Read Can't Take the Heat Online

Authors: Jackie Barbosa

Tags: #Anthologies, #Contemporary, #Collections & Anthologies, #working women, #Romance, #Contemporary Romance, #modern women

Can't Take the Heat (4 page)

BOOK: Can't Take the Heat
11.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

So…yeah.

“Not exactly always,” he says ruefully.

I smile. “Nobody’s perfect. But you’re pretty darn close.”

Lifting myself up on tiptoes, I press my lips to his. I love the way we fit together, just a few inches of height separating us. At least
this
is utterly familiar, completely right.

He hesitates, not returning my kiss, but I know from the way his muscles tighten that he wants to. Badly. He’s thinking that I’ve been injured, that I just got out of the hospital, that it’s too soon for this. But it’s not.

I pull away. “Jessica said I should resume my regular activities.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything ‘regular’ about what I want to do to you.” His voice is low and guttural, verging on a growl.

Oh, he wants to, all right. As if I needed further proof, I feel the ridge of his rising erection against my abdomen.

“I like the sound of that.”

His body tenses even more, though that hardly seems possible since he’s already practically vibrating with suppressed energy. Then, with sudden purpose, he puts one arm around my back and the other beneath my knees and sweeps me off my feet. “As you wish,” he murmurs near my ear, raising goose bumps on my neck.

He lowers his head and kisses me with an urgency that takes away what’s left of my breath. Never breaking contact, he carries me down the hall with long, easy strides that belie how much I must weigh. Like so many things, my body has changed in the three years I’ve forgotten. I’m more muscular and athletic than I used to be.

But I can’t think about that right now, because the one thing that clearly hasn’t changed is the instant arousal that sparks between Wes and me, as if we’re two sticks rubbed together to make a fire. The thought of fire tickles something in my memory, but it’s gone before I can make any sense of it, lost as he deposits me in the center of our bed. Following me down, he pulls his black T-shirt off over his head, revealing the sculpted planes of his chest and stomach. I reach up and place my palm between his pecs. His heart thuds beneath my hand, swift but steady.

He looks down at me, and my desire ticks up a notch at the need I read in them. His eyes are his most remarkable single feature, their color varying from gold-green to light brown depending on his mood. When he’s aroused, the gold color gathers into a bright ring around his irises. The ring of fire, I call it. And right now, that ring is thicker and brighter than I’ve ever seen it.

One of his hands rests for a second just above my knee before sliding up under the hem of the cotton sundress I wore home from the hospital. It’s an unspoken request, and I obey it, lifting my butt and then my back and head so he can slip the dress up and off. Beneath, I’m wearing a pair of bikini panties and a plain white bra. They’re both gone as quickly as the two of us can manage to remove them.

Wanting him as naked as I am, I start to unbutton his jeans, but he shakes his head. “Not yet. If I take these off, I won’t be able to resist the urge to get inside you.” His breath shudders out of him. “God, you’re beautiful. I want to be inside every part of you.”

Damn, but the man really does know exactly what to say.

Longing coils tight in my belly and tingles in my taut nipples and especially in my swollen, aching sex. With a skill born of years of practice, he pulls one sensitive nipple into his mouth and swirls it with his tongue while his fingers glide between my thighs. He knows exactly how much pressure to exert, which angle to employ, both to make me come and to keep me from coming. I let my legs fall open, every nerve ending so alight I pray he’ll finish me before I go up in a puff of smoke.

He’s not so kind. Just as I’m on the brink, he releases my breast and scoots down my body, a wicked smile on his lips. I close my eyes and dig my nails into the bedspread, because I know what I’m in for. How good it’s going to feel.

His mouth finds that exact right spot, and I’m gone. I’m nothing but sensation, centered right there where he’s touching me, and radiating out to my toes, my fingertips, my scalp. He slides two fingers inside me, thrusts them in and out while he does mad, mischievous things with his tongue.

It’s not as good as I thought it would be. It’s so much better.

As I tumble over into the sweet agony of release, three words pop into my mind. Three words I don’t understand, but that keep repeating themselves.

I’ve missed you.

Damn, he’d missed her.

Naked and spent, she lay in the center of his bed—no, their bed—right where she belonged. Her eyes fluttered open, her long, thick lashes dusting the top of her cheeks like butterfly wings.

“Glad to see we’re not at the oral sex stage yet,” she teased, a little breathlessly.

This was a reference to a joke they’d both heard years ago. The punch line was that, after twenty years of marriage, all that was left was oral sex, as in the husband and wife yelling “Fuck you!” at each other.

“Not even close. Although,” he added, crawling up her body and leaning down to brush a kiss across her sweat-dampened brow, “I do want to fuck you.”

A mischievous smile curved her lips. She reached down to the waistband of his jeans. “Then you’d better get these off.” Tugging at the button until it popped free, she started on the zipper. “Dare I hope you went commando?”

He chuckled. “Sorry. I heard somewhere I always should wear clean underwear when I went to the hospital. Or something like that.”

The zipper reached bottom, and she shoved her hands beneath both layers—jeans and boxer shorts—at his hips and pushed them down toward his ankles. His cock sprang free, a blessed event after its long confinement. Ironic that all he wanted to do was confine it again.

