Baddest Bad Boys (21 page)

The bottom pool, carved deeply into ancient rock and worn smooth by ever-flowing waters, was large enough to take four people with ease. Here, so close to the beach, the pungent sulfur odor gave way to the scent of ocean winds.

It was magical. Every tense and tired muscle in Tommi’s body tingled, drawn to the ease and relaxation the waters promised.

Mac started to take off his jacket.

“What are you doing?”

“Going in.” He peeled off his shirt to reveal a broad chest, lightly sprinkled with hair, and amply muscled. His hand went to his zipper.

“You’re not going to—”

“Take it all off?” He didn’t smile, but he did raise a brow. “Only if you want me to.” He took off his shoes and socks, then shucked out of his jeans, draping them carelessly over the walkway’s two-by-four railing.

What a body! Tommi didn’t know whether to be thrilled or alarmed. An image of the young Mac Fleming popped into her head, that skinny, too-tall kid with the glower from hell. Whoever that boy was, he was gone, kidnapped by life and passing years and replaced by a man as physically perfect as she’d ever seen; his body was hard-muscled and tight, his smooth skin taut over angular, strong features, as unambiguously male as…the thickness in his briefs.

She watched him ease into the pool, held her breath when the quivering waters reached his muscular thighs and higher, molding those briefs to his heavy sex before he sank into the steaming waters waist-high. He stretched his arms along the rock shelf behind him, put his head back, and closed his eyes.

They were still closed when he said, “Take it off, Smith, and get in here. I won’t bite. And I won’t touch.” He opened his eyes. “But I will look.”

Tommi didn’t move. Couldn’t. Mac was lying. He would touch. If he didn’t, she would. Her fingers ached to explore him. She studied the man stretched out in the pool, her throat tight, her heart seeming afloat in her chest, its beat loud and unsteady. It made no sense. Mac didn’t like her but he wanted her. He was a stranger to her, a mistake waiting to happen…and she wanted him.

Risk. It had been a long time, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Still she hesitated. And the first pellets of rain hit her cheeks.

Mac gave her a speculative look. “You’re going to get wet either way.”

“I’m not wearing a bra.”

“Good. From that preview I had last night, I’d say I’m a lucky man.” He shifted over, nodded at the stone bench seating nature had provided. “Unless they don’t stand scrutiny in the cold light of day. Or you think I can’t keep my promise not to touch.” He did one of those almost-smiles of his, the challenge implicit.

“Most men wouldn’t.”

“I’ll bet you know the comeback to that one.”

“You’re not most men.”

He didn’t answer but kept his gaze on her, fixed, unwavering.

“You’re daring me, aren’t you?” She shook her head.

He smiled, patted the rock beside him.

As overconfident males went, Mac was top percentile.

“And you won’t touch me,” she echoed, warming to the challenge.

“Not an eyelash.” He crossed his heart.

Suddenly the waters with a half-naked Mac showcased to full effect became a tantalizing playpen. And considering she hadn’t played for a long time, much too tempting to pass up.

She had to stop herself from smiling.

It would be fun to see the man suffer. And distracting.

She stroked the tab on her jacket zipper, pulled it down slowly, maybe eight inches. “Okay then, Fleming—ready or not, here I come.”

5

Tommi undressed in a cold, misty rain—and Mac watched her every move, as she knew he would. Ignoring the fact she was damn near freezing, she forced herself to make a show of it. First the outer jacket, then the fleece. When she was down to her sweater, she took off her shoes and started undoing the fly buttons on her jeans, flicking them open slowly, one by one. Finally she shimmied out of what was fast becoming skin-sticking denim.

She met Mac’s gaze directly and pulled her sweater over her head. With nothing between them now except heavy rain, wind, and a slice of sheer black silk, she stood, hands on hips, and let him look his fill.

He wasn’t going to touch, he said.

She’d see about that.

Mac managed not to swallow his damn tongue, but nothing short of the grim reaper could stop him from getting hard. He memorized every curve as Tommi unveiled it, the line of her hip, the rounds of her firm breasts, the triangle of black covering the territory he most wanted uncovered.

Even her goddamned knees were perfect.

As he’d imagined her. As he’d dreamed her.

She stood over him, rain a silver slick over her straight shoulders. Her nipples pebbled, two strong juts into the wind and rain. She looked like some kind of nature goddess.

Except for that black silk triangle.

And he’d promised not to touch. He was a madman. An egotist who’d taken bull-headed pride to new heights. As penance, he’d probably have this hard-on for life. And he knew damn well she was teasing him. Either that or she was enjoying freezing her butt off.

“If you don’t get in,” he said, sounding like he felt, frustrated and angry, “you’ll get pneumonia. And I’ll embarrass myself.”

She stepped down into the pool and sat on the stone shelf opposite him. When the water covered her to the shoulders, she closed her eyes. “Oh…this is heaven, absolute heaven.” She lifted partway out of the water, forked her fingers through her rain-soaked hair. In his sex-fogged brain, her breasts, wet with steam and water and only an arm’s length away, seemed luminescent; her eyelashes, when she raised them to meet his gaze, were diamond-tipped and sleek.

“Glad you took the dare?” If he didn’t say something, he’d drown in his own juices. God, he hurt.

“Yes.” She made a swimming pose with her hands, playfully pushed the water aside, then looked at him from under lowered lids. “Except—”

He waited. “Except what?”

She skimmed her palms over her nipples, cupped her breasts and lifted them. Offered them. “It’s making me…hot.” She grinned at him, a grin full of mischief and sexual mayhem, and stood. The water now only to her waist, she waded toward him. “Very hot.” Standing over him, she purred, “What about you? Is your temperature rising?” She rested a hand palm-flat on her stomach, ran a finger under the trim of her panties.

