Fallen Into You (2 page)

It seemed like an eternity, but they were finally under the porch, standing at the door. Kara looked back at the rain and was stunned that she couldn’t see the truck. Anders swung open the door and ushered her inside.

The house was virtually silent compared to the sounds outside. Kara stood still for a moment, dripping on the entryway, listening. Anders touched her arm. “We need to get you out of those clothes.”

Kara blinked. “What did you say?”

Rather than backtrack and act gentlemanly, as she expected, Anders gave her a slow grin. “Under other circumstances, it would be sexy,” he said, his voice now low and sultry. “But under these circumstances, it’s just prudent.”

She knew he was right – she was shivering.

“Down the hallway, the first door to your right,” he said. “Everything you might need is in the little closet beside the sink. Get a really hot shower and I will find something suitable for you to wear.”

The certainty in his tone was soothing. She carefully removed her heels, glancing at them only once – they were ruined. With another touch of guidance from his hand, she headed toward the bathroom. But before she got there, she turned and looked at him from under her dripping hair.

“Thank you,” she said.

Anders smiled and nodded. “Go get warm.”

Chapter Two

T
hirty minutes later, Kara emerged from the bathroom wearing an old flannel shirt that came down almost to her knees. She had stepped from the shower and saw it neatly folded on the counter. Obviously Anders had put it there, and that meant that he had come into the bathroom while she was showering. The thought of him standing there, looking at her through the sheer curtain, made her nervous. Why hadn’t she thought to lock the door? Maybe she should have stayed with her car after all.

Anders was standing at the picture window at the front of the living room. He had changed clothes and now looked clean and fresh. Kara stopped for a moment and looked around the room, getting her bearings. The furniture had seen better days but definitely looked comfortable. The carpet was new, and so was the big television in the corner, but the coffee table had obviously seen years of good use. There were small pieces of art on the walls, bright pops of color on a dreary evening.

Just as she was moving toward one for a better look, the lights went out.

Kara froze. Anders cursed. She stayed right where she was, listening to his confident steps through the house. Soon there was a scrape, then another, then the blooming of a flame from an old-fashioned hurricane lamp. She watched the glow brighten as Anders put the glass chimney on top. Seeing it made her smile, because it already seemed like just the thing such a man would have handy for emergencies.

“I wondered when that would happen,” he said. “The power lines out there are swaying like crazy.”

Just then, Kara spied the phone on the table next to the couch. She picked it up and listened for a moment, then turned to Anders, her eyes wide with surprise. “The phones are dead.”

“That’s impossible…it’s a landline!”

Kara held the phone out to him and watched as he heard the silence. He carefully put the phone down on the cradle and then sank down on the couch. He had the look of someone who had just been dealt a huge surprise.

“This is a really bad storm,” she said, looking at the window, suddenly aware that there were trees and power lines and all sorts of debris that might be thrown around by the wind outside. She took a step back from that big pane of glass.

“This house is sturdy,” he said. “No worries here, I promise.”

Kara sat down beside him, careful to keep the flannel shirt down far enough to cover her. When she bent her knees all the way, she cried out with the sudden flare of pain. Anders was suddenly on the floor in front of her, his hands on her thighs, looking up into her face.

“Where’s it hurt?” he demanded.

Kara bit her lip hard and took a deep breath. “Knees,” she whispered.

“Okay…okay.”

He was gone in an instant, then back with a first aid kit. He popped it open and pulled out two white packages. She watched as he squeezed them hard in his hands. When he pressed them to her knees, she realized they were cold packs. She hissed at the coldness, but he held them there for a moment longer, watching her face.

“Too cold?”

She nodded.

He instructed her to hold the packs, then made a quick trip to what she assumed was the kitchen. Sure enough, he came back with two faded, ragged dishtowels. He wrapped the dishtowels around the cold packs and placed them against her skin again. This time the sensation was heavenly.

“You probably banged both knees against the dash when you crashed,” he said. “You might have bruising from the airbag later, or even the seat belt. Does anything else hurt?”

“Just aches…nothing bad.”

“Ibuprofen will help.”

“You’ve got that too, huh?”

He grinned and reached into the first aid kit, pulled out a small bottle and shook it. She recognized the sound of pills rattling around inside. “I was a boy scout in a former life. Always prepared.”

Kara leaned back on the couch, still careful to keep the flannel shirt down. Anders took his time looking at her legs, not hiding what he was doing, and soon she was blushing so hard that she felt like she needed cold packs on her cheeks.

“Thank you for your help,” she said.

“It’s not every day that I get to rescue a beautiful damsel in distress,” he teased.

There was that word again:
Beautiful
.

Kara watched him as he eased onto the couch beside her. He was letting his eyes feast on her body, but was keeping his hands to himself. She watched him until his eyes met hers. He didn’t blush or apologize or stammer. He simply smiled broadly at her. “You look so good in my shirt.”

Kara didn’t know what to say. The lamplight cast a warm glow over them. The storm raged outside, the rain falling so hard that it created a cocoon around the house, closing them off from the rest of the world. She could almost imagine that this man was someone special, and that they were trapped in this comfortable house while the rest of the world dealt with a wild storm. The darkness, the rain falling down in sheets, the gray outside the window – it was like being wrapped in a cocoon where they were completely safe and sound.

