“What will you give me for a kiss?” he asks.
His voice is heart-stoppingly sexy. A resonant sound that fills her ears like the loveliest bass instrument. Her pulse throbs at her throat. She’s hot all over. Hot and wet and desperate.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” she whimpers.
“I want you to touch me,” he says. “Here.”
And then he takes her hand and guides it to the bulge straining against the zipper of his blue jeans. She eases down the zipper, slips her hand inside. He’s going commando, no underwear. She touches him.
It’s so big. So hard. So hot. Scalding. He smells of musky male, and her excitement escalates. He groans and closes his eyes.
At the same time as she’s touching him, his hand is busy snaking up her thigh to hook a finger around the waistband of her panties.
She moans. He crushes his mouth to hers.
He tastes too good to be true. Not the finest caviar in her mother’s pantry, not even the most expensive bottle of French champagne in her father’s cellar can compete with his flavor.
Her palm is pressed hard against his erection, which seems to keep growing and growing and growing. His tongue is a menace, dazzling her with moves she never thought possible.
“I want you inside me.”
“No. Not yet. First, I’m going to make you beg.”
She whimpers again.
“That’s right.” He nods. “This has been a long time coming.”
Her nipples tighten. She wriggles her hips. Her panties are whisked off.
“What are you doing?”
“Hush, woman,” he growls. “Hush and enjoy. You deserve everything I’m going to give you and so much more. You drive me wild.”
She glows at his words. Men have told her she’s beautiful before, but no one has ever told her she drives him wild. He’s telling her exactly what she needs to hear, and she loves him for it. She feels incredibly powerful that she’s controlling such a big man with her sexuality.
Then he goes to work with his fingers.
He’s stroking her inner thigh, and then he trails his fingertips inward. He’s doing something that makes her eyes roll back in her head with sheer ecstasy.
Oh, gawd, what that intoxicating hand is doing at the apex of her womanhood!
She writhes against him, clutches his shoulders with both hands, digs her fingers into his flesh through the soft flannel of his shirt.
His movements are gentle but firm. The pressure builds. No man has ever caressed her in quite this way. It’s as if he knows exactly how to make her cry out for more. She’s never been this excited, this desperate, this famished for a man’s body.
“Don’t stop,” she pleads.
He grins. For a moment she fears he’ll stop simply to taunt her. But to her relief he keeps going. And going. And going.
She feels as if she’s riding a roller coaster. Chugging up, up, up. Breath held in anticipation of the rapturous plunge.
She’s close. So very close. Teetering on the verge. One more second. Oh, yes. Yes. She’s just about to—
“Miss?” The flight attendant’s voice slammed her rudely back to earth.
“Yes,” Kay gasped, feeling breathless, edgy and achy.
“Would you care for another beverage?”
She shook her head. The flight attendant moved on down the aisle. Then Kay realized she was still holding the compact. She glanced into the mirror one last time and was horrified to see Paul Bunyan staring right at her.
Their eyes met in the mirror’s reflection. Her heart raced. Her mouth went dry. He gave her a cocksure smile as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.
Flushed and flustered, Kay snapped the compact closed and dropped it into her purse. She burned weak, shaky, her entire body swamped in heat. This wouldn’t do. She had to compose herself. Immediately, if not sooner.
Unbuckling her seat belt, she got up, slipped into the lavatory and locked the door. Bad idea. This was the scene of the fictitious crime, and she couldn’t escape her own mind.
She wet a paper towel, pressed it first to the back of her neck, then to the hollow of her throat and took several long, slow, deep breaths. For the past few months she’d been plagued by uncontrollable sexual fantasies. It was quite embarrassing, really. As if she was some kind of X-rated, female Walter Mitty.
Perhaps a fling was in order. Find someone to pop her cork, as it were. Perhaps that would put an end to these persistent flights of sexual fancy.
