Untamed: (Heath & Violet) (Beg For It) (8 page)

“What do you have to
drink?!?” Sam frequently spoke in catty exclamations back in L.A. I
guessed in Vermont he still made exclamations, they just sounded more
desperate.

“I think there are
some Lipton tea bags in one of the cabinets.”

His eyebrows rose, so
appalled at my response he couldn’t even form words. Speechlessness
was new for Sam. He’d made me spit out a drink more than once with
his endless supply of snarky observations. He was always fun to have
around. I just hoped I never ended up on the receiving end of his
sharp wit. I bet it could cut like a knife.

Disgusted, he satisfied
himself with pouring a glass of water from the tap, then set it down
untouched on a coffee table.

“Will we survive?”
he asked, and I wasn’t even sure if he was playing up the drama. He
might really be wondering. He was a city boy through and through.
Fame! probably should have sent someone with us, like a Sherpa with a
compass and a backpack of supplies to help us navigate.

“We’ll make it,”
I reassured him, grateful he was along for the ride. He was an
amazing talent scout. He’d picked out more hot models and actors
from malls and fast food joints than you could count. Cheekbones,
he’d explained to me, were like a poker player’s tell. They gave
it all away. With the right set of high, well-defined cheekbones,
everything else could fall into place.

What would he think of
Heath’s cheekbones? I felt a sudden rush of protectiveness, like I
wanted to growl and guard what was mine. Over our stay in Watson, Sam
and I were bound to run into that hotter-than-hell mountain man, and
I could already see it. Sam’s eyes would light up like he was
hearing a winner’s “ding ding ding” on a game show. Heath would
make the network a whole lot of money. He was just the right kind of
man-meat viewers would tune in to see week after week in action. And
judging by Heath’s skills last night, he really would deliver. It
didn’t matter that I didn’t want to share him with anyone else,
never mind millions of viewers.

Sam perched on the
couch, seeming distrustful of the fabric. It probably hadn’t been
properly cleaned between rentals. But it was comfy. I sat next to him
and picked up the packet that had been prepared for me.

We’d been given a
whole bunch of information on the town, our projected budget, and
some character sketch ideas. Because even though it was a reality
show, we were still casting characters, or at least character types.

“So. Nine a.m.
tomorrow. The Mayor of Hicksville.” Sam glanced at our itinerary,
which had us kicking off our week meeting with the mayor of Watson.
“Get ready for a hard sell.”

“You think?” I’d
prepared myself with some talking points, including all of the ways
in which a show in their town would help their local economy, but I
didn’t know about a hard sell. Did he think they’d be so
resistant?

“They’re going to
sell us!” Sam clarified, throwing up his hands theatrically. “A
show here would be the best thing that’s ever happened to them.
It’d put them on the map! Flood them with tourism! This mayor is
going to beg us to come here, just you wait.”

Hmm. I wasn’t sure. I
wasn’t even sure we wanted to film there yet. “First let’s make
sure we want to do a show in Watson.”

“I know, right?”
Sam snorted. “Who are we going find here to cast? They’ll all
need shave-downs and a month-long juice fast before they go anywhere
near a camera.”

Sighing, I looked at the list our
boss had drafted on a potential cast of characters:

1.
Firefighter

That was a no-brainer. Firefighters
had to stay fit. They were young and hot and heroic. A hunky
firefighter shouldn’t be too hard to find.

2.
Coach (hockey)?

I guessed hockey must be big in
Vermont. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a hockey game in my life.
They played with sticks, right?

3.
Teacher

Maybe.

4.
Ski dude—Mad Mountain

Apparently there was a local ski
place with all kinds of unique, distinctive Vermont characters. I
didn’t understand what that was yet, but I could see it being a
good type to cast.

5.
Restaurateur

I had a difficult time wrapping my
mind around that one. What kind of restaurateur would we find out in
the middle of nowhere? But, supposedly, there were a couple of
locally-sourced thriving restaurants in Watson. We just had to find
out if any of the owners were hot enough for TV.

