Good Time Girl

3

TOM HAD EVERY INTENTION of keeping a tight rein on himself until they got to the Broken Spoke Motel—he sincerely believed some things rightly belonged behind closed doors, despite that kiss in the bar—but she stumbled on the loose gravel of the parking lot as he dragged her through the warm night air toward the flashy little car she’d pointed out to him. Her small soft breasts pressed against his arm, her rounded hip bumped his, and all his good intentions disappeared in a firestorm of mind-numbing heat. He swung around, braced his hips against the low-slung red sports car and hauled her into his arms. “Com’ere, Slim,” he growled, and crushed his mouth down on hers.

Roxanne gave one soft, startled yelp, then melted against his chest like hot wax, reaching up to clutch his shoulders as he pulled her tight against him. His body was like iron against hers. His hands were hard and hot on her back. And his mouth was…oh, his mouth was delicious. Indescribably delicious.

She hadn’t really had time to appreciate that first kiss in the bar. It had happened so fast and been over so soon, and she’d been so…well, overwhelmed was the only word that came to mind. But now that he was taking his time she could fully appreciate his skill. Oh, yes, she could definitely appreciate his skill.

Her dangerous, good-looking cowboy was a wonderful kisser.

A glorious kisser.

Indisputably the best kisser who’d ever puckered up.

His lips were soft and firm at the same time, both greedy and generous as they plucked and nibbled and sucked at hers. Not too wet. Not too dry. Just moist and hot and absolutely perfect, all passion and impatience and wild intemperate lust, with no thought for rules or propriety or her good-girl reputation. She was being ruthlessly, ravenously, thoroughly kissed by a man who knew exactly how it should be done.

It was one of her most cherished fantasies come to life.

With a little sigh of pure unadulterated pleasure, Roxanne wound her arms around his neck to pull herself closer, and parted her lips to suck his clever, marauding tongue deeper into her mouth, determined to give as good as she got.

No way was this man going to be able to accuse her of being a cold fish. No way was he going to have to ask if she’d come. No way was she going to lie and tell him she had when she hadn’t. And no way was she going to censor even the tiniest, most insignificant element of her response to keep from shocking him. She was going to give him her all. Every sigh. Every moan. Every shudder. She was going to match him kiss for kiss, caress for caress, demand for demand. And before it was over, she was going to have all her fantasies fulfilled.

Every hot, lascivious scenario she’d ever imagined.

Every wistful romantic daydream.

Every passing erotic thought.

“Everything,” she murmured fervidly, the words hot against his lips. “I want everything. Now.”

Tom gave a low, ragged groan, like a man mortally wounded, and slid his hands down her back, cupping her tight little buttocks in his palms. “Lord, Slim, you’re killing me here,” he growled as he lifted her into the V of his splayed thighs.

Roxanne whimpered in helpless delight and squirmed against him with the wild abandon of a buckle bunny out to get herself another notch on her belt. With no more thought than any healthy female animal in heat, she raised her knee, brushing it up along the outside of his denim-clad thigh, and rubbed herself against his leg in a paroxysm of mindless desire.

Tom slid his hand from the rounded curve of her buttock to the back of her bare thigh, lifting and turning her in one smooth movement so that she was sitting on the front fender of the Mustang. The glossy surface was cool against the backs of her thighs; his lean horseman’s hips were hot and hard between them. His fingers dug into her flesh, one hand high on her leg, the other still cupped around the curve of her butt. He pulled her forward—one harsh, quick, convulsive movement—so that the crotch of her leopard-print panties was pressed up against the straining fly of his jeans.

All of Roxanne’s fantasies suddenly paled into insignificance against the reality of what was happening. No fantasy, no matter how vivid, could have prepared her for his elemental, unrestrained sexuality—or her own recklessly hedonistic response to it. Awash in sensory overload, swamped by the strength and immediacy of her arousal, she forgot all her carefully laid plans for seduction and simply let herself react to the moment. And she had only one thought in mind at that precise moment. One goal. One overwhelming, pulsating, driving need. Shuddering, sighing, her slender arms locked tight around his neck, Roxanne pulled him down with her as she fell back onto the hood of the car beneath his encroaching weight.