Kay pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off more blushing. This was simply ridiculous. She had to stop entertaining such unsuitable thoughts about total strangers. She took several more deep breaths, tossed the damp towel into the trash, then ran her fingers through her hair. There. She looked fine. Perfectly normal. Perfectly in control. No one would suspect anything to the contrary.
The plane lurched, jostling her as she unlocked the accordion-style door and tried to shove it open, but the silly thing stuck.
The plane pitched again, throwing Kay forward. She put a hand on the door hinges to brace herself, and the door folded open. She raised her head in alarm.
And found herself tumbling headlong into Paul Bunyan’s arms, as if he’d been waiting outside the door just to catch her when she fell.
“WHY, HELLO.” Quinn smiled down into the face of a goddess.
What compelled him to trail her to the lavatory, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was that sassy, controlled walk of hers that hypnotized him. Maybe it was her contradictory aura, pushing and pulling him in two different directions. Or maybe it was plain old horniness on his part.
But now he sure was glad he’d followed her. If he hadn’t been there to catch her, she would have pitched head first into the bulkhead opposite the lavatory and bruised her pretty face, and that would have been a crying shame.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” she whispered.
Her voice surprised him. One more irreconcilable fact that added to her allure. He’d expected her tone would be more cultured, aloof, cool and reserved. Instead, the sexy sound of her had him remembering all those nights during high school and college that he’d spun records of throaty-voiced female blues singers at his family’s tiny radio station in Bear Creek.
Unblinking, the goddess met his gaze and held it. The impact slugged him. Her sultry eyes, dark as coffee and surrounded by lashes as impossibly thick as paintbrushes, snagged something deep inside him and refused to let go.
In the brief, endless moment he held her in his arms, he noticed everything about her.
The tiny mole at the left corner of her mouth. The smooth, expertly penciled arch of her brow. The erratic throbbing of her pulse in the hollow of her neck. The slim curve of her waist. Her rich, fresh scent that made him ache to bury his nose in her hair and breathe deeply.
And the unnerving realization that beneath her ultrasoft silk blouse and bra, her nipples were puckered.
It wasn’t cold in the plane’s cramped confines. In fact, it was very, very hot.
Had her breasts hardened in response to him? Quinn almost groaned aloud at the thought.
Was he reading too much into this casual encounter? Was his desire for one last fiery sexual adventure before he found a wife and settled down for good feeding into his imagination and causing him to misread her reaction?
Her lips parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue pressing against her top teeth. She looked as if she might say something to him, but she didn’t.
Oh, Lord, he could feel her stockings rub against the leg of his jeans as she shifted in his arms.
So many thoughts raced through his brain it seemed as if eons had passed. But it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds since she’d toppled into his embrace.
She raised a hand to her cheek to brush away a strand of golden hair. He tracked her movement, peered into those compelling brown eyes once more.
And stumbled. Literally lost his balance as the plane hit another pocket of turbulence. He tipped backward, taking Charlize with him.
They ended up in the middle of the aisle, a jumble of arms and legs. The fall hadn’t knocked the air from his lungs, but nonetheless, he found it hard to breathe with her lying on his chest.
“Are you okay?” There was that breathy whisper again, uncertain, a bit nervous. And unless he missed his guess, tinged with an acute awareness of him as a man.
“Okay,” he replied, hating for this moment to end.
“Please take your seats,” a flight attendant said sharply as she rushed over. “And buckle yourselves in.”
“Let me help you up,” Charlize offered, rising to her feet with amazing agility and grace for a woman wearing three-inch heels and a mean pair of stockings.
He almost laughed at the notion of a slender branch like her helping a tree trunk like himself to his feet. But he liked the idea of touching her again, so he put out his hand, which dwarfed hers, and allowed her to tug him.
Quinn pushed against the floor of the plane, and his own momentum brought him to a standing position. The top of her sleek head only came to his armpit. Her hip was level with his upper thigh. She seemed as perfect and delicate as the first butterfly of spring.
