Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (16 page)

“What time is it?” he asked, sleep-hoarse.

“About one. I was coming in to wake you.” After she’d ogled him for another hour or five.

“You should have woken me sooner so I could get out of your hair.”

“I figured you could sleep here just as comfortably as you would at home.” In the bedroom he used to share with his wife. Annoyed that her mind had even gone there, she added, “And the sleep after sex tends to be the best.”

“Especially when the sex is that incredible.”

Assurance she hadn’t thought she needed calmed her racing pulse. It
had
been incredible. Not just that, but fun and bawdy and filled with unexpected generosity. Luke Almeida was a giver, in so many ways.

Undeniable intimacy stretched between them while they both considered the incredible sex. And just in case there were any doubts about how fantastic it had been, his hand began to move under the sheet. A slow, rhythmic stroke that put a hitch in her breathing.

“If you want to take a shower and . . .” Eat, talk, keep pumping that gorgeous piece of equipment she needed inside her now.

“Come here,” he said, his voice sexy-serious.

She moved toward him, noting with satisfaction that certain previously underused muscles ached pleasantly. Soreness had never felt so sensuous. She sat at the edge of the bed.

“Closer,” he said, his eyes dark and hooded. He sat up to meet her halfway.

The sheet dropped. Her jaw dropped with it. The man was simply magnificent—and magnificently erect. She squeezed her thighs together.

He noticed. Smirked. “This is all for you if you’re good, baby.”

“And if I’m bad?”

“Bad girls get it harder. Now, don’t make me come over there.”

“Maybe I want to be bad.”

With those quick-as-lightning reflexes that kept him safe on the job, he pulled her into the cage of his strong arms. “How’s the hand, killer?”

She made a fist in mock threat. “Stay on my good side, Almeida.”

“Sure plan to.” He brushed his lips over the still-reddened knuckles and her dumb old heart whispered,
flip-flops
. “I’ve got today off. Want to hang?”

“Is that some weird bondage thing?” she joked, foolishly relieved he’d brought it up but still too wary to read anything more significant into it.

He smiled. One of those “it’s okay, baby, I can tell you’re nervous” smiles. “I’ve been invited to a cookout at the house of some friends later. You’d like them. We could watch the fireworks, make some of our own. What do you say?”

The last question was framed in a cut-the-crap sort of way. No more quips, let’s just be honest that we might like to spend time together.

She thought about what she needed. What was right for her. “Luke, I want to . . . I just . . . I want to be clear. I’m not looking for anything more than a little company. After what happened with David, I’m working on myself for a while.” That came out more serious than she’d intended, so she dug for the humor. “You can use those fake blue eyes on me all you like, but I refuse to fall in love with you.”

He took a long, unsettling look at her. Had she thrown him for a loop with her candid speech or her accusations of eye color fakery or, perhaps, that troublesome mention of the L-word? After walking on eggshells for years with David, muting her strong personality in deference to her ex-fiancé’s ego, she was no longer interested in playing games.

Luke’s granite features broke into a smile. “So you only want my body.”

“You can talk. Just keep the chat at gutter level.”

The smile stretched wider. “I’m fine with that. I’m especially fine with the part that involves working on you. On your breasts, on your ass, on the sweetness between your thighs.” One big, callused hand slipped to the hem of her T-shirt and cupped her butt. “Think of me as your sex coach until you get back on your feet.”

In two seconds, he had flipped her on her back under his hard—extremely hard—body.

“Which means, to do the job well, I plan to keep you off your feet for as long as possible, Miss Taylor.”

 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“T
his’ll do,” Luke muttered.

Kinsey narrowed her magnificent hazel eyes at him and cocked a jaunty hip. Damn, she was looking sexy fine today in an orange-and-white-striped minidress that showcased her legs to perfection. Her beautiful, braless breasts strained at the thin fabric, the top part remaining in place by virtue of a tie around her neck. The only thing between his tongue and Kinsey’s rose-pink nipples was a simple bow knot.

File that under
I
for infuriating.

She held up the list in her hand. “You’re not even taking this seriously.”

“I said I’d just do it online.”

“Luke.” She placed a hand on his chest, step one in working what he now knew was the Kinsey Taylor soft soap. “While human society has managed to make practically everything possible in the online environment, this is one area where the virtual cannot replace reality. Now, get on that bed, stud, and tell me how it feels.”

She gave him a not-so-gentle shove and he fell easily on the first mattress that had filled his visual field as soon as they walked into the store. He’d planned to
buy a new bed this weekend. A little clickity-click on the Web. Done deal. But then he’d made the mistake of mentioning it to Kinsey.

She advised research.

They’
re all the same, sweetheart.

She produced research.

I’ll just pick the top-rated one on Mattresses ‘R’ Us.

Now, thanks to his big mouth, they were in a brick-and-mortar store with a list of dos and don’ts on how to buy a mattress, when he’d much rather be back at her place putting
her
perfectly good mattress to use.

She took a seat at the end, frustratingly out of reach. “How do you feel?”

