Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (19 page)

“Doesn’t matter,” he said gruffly. Showing no surprise at her apology, his face descended to a blank slate. Usually he wore his emotions freely, and the new look didn’t suit him.

“It does matter,” she insisted, to probably unmovable ears. “I have this tendency to get smart when I’m nervous. I’m not used to this—”

“Used to what? Seeing beyond the surface?” He coughed out a caustic laugh. “I imagine that must be problematic for an artist.”

If he had slapped her, it wouldn’t have hurt as much. Since finding her home behind the camera, she had used it as both her sword and her shield. In the space between her lens and her subject, she was untouchable. Unbreakable. Ancient slights and cuts vanished into the ether with an open shutter and a definitive click. Framing people in her viewfinder allowed her to box them up, all neat and tidy.

But the flat, shiny planes and darkened contours of her work were two-dimensional, and not much else. Art was neither neat nor tidy; it was messy and deep and, most of all, human. Tonight there had been a brief moment when she held him captive in her lens and saw something beautifully honest in his fatigue.
I have it
, she thought, but a click of her Leica later, the moment was gone. Never good enough.

“I need to go,” he said, rough and deep.

Her throat had closed up, but she believed she nodded.

He stared at her with those unfathomable eyes, the exact color of which she could never accurately apprehend with her camera. “Lili, I have to leave.”

She gulped down her regret and curled her hands into fists at her sides to stop the imminent shake. “I know,” then when he still watched in harsh silence, she offered a more resolute, “Just go.”

He didn’t budge. He just stood in her cramped kitchen, eyes judging, taunting her with his vitality. Reminding her of everything she couldn’t have. Through his tee, she imagined she saw his heart as it pumped his life force to all the pulse points of his body.

“This is just too frustrating for me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Her breath stopped, momentarily shutting down her lungs. She could not have heard that right. It was like he was continuing a conversation in his head and her words had made no impact. By now, he should have been halfway to his hotel, but he chose to stand in her kitchen telling her…

“Frustrating for you?”

“I’m in physical pain here,” he said, his voice strained.

“
You’re
in pain?”

This is what he had turned her into, a simpleton who parroted ridiculous male declarations. At what point in the history of gender relations had women decided that flipping a guy’s statements into questions was a valid argument strategy?

He looked to the ceiling and appeared to be marshaling his strength. “Lili…”

She had given him an out. She had treated him shabbily and had her apology grudgingly accepted. But
he
had started this thing between them with every hot look he blasted her way since stumbling out of her fridge. Last night, she had offered herself on a silver platter, and her reward was a one-way ticket to Foolsville and the public scorn of his fan club. Tonight he had shown up at her door with his goat cheese caramel gelato and his fucking tractor-beam smile, continuing his mission to plow soul-deep ruts in her mind. And now he had the gall to tell her he was frustrated?

An anger bomb exploded in her chest, hurling bitter shrapnel to every nerve ending. “Jack Kilroy, you do not have a monopoly on frustration. I’m frustrated, too.”

More of the gimme-patience look. “Sweetheart, it’s different for a man.”

“Are you saying it’s worse for a man?” she demanded in a tone that said he’d better not be saying that.

The man smirked. Smirked! “Yes, I am. It’s much worse.”

“That’s bullshit. You’re prancing around, kissing me”—she jabbed him in the chest, gratified when his eyes flew wide and dark—“teasing me, and I’m not supposed to be affected by that. My whole body is aching.”

Oh, dear.
Inside thoughts, Lili.

“Aching?” he asked, a bourbon-laced rasp.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to will away her admission, but she would have more success stopping her heart from beating. She couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving without a kind word or a soft touch. Just a whisper of his hand to ease the pain, a light abrading to return her to sanity. That’s all she needed; then he could go on his way.

“Tell me,” he urged. “Tell me where it hurts.”

