Page 9
Author: Tracy Wolff
“Yeah, I can tell. ”
Fueled by fury and a good dose of righteous indignation, she marched up his driveway, across his lawn, and straight up to the cell-phone swallowing fountain. He was right behind her, making sure that she didn’t stumble or fall—she might be more alive than he’d seen her all week, but she was still only three days out of surgery, not to mention heavily medicated.
Once at the fountain, Elise bent over and tried to fish out her phone. But to do that, she had to brace herself on her injured hand and, even with the cast, it wasn’t ready yet to support her. His amusement fled instantly—even before she gave a yelp of pain—and then he was picking her up and carrying her away from the fountain.
“What are you doing?” she screeched, this time loudly enough to break the sound barrier. “Let me down! You can’t just manhandle me whenever you want, Quinn!”
“While that’s a nice thought, Lissy, I was just trying to keep you from injuring yourself worse. ” Still, he carefully put her back on her feet.
“You should have thought of that before you dragged me out here to the middle of nowhere!” She stomped her ballet flat clad foot hard and he tried to swallow another round of laughter.
Unfortunately, he failed. But he couldn’t help it. It was just so incongruous seeing her like this—flipping out over a phone. And the minor matter of being kidnapped, but he was choosing not to dwell on that fact.
“I need my phone, Quinn!” This time when her foot came down, it was right on the top of his toes. Since he was wearing flip-flops instead of his normal boots, she actually managed to do a little bit of damage. Not that he intended to let her see that.
“I’ll get it. Just chill. ” He headed back toward the fountain. “Not that I think it’ll do much good at this point. That thing is toast,” he told her.
“Maybe if we pack it in rice. ”
“Maybe. ” Who was he to shatter her illusions, after all? But his band mates had done any manner of things involving their iPhones and water through the years and not once had he ever seen the phones actually recover from the abuse.
Elise’s phone had landed near the center of the huge fountain, and he had to bend over and stretch all the way out to reach it. Poor Elise hadn’t stood a chance.
His fingers had just closed over the dark red case when Elise walked up behind him. “I’ve got it,” he told her, not bothering to look behind him.
“Good,” she answered, right before he felt both her hands in the middle of his back. Then she was shoving as hard as she could and he was falling, face first, into the three-foot-deep fountain.
…
Quinn came up spluttering and dripping, his once perfectly coiffed hair falling in clumpy strands over his forehead and down his cheeks. A stray leaf was stuck to his chin, while a couple purple flower petals decorated the tips of his crazy-long eyelashes.
She was the one laughing then, hysterical snorts she had no control over. At least until Quinn began stalking toward her with hot eyes and an even hotter look on his face. Her phone was clutched in his hand and Elise knew if she wanted it, she was going to have to stand her ground. But it was hard, when every instinct she had was telling her to flee…or to throw herself at him.
She wasn’t sure what it said about her that the second option was the one she found most appealing. Especially considering the way his white T-shirt was plastered to his muscular chest while rivulets of water ran down the hollow of his throat before disappearing beneath the shirt’s V-neck.
As he stalked toward her, he reached for the hem of his shirt and ripped it over his head before tossing it onto the ground at his feet. Again, the adrenaline coursing through her body urged her to run. And again she just stood there. How could she not when a half-naked Quinn was headed straight for her?
She tried to rip her eyes away from his naked abs—taking off his shirt had definitely given him an unfair advantage—but she couldn’t do it. Not when she was getting her first glimpse of his chest, which, to answer her question from a couple days before, was definitely tattooed, and not when she was faced with abs that looked like they had been chiseled from stone. Forget six-pack. Quinn had an eight-pack and it looked amazing on him, as did the happy trail that started below his navel and disappeared into the waistband of his low-slung jeans.
“You’re drooling,” he told her once he’d finally stopped in front of her.
“Do you blame me?” She reached out the fingers of her good hand and stroked them down the center of his body, from breastbone to belly button. His whole stomach contracted, his muscles growing impossibly harder and tighter beneath her hand. “This is ridiculous. ”
“My abs?”
“Yes. No! This whole situation. It’s ridiculous. ” She dragged her eyes away from his chest and stomach, tilting her head up so she could look him in the eyes. Then almost wished she hadn’t as his gaze was darker and hotter than she had ever seen it before. Not to mention focused on her with an intensity that bordered on the predatory.
“I want—” Her voice broke, so she tried again, forcing the words past her suddenly tight throat. “I want to go back to the city. ”
“You should have thought of that before you shoved me into a fountain. Not only am I half naked, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a goldfish in my boxers, so the only place I’m going is into my house. ”
“A goldfish?” Her eyes were drawn, against her will, to the area in question.
“Yeah. My gardener’s brilliant idea of the month was to introduce goldfish to the fountain. Next time I see him I’m going to let him know it was an epic fail. ”
Again with the goldfish? They were around so much that if she was a superhero, she’d think the damn things were her nemesis. “Should you, uh, try to get it out?”
“Is that your way of asking me to get naked?”
