Flushed (12 page)

He threw her clothes off the bed, kneeling at her feet and
raising his eyebrows as if challenging,
What are you going to do about it?
Oh, no. She would not be baited after he’d gone to such lengths to lull her
into a state of drunken arousal, not even with his calloused fingertips atop
her instep, stroking shivers over her skin. She considered arching her foot to
stroke him somewhere far more private. Instead she beckoned grandly for him to
join her, her arm flung across the bedspread in invitation.

He laughed and threw himself beside her. His fingers trailed
up her thigh, over her hip and ribs. The rough friction grew too intense as
reached her breast and her muscles tightened. He continued upward, circling her
shoulder, skimming down her arm.

She wove her fingers among his and brought their entwined
clasp to her lips, gently biting his knuckles before taking his rough fingers
into her mouth, one by one. Climbing was tough on his hands. She used her teeth
more firmly than she’d want him using on her own uncalloused skin. He seemed to
like it, his face mere inches from hers. The dark rings of his eyes had bled
into the pale irises while the pupils expanded, giving him a smoky, dangerous
look.

She turned on her side to face him, still working his hand.
His erection bumped her hip. For Isabelle, this was the best part of sex.
Knowing her own power to arouse. Feeling how badly her partner wanted her. It
made her feel alive.

It had been far too long.

“Tease.” Kim said it so quietly she was more aware of the
“T” and “S” on her skin than in her ears.

She pulled his finger from her mouth and pushed him onto his
back on the mattress. She sat on him, a more distracting proposition than it
had been before. Now it was skin on skin, the hottest part of her body
deliciously close to the hottest part of his.

“Tease?” she asked.

He grinned up at her, his hands on her thighs. His face
seemed flushed around the ears. His eyelids, too, were a bit pink. She wondered
if he might show even more color when aroused if he weren’t so tanned. She
treated herself to a nice, leisurely examination of his chest, her fingers
retracing last night’s explorations and combing the dark, moist hair. Kim’s musculature
wasn’t bulky like the men she knew who worked out for the sole purpose of
looking good naked. Kim was tight and strong the way a wild animal was tight
and strong. He’d earned his defined pecs through action. The pale lines of old
scars only reinforced the impression of him as a sleek and wily survivor.

“You are one hot man, Kim Martin,” she said.

He propped himself on his elbow, tracing her collarbone with
his other hand. “The question is, is one man enough for such a wild lioness?”

His words set off a rush that engulfed her brain. She kissed
him, pulling at his lip as he’d pulled at hers earlier. Two days worth of beard
made it as interesting as his rough hands on her skin—hands that gripped her
hips as she pressed wetly against him. With just the slightest movement, she
could take him inside her. The pulsing rush in her temples matched the heavy
throb of her lower body, urging her to do it.

She couldn’t. They weren’t protected.

Before she could force herself to break away and take care
of that, he surprised her, exploring her with his finger. The friction of his
calluses on her most tender tissue was maddening, incredible, disastrous for
her self-control. She bit his lip without meaning to, overwhelmed by sensation.
He barely paused before turning the tables, taking her lip for more of his
brand of intoxicating torture. There seemed to be a direct connection between
his kisses and the need to move her hips. She didn’t want to move lest she
dislodge his fingers. She grew wetter every moment as her body tried to grant
him full access. She was melting on top of him.

His mouth toured the length of her neck, leaving yet another
part of her body wet and wanting. She gripped his arm, feeling his muscles
bunch and shift as his fingers continued to work their magic. There were
noises, she noticed, happy, sexy noises and she was the one making them.

Orgasm hit her unexpectedly. None of the usual, gradual
tightening of her body. What with one thing and another, she’d already been
tight. Now she cried out with sudden release. Her body shook with it. A small
part of her noticed Kim was moving her. She had to trust him. She had no
choice. She’d been engulfed by something larger than she was. Until it was
done, she was helpless to pay attention to anything else. She wrapped her arms
tightly around his ribs and rode the thunder he had coaxed from her.

When the trembling subsided, she found she was on her back
on the richly colored bedspread. Kim was kneeling beside her, bestowing wet
kisses along her hip and up her steeply pitched thigh to her bent knee, his
eyes watching her face.

She tried to speak. All that came out was a happy sigh.

He smiled. Rather, his eyes did, which was all she could see
above the knee of her crooked leg. A smile in those smoky, sex-drenched eyes?
She’d thought his appeal couldn’t go further off-scale, but even marinating in
bliss, she wanted him.

Eyes, yes. And oh, that mussed hair. She groaned.

“Yes?” he asked as if she’d called his name. He kissed her
shin and rubbed his whiskers against her skin.

“Yes,” she managed, though her voice was iffy at best. “A
bucket of yes.”

He laughed, kneeling between her legs, sliding his hands
slowly up her thighs. “A whole bucket?”

