Hot Summer Lust (5 page)

I stand next to the bench where he sits and he stops strumming his guitar.
His eyes are on my body, searing me with
his sapphire-eyed
awareness. My nipples get hard and the hollow between my legs feels hot, throbbing
lightly. I go wet and my panties cling to sensitive flesh as I sit on the bench’s far end. I don’t want to get too close to him. I’m afraid of what might happen.
I’m excited by what
could
happen. I can feel my pulse everywhere.

He looks bigger up close. With his dark looks and broad-shouldered brawn, he looks
dangerous.
He probably weighs double what I weigh.
There are veins under the skin of his brown arms and hands that sort of amplify the promise of his raw strength.
If he wanted to, he could overpower me in any way he wanted
. He could kill me with his bare hands.
Or he could hold me down. Pin me under his
weight.

“I saw you drive by my house today,” he says.

“You did?”

“I did.” His voice is just about the sexiest thing I’ve ever
heard in my life. R
asped with notes of dark promise and hot lust.

His lazy contemplation is making me crazy
.
I start talking, maybe just to fill the sparked space between us.
“I … yeah
,
I put one of my flyers in your mailbox. I didn’t think anyone was even living
there, but I had a few left over.
I’m
looking for cleaning jobs, to save up some money so I can move to Nashville in the fall.”

“Nashville.”

“Yeah, Nashville.”

“What’s in Nashville?” he says, and there’s a little thread of curiosity in his voice, like he’s dying to know.

“Music.”

“You play?”

“
I sing.”
I play the guitar and piano
too, but I don’t bother telling him this. And
I know what it sounds like. The endless procession of wannabes that flock to Nashville, hoping for a miracle, searching for their lucky
break.
Most of them’
ll never find it.
But here’s the thing: I k
now I’m good enough. I feel
it
in my gut. And even though I’m
a little self-conscious about what I might look like to him – like one more dreamer in a vast sea of dreamers – I don’t care. So it comes out sounding a little defiant.

He smiles again. “How ‘bout that,” he says softly. “Sadie sings.”

I glare at him.

“Sing me somethin’.”

His accent has deepened, and so has mine. “No, I’m not gonna sing you somethin’.”

“Go on.” He starts strumming again and looks over at me from under the lush fall of his dark hair. It’s pretty interesting, when you think about it, that a million lessons about temptation never taught me a thing. Now, I finally understand it.
“Sing for me.”

There he goes again with that self-assured, masculine
delivery, the one that makes me want to give him anything he asks for. “All right. Just one verse.”
I do it.
I sing softly along with his tune. I know the words. I’ve sung this song a thousand times and I sing
it again
. The music’s in me. This song, like they all do, inhabits me in a way that sort of takes over and makes me feel better than I do when I’m not singing. The notes weave themselves around the
thick night air like smoke.

When I’ve finished the verse, I stop.

Elias i
s quiet for a few seconds. He’s watching me intently. Then he sits back
and lets his muscled arms cradle his guitar. I feel a weird sense of jealousy, or something like it.
I want to know what those arms
feel like, warm and strong and carefully possessive.
Slung
casually with all their powerful promise, around
me
.

“Well, how about that
,” he finally says. “Sadie
sings
.”

“I’m leaving as soon as I’ve earned enough to get myself a place in the city
. Something small, it doesn’t matter. Then I’ll start auditioning. I’ve got a list of places to try.”
I don’t know why I’m telling him all
this. The topic couldn’t be more boring. But
Elias Hayes blinks his thick, black lashes, watching me with smug amusement and … something more. A beguiled, hot fascination.
His gaze is on
my parted lips as I speak
.
I gently bite my lip and he watches my teeth
as they sink gently into tender flesh.
I’m afraid he’ll somehow notice that my panties are saturated. I try to fold my arms over my chest since my nipples are clearly visibly poking against the thin cotton on my nightie, but when I do this, the short skirt rides way up my thighs.

“You got a list of places to audition, do you?” he says softly, that light amusement playing at the corner of his sumptuous lips.

“Yes.
” As heart-breakingly gorgeous as he is, his slightly-mocking arrogance is starting to rile me. “Anyway,” I say, and a light
petulance has crept into my tone. He can
mock me all he wants. I’ll show him, just like I’ll show everybody
else.
“What is it you wanted to talk to me about? Are we done here?”

He laughs lightly, his hot gaze holding mine
.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think we are done here, Sadie
. Not at all.
I think we’re just getting started. I’ve
got some questions I want to ask you, see, and I’m not leavin’ until I get some answers.” Damn, the man is arrogant as all get out. His voice is deeper,
and dark-edged when he says, “The thing is, after seeing you twice today …”

I feel myself blush scarlet at his mention of
twice
. He uses all that. He’s doing it on purpose. He’s smiling like this is the best fun he’s had all day.

“First of all,” he says, “I do, in fact, need a cleaner. The place hasn’t been lived in for over a year and it needs some attention. I want you to come work for me.”

“I …” I want to refuse him
. It’s a terrible idea.
Working for him will be dangerously …
tempting.
He knows this, too, damn him. He’s challenging me to refuse him and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. I can handle him. Sure I can.
“I suppose I could.”

“You suppose you could.” He’s stopped smiling but it’s
still there in his midnight-blue eyes.
He’s leaned a little closer and he’s looking at me like he wants to eat me alive. I wish he would. I wish he would touch me, and cross a line.

“I might be able to,” I tell him.
He’s exasperating me, among other things, and I think I might just be losing my grip on my own self-control.
      
“I want you to start tomorrow.”

