“Mel, that stuff is going to eat your flesh-”
“No kidding!” She was hopping up and down as she kicked off her athletic shoes. “Ouch, ouch…” More hopping as she shrugged the coveralls off her shoulders, revealing a white satin bra.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but the pained sound she made galvanized him. Tugging the coveralls off her hips, revealing white satin panties, which matched her bra.
Don’t look. Don’t look. But her skin was already going pink.
“The hose,” she gasped, pointing to the hose coiled against the wall, used for washing down the concrete floors. He ran while she shoved the coveralls past her knees and kicked them off.
Yanking the hose from its holder, he cranked it on, trying not to notice how the scraps of silk covered her. Or didn’t cover her.
“Hurry!”
Adjusting the spray, he nailed her with the water, telling himself he was a pervert for noticing her underwear.
Mel let out a short gasp at the shock of the icy shower, but not another sound as he ran the water from her shoulders to torso to belly to legs and back up again while she slid her hands over herself, hurrying the process along, skimming her arms over her slightly rounded belly-his favorite spot on a woman-her breasts, making his own breath back up in his throat.
Don’t think about it.
Yeah, right. Her bra and panties were good and sheer now, her nipples pressing hard against the thin material on top, and on the bottom…She was waxed or shaved or something, so the wet satin clung to every fold, every dip, every gorgeous inch, and melted brain cells at an alarming rate.
God. It was like every wet T-shirt contest he’d ever witnessed, only better. More like every hot fantasy he’d ever had. Only better.
Waaaaaay better.
Then she turned, presenting him with her back, her ass, and the hose jerked. So did a singular part of his anatomy. He stood there, running the water over her, watching it race in little rivulets down her body, and he wanted to lap it all up with his tongue. He felt like a voyeur, he felt like a jerk, and he’d never been hotter in his life.
Finally she stepped free of the water, crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him as if this was all his fault. Tossing the hose aside, he stepped toward her as he unbuttoned his own shirt.
“What are you doing?” Taking a step back, she came up against the hull of the plane.
He shrugged out of the shirt.
Gaping at him, she unfolded her arms and put her hand in the middle of his chest to hold him back. “You just stay dressed, Bo Black-”
Cutting her off in midsentence, he lifted her arm and shoved it into the arm of his shirt.
“Oh,” she said, and Bo watched humility war with pride as she put her other arm in and hugged the shirt to her. It came to midthigh on her, and she stood there, arms wrapped around herself, staring at his now bare chest. She bit her lower lip, and said nothing.
Was the woman actually tongue-tied? Tongue-tied while looking at his body? Again her gaze flicked over him, lingered.
She was. And he was just male enough to find that incredibly fascinating. “The word is thanks.”
She sighed. “Thanks.”
She said this so begrudgingly, he had to laugh. “Yeah, don’t hurt yourself.” Turning to the plane he grabbed the fallen wrench and worked on the bolt himself. It took him a moment, but he did get it, and dropped the thing into her hand.
She stared down at the rusty bolt. “You win.”
Due to all his blood still pooled behind the buttons on his Levi’s, he was only working on two cylinders and didn’t follow. “Huh?”
“You win.”
“Just to be clear,” he said warily. “I win what?”
He didn’t know what he expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t that she’d stalk toward him, grip his arms, and slam her mouth over his.
Chapter 12
Mel’s kiss left Bo staggered by a barrage of sensations. First, her mouth. God, that mouth. It was the mouth of wet dreams across the land. Warm, eager…She tasted like everything missing from his life, things he hadn’t even known existed.
So shocked by that, he let out a dark sound, a bit staggering in its neediness, and braced himself as he hauled her up, kissing her hungrily, frantically, unable to stop himself. Her breasts, covered in that wet sheer bra and by his own shirt, smashed into his bare chest. Her thighs entangled with his. Her heart drummed a staccato beat against him, so fast and heavy it was amazing that people didn’t come running to see what the racket was. Or maybe that was his heart. Hell, he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. Then she pulled back, leaving him gasping for air, painfully aroused.
Her cinnamon eyes dropped to his mouth before lifting once again to meet his. In them was a confusion, a heat, and a temper he wanted to snarl right back at. Or soothe…
“What the hell was that?” she asked, her voice low and husky. “I mean what the hell?”
“You’re asking me?” Risking life and limb, he fisted one hand at her back, gripping the material of his shirt low on her spine. He sank his other hand into her wet hair, tugging her head back, looking into her eyes…
“All I know,” she said shakily, “is that you need to keep your shirt on always.”
“Why?”
“Like you don’t know how ripped you are.”
“Again,” he decided.
“Um…what?”
“This. Again.” And he kissed her this time.
Harder.
Wetter.
Deeper.
He did it to keep her quiet, because damn, he liked her quiet. He liked her just like this actually, mouth fixed to his, little whimpery pants escaping her as if she couldn’t get enough. Then she sucked his tongue into her mouth and he couldn’t think at all because his heart was going to leap right out of his chest.
Her hands ran up his sides, over his ribs, her fingers sinking into his pecs painfully enough to make him suck in a breath. She tasted hot and sweet and felt even better, and she was wet all over, with a hot little bod he definitely needed more of. He was quite certain there would be a price to pay for this glimpse of pure, unadulterated pleasure, there was always a price, but not caring at the moment, he backed her up to the Hawker, pressed her up against the cool steel and took his mouth on a cruise over her throat. Nudging the shirt off her shoulder wasn’t a problem, and the wet, sheer bra wasn’t, either. He simply tugged it down, groaning when a breast popped out, her nipple pebbled and thrust upward, as if begging for his attention. “Mmm,” rumbled from his chest, and he took it in his mouth.
“Ohmigod.” Mel’s fingers sank into his hair, fisting it, doing her best to make him bald before he hit middle age.
He didn’t care. He sucked hard, then flicked her nipple with his tongue. She gasped, and her head fell back, thunking against the plane, dislodging a few tools she’d set around the opened engine compartment. As they rained to the ground around them, clanging and clattering, Mel jerked, then stared up at him, eyes huge, mouth open as if she needed it that way just to breathe.
God, she looked like heaven standing there, his shirt off her shoulders, caught on her elbows, opened to reveal her breasts, one nipple wet from his mouth. “Mel-”
“This isn’t happening,” she said. “Is. Not. Happening.” Her eyes were dilated, her mouth a little swollen. And he’d left a slight whisker burn on the underside of her jaw that he wanted to press his lips to.
In fact, he did, he leaned in and kissed her there, or tried to, but she slapped a hand to his chest and held him off. “Guess you got another airport quickie,” she said. “Only in the hangar this time, not the closet. Oh, and not with a blonde.”
Wow. Her opinion of him was even lower than he’d thought, and he had to remind himself that he didn’t care. “A quickie implies that I got off.”
She stared at him. “I’m a damn idiot,” she muttered and brushed past him. Hauling open the closet with more force than necessary, she pulled out another set of coveralls, shoving her legs through one at a time while he eyed the peek-a-boo hints he got of her panties and belly as his shirt rose high on her thighs.