They were chest to breast now, their breathing rasping and heavy, their hearts racing, just as they had been in the bar, but now he was between her thighs, his narrow hips moving in a slow, maddening grind that pressed the hard, heavy bulge beneath the fly of his jeans against the rapidly dampening crotch of her panties. His hands were flexing and kneading her buttocks through the denim of her skirt, lifting them to meet each deliberate downward thrust. His mouth was melded to hers, his tongue probing and exploring, devouring, rapacious and utterly devastating.

Roxanne strained against him, one booted ankle locked behind his thigh to hold him to her, her tongue dueling with his, her hands frantic, skimming over the long, hard muscles of his back, over the swelling mounds of his shoulders, searching for a way beneath the soft cotton fabric of his shirt to the flesh beneath. She found bare skin above his shirt collar—warm, satiny, slightly damp—and pressed her glossy red nails into it, making him moan and arch away, lifting his mouth from hers as he drove his hips forward and down.

She slid frantic fingers up over the back of his head to keep him where he was, found his hat in the way and yanked it off, tossing it blindly away so that it flew over the windshield and landed on the floorboard in the front of the car.

He moved one hand up her side, gliding swiftly over a rounded hip and the gentle dip of her waist, skimming the side of one soft breast, over her smooth, bare shoulder, to fist in the soft, tousled hair at her nape. He drew her head back, forcing her body to bow beneath his, instinctively reasserting his control over her, and dragged his open mouth down the long, elegant line of her throat to the tantalizing swell of cleavage revealed by the scooped neck of her blouse.

Roxanne’s response was unhesitating, unapologetic, and wildly uninhibited. She clutched his head in both hands and arched under him, pressing her breasts forward, urging him to take more. To take all. To take everything.

He obliged with flattering speed, his mouth open and sucking at the soft flesh of her breast above her blouse. One hand moved down to her bare thigh, then began inching upward again, sliding under the bunched-up hem of her tiny denim skirt. She felt his fingers skimming along the leg opening of her panties, and then they were edging under it, tracing the sensitive crevice at the top of her thigh, touching the soft crinkly hair that covered her mound, moving inexorably toward the throbbing, heated core of her.

She tensed. Breathless. Waiting. Wanting. Her nerves screaming with anticipation. Her body screaming for release.

“How do you like to be touched, Slim?” he murmured, his voice low and heated, just on the edge of ragged. “Slow and easy?” He skimmed her clitoris with his fingertip, gently, like a man lazily strumming a single string on a guitar.

Roxanne gasped as heat forked through her, and rolled her head against the hood of the Mustang, lifting her hips upward, pressing closer, straining.

“Or fast and furious?” He flicked the swelled nubbin of flesh, quickly, as if he were doing hot licks on a banjo string.

Roxanne bucked wildly beneath him and her hips began to piston in silent demand. She was as taut as an expertly coiled rope, the tension in her arched body a palpable thing that held her, quivering and breathless, on the edge of release, needing only the right touch to send her flying.

“Talk to me, Slim,” he growled, his head lifted now so he could watch her face as he held her there, trembling on the brink. His eyes were like blue lasers, hot, intense, and focused. “Tell me how you want to be touched.”

Roxanne moaned, incoherent with need and excitement, and reached down to grab his hand, intending to direct his fingers to where she most wanted them to be, to show him what she wanted with every fiber of her being.

“No.” He resisted the silent demand. “Tell me.”

“I…I… Oh. I don’t. I can’t. I… Oh, please. Please. Just touch me. Touch—”

“Well, hot damn, would you look at that.” The voice rang out across the parking lot, boisterous and male. “Yahoo! Ride ’em, cowboy!”