6.
Farmer—organic?

That I could picture. And it would
be perfect if we could find some big, burly guy or his flower power
female equivalent, all dreamy-eyed and save the earth. With good
teeth.

7.
Craftsman

Apparently Watson had a
thriving local artisan scene. I’d met one of them last night. Heath
had said he worked with wood and metal. Good with his hands.

“Having a hot flash?”
Sam asked, noting my pink cheeks.

“I guess I’m just
nervous about tomorrow.” I stood up and got myself a glass of
water. “I don’t know what we’re going to find here. Either way,
I hope we can call it quick. If there’s a show here or not, we
should know by the end of the week.”

“Please, get me out
of here,” Sam agreed. He left for his adjoining condo where he had
a bottle or two he’d taken from last night’s hotel minibar.

I slipped into bed and
tried to fall asleep. Nine a.m. tomorrow would feel brutally early if
my body clock was still set on L.A. time. But even a fast-paced,
steamy romance novel on my Kindle didn’t do the trick. My own mind
raced even faster, taking me to even hotter scenes than those
described on my eReader.

The way Heath had held
me, so possessive with a hint of rough. His lips on my neck, licking,
tasting, sucking almost to the point of it hurting but it hadn’t
hurt, not in a bad way that you wanted to stop. It had felt
electrifying, like he wanted to devour me and could barely hold
himself back.

I guess I’d grown
accustomed to the L.A. version of the male/female mating ritual. The
man would flash his Rolex to demonstrate his wealth. The woman would
thrust out her breasts as she laughed to let him view her assets. The
man would wonder aloud if she was an actress and offer to send her a
script. And it would all go on from there down an all-too-predictable
path.

Nothing had been
predictable with Heath, least of all my body’s reaction to him.
Without even consciously deciding, my Kindle fell to the side and my
fingers found their way down to where I still ached and throbbed for
Heath. I slipped my fingers in under my panties, right where I was
already wet just thinking about him.

I let myself moan,
softly, as I started stroking, remembering how his fingers had felt
last night. He’d known exactly how to touch me, right where to
press, exactly how to work me into a frenzy. The smell of him, the
feel of his hand on the small of my back, clutching my hip. The way
he’d plunged his two broad fingers up inside of me, making me arch
back and come, hard, for him. He drank it in, watching me as I
screamed and shuddered and came on his fingers just how he told me
to.

I came again, moaning
into my pillow, shaking and dazed in the bed in my condo. Once again,
I marveled over how that man had made me come so quickly, so hard.
And this time it was just the thought of him affecting me more
strongly than any other man I’d known.

I hoped I didn’t see
him again. It would make things too complicated. Even though I really
wanted to see him again.

Heath

I knew there was a
table inside all that metal. I just needed to get it out. I’d found
the old hood of a car in a junkyard nearby. A 1969 Chevy Camero.
Whoever had scrapped that beauty should be charged with a federal
crime. Good thing I’d come along to give it new life.

It still had the fins
in tact, but the headlights were long gone. I’d had to search to
find something authentic I could use in their place. I wasn’t sure
exactly how it was all going to come together, but that was always
how it was when I started on a piece. Something about the reclaimed
wood or the scrap metal suggested something more, something else. I
couldn’t always put it into words or even envision what the end
result would be, but I could see the potential.

The great thing about
Vermont—or one of the many great things about it—was the space.
You could collect up here and not run out of space to put it all.
Growing up, I’d always had the tendency to find bits and pieces
along the sidewalks of Manhattan. Junk my mother had declared it, and
our housekeeper had waged a daily battle on her behalf, trying to
weed out and dispose of my treasured oddities.

Now, I owned a big old
warehouse with the sole purpose of storing junk. My dream come true.
I loved the scraps others dismissed, the pieces rejected by the
lumberyard, the hulking relics sacrificed to the local dump. I didn’t
like thinking in glorified terms about what I did for a living.
Basically, I made furniture.

