She stayed glued in place, determined not to be ordered around by the man who had made her heart ache for weeks now.
He grasped her wrist and pulled her forward. “Let’s dance.”
Her boot toe caught on the edge of the lunch counter and she fell forward. He caught her with one strong arm and pressed her body against his. He grinned again and closed her right hand into his left. Heat. The desert temperature was hot enough. She didn’t need additional heat. She pushed against him a little. “I don’t want to dance.”
He resisted her push and turned her in a circle. “I think we’ve done this before. You must be having man trouble again. So tell me what it’s all about this time. Lanny’s family?”
What right did he have to pry? “No,” she said sharply as the room tipped to the left.
“Ben told me what happened.”
“You know, he really should mind his own damn business. He’s worse than any old maid I ever saw.”
“Shh-shh. It wouldn’t work, Marisa.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Because I know you. You’re one of those honest women.”
“Well, so what? You say that like it’s a bad thing....And you don’t know me.”
“I know you better than you think. Reading people’s part of my trade. Honesty’s the thing I admire most about you.” She looked up, into his face, and he smiled. “That is, besides you being so pretty and having a great body.”
She smiled, too. A girl couldn’t afford to turn down a compliment. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. You feel good, too.” He kept looking at her intently as they moved around the tile floor, as if he were seeing inside her and she kept looking back, glad he was holding on to her. She felt vulnerable and naked and didn’t even care. Finally she ducked his gaze and placed her cheek against his neck, felt a quick intake of his breath.
As if the scent of warm man and Safari were Gilead’s balm, the knot inside her seemed to untie and the tension of the past weeks and her many dark thoughts drifted away. She turned to butter in his arms.
The next thing she knew, Patsy Cline was singing “So Wrong,” Terry Ledger’s left hand was cupping her jaw and they were kissing and it was slow and sweet in all the ways she liked and as familiar as if they had done it a thousand times. Not one thing about it felt “so wrong.” Yet it was different from the first time, perhaps because, being slightly drunk, she was less inhibited.
He lifted his mouth from hers and their gazes locked. They kissed again, deeply, with hands everywhere and panting breath. Beyond the lust on his lips she tasted something she hadn’t expected--loneliness. A yearning for home. Until now, he hadn’t quite captured her heart. There had always been an open door for her to escape, for until this moment he hadn’t convinced her he was real.
When their lips parted again, she was defenseless. She was his.
She slid her hands up his arms and around his shoulders. His head lowered and his open mouth pressed soft and warm on the curve where her neck met her shoulder as he moved her to the music. She thought of the apartment behind the café and the bed she had shared with Woody many times, the one with the mattress now bare of sheets. After Woody’s confession, in a fit, she had ripped off the old sheets, stuffed them in the burn barrel and never re-made the bed. Now, desire heightened by Budweiser, she hooked the fingers of one hand behind his belt buckle and gave a little tug.
He caught her hand and moved it, but didn’t stop teasing her neck with his lips. “Don’t you need to go home and check on your mom?”
“Hmm,” she murmured and tilted her head for more of his mouth.He complied, his lips traveling over her shoulders, the slope of her breasts, his breath hot. His tongue touched sensitive places and sent shivers from her nose to her toes.
As if they had minds of their own, her fingers went back to his belt and tugged the end from its loop. A deep hum came from his throat and he gripped her hand again. “Unh-unh. You’re playing with fire.”
“I hope so,” she said softly. She wrapped her arms around his waist, hooked her hands on his shoulders and pressed herself against his fly. His erection felt like an iron rod pushing against her belly. She reached down and undid the top button of his jeans, found his zipper.
He stopped abruptly and set her away. “Not while you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Let’s cool it. I’ll help you close this place up. Then I’ll take you home.”
****
The first thing that struck Marisa when she reached the café the next morning was how wide open Pecos Belle’s was, how huge the display windows were. Huge enough for anyone passing by to get an eyeful of her dancing and making out with Terry. She walked to the front door and gazed back across the flea market to the café, trying to determine if anyone who might have seen them could tell where he had his hands. Unable to decide, she dragged back to the kitchen, ate a slice of bread and swallowed two aspirins.
She got through lunch without a “special” and no one seemed to notice or mind. By late afternoon, the physical agony of a beer hangover had diminished and she felt better. Now, total mortification sneaked in. What had she been thinking, getting drunk in the kitchen, then behaving like a sex-starved twit with Terry? Lord, she had even tried to unzip his pants.
And what would he be thinking today? She had a nagging suspicion she knew and if she knew men, he would show up before the day ended. She had given him a green light. No stud worth his manhood would let that go un-pursued. Then again, he might be so embarrassed by her being drunk and forward he would never want to see her again.
With those upsetting thoughts in mind, she returned to the singlewide to check on things there. Mama was asleep in her recliner. Marisa went back to Pecos Belle’s and busied herself preparing for the evening’s diners, all the while telling herself she wasn’t waiting for Terry. But as every hour passed and he didn’t put in an appearance, her mood darkened.
She had already wiped down the tables and chairs and was working on the lunch counter when he came through the front door. She stopped her task and looked at him. He hesitated just inside the doorway. Even from across the room, she saw the look in his eyes, that predatory hunger. So he was as transparent as most of the other men she had known. Instead of being put off by that discovery, she had an odd feeling of relief and self-satisfaction. He did want sex with her as much as she wanted sex with him.
He twisted the deadbolt with a heavy metallic
snick
and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. The sane, sensible part of her, the part that stood watch over her virtue, told her to protest, to proclaim that she hadn’t yet decided to close the cafe, but sane, sensible and virtuous were weak defenses against the iniquitous woman inside her who had spent the day anticipating fantastic sex with a hunky guy.