“Big bucket,” she assured him. His arms slid beneath her and
he pulled her body up off the bed toward him until her rear rested on his
thighs. She admired his flexibility as he bent over to kiss her bellybutton.
But when he went lower and began feasting on the aftermath of her release, she
about went through the roof. He held her firmly, even as she squirmed and
writhed. His beard against her thighs and most sensitive flesh was hard enough
to resist. But oh my, his tongue…

She couldn’t say how long he attended her. Her brain went
offline during the overload. Perhaps it was the silky feel of his crazy dark
hair in her gripping fingers. Perhaps the persistent heat of his erection
against her lower back. Or the debauched sound of a wet mouth against wet
flesh.

No, she decided as he gave her a moment to return to her
body, it was that he’d troubled to do it—seemed to relish dong it—in spite of
the delay of his own release.

High time they brought that delay to an end.

She stretched to reach the drawer in her nightstand.
“C’mere,” she said, “I want to give you something.”

He laughed, lounging beside her on the bedspread as if he
were having the time of his life. As if they had all the time in the world. No
hurry. He could wait forever. “A bucket of yes?” he asked.

She tore open the condom packet and smiled at him. Maybe she
took longer than strictly necessary to unroll it over him, but he didn’t seem
to mind that she slid back down his body to enjoy the scenery. It gave her a
chance to savor the hot, musky scent of him, to see up close the trembling of
his belly that betrayed his need for her. No hurry. Sure.

She climbed atop him once again. Even through his tan, she
could see a flush on his chest.

“You are one hot woman, Isabelle Caine,” he said, a perfect
mirror of what she’d said to him.

“Mmm,” she said, satisfied she could give as good as she
got, that she could make him scream, could make him beg. She had the power, if
she decided to use it. A lioness, indeed. Not to be messed with. She smoothed
her damp hair back from her face. It wasn’t about whether one man was enough,
at least not if he was the man. Quite the opposite. “I think you know the
question.”

And with that, she lifted her hips and slid down the hard
length of him.

Kim knew the question. Not that he could process language
until she was through with him and they lay in sated exhaustion on her
king-sized bed.

Was one enough?

It was what they’d been debating all along, him saying yes
and Isabelle more or less calling him a liar. Granted, he’d never met a woman
who could hold his interest for long. Never met someone who was imaginative
enough, competitive enough, just plain horny enough.

Never say never
, he thought, looking at Isabelle
sprawled beside him. The flush was fading from her creamy skin, but she glowed
with perspiration and spent passion. She seemed completely comfortable with her
nakedness, and for that alone he could want to keep her in his bed.

There was so much more. How they’d vied for dominance, first
one on top then the other, testing, teasing, tasting.

Damn.

And her lack of inhibitions. He’d had no problem finding his
way to her most intimate secrets. Her intensely sexy vocalizations made it easy
to learn what she liked.

He’d known accomplished women. Aggressive women. But never
anyone with her spirit. Her surprises.

She blew him away.

He dragged his languid body closer to hers and kissed her
shoulder. Her fingers narrowly missed poking out his eye as she blindly groped
for his hair, stroking him with lazy satisfaction.

One might very well be enough, if it were the right one.

There was a knock at the bedroom door.

“Need to use the bathroom,” came Charlie Bach’s voice. “Do
you need me to run next door?”

“Charlie?” Isabelle asked. “Of course not. How were the
interviews?”

“Good,” he said through the door.

Kim was stunned at the casualness of the exchange. Isabelle
would allow Charlie into the bedroom while she lay here nude? Not while he was
here. “Hold your damn horses, kid.” No way would Charlie have known to knock if
he hadn’t heard at least the finale of the fireworks in here. Kim reached
across her and pulled at the bedspread until he had enough to drape over her.
She smiled indulgently as if it were unnecessary.

Like hell. “Clear,” he called.

Charlie came through the door and headed straight for the
bathroom without looking. Didn’t exactly make Kim love him, but he grudgingly
gave the kid credit all the same.

“Under the covers,” Kim said to Isabelle. She raised her
eyebrow. Draped in the bedding’s rich fabrics to the bare minimum of decency, a
tasseled pillow beneath her dark, tousled head, she couldn’t look more regal.

“Please.”

“Honestly,” she said, but she smiled. Good enough.

Her sheets were burgundy, making her pale skin even more
dramatic by contrast. He climbed under with her, kissing her and touching her
as if he could possibly finish anything he might start. Not likely at the
moment.

Just as well, with Charlie in the bathroom, mere yards from
where they lay. He heard the shower start.

Kim was still listening when he realized Isabelle was
asleep. She stirred and rolled over, putting her back to him. He took it as an
invitation to spoon with her, his arm around her waist, obscurely happy to have
his body between her and the bathroom door. She made him feel…protective. Or
maybe possessive. In any case, she certainly made him feel. More than any woman
ever had. More than he thought he could.

