The Thrill of It All (3 page)

“Warm. Getting to be lovely warm.” Her mind continued drifting along. “A little hungry, though.”

“Unless you want to snack on packets of fast-food-joint salt or salsa, you’re out of luck. That’s the only stuff I found in the glove box besides the flask and the survival blanket.”

“Survival blanket.” Eyes still closed, she wormed a hand free to stroke the light, crinkly fabric, and words materialized in her head. “Indispensable. Versatile. Everyone should have one—more than one. Has half-a-dozen uses—as a blanket for a picnic, the stadium, on a boat. As a desert sunshade. You can even make it into a cooler for drinks.”

“That’s only five.”

His voice snapped her out of her hazy reverie and her eyes popped open. “What?”

“You said half-a-dozen uses. That was only five.”

She hadn’t been aware of talking aloud, so now she could only stare at him. Like her, he was sitting up
and leaning against the side of the car, but because he was so much taller than she, the blanket that reached to her neck cut him across the torso.

Revealing, even in the semidarkness, impressive masculine features: a wide plain of pectorals, heavily rounded shoulders, sinewy arms that rippled with muscles she’d been previously unacquainted with. Even his hands appeared more male than most, the palms broad, the fingers long and limber. Long enough to wrap—

Reality struck. Haziness lifted. Alarm tickled her spine.

She was stranded in the middle of the desert.

With a strange man.

A naked strange man.

Her behind wiggled. And oh, yes, she was naked, too.

Then the how and why of it came back to her, in one staggering rush.

In her mind’s eye, she saw it all over again. She’d been dead. Oh, God, she
knew
she’d been dead. That’s what she’d wanted to tell him before it started raining. That’s what she’d tried to tell him when she’d pointed out that rip in the back of his shirt. That she’d already seen it, from outside of her body.

She’d watched the man—Michael—pull her from the car. His shirt had caught on her sideview mirror and he’d torn it free. Then he’d placed her body gently onto the sand and bent over her, breathing for her, pleading with God, pleading with her, and because
he’d asked her to stay, because he’d wanted so much for her to stay, she had.

Her heart pounded against her breastbone.

“Dollface? You all right?”

“Fine,” she whispered.

But much more than fine. Euphoria—she was living, breathing, thinking, feeling!—bubbled up inside and then shot through her veins.
Alive alive alive alive alive!

Heart pounding harder, she turned to tell him, thank him…

And found herself speechless and staring at him again, once more fascinated by his smooth male skin and hard male muscles. My God. Just looking at them was making things inside of her stir, stretch, come awake, just as his voice had done for her when she’d been lying on the sand.

Heat flashed over her as she ran her gaze over him slowly, stroking his flesh visually like she wanted to stroke him with her hand. With her tongue.

Her tongue?

The idea of licking a stranger should be shocking. Lewd. Disgusting.

But her pulse was tripping all over itself at the thought, while desire slowly flexed its muscle in the depths of her belly. Her gaze bumped over one of his dark nipples and excitement washed across her skin like goosebumps.

She heard his breath catch.

Suddenly heat was everywhere. Pouring off of her,
radiating off of him. It was a heat that matched the heat in her belly and the heat in her blood. It was the heat of life, of the living. Of being alive.

Her gaze jumped from the thick column of his neck to that tangled hair and then to his bad-boy face. Her focus landed on his mouth, edged by dark whiskers. His nostrils flared and he sent off another blast of heat, of citrus-and-leather scent, of seductive, all-senses-alive-and-well arousal.

Her heart was a drum and desire the primal beat.

What
was
this?

She’d wanted men before—but men she knew well. She’d wanted sex before—when the time was right and the man was, too. For her, being intimate with a man had always required a crucial mental component.

But this was physical. Purely, edgily physical.

More excitement prickled her skin and she shivered.

“Michael.” She lifted the hand she’d freed from the blanket.

He met it with the flask. “Take another drink,” he commanded in a raspy voice.

Her gaze lifted to his. He had to know it wasn’t a chill she was feeling. But despite the scorching awareness still pulsing between them, his expression was remote. Cool.

