Straddling the Line (9 page)

He could do sex in the wide-open spaces. Hell, given the way she was sucking on his lip, he was pretty sure he could do sex anywhere. Certain parts of his anatomy jumped to agree. Anywhere, as long as it was with her.

He had her top half off when she pushed him away. “We should go.”

“Where?”

She closed her eyes and licked those lips. “Your place,” she said as she grabbed the edge of her shirt and pulled it back down. “Take me to your place.”

Seven

T
he motorcycle seemed to go faster and faster, until the world around her was nothing but a blur. They couldn’t be on the highway anymore. They had to be flying, faster and lower than she’d ever flown before. For a lost second, she felt like the little girl she’d once been, flying on the back of a horse headed to the place where she could be herself.

Except she wasn’t, not anymore. Now, she was a grown woman going home with a grown man. That’s what she wanted right now. To hell with what anyone else thought. She may not have the best idea of who she really was, but Ben was the only man to ever ask—and that’s who she wanted to be with.

She clung to Ben, every part of her front touching every part of his back. The motorcycle hummed between her legs, making it hard to breathe.
Faster,
she thought.
Go faster.

Finally, the blur became streaked with light. Josey took that to mean they were near the city, but she couldn’t make out anything else.

She clung to Ben, trusting that he knew how to ride this machine. This whole thing was perfectly safe. There was absolutely no reason to be panicked about any of this. Least of all the fact that Ben was driving like a bat out of hell so he could take her to bed.

Despite the body-tingling vibrations shaking her to her core, she could feel his heart hammering away underneath his jacket. Yes, she was a little nervous about this. It had been far too long since her last lover. But the feel of her arms around his broad chest and the way his last kiss still burned on her lips was enough to push her past her worries.

To be wanted was a satisfaction in and of itself. Ben wanted her so bad that the world was a blur. He couldn’t wait, and truthfully, neither could she.

The world stopped spinning as he slowed down and made a series of turns. Soon she could even make out her surroundings—large warehouses in an industrial neighborhood. Ben brought the bike to a fast idle when he pulled up alongside a nondescript building. He punched a button, and a steel door rumbled up. He walked the bike inside and pushed two more buttons. The steel door slid down, and moments later the whole floor was lifting them up.

“Where are we?” she asked, finally venturing to unlock her arms from around his waist now that the bike was no longer hurtling in a horizontal direction—although she found the vertical a little disconcerting. Who had an elevator big enough for a motorcycle in their house?

“My place,” he said, unstrapping his helmet. He put the kickstand down and waited, but Josey wasn’t sure she trusted her legs right now. After a second, he slid off without knocking into her. He took her helmet off for her. “Also known as the former headquarters of Crazy Horse Choppers.”

He lived in the old factory? Visions of a place that looked exactly like that stainless-steel office—only with a bed in it—flashed before her eyes. Was there anything even remotely sensual about stainless steel?

The freight elevator—for that’s what it was—lumbered upward. They passed the second floor. A heavy bass beat cut through the gauzy red fabric that covered the elevator shaft.

Ben caught her confusion. “I rent the second floor to a couple of artists. They clean my place twice a month, and I let them pay me in paintings when they can’t make rent.”

“Really?” He was an art patron? Maybe that wasn’t so far off from savior of the school. “Who else is here?”

He stepped closer to her and unzipped her jacket, the edges of his fingers grazing the inner curves of her breasts. Vibrations—different from the mechanical rumbling that had burned between her legs—caused her upper body to tremble. The corners of Ben’s mouth curved up. He’d noticed. “The first floor is the band’s—storage, practice. Been thinking about building a recording studio in there…Billy uses the third and fourth floors to store all his old bikes. And I live on the top floor.”

Two entire floors of emptiness separated him from the rest of the world. And now that her jacket was unzipped, she was just that much closer to naked. In a freight elevator.

He leaned in, one hand on the seat in front of her, the other behind her bottom. He wasn’t touching her, but only by millimeters. Otherwise, he had her most intimate areas surrounded. The tip of his nose brushed against her forehead, then down to her ear. “Did you like the ride?”

