Some Like It Hot (14 page)

“What?” Eva felt slow, as if all the foreplay had turned her brain to tapioca.

The forceful tone bled into his voice, his jaw as hard as marble, as he said, “Hold up your right hand. Index finger.”

Clumsily, she complied, and he praised her with a soft, “That’s good. You’re perfect.”

Warmth filled her at the approval in his voice, and a languid sort of heat stole over her as he propped his feet on the coffee table behind her, raising his knees as a support for her back. She relaxed against his strong thighs, the denim rubbing her skin sensitive and hot, and waited for his next request.

“Beautiful,” he said, and she didn’t know if it was a compliment or an endearment, but either way, she liked it. “Take that finger and touch yourself. I want to see how wet you are.”

The boldness of it, the straightforward way he stared at her and invited her to participate in stoking her own passion appealed to Eva.

She’d never been shy. Or, if she had been, it had been many years since she acknowledged it or let it stop her from doing whatever the hell she wanted. So the blush that heated her face and neck surprised her as she trailed that finger down the centerline of her body toward the slippery, tingling flesh between her legs.

Her cheeks were hot, as hot as the tiny cluster of nerves at the top of her slit when she searched it out and made herself shudder.

Danny watched every move she made as if he were going to be quizzed later, and Eva let the attention cover her in a mantle of confidence. When Danny’s lips parted and his breath sped up, Eva’s natural exhibitionist came roaring to the forefront of her consciousness.

Holding his gaze, she let another finger come into play, delving deeper, playing through the slick folds and circling her clit. It felt incredible, better than when she did it alone, as if Danny’s presence, his watchful eyes, gave the familiar act an extra kick.

Shuddering, hips pulsing ever so slightly, Eva let herself writhe in his lap like a cat begging to be stroked. Her head tipped back over his knees, the long line of her throat bare and vulnerable, her belly quivering softly with every wet slide of her fingers.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Danny told her, thrusting up so that the rough teeth of his zipper scraped at the bare flesh of her buttocks. The move tilted her hips forward far enough to tap his erection against the back of her hand. Seizing the opportunity, Eva pulled her fingers free of her body and wrapped them around his hard thickness, pressing the length of it solidly against her weeping sex.

That hardness, heavy and hot and right there, felt incredible. It was exactly the friction she wanted, better than any fingers in the world. It must have felt good to Danny, too, because he squeezed his eyes shut and thrust his hips again, shoulders pushing into the back of the couch as his back arched.

“God,” he said. “Too close. Can you reach my wallet?”

Keeping his cock where she wanted it with her right hand, Eva craned forward to kiss him, sloppy and hot, while her left hand burrowed into his back pocket.

“Got it,” she breathed against his mouth.

“Condom,” he gasped. “Get it on me.”

Eva had never been so eager to obey in her whole life. She found the condom and ripped the wrapper open with her teeth. The grip of her hand as she rolled the latex down over his straining erection brought another shuddering groan out of Danny.

Feverish with need, desire wound so tightly inside her that she was afraid she’d explode, Eva lifted herself up and, holding Danny steady with one hand, brought herself down over him.

She moaned at the nudge of his cock head against her entrance, thick and searing hot, even through the condom. He was big, wide and uncompromising, and she wanted every inch of him.

Pushing herself, Eva let gravity do most of the work, concentrating on relaxing enough to let him all the way inside.

“Careful, sweetness,” Danny said, concern wrinkling his brow. “Not too fast. We’ve got the whole night.”

It didn’t feel that way to Eva, who wanted him inside her now, all at once, filling her up and making her fly.

With a gasp she felt herself stretched to the limit as her hips slammed down, grinding her pubis against the hard bone of his pelvis. Her brain shorted out in a shower of sparks, and the whole world became nothing more than rocking and moaning, clutching and gasping and straining toward something perfect, just out of reach, until suddenly, with a tightening of muscles and a last rough thrust, she was there.

When it was over, she blinked her eyes open to find her forehead pressed to Danny’s sweaty shoulder, her thighs quivering tiredly, muscles sore from being held apart for so long.

He groaned and shifted, as if he might be sore, too, and that one tiny movement sent aftershocks fluttering through her entire lower body.