Embarrassment joined the hot tangle inside of her.

Cool. He wanted to play it cool.

And she should be thankful.

With effort, her fingers closed on the flask. She couldn’t stomach another swig of the stuff, but she
had to do something with herself—with her hands and with her mouth—or she just might forget who she was.

And she just might try showing him exactly how thankful she could be.

Taking a deep breath, she looked away from his nothing-remotely-like-her-type face, and said the only thing that made good sense to a woman like Felicity Charm when choosing between coming on to a perfect stranger or chugging down more bad tequila.

“Pass the salsa, please.”

The night was just one stupefication after another, Magee decided, as the woman started doing salsa shooters. Salsa shooters! She might be doing them in ladylike sips, but they were salsa shooters all the same.

“When was the last time you had something to eat?” he finally ventured.

“Don’t know.” She was using the time-honored lick-sip-suck method: first she sprinkled salt on the side of her fist and licked it off, next she swigged the tequila, then she sucked some salsa out of a plastic packet. “I’m pretty sher—
sure
—I didn’t eat dinner.”

Great. Tequila on an empty stomach. “Maybe you’ve had enough.”

She looked over at him, seeming to consider a moment. Her gaze wandered from his bare shoulders to his waist, where he’d let the blanket pool because it was getting so damn hot inside the Jeep.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Coupla more.”

He sighed. Okay, so they
were
very small hits. And
when he’d first pressed the stuff on her, half of it had spilled down her skin. Soft, satiny ski—

“You want?”

He started, then realized she was talking about the flask she was holding out to him. “No.” Alcohol made him reckless, and he couldn’t afford to lose even half a scruple.

Especially tonight with its surprise KOs. Discovering it was Simon’s flask in his glove box instead of his own had almost wigged him out. Though it shouldn’t seem so strange, Magee thought, sliding lower. When he’d cleaned out Simon’s truck before putting it up for sale, he’d found not only his own second-best pair of belaying gloves but his treasured 1999 Topless Chicks Top Mountains calendar, too.

“You’re smiling.”

“Am I?” He looked over to find Lissie had shifted lower as well and was half-turned toward him.

“Yep. Nice smile.” The hand holding the flask made a sloppy gesture toward it, sprinkling tequila over his chest. Then she smiled, and that was sloppy, too. “Uh-oh. Baptized you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” But he edged away from her anyway, because she was definitely heading toward tipsy and she was definitely staring at his bare skin.

Then her gaze lifted from his chest to his mouth. So, hell, he indulged himself and looked at
her
mouth. That puffy, pretty mouth that he knew but that he’d never kissed. Her dark hair had dried and was sticking out in wispy tufts from behind her ears and her lashes were a thick, black fringe around matching dark eyes
in the paleness of her small face. With the silver-gray blanket around her, that distracting mouth of hers was her only colorful feature.

The only thing colorful in his sight.

It was a dark pink. A bruised pink.

All night long he’d been half-hard, thinking about administrating first aid on it again—the consensual kind.

As if she could read his thoughts, the hand holding the flask jerked, spilling more tequila on his chest.

“Uh-oh,” she said again, and her free hand reached out to wipe it away. But at the last second, she halted, leaving her palm a crucial inch from his skin.

The atmosphere inside the car crackled with static and the temperature jacked up another twenty degrees. He sucked in a breath. Though he’d half-expected this phenomenon to reappear, it didn’t make the combustion any less powerful.

“Uh-oh,” she said, wiggling the fingers of that damn hand. “Mi-chael.”

“Don’t,” he rasped out. “You don’t want to do it. You don’t want to touch me.”

She frowned at him. “Yes, I do.”

He ground his back teeth together, cursing himself for not dealing out the facts the first time they’d almost incinerated. “Dollface, here’s the beta on what’s happening. We don’t really want to bump bones. It’s survival rush.”

Her frown deepened. “Beta? Bump bones? Survival rush?”

Taking advantage of her confusion, he inched far
ther from her hand. “Beta—that means information. Bump bones—that’s a boink, a bang, a score, a screw. Survival rush is just what it sounds like.”

