Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (8 page)

“You deserved the worry.” The grin on her
lips belied the solemn words, but she couldn’t help it. Nor could
she help her quickened breath and racing heart. “But Maggie must
have gotten over it by the time she married Carl.”

He laughed then. “All those years of
agonizing guilt I suffered, then, when we were drinking champagne
after her wedding, she told me she hadn’t been screaming at all.
She’d been laughing hysterically.”

“Laughing?”

“Yeah. Ricky Meyers was a tad on the small
side. I never knew it, but she was the one who started calling him
Tiny Tim.”

“Guess she got you in the end, huh?”

“I learned one of life’s great lessons very
early.”

“What’s that?”

“Revenge backfires.”

She laughed, but when she lifted her eyes to
his, the smile died away. His blue eyes were suddenly so hot.
Burning, blazing. For her. She hadn’t been wanted in such a way in
a long, long time. And he did want her. She knew.

He robbed her of her breath. He stole her
power of speech. He warmed her skin and peppered it with goose
bumps all at once.

Dropping her gaze, she played absently with
her toes. He stroked her forearm. Ooh. He was big-time getting to
her.

“I want to kiss you, Simone.”

Oh my. The things this man made her feel. He
was adorable, like a big huggable grizzly bear with a heart of
gold. Did grizzlies have hearts of gold? Well, he did. For the
first time in a while, she wanted more than the fantasy on her
computer. She wanted to close her eyes and lose herself in his hot
touch. As scary as that was.

Very scary. Too scary. She was a baby-step
kind of girl. The thought of baring anything, everything—physically
or metaphorically—terrified her. What if she got too exuberant?
What if he covered her mouth?

But, oh my, she wanted more. Not all-the-way
more, just a tiny bit more. Something nonthreatening, but very
sexy, very erotic. Something to tease herself with.

He smelled so good. Purely soap and shaving
cream laced with the subtle hint of hot hard male. She’d forgotten
what an aroused male smelled like. She’d missed that, too.

Simone raised her gaze to his, the light of
the TV flickering across his cheek. Then she tucked her feet
beneath her and rolled to her knees, putting her hand on the back
of the sofa next to his shoulder, her lips inches from his.

“You know, Brax, I’d like to kiss you. But
there’s something I’d like even more.”

* * * * *

God help him, he was about to complicate
things. Against his better judgment. But right now, Brax would give
her anything. Everything. He couldn’t help himself.

“What do you want?” His voice almost cracked
like an adolescent.

He wasn’t a man who usually asked permission.
A woman gave signals. A man learned to read them. He didn’t think
he was wrong about hers. The quickened rise and fall of her chest,
the flush tingeing her flawless skin above the neckline of her
T-shirt, and her concentration with her toes. Yet something made
him hold back, some indefinable sense that he wanted her sanction.
Her unqualified consent to full participation in the sweetest kiss
his mind had ever conjured. He anticipated her taste with an
intensity so great his hands shook.

He scanned her features, her eyes, her
slightly parted lips, and drank in the citrus scent of her hair. He
wanted the touch of her crimson lipstick and the lingering taste of
licorice.

“I want the fantasy,” she fairly purred.

“The fantasy?” Which fantasy? His? Hers? He’d
die to know what they were.

“Yeah, you know, that whole building-tension
thing, where you want and you anticipate and you’re pretty sure
you’re going crazy, because it’s all you can think about, every
moment, sleeping or waking.”

Her words were so damn close to the way he
was feeling. “And?”

“Don’t you remember how it was when you were
sixteen? You wanted to touch that girl, whoever she was, so badly,
your fingers itched and your whole body felt like it was going to
explode.”

He’d been seventeen, and the girl was Mary
Alice Turner.

“You ached for the touch of her breast
through her blouse, wanted the feel of its peak in your palm. You
were on the edge, dying, needing.”

Simone’s voice took him back to that time,
that place, the backseat of his dad’s Chrysler, sweet, pure,
innocent desire consuming him.

