JESS THOUGHT HE’D PREPARED himself for the sexual impact of being back in Katie’s apartment. But no guy could really prepare for this barrage of—how could he describe it?—bordello lite.
Sure, he’d set the scene last night with music and wine and candles, but he was an amateur compared to Katie. She’s bought beanbag chairs, for crying out loud. Who would think of them in connection with sex?
Yet put them together with the coffee table full of goodies and that short skirt and skimpy halter she was wearing, and the beanbags seemed to be all about sex. They were moldable. He’d never considered that before.
Beanbags were the ultimate surface for sex, come to think of it. You could bunch them any which way you wanted to get the best angle for…almost anything his heated imagination could think up. And speaking of up, he was getting there fast, and he’d only just arrived on the scene.
That could be a problem. They had the whole evening ahead, and from the looks of this setup, Katie planned to drag out the action. He wanted to prove to her that he was cool with the leisurely approach to sex. She might not believe him if he sat there with a constant woody.
Women had it easier. They could practically have a climax and nobody would be the wiser if they wanted to disguise their reaction. A guy couldn’t hide bubkes, especially while sitting on a beanbag next to a coffee table.
So instead of sitting, he poured the wine and decided on a stroll around her living room to see if that helped mellow him out. He already knew the territory but had been too nervous to examine it closely.
She had a shelf system against one wall that held woven baskets, clay pots and kachinas. A framed picture of her folks was there, too. The light was dim in the room, but he still recognized them. Don and Joanne Peterson, nice people. This must have been taken recently, because Joanne had looked a lot like this when he’d seen her yesterday and asked for Katie’s address.
After staring at the snapshot of Don and Joanne for a while, he was in better control of himself. Nothing like the smiling faces of a woman’s parents to kill the sexual urge. Beside that picture stood one of Katie’s older brother, Dennis, with a pretty brunette and a little baby.
So she was Aunt Katie now. He wondered if she’d ever thought of settling down herself. Come to think of it, she could have been married and divorced. Most of their classmates from high school were married, and some were on second marriages by now. Whenever he ran into high school friends, they always asked him what he was waiting for.
It might be more a question of who he was waiting for. Until seeing Katie at the station Friday night he hadn’t realized how much she’d influenced his choices in women. After her he’d dated primarily blondes, but none of them had seemed quite right. Then he’d come face-to-face with Katie and it felt as if a gear had finally meshed that had been out of alignment for years.
He honestly hadn’t thought about his motives for planting a yellow rosebush until today, when he’d looked at it and realized that he should take her one of the buds. Unconsciously he must have planted that bush because of his memories of her.
“Dennis married a girl from New York, so they live back there now,” Katie said as she walked into the room and set the vase on an end table. Then she came over to stand beside him. “That’s Dennis and Julie with my niece, Emma.”
“Cute kid.”
“Adorable.” Katie reached out and turned both pictures facedown on the shelf.
There went Jess’s sexuality damper. “Why did you do that?”
She glanced up at him and smiled. “Makes the room less crowded, don’t you think? Let’s go have some fondue.”
Although Jess had a feeling they would enjoy more than fondue sitting in those beanbag chairs, he pretended that they were pulling up ordinary chairs for an ordinary snack. “Why not?” But as he lowered himself onto the pliable surface and began to imagine the possibilities, he must have groaned or whimpered or something.
“Are you okay?” Katie sat in the chair next to him.
“I’m just dandy.” The graceful way she eased into the scrunchy seat reminded him she was once a cheerleader who could do the splits like nobody else on the squad. The guys at school used to make bawdy jokes about that, which had caused Jess to get in a couple of fights to defend her name. Everyone on campus might have thought he and Katie were having sex, but he’d known differently.
Now he was debating the wisdom of his course of action back in high school. If he’d accepted Katie’s offer on prom night, he wouldn’t be here feeling at a decided disadvantage with a woman who’d become extremely worldly. If he’d had sex with Katie thirteen years ago, they might have stayed together.
And yet…staying together might not have been the best thing for them. He could have done something stupid and asked her to marry him before either of them were ready for that. They’d both needed time to spread their wings.
Katie picked up her wineglass. “Here’s to old friends…and new experiences.”
“Sounds good.” He touched his glass to hers and took a long swallow of the wine. “I’ve never had fondue before.” He didn’t think that’s what she meant by new experiences, but he’d play dumb.
“Not even when you were a kid?” She gave him a long fork and passed over the basket of bread cubes.
“I don’t think so.” He would make book on it. His mother hadn’t had the time or money for froufrou grocery items. They’d been lucky to have a half pound of ground beef and a box of Hamburger Helper.
But if he ever had fondue again, he’d associate it with Katie sitting in the beanbag chair, her skirt hiking up each time she moved and her nipples outlined against her halter top as she handed over the fork.