He sat down next to her. The denim of his jeans rubbed against her bare thigh. The heat of his body was only inches from hers, radiating like a furnace. He sat quietly, so still and calm that she finally looked up.

“I want to kiss you so badly,” he said, softly.

Kara’s heart started racing. She kept looking right at his eyes. “You’re a stranger.”

“Not entirely…”

“If it weren’t for circumstance, we wouldn’t be together at all…”

He smiled at her. “Well we can’t fight circumstance, now, can we?”

His lips were surprisingly warm and soft against hers. Her heart pounded but she closed her eyes and lifted her face, giving him silent permission to keep doing exactly what he was doing.

It was entirely wrong and at the same time, entirely right. She was thinking only of that as he leaned even closer and slid his arms around her. She touched his face, feeling the stubble there, and when his tongue pressed against her lips she opened them, allowing him a full taste of her.

She had never kissed a stranger before, if that’s what he was. She’d never kissed someone she just met, that was the point. Her boyfriend would be beyond angry if he could see what she was doing right now. And her father, a strict traditionalist, wouldn’t be too happy either. But none of that seemed to make any difference at all as Anders carefully slid a hand into her hair, pulling her closer and kissing her harder.

“Circumstances?” he whispered.

She swallowed hard. “That’s all.”

Then she pressed her lips against his again.

Already the pain in her knees was fading, and it was replaced with another sensation, one that brought all her attention to bear on the center of her body, where the heat was building faster than she had ever felt. She was very aware of the fact that the flannel shirt was riding up higher on her thighs. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Suddenly she felt wanton and naughty, an addictive feeling that made her arch her back and push her sensitive breasts toward him, beckoning him to touch her.

The moment he slipped his hand under the flannel and ran his cool fingers across her heated skin, she took a quick breath. “What the hell am I doing?”

“Whatever feels good,” he said, already panting.

“This is wrong,” she protested, even as she slid her hands into his hair to pull him back to her lips.

“Entirely,” he said, before his tongue slipped into her mouth again. At the same time, his hand found her breast and massaged it. Her nipple was already hard and sensitive, and she moaned into his mouth as he caressed it.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

Did she? A series of thoughts popped like firecrackers in her brain.
I have a boyfriend. I am more responsible than this. He is a stranger. He helped me. He is absolutely gorgeous. Who would know what happens here? We are alone and we are both adults. It’s entirely out of character. But what’s wrong with that?

“Don’t you dare,” she said, winning a chuckle from him.

Long minutes later, the flannel shirt was unbuttoned and she was lying on the couch underneath him. His shirt had been thrown across the room, and his jeans were open just enough that she could slip her hands inside – and when she did, she was very pleasantly surprised by what she found there. He moaned and pushed hard against her hand, showing her exactly what he wanted to do.

“We can’t go that far,” she protested, even as she opened her legs wider and let him settle in between them.

“I’m prepared,” he panted into her ear, and she kissed his neck as he pulled a foil wrapper from his back pocket. She had a moment to think about the fact that he had changed clothes after they got back to the house and had slipped the condom into his pocket. Was he planning this all along? Hoping that it would happen? How could he have assumed something like that?

But even as her mind was questioning everything, her body was singing a different tune. She watched without an ounce of embarrassment as he rose up on his knees, pushed his jeans down, and rolled the condom on. Even before he was ready her hips were rising up to him, beckoning him to finish what they had started. With one long push and two low moans, he was deep inside her, and a moment after that he was moving with slow, steady intent.

He was just the right size, touching just the right places, and soon Kara was clenching his shoulders and moaning loud enough to wake the neighbors. When the orgasm broke over her it was wild and unbridled, as passionate as the storm that still raged outside. Then there was his answering cry and the throbbing inside her, the completion that made her want even more.

“Spend the night with your stranger,” he whispered into her ear.

***

Kara woke to the early-morning sunlight streaming through the window. The bed was firmer than what she was used to, but the blankets were of the kind of softness she could get lost in. She opened her eyes to a pounding headache that seemed familiar, somehow – and with a sudden rush, she remembered.

The tree. The car. The crash in the rain.

The man who had come to her rescue.

She turned her head and there he was – sleeping on his back, right beside her. He looked younger when he slept, almost like a teenager with his shaggy hair in need of a cut and the stubble all over his face. His shoulders were hard and toned, the chest of a man who worked hard for a living. On his collarbone right above the blankets was a mark, one that looked suspiciously like an amorous bite.

Kara stifled a groan of dismay. What the hell had she done?

Then the image of her boyfriend came to her, and the wave of guilt threatened to take her breath away. No matter what, he could never know about this. He would never understand.

Hell,
she
didn’t understand.

She eased out of the bed, stifling an entirely different groan this time, one of sheer pain. Everything else fled her mind, everything but that intense agony. Her knees felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to them, and for a moment she wondered if she would be able to stand up.

You have to get out of here!

She found the strength to stand, and slowly hobbled to end of the bed, where she found the flannel shirt she had discarded there the night before.

How the hell am I going to get home?

She slowly walked through the house, staying as quiet as possible. She found her suit, draped over the back of a chair. The fabric was stiff but dry. The colors were faded so badly that she knew she would never be able to use it for work again, but it would have to do for going home. She quickly changed into her old clothes, and then found her high heels and her purse, right where she had left them, by the door. They were warped but serviceable. She slipped the heels on and winced at the pain in her knees, but she had to have something to walk in.