Big Bad Wolf (13 page)

“Which leg cramped up?” he asked, ignoring her demand.
“You were squirming so much I couldn’t see for sure.”

“I’m feeling better now,” she lied, then gasped aloud when he calmly tested one thigh by putting pressure
on it
with his knee.
It was a lucky guess.
“You bastard!”

“You won’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to!” she yelled.

“Too bad.”
He got up on one hand, pulling the scrunched up towel across her body.
“There, almost decent.
Let me see you move your leg.”

Did he know what he looked like from her position?
Jaymee stared at him as she lay on her bed, naked except for a wet towel on top of her body.
He was half-on and half-off her, the front of his shirt and pants wet.
A very warm hand lay on her injured thigh.
A long moment passed.

“Don’t look at me like that, darling,” he drawled.
“Move your leg, Jaymee.”

She tried, and bit down on her lip at the immediate spasm that followed.
He nodded, his hand pressing down on the knot.

“A pulled muscle.
I’ll take care of it.”

Looking around, he saw the bottle of body lotion on her bedside table, and leaned across her to get it.
Mesmerized, Jaymee watched him pour an indecent amount into those beautiful hands.
She swallowed hard as those hands rubbed together.

“You aren’t going to do it,” she announced, panicking.

“It isn’t going to hurt, babe,” Nick told her, and two slick hands were kneading down on her thigh, his thumbs pressing and massaging the sore spot.

She cried out something incoherent.
Did he say it wouldn’t hurt?
So why did her body feel like one giant cramp?

“Relax, or I’ll have to massage your whole body.”

He was teasing her, but the thought of those hands doing similar things to the rest of her made her insides flip somersaults.
She eyed him with the keen knowledge of a cornered prey.
He had her trapped and the glint in his eye told her he was very aware of it.
Her mind worked feverishly, trying to see a way out.
Even if her leg had allowed it, she couldn’t jump up and run off with just a towel clutched to her front.
She couldn’t see herself screaming in maidenly despair; she wouldn’t know how.
She could just quietly lie there, like an animal playing dead, pretending his fingers weren’t sliding up and down her thigh.
She could, if her blood wasn’t boiling over from the suggestive up and down motion.
His laughter brought her attention back to him.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“You.
You’re so transparent, Jaymee darling.
Right now you’re busy trying to find a safe subject to talk about, as you always do when you panic.”

Was she so easy to read?
Annoyance replaced embarrassment as she pulled the towel a little higher, then realized only gave him more view of her thighs.
Keep talking, she thought.
“What’s wrong with that?”

“OK, let’s do it your way.
We won’t talk about my hands on your thigh.
Let’s talk about your breasts.”

Jaymee squeezed her eyes tightly shut, refusing to look any longer into those laughing wolf eyes.
That made things worse, since now his roving fingers were all she could feel.

Without her sight, she caught the change in the tone of his voice.
“You
have
beautiful large nipples.
Rosy pink, like seashells.
I want to....” Jaymee started to tremble and covered her ears with her hands, trying to
keep the sex
voice out.
She didn’t want to see.
She didn’t want to hear.
He wasn’t going to get to her.
His muffled voice came through her cupped hands.
“Al
l
right, we’ll change the subject.”

His hands paused and lifted from her body.
Jaymee sighed with relief.
Maybe he was done.
Maybe...she shrieked as a hot, wet tongue traveled up where the hand was a moment ago.
Her eyes flew open, her hands dropped from her ears, and she scooted high up her bed to escape.
The hot, wet tongue followed, and the world suddenly exploded into shadows and sound.
She kicked at him with her good leg, giving him the opening he wanted, and she found herself under siege as a slow invasion began.

She fought.
How she fought.
She tried to buck him off and found herself arching into his deepening kiss.
She tried to push off with her one free leg and a strong hand held her down, easily gaining more access.
The siege was gaining higher ground.
She took tufts of his hair in her hands, but just as she was about to yank hard, he found her vulnerable bud.
His tongue slid over it, going in lazy circles.

Jaymee forgot to breathe.
She forgot about her hands holding his dark hair like reins.
An incoming tide of desire overwhelmed everything else.
There was, simply, no escape from his tongue.
He kissed her intimately, sexually, giving her the same attention she had earlier envied her computer, seeking to get some answers from her as she arched toward helpless surrender.

The long drawn-out kiss from his magical tongue left her gasping his name now.
She stood from some unknown height and was unwilling to make that jump.
Mindlessly, she undulated against his mouth, desperately trying to tell him to stop.
To hurry.

But Nick wasn’t in a hurry.
He had all he wanted right there, a feast for his senses.
All he could think of was the sweet taste of Jaymee Barrows and he wanted to keep on feasting.
He felt her uncertainty, her fear of losing control, and he wanted to show her there was nothing to be afraid of.
So he took her slowly, pulling her nearer to the edge without pushing her, savoring her with careful ardor.
He finally tasted her increasing need, her urgent hands pulling his hair.
She was ready.

Jaymee’s head moved from side to side as she edged closer and closer.
She was in a dark, sensuous place, with only the feel of that tantalizing tongue guiding her intense longing for release.
Each stroke, each lave, was pure dark magic, until...

