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KAY FREEMONT CASUALLY TOOK a compact from her purse.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t so casually. Maybe she wanted another peek at Paul Bunyon back there without turning around and giving him the satisfaction of knowing she was interested.
Not interested in a serious way, of course. She was trying to untangle herself from an unsatisfactory relationship, not get into a new one. She merely wanted to confirm that the broad-shouldered man clad in flannel and denim was indeed as ruggedly cute as she thought.
Kay might have worried her bottom lip with her teeth, so curious was she about this man, but many years of her mother’s nagging stopped her. Mustn’t smear one’s lipstick. Freemonts had a certain image to maintain.
She feigned using the compact mirror to pat her unmussed hair into place, but she angled it so she could see him. Secretly she’d always been sexually attracted to burly, outdoorsy men. Strong, physical men who played contact sports and repaired their own cars. Men who chopped wood and roasted raw meat over fire pits. Men who’d fight to the death to protect their women.
The fact that her boyfriend Lloyd was a slender, brainy, pacifistic vegetarian who didn’t even own a car, much less know how to work on one, did not escape her. But just because she daydreamed about extremely manly men didn’t mean she coveted a relationship with one. It was simply a sexual fantasy.
Besides some things were more important than sex. Companionship, for instance.
And Lloyd is such a great companion? He works eighty-hour weeks. And when was the last time he made love to you? Seven, eight weeks ago?
That wasn’t fair. She couldn’t lay blame solely at his feet. She was as busy as Lloyd.
And is it your fault that Lloyd has never satisfied you in bed?
Maybe it was her fault. Even though she spent a lot of time researching and writing how-to-improve-your-sex-life articles like “How to Achieve Multiple Orgasms” and “Tantric Sex, The New Revolution in Intimacy,” for the hottest women’s magazine in the country, Kay had yet to experience such lofty sensations herself.
Yes, she read and she read and she read. From classics like The Hite Report and The Story of O to the most up-to-date literature on the subject, she knew them all by heart. Kay understood the mechanics of sex, and she kept thinking that if she just gathered enough knowledge on the subject, one day she’d be able to scale her way to the stars.
Maybe she should see a counselor, instead.
Or maybe you should just have a wild, uninhibited fling. I bet Paul Bunyon’s got what it takes to please a woman. Did you get a load of those hands? If it’s true what they say about the size of a man’s hands and the size of his...
Kay tilted the mirror to the right to get a better look.
Paul Bunyon’s upper arms were as big as her thighs. For some illogical reason, this thought made her shiver. He was so very large and seemed to be constructed of pure steel. He was tall and muscular and solid. She imagined he could toss her over his shoulder more easily than she could pick up a tea bag. He possessed hair the color of aged whiskey and sultry gray eyes that snapped with surprising intelligence.
His shirt was a comforting shade of blue, and he had the sleeves rolled up a quarter turn, giving her a peek of sexy forearms offset by a thick, leather-banded watch. Nice. Very nice. Just the right amount of hair. Kay had a weakness for sexy forearms.
She licked her lips, forgetting all about smearing her lipstick. A weighted feeling settled over her and made her blood flow hot and sluggish as the erotic sensation drifted down to wedge heavily between her legs. She wondered what would happen if she stood up and walked toward him. What would he do if she bent down to his ear and with a seductive whisper invited him to become a member of the mile-high club with her? Tingles dove down her spine.
If she pivoted on her heel and sashayed to the lavatory, would he follow?
She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. What a tight fit! The two of them crammed into an airplane lavatory. It would require some maneuvering. Kay stared so hard into the mirror of her compact that her vision blurred and she was transported.
He lifts her up on the counter; his eyes fill with heated desire. He takes one of those big hands and, starting at her right ankle, he oh-so-slowly moves it up her leg, past the curve of her calf, to the bend of her knee. She gasps at his touch. His callused fingertips snag her stockings, tearing them until she resembles a lady of the evening after a long night of selling pleasure.
Then his other hand starts its journey up her left leg. He moves closer, and she wraps her legs around his waist. The top of her head is resting against the rest-room mirror, and her back is arched. He stares into her eyes, captivated. Clearly he thinks she is the most exquisite creature on the face of the earth.
His right hand goes farther. Moving up her knee inch by inch. Her skirt hikes high. The sensations are incredible. His rough fingers sliding over her bare skin, the cold sink beneath her bottom, the feel of his hard waist against the inside of her legs. She feels a million things at once, and they are all good.
He’s still looking at her, but not saying a single word. He smells delicious, like Christmas trees and woodsmoke and leather. She feels herself moisten with desire. She wants him like a lion wants a lamb.
“Kiss me,” she commands him in a bossy voice.
