Dream & Dare (5 page)

Swallowing hard, trying to remember that he was being presumptuous and arrogant, that he had a knife, that he was a stranger, she said, “Just a ride, I thought. You can go now.” He hadn’t moved his thumb, and her lips moved on it as she spoke.

“You want me to?”

“Kiss me.” She’d meant it as a question, because she wasn’t sure if he was asking if she wanted him to kiss her or if she wanted him to go. But it came out an imperative—a plea, even—and he smiled and bent his head toward hers.

He came down slowly, and she could have backed away. But she didn’t.

And oh, that mouth was even better at kissing than it was at smiling. At first, he simply brushed his lips over hers, back and forth, until Bibi felt the tingle and clench in her core that made her restless and impatient. She took hold of his kutte in both hands and opened her mouth.

She felt him smile, and then his tongue was in her mouth, and his hands were on her ass. The skirt of the dress was short; the crinoline provided most of what coverage there was. But he didn’t go searching for bare skin. He simply held on and squeezed her body to his, deepening the kiss with every breath.

When she let go of his kutte and snaked her arms inside it, he groaned and pulled his head from hers. “I want to have you.”

That was at least the second time he’d said something that sounded like it had come out of a novel. She should have laughed at him. Gina would have laughed at him. But Bibi thought it sounded romantic.

“Please don’t be a serial killer.”

She caught the ghost of an expression that seemed important, but then it was gone, and his hand was on her face again. “I won’t hurt you.”

~oOo~

Bibi moved the bed tray over to the window and helped Hoosier clean up. She wiped the crumbs from his beard and gave him a warm washcloth to wipe his hands. As she smoothed her hand over his beard, she whispered, “That was when I fell in love with you, you know. I don’t think I ever said that before. Don’t know why. But it was then, when you looked down at me and said you wouldn’t hurt me. I believed you right off. And I loved you.”

She settled at his side and laid her head on his shoulder. “And you never have hurt me, Hooj. You’ve made me furious. You’ve made me crazy. But you’ve never hurt me. Not one day in all the years since.”

His hand clenched hard around hers, and Bibi knew he’d understood her.

Because she knew Hoosier believed he had hurt her terribly at least once in their years together. He remembered enough to know that.

But maybe that wasn’t a memory they needed to relive.

He was in there, though. He remembered; he was with her, even if they couldn’t quite reach each other yet. Tears blurred her vision. “No, baby. You’ve never hurt me. Not ever.”

~oOo~

Bibi woke the next morning with a strong, tattooed arm around her. She took a deep breath and sank into the calm of that touch, feeling his warm body, the hair of his arms, legs, and chest behind her, around her, against her bare skin. She felt content and secure.

She’d never been with a guy with a hairy chest before. It was sexy. And she’d never had a lover like he was before. Joel and she had had what she thought of as amateur sex—sweaty, but not exactly effective. And these days, usually what she had were quick, drunken grapples. It wasn’t like her crowd did dates or anything like that, and it wasn’t like she had the chance to meet other people. Her clientele at Nordstrom was primarily female. Every now and then, a man would come looking to buy something as a gift, and every now and then, one of those men would make a pass, but that was just gross.

So she had sex with the guys she knew, and then they, or she, went home.

Hoosier was…well, he’d been a
lover
. He’d gone down on her—and now she’d need both hands to count how many times in her life that had ever happened—and he’d known what he was doing. Better yet, he hadn’t shoved her toward his crotch like he’d expected quid pro quo.

And when they’d fucked, he’d held off, both times, until she came. He’d kissed her and touched her, and he’d been vocal. Not just grunting and groaning, but talking. Telling her how good she felt, how she tasted. And dirtier things, too.

Remembering, she felt her body ready itself for more, and she moaned and stretched with restless need.

He stirred behind her, breathing deeply and rolling to his back before settling into sleep again. Bibi mourned the loss of his arm around her.

But then she thought of her face and hair. Oh, hell’s bells, she knew without a mirror that she looked a mess. She’d seen her post-club self gaping blearily back at her over the sink more than enough times to know the horror.

Peeping over her shoulder, she saw that Hoosier was really out. The sheet slanted across his belly, and she paused for a moment and stared at that chest. The hair over it was black and not too heavy. Like Tom Selleck on
Magnum P.I
. Just right. A narrower swath ran down his belly, leaving the contours of his abdominal muscles totally exposed for lecherous ogling. Tattoos covered his arms, but his chest and belly were unmarked, except for a thick scar a couple of inches under his right nipple.

He was sex on a plate.

Shaking herself out of her lechery, Bibi eased carefully out of bed and grabbed her chenille robe off the back of the door—just in case Gina had come home and not alone.

The coast was clear, though. The front rooms were empty, and Gina’s bedroom door was open. Bibi was alone with Hoosier. She went into the bathroom.

After she peed and brushed her teeth, she picked up the pliers from the window sill under the painted-shut, frosted-glass window, and turned the broken hot-water knob on tub faucet.