His fingers.
She’d forgotten about those long, elegant fingers.

And suddenly, it was his mouth and fingers.
She whimpered when she felt them touching her, opening her.
His mouth caught her throbbing desire and his fingers plunged in deep, and Jaymee fell down that cliff of unbearable pleasure, her body clenching and convulsing in a drenching climax, her hands playing with his hair.

She lay helpless, still climaxing, when he lifted his head and kissed his way up her body.
With the towel long gone, his lips lingered softly against her belly, her breast, her neck, until he reached her mouth.
He kissed her with the hungry need of a man who wanted a woman, a sexual twining of his tongue with hers, slanting his head one way, then another.
She could taste herself on his lips, and she shivered when she felt him hard through his pants.

“Look at me.”
His voice was ragged, husky.
Jaymee’s breath caught at the piercing need in his eyes, blue outlines around darkened irises.
“I want to take you to bed.
I want to make you scream under me, holding me, while I’m inside you.
I can have you now, but I won’t, because I don’t want you making excuses about what happened.
I meant it when I told you I’ll give you time to get used to me, and I intend to keep my word.” He smiled that dazzling, crooked smile of his.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t do it this way every night to pursue my case.
I kinda like the idea.”

Her cheeks tinted prettily.
“Is that what you do?” she challenged softly, her heart rate almost back to normal.
“Pleasure your women until they give in?”

That sexy smile widened even more.
“Whatever it takes.
Wait till tomorrow.”
He laughed at the look on her face, then shook his head ruefully.
“I don’t think it’ll be good for my health in the long run, though.
I’ll have a perpetual cramp
myself
.”

Jaymee couldn’t help smiling back, a naughty curl of her lips.
“I could knead and massage it away.”

Nick groaned, laying his forehead against hers.
“Tease.”

She licked her lips.
“Nicholas, I’m afraid.”

“Let me have you, Jaymee.
Let me take you to all those places you’re so afraid of.”
He kissed her again, and added, “Let me be your lover.”

Jaymee sighed.
How on earth had she thought she could resist this man?
“For how long?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“For as long as I’m around.
I’m being honest, Jaymee.
I can’t promise you more.”

How could she argue against a man who was promising her honesty?
“I....”

“Shhh.
You aren’t required to answer me tonight.
You’re tired and need to sleep.”
She made a sound of protest when his weight left her body.
“Sit up a minute, sweetheart.”

She allowed herself to be pulled up to a sitting position.
She felt shy about her nakedness and self-consciously pushed tangled curls away from her face, gathering the heavy mass of damp hair in one of her hands.
He pulled her hand away.

“No, don’t.
You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to see your hair loose like this.”
He splayed his fingers into the curls, arranging them around her bare shoulders.
“Where’s your brush?”

“I can’t use a brush with hair like this.
I use a hair pick.”
She pointed to the dressing table, and he went to retrieve it.

“This one?”
He sat back down beside her and then did something no man had ever done to her before.
He combed her hair.
Jaymee closed her eyes, enjoying the sensuous pull of the comb as he worked on her tangles, running through it repeatedly until her scalp could have moaned in pleasure.
She could...get used to this kind of evening.
“You have beautiful hair, Jaymee.”

“Bothersome,” she mumbled, too relaxed to really want to argue.
“Unmanageable.”

“Beautiful,” he told her again, and gently pushed her back against the pillows.
“Gypsy hair.
Passionate, sexy, arousing.”

Jaymee giggled sleepily.
“Passionate hair.
Arousing hair.
A pig with gypsy hair.”

“Pig with what?”

She stretched with artless grace, then yawned behind a hand.
“As opposed to Red Riding Hood,” she explained.

She wasn’t making sense at all, but she was too sexy to sit around just for a conversation.
Not when other parts of his body wanted to communicate in other, more
satisfying, ways.

“Go to sleep, little pig.
I’ll let myself out,” Nick said, thinking he was going to regret this decision for the rest of the night.

“Hmmm.
Are you leaving me?”

“I’d better,” he replied, wryly looking down at his damp pants.
If he stayed, he would definitely not keep his word.

“Yes, Dad will be home soon...”

He kissed her eyelids and they fluttered shut obediently.
“Sleep,” he ordered.

She smiled, her eyes closed, as she drifted off.

“Jaymee?”

“Hmmm?”

“Where do you go after work?
Before you come home?”

She stretched and sighed with pleasure when he tucked the covers over her.
“Working,” she told him.

“You’ve another job?”
Nick kept his voice light, but anger reared at the thought she had to work so hard.
For what?
He wanted to know the whole story.
Was she really in such debt?

She must have read his mind, because she answered him so softly he had to dip his head close to her face.
“For my future,” she said, and fell into a deep slumber, her body satiated for the first time in eight years.

*

A smart Red Riding Hood would take a different route to avoid the Big Bad Wolf, and a smarter little pig would barricade herself inside her house of stone and not come out till the wolf was gone.
However, both Red and the pig didn’t have a contract to keep, a job to do, and most of all, they didn’t dream of being naked with the Big Bad Wolf.