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“Kathryn?”
She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes. She had some difficulty opening them, as though awakening from a trance. When she finally did, she stared into his eyes, mesmerized. Had she ever noticed how black, fathomless, shiny they were? Like polished obsidian.
“Are you all right?” Concern creased his features.
His rich, deep voice resonated through her.
“Everything,” she murmured huskily, “is wonderful. You’re wonderful.”
He looked taken aback, even as a grin slow-danced across his face. “Uh, thank you. You’re wonderful, too.”
“Mmmmmmm.”
One side of his mouth still curled in a sexy grin, he suddenly looked down at his hand. “Whatever that nothing in this bottle was, it’s a warm nothing.” He flexed his fingers. “I swear the feeling’s traveling up my arm.”
She nodded, half taking in his words, more absorbed with her own carnal thoughts. Such as how his skin, all deliciously brown and sun kissed, turned her on. How would it feel to press her lips against that skin? To lick, rub, bite, devour? Just thinking about it was like holding a match to an already fuel-drenched libido. Erotic thoughts and ideas ignited, fired and exploded in her mind, heating her trembling body, accelerating her heartbeat until she swore if she didn’t do something, now, she’d implode.
“Come here, Coyote,” she whispered, picking out one of the more deliciously wanton fantasies. “Let’s play a game.”
4
COYOTE STOOD stock-still. Words raced and tumbled and plummeted through his mind, but not a damn one made it out of his mouth.
She wants to play a game.
Not that he hadn’t had his share of lively propositions before. Or indulged in some imaginative romps. Life, after all, was a feast and most poor fools were starving to death.
No, what left him speechless was how Kathryn had managed to sidestep the first, and often awkward, steps of the mating dance and waltzed straight to the heart of the matter. Let’s play a game. No cajoling, intimations, suggestions—none of the push-and-pull doublespeak that typically went on between a man and a woman. It was refreshing, and frankly damn sexy, to hear a woman say exactly what she wanted.
But it was more than simply her words. That was like saying fire was simply light, or a thunderstorm merely wet. It was how she’d evolved, almost overnight, from the all-business, no-nonsense woman he’d known at work to this hot, sexy, take-no-prisoners babe.
He’d never, never again judge a book by its cover.
She leaned seductively against a pier piling, her eyes damn near scorching his with their relentless intensity. If that bold, downright carnal look in her eyes indicated what kind of game she had in mind, he’d better fasten his seat belt, because he was in for one hell of a ride.
He cleared his suddenly dry throat. “What kind of game?”
She flashed him a don’t-you-just-want-to-know look.
That did it.
Raging male instinct roared through his veins as he fought the urge to cross the space and possess her, right here and now, over and over on this vast bed of sand.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he held back and attempted to cool his need with slow, deliberate breaths. Even if all he wanted was slick, sweaty, pounding-hard sex, he didn’t want it so bad that he blew it before the coin toss, so to speak.
He never got this worked up so early in a game—any game. Even last year when he had the plum job of covering the Super Bowl for the Times—the kind of perk that made his enemies put him on their Christmas gift lists—he was more in control sitting at the fifty-yard line with thousands of screaming, frenzied fans than he was here, underneath a pier, with only Kathryn.
A breeze lifted the hem of her pretty cherry-printed dress, and his attention dropped to catch a provocative flash of thigh. And, for a blood-boiling moment, he fantasized about what lay higher. Maybe a strip of filmy, translucent material that offered a mouthwatering peek of dark, curling hair. His palms grew sweaty, his chest ached, and just as his cock filled to bursting, the dress fluttered back down.
He emitted a low, painful groan.
Obviously the elements were on her side, working in tandem to torture him. His gaze dipped past the nowdemure hem hovering slightly below her knees, over her shapely bare calves, to her bare feet—when had she slipped off her shoes? Her fair, creamy skin told him this wasn’t the kind of woman who spent much time out of doors, if at all. And yet, here she was outside, barefoot—the sand, ocean and fog her backdrop.
She dragged one foot ever so slowly, seductively, in the sand while emitting a drawn-out, needy sigh that could have enticed Adam to forgo that one measly bite and devour the entire apple whole.
Coyote’s gaze lurched back up over the red-hot sea of cherries to those devilish eyes.
“What kind of game?”
He’d barely repeated the question when the tingling he’d felt in his hand spiked. He looked down and flexed his fingers, amazed at the building warmth that radiated up his arm and infused his chest. But it wasn’t just physical warmth. He also experienced a growing euphoria, almost dizzying in its intensity.
“Kathryn,” he murmured, thinking those damn cherries seemed to pulse a brighter red. Blood pumped hard and fast through his veins and if he could think through the all-consuming lust, maybe he could express more than saying her name while devouring her with his eyes.
