Enemies on Tap (12 page)

Logan squeezed her around him and rocked against her. “Fuck, you feel so damn good.”

Both of his hands snuck around the front of her body. One hand cupped one breast, squeezing her hard nipple between his thumb and finger. His other hand delved lower, his fingers sliding between her slick folds and pushing inside.

Miranda threw back her head against Logan’s shoulder as his fingers drove her closer and closer to orgasm. Her hips moved of their own accord, twisting so that she rubbed against the heel of his palm. Energy curled into a tight ball in the base of her spine, tightening and constricting as her pleasure built.

“You are so wet and soft.” He stroked the bundle of nerves inside her while increasing the pressure. “I can’t wait to taste you later. I’m going to spread those long legs wide open and play with you until you explode all over my tongue.”

He emphasized his intent by rolling her nipple until the bliss bordered on torture. And just when she thought she couldn’t take another minute of his divine torment, her thighs buzzed, and her orgasm crashed against her, drowning her entire body in a wave of pleasure so intense it bowed her spine.

Chest heaving, she melted back against Logan, his dark chest hair tickling her back. “That was amazing.” She snuggled back, her ass brushing against him, already plotting her next move. They had tonight to feast on each other, and she wasn’t going to waste a minute of it.

“I hope you’re not ready to call it a night already.”

She spun around on her heel, pressing her breasts against his hard chest and wrapping her hand around his length. “Far from it.”

Stroking him, she brushed her thumb across the head. Miranda lowered herself until her knees hit the smooth teak deck and let go of him. Maintaining eye contact with Logan, she slid her wet thumb tip across her bottom lip, then licked the remainder of the salty liquid from her thumb.

He sucked in a deep breath. “Fuck.”

“Not yet.” She winked.

Anchoring herself by holding on to his solid thighs, she kissed the head before sliding his girth between her lips. He filled her mouth, forcing her jaws wide as she took in more of him before withdrawing and starting the process again, each time relishing his moans of pleasure. His thigh muscles tensed and relaxed under her palms in sync with her mouth’s movements. She undulated her tongue against the sensitive underside, wanting to take him higher. His thighs tightened under her palms. Intoxicated on her ability to bring him pleasure, she rubbed her tongue along his shaft while he filled her mouth. She reached out to cradle his balls, one finger rubbing the small patch of skin behind his sac. His legs quaked.

“That is so damn good.” He ground out the words through clenched teeth, his fingers soft against her head. “Do that thing with your tongue again.”

Emboldened by his pleas, she took him deeper, stopping only when he bumped against the back of her throat. Her free hand snaked down between her legs, and she moaned around him.

“God yes, baby, touch yourself. Are you ready for me?”

Spurred on by his words, she took him deep again as she circled her sensitive nub. The pressure from her fingers pushed her over the edge. Her moans of pleasure made her throat tighten, eliciting a growl of pleasure from Logan. He clenched his fingers in her hair, unwinding it from the tight bun.

With a half-swallowed groan that mixed agony and ecstasy, Logan pulled back on her head. “If you keep doing that I won’t be able to stop myself.”

Not ready to let him off that easy, Miranda grabbed a condom as he sat down in the captain’s chair. The wrapper crinkled as she tore it open and removed the condom before sliding it home in one smooth motion.

“My God, look at you.” Her hands caressed him, trailing her fingers down until she grasped his hips, lowered herself and positioned him at her slick entrance. “You’re beautiful.”

He pushed forward slowly, inch by inch, letting her body adjust to his size and the angle. Looking over her shoulder at Logan’s closed-eyed ecstasy, she pushed her own ecstasy higher, blanking out everything but him. They came together like nothing else in the world existed or mattered. Hands touching. Lips tasting. Bodies moving together. It was too much and not enough. It was everything. Logan was everything.

Miranda’s skin burned with need for him as he filled her body and soul so completely she couldn’t imagine the night ever ending. But no matter how much she wanted it, that wasn’t the plan. Tonight was about one thing only—relieving an itch she’d needed to scratch since she’d walked into the Martin Bank and Trust weeks ago. Maybe if she kept saying it enough, she’d start believing it, because in her heart she knew it was much more than that.

He leaned forward, changing the angle and driving deeper inside, rubbing against her most sensitive spots. The buzzing started in her calves, gaining strength as it traveled up her legs and driving out any logical thought. Swept along by the overwhelming intensity of sensation, she lost herself to the moment and let her body take her where she needed to go.

