Holiday Heat (3 page)

“Do you want me
to get a tattoo?” he asked, a different note in his voice.

“No.” Her
fingers lingered on a jagged scar that slashed through the curve of his
ribcage.

“I guess my
body is marked enough.”

She sucked in a
sharp breath. “Don’t say that. I like your body as it is.”

When she
realized what she’d said, she blushed a little—although there wasn’t any good
reason for feeling self-conscious.

Her eyes darted
up, and she saw Matt was almost smiling. “You know what I mean,” she added.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Her fingers
kept playing along the scar, and she felt that same unfamiliar tenderness
overwhelming her.

He cleared his
throat. “Don’t.”

Carrie frowned,
startled from her reverie and a little embarrassed by it. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t feel
sorry for me.”

“I wasn’t doing
any such thing.” She wanted to trace the line of the scar that ran from his
right shoulder toward his nipple with her fingers or her mouth, but she
resisted the silly impulse. “You’re far too smug to pity.”

“Good.”

“Do you—” She
broke off the question, confused by the sudden impulse to ask it.

“Do I what?”

“Do you think
it’s…unhealthy. What we’re doing, I mean. We both should be trying to heal
emotionally, and maybe having sex like this is really just a…”

His brows drew
together. “A crutch?”

“Yeah. Do you
think it is?”

 “Does it feel
like a crutch to you?”

“I don’t know.”
She sighed and couldn’t quite meet his eyes. She had no idea why she was
blurting all of this out, but it had been on her mind more and more lately.
“I’m just sometimes afraid we’re with each other like this because it’s never
going to go anywhere, because we’re both too scared to get close to anyone. And
it’s keeping us from moving on, finding someone for real.”

Something felt
strange about the way he was watching her, but she still couldn’t look him in
the eye. “Do you
want
to be with someone else? Someone you feel like you
could have a future with?”

“No,” she
admitted. “I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”

“So what’s the
problem?”

“I don’t know.”
She felt better at his matter-of-fact question. “I guess there isn’t a
problem.”

“Okay, good.
Now tell me this. Do you want to be with me just because you think I have a
hard edge?”

The question
surprised her, as did the almost diffident look in his eyes when she glanced up
to check his expression. The truth was she’d gotten together with him at the
beginning only because of that edge—because he was new, dangerous, exciting,
completely different from Henry, completely different from anything her life
had ever been before.

It wasn’t why
she was with him now, though, and the realization was so terrifying she
immediately pushed it out of her conscious mind.

To force the
conversation back into their normal pattern, she stroked his chest again and
said in a lilting voice, “Oh, no. I like you for your other hard...qualities.”

Her hand slid
farther down, over his flat belly, and lower toward his groin. Her eyes widened
as she saw he was partly erect again. “Damn, Matt, you’re insatiable. Have you
always been this horny?”

“Honestly, no,”
he admitted.

She was vaguely
comforted by the fact that he hadn’t been this way with every woman he’d ever
been with. All she said was, “Hmm. Maybe cheap motel rooms turn you on.”

He stifled a
burst of laughter. “That must be it.”

Feeling rather
soft at the sound of his laughter, Carrie smiled and reached out to take his
shaft in her hand. It was still only partly erect, and she rubbed the length of
it with her thumb. His flesh twitched in her grasp, but he didn’t harden any
further.

She stared down
at her small hand, wrapped around him in such an intimate way. A feeling
swelled up inside her chest, and she recognized it as pride and possessiveness.

Entirely
inappropriate feelings. And they disturbed her to such an extent that she
released him. With a groan, she rolled over and saw that it was after six in
the morning. “I better get up. I’ll have to get going soon.”

She didn’t wait
for a response from Matt. Just walked barefoot into the bathroom to take a
shower. The cool water felt heavenly after the heat of the room and her
physical exertions. She took a longer shower than normal, using the time to
pull herself together.

Matt couldn’t
allow himself to be emotionally intimate with a woman after what had happened
to him and his girlfriend, any more than she could after Henry. Isolation was
so much safer than risking another gaping wound in the heart.