Wait a minute…It wasn’t even slightly cold in this room, and the soft, seductive light from the candles made everything hazy. If he could see her nipples against the cotton material, then she was definitely excited. He felt better knowing that. He took the fork and stabbed a bread cube from the basket.
“My parents had a fondue pot when I was a little kid.” She speared some bread and leaned toward the one holding melted cheese. “Then the craze ended and they sold the pot at a garage sale. Now fondue is in again. I thought we should try it.”
Jess caught about half of that speech because mostly he was watching what happened when Katie leaned over. Her halter top gaped open, and he was ready to forget fondue and go for something more satisfying.
“The idea is to swirl your piece of bread through the cheese.” Katie dragged her fork through the creamy yellow mixture.
Jess could sit and watch her do that forever. As she moved, so did her breasts. Then she picked up the bread cube dripping with cheese, leaned over the pot even more and opened her mouth.
She was putting a cheese-saturated bread cube in there, not a candle, but Jess associated her mouth with sex all the same. She’d apparently permanently imprinted the message in his brain, so that anything to do with her mouth equaled sex.
While they’d been dating, he’d never had the nerve to ask her to go down on him. Now, after last night’s question about oral sex followed by the candle incident, he couldn’t seem to think of much else. The candles burning in the room didn’t help, and the music she’d chosen was even sexier than the CD he’d put on the night before. The faint sound of jungle drums seemed like the perfect rhythm for thrusting.
“Mmm.” She chewed the piece of bread and swallowed it. “Not bad. Try it.”
He wasn’t the kind of guy to leap on a woman and start tearing at her clothes, but this atmosphere was rapidly changing his normal disposition. In spite of that, he’d restrain himself. He’d always been proud of his self-control.
Time to spear a bread cube and fondue something. While bending closer to the melted cheese, he was reminded that sweats would have been a better choice than jeans. The denim pinched, especially with the ever-present swelling going on underneath it.
With Katie watching, he stuck the bread in the cheese and swirled. “It feels like dipping a brush in a bucket of high-grade enamel.”
She laughed. “I hope it tastes better than paint.”
He wondered if she had any idea what he longed to taste right now. It wasn’t a cheese-laden bread cube, that was for sure. Leaning closer, he managed to get the dripping cube in his mouth.
“How do you like it?”
He chewed and swallowed. “Not bad. A plate of nachos would have been a more efficient delivery system, but this is decent enough.”
“Spoken like a typical guy. Maybe I should have bought beer instead of wine.”
“Right. And then we could power up your TV and watch the Cardinals play football.”
She looked crestfallen. “Do you want to?”
“No, Katie. Not even slightly.” I want to strip you naked and kiss every inch of your body—a fantasy that’s haunted me for years.
“Okay.” Her expression brightened.
“I’m not much of a sports fan. Maybe it’s because I never had time to play.” Indoor sports, that’s what he was talking about. Bouncing together on an innerspring. There was a event worth training for.
“But you came to most of the games in high school.”
“As many as I could with my work schedule. The thing is, you were a cheerleader.” He could still picture her in that short skirt, about the same length as the one she was wearing now.
She’d had some sexy moves out there on the sidelines. He wondered if she could still rotate her hips the way she could back then. Before the night was over, he intended to find out.
She paused in the act of spearing another bread cube. “You only came to the games because of me?”
“Pretty much.” He took another drink of his wine. “You didn’t know that?”
“I thought…well, I thought you liked sports and seeing me was a bonus.” Her fondue fork remained poised in midair, apparently forgotten.
“I liked you and seeing the game was a bonus.” Actually he’d loved her desperately. Because he tended to use words sparingly, he probably hadn’t told her often enough. Broadcasting his teenage passion now seemed kind of sappy, so he’d modified the wording to save them both embarrassment.
“I…liked you, too.”
For a moment, as he gazed into her eyes, he imagined regret lurking there. Well, she could join the club. He should have been her first lover. He should have worked it out so that had happened.
Then she smiled, and the regret seemed to disappear. “Come on, Jess. Have some more fondue.”
KATIE HAD NURSED HER grudge against Jess for so long that trying to see him in a different light was giving her mental eyestrain. She’d convinced herself that she hadn’t been all that important to him.
His refusal to have sex with her on prom night had seemed like solid evidence that he hadn’t wanted to get tied down to her. The way his life had turned out since then had given her more proof that he’d had big goals for himself after graduation. She’d imagined that his personal plans hadn’t included a close relationship with her.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she’d been far more important to him than she’d imagined. She’d pictured herself as the most invested of the two of them. What if that hadn’t been true?
In any case, she was in a great position to find out. A desperate man would be more likely to bare his soul, so turning Jess into a desperate man was still in her best interests. She’d already learned some things. She wanted to learn much more.
Telling her that he’d gone to high school games only for her had made her dangerously warm and mushy inside. But if she allowed herself to think about that too much, she might become too cooperative and make everything easy for him. Cheryl had counseled against that.
