Double the Heat (38 page)

Read Double the Heat Online

Authors: Lori Foster,Deirdre Martin,Elizabeth Bevarly,Christie Ridgway

Tags: #Erotic Stories; American, #Man-Woman Relationships, #Mate Selection, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Short Stories

BOOK: Double the Heat
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Zin’s other hand landed on his thigh.
Hallelujah.
“You guess? You don’t remember?”
“It’s foggy in my memory.” Which was true, so he didn’t need to feel anything but gratified as Zin shifted even closer. He turned the hand she covered so he could grasp hers in reassurance.
“So you’re still under a doctor’s care?”
Mark was his best friend. John Henry figured he’d be under his “care” for the rest of his life—and the man had exhorted him just two days before to get his priorities straight. Right now, strict truth wasn’t at the top of John Henry’s list. “Yeah.”
Zin frowned. “Then you shouldn’t be out here. It’s getting chilly.”
But it would be downright cold if he had to return to his room alone. “Why don’t we go inside, then? You could join me for a nightcap at the bar.”
“No.” She made a face. “The last thing I need is the other staff members seeing me fraternizing with one of the guests. I don’t need to add that to my rep as a Friday.”
John Henry stilled as the next natural suggestion popped into his head. It couldn’t be that easy. Right? He’d been willing to work
much
harder than this to get her where he wanted. He cleared his throat, then remembered to cough instead. It came out sounding pathetic, if you asked him, but Zin rubbed his thigh at the sound, distracting him for ten too-long seconds.
Follow up, man!
the devil on his shoulder urged.
“So, Zin . . .” He kept his voice casual. “If you don’t want to be seen in public, I have a well-stocked minibar in my room. Care to join me?”
Her head tilted to the side in consideration. He held his breath.
“I can do that,” she said.
The red-caped dude with the pitchfork and horns cheered. John Henry tried to keep any whiff of the triumph out of his smile. But surely he
was
smiling, because Zin responded with her own.
“You have the most amazing dimple,” she said. “Right here.” A small forefinger brushed his cheek.
All the better to seduce you with.
And damn, he felt like a wolf as he led her away from the terrace and toward his room. In deference to her concerns about the staff seeing them socializing, he kept his hands to himself until they reached the deserted outdoor pathway that led to his suite.
At his door, he reached for his card key with one hand and twined the fingers of his other with hers. As he glanced back to gauge her mood, her face froze him.
It was so damn arresting in the starlight—that magical hair, those delicate features, the mouth with its soft and tempting lower lip.
A beautiful package, this woman, and he’d lied to her.
“Sweet Zin,” he said, as the devil on his shoulder groaned, “I wasn’t altogether up-front with you.”
John Henry Hudson: uptight, overwound, and such a Boy Scout.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’m not really under a doctor’s care anymore. I just said that in hopes of . . . well, you know.”
There was a moment of silence between them. Then Zinnia Friday’s tempting mouth curved. “I do know, John Henry. And I knew out on the terrace too.”
Busted! Yet . . . yet she’d still followed him back to his suite! Hmmm. Didn’t that imply . . . ?
He pulled her close, gratified—hell, happy as the proverbial clam—when she didn’t resist. Her body molded to him, and he knew that Zinnia Friday was going to be his lover tonight. Lowering his head, he kissed her. “I’m a very, very bad man,” he said against her lips.
But he was determined to make sure Zin reaped the benefits of his sin.
 