He never heard the shower stop.

He woke as Isabelle did. She bumped into him as if she
weren’t used to being held in her sleep. Hard to believe. She turned over in
his arms, stirring up the rich scent of the two of them on the covers. He
kissed her before she even opened her eyes. She made a sound of honeyed
sleepiness and reached her hands over her head as a stretch rolled down the
length of her body in a long, sensuous wave. It meant she was rolling those ripe
curves against him. Talk about a bucket of yes. He was entirely in favor of
Isabelle’s stretches.

“Do that again and you’ll never be rid of me.”

Her smile was sleepy and lazy and he loved it.

“Bring me food. Then we’ll see what happens.” Her arms
settled on his shoulders. She kissed his nose.

“Bring you food?” Damn, she smelled good.

“I’m hungry.”

“I noticed,” he said, grinning. He kissed her. He remembered
Charlie was in the house. “Let’s pick up something and go to my place.”

She rolled on top of him, languid and warm and easily the
sexiest woman he’d ever known. “I’d rather order in,” she purred.

In Kim’s perfect world, they’d never leave her bed again,
making love, laughing, talking about Austin and all the things they might do
before he left. But this wasn’t Kim’s perfect world. His perfect world had no
room for brothers.

“Charlie.”

“Is a grown-up,” she finished for him. She braced against
his chest, sitting up on top of him. “Easy enough to ask him to go to the
movies or something.”

Kim pulled the sheets up to drape around her shoulders.

She looked at his hand holding the sheet in place, snorted
and slid off him in the most wonderfully distracting way to lie beside him. “So
modest?” she asked. “I can’t imagine you had a lot of privacy on that office desk.”

It took him a beat to realize what she meant. Jules. He
hadn’t explained—he hadn’t explained and she’d slept with him anyway. And she
didn’t sound mad.

He sensed trouble, which did him no good. If he were out
climbing, he’d let go now, drop and try again. If he were with a different
woman, he’d let go and write it off. This was Isabelle. This mattered.

It mattered so much it scared him.

“The door was closed,” he said because if he didn’t say
something soon there’d be no trying again.

She laughed.

Of course she laughed. The office door was glass. “I mean
the door between the office and the storage room. She always changes in there.
Wall Werx doesn’t have a dressing room—one of the many problems I’m trying to
get Damon to understand.”

Isabelle tossed off the covers and walked, nude, to her
dresser. Kim hardly noticed the poetry of her pale backside as she bent to pull
something from a drawer. He was busy trying to figure out why his story didn’t
even convince him.

Isabelle pulled on an ivory silk something that might have
been either a nightgown or a slip, and as it slid into place over her body, Kim
did have to pause to consider her beauty before he could focus again.

“I broke the desk,” he said. “I was trying to fix it. I had
nothing to do with her bra.”

She took a dress from her armoire and stepped into it,
another antique one with the zipper in the side, running from her hip up under
her arm. It made a trim-fitting, sleeveless dress that would fit right in with
the cast of
Mad Men
.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

Okay?

Kim got out of bed and, seeing as Isabelle was dressed, went
into the bathroom to retrieve his dirty t-shirt and shorts. He pulled them on
and caught up with Isabelle as she was walking into the living room.

Charlie lay on the sofa, popping cheese curls as he jammed
to some inaudible masterpiece of rock playing through headphones attached to
the music player balanced on his stomach. He acknowledged them by waving a
cheese curl in their direction.

Kim saluted in return and followed Isabelle onto the porch,
which was as dark as it had been the night before, as dark as Kim’s brain
function. Were they going to his place after all?

But no, Isabelle stopped on the porch. She put her arms
around him and kissed him in a way that suggested she really wasn’t mad. It was
hard to pay attention to his lingering sense of trouble with Isabelle in his
arms.

“I should spend some time with Charlie. Is there a number
where I can call you? All I have is your service.”

There were awkward moments of getting her the number before
they were back on the porch and more kissing that was so right, so heated, Kim
forgot everything until he slid his hand up under her dress and he remembered
she wore nothing but a slip beneath. Something happened in his brain then and
it wasn’t pretty. The part of him that had wanted to keep her in bed until they
died of thirst was comparing the adventure quotient of doing something about it
right here on the dark porch, against trying to slip her past her brother and
back into the bedroom’s comfort. The part of him she’d wakened with her hats
and her house and her fear of heights argued something was wrong—that he needed
to stop kissing her and start thinking. Or at least take his hands out of
temptation’s way. He managed that much, smoothing her dress to cover her
thighs.

She became shorter without seeming to move. Her hands, once
locked behind his neck, slid down over his chest. She must have been standing
on her toes to kiss him.