“What?” She felt her cheeks catch fire. “No! Of course not. I was just thinking of the poor fish. If we could get him back into the water quickly, he might be okay. ”
He quirked a brow at her. “The fish is really your primary concern here?”
“Of course. ” Ignoring the blush sweeping everywhere from her face to her ears to down her neck, she forced herself to meet Quinn’s knowing eyes. “I’d hate for the poor thing to die. ”
Holding her gaze with his own, Quinn slowly unbuttoned the top of his jeans. Then slid a hand into the waistband and down, down, until it came to rest right behind the zipper.
She followed that hand with her eyes—she couldn’t help it—and nearly whimpered when he fisted himself under the faded denim.
“I must have been mistaken,” he said after a moment, his voice low and gravelly and so sexy that she felt her ni**les peak in response. “There’s nothing here. ”
Considering the already impressive size of his erection, the words were so patently untrue that Elise didn’t bother calling him on them. Then again, she wasn’t sure she could have formed a coherent sentence even if she wanted to. Not when he was stroking himself under her hot gaze, his fist moving back and forth along the length of his cock.
“Of course, if you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to check. ”
She forced herself to swallow, despite the fact that her mouth had gone bone dry. “Check?” She tried to sound scandalized instead of intrigued.
Quinn grinned, slowly stroked himself once more before he pulled out. “For the fish. In case I missed something. ” He left his jeans unbuttoned in an open invitation.
If another guy had done something like this to her, she would have told him off—and made him feel like the biggest loser in the world while she was doing it. It was just one of the many perks that came with being a “frigid bitch,” as more than one of her dates had called her.
But after watching Quinn do that, she was as aroused as he was. Maybe more. But she refused to let him see it, refused to let him have all the
power in this equation. She’d done that last time and it hadn’t worked out very well for her.
Injecting a carelessness into her voice that she was far from feeling, she told him, “I’ll take your word for it. Besides, you’re right. It doesn’t look like there’s anything there, after all. ”
She expected a witty comeback, narrowed eyes, maybe a little bit of insulted manhood. Instead, what she got was so much better. And so much worse.
He reached forward, scooped her up in his arms. Then turned on his heel and took off up the winding, concrete path that led to his front door.
Chapter Six
Elise wasn’t sure what it said about her that even though Quinn was the worst possible thing for her—he’d broken her heart once already and left her devastated—the knowledge did nothing to dissuade the heat burning low in her belly, or the ache in her sex that she couldn’t ignore, no matter how hard she tried.
She could blame it on the Vicodin, but it had been five hours since she’d taken the pill, so that pretty much seemed like a cop-out. She could blame it on the fact that she was lost, confused, unsure of where her future was going to end up. But that wasn’t quite right either.
No, the need that was slowly building inside of her had a lot more to do with Quinn than it did any painkillers she might have taken or any uncertainty she was feeling.
Damn it.
What was it about this man, this one, particular man, that turned her into a seething mass of need? And what was she supposed to do about it?
Along with the admission of the feelings he evoked in her came the creeping awareness that she actually didn’t want to do anything about the situation she currently found herself in. She liked the way it felt to be carried by Quinn. Liked even more the arousal he brought out in her when it had been so long—too long—since she’d felt anything close to it. If she closed her eyes, she could still see what he looked like with his hand wrapped around his cock, stroking himself while he watched her with heavy-lidded eyes. That was the moment her body came alive, really alive, for the first time in way too many years.
But just because her body was falling under his spell didn’t mean that she had to, Elise reminded herself. She did have free will, after all. She could do what she wanted. And what she wanted was to act like a sane, reasonable woman. One who understood that falling for Quinn Bradford again was the worst thing she could do.
At least, that’s what she told herself.
She might even have believed it if she hadn’t just shoved Quinn into a fountain. She didn’t know what had possessed her to do it—other than a need to get some of her own back after he’d killed her phone.
Still, she hadn’t done anything that stupidly childish since…since the last time she’d been around Quinn, she admitted to herself ruefully. Something about being near him brought out the worst in her.
Or the best, a little voice whispered deep inside of her.
As he took the steps two at a time, she was extremely conscious of the fact that the tip of his very hard c**k was only an inch or two below her ass. Because the thought was arousing—much more arousing than she wanted it to be—she stiffened in his arms. Forced a coolness into her voice she was far from feeling as she said, “I’m not setting foot in that house. ”
He glanced down at her, one dark eyebrow raised wickedly. “That’s why I’m carrying you. No feet required. ”
Damn it. He really was too charming for his own good. “You know what I mean. ” She pushed against him, struggled against him in an effort to get him to let go, but it didn’t get her very far. At six foot three, he was ten inches taller than she was, and well over a hundred pounds heavier. She wasn’t getting away from him until he decided to put her down.
The thought should have infuriated her, but she was strangely calm as he unlocked the front door and carried her inside. Not that she wanted to stay here or anything, but she had to admit, Quinn took her mind off her problems. From the second he’d all but admitted to kidnapping her until this moment, she hadn’t thought about her hand or her career or the bleak future stretching out in front of her. That had to be worth something.