He might not be the louse she’d wanted to believe, but he was still showing signs of traditional male thinking, expecting sex would automatically happen. She’d allowed him to lapse into his comfort zone while eating cheese-covered bread cubes and drinking wine. He might be under the impression that this would morph into a typical bedroom scene.
She wasn’t nearly ready for that. Frankly it scared her a little. One taste of bedroom sex and she might transform from a kick-ass bad girl into his willing slave. Thirteen years ago she’d been heading down that road, and she wasn’t about to let history repeat itself.
Time to shake things up. “Let’s switch to chocolate,” she said. “That’s where the strawberries come in.” She pushed herself out of the beanbag. “I bought some whipped cream to go with this, too. Let me get it.”
“All right.” The wary look had returned to Jess’s dark eyes.
Good. Cheryl would approve of her keeping him off balance. Last night she’d had him begging, but she wasn’t nearly there tonight. She’d been way too easy on him so far. With this next stage she’d turn up the heat and see how Mr. Self-Control handled her newest suggestive behavior.
In the kitchen she grabbed the can of whipped cream from the refrigerator and a bowl from the cupboard. She returned to the living room shaking the can vigorously. She knew that created a great breast shimmy and she wanted him to get an eyeful of jiggle. Men were notoriously susceptible to that, which she’d counted on when she’d chosen to wear the halter top.
Sure enough, his eyes grew wider the longer she shook the can. Then his throat moved in a quick swallow and he ran his tongue over his lips. Excellent. He was primed for the next step.
After walking over to the coffee table, she set the bowl down and stood between the two beanbags so that he’d have no trouble looking up her skirt when she leaned over. “Are you ready for this?”
He swallowed again. “I…guess.”
“Here goes.” Bending at the waist so her skirt rode up good and high, she popped the top on the whipped cream and squirted a high, fluffy mound of it into the bowl. “There.” Still holding the can, she turned and eased back into the beanbag.
Jess looked hypnotized. She had the urge to snap her fingers under his nose to see how startled he’d be. But she had a better way to get his attention.
“This is a great brand of whipped cream.” Facing him, she ran her tongue around the nozzle. “It tastes so good that sometimes I suck it straight from the can.”
Instantly his gaze was trained on her.
“There’s always a little left in there after it squirts out.” Rounding her lips, she sucked gently as the sweet cream slid over her tongue.
Jess was transfixed, not moving a muscle.
And that was exactly how she wanted him. “If I crave more, and I often do, then I can suck and press the nozzle so the whipped cream comes right into my mouth.” With a little whoosh of compressed air, she filled her mouth with whipped cream. “Mmm.” She let some dribble out and caught it with her tongue.
“Katie.” His voice rumbled low in his chest.
She adopted an air of innocence. “What?”
“You know what.”
She held out the can. “Want to suck on it a little while yourself? It’s fun to do.”
He ignored the outstretched can. “You’re something else.”
“So I’ve been told. Let’s each have a strawberry, shall we?” After setting down the can, she picked up her fondue fork and stabbed the biggest, plumpest strawberry in the bowl. As she dipped it into the warm chocolate, she glanced over at Jess.
He still hadn’t moved, and his stare was hotter than the Sterno flame.
She pretended not to notice. “What’s the matter, lost your fork?”
“No, just my mind when you pulled that last stunt.”
“It bothered you?”
“Hell, yes, it bothered me. You know perfectly well what you were doing with that can of whipped cream.”
She lifted the strawberry from the chocolate and turned it gently until it stopped dripping. “I certainly do. I was enjoying it.” She dunked the chocolate-covered strawberry in the mound of whipped cream.
“You were mimicking something else.”
“Was I?” She licked the whipped cream and chocolate off the strawberry.
“You want me to imagine what it would be like if you…did that to me.”
“Did what?” She held his attention as she sucked on the tip of the strawberry.
“That.” Waves of intensity rolled off him as his gaze bored into hers. “And you’re not going to do it either, are you? You’re going to drive me crazy thinking about it, but you’re not going to actually—”
“I might.” She nibbled on the strawberry.
He groaned.
“If you ask me nicely.”
“You mean if I beg, don’t you?”
She finished the strawberry and stuck her finger in the bowl of whipped cream. “Something like that.” Then she licked the whipped cream from her finger.
“Well, I won’t.”
“No?” She gathered more whipped cream on the tip of her finger and sucked it off. “Too bad. You look like you could use some relief. But if you’re not interested, I’ll just have another strawberry.” She speared one from the bowl. “You should try this. They’re great.”
“Damn it, Katie, it seems backward to start with you going down on me. I think we should have regular sex and then—”
“You know what, Jess?” She dipped the strawberry in chocolate and then in the whipped cream. “Maybe you should just relax and take what comes your way.”