“You’re,” he rasped, dragging a hand through his damp hair, “so…damn…hot.”
Hot, hot, hot. Kathryn could feel the word reverberating through her entire body. She sucked in a deep breath, her heart racing at the sight of Coyote. A film of moisture sheened his broad forehead, across which a strand of his jet-black hair loosely fell. He’d always had a dangerous ambience that naturally surrounded him, but right now it seemed darker, wilder, as though the predator was emerging through the man.
They stood staring at each other, their eyes probing deeply, silently into the other’s. The game had seemed easy at first, but now it had a perilous edge. It had become a force to be reckoned with, the way a storm crackles and flares on the horizon and you frantically bolt windows and doors to protect yourself from its imminent onslaught.
She breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with the brisk salt air. As she released it, whatever lingering concerns she had flowed out. Forget bolting windows and doors. I don’t want to protect myself from feeling. I’ve done that for too long. It’s time to discover the new Kathryn.
With that last thought, some small, lingering piece of resistance finally melted. At the same time, her senses notched up, and she felt acutely aware of everything around her. The sea air was sharper, the distant sunlight near radiant as rays probed the cocoon of fog, the outlying waves thunderous in their never-ending rise and fall. She’d never before felt so alive, so charged, so ready. Nothing felt wrong, and everything felt right.
“The game,” she murmured, “is like the one at the very beginning of Bound in Brasilia.” He’d read the first few chapters, so he knew what she was referring to. “Remember when they decided to reenact a previous meeting with their sensual truth?”
“I remember they screwed on a beach.”
She couldn’t hold back a soft gurgle of laughter. Trust a man and woman to describe it differently. “Well, I’m talking about what led up to that.”
In the story, the sexual tension had been taut as the protagonist insists the man tell her what he feels and wants, in great detail, before she lets him touch her. He describes his feelings, then his fantasies until their sexual excitement can no longer be contained.
Kathryn wanted that, too. With Coyote.
“Remember at the Taboo yesterday,” she asked, “when you held up your hand?”
“To tease you about my being five votes behind.”
“We surmised each other’s thoughts and feelings.”
His beautiful lips curved into a big, lopsided grin. “That we did, baby.”
Baby. She liked the deep tenor of his voice when he said the word. Deep and familiar.
“And, for the most part, we were right in our assumptions.”
He nodded.
“But if we’d been alone, as we are now, where the only real rule is that there are none, what might you have said to me?”
She smoothed a hand down her damp dress. Funny how she’d scurried down the pier, fighting both the chill of being doused and the cool weather, hunched into herself as though that provided protection.
Yet now her body felt deliciously warm. Almost too much so.
She unzipped his jacket, relishing the rush of coolness against her hot skin.
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, watching the zipper go slowly down before his eyes returned to hers. He lifted his hand, fingers splayed wide as they’d been yesterday.
“I remember a story my mother used to tell, about the mythical Coyote being responsible, in a roundabout way, for people having five fingers. You see, he and the Lizard, who were the very first beings, tried to make humans. But they fought bitterly because Coyote wanted to make them be just like himself while Lizard argued that if they did that, people could never eat or take hold of anything. Eventually, Lizard made people to have five fingers on each hand.”
She paused, then sputtered a laugh. “I set up this fantasy, and you tell a story about Coyote and Lizard?”
He smiled somberly. “My honesty is like the Coyote’s. It’s not always what I do directly in life that makes a difference, it’s often what I do indirectly.”
The moment dragged out so long, she began to wonder if she’d done the right thing. Her entire body might be quivering in anticipation, but that didn’t stop small, betraying thoughts from creeping to the surface. Security, security…
“What does that have to do with—”
“Shh,” he said, holding one finger to his lips, before holding up his hand again. “I’m letting the honesty of my words lead the honesty of my actions.”
Which was what the game was about. Being honest. Sensually, erotically honest.
Something passed between them, something as direct and powerful and potentially combustible as a line of gunpowder leading to an explosive device. She knew he felt it, too, this wild, flammable need ricocheting wildly between them. And the only thing that mattered was satisfying that need.
As though on cue, they shared a smile and whatever last, niggling reservations she had suddenly lifted, like a wisp of fog into the air.
He waggled his fingers lightly in the air, bringing the focus back to his previous topic.
It crossed her mind that he had elegant hands. Brown, long, tapered. Beautiful, really. She’d never thought that before about a man’s hands. But then, Coyote was a man of contradictions. Crafty one moment, open the next. Coarse, then sophisticated. No surprise this tall, dark and impossibly masculine man would have beautiful hands.
“I’m going to tell you how my five fingers represent my five senses.” He held up his forefinger. “The first is for sight.” He looked at her as though memorizing the moment. “I love how you look right now. How the sea has coaxed curls in your hair and misted your skin. It makes you look more alive, more primed.”
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