“You wanted to get to first or second base,
maybe even third so bad you thought you’d die. It was so intense
you almost lost it with the thought of touching her most private,
intimate spot.”

Her voice and his memories seduced him.

“That’s eroticism,” she whispered. “Wanting
but not being able to have. It made you feel so alive, so aware,
breathless with desire. And when you finally got what you wanted,
if you ever got it, you’ll never forget that moment.” She licked
her lips. “Do you remember what that was like, Brax?”

God, yes. He’d wanted Mary Alice with the
fervor of teenage hormone overload. He remembered the depths of
despair, then the glory of that first kiss and, yes, Mary Alice
Turner’s nipple against his palm. He never made love to Mary Alice,
but he’d wanted to with every fiber of his being. He couldn’t
remember a time that was more intense or made him feel more
alive.

Simone was right. Kissing her right now would
be great, having sex with her even better, but if he let the need,
anticipation, and desire build, he might recapture that feeling of
aliveness he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time.

Maybe that was another thing that had been
filling him with this sense of restlessness, not only the murder,
but also the feeling that life was passing him by without him even
noticing. Maybe his memory of Mary Alice had been piqued by the
recent goings-on in Cottonmouth, but he’d wondered a couple of
times what had happened to her after she left town. Old hurts, past
mistakes, previous errors in judgment. They’d consumed him in
recent weeks. His dead friend, his dead marriage, his ex-wife.
Maybe he’d never shown her the passion she needed to make her feel
alive. He knew he’d never truly felt alive in the marriage.

Brax touched Simone’s cheek, then trailed a
finger down to her jaw, farther still to the hollow above her
collarbone. Again, he trembled with the warmth of her skin. His
breath came fast, his gut clenched, and his groin tightened.

He wanted that kiss. He wanted her breast in
his palm, his hand in her panties, and his body buried deep inside
her. But more, he wanted
this
, the wild need clutching his
chest, the sense that he couldn’t take his next breath without
mingling it with hers. The fear that he’d come without a touch,
with nothing more than the sound of her voice so damn close to his
ear.

She made him feel the blood pounding through
his veins, the pulse at his temple, his throat, and his fingertips,
the rush of heat across his skin. She made him feel fiercely
alive.

“I remember,” he murmured, his gaze holding
hers. “And I want that feeling. With you.”

She leaned in, closing the small distance
between them, and licked his lower lip with her tongue.

He damn near exploded in his pants.

She did the one thing he couldn’t do for
himself. She made him forget his guilt. Even if only for a short
time.

* * * * *

The witch cackled, Dorothy fell asleep in the
field of poppies, and the Tin Man cried.

Simone realized they’d missed more than half
the movie.

Brax watched her with...intensity. His gaze
traveled over her face, coming to rest on her lips. Her skin felt
flushed, her body more than aroused, her nipples hard and achy. Her
stomach fluttered like one of the heroines in her stories.

“We missed the part where we would have found
out if they were sisters.”

His eyes didn’t even flick to the screen.
“Yeah, we did.”

“Then I guess we’re both losers.”

He picked up a lock of her hair that rested
against her chest, the back of his hand brushing across a nipple
for the tiniest moment. A flame sparked inside her.

An answering blaze lit his eyes to a deep
blue. “I don’t see any losers around here.”

“I think you’re a nice man.”

He grinned. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that
calling a man
nice
is the kiss of death?”

“Men don’t like to be told they’re nice?” She
knew that. They wanted to be told they were hot or macho or hunky
or virile or big where it counted. But nice? Not.

“There’s always a
but
that comes after
nice.”

“Not this time. This time it’s the highest of
compliments. The last nice man I met, I almost married.” Oops darn.
She shouldn’t have said that.

“But you didn’t marry him. Nice wasn’t so
nice after all.”

Andrew
had
been nice. “He just had a
little phobia about catastrophic failure.” As if it rubbed off on
those closest to the ruined individual.

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled brightly, though her face felt
like cracking. “I’m so over it now.” Not. Especially not Andrew’s
disgusted whispers in the dark. That was the worst part.
Simone,
the neighbors will hear you
.

