Borrowing a Bachelor Read online

  “I can do this,” she declared, as if she were trying to convince herself as well as him.

  “Even with no pole, huh?” He couldn’t resist teasing her a little bit.

  “Oh. I forgot about the pole,” she said, looking distressed.

  “Don’t worry about it. You can use a chair or something, right?” Adam pulled a chair out from under the room’s desk and set it in the middle of the floor. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and held the ice pack to his nose.

  Nikki took a deep breath, approached the chair and grasped the back. Then she began.

  She gyrated her hips to the beat of the music and pressed her pink lips into a pout. After a few moments, she took the bottom of her shirt into both hands and began easing it up, teasing him with the sight of her breasts in a red push-up bra. She whipped the shirt over her head and spun around.

  When she turned to face him again, she ran a hand down her smooth, flat stomach, sort of slithering it around. She played with the button at the waistband of her skirt.

  The bra was the second article of clothing to go, leaving her breasts bare except for a pair of strategically placed pasties with tiny tassels that shook in every direction and betrayed her total lack of rhythm, but who cared.

  She was all enticing skin and curves.

  A minute or so later, she ditched the skirt, letting it drop to the floor. She stepped out of it, gyrating her hips, and kicked it to the side.

  Adam’s woody made a return appearance when she plunged her hand into the front of the G-string.

  Adam stopped breathing at the sight.

  She rotated her hips as if they were mounted on ball bearings, then leaned forward and squeezed her breasts between her arms so that they thrust forward. Then she worked her shoulders, shimmying them, too.

  A cold trickle of water, followed by another one, rolled down Adam’s throbbing nose and dropped onto his now equally throbbing denim-clad crotch. He was half-afraid it would start to steam.

  Nikki put her hands up to her hair and pushed it on top of her head as she gyrated, letting it tumble down over her shoulders as she turned her back to him. Hot! Hot!

  But then his gaze dropped again to her ass and the mosquito bites, now shiny with cortisone cream…not to mention the tufts of mud and grass on her heels. Worse, the twin mosquito bites now stared out at him from each cheek like a couple of angry red eyes.

  Her thong formed two frowning eyebrows as it dipped horizontally from each hip, and the vertical part in this context looked like a nose. The cheeks were, well, cheeks. And that sweet, sweet underside as her bottom met her thighs—well, it grimaced at him.

  Adam couldn’t help himself—he guffawed, knowing as he did so that it was probably the worst offense he could commit.

  Nikki stopped dead, her whole body stiffening in outrage.

  He winced and ducked reflexively, thinking that she’d throw something at him. But it wasn’t anger on her face as she turned—it was something much worse: shame. Complete and utter humiliation. And shock. And deep, deep hurt.

  “Nikki—”

  Shaking, she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  Nice, Adam. You’ve sure gone and done it now, haven’t you? His bedside manner needed work. He groaned and walked to the door, then knocked softly. “Nikki, I wasn’t laughing at you—”

  “Yes, you were!” Her voice was thick with shame.

  “No, not the way you think.”

  “I know I have no rhythm or talent and I know I’m fat,” she wailed.

  “Fat? Are you crazy? No, Nikki, you’re not. And you do have talent…” Okay, not much, but enough to get a guy’s motor running, that was for sure.

  “It was the M&M’s,” she blurted.

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, God…why don’t you have something in here that I can just kill myself with?”

  Alarmed, Adam tried the knob, but she’d locked herself in. “Nikki, you can’t be serious. Please, please, let me explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain,” she wailed. “I danced and you laughed.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, no, no. Look, just give me a chance—”

  “You would have to have an electric shaver,” she said bitterly. “I can’t slit my wrists with that.”

  “Nikki!”

  “And no sleeping pills. Not even any freaking dental floss that I could strangle myself with.”

  “Nikki, don’t you think you’re blowing this out of proportion? I mean, even if I had laughed at your dancing—”

  “You did!” This time she bellowed it.

  “No, I didn’t. Not the way you think.” Adam ran his hands over his face, which was a mistake, since he aggravated his nose all over again. “Look. Nikki, do you have a sense of humor?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if you have a sense of humor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you have to ask,” Adam said patiently, “then you probably don’t have one.”

  “I do, too.”

  O-kay. “Then turn around and look at your, uh, bottom in the mirror.”

  Silence. Then, she said, “You want me to check out my own butt?”

  “Yes. Just do it.”

  More silence. “Whatever,” she said, in tones that indicated she was only humoring a lunatic.

