The Other Brooks Boy (Texas Wildfire Series) (8 page)

He chuckled.
"I was thinking the same thing about you."

She smiled at
him. "And I'd forgotten what a great dancer you are. Smooth as silk,"
she purred.

"Okay, you
don't have to butter me up to lift my mood," he said, laughing.

Her grin turned
wry. "It's not buttering up if it's true."

"So you
won't think I'm buttering you up if I tell you that you are, without a doubt,
the most gorgeous forty-year-old woman in this place tonight?"

Her expression
lost some of its playfulness, turned more serious. "I have to admit, I'd
suspect that to be more in the buttering up category than true category,"
she said.

"It's true,
darlin'. It's a repeat of the fundraiser where I stood around and fielded
questions about you all night. Every man in this place has his eye on you
tonight," he said, leaning close to her ear so he wouldn't have to shout
it over the music.

She shook her
head dismissively and actually rolled her eyes, not even bothering to argue
with him. "Well, I've been asked about you too, so there."

He brightened.
"Really?"

"Oh, yeah.
They all think you're hot," she said, and he heard a note of mild
irritation in her voice.

"And that
bothers you?" he asked, fighting a touch of pride over all that.

"Yes, it
does. They're acting like a bunch of heifers who've never seen a bull."

He laughed right
out loud at that, enjoying that they all thought him hot, that she compared him
to a bull, and that she might be feeling a tad possessive, just like he was.
She sent him a dark look, but he kept right on laughing.

"Oh, I see
how it is," she said. "Get a herd of heifers hot on your tail and
your mood suddenly becomes elated."

"Show me a
man who wouldn't be elated with that." He swung her out for a turn,
spinning her around and under his arm, then drew her back into his arms,
pulling her even closer than before. She raised an eyebrow at him, but never
missed a step, and actually pressed herself up against him until he could feel
every lush curve of her against his chest and belly.

"All right.
You enjoy that elation. It's well deserved," she said. "Clearly,
there are not too many of our classmates who devote the amount of time and
effort to the gym that you do."

"Not
everyone has a masochistic streak like I do."

"Maybe not.
But it's serving you well. Women like a
hard man
," she whispered right
in his ear. She might as well have grabbed him by the
nads
.
At least, that's where he felt it.

The music
changed, the deejay offering up some rock for a different type of dancing. She
leaned back in his arms and gave him a dare with her eyes. "You up for
this?" she asked, a suggestive grin toying with her mouth.

"Darlin',
I'm up for anything," he said, as the music grew in intensity, the base
booming and reverberating in his chest.

The floor filled
up with dancers in that strange phenomenon that happened in Texas honky
tonks
when the country band was on break and the deejay
decided to up the energy with a rock song or two. It never failed to bring them
all out of their chairs for some reason.

Cara twirled
away from his embrace and began to shake her hips to the beat, her gaze steady
on his. Greg moved, too, in time to the music, but really was there to keep a
place warm on the floor as he watched her do her thing, her dancer's body using
a rhythm and agility no one else in the place could mimic, much less match. And
it wouldn't have mattered if they had. His eyes were on her, and her alone.

That flirty
little skirt teased him again and again as she moved with the beat, and the way
she shook her hips made him want to grab two handfuls of tight ass and grind
himself against her. She might have been reading his thoughts, he decided, as
she turned her back to him and looked back over her shoulder to send him the
most smoking hot come hither look he'd ever received, then slipped her spine,
arms in the air and bounced her ass in invitation. He was on it in exactly two
beats, taking her hips in his hands and moving in time behind her. Up close.
Brushing, bumping, dirty dancing at its best.

Cara teased him
mercilessly, moving against him, then turning away, dancing barely out of
reach. Her gaze found his then, and she held it captive as she moved back in
closer, her hips mesmerizing him with suggestive movements he wanted to feel
rather than see. He reached for her hand and drew her back, turning her again
so that he danced right up against her backside, and she took it a step further
by placing his hands on the swells of her hips, then inching them over on the
flat of her belly so he might feel it as she made tiny little erotic circles
with her hips. Her head fell back against his shoulder, the scent of her hair
rising up to inflame him even more. Her back arched, and she stretched, her
bottom pressing hard into his groin, and Greg about lost his grip on reality.
This was like a page out of his fantasy journal, and it was happening in a
public venue with half his high school classmates watching. Heaven and Hell
right there in his lap. The thought sobered him a little, and he put some
distance between them and sent her a warning look. She had to know what she was
doing to him, had to feel his arousal. She cocked an eyebrow at him as if to
say,
"What are you gonna do about it?"

