The Thrill of It All Read online

  “I hope this doesn’t mean you’re closed for the night?” An amused voice called out.

  It was a familiar voice, too, though Magee couldn’t place it immediately. Someone he knew, and he’d kill him if he ever mentioned this incident. If he hadn’t already croaked himself from whatever Felicity had—or hadn’t yet—given him, that is.

  “We’re definitely closed,” he managed to yell out.

  Felicity had one hand over her eyes, but, as usual, her lips started flapping. “I’m so sorry you’re inconvenienced,” she babbled, all sweetness and light and ridiculous lies. “We’re, uh, running a test to determine the strength of the bar tables for the, uh, California State Department of Forms and Measures.”

  “Oh?” said a second voice by the door.

  “Exactly,” Felicity went on. “I’m a Special Inspector—”

  “Of Forms and Measures?” Magee murmured, pressing his naked erection against her body.

  She jumped a little, but other than that, ignored him. “And it’s my duty to ensure the safety of the, uh, bar patrons of inland Southern California.”

  The bullshit was so outrageous that for a moment he thought the people at the door bought it.

  Then a woman’s voice joined the discussion. “Looks like the tables are plenty strong to me. But Magee, keep me in mind next time you want to conduct a ‘safety’ test, will you?”

  Felicity’s heels dug into his nakedness and he grunted. He couldn’t figure out what had her hackles up, because he was busy coming to grips with one hell of a realization. He didn’t have a condom. Mr. Responsible, Mr. Turned-Over-a-New-Leaf had been this close to having stranger-sex without a condom.

  The fickle finger of fate rose high in his mind. Thank God for the interruption, because he knew he wasn’t the Lucky Bastard anymore.

  Ten

  Despite the untimely interruption, Magee was still desperate to get Felicity out of his system. They were going to have sex, he decided. And this time they were going to have sex someplace where they were guaranteed to be alone. Once the would-be bar customers left, he pulled Felicity across the parking lot, not giving her time to think or protest.

  “We’re going to a hotel,” he told her. “You drive.”

  He wasn’t sure what was going through her mind, but she followed orders readily enough, stopping at the Go-Market he directed her to. When he came out with coffee, condoms, and chocolate bars, she took the styrofoam mega-gulp he offered her without a word.

  But then she peered down at what he dumped on the console between them. “Are we preparing for a siege, or sex?”

  He ignored her. “Start the car.”

  Instead of obeying this time, she took in a breath. “Listen, Magee—”

  “Don’t start with me.”

  She sighed. “Have you considered this is Fate’s way of giving us the opportunity to reconsider?”

  “Then Fate should have reconsidered our little bump in the night a few days back.” He leaned over and turned the ignition key for her. “I need to get you out of my head.” Out from under his skin.

  When she still hesitated, he leaned toward her. She expected a persuasive kiss, he could tell because he heard her take a breath like a swimmer about to jump, so he went for surprise. Instead of going for mouth-to-mouth, he ran his tongue across her bottom lip at the same time as he ran his palm up her thigh, from knee to heat.

  Then he lifted his head, his hand still insinuated between her legs. He rubbed two fingers along either side of the seam he found there, then pressed them against her, hard.

  That wasn’t very romantic, either, but she jerked into his palm all the same. In response, his erection lurched against his belly. They stared at each other, both of them already breathing hard. “Decide,” he commanded.

  The neon G in Go-Market was busted. It blared red against her face, then shorted out with a zizz, only to zizz once more, washing her scarlet again. In his ears, his pulse pumped in counterpoint—thump zizz thump zizz thump zizz thump—the sound and her indecision stretching his nerves like cheap climbing rope. His fingers twitched.

  Her inner thighs clenched against his hand and her head dropped back against the seat. “Yes,” she said. “Okay, yes.”

  He would have stripped her then and there, but with their luck, in the next instant the Pope would pull in for cookies and latte. Sister Felicity Magdalene’s explanations were too painful to even imagine.

