An Accidental Gentleman (5 page)

“Dead. Yeah. They come in broken and they go out whole.” Except Grandpa Jake. His worktable on the far side of the room waited like he’d left it, a mess of miniature cars and trains, engines that wouldn’t race again.

“So you’re a surgeon.” Brilliant Brian, half whited out by the work light, half sunk in deep shadow, rubbed the mixer’s slender neck. “This your patient?”

A soft touch, and slow. He didn’t go digging his fingers in every open bin or shift work aside. Didn’t presume to take her seat and adjust the height to his liking. He treated her space with respect. He’d tracked her down at the shop, sure, normally a presumption she’d hate in a fuckee—but she hadn’t fucked him yet, and she damn well wanted to.

“On the operating table. This piece here?” She sidled up easy, crowding him without touching for nothing but the charge. “It sacrificed itself to save the motor. Quick replacement and she’ll be good to go again.”

Nodding, he traced the decorative grooves around the head. He’d had the power last week to jack up the truck and help her seat the spare, but tonight he exposed his nice-guy gentleness. Definite love-whisperer caresses. Not a first-move maker.

He dragged a slow circle. “You cut away the wounded bit and restore the beating heart.”

“The core’s strong. It just needs help finding the right speed.” She finger-walked over a flathead, rocking the hexagonal handle. An illicit shimmy traveled down her spine. Never at the shop, not once, and playing the bad girl to his nice guy heightened the thrill. Risky, with the shop still open, and less than smart, and yet—as her desire spun out of control, no little pieces piped up to sacrifice themselves on the altar of sanity. The screwdriver tumbled from her grip. “What about you, Brian? Are you stuck in low gear?”

“Maybe we’re both stuck—me in slow, you in fast.” The tool’s thumpy roll ended in his steady grip. He stroked the translucent yellow-orange handle. “We could meet in the middle over dinner.”

“I told you, I don’t go out with nice guys. I fuck bad boys.” The more she said the words, the more defiant they rang.
You chase, I choose.
“They are what they say on the label. One night, a good time, no pretending they’re going to hang around.” She shoved down Erin’s too-familiar speeches, the years of finishing her schoolwork at the kitchen table while her sister swore off men and crossed the spectrum from ranting to sobbing the deeper she got in her beer after putting the girls to bed. “I don’t need a man in my life. I just like an orgasm now and again.”

The longer she talked, the lower his brows and his frown dipped. “I’m not pre—”

Grabbing his crisp shirtfront, she drove him two steps back, to the sliver of bare wall between the corkboard and the workbench, and slammed their lips together.

Hands flying, he gripped her waist. Now that was more like it. Stronger than he looked.

He opened his mouth—surprise, maybe, or to argue more—but she stroked his tongue and tasted breath mints. Nice-guy flavor. Thinking he needed to work out all the data and crunch his numbers or whatever he did before he allowed the down-and-dirty bits to get going. Sometimes you had to make the connections, turn the damn thing on, and see how she ran. Deepening the kiss, she slid a hand across his belt.

He arched his hips from the wall. Poor man had nowhere to go in his dress pants, his cock hot, hard, and grinding on her thigh. He teased in return, curling his fingers beneath the hem of her shirt. Jesus, he spread fucking flutter-strokes at the top of her ass like he meant to drop his hands inside her jeans, cup her cheeks, and haul her to him.

Better idea. She clamped his wrist and tugged. Right hand, yeah, he seemed to be a righty, and if not he’d have to make do. Dragging her mouth free, she slapped his hand between her legs. Fuck, yes, straight on the seam. The pressure overheated her in the best way.

Rubbing her with the heel of his hand, he groaned. “Christ, Katherine.”

“Unh-uh.” Cheek to cheek, she jostled him in her denial.

Fresh and stormy, he smelled upper-class and dangerous—a man with lily-white fingernails who never showered at day’s end to scrub away his labor. A man who needed despoiling. She took him in, settled his clean scent in her lungs. The metallic tang and sweet-sour oil fragrance from the workbench would dirty him up.

“My name is Kit.” She rocked into his hand. Now or never. “And I dare you to make me come.”

* * * *

Christ, she pushed his buttons with her bold challenges.

Dick surging, he cupped denim-covered, squirmy woman in his palm and squeezed. “When I’m making you come, you’re Katherine.”

She shuddered from the feathered auburn tips of her hair to her rising-on-tippy-toes feet. Given her moan vibrating against his neck, she seemed inclined to agree.