“Logan.” She only managed the single word before her world exploded, sending shockwaves of pleasure vibrating through her limbs.

Plunging deeper than he had before, Logan buried himself to the hilt as he cried out his own climax. He collapsed against her back, his cheek fitting perfectly in the hollow of her shoulder.

“I’m never going to look at the helm the same way again.” Logan kissed her shoulder and pulled them both into a standing position before picking her up and carrying her down the narrow stairwell to the enormous cabin below deck.

“That makes two of us.” She snuggled deeper into his embrace, praying the steady drumbeat of his heart would drown out the little voice demanding to know what she planned to do now.

Chapter
Twelve

Miranda eased
her way down the wide staircase at Uncle Julian’s old house, her thighs protesting each downward step. Despite the image her lingerie drawer projected, it had been a while since anyone besides her had seen her lacy underthings. Muscles she’d forgotten she even had were making three condoms and six knee-jellifying orgasms worth of complaints.

After a night of naked fun and long talks, Logan had dropped her off just before dawn, and she’d snuck inside the isolated country house like a teenager who’d broken curfew. She’d navigated the large sitting room in the dark, avoided the squeaky stair right before the second floor landing, and tiptoed past Natalie’s room. Once in her own room, she’d spent a fitful night ping-ponging between hope and self-recriminations.

Now, f
our hours later
, she was heading back down the stairs for a cup of coffee big enough that she wouldn’t need toothpicks to hold open her eyelids.

The cell phone camera flash stopped her mid-stride as she was coming off the bottom step. She jerked to a stop and blinked away the bright balls of white light dancing across her vision. “What was that for?”

Natalie stood in the kitchen doorway, cell phone in hand, clicking away with her thumbs. “I figured Olivia needed to see what happened when someone follows her advice. You look like hell.”

Oh, the joys of sisterhood. “I love you, too, darling sister.”

Natalie grinned and pushed up her glasses. “So spill.”

“Let’s see.” She flicked up her pointer finger. “Tyrell Hawson did not take kindly to our proposal and threw a total fit in the middle of the country club.” A second finger went up. “Someone slashed all four of my tires.” A third finger stood up. “Oh yeah, and I had mind-blowing sex with Logan Martin.”

Natalie blinked her large, blue eyes several times before spinning on her heel and striding into the kitchen. “Coffee and marshmallow crunchy cereal. Now.”

Miranda mowed through a bowl and a half of cereal and sucked down a ginormous cup of coffee while explaining the events of last night to her silent sister. The caffeine and sugar had kicked her pulse into high speed by the time she finished. Natalie, meanwhile, still drank her first cup of certified organic green tea and took dainty bites of a toasted whole wheat bagel.

“So what did the police say about your car?”

She shrugged, ignoring the spike in her blood pressure at the damage done to her baby. “Not much. I told them that I’d recently let an employee go under less than ideal circumstances. The officer said he’d go talk to Carl, but unless he confesses, there’s not much evidence to tie him or anyone else to the slashing.”

“That’s comforting.” Her cup clanged against her saucer. For Natalie, that equated to a scream of protest.

“No kidding, but right now I’m more pissed than scared. Carl’s a slimy little malcontent, but he’s not a psycho. Still, it’s a good idea to keep the house locked up.”

Uncle Julian’s house—which belonged to her and her sisters now—was an old two-story farmhouse that had been home to the Sweets for more than half a century. Solid oak doors, double-paned windows, and old-school craftsmanship made the place as safe as a Cold War bunker.

“Will do.” Natalie took a sip of tea. “Nothing we can do about Carl, but what about our good mayor?”

A hammering at the back of her skull added to the angry flush from her pounding heart. “Another goose egg. We can’t force him to accept our offer of help. Logan hasn’t given up, but I’m not holding my breath.”

“Speaking of Logan…”

She slid down in her seat. The last thing she wanted was to dissect what had happened last night. “Do we have to?”

“Does he know your plans for the brewery? That it’s just a stepping stone and you’ll be out of here in a few months?”

Hearing the words out loud stung.

“No, and he doesn’t need to know. This…” Miranda searched for the right word to describe what she was doing with Logan.

“Idiotic folly?”

She rolled her eyes so hard at her sister that they nearly fell out of her head. “Look, Judgey McJudgeypants, he’s a nice guy.”

“What about the bet? Did he call it off?”

