Hot Number (10 page)

“I can’t wait to see that list,” Nick said as
he climbed into the driver’s seat. “I think.”

Sadie grinned and clicked her seatbelt into
place. After all those heavy moments in the bar and especially
after that kiss—which had knocked her completely off balance—maybe
it was better to keep things light. At least for now.

“I hate these gas-guzzling SUV’s,” she said,
determined to get a rise out of him. “Don’t you care about the
environment, Saxon? Haven’t you ever heard of global warming?”

He threw her a
get real
look. “I live
in Las Vegas and I fought in Iraq. Trust me, there’s nothing I
don’t know about heat.”

They bantered like that all the way back to
the Desert Oasis, but it still took way too long for Sadie’s
liking. At least Nick drove with one hand resting on her thigh, his
warm fingers playing with the edge of her skirt. And for all her
efforts to play it cool, every time she looked at his strong
profile, his hard, beautiful mouth curving into a sexy smile, her
heart pounded so loudly she thought he might just be able to hear
it.

Finally, he wheeled into the hotel’s massive
parking garage. From there, he explained, they could access one of
the service elevators, and that would keep the number of prying
eyes to a minimum.

As he ushered her inside, Sadie giggled
softly at the thought that she’d have to amend her Vegas to-do list
to insert ‘clandestine’ into ‘wild, crazy sex’.

Nick pushed open a door that led into a
service corridor near the hotel’s sprawling kitchens. “Something
funny, little lady?”

“I was just thinking about my to-do list, and
how important it is to be flexible. Keep an open mind. Don’t judge
a book by the cover. Let the universe unfold. All those
clichés.”

He stopped at a bank of three elevators and
punched the call button. “I guess that means I didn’t exactly sweep
you off your feet the first time we met.”

Sadie pretended to take his statement
seriously. “Oh, I don’t know. You clearly had a certain something
that can appeal to a woman’s baser instincts.” The doors opened and
Nick ushered her inside the empty elevator. “I’m sure Genghis Khan
and Attila the Hun had legions of women lusting after them. Why, if
you were to do a historical survey of all the conquering—”

She gasped when he pushed her up against the
back of the elevator and swooped in close.

“You know, Sadie Bligh,” he said in a low,
growly voice that made her legs go weak, “sometimes you really do
talk too much.”

* * *

Nick liked hearing Sadie talk, but not right
at that moment. And the easiest way to shut her up was to kiss her
again. He’d been planning to do exactly that since the moment he’d
savored her lush, soft mouth in
Billy Jack’s
parking
lot.

As she nudged even closer into his embrace,
the sensation of her full breasts pressing into his chest fired a
wave of lust straight to his groin, turning him rock-hard in an
instant. Instinctively, he gripped her ass and pulled her tight
against him, lifting her onto her tiptoes again. A little moan
vibrated from between her soft lips.

God.
What he planned on doing as soon
as he got her flat on her back might not be totally legal, even in
Nevada. That’s how hot she’d stoked his fire.

From the surf chicks of La Jolla to the party
girls of the Vegas Strip, Nick had sampled his fair share of women
with killer bodies. Sadie Bligh, as sweet and sexy as she was,
would look completely out of place in a group photo of those women.
But from the moment he’d pulled her floundering butt off the Pai
Gow table, she’d been driving him crazy and causing him all kinds
of trouble. So, here he was, risking his job—thanks to a hot little
number who’d breezed in from Chicago and switched his hormones onto
full burn.

He let his hands roam over the generous
curves barely covered by her silky dress, aching to peel it away so
he could see her, touch her, taste her. If they were anywhere more
private than the elevator, he’d have her clothes off in a lot less
time than it was taking them to reach the thirtieth floor. But even
though things were getting hotter by the second, his brain kept
telling him to slow down. Nick barely knew the woman now clinging
to him like Velcro, and his brain insisted that something about her
was... not off, exactly, but not totally right.

Go to hell, brain
.

Nick broke the kiss as the fast elevator
shushed to a stop. The instant the doors slid open, Sadie unstuck
herself, grabbed him by the wrist, and pulled him down the hall
toward her room. He grinned and let her take the lead. Like a
Marine, she was a woman on a mission.