One treacherous current navigated on impulse. Millions more, relentless and unseen, pounded their safe harbor. Turn this woman down, and he wouldn’t be granted another chance. Satisfy her demand, and he still might not, not if she relegated him to just-another-fuck status.

As he went in for a kiss, she angled her chin away. “Five minutes, bad boy.” Lips twitching, she teased the touch she wouldn’t permit him. “Get me off if you can.” She swept him with her gaze, imperious and searching. “Fingers only, and my clothes stay on.”

A contest of wills. If he wanted her, he’d have to conquer her, and she wouldn’t go easy on him. Fine, then. He preferred stealth mode anyway. Let her brace for a full-on war while he crept behind her lines and showed her they’d been on the same side all along. She wanted fast to deny him a connection. When he won—no, when they both won—her one-and-done rule would become a daily-with-him rule. But first he had five minutes to stop jumping the flames in her fiery eyes and feel her orgasm under his fingers.

She raised an eyebrow in cocky challenge. “Giving up so soon, Prince Charming?”

Using the wall for leverage, he locked his hands around her waist and launched forward in a two-step pivot. Her gasp brought music to their swing. She fit against him face-to-face, the perfect height for wall-fucking. The day she donned a dress, he’d hitch her leg up and over his hip, shove her panties aside and bury himself.

Positions reversed, breathing hard, she glowed with beauty fit to light the darkness. “Better.”

Oh, he’d show her better. In the next four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. With a push at her shoulders and a pull at her belt loop, he spun her to face the wall and pinned her beneath his weight. They shared height, but in his wider frame he topped her by twenty pounds. Rubbing his nose at the back of her neck, he inhaled pineapple and salt. “Best.”

Shivering, she pitched a shaky laugh.

“Hands only,” he whispered. “I know.” God forbid she worry and reach for the nearest weapon instead of enjoying their five minutes. If he meant to be long-term material, he’d seal away end-of-the-night bar thinking. Prove his trustworthiness, prove his bad-boy streak, keep her safe but let her feel endangered. Christ Jesus, give him the strength to find the perfect line to ride this wave. Impossible if she got her hands on him. “But you keep yours up where I can see ’em.”

As he took hold of her wrists, she nodded. She let him guide her up, palms flat, and stop with her gorgeous muscled arms in a wide diamond framing her half-hidden face.

“Right there.” In replacement for the kiss she’d refused him, he stole one from the pulse pounding in her neck. “Don’t you move now, Katherine.”

Fuck, her mouth dropped open and she breathed deep. Succumbed when he met her demands with demands of his own. The tiny gaps between them filled out with hot, needy woman.

Impatient and greedy for the interior tour, his dick banged at the gate. Grinding against her firm, rounded ass cushioned the ache. Her unexpected obedience left him free to roam. As righty went to work on her belt and jeans, he slipped his left hand under her shirt and cupped the warm, gentle swell of her belly. With a thumb sweep, he grazed the band of her bra.

She rocked light as the lake on a calm July afternoon, her waves peaceful, steady, and nudging the prow of his boat with relentless persistence. He mapped the curving arch of her ribs and the shallow divot of her navel. As he dragged her zipper south, her jeans fell in a gaping vee granting him access to the shadowed cotton triangle beneath.

Eyes falling closed, she ducked her chin and swallowed. “Might’ve worn fancy underwear if I’d known you were stopping by today.”

The hitch in her chuckle found a match in his chest, a desperate urge to kiss away any embarrassment he’d caused. He nuzzled as far as her ring-neck tee allowed, nipping at the collar.

He’d cared about getting women off before, because sex was a game, a time for laughter and fun, and because he liked to win, but he’d never cared so damn much. Nothing in his life, not mastering his service skills exams, not standing by Rob on his wedding day—nothing mattered more than showing Katherine he could be a nice guy and still get her off, still satisfy her needs and be worth coming back to. He bypassed the barrier, diving through grasping curls with his whole hand. “I’m not here for the panties. I’m here for the woman in them.”

Greeting him with eager wetness, she wiggled into a wider stance. Silent and breathless, she tugged her lip between her teeth.

Further still he slid, spreading his hand over the sexiest fucking curve in existence, the front swell of a woman, made to fit a man’s hold. Lips silk-soft, she parted for him. Leisurely exploration would wait for another night. His woman had requested immediate satisfaction, and she’d have the best of his ability. Bad-boy talk would keep her content, turn a date into an exciting and dangerous desire. Enough to intrigue her the way she’d leashed his heart. Testing, he sank his middle finger to full depth in her slick heat.