He dips his head. His hands are on her thighs, palms splayed. He’s so close, but he doesn’t lower his lips to hers. He’s teasing. There’s a naughty gleam in his eye.
“What will you give me for a kiss?” he asks.
His voice is heart-stoppingly sexy. A resonant sound that fills her ears like the loveliest bass instrument. Her pulse throbs at her throat. She’s hot all over. Hot and wet and desperate.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” she whimpers.
“I want you to touch me,” he says. “Here.”
And then he takes her hand and guides it to the bulge straining against the zipper of his blue jeans. She eases down the zipper, slips her hand inside. He’s going commando, no underwear. She touches him.
It’s so big. So hard. So hot. Scalding. He smells of musky male, and her excitement escalates. He groans and closes his eyes.
At the same time as she’s touching him, his hand is busy snaking up her thigh to hook a finger around the waistband of her panties.
She moans. He crushes his mouth to hers.
He tastes too good to be true. Not the finest caviar in her mother’s pantry, not even the most expensive bottle of French champagne in her father’s cellar can compete with his flavor.
Her palm is pressed hard against his erection, which seems to keep growing and growing and growing. His tongue is a menace, dazzling her with moves she never thought possible.
“I want you inside me.”
“No. Not yet. First, I’m going to make you beg.”
She whimpers again.
“That’s right.” He nods. “This has been a long time coming.”
Her nipples tighten. She wriggles her hips. Her panties are whisked off.
“What are you doing?”
“Hush, woman,” he growls. “Hush and enjoy. You deserve everything I’m going to give you and so much more. You drive me wild.”
She glows at his words. Men have told her she’s beautiful before, but no one has ever told her she drives him wild. He’s telling her exactly what she needs to hear, and she loves him for it. She feels incredibly powerful that she’s controlling such a big man with her sexuality.
Then he goes to work with his fingers.
He’s stroking her inner thigh, and then he trails his fingertips inward. He’s doing something that makes her eyes roll back in her head with sheer ecstasy.
Oh, gawd, what that intoxicating hand is doing at the apex of her womanhood!
She writhes against him, clutches his shoulders with both hands, digs her fingers into his flesh through the soft flannel of his shirt.
His movements are gentle but firm. The pressure builds. No man has ever caressed her in quite this way. It’s as if he knows exactly how to make her cry out for more. She’s never been this excited, this desperate, this famished for a man’s body.
“Don’t stop,” she pleads.
He grins. For a moment she fears he’ll stop simply to taunt her. But to her relief he keeps going. And going. And going.
She feels as if she’s riding a roller coaster. Chugging up, up, up. Breath held in anticipation of the rapturous plunge.
She’s close. So very close. Teetering on the verge. One more second. Oh, yes. Yes. She’s just about to—
“Miss?” The flight attendant’s voice slammed her rudely back to earth.
“Yes,” Kay gasped, feeling breathless, edgy and achy.
“Would you care for another beverage?”
She shook her head. The flight attendant moved on down the aisle. Then Kay realized she was still holding the compact. She glanced into the mirror one last time and was horrified to see Paul Bunyon staring right at her.
Their eyes met in the mirror’s reflection. Her heart raced. Her mouth went dry. He gave her a cocksure smile as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.
Flushed and flustered, Kay snapped the compact closed and dropped it into her purse. She burned weak, shaky, her entire body swamped in heat. This wouldn’t do. She had to compose herself. Immediately, if not sooner.
Unbuckling her seat belt, she got up, slipped into the lavatory and locked the door. Bad idea. This was the scene of the fictitious crime, and she couldn’t escape her own mind.
She wet a paper towel, pressed it first to the back of her neck, then to the hollow of her throat and took several long, slow, deep breaths. For the past few months she’d been plagued by uncontrollable sexual fantasies. It was quite embarrassing, really. As if she was some kind of X-rated, female Walter Mitty.
Perhaps a fling was in order. Find someone to pop her cork, as it were. Perhaps that would put an end to these persistent flights of sexual fancy.
Kay pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off more blushing. This was simply ridiculous. She had to stop entertaining such unsuitable thoughts about total strangers. She took several more deep breaths, tossed the damp towel into the trash, then ran her fingers through her hair. There. She looked fine. Perfectly normal. Perfectly in control. No one would suspect anything to the contrary.
The plane lurched, jostling her as she unlocked the accordion-style door and tried to shove it open, but the silly thing stuck.
The plane pitched again, throwing Kay forward. She put a hand on the door hinges to brace herself, and the door folded open. She raised her head in alarm.
And found herself tumbling headlong into Paul Bunyon’s arms, as if he’d been waiting outside the door just to catch her when she fell.
Chapter Two (#ulink_ec6daec9-43e3-59ec-a5ce-ebabf7baf182)
“WHY, HELLO.” Quinn smiled down into the face of a goddess.