Miranda bristled. It wasn’t like Natalie was asking anything she hadn’t wondered about while tossing and turning last night, but still. “We didn’t talk about the bet.”

“Could it all be a ploy to screw us over figuratively as well as literally?” Natalie pushed up her glasses and pierced Miranda with an inquisitive stare.

“You know you’re a real Pollyanna. I’m telling you, he’s different.” An image of him naked in the captain’s chair flashed in her mind. “He’s nice.”

“I bet he’ll seem real nice when he’s stabbing you in the back. You know what those Martins are like.”

“Listen to you, you’re just as bad as the assholes in town who never gave us a chance because of our last name.”

“Oh you’ve given him a chance before. Did he come to your defense then? Or did he just take the that-a-boy pats on the back while you were shunned?”

“That was a long time ago. He’s grown up. I’ve grown up.” She resisted the urge to bang her head on the table in frustration. “I know a roll in the proverbial hay without benefit of a relationship is beyond the pale for you, but I know the score. Logan knows the score. It was hot, no-strings sex, and that’s it.”
Yeah, sure it was.

Natalie pursed her lips and drained her lukewarm tea. “You two talked about this and agreed to it?”

Staring intently at the hand-painted flowers on her coffee mug, Miranda avoided her sister’s surely skeptical gaze. “Not in so many words.”

“Uh-huh.” Natalie stood up, took her dishes to the sink, and flipped on the water. “This isn’t going to blow up in your face at all.”

Like a four-year-old caught with her hand stuffed in the cookie jar, Miranda wanted to ignore the whole situation. “Will you just give me a ride to Fix ’Er Up so I can pick up my car without lecturing me the entire way?”

“Lecture?” Natalie turned and grinned. “I never lecture.”

The Fix ’Er Up Auto Repair and Body Shop sat a few miles out
side of town on Highway Forty-Eight, a stucco monument to rebuilt carburetors and oil changes. Hud Bowden had gone straight from the Salvation High School football field to the garage bay right after graduation. Today, he had his head under the hood of a cherry red Ford Thunderbird. Miranda would have admired the view more, if it wasn’t for the fact that, even after a shower, she could still smell Logan’s woodsy cologne in her hair.

“Hey, Hud.”

The former linebacker straightened up, wiping away the black grime from his hands with a rag. He didn’t glare at Miranda and her sister, but his look wasn’t exactly welcoming either. “Sounds like you had an eventful evening last night.”

Her feet froze to the garage’s concrete floor, and her toes curled up in her ballet flats. “What do you mean?” She coughed to cover the embarrassed squeak in her voice.

“It’s not every day that someone in town makes the mayor blow his top
and
has her tires slashed.” He cocked his head. “Why, what did you think I meant?”

Oh, getting freaky in the yacht with your best friend.
“That pretty much sums it up.” She resisted the urge to fan her heated cheeks.

Natalie shot her a told-you-so smirk.
Sisters.

Hud stuffed the rag into his back pocket and jerked his head toward the next bay in the garage. “I’ve got your car up on the lift now. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll have it all finished. You and your sister can wait in the sitting area, if you’d like.”

She backpedaled at a fast clip toward the waiting room. “Will do. I really appreciate your help with my car.”

“No worries. Logan told me about your offer on the road. Tyrell is a real ass for reacting like he did. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

That stopped her cold. Hud’s grandfather had been the country sheriff and had spent a decade chasing after her father for illegally brewing moonshine in the back woods. Before her parents had retired to Mexico, they’d operated like the Bonnie and Clyde of bootleg white lightning in Hamilton County. Hud’s grandfather had caught her parents more than a time or two and thrown them in jail, giving them the criminal records that made it impossible for them to be involved directly with the Sweet Salvation Brewery. Like the rest of the town, Hud and his family expected the Sweet triplets to follow in their parents’ footsteps and treated the girls as mini-me criminals and outcasts. An apology from Hud was tantamount to a pardon. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve it, but she’d bet Logan had something to do with it.

“Thanks, Hud.” She swallowed past the tightness in her throat and followed Natalie into the spartan waiting room, populated by one couch, two plastic chairs, and a TV.

She flopped down on one end of the olive green pleather couch, and Natalie hunkered down on the other. Miranda’s phone vibrated in her purse. It took three rings before she found it at the bottom. Patilla the Hun’s name flashed on her caller ID.