  As she drove, there was no more talk between them except for his terse directions. He’d downed his coffee and eaten two candy bars by the time she parked outside the check-in office of the Desert Fountains Resort. Once he had the key to a private villa in his hand, he scooted her out of the driver’s seat and sped toward it himself.

  She went too damn slow.

  But once they were standing in the tiled foyer of the Mediterranean-styled cottage, he stilled, incredulous that they were alone. “Is it possible?”

  Still suspicious, he reached out and opened the closet door to his left, flipped on its light. Ironing board, iron, wall safe, hangers. The bathroom was next. Thick towels. Two terry robes hanging from a hook. He walked out, shaking his head.

  “Not a spider, a relative, a customer, a friend. Nothing. Nobody,” he said, stalking toward Felicity. “Just you and me.”

  She was looking apprehensive again, and he couldn’t have that. It made him soft. He snatched her hand—remembered that candyass kissing of it the first night in the desert, damn it—and dragged her up against his body. “Just you and me, Lissie.”

  The name banished the ghost of anxiety in her eyes. When he put the arm he held around his neck, she flung the other up to meet it. “Michael,” she said, then fisted both hands in the ends of his hair and yanked his mouth down to hers.

  Her mouth was hotter than the coffee and ten times as stimulating as the caffeine. He rubbed his body against hers, leading with his clamoring erection, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was going to be enough until he had her, at the door, on the floor, wherever.

  Anywhere except the bed, he decided. That would be too soft, too treacherously normal for what he wanted from her.

  It was going to be raunchy and crude and she’d probably call him names over it later. He hoped so. He hoped that afterward she’d never want to look him in the face again. That’s the way they could end this.

  But for now she was sucking on his tongue like she needed it as much as he did and he groaned into her mouth, crowding her against the wall. With his hands on either side of her head, he leaned into her belly, then bent his knees to push against the soft pad of female flesh over her pubic bone.

  She pushed back, grinding herself against him.

  “I have to get inside you now,” he said, wrenching his mouth away from hers. “Don’t say no. Don’t say anything.” He ripped at the fastening of her jeans and shoved them down. He must have caught her panties, too, because she was suddenly, sweetly, naked in his hands.

  He cupped the swell of her cheeks in his palms, aware that she was stepping out of her shoes but paralyzed by just how good it felt to be holding her. Then she dragged his head down for another kiss. It went serious in a heartbeat, hot and wet. She teased him with her tongue until he bit down on it, trapping it inside his mouth.

  Moaning, she wound one naked leg around his thigh, opening herself to him. He shifted his hand and in one smooth slide thrust his middle finger deep inside her tight, creamy heat.

  His cock leaped. He looked down into her flushed face and glittering eyes and felt on the edge of that treacherous internal cave-in. No. No.

  “You feel so good, dollface,” he said roughly, drawing out his finger to the tip. He circled the pad just inside the opening to her body, knowing his rough calluses would stimulate the sensitive skin. “You feel so good, I’m gonna make you come just like this.”

  He thrust two fingers inside her. She jerked, her shoulders thumping against the wall. The fit was tighter, wetter, and when he drew his fingers back out he st
roked them through her soft folds and found her magic button. Her bare heel ground into the back of his thigh and he used it as the barometer to her gathering climax.

  “You like that, don’t you?” he said, dropping kisses on her cheeks and chin. “Look, it’s even better with my thumb there and my fingers right…here.”

  The pleasure-filled yet agonized sound she made was his magic button. His balls drew up and his cock almost spasmed. A rash of prickles rose on his arms and chest as she dug her heel harder into his leg.

  “Michael. Michael.” She was tensing up, her hips tilting to allow him better access.

  “Right here, baby.” He held her in his hand, everything he wanted of her, anyway. She was hot and needy and his to make orgasm at will. He thrust a third finger inside her and pressed the magic button.

  She made the kind of half-moan, half-groan that came straight from the belly. Then her head thumped against the wall and her body quaked in waves as the climax rolled through her. Her eyes closed, her cheeks flagged with color, a sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead. It was better than a XXX-rated peep show.

