Crazy Hot (22 page)

“No,” she said quickly, half coming off the bed, a trace of panic in her voice. Then she blushed and sat back down. “I mean, I was hoping you would stay, for just a while. I thought, well, you don't have to take your clothes off or anything, but I thought I could do your face.”

“Do my face?”

“Yes.” She gave him a small smile and scooted back on the bed, making room for him at the same time as she reached for her box of tiny makeup containers. “Just your face, I swear. Please. It'll help me relax. I've never been shot at before.”

Yes. Of course. Perfect. He owed her that much at least. He'd be happy to sit on the bed with her and have her hands all over him.

All over his
face
—anything to get close to her.

And when he died from pure and abject sexual frustration, it would at least be an artistic death. He would keel over looking like God knew what by the time she was finished with him.

No,
he told himself,
use your head.
It was impossible. He simply wasn't to be trusted on a bed with her.

“Sure,” he said, walking over as casually as possible and consigning himself to a few minutes of glorious torture.

But it wasn't a few minutes. A half an hour later, Nikki was still “doing his face,” and he was floating someplace between heaven and hell.

She smelled wonderful, not like perfume, but a little like makeup, a little like her studio, and a lot like warm skin and soft breath, and up close he'd figured out that her eyelashes were real. She'd gotten an expression on her face, the same look he'd seen when she'd been working with Travis, and he was fascinated by it. He'd never thought anyone could be so intensely focused on his face.

What was she seeing? he wondered, when she would lean back and narrow her gaze, taking him all in before she started in anew. He might have doubted it was him at all, except that now and then she would meet his gaze, and color would rise in her cheeks.

He loved it, her awareness. Personally, he was going for a Bronze Star in awareness. She was using her fingers on him and lots of brushes, dabbing out of her tiny pots and compacts, spiking his hair and putting color there, and every time she touched him, another pint of blood drained out of his brain and pooled in his groin. It was the most perfectly awful and wonderful sensation, a real challenge to his integrity and everything he believed in. He was holding himself so still, he was hardly breathing to keep from rising up and pressing her back down onto the bed and consuming her.

“There,” she finally said, sitting back on her heels.

Reaching out, she took his chin in one hand and turned his face to either side, surveying her handiwork.

“Do you want to see?”

“Sure.” God, he was so smooth. He'd actually managed a word without his voice cracking.

She took a small digital camera out of her purse and leaned back to take a picture. When she turned the camera around and gave it to him, he glanced down and was instantly taken back.

He looked up and met her gaze, amazed.

“Do you know what you are?” she asked, an excited smile playing about her lips.

“Yes.” He knew what he was, what she'd made him. He knew exactly what she'd painted on his face, and it did nothing short of astound him.

“Well?”

“A goshawk.” Not a Cooper's hawk, or a red-tailed hawk, not a gyrfalcon or a golden eagle, but a goshawk—the largest, deadliest hawk. They were fierce predators, skilled hunters coveted by falconers all over the world. “I had one as a kid. We called him Gus.”

“Gus the goshawk?” She wrinkled her nose. “That's not very regal.”

“Gus was a goofball,” he said, grinning. He looked back to the digital photo. It was all there on his face, the bird's dark crown and cheek patches, a yellow stripe across the bridge of his nose, a dark gray beak, his eyes done in a narrowed, raptor gaze. “You are so good.”

“Do you want to do me?”

Oh, yeah.
His gaze snapped up to meet hers. He wanted to do her all night long.

“I mean, my face,” she hurriedly explained, a faint wash of color coming into her cheeks. God, she was pretty.

His own cheeks had to look the same way, but she would never see it through the mask she'd brushed on his face.

His instinct was to say no, he wasn't much of an artist, but for once, he didn't follow his instincts. He needed to expand his horizons if he was going to keep up with her, and he definitely wanted to keep up with her, maybe even get ahead of her if he could. They were at Steele Street. They were safe. He could let down his guard a while longer—long enough to play her game, even if he didn't have a clue about the rules.