He’d witnessed it during climbs, even between a man and woman who held an active dislike for each other. Have them survive the same epic snowstorm or hairy roped fall and the next thing you knew, they’d be shedding their packs and their gear and going at it like rabbits. “That urge you’re feeling’s a reaction to stress. It’ll go away.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “I kinda like it.”

Damn, he knew he should have taken the tequila from her. Without its influence, this uptight little cookie would never have made such an admission. But now the shooters had loosened her up, forcing
him
to play old maid aunt. “Too bad,” he said firmly. “We’re not going to act on it.”

Her mouth pouted, just crying for a kiss. “Why not?” She put both hands around the flask and brought it up for another sip.

“Be—” Her movement lifted the top slope of her pale breasts out of the blanket and he had to wrench his gaze away from them. “Because, damn it, there are rules.”

Like she was three-quarters drunk and he was almost—

“Naah.” Her head wagged back and forth. “Guy like you, you don’ follow rules,” she announced.

But after what happened to Simon, Magee had vowed to change that. It was the straight and safe for him from now on. “You do.”

She waved that away, wiggling closer to him as the part of the blanket covering her tits slipped southward again. “Come up with something else.”

“Because we’re strangers,” he said between gritted teeth. “Because we’ll never see each other again.” A prissy woman like this one, that should change her mind.

Instead, she sent him a beatific smile. “Even better. Then if you’re lousy I won’ tell anybody you know.”

He rolled his eyes, but was relieved when she moved back to sit straighter. And even more relieved when, with exaggerated care, she capped the flask and set it aside.

Then she fell on top of him.

Magee caught her by the wrists. Her pretty face, her pretty mouth was just inches from his and so—to hell with it—he kissed her.

Oh, God. She tasted like the best vacation he’d ever had. Four years ago, he’d headed south to cliff-climb in Mexico, but instead spent most of his time lying on the beach, soaking up tequila and spicy food and heat.

Heat. Burning heat.

He dropped her wrists and ran his palms up her spine. Then, fisting his hands in her hair, he tilted her head to change the angle of the kiss. This time, her mouth opened more and her tongue slipped out to stroke his.

On that aforesaid vacation, a rogue wave had swamped him.

He reacted the same now as he had then, jerking up,
jumping away, shaking himself like a wet dog. “Don’t do that,” he choked out.

She didn’t say a word until he turned and grabbed for his damp jeans.

“What’s wrong?”

He refused to look at her as he struggled to pull them on, she was that tempting. “I need to get out.” It had stopped raining. He’d get some air, give the situation time to defuse.

“Mi-i-i-i-chael.”

Her voice was a sexy purr that felt like a light scratch of fingernails against his bare skin.

“Look, you gotta understand something here,” he ground out in warning. “I’m no saint, dollface. I’m just trying to act like one.”

“Silly Michael. Be brave. I won’ hurt you.”

Oh, he had plenty of courage. And it was true that he’d never been known for turning down sex. But things were different now. He had obligations to fulfill. Promises to make.

So he was doing the smart thing. The climbing tribe had nicknamed him “Lucky Bastard,” but his legendary good fortune had never been due strictly to chance. It was in part because he used his brain when deciding between continuing on or bailing out.

And it was bail time, baby.

Without even waiting to shove his feet in his boots, he thrust open the back door and leaped from the Jeep.

The cold swamped him, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The clouds—not that he’d ever seen any before the
rain—had disappeared and the moon was out once again.

Then Magee saw that something else was out, too, creeping up from beneath the sand.

Somethings.

He froze, as all around him dozens upon dozens of tarantula spiders—as big as his palm!—emerged from the desert floor and went on the prowl. His skin crawled right along with them.

Okay. Well. Damn, damn, damn. This changed the danger/courage equation entirely.

With a sound oddly like Simon’s laughter ringing in his ears, Magee opened the Jeep’s back door and dove back inside.

B
efore disappointment had a chance to sink in, Michael was back inside the car. Felicity smiled.
He’d changed his mind!

