Annette Blair (19 page)

“You afraid I might want to zap the pecker, Ice Boy?”

Jason raised his head and grinned. “Yeah . . . cause my kisser’s kaput.”

“Say what? The Best Kisser in America can’t kiss?”

“Those limelight wind-up dolls fried my lip-to-lip circuit. It’s toast. Nothing. Nada.”

“Yeah, you acted totally miserable on that show.”

“Operative word: acted. I might as well have been kissing rotten rutabagas.”

Kira smiled, but Jason caught her sympathy and concern. He tucked an unruly lock of her hair behind her ear. “You deserve better than an act.”

She cupped his cheek and stroked his chin with her thumb, her touch like a blessing. “You had to disassociate yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yep.” Jason sighed, regret heavy on his chest. “And now I’m ruined.”

A light entered Kira’s eyes. “But you can still do, er, everything else?”

“I didn’t play at anything else. When the fake kisses sucked, excuse the pun, I couldn’t risk my favorite sport.”

“On the show, they implied you did.”

“The implication was in the contract. Sleeping with the windups wasn’t, though I had my chances, believe me.”

“My luck,” Kira said, knuckling his lips. “I get a free rabbit-hole card and a gimp jock with no kisses.”

Jason smiled. “If my lip-to-lip instinct returns, you’ll be the first to know. Gimp jock’s promise.”

“Promise noted.”

“You’re not disgusted, or angry, are you?”

“No, but I feel bad, for your sake,” Kira said, kissing his brow, his eyes, his chin, nibbling her way from his neck to his chest.

She made him believe
he
was important to her. Her sounds of appreciation were a real turn-on.

Jason
wanted
to touch his lips to hers, but he was afraid he’d be repulsed, and she’d think it was her fault, especially after Charlie. She’d already been hurt by one of his kind. He was not about to add to her pain. Kira Fitzgerald was a goddess. She deserved . . . everything.

They had something special going, and he’d be damned if he’d ruin it with a kiss.

Right now he’d take what she offered. And her offer was generous. He absorbed every nuance of her every touch. His body roared to life at the way she moved her hips against his.

Jason felt caring and affection in the touch of Kira’s lips against his chest, and he began to remember how that used to work from his end. How he could worship a woman with his lips . . . except that he had never quite understood the meaning of the word
worship,
not until he entered Kira’s rabbit hole that night.

That’s what scared him away that night, he thought. Attraction. A very strong attraction. Strong and scary and sitting here making him hot.

“I just want to play,” she said.

Jason translated that to mean that she didn’t want to go all the way. “I’m pretty sure we can satisfy each other,” he
said, “though I wish we hadn’t reached this state in a musty stairwell.”

“I’ve seen nicer rabbit holes,” she said, “but right now I don’t care.

“Where’s your sweater?” he asked.

“I left it to the birds. They wouldn’t let it go.”

He undid the zipper on her jumpsuit, pushed it off her shoulders, and the light beamed down on them as if in blessing. Her crimson bra raced his blood, pounding it through his chest, and points south.

He undid the clasp at the front of every man’s fantasy, but when her luscious breasts fell out, Jason forgot fantasy and embraced reality. “Beautiful,” he said as he nuzzled her, each breast overflowing his happy hands. “
You’re
beautiful,” he said.

He changed positions, reclining Kira in his embrace, so he could feed off of her, suckling like he’d never done, using his lips in a way that was still sacred and special, and only for her. “Kira,” he whispered as she moved her hands in his hair.

He’d been in lust with her since he caught her wielding her vengeful wand, and now she was his, at least for a while.

She arched as he suckled, until she began to writhe, and call his name.

That easy, she came, with his mouth on her breasts and their clothes between them.

As she rolled into him and caught her breath, her heart pumping like after a race, Jason felt pretty powerful, mighty hard, and damned near to exploding.

He held her close, rubbed her back, nuzzled her hair, and thought about all the ways and places he’d like to make her come again.