Thunder rolled and roared somewhere in the distance. The weather was closing in, as was Tommi. Torturing him with his own promise.

The steam rose from the pool to curl around her like smoke, making her unreal, dreamlike. A sexual feast, just out of reach.

He dropped his gaze. Below the surface of the water he saw the black triangle, the slight rise of her sex. A handful. A perfect handful. And under that—

He cut his thoughts. A promise was a promise. He’d have her, all right, but when he chose the time and place. When he was in control and could make her so hot she’d combust under him. In a primal way he wanted to brand himself on her. So she’d never forget…probably never forgive him.

He stretched out his legs on either side of hers, his erection aching—and blatant, and leaned back against the rock. “You’re playing me, Smith. It won’t work. You can save the ‘come fuck me’ routine for another time. Right now, all I want is nature’s hot tub.”

He gave her credit—she didn’t flinch, she laughed. “Looking at that”—she eyed the hard length of him visible beneath the clear water and smiled—“I’d say what you want is me.”

“Figured that out, did you?”

“Uh-huh. Actually, I passed the Introduction to Male Arousal course sometime in the sixth grade. There were pictures and everything.” She looked at him again, more studiously this time. “You’d have made a good model. Long. Straight. Very impressive.”

“Thanks for the kind words. Now…sit.” Her eyes might as well have been her hands on him, stroking—but coming apart in the hot springs wasn’t his plan. Tommi knew the sex game, played it well, which both pleased and irritated him.

“I could go on.” She looked at him as if she knew he was suffering and she had the cure.

“You planning a second career doing phone sex?” he asked through a locked jaw.

She laughed then, stepped over his leg, and sat beside him. Her arm touched the side of his chest, under his outstretched arm. He turned his head a second, closed his eyes and took in some oxygen, his promise now looking like a marathon of self-control—or a fatal attack of male masochism.

Tommi didn’t let up. “I could straddle you right now, take off your briefs, and take you in…deep.” She ran her tongue over her lower lip. “Or I could just taste you? Which would you like?” She lifted her brows, gave him an innocent look totally at odds with her provocative words. “Of course, that would involve us touching.”

His mind stuck on auto-sex. Tommi…tasting him.

Every testosterone-loaded cell in Mac’s body detonated, the din of it deafening him, blotting out reason. He turned his head to look at her, see what was in her eyes. “I’d like both. And you damn well know it. But—” He stopped, the devil on one shoulder telling him to shut up and begin the feast—make her chew on her own taunts—the irritating wingless angel on the other telling him to be honest. If he were honest, his guess was Tommi would be out of the water with the speed of light. Shit!

“But?” she said, keeping in the game with her wide eyes and sultry tone.

“That’s all I want. To fuck you and forget about it.” The want part was a given, the forget-about-it part? Not such a sure thing.

She froze in place, the smile slipping from her face. She looked away briefly. “I guess I should have expected that.” Her smile came back, but it was weak and wobbly, and she kept compressing her lips. “You look at me and you see a bed, a babe—and sex.”

His lungs seized up, tight. “Tommi, I—” He was going to apologize. Like hell!

She held up a hand. “Forget it. You were honest. That’s something.” Her wobbly smile held, but the shadow in her eyes darkened. “I’ll admit to a time in my life when I, uh, looked for love in all the wrong places, but I’m not the girl who, as some of my so-called friends in high school predicted, was ‘the graduate most likely to suck her way to the governor’s mansion.’”

Silence.

“What kind of girl are you?” Mac felt like Jell-O—at least most of him did. The rest felt like hell.

“For one thing, I’m not a girl, not anymore. I’m a woman—and like every woman, I work hard, try to do the right thing—when I can figure out what it is, and—”

“And,” he prodded.

She laughed, a thin laugh, soft and regretful. “And I try to stay away from men who have nothing to offer but sex in an emotional vacuum.” She moved away from him, settled herself on the rock ledge across from him, and sank deep into the water.

“Or in a hot spring?”

It was as if she didn’t hear him. “Reid McNeil was the first man I’d dated in two years. And I blew it again. I don’t feel good about that.” She looked at him. “And now I’m here…with Hugh’s younger brother in hot water again—literally, this time—about to make another mistake by seducing him.” She slanted him an odd look. “A younger brother who didn’t, maybe still doesn’t, like me all that much.”

Mac’s heart, which had finally slowed to normal, kicked again, but he said nothing. He might need to revisit some faulty thinking, but he wasn’t ready to deny her accusation.

“I never slept with Hugh. You should know that.” She hesitated. “He wanted to. I didn’t.”

The weight that lifted from Mac’s chest was a semi-load.

“He was—is—too good a friend. Sex would ruin that.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, rubbed her shoulders. When her foot brushed his under the water, she pulled it back.

“Sex doesn’t ruin things. People do.” He moved through the water until he was braced over her. She put her hands on his chest, held him back. He let her.

“You haven’t denied it,” she whispered, her voice catching.

“Denied what?”

“That you don’t like me. Will you tell me why?”

“I’m starting to like you. Is that good enough?” Now wasn’t the time to answer her question, and he didn’t wait for her answer to his, because he wanted her mouth put to a better use.

Her lips were moist, her mouth welcoming, and her eyes, wide and wary when he lowered his head to hers, closed when their mouths joined. Her hands curled into his chest hair and, finally, his tongue entered to taste her. His sex lay heavy, achingly ready, against her black silk triangle. Before their kiss sapped all his strength, he lifted his head. Ignoring the sear of tension between his thighs, he watched her eyes come open, languid and dazzled.

Good. Dazzling women was what he liked to do best.

He touched a finger to her cheek, then ran it down her throat. When her eyes opened and fully met his, they went from dazzled to guarded. “You’re good at it, aren’t you?”