chapter Six
He withdrew from her and gently eased her into a less-strained position, wrapping his arms around her and levering her up. She groaned and he chuckled, kissing her temple. His hands caressed down her front, brushing her nipples, belly and softly delving into her drenched sex.
“So f*cking gorgeous. You undo me, Althea. You really do.”
She swayed, unsteady, and he lifted her in his arms, carrying her to a beat-up leather armchair. She sank into it, curling up. It felt odd to be naked in it, but now she had no clothes down here, thanks to her wild impulse.
Steel came back with the damp cloth, now worse for wear, and another can of beer. She refused the beer, but took the cloth, wiping herself down. He cracked the tab and drank it himself, watching her. Oddly, she didn’t mind now. Of course, he’d seen everything of her there was to see and more. Had touched her in places she hadn’t touched herself. The blush took her then and he chuckled.
“I love that you can still blush.”
She took him in, tanned all over except around his cock, which lay against his thigh, still sticky and slightly engorged. Black hair concentrated there and dusted out over his strong thighs and flat abdomen. On his chest, the brilliant dragon circled, the golden ring seeming to be clamped in its teeth.
“You want to touch it?”
She nodded and uncurled from the chair, standing up and moving a hesitant step toward him. She felt a little like the virgin baiting the monster, though how she could still feel that way after all they’d done… Reaching out, she touched the little ring through his nipple, then tugged on it, looking up to see his reaction.
“It would take more than that to hurt me, princess.”
She smiled at him then. Giving in to the urge, she put her hands on his chest, took the little ring in her teeth and flicked her tongue on the flesh it impaled. Steel hissed in a most gratifying way and put a hand on the back of her head. She let go and he kissed her, soft and lingering. A tender emotion turned over in her heart and she found herself wanting to press up against him, wrap around him and hold him close.
Spooked, she stepped back, needing distance. A flicker of something hard and cynical crossed his face.
“How do you feel?”
“Sore,” she admitted. “Wrung out.”
“You got a bathtub up in that loft of yours?”
“Yes, but—” She hesitated.
“Don’t worry—I know you don’t want me up there.” He drank down the beer.
“Steel, I—”
“Don’t give it a thought, darlin’. We’ll take it slow.”
She nearly laughed at that. If this was his idea of taking it slow, then taking things fast might have killed her. He followed the thought and grinned at her.
“Go on up and get dressed. I’m taking you for a little outing. You got a pair of jeans? And boots?”
“Out? On your motorcycle?”
“Yep. Nothing like a ride on a warm evening with a pretty girl.”
She glanced at the louvered windows, surprised to see it was still the warm glow of late afternoon. It felt like she’d been down here for days.
“Don’t worry—we won’t go anywhere your friends will see you with me.”
She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but it stuck in her throat. As a business owner, she did have a reputation to maintain. And no sense causing a stir over this temporary affair.
“I have jeans and boots.” And a ride would be fun. “But I’m naked.”
His eyes roamed over her in a leisurely tour. “Strikingly so.”
“Where are my bra and panties, at least?”
He leered at her. “In my souvenir box. You get these.” He pressed her glasses into her hand.
“Can I borrow a shirt?”
He tilted his head in that teasing, pretending-to-think move. “Hmm. Nope.”
“But how can I get upstairs like this?”
“You can go up through the gallery. Put your hair up in that sexy ponytail, too, like you had it the other day.”
Torn between laughter and frustration, she went to the stairs. Looked up in trepidation at the light under the door.
Steel followed her and gave her a little smack on the bottom. “If you scoot quick like a bunny, no one will see you.”
Acutely aware of his gaze following her, she went up, disabled the alarm and peeked around the corner. No one was passing by on the street. With a frisson of delighted daring, she ducked around the corner and ran up the stairs to her apartment.
Steel had an ability to go from fierce to light and teasing. Just when she thought the intensity would tear her apart, he’d turned it all into just a game. From the depths to daylight in one whooshing moment. And now they’d go for a motorcycle ride, a fun date on a pretty evening, as if he hadn’t just f*cked her within an inch of her life.