Kira Fitzgerald was the most sensuous woman he’d ever been with. In black and white or in color.

“You did it,” she whispered against his ear.

“Did what?” he asked, sliding his fingers from her naked back to her silky bottom.

“You gave me an orgasm.”

“I figured that out.”

“You’re the first.”

He settled her so she faced him. “You’re not saying that was your first orgasm?”

“Of course not. I’m just saying that you’re the first
man
who ever gave me one.”

“Wait. You’ve been with women?”

She laughed and fell forward, exhausted, against him. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no.” She spoke against his neck, kissing it between words and bites. “I’ve only ever come with . . . mechanical devices.”

“If I had protection on me, I’d put your mechanical devices to shame.”

“Protection . . .” Kira went for his belt buckle. “Just for the record, I’m on the pill, and clean,” she said, “safe-sex wise. I felt the need to check after the Penis. Haven’t been with anyone since.”

“Clean here, too,” Jason said. “Got checked in the hospital after my accident. Haven’t been with anyone since, either. What are you doing?”

“Tit for tat,” she said.

“Stop that. Pull the big guy out and I guarantee you, a twenty-man rescue team will rush down these stairs.”

“Come on, I wanna meet Harvey, give him a hello kiss.”

“And he sure in hell wants to meet you.”

“Well?”

“I’m better in a bed.”

“Is that supposed to turn me off?”

JASON
barked a laugh. “Are you nuts, Fitzgerald? It’s
not
supposed to turn you off. It’s supposed to turn you on, make you hop in the sack with me the minute we get home. But, no, you can’t wait.”

“And that’s bad how?” Kira asked.

“Location, timing . . . leg room.”

Kira scoffed. “Screw that.”

“Okay, I didn’t want to do this,” Jason said, “but you’re forcing my hand. Now I have another confession to make.”

Kira stopped, her hand on his zipper, and looked up. “Uh-oh.”

“Yes,” Jason said, “you
do
have bird poop in your hair.”

Kira whooped and fell against him, charming him out of his mind with her unabashed laughter.

“You’re just getting it, aren’t you,” Jason said. “How ludicrous this whole thing is? You with the birds? Us, in a hidden staircase? How bad I want to turn you on, not off?”

Kira squeaked a yes, rolled out of his arms, hiccupped, and kept on laughing.

Jason sat on the landing beside her and let her merriment carry him away. Before he could think straight, he had her laying across his lap, her head on his arm, as he watched her laugh.

He had never seen such open merriment on her face. Kira Fitzgerald laughed the way she worked, the way she made magic, putting her all into it. Jason wanted to know if she made love the same way. He wanted
her
.

Sliding his hand inside her red bikinis, he found her warm wet center, and when he began his intimate quest to bring her fulfillment once more, she rose, hips and all, and followed where he led.

She wept her joy, against his fingers, against his face.

He’d been branded, Jason thought, branded and bewitched.

Their play went on while the slant of the light changed position and their rabbit hole became too dim for Jason to see the stairs or much of anything else.

Kira fell asleep, her head on his shoulder, the warmth of her breath, her fresh berry scent, flooding his senses, as he continued to caress her warm slick center.

When he started to pull away, she whimpered, and he grinned. How amazing would she be, if they ever really did . . . have sex. They
would
have sex, or at least he hoped they would. Maybe he should hope they wouldn’t. He’d have to think about that. He had a feeling that sex with Kira Fitzgerald would be as addictive as a drug. Madness.

But right now, sanity was returning, and with it the harsh reality of voices and footsteps.

Jason sat up, confirming the echo of sound. He didn’t call out because he needed to do a fast reorganization of Kira’s clothes. “Wake up, sweetheart. We’re being rescued.”

He raised Kira enough to slip her arms back into the top of her jumpsuit, but her eyes remained unfocused.

“Button my shirt,” he said. “Help me, please. They’re coming closer.”

“Who? What?”