“God. This competition is under protest,” he breathed. “I call shenanigans. The founder’s daughter just drained all my strength out through my dick.”

Eva snickered into his collarbone, licking a little at the salty taste of his skin. “Lucky for you, I’ve got nothing to do with the judges’ decisions about anything, or your competitors would be the ones calling shenanigans.”

“Hey.” Annoyance crept into his satisfied tone. “I wouldn’t have slept with you if it would look like I was trying to fuck my way to the top.”

Opening her mouth lazily, Eva sucked at his neck. Not hard enough to leave a mark and cause questions neither of them wanted to deal with, but definitely hard enough to feel, if the way Danny stretched against her was any indication.

“Okay, uncle,” he said on a strangled gasp. “Maybe I would’ve slept with you no matter what. You are hell on my good intentions, woman.”

“Good intentions are for the boring,” Eva told him, reaching an efficient hand down to deal with the condom. There was something kind of dirty and fun about playing nurse like this.

Danny snorted as she moved off his lap and tossed the used condom in the direction of the trash can beside the desk. “I’ve been considered boring by lots of people.”

“Stupid people,” Eva dismissed, collapsing back against the couch with a gusty sigh. “People who’ve never had sex with you. God, I needed that.” Rolling her head far enough to the side that she could see him, she said, “And so did you. Admit it. I took good care of you!”

“I admit it, I’m glad I followed you up here,” Danny deadpanned. “None of my teammates would’ve employed your particular method of pain relief.”

“Mmm. I’m better than a bucket of ice and an aspirin? You sweet-talker.”

Buffeting his bandaged fingers against the sticky mess at his crotch, a spasm of annoyance crossed his face. Danny growled low in his throat. “I think I mentioned once before, when I first met you—I might be a pastry chef, but I’m not as sweet as I look.”

“Here, let me help with that.” Eva got kind of a thrill out of the easy way he lay back and let her tuck him back into his pants. She did up the zipper but left the button undone, purely because she liked the look of it.

She liked being the one who got to see him that way.

The thought was frightening in its intensity, and Eva shied away from the revelation as if it were a light shining too brightly into her eyes. Silently cursing her still-shaky legs, she wobbled off the couch and started a fruitless search for her underwear before giving up and heading across the living room to the French doors that led to the bedroom.

When she came back to the living area a few moments later, swathed in one of the hotel’s complimentary thick terry-cloth bathrobes, it was to see Danny pushing himself off the couch with his elbows, his soiled shirt hooked over one bare, muscular arm.

Despite her own instinct to flee the scene, some contrary portion of Eva’s heart tugged with disappointment at the sight of Danny poised to make his getaway.

Leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb, she had to work to make her voice smooth and light. “Going somewhere?”

Danny stopped, bent halfway over and tripping on the trailing hems of his jeans. “Just trying to take a hint,” he said, as casually as he could manage.

Which wasn’t very casual. He grimaced, irritated by his own inability to just be cool and not care, for once in his whole, stupid life.

Fingering the tie holding her robe closed, Eva slanted him a look from under her lashes. “Maybe you should check your clues one more time. The hint could just be that you need a shower.”

Happiness poured into the hole that had opened in his chest when Eva left him there on the couch without a backward glance. Danny waved his useless baseball-mitt hands and said, “Can’t get ’em wet, remember?”

Eva sauntered toward him, her whole body moving in a sinuous, slinky way that reminded him of her unself-conscious abandon as she took her pleasure. “I’m disappointed, Chef,” she said. “I would’ve thought you’d be a little more innovative than that.”

Danny felt his mouth go dry as she picked apart the knot at her waist and let the robe fall open to frame her lovely, smooth skin. “Any man whose brain works at peak capacity around you is either gay or dead.”

She gave a delighted laugh. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Proving my point!”

“Come on.” Eva grabbed his elbow, managing to knock his shirt and chef’s whites to the floor. “I’ve got a big, gorgeous, deep spa tub in the master bathroom.”

Danny’s eyes followed his clothes down and snagged on the telephone resting beside the couch. He frowned. “I should really call my guys and check in.”