Sex was sex. It
was physical. It was enjoyable. And it was so much easier than loving someone.

She felt much
better when she finally stepped out of the shower—her body clean and at a much
more comfortable temperature, and her emotions settled into their normal
pattern.

She pulled on
her bra and panties before wrapping her wet hair up in a towel. When she left
the bathroom, she looked over to see that Matt was still in bed. He was
stretched out on top of the sheet, watching her with leisurely interest. He
wasn’t posed or self-conscious—he looked lazy and natural—but his body was
completely naked, and she couldn’t help but admire his lean flanks and long
limbs.

“It’s early,” he
said. “I thought your shift didn’t start until nine.”

“They asked me
to open this morning.”

Matt frowned.
“You already work there about fifty hours a week.”

“I don’t mind.
The money doesn’t hurt.” She unwound the towel from her head and shook out her
wet, dark hair. Her hair wasn’t going to look good today, so she didn’t make
too much of an effort. Running her fingers through it, she figured she’d let it
do its own thing.

“Do you want to
get together again tonight?” Matt asked. He’d been watching the proceedings
with her hair-styling.

She made a
face. She did want to spend the night with him again tonight. “I’m supposed to
hang out with Jenn tonight.”

Matt frowned.
“What are your plans for the weekend?”

“On Saturday,
I’m doing some Christmas shopping with Jenn.” She shuddered at the thought,
still ridiculously nervous about the Christmas season, which was now somehow
upon them. So far, seeing all the decorations and festivities hadn’t been as
painful as she’d feared, but the worst of it was yet to come. “I was going to
just buy stuff online, but she really wanted me to go. She thinks it will be
good for me. I’m hoping it won’t be too bad. I haven’t bought a single present
yet.”

“I haven’t
bought anything yet either. So that’s all you have going on this weekend?”

 “Well, on
Friday…” Ridiculously, she felt herself blushing, although she had nothing to
be embarrassed about.

“What are you
doing on Friday?”

She shrugged.
“I’ve got this double-date thing.”

Matt sat up. “
What
?”

“It’s nothing,”
she said in a rush, annoyed with herself for feeling guilty. “Jenn and her
boyfriend kept bugging me about this guy until I finally just said yes. They
want to set me up with him.”

“And you didn’t
tell them that you were dating someone else?”

She met his
eyes evenly. “I’m
not
dating anyone else. In order to do that, we would
have to—oh, I don’t know—
date
. You know, be seen together in public, go
out for romantic evenings, spend holidays together. The things people who date
do.”

“I’d assumed,
once we stopped using condoms, that we were exclusive.”

“Of course
we’re exclusive. I’m not sleeping with anyone else. But let’s not pretend this
is anything other than it is. We made it clear from the very beginning. We
screw. We don’t date.”

To her
surprise, Matt’s face relaxed and a hint of a smile played at the corners of
his mouth. “Right.”

She narrowed
his eyes at the skepticism in his tone. “I’m just telling you what you already
know. Those were the ground rules from the beginning. I have no desire to date
you.”

“Right.”

Her shoulders
stiffened, and she felt a blaze of heat flood her cheeks. “I don’t even really
like
you most of the time.”

“Right.” This
time, he didn’t quite manage to hide the smile. “We’re together purely for
mindless sex. It’s just like a really good cup of coffee. I’ve got it.”

She sat down on
the side of the bed beside him and said, “I’m a free agent, and I can choose to
go out with whomever I want.”

“As can I.”

She didn’t like
the idea of his going out with some other woman. In fact, it made her want to
break something.

She supposed
that maybe he felt an inkling of that same irrational jealousy over her.
Despite the fact that the sex had always been explicitly casual and without
ties, sex was an intimate act and those kinds of feelings were inevitable.

She checked his
expression and was reassured. He looked easy and natural—partly amused, partly
observant, and partly hot.

“There’s
nothing wrong with some good sex,” he drawled, a husky note once more entering
his voice.

