Wait Until Dark (19 page)

"Well, I like to think so," he replied with becoming modesty, then grinned and stood up, stretching his arms wide. She stood up, too, and immediately shrugged out of her soaked suede jacket. It landed on the floor with a wet-sounding plop. Getting rid of it felt wonderful. She had not realized how heavy it was until her shoulders were suddenly free of the burden.

Jake had stopped stretching and was frowning at her.

"You're as blue as a Smurf."

'Yes, well, freezing to death does seem to have that effect on people, I've heard."

Paradoxically, the tartness of her voice seemed to ease his concern.

"Here, get those wet clothes off and put these on." He reached behind her, picked up the shirt and sweats, and thrust them at her.

Charlie took them with fingers that felt clumsy because they were still so cold, then hesitated, glancing up at him. What was left was slim pickings. "What about you?"

"I'll make do with the shorts and blanket. That way, if we end up hitchhiking, it won't be any trouble for me to stick out a leg." He smiled then, a funny, charming smile, with his mouth turning up crookedly and his eyes crinkling. It occurred to Charlie with some force that he was one hot, sexy guy. "Don't argue. Strip."

She frowned. "Turn around."

Dazzling as the idea of dry clothes was, she was not stripping with him just standing there watching. Especially not after the unsettling little epiphany she'd just had.

There was the way he was looking at her, too. His gaze was moving over her with an arrested expression as if he were really seeing her for the first time. Glancing down at herself, she realized that her black T-shirt with the Sugar Babes legend was wet through, and clung to the firm globes of her breasts like a second skin. Her nipples were hardened and puckered from the cold, and thrust boldly through the stretchy cotton and the flimsy nylon bra that covered them. His gaze lingered on her breasts for a moment, she noticed, then slid swiftly down over her slim waist, narrow hips, and long, slender legs.

Charlie's eyes widened and her mouth went dry as it occurred to her that her partner in extreme survival was checking her out.

When his gaze lifted seconds later and their eyes met, the expression in his made her heart skip a beat. Raw sexual heat flared out at her before he abruptly turned his back.

"So strip already," he said in a tone that was faintly grim. "And hurry up. Under the circumstances it's not smart to spend too much time in one place."

1O

“WANT TO EXPLAIN
SUGAR BABES?"

It was the first thing he'd said to her in the minute or so that had passed since he'd started undressing. During that time, he had shed his coat and shirt—it was a pullover sweatshirt, Charlie had discovered, watching with fascination as he tugged it over his head—and he was currently in the process of unbuckling his belt. The question was directed at her without his ever looking around. Charlie was so mesmerized by the striptease taking place in front of her that it took her a couple of seconds to realize that he was talking about the writing on her T-shirt.

"Oh—I'm a singer. My sister and I perform as the Sugar Babes." His back was magnificent, she thought. Really, really magnificent. Broad shouldered and deeply tanned, with muscles that flexed every time he moved, it was mouthwatering enough that just looking at it made her forget that she was supposed to be removing her own wet clothes as well.

"Older or younger sister?" His biceps flexed as he stood on first one foot and then the other to pull off his socks. They were great biceps, she thought. The kind of biceps that women salivate over.

"Older. There are only the two of us. And my mom. My dad died five years ago." Realizing that he was almost finished undressing and she hadn't even started, Charlie hurriedly pulled her T-shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor. Unbelievably, she was even colder without the soaked shirt than she had been with it. Fortunately her hair was very nearly dry. Shaking it back from her face, rubbing her hands briskly up and down her goose-pimpled arms, she cast him a quick look to make sure that his back stayed firmly turned—not that the idea of being naked in front of him didn't turn her on, because it did, but she barely knew the man, after all, and she didn't think she was quite ready to take that particular step—then discarded her bra and pulled on soft, dry flannel. It was pure bliss.

"So how old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-seven. What about you?"

"Thirty-four."

"Old man." She said it teasingly.

With another quick look at him, she shed her jeans along with her panties, then quickly pulled her knees up to her chest inside the voluminous shirt, which covered her well enough in that position so that only her small bare toes peeked out.

"Try thinking of it as experienced."

Was that a subtle come-on? Charlie wondered, and at the idea her heart rate increased. She discovered that she liked the idea of him coming on to her. Then an unmistakable sound distracted her, and she looked up to find that he had unzipped his pants, and was shucking them with as much nonchalance as if he'd been alone, revealing an athlete's toned physique. He was wearing a pair of dark colored boxer briefs that clung to his narrow hips and muscular thighs like a second skin. Of course, they were probably as wet as the rest of him, she realized, which would account for how very faithfully they molded his flesh. He moved then, stepping out of his pants, and she had an excellent view of a tight, well-muscled masculine backside in motion.

She was, she realized, starting to feel a little warmer.

