Authors: Cat Johnson
“I’m fine.” Of course, she hadn’t dared to actually look at the cut yet. Judging by the throbbing and the amount of blood, it was going to be bad.
Robert pushed his way through the group to stand beside her. “Give her some space. Lexi, let me see.”
Not so upset about his treating her like a child any longer, Lexi thrust her hand at Robert and looked the other way, afraid of what she might see. At least she hadn’t noticed any fingertips on the cutting board. Surely, that was a good sign.
“It’s not that deep, but you should go to the emergency room anyway. It might require a stitch or two.”
Stitches. She’d never needed stitches in her life. “No, really. I don’t think the emergency room is necessary. Can’t we just bandage it up and I’ll finish the show?”
There was that frustrated sigh again from Robert that she’d gotten so used to. “
If
we can get it to stop bleeding, you can finish the show. Then I’m taking you to a doctor to at least have it properly cleaned and looked at. Got it?”
She nodded as Robert called out over his shoulder, “Can somebody bring me a first aid kit, please?”
He couldn’t hide the
I told you so
expression he wore, but he didn’t say it out loud. It didn’t matter. Lexi didn’t need him to say it. Her own bloody finger was enough of a reminder.
Chapter Eight
Scott stood at Lexi’s door and rang the bell, as ready as he’d ever be to withstand the temptation of being near her again in the flesh. He thought of her every waking moment when they were apart and thought about stripping her naked the entire time they were together. He was living in a constant state of frustrated arousal.
Being with her for their lessons and having to act professional and as if he didn’t want to roll around with her on the kitchen floor was unbearable. But being on shift at the firehouse was also killing him. All that time to sit around and think about her. He’d actually found himself wishing they’d get a call and have to go out so he’d have something to take his mind off this torture.
Realizing what a sad state he was in, he’d made sure to take care of his physical gratification on his own before coming to see Lexi tonight. Since he got a hard-on just thinking about her nowadays, he knew there was no way he could be in the same room with her and not have his body react to hers. Smelling the now familiar scent of her citrus shampoo mingled with that of whatever food they were making. Watching her chest rise and fall as she breathed. Seeing her bite her lower lip while she concentrated... He’d had no choice but to take matters into his own hands before he saw her.
Now, there would be no sexual distraction. He was prepared for the next cooking class—individual-sized quiche appetizers. Lexi had gone to the store and bought all the ingredients for the lesson today. Everything should be good to go.
Or so he thought…
When she opened the door looking like any man’s wet dream he knew he was in trouble. Cooking appetizers was the dead last thing on his mind and his formerly satisfied dick was standing up and taking notice again.
Her face was flushed red, making her look like she’d just had an energetic romp in bed. The redness ran all the way down to her exposed cleavage. The short, achingly tight bicycle pants she was wearing didn’t help Scott’s hard-on either.
“Hi. Come on in, but you’re going to want to take off your jacket, probably your shirt too.”
A wave of warm air hit him. Scott stifled a groan and realized he’d have to take at least something off. “Um, what’s going on?”
She let out a huff and threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know. There’s something wrong with the heat in the building. It’s like ninety degrees in here even with the windows open. I can’t imagine how hot it’s going to get once we turn the oven on.”
Oh, Scott could imagine how hot things were going to get, all right. He stripped off his jacket and sweatshirt but chose to suck it up and keep his T-shirt on. He was a fireman. He could handle extreme temperatures. It was the extremely hot girl in front of him, the one with the shapely behind leading him to the kitchen, that he was having trouble not getting scorched by.
“I went to the store and bought the stuff. I even tried making a batch of pie crust on my own for the quiches, but it’s so sticky, no matter how much flour I add.”
He dragged his gaze away from the flour stain on her tank top—it was located just over her left boob—and tried to process what she was saying. Oh, yeah. Flour. Piecrusts. “It’s too hot. You can’t work with dough when it’s this hot. The dough has to be cold.”
She sighed. “Then what are we going to do?”
Bending her over the counter and pressing up close behind that tight little ass of hers came to mind. He wrestled his mind away from the image of what he’d like to do and went to squat near the closest radiator. The heat pumping steadily out of it was nearly as unbearable as his urge to strip them both naked until they were sweaty for quite a different reason. “Put the dough in the fridge for now. I think I can temporarily turn off the radiators until your landlord fixes whatever is wrong. You got a screwdriver?”
“The kind with the tip shaped like an X or the kind without?” Lexi actually made an X shape with her two fingers when she asked him that question.
He smiled. As well as being cooking challenged, Lexi apparently wasn’t mechanically inclined either. It made her even more adorable.
“A straight screwdriver is fine.” He decided he better elaborate. “The kind without the X.”
She nodded and scrambled over to a drawer. After lots of rifling through what looked like quite a mess of pens, papers, take-out menus, string and for some reason a small rubber ball, Lexi triumphantly emerged with a screwdriver.
Once in possession of the tool, Scott managed to turn off the radiator in the kitchen. He wiped the sweat flowing freely over his brow. “That should help, but we’ll have to wait for it to cool down in here before we work on the pie crust.”
“Could you turn off the radiator in the bedroom too? I’ll never be able to sleep tonight if it’s this hot in there.”
“The bedroom? Um, sure.” He swallowed, picturing her sweaty and naked, tossing and turning in bed while she was unable to sleep.
“Great. I’ll show you where it is.” She walked ahead of him as his internal warning sensor screamed at him.
Danger. Danger, Scott O’Malley.
The room was much too small to be in there with both Lexi, looking like his sexual fantasies, and a big available bed, which had also starred in a few of his imaginings. As he crouched between the bed frame and the radiator, it didn’t help one bit when she plopped herself down on the mattress with a bounce. His eyes went directly to her breasts, like a compass to true north.