He was shopping when he should be pounding beers, carbonizing steak, and making up for his year-long sex drought. How did she think he felt?

He remained silent.

“The research advises lying for ten minutes in your regular sleeping position.”

Throwing out his arms and legs in a sprawl, he took up as much room as possible.

“That’s your regular position?”

“When I’m alone. When I have company, I’m more generous.”

“What a lucky girl.”

The grin he shot her covered his true reaction to that throwaway comment. He got it. This was temporary, and that stuck in his craw more than he’d like to admit. “Just get over here and play stand-in for the next woman I grace with my gifts.”

Her sigh was more amused than annoyed as she
kicked off her flip-flops and swung her legs up onto the mattress to lie down beside him. After a few seconds squirming her way into a comfortable position—which he was positive she did to piss him off—she laced her hands behind her neck.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Not too firm, not too soft. Goldilocks would definitely approve. With the woman lying beside him, it felt close to perfect.

“Feels good. Like . . .”

“A mattress?” She turned on her side and inched closer. “Why are we here, Luke?”

“Because you insisted I do this in person. On July Fourth, when there are a million other things I’d rather be doing.” Like her, for example. He couldn’t believe they’d found a mattress store open on the holiday, but then he supposed that was why the founding daddy-os had gone all revolutionary on those British asses. For the right to sell mattresses on any damn day of the year they pleased.

“No, why are you buying a new mattress? I’ve slept on the other one and it seems fine.”

His gaze shifted to the rest of the store, empty except for the lone salesman who eyed them surreptitiously, waiting for the slightest encouragement to unload his spiel. Luke thought about how to put it delicately, then figured a straight shooter like Kinsey could handle it.

“My current bed is where my ex-wife fucked my ex-friend for several months.”

Eyes alight with understanding, she leaned up on her elbow. “Is this something you know or, uh,
know
?”

Oh, he knew all right. “There’s not enough bleach in all of Costco to cleanse my eyes of that image.”

As if it wasn’t bad enough that his wife and her man-slut were screwing like rabbits, they had to do it in his home. In the bed he and Lisa had bought together when they’d married. His life had teemed with possibility then: he would fill Lisa with babies in that bed, she would breastfeed their kids in that bed, they would build a good life in that bed.

“So it’s been more than a year,” Kinsey said, puncturing his misery bubble.

“Right.”

“And you’ve been sleeping in that bed this whole time?”

“No, I sleep on the sofa.” At her mouth twitch, he clarified. “Don’t worry, I change the sheets every couple of weeks. You weren’t sleeping in the original crime scene.” He wasn’t that fucked up that he’d maintain the bed linens as some sort of shrine to his ex-wife’s cheatin’ heart. But otherwise, he had let the room fossilize. The furniture she chose, the robin’s-egg-blue paint on the walls, the raw silk drapes he wasn’t allowed to touch with his smoke-smudged fingers.

And then there were the other things that had been off-limits.

Wash up first, Luke. You know I can’t get in the mood when you’re
dirty like that.

A stray lock of honey-blond hair had escaped Kinsey’s hair tie and he pushed it behind her ear. Out of her power suits and kneel-before-me heels, she looked years younger and not unlike this ideal he had crafted in his mind for the future. This pliant,
easygoing woman who would bow to his will. Of course, his libido knew better. Reluctant to leave, he let his thumb rest on her cheek.

“Lisa was always looking for more, expecting that I had all these extra layers that she’d unveil as we got to know each other better. But . . . I’d shown her all I had. There were no hidden depths. No inner child struggling to break free. I’m just a simple guy. I love beer, sex, and hockey. I hate liars, Sting, and art that doesn’t have people in it.”

She laughed, which was his intention. He saw no reason why a conversation about his ex and all the ways he had failed her should ruin the mood.

He looked up to the ceiling. One of the tiles was loose. “I thought keeping her safe and loving the hell out of her would be enough, but it wasn’t. She didn’t think I had sufficient emotional intelligence, whatever the hell that is. What it boiled down to is that I wasn’t ambitious enough for her.”

“In your career?”

“Yeah. She’s a lawyer, and the blue-collar thing floated her boat for a while, but she wanted me to strive for more. Lieutenant, arson investigator, out of the FD altogether. She said my family held me back.”

Serious again, her gaze turned sharp. “Do they?”

“I told you already how important it is that I protect them. For now, that’s all the ambition I need.”

She nodded her acceptance, not a nod of,
I get it,
but one that said,
We’ll come back to this
. He wanted to resent it, but found he liked her approach.

“I wasn’t a great husband, Kinsey. I should have talked to her more. Listened to her needs.”
In that bed.
Now he sounded like a new spin on the Chinese
fortune cookie game, except instead of the “between the sheets” postscript, it was this latest catchphrase.

You will get your life fucked over. In that bed.

The sympathy in Kinsey’s eyes killed him a little. “Sometimes we like to assess past decisions through the filter of shoulda, coulda, woulda, Luke. Maybe you should have given her more attention and listened to her problems. Or maybe she shouldn’t have been a skanky-assed, open-her-legs-for-any-dick whore.”