  He leaned in to kiss her mouth as her foot slid nervelessly down the back of his leg. She pushed at his wrist and he withdrew from her body and lifted his head. Already she wouldn’t look at him—he’d embarrassed her that easily.

  His gut tightened, and he reached out to reassure her, then stopped, because her embarrassment was what he wanted! Damn it, he couldn’t afford to be tender. He couldn’t afford to have actual feelings besides this needy, edgy greed for sex.

  “I want you to do it again,” he told her, his voice grating and demanding, because it wanted to be gentle and soothing. He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up to his mouth for a punishing kiss because he wanted so badly to pet her, to stroke her, to coax her back into his arms. “I want you to come for me again.”

  She ducked her head. “Let me take a shower.” Then she slipped out of his grasp and leaped toward the bathroom door.

  Just that brief flash of her perfect ass sounded the buzzer on his personal desire-o-meter, and the new jolt of lust steadied him. So he leaned a shoulder against the wall, waited. It was going to be all right, he was going to be all right. This was just an everyday case of raging lust.

  At the shush of water through the pipes, he did a slow count to ten, then he stripped and strode after her.

  The shower was nearly as big as his office at the Bivy. Its glass enclosure was clear, revealing every wet detail of the back of Felicity’s body. That buzzer inside him went on and stayed on. For an instant he wondered if it was a warning, but he couldn’t care, not when he had to touch her again.

  She did the whirl and shriek when he popped open the glass door, but he didn’t hesitate. Instead, he continued toward her, fascinated by the rivulets of water sluicing down her breasts and over her nipples. “You give a whole new meaning to the term ‘wet dream,’” he murmured.

  “What are you doing?” she said, a startled Venus di Milo.

  He stopped within a breath of her. The shower’s spray misted the hair on his arm as he lifted his hand to push away one of hers and cup her breast. “I’m touching you. I’m going to make you come again.”

  Her eyes widened and she swallowed. “Magee, no, I mean, well, um…there’s you and…”

  “You let me worry about me.” This was all about him, about getting his wayward libido under control and getting her out of his head and his life. With his other hand, he found the pretty little soap she’d unwrapped and lathered it between his fingers and palm. “I’m going to make you slippery—everywhere—baby.”

  Now her eyes dilated. “Magee—Michael.” His name ended in a moan as he moved the soapy hand over her other breast.

  It took no time to bring her to the edge again. It was mutual, he knew that, this greedy need, even though acting on it wasn’t so easy for her. He spun her away from him to run his hands over her sleek back and rounded ass.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered against the back of her neck, tasting water and Felicity with his tongue. “Just looking at you makes me so hard that lately the nights have been endless.”

  He stroked his hand down one sweet cheek and from there reached between her legs. “I like to sleep on my stomach but the pole you give me makes that impossible.”

  She gasped, but whether it was at his exploring fingers or raunchy words, he didn’t know. He didn’t care. “You look so sweet and innocent, don’t you, baby, that I bet no man has ever told you how it really is.”

  One hand between her legs, he covered a breast with his other palm and drew her back against him. Her head lolled against his shoulder as he played in the wet folds of her sex.

  “How’s it really?” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut. “Tell me.”

  “When I look at you I want to suck, to lick, to bite. I want to mark you somehow so that you know you’re mine, and then I want to pull off your pants and pull your legs wide to find out all I can about what’s between them, with my hands, my mouth, and then my cock.”

  And just like that, she came again.

  It only got wilder after that.

  He shut off the shower and then lifted her onto the countertop beside the sink so he could spread her legs and kneel between them. “You taste so good. Luscious. Sweet woman fruit.” Her fingers tangled in his hair and she orgasmed in pulses against his tongue.

  She was still unsteady on her feet, so she braced herself with her hands on the counter when he thrust into her from behind. He groaned. “So tight, so hot and tight and wet. I love this. I could live thrust up inside you.”