The screwdriver slipped and rammed into his palm.
“Damn.” He hissed in a sharp breath.
At least the pain of the sharp tool jabbing into his hand brought his mind back up from the dark depths to which it had sunk.
“You hurt yourself. Let me see.” She frowned and leaned low, giving him even more of a view down her shirt.
“Nope. I’m fine. Nothing to see.” Scott shook his head, ignoring the small crimson puddle forming in his palm. If she started tending his wounds, he knew his resolve would be lost and he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her any longer.
“You’re not fine. You’re bleeding.” Lexi grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and kneeling next to him, pressed it into his hand.
He looked down at her small hand in his, then up to her face, level with him as they both knelt.
“Uh, thanks.” As predicted, the close confines and her concern for him were definitely not helping. He grasped for any distraction, and then he noticed the bandage on her finger. “Hey. What happened to your finger?”
“I tried to skip ahead a few lessons. I cut myself trying to chiffonade basil for some macerated strawberries.” She bit her lip, looking embarrassed and adorable.
That was it. With that one little action his resistance was totally gone. He realized he couldn’t take any more. His gaze dropped to her tempting lips.
What could one little kiss hurt? He was an adult. He should be able to handle a simple kiss and then they could move on to making those quiches. With that in mind, Scott gave in to the urge. He leaned forward and saw Lexi’s surprise as he touched his mouth to hers.
She leaned into the kiss. He drew her bottom lip between his teeth and tugged on it. Her breath caught in her throat and he became totally lost in her. Both his and her injury forgotten, he slid his hands around her waist. He felt the hot damp skin of her back where her top and shorts didn’t quite meet.
“Lexi.” He broke away just long enough to say her name before he was kissing her again, forcing them both down onto the carpet. She felt so right beneath him, even if they were on the floor wedged between the wall and the bed.
With every passing moment, things got more heated. Why hadn’t he kissed her long ago? All the reasons he’d come up with—his past hurt from his relationship with Linda, his wanting to stay professional during the time leading up to the fundraiser, his fear that maybe she liked him just a friend—all seemed ridiculous now.
And then she did it. What he’d been afraid of in the first place. She drew back and held him off with one hand.
He stifled a groan and pulled away. He pushed up from the floor, kneeled over her, and waited for the inevitable blow off.
“Scott, I can’t do this like this.”
Resolved, he closed his eyes and nodded. “I understand.”
“It’s too damn hot for all these clothes. I want you naked.”
His eyes flew open. “You do?”
Lexi grinned and ran one fingernail down the damp T-shirt covering his chest. “Mmm, hmm. I’ve been enjoying my calendar, but there’s no substitute for the real thing.”
The real thing
. With her beneath him, he understood what she meant better than she knew. His groin ached with wanting her in spite of having jerked off not an hour ago. “Oh, you got that right.”
He pulled off his shirt, flung it somewhere behind him and leaned low. He pushed his tongue between her lips. She raised her hips to press against him. His touch roamed her body. Groaning, he pushed the hem of her shirt higher.
“I want you naked too.” He spoke close, his lips hovering just above her mouth.
“I want you in that bed.”
He couldn’t complain about that request. “How about we both get naked and I’ll meet you there?”
Lexi smiled. “You got it.”
There was a brief whirlwind of flying clothing as they raced to get to the bed. Lexi, who hadn’t had to deal with shoelaces the way Scott did, got there first.
He took a step toward her and stumbled. “Ow. Shit.”
Why was there always some kind of painful obstacle standing between him and this beautiful, willing, and now nude woman?
“What did you do to yourself now?” She giggled.
Bending down, he grabbed the offending object and held it in the air for her to see. “I stepped on the screwdriver.”
She laughed. “Put it away in the drawer before you hurt yourself more and can’t perform.”
“Oh, I’ll be able to perform, don’t you worry about that.” He took one painful step to the nightstand, pulled open the drawer and stopped, staring and speechless.
“What’s wrong? Oh. Oh my God.” Red faced, Lexi dove across the mattress and tried to shove the drawer shut, but Scott was far more motivated to keep it open.
“Oh no, no, no.” He held the drawer open with one hand while he pulled out a large pink penis-shaped dildo, complete with battery pack. As he grabbed it, his hand must have brushed the on switch because the thing started to gyrate and quiver all on its own. He smiled down at her on the bed. “What do we have here?”
“I can’t believe you found that.” Lexi flung herself onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow.
“That’s not all I found.” He reached into the drawer again and pulled out the fireman calendar…opened to July.
She raised her head off the mattress just enough to see what he was talking about and then buried it again. “I’m so totally humiliated.”
Lexi was naked and face down on the bed. There were far better things he should be doing than talking, but Scott couldn’t help himself, he had to ask. “Lexi. Do you actually…you know… masturbate to my picture?”
“I’m not going to answer that.” The pillow still muffled Lexi’s voice, but he heard her just fine and knew that a
no comment
was as good as a yes.
This revelation was more than interesting. Scott had a bedside drawer with a skin magazine in it, one he hadn’t needed since meeting Lexi and having her image in his head, but he had no idea that women did the same thing.
Still in shock at the discovery that women did the same thing men did, but with toys, he managed to turn off the pink thing and put it back in the drawer without sending it into spasms again.
Smiling with satisfaction, Scott crawled onto the bed and laid the length of his body against Lexi’s back, nestling his erection snugly between her legs.
Nuzzling the back of her neck, he whispered, “At least you have a picture of me. When I do
that
thinking about you, I have to use my imagination.”