McKettrick's Luck (22 page)

Cheyenne blushed. “Of course not,” she said, and wondered if she'd told the truth. “They're probably miles away.”

“Palm Springs,” Jesse said, twisting one of her dark brown locks loosely around his finger. “I like your hair down,” he told her.

She turned onto her side, so they were facing each other. “Are we crazy?” she asked.

He smiled, slid his hand down along her upper arm, brought it to rest on the curve of her hip. “Probably.” He was close now, breathing the word against her mouth. As she opened to him, he hooked a thumb under the button of her jeans.

She gave a slight whimper, then slid both arms around his neck.

He kissed her, very lightly at first, then with deepening passion. He unfastened the button, then slipped his hand beneath the hem of her clingy T-shirt, splaying his fingers wide on her belly.

Cheyenne groaned, twisting onto her back.

Jesse didn't break the kiss, but found the front-catch on her bra and snapped it open, setting her breasts free. Cupping one, chafing the nipple with the tips of his fingers until it hardened, straining toward him.

Cheyenne gasped when he finally let her take a breath. Gasped again when he shoved her shirt up, bent his head and took her nipple full into his mouth.

She cried out, arching her back, and plunged her fingers into his shower-damp hair. Overhead, the stampede blurred, came into sharp focus, and blurred again.

Jesse tongued her other breast, then suckled, at the same time unzipping her jeans.

She lifted her hips, peeled the fabric away with frantic motions of her hands. Jesse paused long enough to pull the jeans down and away, and her panties went with them.

While Cheyenne lay dazed and needing, naked except for her displaced bra and the T-shirt pushed up to her shoulders, Jesse knelt beside her. With one hand, he unbuttoned his jeans. With the other, he stroked the thatch of curls between Cheyenne's thighs, never going quite deep enough.

She moaned softly, lifting her hips a little, craving his touch.

He hauled off his T-shirt, tossed it aside. Played with Cheyenne in a way that made her give a little whimpery yelp of need.

When he thrust a finger inside her, she made a sobbing sound, threw back her head and closed her eyes. The lower half of her body moved in delicious rhythm with the slow, steady movement of Jesse's hand.

He must have shed his jeans then; Cheyenne was aware of nothing but the sensations of his thumb, making wet circles around her clitoris, while his finger set fire to the little nest of nerves inside her. Sure enough, he'd found her G-spot. Until that moment, she hadn't known she
had
one.

No doubt about it. G-spot up and running.

“Jesse,” she whispered, pleading.

“Not yet,” he said, between her legs now.

“But I'm going to—oh,
God—
”

He continued to tease her, leaned over her to capture her mouth for another kiss.

She couldn't lie still, even for his kiss. Tossing her head from side to side, she moaned again, fevered. “
Jesse,
I'm—”

“I know,” he said. Then he nibbled his way back down her body, draped her legs over his shoulders, slipped his hands under her buttocks and raised her to his mouth.

The moment his tongue flicked against her, she erupted in a shattering orgasm, and a low, keening sound came from her throat. The spasms seemed to go on and on, and just when she thought she couldn't bear the shrill pleasure of it for another moment, Jesse began to suck on her.

The climax intensified. And then intensified again.

And still it went on.

Cheyenne clawed at the bedding with both hands.

Jesse drew on her harder, and then harder still.

Cheyenne's body went slick with perspiration.

She screamed Jesse's name, and then the apocalypse came. She splintered, flew apart like an expanding universe in microcosm, and then dissolved into tiny particles, conscious only of desperate, consuming release.

When the flaming pieces drifted back together, and she became aware of herself as a solid being, she was on her knees, straddling Jesse, and he was gliding inside her. The friction ignited her all over again, and she tried to move faster, hungry for more, but, grasping her hips, he kept slowing her down.

Stroke by long, slow stroke, he drove her into a frenzy of satisfaction, caressing her breasts and urging her on as she rode him.

They came simultaneously, their bodies locked together, seemingly suspended in midair, in the final, catastrophic collision.

When it was over, Cheyenne collapsed onto Jesse's chest.

He caressed her back, her buttocks, the flesh of her thighs.

She felt his heart, beating against her own. Felt his breath, warm and raspy in her hair.

He was still deep inside her, warming her flesh, making her expand to accommodate him.

She moved to roll off, blissfully exhausted, but he didn't allow that.

Remarkably, he was getting hard again.

“Oh, Jesse,” she murmured. “We can't—”

He cupped her face in his hands, drew her head down for his kiss. “Sure we can,” he said, after he'd taken her breath away again. And he began to move beneath her, inside her.

The friction—the friction. She was catching fire again.

Clasping her hips now, he guided her, up and down, up and down, with excruciating leisure, along the length of him. She rode, trembling with need and anticipation, while he told her, in low, gruff words, all the delicious things he meant to do to her.

Over the course of the next few hours, he did them all.

Every one.

Finally, they slept, exhausted, as one flesh.

A few hours later Cheyenne awakened alone, to the sound of running water.

She sat up, momentarily alarmed. “Jesse?”

“In here,” he called.

She crawled off the bed, tested her legs, and stumbled toward the bathroom. The hot tub brimmed with steaming, bubbling water, and candles flickered on the painted tile rim surrounding it on three sides.

Jesse was already in the bath. Two glasses of red wine glistened in the dancing glow of the candles flames.

He beckoned.

Cheyenne joined him.

The water, exquisitely warm, surged against her spent muscles.

Jesse handed her a glass of wine. She sipped, set it aside.

