Adam looked at her oddly. “You don’t sound as if you want to do this, Nikki.”
“What? Oh, no—I
do,
” she lied.
He frowned.
“I, um—” She waved a hand. “I need the practice. Really. You’ll be doing me a
favor
to watch.” Okay, that was probably laying it on too thick, but Adam didn’t call her on it.
“Come on. Let’s stop talking and go.” She teetered out to the parking lot and over to her car. She pulled on the driver’s-side handle, but it was locked. Nikki fumbled her keys out of her bag and poked the relevant one toward the lock, but her hands shook and it was dark.
A couple of steps brought Adam up behind her, so close that she could smell his laundry detergent—the same brand she used—and a masculine-smelling shampoo. There was another scent that clung to Adam: faint traces of beer from the bar, but also something that reminded her of a library. Books? Paper? Ink?
“Excuse me.” His arm reached around her, his hand covered hers, and with long, lean, competent fingers he inserted her key into the lock of the door, then turned it. “There,” he said.
Nikki stood still for a moment, drawn to the warmth of him, the brush of his soft cotton shirt against her bare skin. She wanted to stay encircled by his arm, even lay her head against his chest. But Adam opened the car door for her, so she blinked and got in.
Adam shut the door and walked around the Beetle, getting into the passenger side. She started the engine, and seconds later the air conditioner shot a blast of lukewarm air straight between her thighs, making her jump and squirm.
He turned his steady, chocolate-brown gaze on her once again, still holding the ice pack to his nose. “You sure you want to do this dance?”
As she looked at him, at his slightly mussed dark hair, the crinkles of good humor around his eyes, the tough jaw and the tiny indentation in his chin, Nikki found to her surprise that she did want to dance for him. She wished it were under different circumstances—after a date maybe, when they’d eaten at a nice restaurant and maybe gone to see some live music.
That wasn’t the case, but she responded to his innate kindness and decency as well as his good looks. Here was a guy that she wanted to want her…and she had to meet him under
these
circumstances? She sighed inwardly, but turned her brightest smile on him.
“I absolutely do want to keep up my side of the bargain. I promised you a dance, and I’ll give you one.”
“It’s not smart to come back to my hotel room,” Adam told her. “How do you know I’m not a serial killer? A twisted rapist?”
Nikki frowned. “You don’t seem like the type.”
“What type would that be? They’re all pretty normal-looking white guys. Most of them are married with children.”
“Are you married with children?”
“Not even close, but you’re missing the point.”
“Are you a rapist or murderer?”
“No,” he said, sounding a bit exasperated. “But you shouldn’t take my word for it.”
“Would you like me to check on you from my iPhone? Find out if you have an arrest record before I get out of the car?”
Adam leaned his head against the seat, adjusted the ice pack and closed his eyes. “You can’t possibly be this naive.”
“There’s no need for name-calling,” Nikki said. “I have a solution. We’ll stop by the front desk at the hotel and let them know that if I’m found scattered in pieces anywhere, I spent my last hours with you. How’s that?”
“Fine, laugh at me. I’m simply trying to tell you that it’s a scary world out there and you shouldn’t go back to strange men’s hotel rooms.”
“Just how strange are you?”
“I give up!”
Nikki grinned, then put the Beetle into Reverse and backed out of the parking spot. “Look, I appreciate the good advice. I really do. But I have pretty good instincts about people and my creep radar didn’t go off around you.”
“She has a creep radar,” Adam said to nobody in particular. “Whatever that is.”
Nikki laughed. “If you were a sicko, you wouldn’t have tried to talk me out of going to your hotel room with you. You’d have been trying to convince me that you were the most harmless, trustworthy person on the planet. You might even have leaned on a crutch and begged for my help, Ted Bundy–style.”
“Whatever,” said Adam. They rode in silence for a little while.
“So you weren’t having a good time at the club?” Nikki asked. “Why not?”
“Just not my scene.”
“What’s your scene, then?”
He shrugged. “Quiet music, smoke-free air, a beer on a back porch, watching the sunset.”
“That sounds nice.”
Silence fell in the car again. Nikki thought about how to dance for him. What would a guy like Adam be looking for?
“Do you have an iPod or anything for music?” she asked. She hadn’t gotten around to downloading any songs on her own phone.
“Um. No, but there’s a clock radio in the room.”
Nikki nodded. Not ideal, but it would work in a pinch. Now…how to read him? She might as well ask.
“So,” she blurted. “Do you like it fast and skanky, or do you prefer slow and sensual?”
Adam’s jaw dropped. He swiveled toward her and the ice pack fell off his nose and into his lap.
“Excuse me?”
he asked, in strangled tones.
4
UNDER THE ICE PACK, Adam popped a woody. Had the girl really asked him that?
“Oh, my God!” she said. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I meant, you know, about
dancing.
”
Adam’s brain was still locked on the concept of
fast and skanky
sex, even though he tried valiantly to get rid of the images. It didn’t help that the girl sitting in the driver’s seat was so smoothly, er, curvilinear. Or that he’d seen her practically naked, peered either up or down every one of her female crevices.