She put the squeeze on, a jerking clench so tight he couldn’t drag his way out. Positive feedback. Now to send her into a looping growth cycle, until the waves crested her jetties and carried her out to sea. He’d shown her all of slow she’d allow. Time to bring the storm.

* * * *

Sweet Jesus, she’d underestimated the charming prince. From so simple a dare, he transformed into a man bold and demanding. He cast his breath, heavy and heated, across her neck. He pressed her to the wall, here, not two feet from the place she sat daily and made broken things whole, and rubbed his cock against her as he fucked her with one finger. No—he ventured inside her with one finger. He fucked her with every circuit and synapse firing in him, from his fingernail-short blond hair to his fancy leather shoes.

“What makes you think a date with me won’t be like this, Katherine?” Keeping up his steady thrusts, he stole under her shirt with his other hand. Though hooked, her bra no longer served a purpose as he peeled the cups aside and freed her. “A naughty surprise.”

“You think this is naughty?” She aimed for coy, but her body gave her away with every gasp and tremble. If she had any sense, she’d tell him to stop saying her name in that damn tender-teasing tone. What right did he have for—for suggesting so much intimacy?

“I think you like thinking it is.” Neither soft nor rough, he fondled her with a firm hand. Pinching her nipples, sending sparks sweeping downward, he worked her absent an instruction manual. “What if I took you to dinner?”

Dating. The first time she’d had a boy between her legs, she’d been seventeen. Too young and naïve to advocate for herself, to demand equal satisfaction. In the cramped backseat of her date’s car after the homecoming game senior year, she’d put footprints on the fogged-up windows trying to work some leverage, anything to get the action near as good as touching herself.

But he’d been fumbling and sweaty, with breath stinking of the nachos and hot dog he’d scarfed in the stands, and her lost virginity had been all about his dick. As he jammed himself in, his hand might’ve grazed her thigh. Maybe. The flaw replicated in the guys she fucked these days, stamped in on God’s male assembly line. They needed forceful, direct reminders to keep their damn attention on more than their cocks. Brian hadn’t even reached to adjust his.

“And what would we”—fuck, her arching back took her breath and trapped his hands with her against the wall—“would we do at dinner? Talk?”

“We’re talking now.” He liberated them both and restarted his rhythm. Holding her secure as a chain hoist cradling an engine block, he delivered powerful strokes. Not a boy or a guy. A man. “You’re worth the multitasking effort.”

In prove-his-manhood mode, Brian remained a giver, not a taker. Flipping her toward the wall and shoving his hand down her pants—total bad boy move. Except he made bold demands on her behalf instead of his own. She hadn’t moved her arms, not once, though only his words shackled them. She’d grown accustomed to giving orders. Most men lacked imagination—or the initiative to use it. In the greedy race of sex, the first-place finisher carried no obligation to bring anyone else across the line. Two bodies, clashing, in a contest she’d win first or leave unfinished.

“We’ll get a corner booth, deep and dark, a cozy circle for two.”

The illumination from the work light fell short of their bodies. Hidden in the shadows, he ground against her jeans. Not like a man trying to weasel his way into fucking after she’d set the terms, but one proving her arousal turned his crank.

“The waiter’ll hand us our menus, and we’ll order a couple of longnecks, and he’ll give us a snooty look, because it’s the sort of place where the women sip wine and the men drink scotch.” Skillful and teasing, Brian drew out the torture with her own wetness as he pinned her in place. He understood how to work her grease into her grooves and spin her up properly. “You’re wearing a dress—”

“The hell I am.” As if she’d bother with frilly nonsense for a simple fuck.

“—not because women need dresses to be beautiful, but because you want me to touch you. Your choice, Katherine.” Abandoning her breasts beneath her rucked-up shirt, he crossed below her navel and into her panties. Both hands, now, and not a dry, cracked finger in the bunch. “Our date is about making sure we both get what we want.”

He still smelled sharp and fresh as a summer storm, but her arousal surrounded them in earthy musk. Waiting for lightning to strike. The longer their bodies melded, the stronger the sense of rightness grew. Less a dare and more a demo of smooth running when the pieces came together. Not too-tentative nice guy, and not too-controlling jackass. Just Brian, who helped her change a tire and wanted a date. A date.