“Mmmm,” she said, “why did we wait so long?”

Kim smiled. The wolf-crying part of his brain was being
stupid. She was fine. She was wonderful. And maybe, just maybe, she was his—or
could be, once he told her the score.

Which scared him.

And explained why his brain had been making such a fuss.
Stupid brain.

“Because we weren’t dating,” he said.

She grinned and kissed him again.

His hand slid down her leg. She pressed against him. She was
wonderful, all right. Handfuls of wonderful. A bucket of wonderful. Now he just
needed to turn the conversation toward the complication looming in their
future. “Thanks for changing your mind about that, by the way.”

“Oh, I haven’t,” she said, still warmly snug against his
hips. “I have no intention of dating you. I just want to sleep with you.” She
kissed him a final time and slid out of his arms. “I’ll call you later.”

She left him there on the dark porch.

Trouble, said his brain.

Stupid brain.

* * * * *

Isabelle pushed Charlie’s feet off the sofa and sat down
next to him. He scrambled to sit up, pulling off his headphones. Outside, Kim’s
truck started, then pulled away.

“Damn, Isabelle,” Charlie said, “I’ve never seen you smile
like this.”

“I should have been born a man.”

Charlie laughed. “You’re too smart to be a man.”

“True.” She took a cheese curl from the bag he still held
and crunched.

“So help me out, sis,” he said. “I know you had a good time
in the bedroom—a really good time, by the screaming involved—but I’m guessing
there’s more than great sex behind that cat-ate-the-canary smile.”

Isabelle blushed, but her smile just wouldn’t go away. “The
sex was epic. I had no idea purely physical fun could be so, well, fun. I must
do that again,” she said, “and often.”

Charlie laughed so hard he choked on a cheese curl. Isabelle
brought him a glass of water. Walking had become an interesting sensation. The
silk slip moved over her skin more softly than Kim’s fingers had, but it
reminded her of him anyway. Her thighs prickled with beard burn and she felt a
little swollen from Kim’s attention. Being without underwear may have happened
more by accident than conscious choice, but it seemed fitting punctuation for
what had been the most fully physical couple of hours of her life.

Making it, simply, the time of her life.

Amazing what had happened once she decided Kim Martin had
“fling” written all over him and let herself go for it. As long as he could
make her feel like this—hot, happy, hungry—she’d continue to go for it.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Charlie said, once he’d
gotten the curl under control. “Congratulations.”

“Somehow, I knew you’d approve. Dinner?”

“You’re buying,” Charlie said. “Not only am I unemployed,
I’m not getting any, remember?”

Isabelle laughed and went to put on some underwear.

By time she’d eaten her salad and stolen the last slice of
quesadilla from Charlie with no sign of their dinners’ arrival, Isabelle wasn’t
laughing any more.

“What do you mean, do I remember Liz from the IGA?” she
said. She’d been grilling Charlie about the problems between him and Gina,
feeling quite sure her new, “modern” perspective would give her the added
wisdom to help. Now she felt quite certain she wasn’t going to like what she
learned.

Charlie shrugged.

“You didn’t,” Isabelle said.

“Purely physical fun.”

“Charlie!”

“What? You said it yourself earlier tonight—”

“Charlie Bach, you cheating bastard. I’m embarrassed to call
you family.”

“What happened to ‘I want to do that again, and often’? I
thought you were a convert.”

She sputtered. “I’m not the one in a relationship, here.
You’ve been living with Gina for months. You told me you loved her. You said
you thought it was serious.”

“I was. I did. I mean, I do.”

The waiter brought steaming platefuls of food. Hungry as
she’d been, the sight of the sour cream sauce on her chicken enchiladas made
Isabelle feel ill. She pushed the plate aside so she wouldn’t have to smell it.
Charlie’s appetite seemed unaffected. He swarmed over his enchiladas, which
only made her madder.

“Tell me how it works, Charlie. I want to know.”

“Guessing you already know—screaming, etc.?” He grinned
before returning to his own enchiladas.

She smacked her palm against the Formica tabletop and
Charlie jumped. Good. “Do you have different compartments in that primitive
brain of yours?” she asked, all her good feelings gone. She made a box with her
hands and used a Charlie voice. “Here’s where I keep Gina, who knows how to
cook and who lets me keep my socks at her house. And here,” she moved her hands
to make a second box, “is where I keep the bimbo from the grocery store.” She
moved her hands again. “The one with great tits.” Again. “The one who likes to
swing from the ceiling fan.”

“That’s amazing,” Charlie said.

She thought she might throw up.

She watched Charlie shovel in the food and wondered whether
all men really were pigs or whether she just had a disproportionate number of
them in her life. Maybe she attracted them. Maybe something about her said,
“Hey guys, here’s one you can toy with. Watch her explode when she finds out
you can’t keep it in your pants.”