turn on the news, someone else is being shot or stabbed. Where there used to be sitcoms on, now it’s all about the crime shows. Death is all around us.”
Beyond her control, her tone went morose on the last words. Somehow that pulled his smile back to the surface. “So is life.”
“Yeah, well, I suggest you get to life.” She pushed to her feet, grinding her crotch against his shaft as she went and feeling a resulting burst of wetness in her pussy. “Off with the jeans.”
“Promise you won’t laugh at my boxers?”
Yep. She knew he was a boxer man. He had his gentle moments, but more so an attitude far too rugged to constrain with briefs. It also should have been too much for him to care if she laughed over his underwear. “Why would I laugh?”
Chris slid to his feet. With a hesitant glance her way, he unfastened his jeans and pushed them down his thighs. Before she’d only been able to see a strip of navy waistband above the rise of his jeans. Now she saw the rest of his boxers were white with a navy cat pattern and a tent pushing out the front of them.
He grinned in a smug way that said his hesitation had been for show alone. “I thought you might be missing Hot Stud.”
Claire’s smile was automatic. There he went mixing up her feelings again. Her sex clenched with the desire to wrap around the object responsible for that tent even as gratefulness for his wearing the silly cat boxers to make her feel more at home warmed her through. “Is there anything my sister didn’t tell you?”
“I’d say she pretty much covered it all”—wicked anticipation sizzled in his eyes—“including what a hellcat you are in bed.”
Way to go, Erin.
No, really, way to go, Erin! She was about to end her sexual dry spell and, for the first time since waking in an unfamiliar bed this morning, she felt nothing but elation. Well, nothing but elation and a major case of lust.
Chris had helped himself to her underwear when he’d grabbed hold of it and jerked it up inside her pussy, so she helped herself right back. If she happened to get a fistful of cock in the meantime, hey, who could blame a girl?
She gave his erection a testing squeeze before gliding her fingers the length of it. His sex thrummed and her own responded in kind. “Will you really sleep with me once we’re both naked?”
“I will,” he vowed in a thick, smoky voice, and then glanced toward the bedroom door. “Out there.”
She frowned as she followed his gaze. “Out where?”
“On the deck.”
4
With the immediate way Claire’s expression went from sultry to sickened, Chris felt like he’d delivered her a death sentence. Her fingers uncurled from his shaft and she took a step back, eyes narrowed. “I should have known this was a trick.”
Lamenting the loss of her touch, he moved to the bedroom door. “At least come in here and take a look.” She hesitated, so he added a pleading, “For me.”
She looked shocked for about two seconds and then let out a dry laugh. “Erin really did tell you everything.”
Her sister had included in Claire’s file what a pushover she was when it came to begging, particularly if Erin was part of the equation. He hadn’t intended to use that knowledge. But then, he also hadn’t intended to use her desire to sleep with him and he’d since changed his mind on that note, as well.
She stood her ground the better part of a minute before her glare let up. “Fine. I’ll take a look, but that’s as far as I’m going.”
Claire came to the doorway. She stalled when she reached him to send a nervous look at his tented boxers. “If you’re thinking of skewering me as I pass by, then moving me out on the deck when I’m too stupid with lust to realize it, forget about it. I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
Chris brought a camouflaging hand over his cock. “No skewering, I swear.”
With a nod, she continued past him. He’d been doing his best to ignore the fact that she hadn’t pulled the crotch of the boy panties from her sex. He didn’t have as much luck ignoring the hot way the coral—as she called it—cotton rode up between her butt cheeks. His dick jerked against his palm and, for the little bit of time it took for her to reach the bed and sit down, he had second thoughts about the whole skewering thing.
Ordering his head out of his ass and the blood back to his brain, he slipped between the bed and the two-person table-and-chair set to draw the floor-to-ceiling blinds. Past a sliding glass door, numerous trees were visible. None were close enough to the cabin to shade it. Sunlight streamed down from the deck’s wood-framed screen roof, shimmering in the water that ran through a small, decorative fountain shrouded with dogwood seedlings and baking the dark oak floorboards.
Moving back around the table and chairs, he came to a stop in front of the sliding door. “As you can see, the deck’s screened in with trees surrounding the outside perimeter. No other cabins are nearby either, so you don’t have to worry about being watched.” He grinned back to where she sat stiffly on the side of the bed, bare legs hanging over the edge and her hands fisted on the mattress near her hips. “Not that I think you wouldn’t go for a voyeur if you knew they were harmless.”
Claire didn’t even crack a smile. “I’ll admit it looks nice.” She spoke quietly without meeting his eyes. “But I can’t go out there.”
“You can. You just won’t.”
Another of those dry laughs left her as her gaze lifted to his. The disappointment in her eyes was nearly palpable. “Somehow I thought that when you said you understood what I’m going through, you really did understand.” Her voice wasn’t quiet now but accusing. “You don’t get it, though. You sound just like Erin.”
“I do get it, Claire. Enough to know that, in this case at least, your sister’s right.” Adding some wicked to his grin, he held out a hand. “Try it. You have nothing to lose and a whole lot of me to win.”
“Yeah. Nothing to lose. Just my breakfast and my mind.”
“Suit yourself. I’m going out.” Using the hand he’d offered to her, he slid open the glass door. Claire’s breath dragged in loudly. Even before he turned back, he knew panic would be in her eyes. Knew it would reach out and grab him by the throat, make him feel like he was committing some grave sin.
Not about to let himself go there, he took a step backward through the door. The deck had been built at the best angle to avoid the wind. Barely a breeze lifted through the screened-in room, leaving the sun to render it almost steamy. Smiling in a way that wasn’t almost steamy, but downright feral, he met her eyes and then slid his gaze to his groin. He slipped a thumb into either side of his boxers, easing the tacky cat shorts slowly down, gliding the soft material against the inclines of his hips. Lower to expose a teasing flash of dark blond pubic curls.
The rough edge of the waistband brushed the arousal-sensitized head of his cock. He lost his grin as electric sensation zinged through him and a sigh whistled past his lips. “Apparently, he has a weakness for hellcats.”
Desire danced into Claire’s eyes, knocking away all traces of fear. She sucked in a hot breath. “You don’t play fair.”
Reclaiming his grin in a rough chuckle, Chris skated the boxers down his hips another inch. “C’mon, sweetheart. Every step you take is another inch you get to see.”
She shook her head in denial but then pushed to her feet. “I’m stopping the second it gets to be too much.”
Nah, she wasn’t stopping. The panties were still sucked up inside her pussy, wetness darkening the material and short dark, moist curls exposed on either side. She couldn’t be that afraid and that turned on all at once.
She came a step forward, and he pushed the shorts down