What compelled him to trail her to the lavatory, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was that sassy, controlled walk of hers that hypnotized him. Maybe it was her contradictory aura, pushing and pulling him in two different directions. Or maybe it was plain old horniness on his part.
But now he sure was glad he’d followed her. If he hadn’t been there to catch her, she would have pitched head first into the bulkhead opposite the lavatory and bruised her pretty face, and that would have been a crying shame.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” she whispered.
Her voice surprised him. One more irreconcilable fact that added to her allure. He’d expected her tone would be more cultured, aloof, cool and reserved. Instead, the sexy sound of her had him remembering all those nights during high school and college that he’d spun records of throaty-voiced female blues singers at his family’s tiny radio station in Bear Creek.
Unblinking, the goddess met his gaze and held it. The impact slugged him. Her sultry eyes, dark as coffee and surrounded by lashes as impossibly thick as paintbrushes, snagged something deep inside him and refused to let go.
In the brief, endless moment he held her in his arms, he noticed everything about her.
The tiny mole at the left corner of her mouth. The smooth, expertly penciled arch of her brow. The erratic throbbing of her pulse in the hollow of her neck. The slim curve of her waist. Her rich, fresh scent that made him ache to bury his nose in her hair and breathe deeply.
And the unnerving realization that beneath her ultrasoft silk blouse and bra, her nipples were puckered.
It wasn’t cold in the plane’s cramped confines. In fact, it was very, very hot.
Had her breasts hardened in response to him? Quinn almost groaned aloud at the thought.
Was he reading too much into this casual encounter? Was his desire for one last fiery sexual adventure before he found a wife and settled down for good feeding into his imagination and causing him to misread her reaction?
Her lips parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue pressing against her top teeth. She looked as if she might say something to him, but she didn’t.
Oh, Lord, he could feel her stockings rub against the leg of his jeans as she shifted in his arms.
So many thoughts raced through his brain it seemed as if eons had passed. But it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds since she’d toppled into his embrace.
She raised a hand to her cheek to brush away a strand of golden hair. He tracked her movement, peered into those compelling brown eyes once more.
And stumbled. Literally lost his balance as the plane hit another pocket of turbulence. He tipped backward, taking Charlize with him.
They ended up in the middle of the aisle, a jumble of arms and legs. The fall hadn’t knocked the air from his lungs, but nonetheless, he found it hard to breathe with her lying on his chest.
“Are you okay?” There was that breathy whisper again, uncertain, a bit nervous. And unless he missed his guess, tinged with an acute awareness of him as a man.
“Okay,” he replied, hating for this moment to end.
“Please take your seats,” a flight attendant said sharply as she rushed over. “And buckle yourselves in.”
“Let me help you up,” Charlize offered, rising to her feet with amazing agility and grace for a woman wearing three-inch heels and a mean pair of stockings.
He almost laughed at the notion of a slender branch like her helping a tree trunk like himself to his feet. But he liked the idea of touching her again, so he put out his hand, which dwarfed hers, and allowed her to tug him.
Quinn pushed against the floor of the plane, and his own momentum brought him to a standing position. The top of her sleek head only came to his armpit. Her hip was level with his upper thigh. She seemed as perfect and delicate as the first butterfly of spring.
Without a doubt she was the most exquisite woman he’d ever met. Her straight blond hair was cut in a polished style and appeared as finely spun as silk. Her complexion was flawless, except for a small scar below her right earlobe. He had an almost overpowering urge to explore that scar with the tip of his tongue.
How he wanted to say something more to her, to do something more with her, but the frowning flight attendant was clucking her tongue and waving at them to take their seats. Charlize scooted past him, her breasts lightly brushing his upper arm, causing a brushfire to leap up his nerve endings, and made her way to her seat.
Kay was practically panting as she clicked the seat belt in place around her waist. Her heart pounded, blood suffused her skin. She couldn’t believe what had just happened and her body’s heated response to a stranger. Touching him had been far more electric, far more satisfying than her wildest imaginings.
She didn’t look up, because she knew he was still standing there staring at her as if he’d been struck with a bolt from the blue. What was the matter with him? Didn’t they have women wherever it was he was from?
“You sure you’re all right?” He squatted in the aisle beside Kay, defying the angry flight attendant, who looked as if she wanted to tie him into his seat but was too quelled by his size to approach.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Please, for your own safety, sit down.”
“If you need me, I’m right behind you.” He touched her wrist with his massive paw, and her blood slipped through her veins like quicksilver. Intense. So intense. If she closed her eyes, she could see the two of them in a forest. Walking. Alone. On a bed of soft, mossy ground. The sunlight flitting through the trees.