"Charlie." He glanced around then, frowning, and Charlie realized that he must have asked her a question she hadn't heard. She was, in fact, staring at his tush, and he had caught her at it. His eyes narrowed at her, and she frantically searched her mind for what he had last said. Whatever it was, if she had even heard it, it eluded her now.

"What?" she asked, defeated. She
definitely
was feeling warmer.

"I thought you and your sister trapped wild animals, or something.'' He was stepping into the oversize Bermudas.

"I don't. She does. I was just helping out for tonight," she said, hurrying to finish buttoning up the shirt before he could turn around and see that she was not quite done and guess the reason why. Really, getting all those little buttons into their holes was not easy with fingers made clumsy by—well, she preferred to think it was the cold, "Marisol—my sister—asked me to cover for her tonight so that she could celebrate her boyfriend's birthday."

"So you actually make a living by singing?" The Bermudas were so big that they threatened to drop straight back down to the floor the minute he let them go. Charlie looked on with interest as he bent to retrieve his belt from the soaked black pants. Really, watching all those muscles ripple was entertainment worth paying for.

It was only when he straightened and started threading his belt through the loops on the Bermudas that she remembered that he'd asked her a question. Exhaustion had to have something to do with her lack of concentration, she told herself. And her racing pulse and the weakness in the pit of her stomach that happened when she looked at him, as well. His wasn't the first male body she had seen, after all.

Although she had to admit that it might well be the best.

"Nothing very lavish." She grimaced, thinking of the small amount she actually took home each week. "I sing backup for various studio bands during the day, and at night I perform wherever I can get a gig, or wherever Marisol and I—the Sugar Babes—can get a gig. We're singing Saturday at the Yellow Rose."

A hint of pride touched her voice as she said that last. Along music row, a job at the Yellow Rose was considered pretty prestigious. Then she remembered that she might not be around to sing on Saturday at the Yellow Rose, and that effectively distracted her from the sudden attack of the hots she seemed to be experiencing for Jake.

"Maybe I'll come see," he said, turning around. The Bermudas clung to his hips by nothing more than the grace of God and the good offices of his belt and reached well below his knees. He would have looked utterly ridiculous if it had not been for his truly gorgeous physique. Just looking at his chest was enough to infect her with the hots for him all over again, Charlie discovered. Wide and well-muscled, with a thick wedge of black hair, it tapered in a classic vee-shape from his shoulders to his narrow athlete's hips.

She wanted to touch it, to run her hands over the firm muscles, to thread her fingers through the mat of hair so badly that her toes curled.

"Always assuming we'll be alive Saturday." She said it flippantly, partly to remind herself of the direness of their circumstances and partly to remind him. His words, plus the heated glint in his eyes as they moved over her, told her pretty conclusively that she wasn't the only one dealing with a sudden bad case of lust.

Not that good girl Charlie Bates was going to do anything about it, of course. It just wasn't in her to jump a sexy stranger's bones. She hadn't been raised like that.

Why did nothing in her life ever work out the way it was supposed to? This gorgeous guy had practically been handed to her on a plate, and there were half-a-dozen good reasons why she wasn't going to do anything about it.

"You forgot to put your pants on," he said, draping the blanket over his shoulders and picking up the sweatpants. Charlie was horrified to discover that he was right She'd been so involved in salivating over him that she had totally forgotten that she was freezing, exhausted—and only half dressed.

He moved around in front of her and bent, holding the sweatpants open for her as if she'd been a child.

"Put your foot in," he said, with a lurking half smile and that carnal glint in his eyes.

She did, first one, then the other, sliding her long legs into the cavernous depths of the wide-load fleece, conscious of his gaze on the slender curves of her calves and thighs all the while. He swept her with a single hot look as, kept decent by the length of the shirt, she stood to pull the pants up. Then he turned away to scoop the flashlight from the floor.

She watched him, and her heart pounded. Her mouth went dry. She was totally turned on, she realized, and the man hadn't even touched her. Yet.

She'd wished for excitement, hadn't she? Well, tonight she'd gotten excitement in spades.

The terrifying kind of excitement that came with stumbling across murderous drug smugglers she could do without, she thought. But the kind of charged sexual excitement that was sizzling between her and Jake— well, now she knew what had been missing from her life. She had never, ever, even when they had first started dating almost a year ago, felt that kind of excitement with Rick.

This was what she wanted.

"There must be kids in your life," Charlie said, glancing around to find Jake going through drawers behind her and striving to keep the conversation light until she could figure out what to do about him. The question about kids had sprung from the way he had held out the pants for her, as if it was a natural thing for him to do.

Then she realized what she had said.
Kids in his life?
Oh, God, she thought fervently, don't let him be married.

"Six nephews. I have three brothers, and they have two boys each. Actually, when I'm home I baby-sit a lot."