Fearing he could read her mind, she returned to wiping down the lunch counter, though as he ambled through the flea market, she sneaked peeks from the corner of her eye. In tight Levi’s and a bright blue T-shirt, he looked more delicious than her best cream pie. And just as edible.
Then, in what seemed like seconds, he was standing at the end of the lunch counter. That aura of S-E-X was glowing around him like neon and her heart was trying to leap out of her chest.
“Hey,” he said softly, then came to her side and placed a possessive hand on her back, his palm hot against her thin tank top. Enveloped by the smell of him, the feel of him so close, the very idea of him, she didn’t know what to say. “I’m still open,” she managed.
“No, you’re not. I just locked the door. I’ll get the lights if you tell me how.” He turned her to face him, cupped her jaw with a large hand and kissed her, long and slow, with a tantalizing hint of tongue. Godhelpher, she kissed him back, like for like.
In time, their mouths parted, but his eyes held hers. “I thought about you all night,” he said huskily. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”
She placed her forearms between them. “I was drunk last night.”
“But you’re not tonight.” His eyes still locked on hers, he grasped her dishtowel, pulled it from her hand and dropped it on the counter. He bent to kiss her again, but she turned her head to the side.
His hot mouth found her neck instead of her lips. “And after you spent the night inside my head, I woke up this morning with a blue-steel hard-on. All I could think about all day was kissing you all over, teasing that navel ring with my tongue.”
Eek!
A shiver raced down her spine. “Terry, please. Someone could see us.”
She freed herself from his arms and as if by rote, picked up the dishtowel and sashayed to the kitchen. Big mistake, because he followed to where her only escape was through the kitchen’s back door, into the apartment. Her heart pounded harder. She turned on the water in the sink. A cloud of steam rose in the tight space and dampened her face as she thrust the towel under the stream of hot water. “Honestly, Terry, this is such a mistake.” She twisted the towel, wrung out water. “And I’ve got to finish cleaning.”
“I’ll help you later,” he said, standing behind her, running his fingers along her upper arm. Heat from his body against her back, combined with steam from the water, made the room feel like a humid cocoon.
Preparing to close the café, she had turned off the overhead kitchen light before he came in. Now in the subdued light from the under-cabinet fixture, his arms came around her waist. His hand slipped under her tank top bra. He deftly undid her bra and she went soft all over at the release of her breasts into his hands. The room began to spin, her eyelids fluttered closed.
His open mouth landed on her shoulder. His hands caressed, his fingers teased and plucked at her nipples until they became hard and eager and her deepest vaginal muscles began to flex. His mouth moved up to her ear. “You feel it inside you when I do that, don’t you?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she answered in a tiny voice.
What she also felt was chaos. Her nerves seemed to be strung along the very surface of her skin and the words whispered in his deep voice played them like guitar strings.
Godohgod
.
“Will it make you come?” he asked softly, while he gently pulled at her nipples.
“I don’t know,” she breathed.
“But it makes you want to, doesn’t it?”
He knows too much about women. And about sex, the protector of her virtue warned her. “You know it does,” she whimipered. ”
A hum came from his throat as his tongue flicked against her neck, and all she could think of was those shameless flicks in other places. She gave up, dropped the towel into the sink and leaned back against him. She could be a good girl tomorrow.
He got the message. In one quick move, he reached around her with his left hand and turned off the water. At the same time his right hand slid inside her elastic waistband and down and into her bikini panties. Without a second thought she spread her legs. His fingers combed into her pubic hair and began to stroke where she felt swollen and hot.
“You’re wet,” he said against her neck.
After her imagination had worked overtime all day, of course she was. Oh. God. She hated having him know. “Terry—”
“Shhh.. Just let me in,” he murmured, his fingers parting her and probing.
On a soft moan, she gripped the edge of the sink, bent her knees and felt herself open. His fingers easily slid into her and she felt herself flex around them.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “Just pretend this is my eight inches going all the way to your heart.”
Tthe visual all too vivid as his fingers worked and teased, she squeezed her eyes shut. Her breathing grew shallow. Every rational thought left her mind, replaced by the utter bliss of being tormented in all the right places by a man who knew where they were. He played at will until she was almost crazy with desire and frustration. She had never been so ready.
When she thought she couldn’t wait another minute, his fingers moved to the throbbing heart of the issue. The instant he touched her clitoris her brain turned to red mush and she began to spasm hard. She gripped the sink’s edge even harder and bit down on her lower lip, stifling the outcry that rushed to her throat. But she was helpless to stop the little animal grunts that escaped instead.
When she finished, her dignity as well as her strength decimated, his hand cupped her between her legs and he pulled her back against him. “Hmm,” he murmured. With the other hand, he brought her face around to his and kissed her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth and stroking with an erotic rhythm. When they broke to breathe, he whispered against her lips, “I knew you’d be easy. I just knew it.”
“I’m not easy,” she said weakly, struggling for the strength to stand straight.
“Trust me. It’s a good thing.”
He was the devil in person. “Let me go,” she said, doing her best to be insulted, and giving him an elbow in the midriff.
He moved his hand from between her legs, allowing the scent of her moisture to escape in the tight, steamy room. But he left his hand splayed across her bare stomach, continuing to hold her against him and fitting an erection that felt like steel against the cleft of her backside. “What are we gonna do about this?” he said against her ear. “Turnabout’s fair play.”
Embarrassed now at being
easy
, she couldn’t look him in the face, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want that eight inches right where he had promised it. Her knees still felt like jelly and she drew a shuddery breath. “I have to make Mama’s supper and put her to bed. If you want to stay in the apartment and wait for me, I can come back afterward....There’s, uh...a, uh, bedroom—”