Texas! Lucky (5 page)

A crude comeback sprang into his mind, but he resisted saying it. She wouldn't appreciate the bawdy comment right now. Besides, a reference to another swollen member of his body might be the very thing that would cause her to kick him out.

"I don't think I'll be going anywhere a-tall tonight," he said. "I feel like hell. This is all I want to do. Lie here. Real still and quiet."

"Good idea. You can have this room. I'll get another one."

"No!" he cried, dislodging his ice pack. "I mean, I can't take your room."

"Don't worry about it. It's paid for. It's the least I can do after what you did for me this afternoon."

"I'm not worried about finances," he said sharply. "But at least now you're admitting that I rescued you from Little Alvin and Jack Ed."

"Just so you could put in your bid for me?"

"Huh?"

"You 'rescued' me from them, but you're no better. Your technique simply has more polish."

"You think … think…" he stammered. "You think I want to share this room so— Come on, lady. Do I look like I'm in any condition to have sex?"

He followed her gaze down the length of his body and realized that he
did
look as if he could have sex. He was shirtless, bootless, and sprawled in the center of a motel bed. His recent vivid fantasies had created a bulge behind his fly that he hoped she wouldn't notice. Immediately he fell back against the pillows with a great moan, not entirely faked, and replaced the ice pack against his eye. Waving his hand weakly, he said, "Go on. Do whatever you want. I'll be okay."

He watched through slitted eyes as she picked up her purse and headed for the door.

"All my injuries are probably external," he mumbled just as she placed her hand on the doorknob.

She turned. "You think you might have internal injuries?"

"How the hell do I know? I'm no doctor." He placed a tentative hand on his side. "I thought I felt some swelling here, but it's probably nothing. Don't let me hold you up any longer."

Putting aside her handbag, she returned to the bed and gingerly sat down on the edge of the mattress. It was difficult for Lucky to look pained rather than give in to a complacent smile. He expected her to murmur sympathetically. Instead, she said nothing.

When he turned his good eye to her, she was staring down at him skeptically. "If you're conning me—"

"I told you to leave. Go on. Get another room. If I need you, I can call you through the motel operator."

She pulled her full lower lip through her teeth several times, which caused Lucky to groan for an entirely different reason. "Where do you feel the swelling?"

She had missed her calling. She could have been a great vaudevillian straight man. She was feeding him cues to which he had terrific punch lines. Again resisting the impulse to say aloud what he was thinking, he took her hand and guided it to his side.

"Around here somewhere. Feel anything out of the ordinary?"

She probed the taut skin for several moments, working her fingers up and down his side from waist to armpit. "No. I don't think so."

"That's a relief." She withdrew her hand. "I just hope no ribs are broken," he said hastily.

"Which side?"

"Same one."

Her fingers walked up his ribs cautiously, gradually feeling their way, until they reached the hair-matted, curved muscle of his chest. It might have been the feel of his chest or of his distended nipple that caused her to pull her hand back quickly.

"You're probably just stiff and sore," she said.

You can say that again, Dovey
. "Good."

"But maybe I'd better not leave you alone," she surprised him by saying.

"Oh gee, that's terrific'

"I wouldn't want your death by internal bleeding on my conscience the rest of my life."

He frowned, saying drolly, "I wouldn't be crazy about that either." Removing the dripping ice pack from his eye, he handed it to her. "I'm drowning from this thing."

She took it away, and a few minutes later brought him a replacement. "Maybe by the time this one soaks through, your eye won't hurt so bad."

"Maybe. Could I please have a glass now? I think I'm entitled to a drink."

She poured each of them one. He tossed his back. It made him cough, but the liquor spread an anesthetizing heat through his midsection that made his discomfort more bearable.

Dovey went into the bathroom to add water to her cup, then dropped in a couple of ice cubes and sipped the drink like a lady. He remembered the glass she'd poured her beer into. Classy broad, he concluded muzzily. Not pretty in the soft, cushy, baby-doll sense, but certainly striking. She would turn heads on any sidewalk in the world.

Through a mist of pain and booze, he watched her remove her jacket and drape it over the back of a chair. Just as he'd thought—high, round breasts.

Oh yes, quite a looker was Dovey. But that wasn't all. She looked like a woman who knew her own mind and wasn't afraid to speak it. Levelheaded.

So what the hell had she been doing in the place?

He drifted off while puzzling through the question.