Without a word, he leaned across her to swipe up the flask of tequila. A healthy slug went down his throat. And then another.

They were going to have sex after all!

She hoped so anyway, because the salsa shooters hadn’t taken the tiniest edge off her need. And oh, did she
need
. The feeling was exhilarating, exciting, excruciating.

She didn’t give a hoot if it was survival rush or a reaction to stress or anything else. And acting on it only made complete sense, she told herself. It was absolutely necessary. She’d had that strange, scary sensation of being outside her body, and now she needed something—apparently sweaty sex—to put herself firmly back inside it.

No, no. Sweaty sex would put
him
firmly inside her.

She giggled at the idea, then sobered, a second
thought flitting through her tipsy brain. Inside her? She was going to let a man she didn’t know inside of her? That wasn’t what smart, hardworking Felicity Charm would
ever
do.

“Look, Lissie…” Michael began, then stopped to take another draw on the flask.

Lissie? Oh,
yes
.
Lissie
.

Felicity Charm, America’s Sweetheart of Sales, wasn’t going to be doing the wild thing with the wild man who wasn’t her type. It was
Lissie
. Lissie, who wasn’t the It Girl of anything, which meant she was free to do things that Felicity couldn’t.

“Look, Lissie, I’m not back…”

His words drifted off again as she reached up and combed her fingers through his hair. Lissie got to do stuff like that, the lucky girl. “Kiss me,” she demanded.

And because Lissie wasn’t one for waiting, she yanked on his hair to bring his mouth down to hers. The kiss was hard and hot. His lips moved under hers—oh, nice—but then she realized he was trying to tell her something. She eased her hold on him, giving him half an inch.

“I still think this isn’t a good idea,” he said.

But since one of his arms was clamped around her back, she guessed he didn’t think it was such a terrible idea, either. His reluctance, however, was becoming annoying. He was her bad boy! The dark, untamed stranger destined to fulfill this need he’d awoken inside of her.

Determined to get what she wanted, she reached
down and palmed the fly of his jeans, making him groan. “Then you’re thinking with the wrong head,” she whispered. Half-delighted and half-appalled by what she’d said and done, she stroked him once more.

In response, his mouth descended all on its own and widened over hers, widening hers, so his tongue could thrust inside. The delicious intrusion made her tremble. Then his lips were gone, trailing over her cheek and toward her ear. “Really. I didn’t come in for this, for you.”

He bit down on her lobe and she squeaked, her fingers contracting on his hard, happy erection. He groaned again.

“I don’t care,” she answered, not as long as he was going to do something about all these hot, primal impulses clamoring inside of her.

“We have nothing in common,” he murmured, moving back to her mouth.

“Who cares about that, either?” They needed nothing in common besides—what did he call it?—wanting to bump bones right here, right now.

On their next kiss, he dropped the flask. It clattered against the metal floor as he tugged her lower. Then she was flat on her back and he was on his elbows, leaning over her.

Her palms rested on his wide, naked shoulders. His head lowered, his rain-scented hair the dark curtain that made what they were doing more private, more intimate, more breath-stealing sexy. His lips brushed hers and she moaned, the brief connection flinging
heat in every direction over every inch of her flesh. Her fingers clenched onto heavy muscle. She needed his weight, his skin, his taste against every pore.

“Take me now,” she heard herself pleading.

But Lissie wouldn’t beg, she realized, Lissie would do the taking herself. The concern cartwheeled away as his tongue twined with hers again. He could take her this time, she consoled herself, then Lissie would take him the next.

He was kissing down her neck, the stubble of his beard scraping against her skin, teasing more nerve endings to the surface. Then, half-sitting at her side, he hooked his fingers in the blanket between her breasts and tugged, trying to draw it lower.

She held her breath. Yes.
Touch me there
.
Yes
.

But she was swaddled so tightly, the fabric wouldn’t budge. He tried again, again making no progress. Her focus narrowed to his two fingers, the backs of them hard and hot against her breastbone as his hand worked at moving the stubborn blanket away. Worried he’d give up, she shimmied her hips, trying to loosen the maddening material, but that didn’t help, either.