Sadie swiped her card through the reader and
yanked him into the room. Before he could flip on the lights, she
latched on to him again, clamping her arms around his neck in a
death grip as she wrapped one leg high around his hips. Then,
surprisingly, she froze in his embrace, tremors vibrating through
her limbs.

“Babe, what’s up?’ he murmured as he ran a
soothing hand down her spine.

She swallowed, loud enough for him to hear.
“Sheriff, I’m afraid that’s as much assertiveness as I’ve got in
me. I’m counting on you to take charge from here. As loathe as I am
to confess it, I must admit that I flunked out of Seduction 101.”
Her warm breath whispered across his skin in nervous puffs.

He smiled and cradled her close, charmed by
her unexpected vulnerability. Sadie knew what she wanted, but
wasn’t quite sure how to pull it off. For all her bravado and
promises of sin-filled lists, he could tell this kind of behavior
wasn’t her usual style. In fact, the tension in her body suggested
exactly the opposite.

Reaching inside the bathroom, he flicked on
the lights and closed the door until only a sliver of illumination
slanted into the dark bedroom. Too much light equaled too many
inhibitions. Despite her wild woman routine, he figured Sadie’s
self-confidence was a mile wide and a half-inch deep. That was
something he hoped to change before the night was through.

“I don’t have any problem taking charge,” he
said. “But I think you already know that, don’t you?”

He felt her lips curve in a smile against his
neck.

“Sheriff, that’s exactly the answer I was
hoping for.”

* * *

Sheldon sure as heck never kissed like
this.

Sadie knew she shouldn’t have an image of sex
with her ex-boyfriend darting through her brain—not with Nick’s
tongue stroking between her lips and his soldier’s hands inside her
dress—but she simply couldn’t help making the comparison.

A rising star in the physics department,
Sheldon Armitage had a gift for math almost equal to hers. He’d
made even the Higgs Boson particle seem like a romp in the park. As
a lover, he’d been gentle and kind, and sex, though infrequent, had
seemed satisfactory during their three-year relationship. All their
friends had assumed they would eventually marry. Sadie had thought
they might someday, too, but when Sheldon took a four-month
assignment at CERN in Switzerland, word quickly reached her through
the academic grapevine that he was working on more than the Large
Hadron Collider. His extracurricular project’s name was Yvette, and
she was a French graduate student in physics.

Although hurt, it hadn’t taken Sadie long to
acknowledge that she had recovered from Sheldon’s amorous betrayal
in a matter of weeks. She had told herself it was because she was
so focused on her research for the Eagleton Prize. She didn’t have
time for a relationship, much less marriage. Now Sadie knew better,
because what she had felt for Sheldon—at least physically—paled in
comparison to what she felt at this moment for Nick. It was like
comparing steamed broccoli to double-chocolate cake.

Sadie had spent her life doing healthy. Now
she was finally ready for some cake.

She sighed with pleasure as Nick slipped her
dress from her shoulders, letting it pool around her waist. When he
kissed her throat, pausing to give her a tiny nip with his teeth,
her pulse hammered and a beat of arousal pulsed between her
thighs.

Slowly, so slowly she thought she might faint
from some form of physical overload, Nick trailed hot, open-mouth
kisses down her throat and collarbone while gently easing the dress
down past her hips so she could step out of it. Every inch of skin
came alive under his touch, heated with the brand of his calloused
fingertips and his questing tongue as he tasted and explored at a
leisurely, maddening pace.

Sadie clutched at his shoulders. She should
probably be doing something, at least something more than moaning
and going as limp as a sodden noodle in his arms. On the other
hand, if she
did
do something and it was wrong, she’d look
like an inexperienced dolt. That’s what had frozen her in his arms
a few minutes ago—a short, sharp blaze of panic, and a sudden
understanding that she hadn’t a clue how to handle a situation this
hot and emotionally intense.

Fortunately, like a battle-hardened soldier,
Nick had taken charge. He obviously had a plan, and going along
with it seemed more than fine to her, at least right now. If that
made her a bit of a fraud in the wild woman department, so be
it.

He deftly parted the front clasp of her bra
and eased the straps off her shoulders. Her breasts spilled free,
her nipples already hard with arousal. Nick froze—just as she had a
few moments ago—with one arm lashed behind her back and the other
dangling the bra from his fingers.