“Sure,” he said, reaching out and taking her chin in his hand, the way she'd done to him. He turned her face from side to side, acting as if he knew what he was doing, when all he really wanted to do was touch her. Her skin was so soft, her bones delicate within his light grasp. “Close your eyes.”

That was better, he thought, when she did. Now he could look his fill.

“Don't forget the base,” she said.

“Right.” He picked up the biggest brush and dusted it off on his pants, getting rid of any color. Then he dragged it across her cheeks, first one and then the other, down the length of her nose, across her forehead, letting the soft bristles fan out on her skin. He took his time, covering her whole face in gentle sweeps, and suddenly he understood what Hawkins had said. He was sinking into feminine mystique faster than snowballs melting in hell, playing makeup with a girl. And he liked it. A lot.

He'd be the first to admit he'd grown up in a rowdy, raucous, and sometimes sexually crude household, lots of guy jokes, a few—okay, more than a few—pinups here and there, and he'd be the first to admit that he'd been known to approach sex as sort of a two-person team sport with a definite goal in mind and the whole point being to score.

But this.

This was wildly different.

He hadn't known he liked this sweet, teasing sensuality and the way it was wrapping around him from a thousand different directions.

He switched brushes, to something smaller, and made sure to wipe all the color off on his pants. With small, measured strokes, he started feathering invisible lines down each side of her nose and across the tops of her cheeks to the corners of her eyes.

“Are you doing a bird, too?”

“Mmm-hmmm.” He leaned in to studiously and invisibly color in the area beneath her eyebrows. She had the sexiest eyebrows.

“What kind?”

“Sparrow.” He reached for her tube of cherry lip gloss.

“Don't goshawks eat sparrows?”

“Yes. They do. Open your mouth.”

And she did.

Wow.

He twirled up the lip gloss and touched it to the center of both her lips.

“Sparrows don't use lip gloss,” she said quietly, trying not to move her mouth too much.

“This one does.” He twirled the tube back down and tossed it aside, then smeared the little dabs of gloss with the pad of his thumb, giving her soft, glossy, cherry, cherry lips. They felt like wet satin.

His breath caught in his throat, and his thumb drifted to a slow stop in the middle of her lower lip.

“Are you finished?”

“No.” His gaze slid over her, from the thick sweep of lashes lying across the tops of her cheeks, down the delicate symmetry of her nose, to her cherry lips. This was it. He'd reached the absolute end of his rope. His whole body was pulsing. He felt hot everywhere, and the only thing that could possibly save him was to make love with her.

“No,” he confessed again, leaning in closer. “Just getting started.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, just his mouth, and tasted her cherry lips. God, she was sweet and as ready for a kiss as he'd been. She instantly softened, flowing toward him, touching her tongue to his. Her sigh escaped into his mouth, and Kid felt the whole world shift on its axis.

With one arm firmly around her, he lowered her back onto the bed, kissing her the whole time, and more by miracle than design, he ended up between her legs.

Geezus.

“Oh,” she said, when he lifted his head.

He knew what she meant. There was no mistaking how turned on he was, not when he was pressed up against her, right where he'd dreamed of being.

“Don't worry. I won't, uh, you know . . .” His voice trailed off in embarrassed confusion. She turned him around more than any girl he'd ever known.

“Force yourself on me?” she finished for him, a small smile turning up the corners of her mouth.

He nodded, totally turned around now. She simply upended him.

“Don't worry. I won't force myself on you, either.” A teasing light lit the soft gray depths of her eyes. “At least I don't think so. I've never done it before.”

Of course she hadn't. Girls never did—well, except once he remembered a girl getting a little sexually aggressive with him. Not that he hadn't been able to fend her off or anything, but it had been a real eye-opener, and he'd been real careful after that to make sure he never . . .

Wait a minute.

“Never?” he asked, picking up on a subtle inflection in what she'd said. He wasn't embarrassed now. He was focused, fascinated, and he didn't want to misunderstand her in any way.

“Never,” she said, her gaze turning oh-so-serious. “Not once. Not with any of them.”

Well—he took a breath—there was no way to misunderstand that. He knew who she was talking about, all those ripped, naked guys in her studio and on her living room walls.