Without a doubt she was the most exquisite woman he’d ever met. Her straight blond hair was cut in a polished style and appeared as finely spun as silk. Her complexion was flawless, except for a small scar below her right earlobe. He had an almost overpowering urge to explore that scar with the tip of his tongue.
How he wanted to say something more to her, to do something more with her, but the frowning flight attendant was clucking her tongue and waving at them to take their seats. Charlize scooted past him, her breasts lightly brushing his upper arm, causing a brushfire to leap up his nerve endings, and made her way to her seat.
Kay was practically panting as she clicked the seat belt in place around her waist. Her heart pounded, blood suffused her skin. She couldn’t believe what had just happened and her body’s heated response to a stranger. Touching him had been far more electric, far more satisfying than her wildest imaginings.
She didn’t look up, because she knew he was still standing there staring at her as if he’d been struck with a bolt from the blue. What was the matter with him? Didn’t they have women wherever it was he was from?
“You sure you’re all right?” He squatted in the aisle beside Kay, defying the angry flight attendant, who looked as if she wanted to tie him into his seat but was too quelled by his size to approach.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Please, for your own safety, sit down.”
“If you need me, I’m right behind you.” He touched her wrist with his massive paw, and her blood slipped through her veins like quicksilver. Intense. So intense. If she closed her eyes, she could see the two of them in a forest. Walking. Alone. On a bed of soft, mossy ground. The sunlight flitting through the trees.
Stop it, stop it, stop it. Don’t you dare go into another sexual fantasy, Kathryn Victoria Freemont!
She raised her hand to her face. The hand that had been wrapped in his. She smelled of him. Robust, masculine. Like pine needles, wilderness and soap. A shiver she could not suppress overtook her body. She could easily imagine him back there in his seat watching her with eagle eyes.
What was it about this man that so stirred her blood? What was it that made her feel giddy and girlish and oh-so-happy to be alive?
Kay was kidding herself, and she knew it. Just because he made her feel desirable didn’t mean she was licensed to jump his bones. She didn’t even know the guy’s name. What he made her feel was simply a reflection of her wishful thinking. She wanted rescuing from her life, and he was a convenient escapist illusion.
Because lately, nothing in her current experiences seemed to satisfy her. Not her relationship with her parents, who were pressuring her to marry Lloyd and produce an heir. Certainly not her romance with Lloyd, if you could even call what they had a romance.
Lloyd had proposed to her by e-mail two days ago in a manner as romantic as a root canal. His exact message had been “Your father says he’ll make me partner if we’re married by the end of the summer, guess it’s time to do the deed.”
Whoopee! Sweep a girl right off her feet, why don’t you?
She’d ignored Lloyd’s e-mail, pretending she hadn’t yet seen the missive, because she wasn’t ready to deal with it, and surprise, surprise, he hadn’t even called her in Chicago to see why she hadn’t responded.
And even her job as a reporter for Metropolitan magazine no longer fulfilled her as it once had.
“What happened to you?” she whispered to herself, grateful no one was seated next to her. “In college, you dreamed of writing novels and having adventures and taking a lover that was as kind and considerate and understanding as he was good in bed. Where did that girl go?”
It seemed her entire youth had been spent trying to please Mommy and Daddy and striving to be the perfect Freemont. Her one tiny insurrection had been insisting on studying journalism rather than art history, as her mother had wished.
“Lloyd Post comes from blueblood stock, dear, just like you,” her mother had told her when she called the day before to see if Kay had gotten Lloyd’s e-mailed proposal. Apparently Lloyd had already discussed it with her parents. Would have been nice if he’d talked things over with her first. “Give his proposition some serious thought. You could do worse than marrying him.”
Hmm, what was worse than binding yourself for life to a man who virtually ignored you for weeks on end? What was worse than until death do you part with a man who didn’t even care where your G-spot was located? What was worse than spending the next forty years beside a guy with whom you had absolutely nothing in common other than the fact you were both filthy rich with impeccable pedigrees?
Let’s see, what was worse than marrying Lloyd Post?
