seductive slant. She’d wondered if his glasses would get in the way, but they didn’t
His brief kiss at the restaurant earlier was nothing compared to this. That had been a gentle rain. This was a blizzard, dazzling her, whiting out her surroundings and focusing her entire existence on the contact between them. Excitement surged in her veins until her entire body was flushed with it. At Andre’s she’d been too stunned to respond. Not true now.
Now she reciprocated, parting her lips and allowing him entrance as he delicately sipped at her mouth. His feathery caress on the roof of her mouth raised the stakes to a new dimension of desire. It was as if an internal switch had been thrown, flooding her with blind yearning.
The moistness of his tongue diverted her as he brushed his open mouth across her skin, gently traversing her face, her neck, the sweet hollow at the base of her throat. The spaghetti straps of her dress offered little resistance and neither did she.
A sweetly exhilarating weakness invaded her lower limbs, tempting her until she turned to capture his promise-making mouth with hers. His vows weren’t verbal, they were sensual. And they spoke of more pleasure to come.
All this time his hands rested on her shoulders, only moving to tenderly brush her nape with his caressing fingertips. It was as if he didn’t want an embrace to distract them from the simple and purely erotic bliss of lips locked together in a moist joining.
Their kiss took on a life of its own, blossoming into an intimate exchange of sleek tongues and throaty murmurs. Jason finally got to test his theory that her mouth was made for hours of French kissing. He was totally absorbed in his research, leaving no area unexplored. And in the end, he came to the conclusion that he’d been right.
Jason felt his control slipping, but he didn’t care. He was too distracted by how incredibly smooth and soft her skin was. That first night he’d met her, he’d held open the door to the coffee shop for her and as she’d passed him by, her hair had brushed against his hand. That moment had stuck in his mind. Now he slipped his fingers into her hair, amazed by how silky the strands were. Baby-fine. Awesome. Every little thing about her was unexpectedly awesome.
Heather was amazed at how gently he touched her, yet how powerfully she reacted. He might not be holding her tightly in his arms, but he was kissing her with insatiable hunger and ardent passion. It was as if he was trying to tell her with his kisses what he couldn’t say in words. What he’d told her with his eyes in the car—that he wanted her here and now and damn the consequences.
The sound of a siren’s piercing wail finally registered in Heather’s head. She hazily attributed it to her internal alarm war
ning her that she’d jumped in the deep end of the pool and she was going down for the third time.
What little common sense she had remaining belatedly came to her rescue. A week ago she hadn’t even known Jason existed. She wasn’t going to make love with him tonight. It was too soon for him to see her naked. In fact, anytime this century might be too soon. He was too perfect and she was too…not perfect.
Reluctantly pulling away, she inhaled a lungful of air in an attempt to clear her head. Only then did she realize that the siren was actually atop a Chicago police car as it whizzed by. She also realized that Jason’s glasses were actually steamed up.
“Wow!” Jason whispered. His grin tugged at her heart, sorely testing her control.
“Yeah, wow,” she repeated, equally dazed and still entranced. There was more at work here than just sex. This man had the ability to set her on fire. And being set on fire invariably meant that one ended up in a pile of ashes. Time to apply some brakes, some caution. Time to get this bet over with before she did something she’d regret.
Taking another deep breath, Heather said, “I think we’ve both had enough stimulation for one night.”
“I can take it if you can.” His look made it clear that he was primed and ready for more.
Her look made it clear that she was impressed but determined. “‘Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly,’” she quoted.
“Ben Franklin?”
“Gypsy Rose Lee.”
“I can kiss slowly.”
“I noticed,” she said. “I admire that in a man.”
He leaned closer, as if to further demonstrate his ability, but she put a restraining hand on his chest to halt him. “This was only our second kiss. Imagine how good the next one will be. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Have you ever gone in-line skating?”
“No.”
“I’ll teach you how. Be here at noon. Good night. And thanks for rescuing me from that dessert cart.”
Staring at her closed front door a second later, Jason wondered who was going to rescue him from a woman who made his control evaporate like water in the Sahara.
WHEN THE PHONE RANG at seven the next morning, Heather was so out of it she picked up her bedroom TV’s remote control and tried to answer that before realizing it wasn’t her cordless phone. From the foot of her bed, Maxie shifted his front paw over his eyes, growling at the interruption of his sleep.
Heather knew he was growling at the telephone, not her. She felt like growling at it, too. “Hello,” she mumbled into the phone.
“Look, I don’t like seven in the morning any more than you do,” Nita grumbled, “but I couldn’t get to sleep for wondering how it went last night. With you and the legal eagle. Was he upset about the little mishap at the restaurant?”
“Almost falling into the dessert cart and triggering general mayhem was not a little mishap,” Heather said, stretching.
“It could have been worse. You could have ended up face first in that pie.” Nita pointed out.
“Where were you?” Heather asked, trying to stifle a yawn.
“I ducked under the table. I thought he might recognize me and wonder what I was doing there.”
“Wise move.”
“Wise move having Jason save you.”
“Maybe I should write a book about my experiences on how to snag a man,” Heather reflected. “Tip number 203—have a drunk conventioneer tell the man of your dreams you want to have sex with him. Tip number 204—follow that up by taking a nosedive into the dessert cart of an upscale restaurant Sure way to capture his attention.”
