Wicked Sexy

24

Except for the one in my pants, I think.

The intermittently ringing bell abruptly stops, punctuating the old man’s words with welcome silence. He squints up at the dark sky. “Electrical storm comin’ tonight.”

I follow his gaze. I see sapphire sky pricked with the glimmer of stars, but the mountains in the distance are blanketed with thunderclouds. As if on cue, a streak of lightning cuts a jagged white path through a cloud bank.

“Gonna be a big one,” he says, and chuckles. When I glance over at him, he isn’t looking at the sky or the mountains. He’s looking at me. “Just remember to keep yourself grounded so you don’t get electrocuted, son.”

I frown at his back as he turns and disappears, still chuckling, through the patio doors.

Back in my room, I strip and take a long, hot shower. My thoughts are too scattered to focus on any one subject for long, and the attempted distraction is useless anyway. All I can think of is her.

My sweet, vicious, passionate, distant, marvelous, maddening riddle. If she’d let me, I’d spend a lifetime trying to figure her out.

Catching my own thoughts, I groan.

Ridiculous romantic notions like that tell me exactly how much trouble I’m in. If I ever repeat anything remotely similar to Tabby out loud, I’ll have to send out a search-and-rescue team for my manhood.

It’s tempting to relieve the ache in my groin, but my heart is too heavy to bother. So I ignore my erection—the f*****g thing is becoming a cliché—and just let the water pound me.

After ten minutes with my head bent under the spray, some of the tension in my shoulders is gone, but none of the ache in my chest. I figure it’s about as good as it’s going to get, so I turn off the water, dry off and brush my teeth. Sleep is the only thing that’s going to help me now.

If it even comes.

Towel in hand, I push open the bathroom door— And freeze.

“Well,” says Tabby, reclining on my bed with her arms behind her head and her booted ankles crossed, “I must say my timing is excellent.”

Her voice is tranquil, bordering on disinterested. Her expression reveals nothing. The lines of her body are completely relaxed. Only her eyes show anything other than perfect composure. They glitter in the low lamp light, edgy and steely as knives.

After the moment it takes me to overcome my surprise, my voice comes out roughened. “You’re angry.”

She ignores that. Her gaze drifts down my chest, over my abdomen, lingers on my groin. Still with that disinterested tone, she says, “Perhaps you should seek treatment for that. It seems to be a chronic condition.”

I move to cover my erection with the towel, but Tabby says sharply, “Don’t.”

My fingers curl around the towel, bunching it in my fist. I hold still as she inspects me minutely from head to foot.

I deserve this. For her hotel room in DC, for her house in New York, for everything I saw without permission, I deserve this. So I hold still and allow it, watching her face as she looks with cool composure at my naked body. I feel equal parts unsteady, uncomfortable, and fantastically alive.

After a moment she inquires, “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”

A dozen responses come to mind before I finally settle on “I suspect you’re about to tell me.”

Those glittering eyes flash to mine. Her hair falls loose around her shoulders, but no other sign of softness remains. She’s changed back into the black leather armor she wore yesterday in the car. I wonder if she’s hiding a cache of weapons beneath it.

“One night, you said.” She pauses, staring at me with something like rage. “I’ll take it.” I feel the painful beat of my heart, and say quietly, “No.” Her brows shoot up. “No?” she repeats, drawing it out.

“Not like this. Not with this…” I struggle to find the word. “Resentment.”

The fierce look in her eyes softens. She drops her gaze again to my c**k, standing at full attention.

Her lips curve. “I’m not sure your opinion is the one that really matters.” A gust of pent-up breath leaves my chest. “Tabby—” “Come here,” she says, and holds out her hand.

My mouth goes dry. I feel like a teenager again, trembling with nerves on a first date.

“Connor,” she says, softer, still beckoning me with those eyes, that outstretched hand. When I don’t move, she adds, “Please.”

I close my eyes, swallow, take a breath to try to slow my pounding heart. What she’s offering is everything I want, yet a part of me is holding back, still listening to the old man’s warning: Keep yourself grounded.

I’m not grounded. I’m f*****g unmoored. I’m so full of crackling, unstable energy, I feel like I might break the bonds of gravity altogether and rocket off into space.

Ultimately, my feet move me forward. Tabby on my bed is too great a compelling force for them, for any part of me, and so I walk.

When I get to the edge of the bed, Tabby stretches her leg out and stops me with her boot planted flat on my stomach. I halt, taken aback at the change of impetus, her sudden change of mind, but as she lies there staring at me and patiently waiting, it dawns on me that this isn’t a reversal.

It’s a command.

Without looking away from her face, I take her boot in my hands, untie the laces, and slide it off. I drop it to the floor, where it lands with a flat thud that momentarily blocks out the roar of my blood in my ears.

Her knee bent, she sets her bare foot on the bed, and then lifts her other foot to my stomach.