  She shuddered, goosebumps breaking over her skin.

  At the sight, his cock jumped inside her and she moaned sharply. Afraid it was all going to be over, he pulled out and dragged her into the bedroom. There, he grabbed a straight chair and sat down. “Straddle me, sweetheart,” he directed, caressing her breasts as persuasion. “Take me for a ride.”

  Oh, she did. She took him all the way home and back.

  But he still hadn’t had his fill of her. So he drew her down to the carpet and learned everything he wanted to about every square inch of her body. He placed kisses on her hip bones, ran the flat of his tongue down her spine, surrendered to temptation and took a bite of one peachy cheek.

  “I’m hard again, Lissie,” he said, flipping her over. “Look what you do to me. Look where I’m going.” He pushed her knees apart and thrust into her. “And look how easy this is, how easy I fit, because you’re so wet and you’re so willing.”

  The rhythm got out of his control and he felt himself climbing, climbing. “So wet,” he said, pushing a hand between them to press her magic button again and send her falling.

  She was milking his body, draining him of this unprecedented, unwelcome lust. Thank God. “So willing,” he murmured, just as he was about to come. “So mine.”

  Magee woke up some time later, still lying on the plush carpet. Felicity was nearby, facing away from him, her back curved into a lonely C. He heard her steady, deep breaths as she slept the sleep of the well and truly fucked.

  Reaching up, he snagged the bedspread and pulled it off the bed. Then he tucked it carefully around Felicity, unwilling to disturb her.

  But he was disturbed, as images of the two of them piled up in his mind. To stop their exquisite torture, he pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes. What had he done?

  He’d learned her secret.

  Damn it, his raunchy routine had backfired, because she’d responded to it, hotter than he could have imagined.

  What he’d thought would turn her away had only turned her on.

  It was all Richie Sambora’s fault.

  That’s the first thing Felicity thought when she woke the next morning to find herself on the floor, covered by a bedspread. Certainly the man dead asleep on the rug beside her shared some of the blame, but it had all started with Richie. One of the girls at school had smuggled into the prep school dormitory a couple of Bon
Jovi CDs.

  The nuns at Our Lady of Poverty didn’t approve of rock music, and the band members’ untamed hair and painted-on pants would have scandalized them, making their music only more appealing to the students. In secret, Felicity’s dormmates had poured over the liner notes, drooled over the photos, passed around the headphones, and gone headlong into puberty to the thudding pulse of songs like “One Wild Night” and “Slippery When Wet.”

  Felicity had been right there alongside them—except in one respect. While her friends had been boy-crazy for the long-tressed blond beauty of lead singer Jon Bon Jovi, his pretty, almost androgynous look hadn’t intrigued her in the least. No, it was bass-player Richie who’d made her quiver. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and smoldering Richie Sambora, who looked like he’d say and do all manner of dangerous things.

  Like the things that Magee had said and done to her last night.

  Felicity shot him a sidelong look. He was still in dreamland, but relaxation didn’t add a whit of little-boy vulnerability to his features. After a night of debauchery, a sleeping Jon Bon Jovi would look lost-angel sweet. But Magee…even with his lashes resting against his cheeks, their thick bristle paired with that black stubble on his chin and around his full mouth made him an unrepentant gunslinger—passed out after a night of whiskey and women.

  She had to get away from him. He threatened the image—the All-American, girl-next-door Felicity—she’d worked on for years. Conscience pricking her, she admitted to herself that she’d been overdoing the blame game. It wasn’t Richie’s fault. It wasn’t Magee’s sole fault, either. The two of them together created a synergy that stripped away her inhibitions and scratched out all her mental lists of Mr. Right qualities.

  Which didn’t change the fact that she had to get away from him.

  Commanding herself to stay quiet, she made a surreptitious slide and nearly yelped out loud. Her backside hurt! More gingerly, she moved again, managing to rise to her feet without a sound. In the mirror over the room’s long dresser she saw the cause of her discomfort.