into Cali’s flushed face.
He wanted her naked and beneath him the next time she made that sound.
Forcing the words out, he said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Breathless, she peered up at him, agony in her eyes. “I can’t. I—Couldn’t we—?” Her smoky gaze fixed on his mouth as the tightening in his gut became painful. “Just one minute more?”
The way her eyes went all warm and soft and needy—he’d have given her anything she asked for at that moment. He wanted to be inside her, but this gorgeous girl who hadn’t been kissed for so long didn’t want it to go that way. Hell, the strain of a few more minutes probably wouldn’t kill him. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, hauling her up against him so her feet lifted from the floor. He maneuvered them around the corner, to where the hinged door of the phone booth provided a modicum of privacy. Pulling her into the booth, barely large enough for them to stand side by side, he lowered his mouth to her ear. “Just one more minute.”
Her fingers clutched at his shoulders as she pulled him back to her. “Thank God.”
Cali was a woman possessed. It couldn’t go further than this. She was treading on dangerous ground as it was, but, heaven help her, she couldn’t give up the decadence of this stolen moment.
It might have been three years since she’d last been kissed, but she could say with all certainty she’d never in her life had a lip-lock like this one. A mind-numbing, moral-melting mainline into pleasure. His taste, touch and scent thrummed through her veins, so quickly and so thoroughly addictive the idea of breaking free was physically painful, mentally incomprehensible.
What harm could come from just a few more innocuous minutes of indulgence?
Strong hands ran in a crisscross down her back, until one wide palm pressed over her bottom, pulling her into closer contact with the hard contours of his body.
How could anything feel so right?
Grabbing her thighs, he hoisted her up. Her skirt bunched as her legs wrapped around his hips. Her shoulders braced against the wall as he rocked against that throbbing, long-neglected spot of need. Fingers of sensation stroked through her middle, tugging the strings of desire dangerously taut.
It was good. Too good to give up so fast. Just another minute like this and she’d stop. Leave. Run. But not yet.
“Oh, God!” she gasped when his hips ground forward again, rasping rough denim and damp lace against her achy sex.
Some distant part of her mind screamed a frantic warning.
She had rules about this sort of thing.
But their position was too perfect, the contact just right, and she was halfway to satisfaction already.
Jake’s mouth tore free from her lips, his blue flame gaze searing over her as his breath punched free in ragged bursts. “Tell me to stop,” he gritted out, his hips moving in a steady rhythm so good she couldn’t have told him to stop if her life had depended on it.
On some level she knew he was right. One of them was going to have to come to their senses, and instinctively she understood the burden fell on her shoulders. But why the hell did it always have to be the girl?
As exciting and amazing as it was, they were in a bar.
In a phone booth.
Her eyes blinked open, her gaze flitting over the small confines of their space.
A phone booth with a wooden shuttered and hinged door that ran almost floor to ceiling.
A phone booth at the farthest end of a scarcely traveled, dimly lit switchback hallway. With Jake’s broad, powerful back a further shield against any prying eyes should someone actually venture this far.
She’d never see this man again. No one would ever know.
Jake’s lean male hips ground forward again, his head bowed and his lips pulled at the vulnerable skin beneath her ear, shredding her resolve.
And then all she could think was that they were alone. With the female singer’s smooth molasses voice pouring over them from the speakers above, and the space around them fading into nothing more than a hazy backdrop for this single stolen moment. His teeth grazed the column of her neck, and one hand caught her wrist to pin it at the wall beside her head. Her body seized; her mind blanked of anything beyond giving in.
She clutched at him with her knees. Rocked her hips to meet his and desperately sought his mouth with her own. Lips fused together, their tongues tangled, mated, and merged. Their mouths were completing the act clothing barely restricted lower on their bodies. So intimate. She could taste him. Feel him thrusting and licking inside her.
She could wrap herself in his strength. Lose herself in his control.
And then he stopped, held her still as she teetered at the brink of a precipice she couldn’t believe she’d been brought to. Her breath fired in moist bursts between them as tension gripped her with stunning intensity, leaving her helpless, desperate, shaking with need.
“Jake.” The plea in that single husky word was unmistakable, and she felt his answering smile curl against her ravaged mouth. Oh, yes.
“Come for me.” His low growl stroked like a vibration deep through her body and soul, curling around the tender spot between her legs just as he rocked again, letting her ride the steely length of him in one long, brutal caress that unlocked her every inhibition.
Spasms of hot pleasure lanced her core, relentless and intense. Stealing her breath through each ratcheting increment until at last it burst free with her shuddering release. Jake caught her fleeting cries with his kiss, held her steady in his arms as her body melted against him. Seconds ticked by as she floated in blissful oblivion. Then slowly her mind cleared and reality descended with the resounding thud of Jake’s back hitting the phone behind him.
Cali’s eyes blinked open.
A bar.
A phone booth, for heaven’s sake!
A stranger.
No. Of all the wrongs piled into one grotesquely cheap heap in Cali’s mind, Jake Tyler wasn’t one of them. She might have met him only hours ago, but something about the man spoke to her on a level she couldn’t deny. He was the kind of guy she could fall for—if she were in the market for falling. Which she wasn’t.
Jake’s brow, damp from restraint or exertion, or possibly a combination of the two, pressed against hers as he stood, eyes closed, shaking his head. “I feel like a teenager.” He didn’t sound upset so much as stunned.
She smiled her understanding—not that she’d actually ever done anything even remotely like this when she was in high school, but she would have liked to. “I think you had more fun as a teen than I did.”
Jake chuckled, that low and sexy sound that made her wonder if maybe—
No. Tonight was an exception.
A brief foray into fantasy. A depraved one-night indulgence she was certain she should already want to forget. Only it had been too good to forget. And, with her work cut out for her with MetroTrek, the memory of this night would probably have to keep her warm for the next few years at least.
Seeing how completely Jake affected her was reason enough to keep her libido in check and an incentive to make a hasty exit. Though not too hasty, because she didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
She was grateful, all right. Was she ever!
But Jake—Well, neither exchanging numbers nor getting busted for lewd behavior in the back of a bar held much allure for her. It was extraction time from this sticky situation. The man who had so generously withheld his own release, and now ran his big sexy hands over her hips to smooth the wrinkles from her skirt, needed to become a fond memory she’d never