In for a dime…Brazen hussy that she was, she opened her eyes and pulled his hand to her sensitive breast. Sexual awareness tinged then bloomed into full-scale knowledge as a branding heat rocked her. In that same moment, she realized her error.

One touch could never be enough.

Chapter Twelve

He should have been out the door, on his way to a bottle of scotch and a good night’s sleep. Should have walked the minute he realized this whole night was one gelato scoop short of a catastrophe.

Getting angry with her, watching her grovel had felt so…shitty. He hated seeing her upset, pouting those bee-stung lips above that stubborn chin, her big eyes, wide and glazed with hurt. More than that, he hated being at the root of it.

As for the killer bod, vibrating with sex and need? Didn’t hate that so much.

And the soft breast cradled in his hand? No hatin’ here.

You know how it goes. One minute you’re whining about how rough it is because you’re so bloody famous; the next you’re feeling up a beautiful woman in her kitchen. After the initial shock of finding his hand exactly where it needed to be, millions of years of evolution kicked in. He had a gorgeous woman’s breast beneath his fingertips—even better, she had put his hand there—so he’d damn well better know what to do with it.

He let her weight fill his palm and when that wasn’t enough, he massaged through the thin layers of blouse and bra, insanely happy when his touch turned her nipple into a pebble of hard candy. She arched and thrust against his hand.

“Please, Jack.” Her eyelids fell to half-mast, her breathing turned shallow.

His fingers felt thick as they fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, desperate to get it off so he could get her off. Damn things fought him like an obstacle course but he overcame.
Veni, vidi, vici.
He didn’t even have to help her out of her top. A slight shrug of those sexy shoulders sent it drifting to the floor, and now she presented herself for inspection, her breasts barely cupped and spilling out of sky-blue lace.

Fucking beautiful.

He slid her bra strap off her shoulder and slipped his palm under the scalloped edge of one of the cups, releasing one breast, then the other. A quick flick of his fingers and her bra met the same fate as her blouse. She was as spectacular as he’d expected, times infinity.

His fingertips returned to one dusky, puckered nipple. His other hand encircled her waist and pushed her back against the kitchen table. “Better?”

She parted her lips, but nothing came out, and somehow that was sexier than if she’d spoken. His pulse beat an insistent tattoo.
Touch, feel, taste. Repeat.
On the table sat the remains of the gelato, now softened to a semi-frozen soup. He placed the flat side of the spoon against her breast and watched as rivulets of dairy dripped, catching in beads of sweetness on her lovely peak.

“Oh,” she said as he traced circles around her beaded nipple, captivated by how her breasts heaved with every sinuous slide of the stainless steel. Her breaths came in short tugs.

“Too cold?” he asked gently. Her fingers splayed at the nape of his neck and she jutted her breasts toward his waiting mouth. Her eyes widened by slow degrees and pleaded with him to give her what she needed. What they both needed.

He licked her breast, a long, lazy ice-cream-cone lick, and vaguely registered her soft gasp followed by a heartfelt moan. The gelato tasted great. She tasted better.

The clatter of the spoon hitting the floor set off a vibration in his marrow, and deep-seated hunger skyrocketed inside him. He plumped her breast with his hand and took it in his mouth. He licked, sucked, and owned one hard peak, then switched to the other. Gotta play fair. Her taste, along with every one of her moans, traveled a direct route to his thrumming erection.

Panting, he traced his tongue along the soft hollow of her throat. “Where else does it hurt?”

She grasped his hand and pressed it between her legs, over her skirt. He pushed the heel flat and her legs parted, the warmth of her sex pulsing through the fabric. Not enough. He needed skin. He bunched her skirt up and, slow as cold honey, glided his hand along her thigh.

“Please,” she moaned.

“I know, love. I’m going to take care of you.” As he stroked over her undies, they dampened under his touch. He slipped a finger past the edge and a strange sound that had caught in his throat croaked out.

Christ, she was so wet.