The two people sprawled on the hood of the Mustang stiffened, stilled in a frozen tableau of passion rudely interrupted. Tom’s hand was under her skirt, inside her leopard-print panties, a millimeter from where she needed it to be. Roxanne’s fingers were clamped around his wrist, the nails biting into his flesh in a futile effort to guide him to the right spot.

“Come on, Hank, honey.” It was a woman’s voice, high-pitched and giggly. “It ain’t polite to stare.”

“Well, hell, darlin’, it ain’t polite to do the wild thing in public, either, but—”

“Come on, Hank. Let’s just go inside. I want to dance.”

They could hear Hank grumbling but he went, his boot heels crunching in the gravel as he followed “darlin’” into the honky-tonk. The door to Ed Earl’s creaked open, spilling music and light out into the parking lot, then closed again, surrendering the night to the garish pink glow of the flamingos on the roof.

Roxanne bit back a strangled whimper of frustration and loosened her grip on Tom’s wrist, hating the loudmouthed cowboy and his giggling girlfriend with her whole heart. She’d been so close. So tantalizing close! All she’d needed was one more second. Just one more measly little second and she knew her good-looking, dangerous cowboy would have taken her all the way to paradise.

Tom swore ripely and withdrew his hand from Roxanne’s panties, silently thanking God or whoever was in charge of looking out for damn fools that Hank and his darlin’ hadn’t come by two minutes later. He’d been that close—that close—to unbuttoning the fly of his Wrangler and giving it to her right there on top the car. Two minutes more—hell, less than two minutes!—he’d have been bare-assed, his jeans around his knees, thrusting into her with no more thought for time and place than a stallion covering a mare.

And no cowboy yahooing in the parking lot would have stopped him until he’d gotten them where they both wanted to go.

Even now, it was a near thing. His control—such as it was—wouldn’t survive another close encounter. The next time he put his hands on her, he wouldn’t stop until both of them were naked, sweaty, and too exhausted to do more than moan in satisfaction. And, damn it, they needed a bed and some privacy for that!

“Come on, Slim.” He stepped back and took hold of both her hands, pulling her upright. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we get ourselves arrested.”

Bemused, befuddled, her body humming with unfulfilled desires, her brain fogged by unsatisfied lust, Roxanne slid obligingly, even eagerly, off the fender of the car—and then just stood there, staring up at him with a soft, besotted expression on her face. Lord, he was good-looking. And sexy. And she wanted him so much. So very much. More than she’d ever wanted anything or anyone in her entire life. She swayed toward him, her face raised, her lips parted, her eyes drifting closed.

He took a quick step back and dropped her hands. “No.”

Her eyes snapped open, widened at his abrupt, almost-biting tone.

“We lock lips again and, I swear, I’ll hoist you right back up on the hood of this car and finish it,” he warned, his voice low and soft and strained. “Every last cowboy in the bar could come tromping out to watch and I wouldn’t stop. Not until we were both too tired to move. And maybe not even then.”

Roxanne smiled beatifically, thrilled to the core by his ragged admission. “I wouldn’t want you to stop,” she said, her voice as ragged, as strained, as his. “I didn’t want you to stop before.”

Tom gulped audibly and his hands fisted at his sides.

The jolt of pure female sexual power that surged through her at that small, telling gesture was utterly intoxicating, adding another layer to her simmering sexual excitement. No man had ever threatened her with ravishment before. No man had ever had to fight to restrain himself from carrying out that threat, either. It made her feel irresistible. Invincible. Intensely, totally female. At that precise moment, good girl Roxanne Archer disappeared completely. In her place was good-time girl Roxy.

And Roxy was hot.

Roxy was itchy.

Roxy wanted a man—this man—and didn’t care who knew it.

She tilted her head, looking up at him from under provocatively lowered lashes, and gave him the same slow, seductive come-to-mama smile that had drawn him to her in the bar. But this time there was no calculation in it, no planning or plotting. She was acting on pure feminine instinct. “I guess we’d better do as you suggested, then, shouldn’t we?” she said, and licked her lips. Slowly.