But just between you
and me, the process felt like a lot more than that. I lost myself in
it, transforming junk into useful and treasured possessions. Taking
something discarded and cast off, I found new purpose and even beauty
in it. It felt a little like magic to transform something from
landfill into a dining table and chairs for families to gather
together and eat meals. Or rocking chairs, those I really liked,
taking rejected scrap and transforming them into something comforting
and traditional, a place to soothe your baby or set out on the porch
and watch time ooze by.

I hadn’t started out
with the sole purpose of making money, but the funny thing was my
pieces were starting to sell pretty well. I displayed my work with
the artisan collective in town. We all chipped in for a storefront to
connect with tourists passing through. I knew I was shit at marketing
and I could do more, much more to grow my business. One day maybe I
would. For now, though, I was content to make just enough. Enough
pieces to satisfy customers, and enough money to cover my modest
living expenses.

I had a good thing
going. I didn’t operate within limits or constraints. My days were
my own. And most days I lost myself in my work, no sense of passing
time.

Except for today,
things weren’t going as planned. I kept finding myself gazing out
into the middle distance. In and of itself, that wasn’t such a bad
thing, but if you were holding a blowtorch the stakes got higher. I
nearly cut a chunk out of my treasured Chevy hood. All because of
Violet.

I wondered if she’d
discovered the SUV yet. I hadn’t even needed to break into her
MINI. After I’d dropped her off last night, my raging hard-on
protesting mightily against my jeans, I’d returned to the bar to
see what I could do about switching out her ride. She’d left the
door to her rental car open.

Impractical. High
maintenance. And damn if she hadn’t tasted like honey on a fresh
baked bun, so good you had to close your eyes while you licked so you
didn’t miss a thing. She’d felt so right, so slick and hot,
working her pussy against my fingers, so desperate and needy in my
truck. The sight of her succumbing to the pleasure, tossing her head
back and coming with a throaty cry, bucking down onto my hand. That
image kept playing over and over, like a glitch or a skip in my
brain.

Maybe today wasn’t
the best day to use a blowtorch. I turned off the open flame and put
down the tool, flipped up the mask on my helmet and took off my
gloves. What was wrong with me today?

True, I’d been
leading a solitary existence, but I’d had my share of women. It
wasn’t as if that had been the first time I’d ever made a woman
come. But it had felt like it. It didn’t make sense, but I guessed
this wasn’t my brain doing the responding. There was something
about Violet, some kind of chemical reaction, and I knew all about
that. As a metalworker, I’d studied the science of combustion, the
transformation from solid to liquid, the melting point. Something
about that woman heated me up quick. And I sure as hell had enjoyed
finding her melting point.

Time for a break. It
was dark out, but I didn’t know what time. I purposely didn’t
have a clock in my workshop. I didn’t want to be governed by the
rigid passage of minutes and hours. I wanted to manage my own life,
dictate how I devoted my time.

I did have a cell phone, though. I
didn’t really want one but even I realized they came in handy. I
glanced at it and saw I had a text. From Ash, one of my brothers:

Hey, man, let me know soon.

Right. I didn’t know
what to do about that one. I took off my helmet and ran my hand
through my hair, leaning against the frame of a window in my
workshop. The light at the front door of my cabin was on. In the glow
I could see a few flakes still drifting past. It didn’t look like
it was snowing so much as blowing around, the powder picked up and
thrown around by nature’s snowball fight.

I had two older
brothers, Colt and Ash. We didn’t have too many snowball fights in
our history to look back on fondly. We’d never disliked each
other—Ash and I had even shared a room for a couple years when I’d
been around five or six, him seven or eight—but our family didn’t
exactly do warm and fuzzy. Maybe it was the cold, aristocratic
British blood on my father’s side, or maybe it was the American
socialite strain on my mother’s. Either way, it meant that all of
our family photos were posed. Never a hair out of place, never a
voice raised.

Until all hell had
broken loose. When I’d been nine my mother had found out that my
father had had a baby with another woman. She’d divorced him,
spiraling down into a deep alcoholic depression. My father had taken
it as a Get Out of Jail Free card and devoted 110 percent of himself
to growing Kavanaugh Industries into the empire it was today. They’d
both basically stopped parenting completely.