Chapter 4

T
he room was in total darkness when Lucky awakened. He tentatively opened one eye, after trying to open both reminded him that his right one would be black-and-blue and swollen shut for a day or two.

There was artificial light coming from the parking lot through the crack between the drape and the wall. It was still night, but he didn't care enough about the time to try to check his wristwatch.

His muscles were cramped from lying in one position for so long. He stretched, wincing and moaning slightly, and attempted to turn onto his side. When he did, his knee bumped into another.

He mumbled, "Dovey?"

"Hm?"

He often awakened in the middle of the night with a woman in bed with him, so he responded as he usually did, by curving his arm across her and pulling her closer. Their knees automatically straightened, bringing their bodies together. Her hair brushed his cheek, and he turned his face into it, inhaling its honeysuckle scent and mindlessly kissing the strands that fell across his lips.

That felt so good, so right, he pressed his lips against her smooth forehead, then let them trail over her brows to her eyelids. Her lashes feathered his lips. He kissed her cheekbone, her nose, then her mouth. Reflexively she drew back. "Lucky?" she whispered.

"Yes, baby," he whispered back before seeking her mouth again.

Her lips separated slowly. His tongue slipped between them. The inside of her mouth was delicious, but unfamiliar. He didn't remember ever kissing her. He explored deeply, leisurely, thoroughly, before biting gently on her lower lip—
that
he remembered craving to do—and sucking it into his mouth.

Making a small sound, she stirred against him restlessly. Her hands landed softly on his bare chest. As his tongue glided across her lower lip, he felt her fingers combing through his chest hair and her nails gently raking his skin. It struck him as odd that all her responses were so tinged with shyness. Then her fingertips glazed his turgid nipple, and his analysis ended. He had no thoughts beyond the taste and feel of her.

Rolling partially atop her, he lowered his hand to her breast, but became confused when he encountered clothing. It was silk, true, but what was she doing in bed with clothes on? It suddenly occurred to him that he was still wearing his jeans. No wonder he was so uncomfortable.

Befuddled, he reached for the top button of his fly. When it and the others were undone, he eased himself free, sighing with relief. The pressure had been almost painful.

Using his personal system of radar, his lips found her neck in the darkness and began dusting it with kisses as his hand moved to her breast again. The barriers of buttons and her brassiere clasp didn't deter him in the slightest, and soon his hand was filled with warm, malleable woman flesh.

Now we're back on track, he thought. Everything was as it should be. Her breast was full and soft as his hand gently reshaped it. When he drew his thumb across the tip, it responded as he expected, becoming tight and hard. He sandwiched it between two of his fingers, enjoying the small wanting sounds that issued from her throat each time he applied the merest pressure to her nipple. Eventually he took it into his mouth. His tongue circled and stroked and teased until her hands were clutching at his shoulders and his own body was burning like a furnace.

"Sweet, sweet," he whispered as he moved aside her garments and hungrily kissed her other breast. "So sweet."

Hose. Pantyhose, he thought miserably when his hand slipped beneath her skirt to caress her knee. He despised the things, and wished he had five minutes alone with the sadist who had invented them.

Moments later, however, he was delighted when his stroking hand discovered satiny smooth skin above her stockings. Apparently she was delighted, too, because at the touch of his hand against her inner bare thighs, her back arched off the bed and she released a staggering sigh of pleasure … and mounting need.

He tracked the lacy suspenders up to the V of her thighs. Inside her panties there were myriad textures to explore and fluid heat to drown in—he wanted badly to taste her. But he didn't have the time. His body was compelling him to hurry.

Had he ever had this woman before? No. He couldn't have. Otherwise he wouldn't be experiencing the contradictory urges to hurry and to loiter. He resented the time it took to fumble in his pocket for the foil-wrapped prophylactic and slip it on. The same desire that compelled him to position himself in the cradle of her thighs was prompting him to wait.

But he was already there, hard and hot and pressing toward sweet deliverance. And she was moist and soft and snug and sweet.

He heard himself say hoarsely, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," but he wasn't even sure why.

All he was sure of was that he could never get enough of this woman. He gathered her beneath him, stroked her expertly, then buried himself deep within the sheath of her body. He wanted to sustain the pleasure, but it was so immense, he was helpless to stop the climax that claimed him, shook him, drained him.

It left him depleted. Totally spent, he laid his head on her breasts, making kissing motions against her nipples with his lips and lightly grinding his stubble-rough cheek against the soft mounds. Tenderly he palmed the nest of damp curls at the top of her thighs.