Tom made a low growling noise and took a careful step back, away from her and the temptation she so blatantly offered.

Roxanne’s smile turned positively feline. Her eyes glowed. Without shifting her gaze from his, she reached down with exaggerated slowness and slid the first two fingers of her right hand into the pocket of her skirt.

“The key,” she said, and held the plastic Hertz key ring up in front of his face with the key dangling. “To the car,” she added, when he just stood there, staring at it as if he’d never seen a key before. “So we can get the hell out of here before we get arrested,” she prompted.

When he still made no move to take it, she reached out, hooked the tip of one long red fingernail on the edge of his shirt pocket, pulled it away from his chest and dropped the key inside. “You drive,” she said, and then turned and sauntered around the hood of the car to the passenger side, hips swaying seductively, glossy red nails trailing over the glossy red car. She made a show of getting into the car, affording him a leisurely, heart-stopping view of her cleavage as she bent over to pluck his Stetson off the floor mat, snuggling her butt into the soft leather of the seat, adjusting the hem of her minuscule skirt over her bare legs with a languid, caressing gesture, as if she enjoyed the feel of her own fingers on her skin.

Tom stood stock-still, watching her, unable to move, unable to respond, unable to speak, as dumb-struck as a wet-behind-the-ears, peach-fuzz cowboy who’d just been tossed on his head by a bronc and still hadn’t got his breath back yet.

She set his Stetson on her head, adjusting it so that it set, low and sexy, over her forehead, then tilted her head and looked up at him from under the brim. The invitation in her eyes was blatant, unashamed, unwavering, with nothing held back, nothing hidden. She smiled seductively, slowly, and licked her lips again.

Damn, she was…she was… Hell, he didn’t know what she was!

Except gorgeous.

And hot.

And so damned sexy it made his insides ache and his palms sweat.

One look, that’s all it had taken. One long, slow, hot-eyed look from a tall, cool glass of water, and he’d wanted to grab and take and possess. He had grabbed and taken and—very nearly, anyway—possessed. And that surprised him. Shocked him, actually. He wasn’t normally a man with a short fuse. Ask anybody who knew him and they’d tell you Tom Steele was one careful hombre. He took his time. He considered his options. He weighed all the pros and cons. Steady, that was Tom Steele. Not a man to rush off half-cocked, or to get all hot and bothered and lose his head over a pretty little piece of tail.

Except that he had.

He stood there in the parking lot of Ed Earl’s, in the pink-neon glow of those ridiculous flamingos, his heart thudding against the wall of his chest, his cock full to bursting against the fly of his jeans, and his hands… Good Lord, his hands were actually trembling.

He unclenched his fists, flexing his fingers like a gunfighter about to take that long walk down the middle of a dusty street, and took a couple of deep, deliberate breaths in a effort to bring down his heart rate. It didn’t work.

“Ah, the hell with it,” he muttered, and reached for the door handle of the car. The only thing that was going to slow his heart rate was the exhaustion that came after a fast, furious bout of hot, sweaty sex. Maybe.

She turned toward him as he slid behind the wheel, reaching out to run her hand down his arm.

He didn’t even look at her. “Keep your hands to yourself, Slim,” he ordered, tight-lipped, as he fished around in his shirt pocket for the key. “And don’t say a word.” He jammed the key into the ignition and gunned the engine to life. “Not a word until we get to the motel.”

Roxanne gave a soft gurgle of laughter, a low, throaty sound of feminine triumph and challenge, and settled back into her seat, her hands folded demurely in her lap. It was only five miles to the motel and judging by the rooster tail of dust and gravel he’d left in Ed Earl’s parking lot, they’d be there in less than five minutes. She could wait that long. Barely.