“Seemed fast.” Like speed-of-sound, life-flash-before-your-eyes fast.

His lips caressed her neck. “I can do slow, if that’s what you want.” He shifted, and he went from not touching her to touching her—a small difference, but one that sent shock waves through her center. One of his fingers was between her and the leather seat. She gasped when he moved again—the smallest movement possible, but one that hit that secret spot in just the right way. “Very slow,” he murmured, his lips tracing the curve of her jawline.

A bed? Who needed a bed? Josey pushed his jacket aside and dug her fingers into the swath of muscles he called shoulders. Ben exhaled extra hard against her skin and rolled his hand so that he was cupping her. Tightly.

Her body bore down against his hand as he pushed back against her. He rolled his fingers against her jeans, and she had to bite down on something to keep from screaming. His shoulder did the job. Did people get naked in freight elevators? At the rate they were going, would they even make it to naked?

The elevator answered the question for her. It lurched to a stop, breaking all the wonderful tension of the moment and coming way too close to knocking her off the bike—and Ben’s hands.

He caught her around the waist before she fell. “We’re here,” he said with that mischievous smile as he guided her off the bike.

Thank goodness, because between the bike ride and the slow, slow touches, she was so
close
already. Any reservations she might have had about coming home with him were long gone, burned away under the heat of some hard facts. The fact was, she had never physically needed a man so much in her entire life. The fact was, Ben Bolton was more than willing and, she had no doubt, extremely capable. The fact was, she wanted him, and that alone was enough of a reason.

His hand tight around her waist and his body pressed to hers, Ben held her for a second while she checked to see if her legs were up to the task of standing before he let her go and opened the gate. Josey braced herself for the expected onslaught of gray as Ben opened the elevator gate. He wheeled his bike out, which was weird enough. Who parked in their house?

“Hang on just a second,” he said as he rolled off into the darkness. “Let me get the light.”

Seconds later, fluorescent lights flickered on over to her left, and Josey found herself next to a full garage. Bright red tool chests—five of them—formed a wall in back, with work benches loaded with all sorts of power tools. Ben rolled his bike to the center of the open space and parked it.

“You live in a garage?”

He gave her a big smile as he closed the distance between them. Her face flushed as he leaned down into her, his lips grazing her temple. “Not quite,” he said as he reached behind her and punched some buttons.

One by one, rows of lights flickered on down an aisle that was nearly thirty feet wide. Every fifteen or twenty feet, couches and chairs sat grouped around rugs. White modern chairs sat on a huge black shag rug; chocolate-colored leather sofas crowded Persian rugs. She counted three pseudo-living rooms that stretched back for what looked like a half mile. The space was huge, like measured-not-in-square-feet-but-square-miles huge. She craned her neck upward, searching for a ceiling. Eventually, she was able to see the duct work, but it was maybe twenty feet over her head. The light was bright and airy. Open. Free.

“Whoa.” Josey stood in openmouthed shock. This was not what she’d expected. Not even close.

“Come on,” Ben said in her ear, causing her to start. For a moment, she’d been so stunned she’d forgotten he was there. She wanted him—oh, how she wanted him—but the magnitude of this place was something else. “Let me show you around.”

Before she could be disappointed in this pronouncement, he planted his hand firmly around her waist and guided her to the first seating area, the one with white velvet divans and the shag rug. When they got there, two sets of lights flickered on either side of the aisle.

There was more. Much more.

“You’ve seen the garage. Then there’s my drums and the game room. On the other side in the back is the guest room, then the gym and movie room.”

“Oh.” Which was not terribly verbose, true, but sounded a heck of a lot better than saying, “You have your own movie room?” She did a slow turn. They weren’t rooms, per se, but one area was divided from the next by low walls that looked like they were constructed entirely of glass bricks. The glass caught the overhead lights and reflected brightness around the room. The game room had a TV that looked big enough to be a supporting wall—and the movie room had a similarly huge screen. The main difference was the seating—recliners for the movies, low rockers for the games. A third TV—a smaller one—hung over a rack of free weights, in front of the treadmill.