“You're a virgin,” he said, and even to him his voice sounded oddly flat, but she'd done it again, completely turned him inside out. The wild girl who painted naked men was a virgin? What did that mean? Had she seen enough of them and just wasn't interested? Hell. He'd let one kiss go to his head and give him all sorts of ideas. Okay, that was a lie. He'd had all those ideas long before he'd kissed her. Damn.

“Does that bother you?” she asked.

Okay, take a breath. That one had trick question written all over it.
Don't lose your head,
he told himself.
Think.

“No . . . no, not really,” he could honestly say. She was saving herself for someone special, and he had to admire that, even if it broke his heart, not to mention a hundred other places in him he couldn't even name. “Actually, I think that's pretty cool.” Cool for some lucky guy who he didn't think was going to be him. Hell, all he'd done was drag her around and get her shot at. She barely knew him—and yet he felt like he knew her.

He felt like he knew her through and through, as if she were a piece of him he'd never known he'd been missing. When she'd opened her door, the connection had been that sudden, that intense.

Looking down into her eyes, he smoothed his hand up the side of her face and ran his fingers into her hair. It was hard to imagine she hadn't felt something of what had hit him so hard.

She shifted beneath him. It was a small movement, but it was enough to send a bolt of pleasure shooting straight through his body. God help him.

“Nikki, I . . .” What could he say?

“Would you look in the makeup box for me? On the bottom?”

No. He didn't think he could. He was done playing with makeup. Now all he wanted to do was play with her. But a virgin—he wasn't sure what she wanted.

He glanced at the box anyway, past all the doodads, and a disbelieving grin slowly curved his mouth. How could he have missed it earlier, tucked into the bottom like that? And how could he get this lucky?

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking back at her, not daring to believe what he was seeing in her eyes and hearing in her voice. Not figuring he could possibly be this lucky, this—Holy Mother of God—this blessed, that she, the woman of his dreams, could want him as much as he wanted her. A virgin. Sweet Jesus.

“Will you call me ma'am and take
all
your clothes off for me if I say yes?”

His grin broadened even as his pulse raced. She wanted him. “Yes, ma'am.”

She laughed at that, a soft, giggly laugh, and he kissed her, lowered his mouth to hers and simply indulged himself. She touched him with her tongue, tasting him, and he returned the favor, letting himself just get high on her kisses, her mouth so wet, and warm, and lush. Easing onto his side, he pulled her close and slid his hand down her back, molding her to him.

He didn't mean to move too fast, but her skirt was damned short, and his hand ended up under it before he even knew that's where he was headed. God, it was heaven to touch her. He wanted to touch her everywhere, naked, but told himself to take it easy, to slow down. Then he felt her hands at the front of his pants, felt her fingers undoing his belt, and he gave up all thoughts of going slow.

“Take off your shirt,” she murmured, breaking off their kiss.

With her hands on his zipper, he was only too happy to comply, shucking out of his clothes even as he helped her remove hers, skimming the skirt down her legs and her T-shirt up over her head. She giggled a couple of times when one thing or another got stuck, but by the time they were done with each other, all her laughter had turned to sighs and soft sounds of encouragement, soft words of love.

“You're so beautiful, Kid.” Her hands were all over him. His mouth was all over her. Every place he kissed her, she tasted like a promise kept. Every place she touched him, she left a trail of fire.

When he'd taken all he could, he emptied the makeup box on the bed and retrieved the condom from the bottom. He wanted inside her, and she was whispering in his ear that she wanted the same.

“I'll be careful.” He sheathed himself with the prophylactic before settling over her. Leaning down, he kissed her cheek.

“I know, and I'm not worried, really, even though . . .”

He met her gaze and grinned, and felt shy even as he did. “Yeah. I know.” He was big, but he
would
be careful—and she was so ready for him. He'd made sure of that.

He entered her in careful degrees, kissing her the whole while, being careful not to put too much of his weight on her, or too much of himself inside her too soon.

“Kid—” He heard the note of panic in her voice, felt her tighten her grip on his waist.