The sooner, the better.

She wrapped her hand around his hot, poker-hard flesh while he kicked his pants to the floor. She pumped his length, base to tip, exactly the way she knew he liked, and he gritted his teeth in an effort to maintain some semblance of control.

It wasn’t as if he’d been celibate since their breakup, but he hadn’t exactly been active, either. And in the past few months, after another unsuccessful attempt at an actual relationship, he’d definitely resorted to being the master of his own domain, which meant she was driving him crazy with her far too skillful, entirely too-long-absent touch.

He grabbed her wrist and shook his head. “I said I wanted to fuck
you
, not your hand.”

“You and your one-track mind,” she said, grinning as she dragged one finger up his abdomen to the center of his chest. “Good thing we’re both headed to the same station.”

Their mouths met in short, hungry kisses as he pressed her down to the mattress and positioned himself between her legs. She bent her knees and angled her hips until the head of his cock rested against her entrance. Everything about her—the tangy taste of her lips and tongue, the spicy musk of her arousal, the silky smooth brush of her skin—was so achingly familiar, he could almost join her in forgetting the past three years, almost sink into her as though they occupied some alternate universe in which events had taken a completely different course.

Almost.
But in the end, even in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t ignore the facts.

He raised his head, interrupting their kisses, and drew back ever so slightly.

Her eyebrows drew together in confusion. “What’s the matter?”

“We need protection.”

“Huh? I’ve been on the Pill for years.”

“But not, I’m guessing, for the past five days,” he pointed out.

Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, you’re right. I didn’t even think of that.”

He hadn’t, either, until two seconds ago. But at least it was an elegant rationale for needing a condom that didn’t require explaining that they needed to practice safe sex for other, more mundane reasons.

Which brought him back to the most important question, and that was what the hell did he think he was he doing? She might not know that they were no longer a couple, but he couldn’t say the same. No matter how much she wanted him now, he doubted she would feel the same way if she knew how and why she’d broken up with him. It was easy to tell himself she’d
agreed
to this crazy treatment plan and therefore knew he was keeping secrets from her, but that didn’t make him any less culpable for his actions. If he went through with this, he wasn’t sure he would ever forgive himself for having taken advantage of her. On the other hand, if he never made love to her again, he
knew
he’d never forgive himself for squandering this opportunity.

Doing the wrong thing had never felt more right.

His mind made up, he turned over and reached for the nightstand. “Fortunately, I have a backup plan,” he said, opening the drawer and removing a foil packet from the nearly full box.

Later, she’d probably wonder why he had a box of condoms on hand if they were still together. After all, they’d passed the condom stage of their relationship by the middle of her junior year in college. For now, however, she seemed oblivious to the implications and instead helped him to roll the thin latex barrier into place.

“I’d forgotten how much fun putting these on could be,” she said, giving his cock a few long, tantalizing strokes.

He ground his teeth. “And I remember why we gave them up. You like teasing me way too much.”

“Sorry, Crush.” Her sultry, unapologetic smile said she wasn’t. Not one bit.

“Mmm, I very much doubt that,” he growled next to her ear, everything forgotten but the urgent need scorching his veins.

She gasped as, in one swift motion, he had her beneath him. In the next, he drove into her wet heat, seating himself to the hilt without preamble. Not that any was needed. Her flesh fitted him the way a lock fits its key…and only
its
key. It didn’t matter that they’d been apart for three years. It didn’t matter that he’d slept with other women in that time or that she had surely been with other men. All that mattered was that this was where both of them belonged, and they were here.

Bracing himself on his elbows on either side of her head so that their bodies touched from hips to chest, he began to move. Slowly, a gentle rocking motion that belied the ferocity of his desire to keep her there, trapped between the mattress and his weight, forever. For the first time since she’d regained consciousness, the two of them were truly living in the same moment, with nothing between them but shared pleasure.

But it couldn’t last, of course. Not forever, and not even for as long as he would have liked. Once inside her, he lost the ability to react consciously. Everything was reduced to instinct, to call and response. When she shifted her hips impatiently beneath him, he increased his pace in answer. At the small hiccup in her breath that signaled her impending release, he slid his hands under her ass and thrust even harder, even faster. And in those few seconds when she went utterly still and stiff right before she came, he could only kiss her and follow her over into the abyss. Into bliss.

And back, inescapably, to reality.

Wes wasn’t asleep, but he was drowsy enough that it took several seconds for him to realize someone was knocking on the door. As soon as he did, however, he knew both who was knocking and that he had less than a minute to get there.

He rolled over and eased off the bed as quickly as he could without waking Delaney. She
was
asleep, despite the fact that it was the middle of the afternoon. He wasn’t surprised she’d fallen into a postcoital slumber, however, given what she’d been through the past few days.

BOOK: Can't Take the Heat
11.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Vampire Elite by Irina Argo
The Chimaera Regiment by Nathaniel Turner
Sex, Lies & Nikolai by R.J. Lewis
Sarah Of The Moon by Randy Mixter
Sweepers by P. T. Deutermann
Stepbrother Aflame by Charity Ferrell
Only You by Willa Okati