 
Zin
had decided that if John Henry showed up during the wine tasting, she would take it as a sign that she should kiss him again. And more than just kiss, if the opportunity presented itself.
The bargain had seemed a sensible one following yet another sleepless night thinking about the man while also worrying over the warning Stevie had dispensed after John Henry left her at Napa Princess Limousine Service. “Your sexual parts are going to shrivel like raisins unless you do something with them!”
To be honest, Zin hadn’t been certain she knew what to do with those sexual parts anymore, but that seemed a baseless concern now that she was pressed so close to John Henry’s large frame. Anchoring her to him with a hand on each of her hips, he delivered a sequence of luscious, passionate kisses.
And in response she felt as swollen and juicy as autumn’s un-harvested fruit.
Maybe even more so, knowing he’d been willing to lie to get her in his arms again—and then couldn’t go through with the fib after all. An honest man.
Tucking her closer against him, he groaned, then lifted his head. His gaze on hers, he fumbled with the door behind him, so he could pull her over the threshold. His brows came together as he drew her into the dimly lit room. “Why are you smiling like that?”
She put her fingers to her mouth, and yes, there it was. “I don’t know, exactly,” she answered, laughing. A giddy euphoria was bubbling through her blood, a feeling she’d never before experienced. “Maybe because this is easier than I thought.”
“How so?”
“I don’t do this often, and I never do it with near strangers,” Zin admitted. “I usually put a lot more thinking time into a decision like this. It’s kind of, well . . . freeing just to go for it.”
John Henry stepped closer. “I think, Zinnia, that ‘freeing’ is something we’re both definitely in need of. So let’s say I ‘free’ you from this shirt you’re wearing, and then those pants, and then . . .”
His nimble fingers went to work.
As each fastening loosened, Zin felt her inhibitions ease too. Sex had always made her self-conscious—
Am I making funny faces? What if he notices the freckles on my breasts?
—but with John Henry the only thing she was conscious of was the delicious sweep of his long fingers against her skin as he removed the last of her clothing.
Naked as a baby, she faced him—still fully dressed—and could only smile again at the smug expression on his face. His fingertip touched just to the right of her nipple. “The pixies sprinkled you with their dust,” he said. “I’m going to taste every one of your freckles.”
He managed to put his tongue to only three of them before Zin’s knees gave out. Kneeling on the plush carpet, now it was her turn to free John Henry. Her heart slamming in her chest, she opened his jeans and found him with her fingers, hot and hard, and more exciting than she’d ever considered any man.
She wasn’t thinking of her freckles or her face, not of anything but what he would feel like in her mouth and against her tongue. He made a tortured sound as she stroked him wetly, and the sound rippled through her, ratcheting up her arousal. When her mouth closed over him, his hand tangled in her hair and goose bumps raced from the point of contact in woozy circles across the surface of her skin. The birthmark on the back of her neck throbbed.
John Henry was talking to her in a low voice, but she ignored the whispered words to indulge her senses in her exploration. She’d never been comfortable enough with a man to play like this, and she didn’t question why it was so easy with someone she’d known for such a short duration.
Instead, she turned off her usually busy thoughts and cupped him in one hand while she used the other to steady him for the suction of her mouth. His fingers tightened in her hair and she glanced up, the greedy look in his eyes sending more champagne bubbles coursing through her bloodstream.
One of his big hands stroked down her cheek, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the soft touch on her skin as her tongue circled him again and ag—
Suddenly, he had her up on her feet and she found herself on his bed. “Hey,” she protested, wiggling against the sheets. “I wasn’t done.”
His gaze on her nakedness, he quickly shucked the rest of his clothes. “
I
was almost done.” Then he knelt on the bed to prowl his way to her body.
She giggled—Zin,
giggling
during sex!—and scrambled away from him.
He caught her ankle and drew her back, her bottom gliding against soft cotton. She laughed again, and slid her hands under her hips. “Be careful, I’ll get a bed burn.”
“Then I’ll kiss it and make it better.” He didn’t smile. “Open your legs, sweet Zin.”
Which meant she wouldn’t, of course, until he crawled to the pillows and kissed away the last of her playful protests. His head lowered to her breast, and he took her nipple in his mouth, sucking and tonguing it until she felt his hand between her thighs and realized they’d parted in unconscious invitation.
Silly to have put up even token resistance, because the man knew what to do with his fingers. Gentle strokes drew forth a slippery wetness that he spread over all her folds. Through half-closed eyes, she watched John Henry, propped on one elbow, seemingly fascinated with the movement of his hand and the reaction of her body. He nudged her clitoris, and she drew a sharp breath, her hips jerking against the sweet pleasure of the touch.
A satisfied smile curled the corners of his mouth, and then he touched her there again, rubbing small circles that made corresponding spirals of tension tighten inside her. “John Henry,” she whispered, “you’re really good at this.”
“We Type A’s,” he murmured, his dimple cutting deep, “always apply ourselves.”
She gasped as one finger slid inside her. Pleasure coiled, ready to strike. “Maybe you should . . .”
His thumb played her as another finger found its way inside her. Her breath caught in her lungs; her hips chased his touch, wanting more, more, more. “John Henry” was all she managed, trying to warn him.
He bent down to take her mouth, his hand still working its magic. “Go free, Zin,” he whispered.
And she did, breaking the bonds of the tightening sexual helix in wild bursts of pulsing bliss.
He didn’t give her time to gather the pieces of herself. Instead, he was at her mouth, her breasts, her sex, kissing, stroking, tasting, until she threw back her head and reveled, giddy again, liberated and lustful.
He lifted the backs of her knees in his hands, and knelt between her legs to enter her, one delicious inch at a time. When she was full, full of John Henry, he rocked his body against hers, and she rose to meet each thrust. Unfettered again, reaching for her peak without awkwardness.
Their breaths sounded loud in the dim room, and she loved the passionate sound. Her thighs tightened on either side of his hips, and he thrust harder, deeper, causing her to tighten around him. Causing him to reach between them for more of those Type-A touches.
This climax rose from her toes, rolling over her body like the sun rising over the earth to heat the air and light the sky and ripen fruit.
She burst again, and the waves of sensation pushed him over. John Henry groaned, his hips jerking against the cradle of her body. Then he was still, leaving her to pulse around him in waning aftershocks.
With a softer groan, he withdrew and fell to the pillow beside hers. “You about killed me, Zin.”
She laughed.
“Hey, is murder that funny?” He rolled his head to look at her.
“I’ve never had so much fun in bed,” she confessed.
His thumb brushed the edge of her cheekbone, the gesture tender. “Then why, sweet Zin, are you crying?”
Five
 
Double-Edged
 
Zin touched her face, surprised and then embarrassed to find John Henry was right. There were tears on her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away with the edge of her hand. The room was dim, with only the light from the foyer weakly reaching them, so she went with the cover. “You are
so
wrong. I am
not
crying.”
He chuckled and rolled from the bed, padding to the bathroom, where she assumed he was tending to the condom business. She’d noticed how smooth he was about that, and wasn’t surprised by it. It seemed like everything John Henry did was done well and done thoroughly. She wiggled against the sheets. All hail the Type A.
He called to her from the bathroom. “It’s a fact that girls cry, Zinnia. You don’t have to hide it.”
A laugh was in his voice now, and she appreciated him for smoothing over the moment. Really, she was flummoxed by the whole wet-cheeks thing. “No fact, John Henry, believe me.”
“You’re wrong.” He emerged from the bathroom and, buck naked, strolled to the minibar. She watched him pour her a glass of wine and pop the top off a beer for himself. Then he turned and walked toward the bed.
She tried to keep her gaze on his face.
“I have a sister, Zin.” He slid back into bed and handed her the wineglass. “I know a lot of Sigma Woo Hoos.”
Frowning, she scooted up on the pillows. “The Who Woos?”
“Not Who Woos, Zin. Woo Hoos. Sorority girls, but that’s neither here nor there.”

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