Jesse drew her astraddle of him again, his hands strong on her waist.

“Jesse,” she sighed, wriggling just a little, “I can't stand one more orgasm.”

He chuckled. “I'd love to test that theory,” he said.

She splashed him.

He laughed and dipped a finger into her wineglass, dabbled the burgundy drops onto her nipple and licked them away.

She moaned.

He repeated the process with her other nipple. Beneath the surface of the water, he found her clitoris again, plucked at it gently, until she writhed with wanting.

She was lost.

That easily, she was lost.

He turned off the jets. Flipped the lever that opened the drain.

The water began to recede.

Jesse knelt, parting Cheyenne with his fingers. Teasing her back to madness with the tip of his tongue.

 

T
HE SUN WAS FRINGING
the eastern hills with pinkish-gold light when Cheyenne drove into the yard at home. Ayanna came out onto the porch in her bathrobe, a cup of coffee in one hand, a pensive smile widening her mouth.

“Not a word, Mom,” Cheyenne warned, climbing the worn steps on spaghetti legs. “I've got to get ready for work.”

Ayanna took another sip of coffee as she stepped aside to let Cheyenne pass. “Jesse?” she asked.

Cheyenne tossed a look over one shoulder. “I didn't plan it,” she said. “It just—happened.”

“These things usually
do
‘just happen,'” Ayanna observed, following Cheyenne into the house. “You might have called, you know. I suspected you were with Jesse, but I was pretty worried just the same.”

Cheyenne sighed. “I'm sorry,” she said, keeping her voice down because Mitch was probably still asleep, and if he wasn't, she didn't want him to overhear. “I knew I ought to call, but I couldn't think what to say. I mean, you
are
my mother.”

“And therefore a completely sexless person who bore two children by virgin birth?”

She laughed softly. “Point taken.”

“Good,” Ayanna said. “I'll make you some breakfast. And Cheyenne?”

Cheyenne waited.

“You're glowing. Unless you want everybody at McKettrickCo to know you spent the night with Jesse, you'd better turn down the dimmer switch a little.”

Cheyenne laughed again, waved her mother away, and hurried down the hall to her room.

When she came out forty-five minutes later wearing a lightweight tweed pantsuit and sensible shoes—hair wound into the customary bun—Ayanna was dressed for another day at the supermarket. Jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a blue vest embroidered with her name.

She handed Cheyenne a cup of hot coffee and some news.

“The leasing people just took your car away.”

“Great,” Cheyenne said, deflated. She'd known Nigel was canceling the lease, but she'd expected a little warning. After all, technically she was still working for him.

“Don't worry,” Ayanna told her, patting her arm. “I'll drop you off in the van.”

Just then Mitch wheeled out of his room all spruced up. “Bronwyn's picking me up in an hour,” he announced. “We're going to Sedona to commune with red rocks.”

Ayanna and Cheyenne looked at each other.

“When was this decided?” Ayanna asked moderately.

“Last night,” Mitch answered. “She stopped by before you got home from the supermarket.” His gaze flicked to Cheyenne and turned pensive. “Doesn't it hurt to pull your hair back like that?”

Cheyenne ignored him, heading for the kitchen. Normally she didn't eat much breakfast, but today she was ravenous. She and Jesse had never gotten around to having supper. Nor had they talked, as she'd intended.

She'd planned to tell him that she was still working for Nigel, but it hadn't happened.

Mitch buzzed along behind her. “How do you feel about nepotism?” he asked with a humorous, hopeful lilt in his voice.

Cheyenne laughed, refilled her coffee cup, then sat down at the table. Ayanna had made pancakes, eggs and sausage patties. If she consumed this much food on a regular basis, she'd have to replace her wardrobe.

“I mean it, Cheyenne,” Mitch insisted. “You're the human resources person at McKettrickCo. I'm human. I want a job.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Cheyenne promised.

“Maybe I could buy a car. If I had a job, I mean. And I could get a really good computer, too. Shit-can that piece of junk I'm using now.”

“Mitch,” Cheyenne warned.

“If I get hired and I can find a car, will you cosign for the loan?”

“Mitch,”
Ayanna said.

“We'll see,” Cheyenne told him.

She continued her breakfast in relative peace.

“I need money,” Mitch announced. “Bronwyn's driving us to Sedona. I can't expect her to pay for lunch, too.”

Cheyenne gave him forty dollars.

“You clear the table and wash the dishes, then,” Ayanna told him. “And don't give me any static. You can reach the sink just fine.”

“Not a problem,” Mitch said.

Ayanna glanced at the clock. “We'd better go, Cheyenne. I like to allow myself extra time, since the van gets temperamental once in a while.”

Inwardly, Cheyenne sighed. Maybe no one would notice when she arrived for her first day on the job in a psychedelic vehicle lacking only a peace sign to look like a time machine freshly arrived from the 1960s.

Regretfully, she left her plate on the table, still half-filled, and followed Ayanna out to the minibus.

There was a spring popping through the passenger seat.

Ayanna pulled a fringed pillow from the back and set it in place, grinning as Cheyenne hauled herself up and sat down.

The ignition made a disturbing grinding sound when Ayanna turned the key, and the exhaust pipe belched so much smoke, Cheyenne thought the rig was on fire.

Ayanna laughed at the expression on her daughter's face.

“Mitch is right about your hair, you know,” she said. “You look perpetually surprised, like somebody who's had one too many face-lifts.”

“Thanks a lot, Mom. That's just what I needed to hear.”