“I …
yeah. Okay
.” I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. B
ut a job is a job. He sure does seem like he has plenty of money.
I might get the full twenty
dollars an hour I was hoping for. After all, y
ou don’t just go out and buy a thousand-acre ranch unless you’re financially secure, and, now that I look a little more closely, the guitar he’s holding is a nice one.
Real
nice. It’s probably worth a couple grand. Maybe even more.

“Good,” he says smugly. “Be at my place by ten, then.
And don’t be late.
”

It takes all the willpower I possess not to tell him to go where to stick his thousand acres, his fancy guitar and his cleaning
job. He is
the
bossiest, most self-righteous person I’ve ever met, I’m sure of it.
His gaze is on my mouth, like he’s thinking about kissing me. A pang of longi
ng surges through me. I wonder what his wicked mouth, with those perfect lips, would feel like against mine. If he’d been gentle. Or if he’d hold me down and ravage me.

“You can walk over, right?” he asks, adding slowly, “since it’s just past your … swimming pond.”

Oh, God.
I’m blushing again
.
I’m still hoping that by some miracle he only just so happened to stumble across me at that very last second, after I’d
finished
…
getting myself off
. But somehow that seems just a little overly optimistic. So I decide to ask him point blank.

“How long had you been standing there?” I say, and it comes out half-shy, half wary.

“A
while.” He’
s smirking but this time the hint of his smile is more wolfish than amused.
He moves his thigh so it rests lightly against my bare leg.

I feel the heat bloom on my cheeks but I’m too
aroused to feel as embarrassed as maybe I should. His big, hard
nearness is blowing my mind. His musclebound virility is affecting my body
in ways I can’t control. There’s a little bead of
sweat at the base of his throat
. I want to
lick
him there like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. I want it so bad I almost do it.

“Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk to you about,” he says.

I look at his eyes, the
dark-blue smolder, like violet embers.
“Yeah?”

“Tomorrow, after we work up a sweat, we’re gonna go for a
swim. Me and you.”

“I … ”
It’s not a good idea. It’s a very
, very
bad idea. It’
s an idea that the little caged wild animal in me had already thought about, before he even suggested it.

I’m about to protest but he leans closer. I can smell him and it’s better than I ever imagined: all hot sun and hot sin.
“You know you want to,” he murmurs. Then he leans even closer, so his lush, full lips are
close to mine. Just that
promise, that near-touch of his mouth
is the most erotic experience I’ve ever had.
My lips part.
My nipples are painfully sensitive. I want him to kiss
me. The
slippery throb between my legs flutters and clenches. I want him to bite me.

But he pulls away.

He stands up and
slings the guitar strap over his shoulder. I can only stare at the size of him. He’s tall and broad and magnificent in his jeans and white t-shirt, his
dark hair falling across his forehead in silky layers.

“See you tomorrow, Sadie.”

I watch as he walks off into the night humming the song I sang to him, his jeans hugging his body in ways I can’t even explain, and I’m reeling from the realization that, just like that, everything has changed.

If I thought I was fucked
before
she tip-toed out her window to sit next to me on the old bench under her oak tree … well, after that, I was fucking
fucked
. The moon illuminated
her long hair in ribbons of gold and light blue. Her skin was lightly tanned and there was a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Her lips were
unbelievable
. Full but not too full. Shaped like a perfect kiss. And when she smiled it actually felt painful, like my heart was breaking or some weird shit. I’m just about the least romantic person I know, but this was something else altogether. Lust, I’ll call it, even though that doesn’t sum it all up.
I almost kissed her, but I knew if I tasted those pink li
ps it wouldn’t be enough. I’d need more, and
I might end up ripping that skimpy, see-through nightgown to shreds
.
I could see the plush silhouette of her ludicrously-sweet body, her nipples poked up against the soft veil of her dress.
I knew if I kissed her
lips I wouldn’t be able to stop until I’d tasted every inch of her, until I’d sucked on those nipples and licked my way down to her damp, clinging panties.

I’d never been so hard in my life.

And then she started
singing
.

It was all I could do to keep my cool. Which is ridiculous. I
always
keep my cool. I’ve never had a reason to
not
keep my cool.

Until now, apparently.

She sings like a goddamn angel. Even worse, like an angel with a taste for the devil.

And even worse – much, much worse – is that I can see that hunger in her. The same hunger
I
used to have, before I got my big break
. Her eyes have that fire. Her mouth has that little pout of determination. All that, combined
with her obvious talent: it’ll be
enough. You can see the x-factor radiating off of her
along with her stardust and her sweet, hot beauty.

I’m walking back to my house in the moonlight. I stop and sit by the pond for a while, sipping from a flask I pull
from my back pocket. Watching the reflection of the moonlight on the water.

I hate being reminded of my former life, but she’s doing that, in a way that makes it less unbearable than usual. The truth is, I like the country. That’s the other reason I bought my new house. I grew up on a goddamn farm, after all,
east of Knoxville. It wasn’t the farming life that drove me away, not at all. I
t was my bastard of a father and his drunken habits that made sure I’d want to put as much distance between me and him as humanly
possible. I could handle the belt, the rage, even the cigarette burns. What I couldn’t handle was the way he treated my mother. I think she was almost relieved when she found out she didn’t have long to live. Finally, an out. I’d told her
I
could be her out. I’d quit school
, get a job. I remember saying it to her: I’m gonna be a superstar one day,
you’ll see.
I’ll take care of
you.
She’d smiled like she believed me. But the cancer spread so quick. She was too sick to leave, even then.