He'd been
tempted by women before, but never to the point of wanting to find some dark
corner where they could get up against the wall, knock off a quickie, skirts
bunched up around her waist, his pants open and sagging at his hips. He was
about to that point, and she must have been reading his mind, her expression
changing, challenge losing its edge to something less confident.

The music died abruptly
and the lead singer of the band took the mike to announce their next set. They
both stopped dancing, like everyone else, but stood there looking at one
another with an avalanche of unspoken communication taking place between them.
Breathless desire and temptation warred with uncertainty and doubt. Greg
thought he might have even seen a glimmer of fear in her eyes.

And that did him
in.

He turned and
left her on the dance floor, walking straight to the exit and out into the cool
of the evening. He needed some cooling off, he thought as gravel crunched
beneath his boots. He walked to his bike and sat down, letting the dark, the
quiet and the breeze wick the heat from his body and mind.  God, she had
him worked into a lather.

He heard her
approach behind him, but didn't turn, not ready to face her after what he'd
seen in her eyes. He could hardly stand the thought of provoking fear in her,
and it mirrored so perfectly what he was feeling, that mind-numbing
apprehension that they would screw things up so badly they could never recover
enough to be friends or family again. It was an enormous gamble.

"Are you
okay?" she asked softly, standing far enough away to let him know she
recognized the danger in him.

"No, Cara.
I haven't been okay in about two weeks," he said, done with dancing in all
its forms. Screw it.

She didn't say
anything, but stood there silently.

He didn't turn
to look at her, knowing it would mess him up, knowing full well there was worry
and fear and uncertainty clouding those beautiful eyes. He couldn't take it
right now. "How about you, Cara? Are
you
okay?" he asked, his
voice coming out strained, edgy.

There was a
prolonged space of time that hung in the balance before she answered, Greg's
gut counting the seconds while he waited.

He saw out of
the corner of his vision as her shoulders sagged in a defeated gesture.

"No. I'm
not all right either," she said in a shaky and tremulous voice that
drained some of his lifeblood away. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold
her. Instead, he pushed to his feet and moved to plant his elbows on the bed
edge of a pickup truck parked next to his bike. He shoved his hands into his
hair and wondered how things had gotten so screwed up.

He turned around
to face her finally. "What do we do about it then? How the hell are we
going to fix this, Cara?"

She moved
closer, wanting to comfort him, he could tell, but afraid to touch him, lest
she make things worse. "I'm not sure this can be fixed, Greg."

That was not a
comforting thought. "So, I've screwed things up between us beyond repair?
Is that what you're telling me?"

She came closer,
her hand reaching out to touch his and she squeezed it tightly. "Not at
all. I know we've changed, and it scares me to think about where we might be
going. But I don't think we'll ever be able to move on to whatever the next
phase is until we explore what's going on between us now."

He looked her in
the eye, measuring what he read there against her words.  "And what
do you think is going on between us, Caroline?" He watched her carefully,
not wanting to miss one clue to what she was feeling.

She squared her
chin bravely and met his gaze without a shred of fear remaining. "Pure,
unadulterated sexual attraction, Gregory."

He looked at her
standing there, so beautiful and sexy and brave.

"Oh,
darlin' ... you got that right," he said. He leaned his back against the
side of the pickup, reached for her other hand and pulled her into the vee
between his legs. "And what do you think we should do about that?" he
asked, rubbing lightly on the backs of both her hands with his thumbs.

She smiled a
half-smile at him, desire smoldering in her eyes. "Surely you can figure
it out. I've always heard you were an ingenious, if not downright kinky
man."

He pulled her fully
against him, her hips nestling into his groin, and he held her with one arm
around her waist while his other hand feathered through the hair falling around
her neck. He buried his face there and kissed the skin that smelled so damned
good he wanted to consume her, taking small bites so as to savor and make it
last. "Ingenious and kinky, huh?," he murmured against her neck. He
reached up to suck on her earlobe, making her hands climb his chest and snake
around his neck in a very satisfying way. She moaned, as if he needed more
incentive. "I'd probably call it ready," he said, then shoved his
hands into her hair and directed her mouth to meet his.