She turned the phrase over in her mind, relishing it as she pulled on a blush pink silk robe and padded into the living room.
Artemisia and Tassi were crashed out in afternoon sleep mode and barely flicked an ear in her direction. She stopped to stroke Tassi’s invitingly offered furry belly and he stretched under the touch. She’d been like that, purring to Steel’s every touch, every stern command. Her sex dampened again—or more—at the thought. She didn’t care to examine what it was she liked about it.
Excitement tingled every nerve and that was a great way to feel.
The ponytail took some doing, what with all the snarls in her fine hair. The boots she had weren’t really motorcycle boots, but they’d have to do. She showered fast, pulled on a sky blue T-shirt, grabbed a leather jacket and went out the fire-escape way.
He waited for her, down in the alley, looking nonchalant. Nobody seemed to be around. She locked the doors and nearly skipped down the steps to him, feeling girlishly pleased by the admiration in his expression.
“You look hot in jeans, baby.” He shook his head. “Maybe we should go back downstairs.”
She actually giggled. “No way. I can’t take another round.”
“Yet.” He pinned her with a ravenous stare. “Because I have plans for you.”
“Yes.” She whispered it, her nipples peaking.
He grinned. “Good. Let’s go for a different kind of ride then, princess.”
All gentleman now, he showed her the bike and where she’d sit, where her feet should go, how to buckle the helmet and tuck her hair inside. He clapped his on his head, climbed on the bike and started it with a roar. A little intimidated, she climbed into the space behind him, her tender crotch groaning at the stretch. She settled against him and wrapped her arms barely around his waist.
Then tightened them convulsively, a squeal escaping her when the bike surged forward. “Not so fast!” She yelled in his ear.
He glanced over his shoulder, grinned and shook his head. “We’re barely moving. Hang on.”
Her heart pounded like a frightened bird as they raced up the street. But Steel kept to the back streets and she realized gradually that they weren’t going so fast—it only felt like it. Being out in the wind with the street so close made it feel faster. They stopped at a light and he put his feet down while they waited.
“You doing okay?” he called back.
“I think so.”
“You want to loosen your grip then, so I can breathe again?”
Feeling silly, she let go, but he retrieved her hands and put them back around his waist with a little pat. “Don’t go away, darlin’. Just a little less throttling.”
“Sorry!” It came out as a squeak when the bike surged ahead and the wind blew back his laugh. The sound of it made her smile and she made herself relax more. It helped that they were heading out of town now on one of the rural back roads. Crape myrtles with their panicles of pink and white ruffled blossoms intermingled with the live oaks, draping languid limbs over the laneways, making verdant tunnels.
When Steel had repositioned her grip, he’d put her hands under his leather jacket and now she could feel the hard muscles of his abs rippling as he balanced the bike. His tanned hands flexed on the handles, expertly handling the speed and curves. She watched them dreamily, remembering how well those fingers had revved her. Her and the motorcycle, well-tuned instruments for him to play.
They pulled into a shaded lane that led back to a lopsided bungalow. A car up on blocks sat near the edge of the yard, surrounded by heaps of stray metal pieces and parts. Kudzu grew up through a stack of old tires. The porch boards sagged and seemed in dire need of both repair and paint.
Steel pulled around the side and cut the engine. The buzz of cicadas and spring peepers swelled in her ears, nearly as loud as the motorcycle had been, in their own way.
“Is this your place?” She hesitated, not really wanting to go inside. Not really wanting to be here at all.
He glanced at her, shaking out his hair and looping the helmet strap on a pin on the bike. “No. Belongs to a buddy—he asked me to keep an eye on it while he’s out of town.”
“So, we’re here to feed his cat or something?”
“Better. Give me your helmet.”
“Tell me why we’re here first.”
“Because if you don’t like it you’ll—what?—ride the bike back yourself?”
