Seeing Spots (2 page)

More spots. This morning, it was a leopard
print bra.

Darren tried very, very hard not to notice,
and failed miserably. He stood behind Katherine in her home office
again, while she sat at a computer and pulled up his newly designed
website. He knew perfectly well he hadn’t really needed to stop by
her Victorian-style house a second time, but he couldn't resist
using the opportunity to see her. Seeing her made him happy.

Seeing her bra made him even happier.

The truth was that he was always happy when
he was near her. And it wasn't just due to the view.

He hadn't meant to look down her shirt,
anyway. Honestly, he hadn't. He'd simply come up behind her,
glanced down... and froze. She was wearing a knit shirt and jeans,
and the shirt's plunging neckline gaped as she leaned forward,
intent on her work.

Which meant he could see spots.

Somehow the fact that she was wearing spots
again made him sweat. It was even sexier that she had concealed
wild lingerie beneath a plain black shirt and worn jeans. He wasn’t
sure why, but the leopard print called to some wild, primitive part
of him, something animalistic that growled deep inside him. He
stared down, still frozen, wondering if her panties matched her
bra.

No
. He jerked his head up and stared fixedly at the computer
screen. He was not standing here wondering about Katherine’s
underwear. He just... was not.

Oh, hell, he totally was.

The image of her in leopard print bra and
panties, and absolutely nothing else, dug its way into the depths
of his brain and made itself right at home. Mentally, he added
three-inch leopard print heels, because, well, he was a guy, and
high heels were hot. Leopard print was hot.

Katherine was hot.

He'd never been as aware of that fact as he
was at this moment. Sure, he'd always thought she was gorgeous,
especially when she flashed her bright smile. He liked to look into
her big hazel eyes, which were unbelievably striking despite the
dark-framed, rectangular glasses she wore, and he sometimes found
it difficult to keep from reaching out and touching the soft golden
waves of her hair. But before yesterday, he hadn't ever wanted to
just grab her and drag her down on the nearest surface and have his
way with her.

Okay, if he was going to be honest with
himself, he'd wanted to do that every time he'd passed her in
town.

But he'd never wanted her
quite 
this 
much.

He tried really, really hard to stare at the
computer screen, but his eyes were pretty much spinning around in
their sockets of their own accord now, and they rolled downward and
gave him another fabulous view of spots.

Silk
, he thought. 
I bet it's
silk
.

He thought about running his fingers over
silky material, feeling her nipple harden under his hand, and
suddenly his fingers were tingling like he'd grabbed a live wire,
and it was all he could do to control his hands. He consciously and
carefully folded them behind his back.

The only problem was, that left his front
exposed. And he was rapidly developing a problem in that region
that really needed to be covered.

He needed to find a chair and sit down.

Unfortunately, Web Sights was a one-woman
operation, and there was only one chair aside from the large, comfy
leather chair she was currently sitting in. The extra chair was
stacked with manuals and magazines, which meant there was no place
for him to sit.

So he was standing just behind her, sporting
a massive erection, and if she happened to look around she was
definitely going to notice, because she wasn't blind.

He hoped to hell she didn’t turn around.
With any luck, she’d stay focused on her work.

Not
that 
he 
was staying focused. He knew perfectly well he didn’t need to
supervise the creation of his website—hell, he couldn’t even
spell 
thumb
, so what could he contribute, really? He’d just
wanted to see her again.

And he'd seen slightly more than he'd
bargained for.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Damn it, he was getting seriously uncomfortable here. His jeans
were old and worn, but they were just too damn tight all of a
sudden. He couldn't seem to… deflate.

He thought longingly about sneaking off to
her bathroom for a minute or two, so he could just sort of...

No. He was not going to
jerk off while thinking about Katherine in leopard spots. Yeah, she
was unbelievably hot, but that was irrelevant. She’d never
indicated she thought about him that way, and so he couldn't think
about 
her
 that way. He wasn't going to think about her breasts,
and he certainly wouldn't think about them in spotted
silk.

He wasn't going to think about touching
them, or about dropping down on his knees in front of her and
taking her nipple into his mouth, right through the bra, and
sucking hard, until she moaned and dug her fingers into his
hair...

God. Where 
was
 the bathroom in her house,
anyway?

He was suddenly aware that his breathing was
fast and ragged. He sounded like he'd been climbing Mount Everest
all morning. Katherine must have noticed, too, because she turned
around and looked up at him, her forehead wrinkling.

"Everything okay, Darren?"

Aside from the fact he was suffering from a
very embarrassing (but highly correctable, if only he could get to
the bathroom) condition, he was fine. He shrugged, and prayed she'd
keep looking at his face. "Sure."

"I just wanted to show you the finished
header," she said, smiling a little. "But if you don’t like this
one, you can go back to your office, and just have me email you a
few more mockups..."

Since he'd come over specifically to see
her, he didn't particularly want to do that. The problem was that
if he continued looking at her, sooner or later she was going to
notice his extremely prominent problem.

But on the other hand, he
really didn't want to step away from the view.
He 
liked 
seeing spots.

She started to turn back toward the
computer, and then her eyes went wide, and he knew she'd figured
out his malady. His cheeks flushed a vivid scarlet, and he wished
for a piece of furniture to crawl under. Unfortunately, this room
was void of any piece of furniture large enough to conceal him.

"Um," she said. "Darren. I, uh..."

He wished she’d call him Dare, like everyone
else did, but he couldn’t say that. They weren’t friends, not
really. Just acquaintances. But he had to say
something.

"It's the bra," he blurted out. "I like
it."