“So are you ready to move on to the next step? Which, in case you’ve forgotten, is taking him skating. He hasn’t done that before, has he? It would be just like Bud to hang us up on a technicality.”
“No, he hasn’t gone skating before. And he’s coming over later today.”
“Great! Then everything is going according to plan.”
“Oh please, don’t pretend that we ever had an actual plan to capture Jason’s attention.”
“Capturing his attention wasn’t the bet, snagging him was, meaning you’ve got him in the palm of your hand.”
Immediately, an erotic picture came to mind of her caressing a naked Jason, her hand closing over his velvety strength. She’d come close to that part of his anatomy several times the night before. So close…
As if sensing her X-rated thoughts, Nita said, “Maybe I should have said that snagging him means having him eating out of the palm of your hand, although having him in the palm of your hand would count in my book, too.”
“You’re bad,” Heather said, laughing.
“It’s why you like me so much. So let’s cut to the chase here. Is this all wishful thinking or do you know what his clothes look like on your bedroom floor?”
“I’m not going to sleep with Jason because of a bet!” Heather said, cursing her voice for squeaking.
“Of course not. For one thing, I doubt you’d get much sleeping done. For another, you wouldn’t have him in your bed because of the bet. He’d be there because he’s gorgeous and you want him.”
“Not on the first date.”
“You’re such a prude. You’d think the host of Love on the Rocks would be a little more…lenient.” Nita clicked her tongue.
“There’s a reason the show isn’t called Lust on the Rocks.”
“Because you refused to let marketing change the name. But let’s get back to Jason here. How soon before I can show Bud the agony of defeat?”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Jason last night. Don’t rush me.”
“Rush you? Which means he wanted to land his 747 on your runway, run his diesel engine on the express tracks to your internal station.” Nita gave no indication that she heard Heather’s choked laughter. “That’s great You’ve given me renewed hope that you’re going to win this bet after all. Now if I can just find that cute cab driver again, we’ll all be happy.”
“IF YOU WANT TO BREAK my legs, why not just do it now and get it over with?” Jason said as he struggled to hold on to the back of a park bench in order to stay upright.
Heather had brought Jason here to one of the smaller, lesser known of Chicago’s famous lakefront parks because it topped her list of favorite places in the city. Especially on a postcard perfect spring day like today. “Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood,” she murmured.
“Let me guess. Gypsy Rose Lee?”
“Daniel Burnham, lakefront architect” She waved her hand toward the city skyline, all sharp angles and reflective glass, on the other side of the Outer Drive. It looked great from here. So did Jason, wearing his black jeans and T-shirt, what she liked to think of as his Dark Knight attire. The dark glasses he wore made him look like a lean and sexy Blues Brother.
Gazing back at the urban skyline, Heather fondly reflected how much she loved this view of the city. She also loved the endearing way that Jason was unable to keep his balance on the rented in-line skates. Maybe she had some sublimated need to keep him as off balance as she felt. “Are you sure you don’t want to take off your sunglasses?”
“They’re prescription. If I take them off I might run someone over.”
“To do that, you’d have to move first,” she noted wryly.
“I am moving. That’s the problem.”
“You’re swaying in place. That’s not the same thing as skating. Here, hang on to me.”
Jason gingerly shifted his grip from the bench to her, wrapping both arms around her before flashing her a naughty grin. “This is much better.” Now he had no trouble staying upright. In fact, he was moving like a pro, and not just at in-line skating. His hands rested on the small of her back, his outstretched fingers provocatively close to the curve of her derriere.
“You fake!” she exclaimed. “You knew how to do this all the time.”
“I would have thought my kiss last night would have convinced you of that,” Jas
on said, with a teasing smile.
“I was referring to in-line skating,” Heather replied demurely.
“I haven’t been in-line skating before. But I’ve been ice skating since I was three.” He would never have agreed to this outing if he hadn’t known what he was doing. Looking the fool was not on his agenda. “And I played hockey in high school,” he added.
“Hockey, huh?” She gave him a speculative look. “Ever break your nose?”
“No. Why? Are you going to repay me that way?”
“I don’t believe in violence. I prefer other means.” Reaching under his upraised arms, she tickled his armpits.
Jason squirmed away from her with boyish outrage, his dark hair falling over his forehead. “Hey, that’s no fair!”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“Which of those are we talking about here?” he asked.
To which she replied, “Ice cream.”
“I don’t recall that being on the list of choices.”
Heather pointed down the path with a smile of anticipation. “An ice-cream cart is coming this way.”
“Is this another case of you eating when you’re nervous?”
Instead of answering, she said, “Last one to the cart pays,” before taking off in a burst of speed.
Jason lost valuable time being distracted by the tempting sway of her rounded hips displayed to the best advantage from his location behind her. The Bermuda shorts she wore were demure by most standards. That just whet his appetite all the more.
He couldn’t believe how much he wanted her. Not that he was the kind of man who rushed into things. But then he wasn’t the kind of man who would normally be caught dead skating along the lakeside, either. Heather had a way about her that made the unexpected appealing.
She didn’t fit into his plans, but then there was room for a dalliance. And there was no one he’d rather dally with than Heather. No other woman had intrigued him to this extent. That didn’t mean he was in danger of losing control of the situation, he reassured himself, squelching his inner fears. After all, he wasn’t talking about love. He was talking about sex. The bottom line was that he wanted this woman in his bed.