“Our rescuers. We’re about to get caught half naked.”

That woke her up. “Yikes!” She went to work on his buttons. He had less than a minute to stand and tuck his shirt into his pants before the door at the top of the stairs banged open, and Deering nearly fell down the stairs, himself.

A policeman, standing at the top, invaded their rabbit hole with his flashlight, the beam hitting Jason square in the eyes.

Jason stepped away from the light. “How’d you find us?” he asked, letting Kira precede him up the stairs.

“The birds,” Deering said. “They were screeching fit to wake old Addie, and pecking at the base of the wall, almost as if they were trying to get you out themselves. One of the blacks was pecking so hard around the door, it chipped its beak.”

Jason touched Kira’s hand from behind.

She shook it off. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, and he didn’t know if she meant the birds . . . or the other.

The crow with the chipped beak, the one who had landed on Kira’s shoulder, said “Shiver my liver” when she emerged into the cage from the stairs.

“Shut up,” Kira said, then she saw its beak and stopped. “I hope you didn’t do that for me.” She stroked the damage. “Poor baby.”

The crow tilted its head. “Nice, Mommy.”

Kira rolled her eyes and left.

Deering chuckled. “Wait till I tell m’wife. She read that crows talk like parrots years ago, and she’s been trying to teach this lot ever since. Now here they go and say their first words to somebody else.”

“That explains their vocabulary,” Jason said, following Deering and the cop downstairs behind Kira. Though it didn’t explain why they chose Kira to communicate with.

“What made you look for us?” Jason asked. “I thought my grandmother would have to report me missing before somebody—”

Deering smiled. “Your granny says there’s a busload of
kids waiting for hockey lessons and you’d better get there fast, if you know what’s good for you.”

Jason laughed, and Kira groaned and fell against him, which meant she wasn’t upset with
him,
precisely.

A mostly white mite of a kitten, with one black ear and a black tail, scooted in, went right to Kira, and mewled plaintively, its paws on her foot.

Deering scooped it up. “You wanted inside bad, didn’t you, Misty?” Deering shook his head. “She’s been over here scratching at the doors all day. I keep bringing her home and she keeps coming back.”

Kira took the kitten from the caretaker, rubbed its fur against her cheek, and got a lick on her nose.

Jason recalled Kira’s cat theory. “She looks too young to be away from her mother,” he said.

“She is, the scamp. And I don’t know why her mama can’t keep track of her. She’s an only child.” Deering took Misty from Melody. “M’wife keeps calling her back, she says, but Misty’s either deaf or stubborn. Hey, look at the time. Your granny’s gonna have my head, if you don’t get out’a here.”

“Hockey practice, Glinda,” Jason said. “Let’s go.”

During practice, Kira played a board game with Zane and handed out hot cocoa to the kids who took breaks, more for her hugs than her hot chocolate, Jason suspected.

Kira wouldn’t look his way. Therefore, Jason kept looking her way, so she could continue to ignore him, which is why Jeff, the brat, managed to poke him in the eye with his stick blade.

Jason moved more slowly around the ice as the boys’ ice time was coming to an end. His slowing stride reflected the newest beating he took tumbling down the stairs. Every bone and muscle in his body hurt, except, oddly enough, his bad knee, which felt better than after their first hockey practice.

Despite the soreness, Jason realized that he was, in fact, enjoying himself. The musky frosted air unique to a rink,
the swish of skates shaving ice, all of it invigorated him, and gave him hope for the future.

The woman entertaining a child in a leg brace instigated a different emotion, one similar to hope, perhaps, a little more frightening, but nonetheless invigorating.

He thought of her in the stairs, coming like fireworks in his arms, and realized that what he might actually want from Kira scared the crap out of him.

They parted the minute they stepped into Cloud Kiss. She took the elevator; he went to the kitchen.

Later, he went downstairs for dinner with his grandmother, holding an ice pack to his eye, hating that the chair opposite his sat empty.