The urge to be inside her, to feel her muscles grasping and milking him, almost undid him but he tamped that down. This wasn’t about his needs. He had little to offer her beyond his smile and his clever hands, but he could give her this even when he wanted so much more.

“Lili, you are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmured against her lips, wishing desperately that it was a lie. He wished there’d been past lovers who got his engine running like this, other potential bedmates he could anticipate with pleasure.

He wished it wasn’t her because it felt like he’d already lost.

*  *  *

Lili loved Jack’s hands. How their coarseness rasped her nipples. How their calluses imprinted against the soft skin of her thighs. And how those rough-cast fingers were causing a well of liquid trouble in her panties. With just a couple of delicious strokes, the pulse between her legs had boosted from dull to knife-sharp. She wondered if there was anything those talented hands couldn’t do.

Her eyelids felt heavy and she fought to keep them open. Holding on to his penetrating gaze was as sexy as what he was doing down below. She had never experienced that kind of intensity in a man. He burned her alive with every look.

“Jack,” she whispered, shifting her weight to allow him access. She needed the full Jack experience, which meant her underwear had to go.
Please say I didn’t wear one of my granny pairs.
Through eyes blurred with desire, she caught a glimpse of her lace-trimmed hipster as Jack pulled it down past her knees, and she kicked them off. Not her sexiest pair, but phew.

He pushed her skirt up around her hips, giving them both a front-row view.
Yes.
Battling to focus, she watched as he coiled a finger in her curls, soaked with anticipation. He ran a solitary finger through her slick heat. Just one, a tease to let her know he was in control, that he had her pleasure in the palm of his hand. A shudder of pure bliss coursed through her, then more fingers, rubbing and caressing. She moaned, deep and primal, because she had lost all self-restraint and it was pointless to pretend otherwise.

“Yes, yes. So good.” It was about to get more so. He slipped a finger inside her and hooked it, honing in on her spot. A wave of lust slammed her. After a minute of searing heat, he pressed another finger and slid it in, stretching her exquisitely tight. And yes, two fingers were most definitely better than one. His thumb feathered her clit. It felt so right, his fingers sliding in and out of her, his thumb creating delicious friction, his dark eyes wide and watching her like he was afraid of missing something. And watching him watch her was the biggest turn-on of all.

Until he started in on the French.

She didn’t need to understand it to know he was telling her things he might never say in English. Maybe they were romantic. She hoped they were filthy.

With every motion, with every secret word he whispered, her skin tightened. Blood rushed from her head to below her waist. Spirals wound down her belly. She screamed his name, begging him to finish her, but he drew it out, slowing and teasing, stopping short of that peak she was so desperate to reach.

She dug her nails into his tattooed bicep, desperate to make her mark as indelible as the ink on his skin. He wouldn’t forget her. Still, he taunted her with those slow fingers. Slow, slow, so damn slow. Fisting his hair, she yanked it hard and was rewarded with a grunt, but no upping his pace. The bastard’s mouth found hers again, hot and demanding, stealing her breath. A blast of sugar and summer heat that sparked her ecstasy and ignited her frustration into fury.

So she bit him.

He didn’t make a sound, but his mouth, the bottom lip pink and slightly swollen, curved into a carnal grin. He liked it. Oh God, he did, and she liked that he liked it.

Her hips thrust forward in blatant appeal and everything slowed and then sped up again. So close. He withdrew his fingers and applied them where she needed it most, sliding through her wetness, stroking her harder and faster. Her blood pounded and surged, sending her lurching out of control. Jack’s devil smile widened. A smile made for her. A smile that made her come so hard, she kicked his shin. He yelped.

Good.

Despite the violent conclusion, his hand cupped her gently, absorbing her shivery shudders, shocking her with his tenderness. Hot tears sprang unbidden, and she buried her face in the warmth of his shoulder, trying to hide her churning emotions. He kissed her hair. He held her tight. He gave her the time she needed to descend.