They were like
dry, underbrush kindling in a Texas wildfire, igniting immediately as their
mouths met in hot, wet, deep and demanding kisses. She tasted like the rum
she'd been drinking and he suckled at her lips, wanting more. She pressed into
his hips like she wanted to straddle him. He couldn't think of anything he'd
like better at the moment. "Cara," he breathed against her ear.
"I want you so badly." He kissed her again, full of want and unmet
need and urgency.

The door opened
across the gravel parking lot, music spilling loudly from within, and Cara
pulled away from him, stepping back once. But their gazes held steady, one on
the other, and there was no turning back now. They both knew it.

"Come on.
Let's go," he said, and got on the bike. She climbed on behind him and
wrapped her arms around his waist. He drove too fast, but she'd pulled the tail
of his shirt free of his jeans, and her hands had found their way beneath, and
she was doing some serious damage to his self-control at the moment. She laid
her fingers in the spaces between his ribs, squeezing and massaging, then
tested his response when she raked her fingernails gently across his nipples
and down over the muscles of his abdomen. She slipped a hand into his
waistband, and he sucked his stomach in hard to aid her, and she brushed the
tip of his erect cock with those searching fingers before he grabbed her hand
to stop her.

"Girl, you
are making this ride a good bit more dangerous," he growled over his
shoulder when they stopped at a red light.

She stretched up
to steal a kiss from his mouth. "Not scared," she said, flattening
her palm against the skin of his belly and fingering the hair that grew there.
 "Hurry, Greg," she said against his ear. That was the final
straw. He looked around quickly and ran the red light.

They pulled into
his garage, and the door closed behind them, then Greg killed the engine. Cara
hardly noticed. There remained a buzz of vibration in her entire body as she
got off the bike and waited for him to do the same. To her surprise, music
played from speakers in the ceiling, somebody was moaning the blues to a
grinding beat, but it only added to the thrumming beat of her pulse.

Greg pushed the
kick stand down and turned to look at her. It sent something straight down to
her middle, that look he gave her, and she wondered if he was ever going to
actually get off that bike and take her inside and do what she wanted him to do
so badly.

Instead, he
reached for her waist and lifted her back up on the bike facing him, perfectly
astraddle his lap. His bulging lap, to be exact. And that very firm part of him
met the very neediest part of her so perfectly that she actually groaned.
 She hooked her arms over his shoulders and leaned her head back, closed
her eyes and relished the contact. It was so good.

He pulled her
more firmly against his erection, and it was even better, then he began to
release the buttons at the front of her dress. His lips followed, covering
every inch of skin he exposed with warm kisses. Cara wrapped her arms around
his head, her fingers delving into his wavy hair as his mouth melted her bones.

He had her
unbuttoned to the waist in seconds, then pushed the edges of her dress back and
ran his palms across her chest and breasts. It was the only part of her body
about which she lacked confidence, her bust, and she wished for more as she
unclasped the front closure of her bra. He brushed her hands aside, his gaze
finding hers for a moment, then moving on to see what his hands might uncover
when he pushed the lacy bra away from her breasts.

"Cara, you
are beautiful," he whispered, his words nearly reverent, his hands
touching her gently, exploring and learning her shape.

And she felt
beautiful as he leaned her back across the tank of that huge bike and placed
his mouth on her skin, her breasts. She arched her back, his kisses making her
breathless and needy. She wanted to feel his skin pressed against hers as his
mouth continued to build a fire in her with luxurious kisses all over her chest
and breasts and neck. His mouth was so hot, and he used it with a knowledge of
how to please a woman, she recognized.

"Greg ...
take your shirt off. I want to touch you," she said.

He kissed her
mouth quickly, dispensed with his shirt and threw it aside, then pulled both
her boots off and did the same with them. He was magnificently gorgeous and
sexy, sitting there astride that bike like it was some beast he'd mastered, his
chest so beautifully sculpted with muscle, his abdomen flat and lean. He placed
a hand on each of her shoulders and ran them firmly all the way down her body
to her hips, then he pulled her against his hips again and ground them together
so firmly she felt herself on the verge of coming. It was so erotic to be
stretched out over that Harley, Greg's eyes and hands and lips all over her,
the groaning blues playing in the background like a musical score to what they
were doing, until Cara knew she'd need very little to push her right over the
top to completion.