“Right,” she
said, her tone wavering a bit. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of his
acquiescence to her, when he’d sounded so skeptical and superior before.

Then, like a
predator, he pounced. One moment, they were both sitting innocently on the side
of the bed. The next, he’d pushed her back against the mattress and had rolled
fully on top of her.

“Hey!” she
objected, “You’re all sweaty! And I’m nice and clean.”

With a low
laugh, Matt murmured, “Not anymore.”

He was right.
His body covered hers wholly and his skin was rubbing all over her.

“Matt!” she wailed,
before he stifled her grievances with a kiss.

The kiss was
deep and unexpectedly urgent, and Carrie couldn’t help but respond. Her mouth
opened to the advance of his tongue, and she groaned in pleasure as a wave of
desire and feeling overwhelmed her.

Soon, she was
squirming beneath him, but not in protest.

He was hard
now—again—and she felt his erection trapped between their bodies.
Instinctively, she rocked up into it and loved the way his body tightened in
response.

Finally, he
tore his mouth away and kissed his way down to the racing pulse in her neck.

“Damn it,
Matt,” she gasped, trying hard to sound more annoyed than aroused. “Now I’m
going to have to shower again.”

“No, you
won’t.” He gently bit down on the skin of her throat, prompting a tug of deep
pleasure that made her jerk. “You’ll get dressed after this, or you’ll be late
for work. Then you’ll go through the entire day, completely covered with me.”

His voice was
erotic. The sound of it and the images his words evoked made her shiver in pleasure.
But she said, “You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m not.
Don’t pretend you wouldn’t enjoy it. Every time someone brushes against you,
you’ll wonder if they can smell me on you. Every time you walk or cross your
legs, you’ll feel me inside you. Every time you breathe, you’ll think about how
good we are together.”

Carrie’s hands
had started to move of their own volition, caressing his back and then gripping
the firm flesh of his butt. When he adjusted, moving aside the fabric of her
panties so he could line himself up at her entrance, she spread her thighs and
lifted her pelvis to meet his.

She was a
little sore after so much sex in the last twelve hours, but she wasn’t sore
enough to dampen her enthusiasm. She moaned as he entered her and then started
to pump her hips to the rhythm they made together.

But she did
manage to say, “That sounds like something
you’d
enjoy. But not me. I’ll
definitely be taking a shower.”

“Right,” he
breathed into her ear.

He didn’t say
anymore, but she knew—at least in some ways—he was speaking the truth. Part of
her
did
want everyone to know how hot and wild and sexy she was with
Matt, how much they pleased each other, how exciting and slightly dangerous her
life had become, ever since she’d started sharing his bed.

But he was her
secret. And, if everyone knew, some of the thrill would probably die.

If everyone
knew, it would start to feel like a real relationship, and then it would have
to end.

The familiar,
natural scent of him surrounded her, invading her senses, heightening her
pleasure. Her body blazed with heat again, more from the ardor Matt was
generating than from the temperature of the room.

A climax rose
inside her—strong, powerful, intoxicating. Despite everything.

“Oh, God,
Matt!” she gasped, arching her neck and digging her fingernails into his ass.

“Yes, baby,” he
hissed, jerking his head in an uncontrolled reaction to his growing intensity.
“Come for me. Let me see.”

His words and
her physical sensations mingled with the rest of her tangled feelings. She lost
control completely, crying out as a hard climax surged through her.

Matt lost it
too. He came with a loud exclamation that sounded like her name. And then he
eased himself down on top of her as lingering spasms from their climaxes
rippled through both of them.

It felt so good
with him. Every time. And she didn’t know why she couldn’t ever get enough.

He gasped
against her neck, occasionally pressing a kiss on her skin there. She loved the
feel of it, so she didn’t complain that his weight and heat were nearly
smothering her.

Finally, she
said, “This was some kind of macho show of force because I’m going on that
double date, wasn’t it?”

Matt lifted his
head to look down on her. Now he looked more quiet than anything else. “It
might have been, had you not wanted it too.”