She spun back to find Ben watching her, his eyes blazing. Without another word, he slid her jacket off her, his fingers brushing against the bare skin on her arms the whole way down. He leaned over her to drop the jacket on one of the sofas—and, in the process, brushed his lips over her neck.

“I like to watch whatever I want, whenever I want,” he breathed against her skin. The shiver that ran down her body pushed her into his chest. “Hmm,” he hummed against the pulse that was pounding wildly at the base of her neck. But he didn’t kiss her, darn it.

Instead, he took her hand and led her toward the next area with the Persian rug. When they got there, the lights behind them shut off and the lights around them turned on. “Pool table and bar,” he said, nodding toward the left side as he pushed her down on a leather sofa. His hands stroked her shoulders as he added, “Library and office on the other side.”

Had a house tour ever sounded sexier? His voice was low, almost silky, with just a hint of the roughness that made her vibrate with desire.

The pool table and bar were deep mahogany. The lights caught the collection of crystal stemware, making the room gleam with a warmth that invited her to belly up to the bar. The library had a wall of books and another plush, expensive-looking rug underneath a leather recliner that looked comfortably broken in. The office was more Spartan, with just a carved desk and enough technology to run a small corporation in it.

Ben knelt before her, running his hands down over her thighs. This was some sort of torture—he was touching her, making her ache, making her want him more with each featherlight caress—but none of this was him throwing her down and ravishing her. The weight between her legs was painful.

Instead of reaching up and addressing that weight directly, he tugged her boots off her feet. “You seem stunned.”

“It’s stunning.” She’d been in fancy New York apartments with their custom interior decorating jobs and opulent wealth. Heck, her grandparents’ apartment hadn’t been anything shabby. The stunning thing wasn’t so much the opulence—it was that it was
Ben’s
opulence.

In New York, this sort of apartment would run the superrich upward of twenty million dollars. Even though they weren’t in New York, it still had to have set Ben back at least a couple million. Obviously, his own margins were not nearly so sharp or skinny.
Obviously.

“I’m glad you like it.” He ran his fingers over the now-exposed soles of her feet. What should have flat-out tickled sent shivers of pleasure racing over her. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her thigh through her jeans. The shudder was harder this time, her body dying to respond to his. But he stopped and pulled her to her feet. She all but sank into the rug.

“Just a few more.”

More?

Ben led her to the next living room. This one had an abstract rug and furniture that looked well-loved—like he actually used these. As they neared, the lights behind them flickered off and the next set came on.

“Wow,” Josey said. A long table was on her left, with seating for twelve. For the first time, she noticed what was on the wall behind the table. A painting that had to be at least twenty feet long and twelve feet high took up the whole wall. An abstract riot of red ran circles around an off-center yellow sun. “Was that one month’s rent?”

“
That
I bought outright.” Ben’s arms circled her waist. “The smaller pieces are rent.” He grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and this time, she didn’t stop him.
Don’t stop,
she thought. House tour, seduction—it was all one and the same. “The kitchen is next to it, and on the other side is my closet.”

She would have felt self-conscious at this combination undressing and tour, but she remembered the way he’d kissed her that first time at the school—after grilling her about salaries and students. Always processing the facts, she thought as he hooked his hands into her waistband and undid the button on her jeans.

He slid his hands down over her panties as he pulled her jeans free. Heat radiated from his palms against her bare legs. “The bathroom is behind the kitchen. The bedroom is on the other side.” He followed the jeans down, kissing between her breasts and then down her belly.

Normally, she’d be looking for the bedroom, because they’d need a bed. But in this place? It was no understatement to say that he literally had fifty different places that would do just fine.

She stepped free of the pants. Thank heavens she’d had the foresight to wear the matching bra and panties, and that the matching was of a black lace sort. Black lace seemed appropriate to her surroundings.

Ben stood, leaving a trail of heat up her backside as his chest warmed her front. “Obviously beautiful,” he said, and she heard the way his voice shook. Then he kissed her as he pulled her hips against his.

From a primal part of her brain, she crowed in victory. He could act all cool and collected, stripping her nearly bare while he showed off the industrial palace he called home, but no man could emerge unscathed from the full impact of black lace.