She sat up and
put her hands on his chest, feeling his strength, his labored breathing, then
kissed him. Their tongues met one another in an extravagant exchange that left
them both breathing hard. Greg finished unbuttoning Cara's dress and pushed it
completely off her shoulders, then gently laid her across the front of the bike
again and nearly blistered her with a drugging perusal of desire that covered
her from the top of her head down. It did amazing things to her to see the
desire in his eyes. Desire for her.

His fingers
toyed with the lacy edge of her panties, slipping inside to smooth over the skin
of her stomach beneath. "I've been fantasizing about this scrap of lace
all evening. Every time that dress fluttered up near your ass I was riveted,
hoping to get a glimpse," he said.

"Was it
worth the wait?"

"You're
damn right, it was," he answered, then kissed her stomach, making it go
all hollow. She shuddered with need.

His fingers
moved between her thighs and slipped under the lacy edge to explore, and Cara
began to tremble, her need so strong now. Deeper, more certain now, his
caresses made her moan, and Cara pushed herself hard against his hand.

"Greg,"
she heard herself call his name, but was beyond any control of what she might
say next. She wasn't too proud to beg at this stage. "Please," she
whispered.

He fished a condom
out of his front jeans pocket and ripped the packet open with his teeth, then
rolled it on efficiently. Cara tried not to think of the fact that he had a
condom in his pocket and what it might mean as he removed her panties. And then
he entered her, slowly, though she could tell it cost him to move so
painstakingly. It was like she'd been waiting for him forever, she thought,
shuddering as she felt herself stretch to accommodate his length, rejoicing in
the feel of him.

The look on his
face was something to behold, a mix of extreme pleasure and driving need. He
leaned forward, bracing his hands on the handle bars and began to move his
hips, sending pleasure singing through her body. She wrapped her legs around
his waist and pulled him down for a kiss that sent her to a new precipice, and
she felt herself hanging there, right on the cusp of fulfillment.

He broke the
kiss, perhaps sensing she was close. "Cara, open your eyes and look at me,
" he said, using his powerful legs to drive into her body again and again.

She did, and she
exploded into a million shards of pleasure. It wracked her body over and over
with sensation so intense she cried out and clung to his hips like a lifeline.
It lasted for an eternity, so strong and overwhelming she couldn't imagine
anything better.

He followed her
immediately, driving into her with movements that rocked the bike, forcing her
to reach up and grab the handle bars as well to maintain balance, and his
breath left his chest in a sighing exhalation of goodness when he came. She
knew exactly how he felt.

His pace slowed
then stopped, and he watched her carefully, caressing her with such tenderness,
she felt tears gathering in her eyes and a knot sting in her throat as the
pleasure ebbed some.

"Oh,
darlin' ... I think we'd both been needing that for a while," he said, and
still he touched her gently with the backs of his fingers down the length of
her sternum, like a feather on the underside of her breast.

She closed her
eyes and simply concentrated on breathing, feeling like she'd run a marathon
... and won. "Oh, my ... yes," she said listlessly.

He leaned over
to kiss her tenderly, then found her gaze and held it, maybe even noting the
welling of tears. "Are you okay?"

She smiled
softly at him. "I'm very well, indeed."

"You can't
be comfortable laying across that gas tank," he suggested. "Wrap your
legs around my waist and hold on," he said.

She quickly
reached for his neck, laughing, but found it highly unlikely they were going to
make it far in their current condition. "Greg, you're going to slip,"
she said as he got off the bike and started toward the door with her clinging
to him like a vine.

"You sure
about that?" he asked, flexing his hips and assuring her he had the
situation under control.

She found his
gaze, her lips curling into a surprised smile. "Maybe not," she said.

He opened the
door and carried her into the house. "My jeans, however, might not make
it. They're about to hit the floor," he said, chuckling at the thought.

She laughed,
too, and reached for a sagging belt loop, catching it with one hand before the
jeans fell around his thighs, her other arm looped around his neck securely. He
walked all the way through the house and into his bedroom, then sat down on the
edge of the bed and began to remove his boots, all with Cara still firmly
impaled.