4

THE FACADE of the Broken Spoke Motel was cheap Hollywood Western, with an unpainted barn-board exterior, a split-log hitching rail running along the front, and horseshoes bracketing the room numbers on each of the doors. A red-neon wagon wheel, one spoke seeming to swing back and forth as it flashed on and off, sat perched atop a pole in front of the motel office, right above the unblinking No Vacancy sign. A bank of vending machines stood on the cracked concrete apron just outside the office door, in clear sight of whoever was manning the registration desk. At the moment it was empty, with a hand-lettered sign advising would-be guests to ring for assistance.

Tom pulled into the first open parking space in the lot, jammed on the parking brake, and was out of the car almost before the engine stopped idling. His boot heels sent up little puffs of dust as he rounded the hood, purpose in every deliberate step, burning lust in his eyes, one thing on his mind. Roxanne sat in the passenger seat in stupefied delight and watched him come to her, come after her, thrilled beyond belief to be the object of such single-minded desire. With a sense of delighted amazement, she realized she could actually feel her nipples, rigid against the satiny fabric of her leopard-print bra, could feel the wetness soaking the matching fabric between her legs, could feel the blood pounding through her veins. She had never been so aware of her body, never felt so sensitized, so aroused, as if every nerve ending was on red alert. She was tingling all over…her lips…her fingertips…her thighs…every part of her quivering with anticipation and wanton, intemperate need, making her wonder how she was going to manage to stand up and walk to the room without collapsing into a quivering heap at his feet.

She didn’t have to try.

He yanked open the door and bent down, scooping her up into his arms. “Which room?” he growled as he shoved the door closed with his foot.

It was another cherished fantasy fulfilled. Being swept off her feet. Carried off to be ravaged by a dangerous cowboy. The old Roxanne would have likely fainted from excitement; the new Roxy looped her arms around her cowboy’s neck and tickled his ear with her tongue, as if being swept off her feet were an every day occurrence.

Tom’s whole body tensed at her teasing caress, and his hands tightened on her thighs and back as a spasm of sheer sexual pleasure shot through him. If he didn’t get inside her in the next sixty seconds he was going to come in his jeans. And that hadn’t happened since he was fourteen. “Which room, Slim?”

“Seven.” She sighed the word into his ear, her breath hot and moist. “Lucky seven.” She slid her tongue down the side of his neck, and then up again, as if he were her favorite flavor of ice cream and she was intent on savoring every last delicious drop. “Second door past the office.”

Tom turned on his heel and headed toward the promise of paradise with long ground-eating strides, while the woman in his arms did her best to drive him to his knees before they got there. He stumbled slightly when she stuck her tongue in his ear, but managed to regain his balance with a quick, light-footed move that brought him to a halt directly in front of the trio of vending machines in front of the motel office. One offered the usual soft drinks, another candy bars and chips, the third had toiletries for sale…miniature tubes of toothpaste, tins of aspirin, palm-size packets of tissue, condoms. A mental picture of his battered canvas carryall, still stowed behind the front seat of his pickup, flashed through his mind.

Roxanne left off nibbling on his earlobe to raise her head. “What?” she murmured, her eyes wide and hazy with arousal, her voice softly slurred.

Tom indicated the offerings in the vending machine with a jerk of his chin. “Am I going to need those?”

Her arms still locked securely around his neck, Roxanne glanced over her shoulder to see what he was talking about. “I’ve got one inside my bra.”

His eyes blazed. “Only one?”

“And a whole box in my room,” she assured him. “There are a dozen in it. Well—” she loosened her hold on him with one hand and touched the little foil packet of protection tucked inside her push-up bra, inadvertently drawing his eyes to the creamy mounds of flesh above the neckline of her blouse “—eleven, anyway,” she managed, watching his eyes heat and burn.

“A dozen just might do it. Maybe.” He bent his head and nuzzled the scented valley between her plumped-up breasts, breathing her in with a long hungry gulp of air. “Or maybe not,” he said softly, the breath rushing out of him in a tremulous sigh.