Oh, no!
Her breasts were too big and
soft, she just knew it. Sheldon had never been all that keen on her
body. Even though he had never said anything, Sadie knew he
preferred taller, slimmer women, women who were willowy and
graceful. Women like Yvette.

Maybe Nick did, too.

“What...what’s wrong?” she asked, anxiety
turning her voice to a squeak.

He jerked his head up, startled. “God,
nothing’s wrong. You’re so damn beautiful, Sadie.”

Her tension eased, and she felt brave enough
to give him a hesitant smile. An emotion she couldn’t identify
rippled like a shadow across his hard features, then he swooped in
and captured her mouth, giving her a rough, thrilling kiss. All too
soon he broke away, leaving her breathless and limp in his arms.
Sodden noodle is right!

His gaze flickered back down to her body, and
he dropped her bra and gently stroked his fingers down the slope of
one breast, brushing lightly across her nipple. It pulled tight,
stiffer and even rosier than it had been only moments ago. Sadie
moaned, relaxing in his embrace, and yet feeling her breath catch
and her inner muscles begin to flex with tension.

Bracing her gently against the wall, Nick let
go of her body to cup both breasts in his hands, dipping down to
take one of her nipples into his mouth. She jerked at the hot slide
of his tongue and pressed her hands flat against the cool, silky
wallpaper at her back. He licked and teased the taut bud while
stroking the other with his fingers. The contrasting softness of
his mouth on one aching nipple and his calloused fingertips on the
other sent a flare of heat down through her stomach and low into
her pelvis, releasing a slick of moisture between her thighs.

She clutched at his shoulders, reeling from
the storm of sensation. Nothing had ever felt so good.

Nick gave a particularly deep, hard, and
delicious suck on her nipple, drawing her back into an arch.
“Oh...oh!” she gasped. “That’s, so, so...” Her voice trailed off as
her head fell back against the wall with a gentle thud. It kind of
hurt, but the party going on between her thighs more than made up
for it.

Nick huffed out a laugh, his warm breath
drifting over her wet skin, then he dragged the flat of his tongue
slowly and firmly across her nipple. She stood on her tiptoes to
follow every torturous millimeter, barely able to breathe. He cast
up a very quick, very wicked glance at her face.

“Don’t tell me I’ve finally rendered you
speechless, Ms. Bligh,” he murmured. He rubbed his cheek—obviously
unshaven since the morning—over her nipple and she had to bite back
a pathetic whimper at the prickling, arousing sensation to her
hyper-sensitive flesh.

He flashed a grin at her helpless response.
“I’ll have to make a note of this event for the history books,” he
said, his voice warm with amusement.

She sucked in a breath to berate him but,
instead, let it out with a sigh of pleasure when he switched over
to nuzzle her other breast.

“Ah, I’m simply taking my time composing an
appropriate response,” she finally muttered.

“Hmmm. Also noted,” he said, keeping his
attention firmly on his task.

And thank goodness for that.

Nick took his time savoring her breasts,
licking, teasing, and sucking each one in turn as if they were the
sweetest things he’d ever tasted. Sadie considered collapsing on
the floor at his feet, but it all felt much too wonderful to miss,
so she forced herself to remain upright. Fortunately, Nick had
obviously decided to help by inserting one brawny thigh between her
legs, propping her up by pressing tight against her cleft. That in
itself was a revelation. It took all her discipline not to push
down, rubbing herself against the rock-hard muscle—almost as if she
could ride him to orgasm. He probably wouldn’t mind her doing that
but it did seem a little forward, even under the present
circumstances.

After a few minutes, his wonderfully rough
hands began to roam her body even as his mouth continued to suckle
and—oh, yes—nip at her breasts. He made smooth strokes, somehow
both soothing and exhilarating, down the long muscles of her back
and over her behind. Then he continued down the backs of her
thighs, trailing around the front and then up to trace the edge of
her panties. He dipped one long, tickling finger under the skimpy
fabric, brushing through her hidden nest of curls. Sadie jolted up
on her toes again as an aching hunger awakened deep inside, making
her feel edgy and restless and strangely vulnerable.