“Fine.” She took off the helmet. “I can just call a cab.”
He studied her. “What has you all het up now?”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“You like being out of control in the basement with me, but not out in public.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, even though the jacket was a little warm now. “I don’t want to discuss that here.”
“Fair enough. Come see what we’re here for and, if you don’t like it, we can leave. Deal?” He held out a hand to her and, not feeling at all thrilled, she took off the jacket, tossed it on the bike and took his hand.
They strolled around to the back yard, fenced only by the dense ring of trees. It seemed ages since she’d held hands with a guy. Since college, maybe. Back then romance had seemed fun and easy. Why this…thing with Steel kept taking her back in her mind to a simpler, more innocent self, she didn’t understand.
“Ah, the simple pleasures.” Steel gestured to an arbor festooned with grapevines. Underneath sat a wooden hot tub. “See? I just thought you might like a little soak.”
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
He whipped the cover off the tub, tested the temperature and sighed happily. Flicking a switch, he set the water to bubbling and white lights, like thousands of stars in the deepening evening, lit up in the vines. “Me neither. No one can see us—it’s well screened.”
He yanked off his T-shirt over his head, the gold nipple ring winking at her. Sucking in his belly, even though he didn’t have to, he flipped the top button of his jeans and raised an eyebrow at her. “Just going to watch the show, sugar? Or are you getting in?”
Actually, watching the show sounded pretty good at the moment. So did a soak under the pretty arbor. Unsure why she’d been annoyed, Althea sat in the grass to peel off her boots, then stood again to shuck her jeans and T-shirt. It felt oddly freeing to undress outdoors, to feel the soft evening air against her skin.
By the time she got her bra and panties off, Steel was already in the tub, giving her an appreciative smile. His expression seemed warm, though, and not wolfish, so she took his hand and let him help her into the tub. She groaned at the surge of hot water melting into her bones and tender flesh.
“This was such a good idea,” she murmured, with her head tipped back, eyes closed.
“I know.”
Okay, he sounded smug and self-satisfied, but she’d give him that. He hadn’t gone outside the lines of the affair or what have you. In fact, he seemed to observe her boundaries quite closely, understanding her surprisingly well for such a short acquaintance. More than she understood about him.
He had his head leaned back over the rim of the tub, ridged throat stretched up in utter relaxation. His tanned arms moved through the water in idle waves, showing now and again through the bubbles. Though his legs were extended, he angled them away from her, giving her space. Instinctively knowing she needed it.
“So, your friend who lives here—is he on vacation?”
Steel snorted. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
He opened one eye, assessed her and closed it again. “You sure you want to know, princess?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“He’s vacationing at Allendale Prison. Possession, before you ask. Plus a little dust-up with the cops.”
Oh. “Is he someone you’ve known a long time?”
“We grew up together, yeah. He has an auto body shop up Summerville way. He gave me space to work on the sculptures when I needed it. Lets me raid his scrap metal. I owe him for being there when no one else was. Watching his place is easy enough.”
A wealth of information lurked under his words. So many things unspoken in the yawning gap between their worlds. Why had only this one friend been there for him?
“No comment?” He raised an eyebrow and opened that eye to squint at her.
“So, is that why you moved out of the shop and into my place—because he went to prison?”
Steel levered himself into a more upright position and ran wet hands through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. The rising steam made the wild ends curl and cling to his neck. “Well, the shop is still open. His second is running it and does okay. But yeah, that was part of it. And the other guys—some of ’em are real dipshits. One used my diamond-head drill bit to put his initials on his socket wrench.” He shook his head at that. “Another idiot ruined my best fine oil brush to pinstripe a Mustang. Pissed me off no end.”
She could just picture him, in all his artistic intensity, trying to explain to a garage monkey why you couldn’t use a mink brush in auto paint. She giggled and Steel gave her a sour look. “Yeah, laugh. It wasn’t funny at the time.”
