Talk Nerdy to Me (42 page)

Her
happiness muscles began to contract and she gasped in delight.
"I
can confirm ... the
efficacy of the intruding implement,"

He
stroked faster, watching her, looking deep into her eyes. "Then it's …
producing the ... desired test results?"

"Yes
... oh, yes ... Lubrication to friction ratio is ... optimal. Resources will be
... deployed soon." She kept her gaze fixed on his.

"Test
nearly complete." His thighs slapped against hers as the room filled with
the sound of their rapid breathing.

She
whimpered as her climax hovered near. "Test results are ..." Her
orgasm hit. "In!" Crying out, she fought to keep herself steady as
the waves of pleasure roiled over her. Through it all, she left her eyes open,
her attention focused on Charlie.

"Ah,
Eve.
Eve."
With a massive shudder, he
burled himself deep. There was a flash of heat in his eyes, but it was followed
by something more, something far greater than physical passion.

She
saw it, knew that the same emotion was reflected in her eyes. How could they
help it? Like it or not, they were made for each other.

Then
he closed his eyes and murmured something she couldn't hear.

"What?" she asked
gently.

Opening
his eyes, he allowed her to see all the caring there, and the confusion, too.
"Too good," he said.

She
swallowed. "Yeah," she said, her voice softened by both joy and
sadness. "I know what you mean."

Battling
a host of conflicting feelings, Charlie was very gentle with Eve as they
disentangled themselves and picked up their discarded clothes. "You know I
want to

forget
about the hovercraft and head for your bedroom," he said as they each
began getting dressed.

"But
you're not going to do that, are you?" Her blue gaze was quietly
understanding.

"No."

"I
didn't think so." She zipped the jacket of her sweat suit.

Longing
tasted bitter on his tongue. "We need to do whatever it takes to get that
hovercraft operational."

"And
that's not all there is to it." She took a long, slow breath. "We're
getting in too deep, aren't we?"

She'd
said what he'd been unwilling to. He nodded. "I think the more we do
this—"

"The more we have sex,
you mean."

"Right."
He searched her expression, hoping she would help him deal with the problem.
"The more we have sex, the tougher we're going to make it on
ourselves."

"So
getting wild and crazy while Denise is out with Manny is off the table."

He groaned. "I wish
you hadn't mentioned tables."

"You want to do it on
the table?"

"I
want to do it on the table, on the floor, on top of the hovercraft—"

"Now
there's
a heck of an idea."
Her cheeks glowed pink. "Beats smashing a bottle of champagne over it by a
country mile."

Charlie
clenched his jaw against the rising tide of desire. He'd just had a
mind-shattering orgasm, and he wanted more. "I've never felt this out of
control. It's scaring the shit out of me."

She
looked contrite. "It's my fault for suggesting the chaps. That's probably
what started you thinking of unusual sexual experiences."

"I
wish I could blame it on you, but I can't, unless you want to take
responsibility for your amazing body, your incredible brains, your happy laugh,
your sexy mouth, your unbelievably blue eyes, your..."

He
stopped himself before he strayed into dangerous territory. He was ready to
start describing parts of her that were better not put into words. Once he
spoke those highly sexual words, he'd inflame himself even more.

"Were you about to
mention my testing equipment?"

He
gulped. Yes, he had been about to do that, and he would have dispensed with the
euphemisms this time around. That was so unlike him to talk like that, but she
brought out an earthy, hedonistic side he'd been blissfully unaware of until
now.

"God,
Eve." He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep himself from reaching for
her. "I want you in ways I've never wanted another woman. I want to say
things to you, do things with you, that go beyond what I've ever thought of
before. I worry that I'm becoming obsessed with you."

She
gazed at him, her color high. "I'm flattered. I think."

"I'm
not trying to flatter you. I'm just telling you how it is."

"You
know I would never ask you to stay in Middlesex because of me."

"I
know. Just like I wouldn't ask you to leave this town you love."
Love.
The
word felt thick and unwieldy in his mouth. He almost stumbled while saying it,
probably because he'd been working so hard not to say it earlier, when he'd
looked into her eyes and known it was the only word that described how he felt.

"Well,
then." Eve cleared her throat. "If we've made the decision not to go
back to the bedroom—"

"I
have. Now all I have to do is get my cock to cooperate."

She
lifted her eyebrows.
"O-kay.
I
see we're no longer mincing words."

"Did
I shock you?" He almost hoped he had. That might dilute some of this
incredible sexual tension.

Slowly she shook her head.
"Sorry. I'm not that easily shocked."

'Too bad."

"But
I'm here to help. It's time to get to work on the hovercraft, Charlie. Let's
channel some of this energy into the project."

He sighed heavily.
"Thank you."

"If
you'll change those connections, I'll have the new fuel available in a little
while and we can test it in the new engine."