His fingers slid out and away and she almost cried, but then he brushed his palm over one blanket-covered nipple.

Yessss
. Lissie was nobody’s sweetheart, nobody’s girl. She was a woman, a needy woman, and she arched her back to get as much of his attention as she could. He laughed, a dark, dangerous sound, and the
wickedness of it thrilled her, making her needier, hotter, wetter.

More demanding.

Knowing exactly what she wanted next, she sat up. Then, curling her own fingers into the layers of blanket, she yanked them past her breasts.

He stilled. Her naked skin shone pale in the darkness. She wasn’t very big—no! Lissie knew appearances didn’t matter, only desire. Desire and touch. So, her gaze glued to his face, she palmed her breasts herself. Once, twice. Her hard nipples pulled tighter, stiffened.

The lean angles of his bad-boy face sharpened. “Do that again,” he ordered roughly.

In their cocoon of fogged windows, his breathing sounded loud and harsh. “Again,” he commanded, his voice hoarse.

Watching him, Lissie slowly moved, reaching up and behind to find the cold glass. She dragged the flat of one hand down the wet surface. His breath hitched as she slowly drew that same hand across the heated skin of one of her breasts, letting it catch on the nipple and then letting the nipple pop free.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “I was nuts
not
to come back for this.”

She’d never felt so liberated from her inhibitions—and her image. Her hand made a languid pass over her other breast. “So,” she said softly, prolonging the anticipation, “why
did
you come back?”

Her hand stretched back up toward the glass. He
tracked the movement with his eyes, and she thought he’d forgotten her question. Her palm flattened, then inched down the slick glass.

“You’ll laugh,” he finally said.

This time she brought her cool, wet hand toward his chest. His skin twitched. “I won’t laugh,” she replied, her palm hovering near one of his dusky nipples.

He was breathing harder.

“I’d never laugh,” she added, still delaying the touch. Making him wait. Anticipate. “Tell me.”

The power was in her hands. It
was
her hands. She allowed her damp thumb to edge closer to his nipple, pause again. He groaned.

“Tell me,” she insisted, just for the wicked, naughty fun of having him at her mercy.

“Because the tarantulas scared the shit out of me.”

Felicity froze. Tarantulas? “
Tarantulas?
” Her hand dropped and her legs jackknifed toward her chest, the blanket restricting her movement to a spastic kick.

He stared. “What’s wrong with you?” His eyebrows rose as she desperately yanked at the part of the blanket caught beneath him.

“We have more in common than you thought.” With the end free, she threw it over her shoulder, toga-style, then arranged the rest of it to re-cover her breasts. Pressing her spine against the side of the car, she tried making herself smaller as she peered about. “Did one get in? Could one be on you?”

“Lissie—”

Something touched her foot and she shrieked. “Get it off! Get it off! Kill it!”

“Take it easy. That was my hand,” he said. “Jesus, you really
are
scared.”

She wanted to slap him. “Of
course
I’m scared.”

“Don’t you think—”

“I don’t want to think. If I think I’ll hear them. I’ll hear their long fangs clackety-clacking and their fat hairy legs rub-a-dub-dubbing my way.” She shivered.

“Now
you’re
scaring me.”

“Shut up, shut up.” There was no way to explain her irrational fear. There was no way to explain her equally immense regret, either. Thanks to him, she’d lost her chance to experience purely physical passion. “I could kill you for this!”

“You’ve had your shot at that once tonight already,” he said dryly. “But now I take it the mood is dead, too?”

She shot him a dirty look, then scrubbed her face with her hands. As illogical, but certainly as
real
as her spider fear was that notion that she’d needed sex. Right now. Tonight. Sex to cement herself back inside her body.

Remembering that sensation of floating above the scene of the accident, she shivered again. Damn him for leaving her hanging like this!

“Lissie, I…” He studied her in silence for another moment, then scooted nearer. “I’m going to get close enough to touch you.”

“
What?
”

“I’m trying to save you from another bump on the head. When I brushed your foot a second ago you nearly hit the roof.”