“I’m sorry.” She tried to compose her face.
“I just wanted to be in a place where people understood art. Things are happening for me—I want to do it right. Those guys have good hearts—they just come from a different world, you know?”
“I do know.” But did she, really? It was hard to imagine his coming up, compared to hers.
Silence fell between them, straining with their differences. Except that the art had altered his life and moved him into a path that crossed with hers. Like a comet blasting through her quiet life, scorching hot and, likely, just as quickly gone.
“How did you start sculpting?”
“Truth?”
She nodded.
“Well, I guess you haven’t run yet. Schools and camps for troubled boys.” He flashed that wicked grin at her, but something melancholy ran beneath it. “I won’t lie to you, Althea. I got into plenty of trouble. Too much mad in me and nothing to use it on. A social worker put a brush in my hand and told me to paint it out.”
He sighed and tipped his head back again, staring up at the lights. “She might have saved me. Then a shop teacher taught me arc-welding and it all came together. I see my friends—like Badger, who owns this place—they didn’t have that…hunger to pull them through the shit, you know?”
“I envy you that, actually.”
He looked at her. “Really? You have the gallery. It’s clear you love the place.”
“I do, but…” She swished her shoulders in the water, feeling restless. This wasn’t something she talked about. “It lets me enjoy art, but it’s not the same as being the artist. It’s more like sitting in the audience, applauding.”
She shouldn’t have said that much. He clearly caught the tremor in her voice and now studied her with that discerning eye that seemed to lay her open.
“I know you have the vision and the sensibility—what got in the way?”
And there he cut to the heart of it. What got in the way?
She shrugged, trying to keep it light. “Not all of us have the talent to make our visions real. My stuff is…uninspired.”
“Who told you that?”
“Pretty much everyone!” She tried to laugh it into a joke. All those teachers, the juries, her own mother. The same look on their faces. That sympathetic regret, the comforting phrases that somehow were worse than the dismissals by more brusque people. “But they didn’t need to. I could see it for myself.”
“I’m sure you practiced like crazy, knowing you.”
Oh, she had. All those hours with the watercolors, until her eyes burned and refused to focus, until she entirely lost the vision in the swarming headaches. Until her mother gently begged her to stop, to turn her ambitions to something close to it. Something she had talent for. Only she was failing at the gallery too.
“Some people are kings, some are kingmakers.” She smiled at him, consciously willing away the tears that threatened. “And I think I’m cooked.”
“Had enough, have you?”
Somehow she knew he wasn’t talking about the hot tub.
“Hang on.” He levered himself out of the tub, water sheeting down his strong body, black hair running dark rivers over the defined muscles. In a moment he was back with a couple of towels. He held one open for her. “Milady.”
She climbed out and he wrapped the towel around her like a blanket. Stepping away, he used his to vigorously dry himself, brisk and full of fierce energy.
“Where did these come from?”
He grinned at her. “Saddlebags.”
Of course. She’d seen him pull the portfolio out of the black leather cases strapped to the bike that first day. He pulled on his jeans and she scrambled to catch up.
“That first day you came to Chalkstone—you were wearing motorcycle pants too.”
“Chaps.”
“Yes. But you didn’t wear them today.”
He yanked his shirt on and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “Those are more for highway riding. Or when it’s cooler than tonight. Why?”
An embarrassed blush made her cheeks heat, so she scrubbed at her face with the towel. “Just wondered.”
“I’ll wear ’em for you, if you want. Maybe with nothing else?”
The image stole her breath. How he’d so accurately gauged her interest she had no idea. He pulled the towel gently out of her hands and tipped up her chin. “I saw you looking that first day. And you’re not the first woman to like how it looks.”
Her face burned. “I apologize. I don’t normally…”
“Stare at a guy’s package? No worries, princess. Made me give you a second look.” His gaze lingered on her lips, but he didn’t kiss her. Keeping to their truce. “Ready to go?”