"Where's home?" Without even thinking about it, she moved a little closer to him, caught herself doing it, stopped, and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Memphis."

"That makes you a local boy." What she was really trying to find out was whether or not he had a wife, but
so
far she couldn't quite seem to phrase the question subtly.

"Close enough."

"So are you married?" Right, Charlie, just blurt it out.

He glanced around at her, smiling faintly, and again she was aware of the smoldering quality of that look. "Nope. You?"

Thank you, God, she thought, but managed not to say it aloud. "No."

"Good."

Without warning, the flashlight went out. The cabin was plunged into total darkness.

"Shit"

"Jake!" Charlie moved toward him, reaching out for him in sudden alarm. Her fingers encountered the soft hair on his chest, and brushed over the warm hard muscles beneath before being reluctantly withdrawn. The contact produced a tingling electricity that shimmied along every nerve ending she possessed. The strength of her own reaction made her catch her breath.

"It's okay. Nothing to worry about. Damn batteries."

"We don't really need it, do we?" It was an effort to make her voice sound normal. She had to resist the urge to touch him again. It was too soon, she didn't know him, the situation was about as inappropriate as one could get.

She could hear him doing something that involved metal, shaking it until it rattled, screwing and unscrewing a lid.

"If we do, we're out of luck, because it's not coming back on. Here, wrap this around yourself. It's cold out there, and we've got to get moving. I wish to hell we'd managed to hang onto our boots."

"Ostrich leather, black, size seven. If we get out of this, you owe me a pair." Her tone was severe, but Charlie was smiling faintly as she said it.

"Yeah, okay. Fine. Blame me. I don't care." He sounded as if he might be smiling, too. Charlie felt something settle over her shoulders: the blanket. The gift of it touched her. For all his obvious physical toughness, he was as human as she was and he would freeze outside without it. It also settled something: However unexpected her attraction to him might be, it was something that deserved to be explored.

For once in her life, she meant to take a chance. And good girl Charlie be damned.

"Jake." She reached out for him again, and this time touched his arm. Her hand curled around one of the biceps she had so admired. It felt warm and hard beneath her fingers. "You know what? I think you're a pretty great guy."

Heart pounding, she took a step closer, rose up on tiptoe and kissed him. His lips were warm, and firm, and tasted faintly of the river they'd just left behind. For a moment, as she pressed her lips to his, he did nothing, just stood immobile as if he would absorb the touch of her lips.

"God, I've been wanting to do that." He said the words against her lips. Then his arms came around her hard and he pulled her to him and bent her backward over his arm and slanted his mouth over hers with a greedy hunger that made her quake.

By way of a reply, she wrapped her arms around his neck and put her tongue in his mouth and kissed him back for all she was worth. But it was he who controlled the kiss now as his tongue thrust urgently into her mouth and his hand came up to cover her breast. Charlie thought she would die at how good it felt to have his hand there. Her loins clenched and throbbed. Her breasts swelled, and the one fortunate nipple thrust boldly against the palm of his caressing hand. Quivers raced up and down her thighs as he pressed his knee between them. Her knees went weak. The bed was pushing against the back of her calves as he turned her around, and she swayed against it, wanting to be horizontal with him in the worst way.

Whether she pulled him down or he pushed her she didn't know, but suddenly she was on her back on the mattress and he was coming down on top of her, pulling up her flannel shirt, cupping her breasts, running his thumbs lightly over the distended nipples, kissing her ravenously all the while. Charlie moaned into his mouth, sliding her hands over his chest, tugging at his ridiculous shorts, so hot her legs were already wrapping around him and she wasn't even naked yet, hotter than she could ever remember being for a man in her life.

"Let's get your clothes off." His voice was thick as he lifted his head to yank the huge shirt over her head. His mouth returned to claim her breast; he slid his tongue over her nipple, then sucked it. At the same time he reached down between their straining bodies to slide his hand inside her pants and caress the cleft between her legs. His thumb found the place where she most wanted to be touched, and pressed.

"That is so—incredibly—good." She was panting, squirming beneath the ministrations of his mouth and that knowing hand, on fire for him, wanting him inside her so badly that she felt like she'd die if he made her wait.

She couldn't wait. Her hands slid between them to caress him through the soft cotton shorts. He was huge and hard and so hot that she could feel the heat even through the cloth. Her hand closed around him and he groaned.

"Charlie. God, Charlie." He jerked down her pants, baring her to the knees, and she kicked the offending garment the rest of the way off. Her legs parted, eager for him to come inside her, but instead of shedding his own pants he bent his head and pressed his mouth to her. She cried out as his tongue found the very center of her, gasping his name and digging her nails into his shoulders. His mouth was wet and scalding hot and well versed in the ways of women, and Charlie thought that she would die with the sheer pleasure of what he was doing to her.