Which was why it was much better not to let
Brax touch her on any of those certain spots that would make her
lose control completely. Now, she wrote about sex without actually
experiencing the act. Much safer that way.

“Glad you’re over it.” Brax wrapped her hair
around his finger, let it pull loose, then tucked the lock behind
her ear. His touch lingered. He traced the shell of her ear, a
barely there caress that sent chills and thrills down her
spine.

This was what she’d meant about building the
need and heightening the senses with anticipation. He’d understood
completely. A kindred spirit, looking for something more than the
wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am of a short vacation fling. When he left
Goldstone, they’d both have wild memories, even if this moment was
all they had. And there would be no embarrassing
hand-over-the-mouth episodes or appalled looks in the
aftermath.

She trailed the tip of her finger from his
Adam’s apple to the center of his chest. A light stroke, a subtle
caress.

He growled low in his throat. “Say it.”

“Say what?” She’d say anything he wanted her
to.

“The bumper sticker thing.”

She understood. “Don’t make me bring out the
flying monkeys.”

He closed his eyes and murmured, “Say it like
you mean it.”

She did, gritting her teeth and infusing
emotion into the words. “Don’t
make
me bring out the flying
monkeys.”

He captured her finger and drew it to his
lips, then kissed the pad. “Christ, that makes me hot.”

She laughed. “I’m pretty sure it’s
never
made anyone hot before.”

Warm and wet. Gentle suction and the caress
of his tongue. She was suddenly a mass of jangling nerve endings.
Her panties dampened. “I really think you better stop that.”

“Does it make you want to go to first
base?”

She tilted her head. “What exactly is first
base? French-kissing?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding. It’s getting my
hand in your bra.”

“No way. That’s second base.”

“Guys don’t care about kissing. They want
flesh.”

“But that wouldn’t make sense. Because if
putting your hand on my breast—”

“On your nipple.”

“—is first base, then that means second base
is getting your hand down my pants. But a home run is going all the
way. So what’s third base?”

He put his forehead to hers and laughed, the
vibration streaking all the way down through her chest to her legs
and even her toes. “Is this like that old Abbott and Costello
routine, who’s on first and what’s on second?”

“Actually, we were talking about third.”

He rolled his head to the side and nipped her
ear. “Third is using my tongue on you.”

Oh. Ooh.
Ahh
. She closed her eyes and
savored the delicious warmth that spread through her. “I don’t
think teenage boys think about
that
. I don’t think they even
know
about that.”

He chuckled. “Believe me, they know exactly
what it is, and they’ve got some very colorful names to describe
it.”

She knew what Andrew had called it, and it
wasn’t polite. He hadn’t liked it because Simone got downright
embarrassing with her exuberance. “What do they call it?”

This time, Brax laughed outright. “I can’t
tell you.”

“I might have to use the terminology in one
of my stories.”

“It’s a guy code of honor. I can’t tell.”

“Spoilsport.” She pouted. But he’d made her
laugh inside and forget about the mutant ache brought on by too
much Andrew-thinking. Andrew-thinking was wrong-thinking at a time
like this.

Brax tugged on a lock of her hair. “It’s an
advanced technique best left to experts rather than teenagers. So I
guess third is getting you to put your hand in my pants.”

She considered his logic. “Maybe.”

“I’m right. I was a teenage boy. Kissing is
unimportant. Touching is everything.”

“So you don’t want to kiss me?”

“Kissing is another advanced technique
employed by experts designed to make your defenses tumble.”

“Hmm. That sounds like seduction. Maybe
you’re not such a nice guy after all.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.” Then he
put his hand on her throat and his fingers on her chin and tipped
her chin up. “I want to kiss you. I want to touch you. I want to
taste you. I want to be inside you.” His lips brushed hers as he
spoke. “But for now, I’ll only do it in my dreams. Until I think
I’m gonna die. Until I beg you to put me out of my misery.”

Ooh, she was in trouble. Very big trouble. He
made her tingle. He made her want to scream exuberantly, and the
consequences be damned.