He had no idea why he'd let those particular
words escape. Maybe because there'd been no real point in trying to
pretend he wasn't standing here with an enormous woody. She wasn't
stupid. Even so, at his impetuous rush of words, his cheeks turned
redder than before. But she didn't seem offended.

"Thanks," she said, as blandly as if he'd
complimented her on her hairdo. "I like it too."

"It's really..." His mind sorted rapidly
through a gazillion different words, then settled on the
most obvious. "Sexy."

The corners of her mouth curled upward
slightly. "I'm surprised you noticed."

His eyebrows shot up. He
noticed everything about her, every time he saw her, but he’d
always tried hard not to make her uncomfortable by staring too
much. He knew he wasn’t her type. He knew through the grapevine
that she went for the intellectual types—guys who read Charles
Dickens and Ernest Hemingway in their spare time. She wasn’t into
the kind of guy who preferred 
Popular
Mechanics
 and 
Motor
Trend
.

Was she?

More words blurted out of their own accord.
"I’ve always known you were sexy, Katherine. I’m not blind."

"Sometimes," she said softly, "it seems like
you are."

He blinked at her, because it almost sounded
like she’d been waiting for him to admit he’d been staring at her.
But that couldn’t be. She’d never noticed him in high school, and
on the rare occasions their paths had crossed in town, she’d never
given any indication that she’d noticed him as an adult,
either.

But there was an unmistakable heat in her
golden-brown eyes as she looked up at him. It made the tension in
his jeans grow tighter than ever.

He looked away from those beautiful eyes,
stared down, right into her shirt, and asked the question that had
been on his mind ever since he'd seen her bra.

"Are your panties leopard spotted, too?"

She looked surprised, then gave
him a slow, sexy smile.

"Why don't you look and find out?"

*****

Well, what do you know. It
worked.

Kathy had laughed at herself earlier in the
morning for putting on the leopard spotted underwear, along with a
shirt that was cut low enough that a bit of the spotted bra showed,
but she’d figured it was worth a shot. And she wasn’t laughing now,
because there was no question that he was interested. His thoughts
were mirrored in his oddly feline gaze, and she couldn’t miss the
proof of his interest, bulging the front of his jeans. He
wanted her. He really did.

She hadn’t spilled grape jelly on herself
yesterday, after all. He’d been looking at her… or at least, at her
shirt. And he was looking at her the exact same way now.

Of course, she didn’t fool herself into
thinking that his response suggested anything beyond purely
physical interest. The two of them didn’t have a thing in common,
and she knew perfectly well there was no way they could ever have a
serious, long-term relationship.

But the truth was that
right now, she wasn’t thinking 
relationship
, and judging from the
look in his eyes, he wasn’t either. He was
thinking 
hot sex
.

And so was she.

*****

Dare’s hands reached down of their own
accord, slipped around her front, and unbuttoned her jeans. He
unzipped them, just a bit, and stared.

 "They match," he said softly.
"Beautiful."

The problem was that now that he'd begun
looking, he couldn't seem to look away. He couldn't seem to stop
staring. And now he was harder than ever, and he had only himself
to blame.

She looked up at him consideringly, then
shook off his hands, rose to her feet and took a step toward him.
Startled to have her suddenly turn the tables and become the
aggressor, he stepped nervously backward.

"Katherine... what are you doing?"

"I thought," she said, stalking him, "that
you might want to get a closer look."

He 
did
 want to get a closer look. But he wasn't at all sure
about this, wasn’t sure he wanted to drag his heart out of his
chest to be shredded, just because he'd developed an inexplicable
fascination with her underwear. She was looking at him like… well,
the gleam in her eyes was unmistakable, but he knew she couldn’t
want him in any lasting sense.

He didn’t really want to
be used as a sex toy. Not by 
her
.

He continued to stumble backward, until his
back was up against a wall.

And then her arms were around him, braced on
either side of him, and he was trapped.

Well, not really. He had nine inches and a
hundred pounds on her. Of course he could get away if he wanted
to.

The truth was, he didn't want to.

"Take off my shirt," she said, her voice
barely above a whisper, "and you can get a really good look."

He made a helpless little sound deep in his
throat, and surrendered, reaching down and catching the hem of her
shirt in his hands, fumbling only slightly as he pulled it up over
her head. She lifted her arms to help, and then she was standing in
front of him, just a couple of inches away, wearing a leopard spot
bra and jeans that gaped suggestively in front.

The bronze, black-spotted material barely
contained the beautifully rounded globes of her breasts, and the
swell of smooth pale flesh over the bra was so sexy that he could
hardly stop himself from bending to kiss her cleavage. But he
didn't quite have the nerve to do that. Not yet.

Katherine Parrish had been the girl of his
dreams for years and years. He wasn’t sure he had the guts to let
her become the girl in his arms instead.

Still, he had to touch
her 
somewhere
. Really, he had to. There was no way of resisting the
impulse. His brain sent out signals he had no control over, and his
hands lifted, then dropped onto the indentation of her waist, just
above her hips.

She moved forward, just a bit, and her flat,
toned belly brushed against his erection. He moaned.

And then her hands were pulling up his
Greene Thumb t-shirt, sliding it over his chest with quick ease, as
if she undressed guys every day of the week. He found himself
standing in front of her barechested. She looked him over
thoughtfully, and said exactly what he'd said about her
underwear.

"Beautiful."

He flushed again, but he wasn't sure if it
was from embarrassment or sexual hunger. Maybe both. The
wild something growled deep inside him again. He wanted to yank her
against him, feel her soft body right up against his, but he
struggled to hold onto his sanity, and spoke as reasonably as he
could.

"We're supposed to be working on my website,
Katherine."