They rode back through the purple evening. Relaxed, sleepy, emptied out, this time she gave in more, feeling the heat of Steel’s body under her hands and between her thighs, the throb of the bike against her rousing tissues. Picturing him in those black leather chaps and nothing else, his cock standing erect, had her wet again, aching to be filled with it. So much had happened since this morning’s drive with Brandon. Feeling daring and aroused and, with a sense of bookending this extraordinary day, she slid a hand down from his belly and cupped his crotch.
His cock leaped under her touch in a most gratifying way. He ratcheted down the speed immediately and turned into a shadowed park lit only by moonlight. Delighted with the power, she pressed harder, stroking him. He rocked his hips in enthusiastic response, pulled over by a picnic table and yanked off his helmet.
“What are you offering, princess? I told you—anything you ask for.”
“The picnic table,” she whispered, pulling off her own helmet and climbing off the bike, the illicit rush heating her more, making her hurry. “If it’s safe here.”
“You’re safe from anything but me.” Despite the lurid promise, he dug out one of the towels and handed it to her. “Don’t want splinters in your pretty skin.”
She spread the towel on the end of the table and sat down, reaching for a boot.
“Just pull your jeans and panties down.”
She frowned at him. But she wanted him from the front this time. He chuckled at her. “Don’t worry—I can get in there. Easier to get dressed if someone comes along. But it’s your call.”
Well, the idea of getting dressed easily again appealed. She unbuttoned the jeans and pushed them down to her ankles, then sat on the table again.
“Oh yeah, baby.” Steel’s gaze took her in. “Just like that. You gleam in the moonlight—did you know that?” He stood in front of her and stroked roughened hands up her white naked thighs. “A moon goddess.”
She shivered, restless, wanting, and he chuckled, handing her the condom package. “You want to do the honors?”
He undid his jeans, pushing them down his hips so his cock sprang free. Biting her lip, she tore the foil wrapper and rolled the condom over the weeping head, stroking her hands up and down his length. He wrapped his hands around her ponytail and tugged. She looked up and his mouth descended on hers, avid and seeking. With a moan she let go of his cock and clung to his shoulders as he pushed her back onto the table.
With a last smoldering kiss, he stepped back and raised her ankles, bracketed together by her jeans. He pushed them back toward her bottom and whispered for her to spread her knees wide. Reaching underneath, he dipped his fingers into her and she whimpered.
“So hot for me, my little minx. You sure?” He stroked a finger around her vulva, stretching and stimulating. “Not too sore?”
“No.” She gasped. “I want it.”
“Good. Me too.”
In a neat twist, he ducked under, came up through the space and plunged into her.
She cried out, back arching and Steel pushed her T-shirt up, licking and biting at her nipples through the thin bra. Digging her fingers into his still damp curls, she urged him up to kiss her. He obliged, gentler now, stroking in and out of her in a languid rhythm. She rocked with it, clinging to him, while the moon sailed high above.
The orgasm shivered through her, melting and sweet, even as he shuddered in her arms, pressing hot kisses to the side of her neck, his welcome weight pressing her down.
That unexpected feeling of romance rolled through her, and this time she let it, too sated to resist. Even when he slipped out of her and they cleaned up and assembled their clothes, a quiet companionship shimmered in the air between them. Steel started to hand her the helmet, paused and slipped a hand around the back of her neck, kissing her with a tender sweetness that stole her breath.
When they arrived back home, she nearly swayed on her feet from sleepiness, digging her keys from her pocket.
“Gallery is closed tomorrow?” Steel asked, unstrapping the saddlebags from the bike.
“Yes. But I have errands to run. Lunch with a friend.”
He nodded. “I’m going to work for a while tonight, so I’ll sleep in, likely. Will you come see me before you go to lunch?”
“I don’t know if I’ll have time.”
“Give me half an hour before you have to leave.”
“Well…”
“I’ll set a timer.”
“We’ll see.”
But she knew she would. Surely he couldn’t do that much to her in only thirty minutes.