His woody wasn’t going anywhere, which was inconvenient to say the least, since they were now approaching the hotel.
Down, boy! Play dead.
Adam really didn’t want to do introductions in the parking lot.
Nikki, meet Johnson. He’s enthusiastic to make your acquaintance…as you can see.
Adam got himself under control with difficulty as he gave her somewhat convoluted directions on purpose. At last Nikki pulled into the Marriott Courtyard where he and the guys were staying.
“Didn’t we just pass this?” Nikki inquired.
Adam mumbled something about being tired and forgetting to tell her to turn, but her puzzled frown told him that she didn’t buy it.
Nikki opened the driver’s-side door and got out, treating him to another view of her spectacular legs and ass, though he vaguely wished she hadn’t felt the need to put on the skirt.
He got out as she surreptitiously scratched at one of her insect bites, and he took pity on her. “I have a first-aid kit with some cortisone cream in my room.” It stayed permanently in his carry-on, and had come in handy more than once.
She nodded, her face a study in mortification under all that makeup. “Thanks.” She wobbled along next to him and he took her arm to brace her as they crossed a small hillock of grass to reach the sidewalk.
Adam slid the key card through the slot at the rear door of the place, and stood aside to let Nikki enter before him. That was when he noticed the little clumps of mud and grass stuck to her spike heels. He turned his sudden laughter into a cough/snort.
Nikki turned. “Are you okay?”
“F-fine,” Adam said. “Allergies.” And he led the combination stripper/lawn-aerator to room 198. Another electronic snick and they walked inside.
The door closed behind them and the two of them stood there like morons, Adam looking everywhere but at her and she looking everywhere but at him. Finally he broke the silence. “I believe I promised you some cortisone cream.”
“Oh, yes,” she said gratefully. “And you should probably get some more ice for your nose.”
He nodded.
Adam went into the bathroom and rummaged the tube of cream out of the first-aid kit. He handed it to her, noticing that the skin of her chest and neck had flushed deep scarlet and perspiration had beaded at her temples. Clearly she was nervous. Had she really never done this before?
As she took the cap off the tube and squeezed some cream onto her finger, he retreated back into the bathroom, wet a washcloth with cold water and brought it out to her. He stopped at the sight of Nikki, twisted like a pretzel with her skirt rucked up, rubbing at the bites on her behind.
How anyone could find the sight provocative, he didn’t know—he guessed he was just an unusual guy. But the position she was in elongated her neck and emphasized her curves, displaying all the lean muscle on either side of her elegant spine and the sexy flare of narrow waist into hips.
If only he could get past the indignity of what she was doing, she’d look like one of those portraits of nude bathers that he’d seen in museums. Though he doubted that Degas or Renoir had ever painted anything called
Nude with Cortisone Cream.
“That’s much better,” she declared, pulling down her skirt again with a forced smile. She handed back the tube. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So, I guess I’ll just, um, turn on the radio…and you can get, um, comfortable.”
While she gets even more uncomfortable.
But Adam nodded and she teetered over to the nightstand and began to fiddle with the clock. A burst of static had both of them wincing, but Adam couldn’t look away from the sight of her bent over.
“What kind of music do you like?” Nikki asked over her shoulder.
“Any rock station is fine.” He swallowed hard. He remembered from the bar that she appeared to be completely hairless under that tiny thong she wore.
Completely.
“I’m just, uh, going to go get that ice,” he said in strangled tones. “Be right back.”
“Okay.” She looked relieved, and he wondered if she’d bolt while he was out of the room. But when he returned with some fresh ice cubes in his nose pack, she was still there, swaying awkwardly to an oldie but goodie—“Light My Fire” by the Doors.
“I can do this,” she declared, as if she were trying to convince herself as well as him.
“Even with no pole, huh?” He couldn’t resist teasing her a little bit.
“Oh. I forgot about the pole,” she said, looking distressed.
“Don’t worry about it. You can use a chair or something, right?” Adam pulled a chair out from under the room’s desk and set it in the middle of the floor. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and held the ice pack to his nose.
Nikki took a deep breath, approached the chair and grasped the back. Then she began.
She gyrated her hips to the beat of the music and pressed her pink lips into a pout. After a few moments, she took the bottom of her shirt into both hands and began easing it up, teasing him with the sight of her breasts in a red push-up bra. She whipped the shirt over her head and spun around.
When she turned to face him again, she ran a hand down her smooth, flat stomach, sort of slithering it around. She played with the button at the waistband of her skirt.
The bra was the second article of clothing to go, leaving her breasts bare except for a pair of strategically placed pasties with tiny tassels that shook in every direction and betrayed her total lack of rhythm, but who cared.
She was all enticing skin and curves.
A minute or so later, she ditched the skirt, letting it drop to the floor. She stepped out of it, gyrating her hips, and kicked it to the side.
Adam’s woody made a return appearance when she plunged her hand into the front of the G-string.
Adam stopped breathing at the sight.
She rotated her hips as if they were mounted on ball bearings, then leaned forward and squeezed her breasts between her arms so that they thrust forward. Then she worked her shoulders, shimmying them, too.