The crack of laughter he let fly loosened something rigid in his chest. It also drew the attention of the salesman, who made a move, only to have Kinsey hold up her hand to stop him. The imperious gesture had Luke’s entire body going hard. This woman was some kind of special.

“Tell me how you really feel.”

“Just sayin’. I’ve been there, remember?” She lowered her head back to the mattress. “So what are you looking for in a bed?”

“Too easy, Taylor.”

That netted him a gorgeous grin. “Soft, firm, adjustable . . .” She leaned over the side to grab the list from where she’d dumped it on the floor, and the view of her golden thighs as her dress rode up put his groin on alert. Back up top, she gave him a good-natured look of,
I know your game
. “There’s pillow-top, sateen cover, no-flip mattress . . . The options are endless.”

“I want one . . .” He considered for a moment, giving it much more thought than it probably deserved. Who knew buying a mattress could be so complicated? “Where I can get great sleep.”

“Of course.”

“Amazing sex.”

“A given.”

Turning, he drank in her fresh California beauty. “And have conversations that matter.”

Her smile wobbled a little around the edges, and that his words had an impact on her contracted the space around his heart. Suddenly they were kissing, touching. Connecting. Putting the cherry on top of what had started out as the shopping excursion from hell, but had now taken on this frighteningly new significance.

Somebody coughed.

The kiss continued because Luke really did not care.

The very annoying somebody coughed again.

Kinsey broke away, blinking those big hazel eyes above cheekbones tagged with a watercolor pink bloom. She shot up to a sitting position.

“Um, sorry about that,” she said to the salesman, who hovered menacingly at the end of the mattress.

“That’s okay,” Sales Guy said. “I’ve seen much worse. Lying on a bed, even when that bed is in public, can be a very intimate experience.”

Evidently doing her utmost to avoid Luke’s gaze, Kinsey rubbed her kiss-swollen lips. Yes, sweetheart, it had felt very intimate indeed.

The salesman patted the end of the bed. “This is one of our most popular models. Serta SmartSurface, FireBlocker Fiber, Body Loft Anti Microbial Fiber, and PillowSoft Foam. It also has Cool Twist Gel Memory Foam, one-inch Support Foam, one-inch PillowSoft Foam, and the Insulator Pad. And all purchases over $599 get free delivery in the Chicagoland area.”

“Sorry, dude, but I understood about every fifth word there. What’s the bottom line?”

Sales Guy checked the tag at the end of the bed as if he didn’t have this shit memorized. He spent all day with these mattresses—he knew what they cost.

“This model is $799. A great price for a great night’s sleep.”

Luke bolted upright like the bed was covered in fire ants. “Eight hundred fucking dollars! For a mattress?”

Kinsey placed a calming hand on his arm and flashed a conciliatory grin at the salesman. “Could you give us a moment, please?”

Curding the air with his oiliest smile, Sales Guy sidled off.

“Luke, you cannot put a price on great sleep, sex, or conversation.”

“Yes, I can. Apparently it’s eight hundred dollars plus tax.”

Gracefully, she jumped up, pulling her dress down as she did, which only served to draw attention to her shapely legs. And the gorgeous swell of her breasts. And how he wanted nothing more than to take her home and bang her boneless.

Stupid mattress shopping.

As she shrugged her feet back into flip-flops, she gave a cursory wave around the store. “Look at all the beds we’ve yet to try.”

He groaned. “We have to look at more?”

“Sometimes the first one doesn’t work out.”

Never a truer word. Sometimes it took practice and a truckload of experience. Mattress buying as a life metaphor. He was learning so much.

Unfolding to a stand, he circled her in his arms, resigned to this not being easy. None of it. A woman like this would never let him off the hook about anything. Foreign satisfaction warmed his chest at that.

“I probably should practice my talking-in-bed skills, and where better to do that?”

She kissed his chin with those soft, supple lips. “By the time you whip out your credit card, we should know each other very, very well.”

“D
o you mind if I ask a personal question?”

Luke grunted, then drew his knuckles along the crest of Kinsey’s breasts. The man was trying to sidetrack her again, which he had been doing all day with the ultimate in fun distractions: glorious, amazing sex. Now she looked forward to christening the rooftop deck of her building, where surprisingly they had the outdoor lounge area to themselves.

Earlier, they had attended a holiday barbecue at the home of some of Luke’s friends, and met up with the rest of the Dempseys. The company was great, the food delicious, the cicadas and easy laughter the perfect summer soundtrack. After an hour of Luke’s smoldering stares burning erotic holes in her sundress, they made their excuses. By the time they’d turned into the garage around the corner, she’d lost her panties, most of her brain cells, and was three-quarters of the way to an orgasm.

It didn’t get much more patriotic than sex in a Chevy on the Fourth of July. God bless America.

“We did waste an entire afternoon talking about me,” she said, making her case for being allowed a
few personal questions. The shopping trip had been a revelation—for Luke. On each mattress, he polished his talking-in-bed skills by laying the groundwork.