"You know,
I wouldn't have believed this was possible if I hadn't experienced it
first-hand. More especially from a forty-year-old man," she said proudly.

He finally
managed to wrangle himself free of the boots, then stood again and let his
jeans hit the floor with a jangle of pocket change. He stepped free of them and
sat back down on the edge of the bed, then kissed her soundly.  It was the
kind of kiss she wanted to last all night, with deep and lavish parts, soft
gentle nibbles along her lip line, and pauses where their lips barely touched
while his hands shaped and caressed her breasts.

Though he'd
never fully lost his erection, she felt him swell inside her, growing stronger,
thicker, and she felt her own excitement building with it.

"Oh, damn,
Cara ... I may never get enough of you, babe," he said, passion deepening
his voice once again.

This was a
surprise to her, this insatiable appetite he had. It wasn't something she'd
experienced in a lover. She did think, however, as he began a completely new
siege of her body, that it was something she could grow to love.

They made love
again, less hurried now, taking time to learn the feel of one another and what
brought a sigh to him, a catch in her breath. And Cara found him a most
considerate and responsive lover, who took cues from those catchy breaths,
managing to bring her to multiple releases in one night, something she wasn't
certain had ever happened for her.

Finally spent,
they lay on their sides facing one another, legs entangled. "Happy
birthday," she whispered.

He smiled the
smile of a fully satisfied man. "Happy birthday to you, too, Sunshine.
That was one helluva birthday present. You'll have a hard time topping that
next year."

She kissed him
and pressed her face in closer to his chest and hoped on her best birthday wish
that things would be like they were now this time next year.

***

Somewhere
distant a phone rang, and Greg was vaguely aware that it was his. He couldn't account
for the muffled sound of it, nor could he quite bring himself to care enough to
let go of the naked woman in his arms in order to answer it. Finally, it
stopped ringing, and he pressed his nose a little closer to the skin that
smelled like heaven, and he relaxed again, fully intending to go back to sleep.

The phone began
to ring again. Persistent soul. Damn it.

Cara stirred
beside him. "Greg ... is that your phone?"

"I think
so. But I don't know where it is," he mumbled.

"Maybe
you'd better find it." She rose up to one elbow and looked around the
room. "Is it in the pocket of your jeans?"

"Probably."

She scrambled
out of his arms, which made him groan at the loss, then found his phone and
handed it to him. Left up to him, he'd have simply forgotten the phone and
dragged her back to bed. But she seemed to expect him to answer the fool thing.

"Hello?"
he answered, none too politely.

"Uncle
Greg?" Maddie's worried little voice asked on the other end.

Instant
wakefulness, better than caffeine, it was. "Yeah."

"It's me
... Maddie."

"Hey,
Mad," he said, exchanging a guilty look with Cara. "What's up,
sweetheart?"

"I'm
worried about Mom. I've called her like four times this morning and can't get
her."

"Really?"
he asked, buying time. "Maybe her phone is dead," he said, wincing at
the lie.

Cara grimaced,
too, and he could almost see the mommy guilt grabbing her by the throat.

"I don't
know. I can't get her on the home phone either. I'm getting worried,"
Maddie said, and he could plainly hear that in her voice.

"Hey,
listen, sweetheart ... I'm sure she's fine. She probably went for a run or
something and left her phone at home."

"That
doesn't sound like Mom at all, Uncle Greg," Maddie said, and he knew she
was right, but damn. He was scrambling here and feeling like a complete douche
for lying to his niece. And then there was Cara, who was practically curling up
into a ball on the bed because she was feeling so guilty. Not a great start to
the day.

"Okay,
Maddie. Don't worry. She was fine when I saw her last. You know we had our
class reunion last night, right?"

"Oh, yeah.
I'd forgotten about that. So she was with you then?"

"Well,
yeah. We went together."

"And you
took her home?"

This was getting
harder and harder. "Yeah. Sure did." He hadn't felt this red-handed guilty
in years.

"Okay,"
came the small, still worried voice from all the way in New York.

"Hey,
sweetheart  ... chill. I'll see if I can't rouse her. No worries,
Maddie."

"Thanks,
Uncle Greg. And tell her to call me right away. She is so grounded," she
said, no small amount of irritation in her tone.