Ignoring the warning sirens blaring in her head, she forced herself to smile as she answered. “Pat, good to hear from you,” she said, hoping he didn’t hear the worry in her voice.

“Miranda, I’ll get straight to the point. After careful deliberations, Mr. DeBoer has decided that I’ll be overseeing your attempt to get Sweet Salvation Brewery up to snuff.”

She stood up, and her stomach hit her toes. Since she couldn’t reach through the phone and smack her immediate supervisor, she paced the eight-by-eight room. Pat had outflanked her deftly, completely, and without her ever having a clue because she was off the corporate grid in Salvation. Being out in the boondocks wasn’t an excuse. Her cubbie-mate had warned her that something was going on, but Miranda had been too distracted by the ins and outs of the brewery—not to mention fantasies about Logan’s hard abs—to protect her home turf. She might be winning the brewery battle, but she had a sinking feeling she was about to lose the war.

“I have to tell you,” Pat continued. “I’m looking over your latest report now, and I peg your chances of success as worse than a snowball’s chance in the desert during a 100-year drought.”

“That’s not true.” She fought to maintain an even tone.

“You’ve made progress on the operations standpoint, I’ll give you that, but you’re sucking wind on getting distribution channels.” He laughed a weasely little nasal chuckle. “I warned Mr. DeBoer nothing good would come from this. When I show him this report, he’ll have no choice but to agree.”

Her hands shook and the phone slid in her slick palm. “We’ve hit a few roadblocks when it comes to folks signing on the dotted line to carry the Sweet Salvation Brewery beer. But we have a solid number lined up for delivery after our next brew day in a few weeks, and I’m in the process of getting a meeting set up to talk with the manager of the Boot Scoot Boogie, one of the biggest venues in the region.”

“I don’t think you’re really grasping what’s on the line here, Miranda.” He sneered her name, emphasizing each syllable. “If you can’t get a big distributor lined up, this deal will fall apart, and so will your shot at a promotion. In fact, I’d have to talk to Mr. DeBoer about your position within the company. The economy isn’t what it used to be, and every department is tightening its belt, including us. Having you out of the office has shown just how well we operate without you.”

Her vision turned black, and blood rushed in her ears, drowning out the rest of his words. “Why are you doing this?”

“You thought you could show me up in front of the rest of the department and the managers? Well, you figured wrong. I paid my dues. I worked my ass off to get to where I am. The worker bees have to see that there are stiff consequences for subverting my authority. You’ve always reached beyond your means, and it’s about time you learned your place in the world.”

So there it was. After everything she’d done to overcome being one of those Sweet girls from Salvation: working two jobs to pay her college living expenses; putting in eighty-hour work weeks; ditching the country twang that made everyone in Harbor City look at her like she was a moron. She’d run as far away from Salvation as she could to claim her future on her own terms, not by how people judged her by her last name. She’d be damned if she was going to cede that decision to some power-hungry middle manager with a hard-on for following chain of command.

“I know where I belong, and it’s in that corner office.” Her voice gained strength with every word.

“That’s not up to you.”

“Oh, yes it is. I’m going to sign that distribution deal. I’m going to turn Sweet Salvation Brewery into a profitable business. And I’m going to get that corner office.” She forced a bone-deep confidence into her voice, even if she didn’t yet feel it in her marrow.

A condescending chuckle echoed through the phone. “Well, you have a week to make that happen. After that, your stuff is getting packed into a cardboard box.”

She hit the end-call button with more force than necessary, but her frustration had to go somewhere or her head was going to explode. Miranda shoved her phone back into her purse and sank down into her seat.

“Now that was dramatic.” Natalie laid down the issue of
Chantal
magazine she’d been flipping through and stared expectantly at Miranda.

“If I don’t get Boot Scoot Boogie to sign a distribution deal within a week, DeBoer Financial will not only turn its back on the deal, I’ll lose my job.”

Someone cleared his throat. Dread creeping up her back, Miranda didn’t need to turn around to know who had just overhead her confession. Still, she couldn’t act like her childhood puppy, Mitzy, who used to hide her head—and only her head—under the covers when she was in trouble. She desperately wanted to stomp and scream and carry on about the unfairness of the whole situation—or worse, cry, but a lifetime of keeping her chin up had taught her better. Inhaling a deep breath, Miranda straightened her shoulders and spun around.

Hud stood in the doorway, a look of oh-shit-did-I-walk-in-at-the-wrong-time plastered onto his face. He held out her keys. “Your car is ready.”