Well, owing money to the Mafia had to be a bummer. Being stranded in the desert with no water wasn’t cool. Having oral surgery wasn’t a blast. So yes, Mommy, you’re absolutely right. There are worse things than marrying Lloyd.
But there were so many better things, too.
Like taking that rugged woodsman to bed?
She tried to picture what would happen if she was to walk into her parents’ house on Paul Bunyan’s arm and announce they were engaged. Laughable! Even she, of the overactive imagination, could not conceive of such an event.
Helplessly she found her head drawn to the right, her eyes peeping surreptitiously over her shoulder.
And there he was, just as she knew he’d be. Staring at her and not a bit ashamed of his unabashed appreciation.
He was pure testosterone in a huge package that proclaimed, “I’ll never let any harm come to you.” It was a heady promise. Between his protective attitude and his raw animal magnetism, the man oozed an essential sexiness that called to something wild within her. Like a wolf to his mate. Something primal and elemental she hadn’t known she possessed until now.
She deserved to be happy. She deserved to be sexually satisfied, and she deserved far better than settling for Lloyd Post. In reality she knew Paul Bunyan did not figure into her future, but regardless, meeting him at this juncture had changed her. It was time she stood up to her parents and started living her own life. It was past time she found out what she’d been missing.
QUINN PLANNED to waylay her in the jetway, help her with her luggage, hail her a taxi, get her phone number and ask her out to dinner. In fact, he was so excited about the idea that he’d kept shifting restlessly in his seat, unable to think of anything else.
But when the plane landed at JFK, she leaped from her seat the minute the flight attendants opened the door. Quinn got up to follow her, but an elderly lady sitting across the aisle asked him to retrieve her carry-on bag from the overhead bin. What else could he do? By the time he made his way into the terminal, Charlize had vanished as if she’d never existed.
He looked left, then right, but the crowd had swallowed her. How could she have disappeared so quickly?
Damn!
He hadn’t mistaken her interest in him, no matter how cool she liked to play it. The attraction had been instant and physical. No denying her raspy breathing when he’d held her in his arms, no hiding her aroused nipples. She’d wanted him, all right.
So why had she run away?
Maybe she was married, the thought occurred to him, but he didn’t recall seeing a ring on that delicate third finger of her left hand.
Ah, well. Quinn wasn’t the sort to cry over spilt milk. He took a deep breath and headed for the baggage claim. Nothing to be done about it now. He tried to push her from his thoughts.
But despite his best intentions, he couldn’t help feeling he’d lost out on something pretty darn terrific.
“KAY, COME HERE, you’ve got to see this.” Her editor, Judy Nessler, stood in the doorway of Kay’s office on Monday morning, grinning from ear to ear and crooking a bejeweled finger at her.
Kay frowned and glanced up from the piece she was working on about finding love on the Internet. She’d gone to Chicago to interview a couple who’d met in an online chat room, and she had her notes spread out on the desk around her. Included in the pile were copies of the spicy messages the couple had posted to each other during their courtship. Reading the sizzling missives had her feeling oddly cranky.
“What is it, Judy?”
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”
She wasn’t in the mood for Judy’s guessing games. It had been almost twenty-four hours since her plane ride with Paul Bunyan, but she couldn’t seem to stop spinning fantasies about him. How could the thought of one man make her ache so badly?
Nor had she been able to locate Lloyd in order to pin him down for a dinner date to discuss his marriage proposal in person, and he hadn’t yet returned the call she had left on his answering machine.
“I’m in the middle of something,” Kay said.
“Just come with me.”
Sighing, Kay pushed away from her desk and followed Judy down the corridor to the advertising department. As usual, the room was abuzz with activity. But atypically, all the activity seemed concentrated in the middle of room. Centered, in fact, around a skyscraper-size man who had his back to them.
A man clad in red flannel and blue denim. His head was cocked to one side and he was laughing at something one of the blushing assistants had said. Kay’s pulse momentarily stuttered to a stop. She raised a hand to her throat.