Eva’s fingers tightened, but her voice went sultry and low. “The tub’s big enough for two…”

Danny swiveled his head back to her in time to catch the moment when Eva dropped the robe in a pile over his discarded chef’s jacket.

Completely comfortable in her own skin, she turned and swayed those perfect little hips over to the double doors she’d disappeared through before, casting one flirtatious peek over her pure white shoulder as she slipped into the next room.

Danny followed her without another pause.

He was pretty sure the guys would understand.

When he blinked his eyes open the next morning and stared up at the gold-leaf motif on Eva Jansen’s swanky penthouse ceiling, Danny was suddenly less sure about how understanding his team would be.

They’d no doubt spent the night dealing with Beck’s anger issues—and what the hell was up with him and that chick from California?—and worrying about the coming day of cooking. He should’ve been with them, not here, lounging around in the lap of luxury, waiting for someone to peel him a grape or something.

Sitting up abruptly, Danny twitched his fingers to check for soreness. The bandages had loosened during the night, what with one thing and another, and he was able to curl his hands into fists without too much pain. It was only by resolutely sitting on his memories of exactly what “one thing and another” had entailed that Danny was able to push back the cover and climb out of the bed, careful not to disturb the slender lump in the sheets beside him.

He moved smoothly, wincing only a little when he had to brace one hand on the corner of the bed to bend over and pick up his jeans. Annoyed by the bandages, Danny set his teeth to a trailing end at his right wrist, and tugged until he could begin to unravel them.

“What are you doing?” Eva’s sleepy voice matched her tousled brown hair and heavy-lidded eyes.

Danny couldn’t look at her without wanting to dive back into bed and lick her all over, so he went back to his bandage. “I’m taking these off so I can see what the damage is,” he said calmly. “The paramedic said to check.”

Eva pursed her pretty mouth, looking skeptical, but she couldn’t really argue. “Here, let me. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

Bemused by her constant desire to nurse him, Danny obediently held out his hands and enjoyed the gentle, meticulous way Eva unwound the white gauze to reveal his reddened, blistered palms.

She sucked in a horrified breath, but Danny flexed his hands and said, “Hey, no. They’re better than they look. A little of that magic hand lotion, and I’ll be ready to cook.”

“Don’t they hurt?”

Danny shrugged and snagged his jeans from the floor. “Well, yeah. But it’s workable. I can push through.”

“I don’t like it,” Eva said.

Jesus, civilians
.

“This is what chefs do,” Danny told her. “Come on, you’ve been around chefs all your life. You must have seen this kind of thing before. We get injured—put a hand down on a burner, chop off a fingernail, what have you—and we keep cooking. My dad once dropped a hotel pan piled with twenty pounds of lamb shanks on his foot and busted four bones. He swelled up like a balloon, but he limped his way through the rest of that dinner service and never once fell behind or complained.”

Eva sat up in bed, pulling the sheets to her chin and resting her elbows on her raised knees. With her tangled, messy hair and perfect makeup-free skin, she looked like a little kid.

“You love him a lot, don’t you?”

Danny had lost the thread. “What? Who?”

She made an impatient noise. “Your father. The way you talk about him—you’re proud to be his son.”

“I never thought about it that way, but yeah.” Pulling on his jeans took some time, the denim harsh against his stressed hands, and Danny used the extra moments to duck and hide from Eva’s too-perceptive gaze. “He’s a good man and a great chef. He’s always had a lot of faith in me.”

“Must be nice.” The bitterness in Eva’s voice made Danny glance at her swiftly, but her mouth was curved in a soft smile. “My dad and I are close, too. It’s been just us, for a long time—I mean, if you don’t count his legion of girlfriends, hookups, and one-night stands. Which I don’t.”

Danny was beginning to get a picture of Eva’s childhood, and it wasn’t a particularly pretty one. His parents might drive him nuts, on occasion, but he’d never doubted that they loved each other and their kids more than anything—with Lunden’s Tavern running a close second.

Before Max left home, he’d accused their father of loving the restaurant more than his own children, but Danny knew that wasn’t true. He’d seen the way his father grieved for those lost years with his eldest son, and no amount of Danny picking up the slack at home and at the Tavern could quite erase the shadow of pain in the old man’s eyes.