“Hah-hah,” she said, eyeing him as he settled beside her again. His bare shoulder jostled hers and her stomach jumped. “Are you certain you didn’t bring one inside with you?”

“Chill, dollface.” He turned toward her, laying a soothing stroke to her jaw with the back his hand. “Why don’t we talk about something else?”

She appreciated the calming caress and then the next one after that, but relax? No. “Have you ever seen tarantulas migrate?”

He shook his head. “Lissie—”

“They come out of the ground and start walking. They stop at nothing. They’ll crawl over things in their path rather than going around them.”

“Gotta admire their determination,” he murmured, stroking the other side of her jaw. “Where are they heading?”

His knuckles played across her bottom lip, but she pretended not to notice. “Not where, but
who
. They’re looking for babes.”

His hand halted. “
Babies?
”

“Chicks.”

“Chicke—”

“I mean women.” She batted his distracting hand away. “No, I
mean
lady spiders.”

“Now I get it.” Michael leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth. Then he kissed her again. This time, despite herself, her lips clung to his, but he lifted his mouth and went back to stroking her face. “They want to mate.”

“They want to mate,” she agreed.

His lips touched down again, finding the corner of hers, and one of those wonderful hot shivers rolled over her. Oh, maybe she still wanted to mate, too.

“Hmmm. I think I’m starting to understand those guys,” he said, working his way toward her ear. “They’re not so different from you and me, right?”

Not so different from you and me
. Maybe she
could
forget about them, she thought, as his lips settled against hers again. Her knees were still plastered to her chest, but her tense muscles were warming, loosening, wanting him once more. When his rough-surfaced palm slid between the blanket and her breast, she gasped. When he took the kiss deeper, angling his head to thrust against her tongue with his, she slipped her hand beneath the waistband of his jeans.

He groaned into her mouth, the sound making her light-headed with lust. His fingers kneaded her breast and she went to work on the buttons of his fly so she could knead him, too.

Incredible, she thought. It was incredible that she could get this far with a total stranger despite tequila and tarantulas and the image she’d been working on for a lifetime. But then it hit her. Of course. It was
because
he was a total stranger.

A woman who’d almost died deserved a dark stranger and a solitary night of unbridled sex. Felicity unfastened the last button and pulled apart the edges of his jeans.

Just that made him groan again, and she almost lost it. Oh, yes, with him she could let go and discover pure, physical passion. It was a woman’s secret
dream, the fantasy that had been described years ago in the book
Fear of Flying,
a book she and some boarding schoolmates had found tucked behind a drawer in an old unused dresser. Felicity remembered that the author called it the zipless fuck.

She reached in and palmed his hot, smooth skin. Inside her own body there was softening, heating, all the preparing necessary to take in the hardness she cradled in her hand. More shivers rolled over her sensitized skin. She’d never been so turned on by touching a man! The moment was priceless.

“Jong,” she murmured against his mouth. “It’s so Jong.” Erica Jong’s zipless fuck.

“Thank you,” he whispered back, pushing up against her hand.

She lifted her head to explain. “No, I mean—” Then she saw a strange expression cross his face, and she stilled. “What? What is it?”

“Tell me more about these eight-legged friends of yours.” He took his hand off her breast and slid away from her.

“What? More about tarantulas?” She glared at him, her body wet and ready, her pulse pounding for that dark-stranger-solitary-night-of-passion. “The females kill their mates after sex. Sometimes
before
sex.” Her hand grabbed his, ready to place it right back where she wanted it.

“They don’t knock?”

Her eyes widened. “No.” Then she heard it, the knock on the fogged-over back window. “
No
.”

“Well, then, dollface, I guess we’ve been caught red-handed, or, should I say, with our pants down.”

As the sky turned pink with dawn, Magee stood alone in the desert. The tarantulas had returned to their underground homes after the rainwater had drained, and the tow truck operator was just now driving away, hauling the convertible Thunderbird behind him. Through the truck’s rear window Magee had his last glimpse of Lissie—the back of her head, anyway—shrouded sari-style by the survival blanket.