The claw-foot tub was ancient, the cast iron showing through an assortment of chips and cracks, flowering rust in all the faults. The shower was a jury-rigged contraption connected to the tub faucet, enclosed by two shower curtains suspended by a metal ring. The air pressure from the steam of the hot shower, or something like that, made the shower curtain pull inward and attach itself to the body inside.

Showering was an exercise in overcoming claustrophobia. But after two years, Bibi was used to it. She waited while the pipes groaned and rattled, and then she finally got the water finessed to a bearable temperature—today, a little too much on the hot side, which was better than the occasional cold showers she got stuck with.

Bibi stepped in, and by the time her hair was fully wet, the shower curtain was clinging emphatically to her legs. Far past the days when she fought fate, she ignored it and washed her face.

She’d just gotten her hair fully shampooed when the shower curtain left her legs and instead billowed outward. The door had opened. With her hands in her hair, she froze. “Gina?”

A deep, masculine chuckle. “No. Need to take a piss. That okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. Go ‘head.” The door closed, and the shower curtain eased back inward.

For a moment, she stood exactly as she was, shampoo oozing down her face. When it hit her eyes, she snapped out of it and turned, leaning her head backward so that the water ran over her face and down her hair.

When she looked up and blinked her eyes clear, Hoosier was watching her. He’d opened the curtain a few inches.

They stared at each other.

Finally, Bibi felt naked and exposed—because she was—and she took hold of the curtain. “You need somethin’?”

He smiled, and her insides fluttered. Cause and effect. “Yeah, I do. But first, not sure if I can flush without boiling you.”

Oh, good point. If he’d flushed, she would have definitely been Bibi Thermidor. “No. Just put the lid down. Thanks.”

He moved away, and she heard the lid drop onto the seat. Then he was back. “Can I join you?”

She didn’t even bother to think about it. She simply nodded.

In bed last night, as much of him as had touched her, she hadn’t gotten a good, clear look at all of him, and she hadn’t had much chance to touch him, either. He’d been in charge of everything they’d done. And that was good, because Bibi had figured out last night that there was a lot about sex she still didn’t know, no matter if she’d lost her virginity at sixteen.

Now, as he stepped into the tub with her, she stared. And she felt like she could honestly say that, until last night, she’d never been with an honest-to-goodness
man
. A real man. He was lean, but he was covered in muscle. His shoulders were much broader than his hips. And there were muscles on his hips that were…well, mercy, they were sin itself, pointing right to a magnificent...dick didn’t seem like enough of a word for what he had. Cock. She liked that better. Boys had dicks, she decided right then and there. Hoosier had a cock. The best one she’d ever seen, in person or otherwise.

The curtain had wrapped them up together, closing them into a pink cone, and the world seemed to fall away.

His hands rested on her shoulders and then swept down her arms, and she looked up from her examination of his body to find him smiling down at her. “I like to look at you, too. You are a fine, fine young Southern belle, Miss Bibi. Without all that circus makeup on, you are beautiful as any woman I’ve known.”

She liked the compliment, but she still felt some umbrage at his critique of her style. “Why’d you even talk to me if the way I looked disgusted you so?”

He shook his head. “It didn’t disgust me. But it doesn’t suit you. Maybe it’s why I noticed you. You didn’t seem like you fit in last night.”

She took more umbrage at that. “Fuck you. That’s my scene.”

A skeptical eyebrow came up, but he didn’t push the point. “Sorry. I’m just saying you stood out from that crowd. And then I saw you tie that cherry stem and tease the bartender, and I wanted to know you.”

“Why? Because I’m a tease?”

“No, because you’re a smartass. But a sweet one. And you’re beautiful. Made me curious.”

“You don’t have some kind of
Pygmalion
fetish, do ya?”

“No. I’m not the kind of guy who wants to fix anybody or make them be somebody they’re not. I am the kind of guy who likes people who don’t run with the crowd, though.”

Frankly, Bibi’s knees had gone weak at the fact that he’d known
Pygmalion
. She had intentionally used the name of the play instead of
My Fair Lady
, because she wanted to feel a little superior to this man, and she hadn’t expected a biker to know a George Bernard Shaw play. But he had.

He smoothed a hand over her wet-slick hair. “You ever fucked in a shower before?”

She shook her head, lost in his smile, lost in his dark, lively eyes, now lost in his mind, too. Just lost. She was lost.

Having that thought, Bibi knew it was true. Oh, hell.

He bent his head and kissed her, turning them both out of the way of the hot shower spray. With his lips still brushing over hers, he murmured, “I want to fuck you here in this shitty shower. I’ll pick you up and put you on the wall, and I’ll fill you so full your eyes’ll bulge. Then I want to hear those sex sounds you made last night bouncing off these tile walls. I want to sink my fingers into your sweet ass and hold you tight while I fill you and fill you and fill you until you bite down into my shoulder again and scream.”

“Holy Moses,” she whispered.

He laughed and picked her up.

FOUR

Way down yonder, in the meadow,
There’s a poor wee little lamby.
The bees and the butterflies pickin’ at its eyes,
The poor wee thing cried for her mammy.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleep little baby.
When you wake, you shall have
All the pretty little horses.