He
nodded. "And if that goes well, then I'll help you mount it in the
chassis."

A
tiny smile lifted the corners of her mouth. "I could do a whole riff on
that, but I won't."

"I'm
grateful." He looked at her and wondered if he was the biggest fool in the
world. He'd never find another woman who could talk like an engineer while she
was having sex. He loved the way she did that.

Oh,
hell. The truth was he loved
her.
And
he wasn't planning on telling her that, because such a conversation was
supposed to lead to a whole other conversation that ultimately resulted in
rings and vows and happily-ever-afters.

"So,
get thee to the garage," she said. "I'll be out with the fuel in a
few minutes."

He hesitated, wanting one
more kiss, one more chance to hold her and act out his increasingly erotic
fantasies. But one more time wouldn't be enough. With every moment he spent in
her arms, he was that much closer to giving up his dream, and that would
poison ever special thing they shared.

Two
hours later Charlie added mental frustration to his sexual
frustration. No matter how he adjusted the carburetor, the custom rotary
engine wouldn't run smoothly. He'd brought the booklet Eve had loaned him and
had gone over it a dozen times.

"It's
the fuel," Eve said. "My converter isn't doing the job."

"It
should work, damn it." At least his complete absorption in making the
engine run right had somewhat compartmentalized his lust for Eve. The
compartment threatened to break open whenever she hovered over him and her warm
breath tickled his neck. But mostly, he could think about the engine and why it
was being so stubborn.

Eve
seemed to have similar powers of concentration. She kept testing the chemical
content of the fuel. She'd brought her laptop out to the garage and was running
some data on that as Charlie leaned close to the engine and listened to the
sound it was making to see if that would identify the problem.

But
it was hard to hear with that pounding going on in the background. Finally he
lifted his head. "What
is
that?"

Eve glanced up from her
computer screen and frowned. "Um..." She turned toward the garage
door. "Someone's banging on the door."

"That's
ridiculous. Why don't they just ring the doorbell?"

"They
might have tried. I'll bet we wouldn't have heard it." She walked over to
the garage door button and punched it.

"Wait!
Put it down again! You don't know who's out there!"

Eve glanced at him,
obviously realized that she'd been about to reveal her hovercraft to whoever
was outside the garage, and smacked the button again, bringing the door down with
a thud. "Whoops."

Charlie
sighed. "We have to get this hovercraft operational and patented so we
can forget about all this cloak-and-dagger stuff." He heard himself use
the word
we
and winced. There was no
we
in
this arena. He was a helper, and once his help was no longer needed, he'd be
out of the equation.

The banging on the garage
door started up again.

"I'd
better see who it is." Eve got up and walked toward the kitchen door.

"I'll come with
you."

She
glanced over her shoulder. "You can keep working. I doubt if our saboteur
would come by and bang on the garage door. That's not what you'd call
sneaky."

"Sometimes
bold is sneaky." He'd appointed himself her protector and he wasn't going
to let some garden-variety intruder get past him just because they seemed too
obvious.

She
reached the entry way and looked out the peephole. "Nobody's there."

"That's
because they're still banging on the garage door. They got encouraged when you
started to open it." Charlie reached for the dead bolt. "I'll go out
there and see who it is."

"I'm going with
you."

As
soon as Charlie opened the door, he saw a
track
with
equipment in the back and figured it out. "It's Creepy Critters
Exterminating."

Eve groaned. "We
didn't call them and cancel."

"No, and the Subaru
just pulled up to the curb."

"Damn
it. I hate this. Denise is so sure I can't handle things without her being
around to organize me. Now I've just proved her right!"

Charlie
came back inside and closed the door. Then he gathered Eve into his arms. He'd
promised himself to be careful about doing that, but this was an emergency.

Tilting
her chin with his forefinger, he looked into her eyes. "Listen to me. You
are a genius."

"I am not! Don't you
dare call me that!"

"Eve,
embrace it." He held her close. "You don't have the kind of brain
Denise has, or the kind of brain I have."

"I know. You don't
have to rub it in."

"I'm not. I'd love to
have your brain."

She
wiggled against him. "I thought you wanted my body."

"That,
too. But this is about what you have between your ears. It's exceptional, and
you need to celebrate that, not feel inferior."

She
took a deep breath. "That's not easy. Right now Denise is out there
telling the exterminator that she left the job of canceling to me and I
failed."

"She
probably needs to do that to protect her ego.

She's
only the normal kind of smart, the kind that gets top grades and scholarships.
She's like me. We know how to catalog, how to sort and quantify. You're miles
beyond that. Screw the call to the exterminator. Your mind is too big for that
kind of junk."

She
gazed up at him, her expression soft and yielding. "Charlie, don't take
this wrong."

"What?"