  Adam waited.

  “Oh, my God!” she shrieked. “It looks like there’s a whole face back there!”

  “Exactly.”

  Now a definite giggle emerged from behind the bathroom door. Almost faint with relief, Adam made another suggestion. “Okay, now look at your heels.”

  This time she whooped.

  More progress.

  “I ask you,” Adam appealed to her, “if you would not have laughed yourself.”

  Silence.

  Then Nikki unlocked and opened the door, her eyes brimming with mischief and streaky makeup behind the wet washcloth she held to her flushed face. She’d pulled on the hotel’s terry bathrobe.

  Adam held up his hands, palms out. “Funny?”

  “Funny,” she confirmed, nodding.

  He nodded, having absolutely no clue what to do or say next. “Listen, I feel really bad that you thought I was laughing at your dancing.”

  “It’s okay.” She scrubbed at her eyes with the cloth, only succeeding in smearing around all the black and purple goop she had on.

  “Can I fix you a drink from the minibar while you take that stuff off your face? It’s the least I can do to make things up to you.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “A bourbon and Coke, please.”

  He made two of them and handed one to her when she came out. “Cheers.”

  “Thanks.” She took a deep gulp. “How’s your nose?”

  “Fine. How are your mosquito bites?” He grinned.

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Fine.”

  “Nikki, where did you ever get the idea that you’re fat?” he asked abruptly.

  She tugged at the robe around her body and hugged herself with her free arm. She took another long swallow of her drink. “Oh, you know.” She shrugged.

  “No, I don’t know. You have a smokin’ body.”

  “I was a really chubby kid,” she blurted. “They used to call me—” She took another swallow of the bourbon and Coke, effectively finishing it off. “Never mind.”

  Adam took the cup from her and went to the minibar to make her another. “What did they call you?”

  She picked up a guide to local attractions and thumbed through it without seeming to see anything inside.

  He didn’t know why he cared, but he did. “Nikki?”

  “Chubba Bubba,” she said, snapping the magazine closed. She shrugged again. “Stupid, huh? Really dumb that I still think about it now, at age twenty-four. But I guess it’s still a sore spot.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Adam said. He gave her the second drink. “Kids can be incredib
ly mean.”

  “You have no idea,” she said, taking another big gulp.

  He almost advised her to take it easy, but he’d already offended her once and was unwilling to repeat the offense. “Oh, I do have a good idea. I got picked on a lot in junior high.”

  “Really? Why?”

  He shrugged. “I was a small, nerdy kid with glasses and braces and a bad case of acne.”

  Surprise crossed her face. “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But you’re gorgeous,” she blurted. Then blushed. Then gulped more of her drink.

  It was his turn to blush. He felt color searing his face. He’d filled out, gone to a dermatologist and lost the braces by his sophomore year in high school. “Uh, thanks, I guess.” He covered his discomfort by burying his nose in his own drink.

  “I embarrassed you,” Nikki said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I laughed at your backside,” Adam said. “So I guess we’re even, huh?”

  She dimpled and leaned forward to set down her cup on the cocktail table. Her robe gaped open as she did so, and his gaze fell straight to her spectacular breasts—what his buddy Devon would call her “luscious golden Winnebagos.” The idiot.

  Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was temporary insanity. Or maybe—

  “I’d never, ever make fun of your front side,” Adam croaked, as she noticed where his gaze was fixated.

  She instantly put her hands up to tug the edges of the robe together.

  “Please don’t,” he asked softly.

  She froze.

  He tried a smile. “They’re so beautiful. Like the rest of you.”

  She swallowed, hesitating. Then, blushing furiously again, she tugged the lapels of the robe open. And then, to his stunned disbelief, she removed the pasties on her nipples and let her breasts spill out to greet him.

  The air went out of him so fast that his lungs almost collapsed. His mouth gaped open like a grouper’s.

  D cups. Perfect, high and round and cherry-capped. Fair? No, this was incredibly unfair. Because Adam wanted to touch them in the worst way. His palms itched, he wanted them so badly. He was afraid he was going to start panting like a dog. He was crazy; he shouldn’t have brought her here. He needed to be studying for the exam on Monday. Where was his legendary hard-won focus?

  “Are you okay?” Nikki asked. “Because you have a very peculiar expression on your face.”

  He groaned. His woody was back with a vengeance.

  “Adam?”

  “Look,” he said. “Nikki, don’t take this the wrong way…but the expression on my face is lust, pure and simple. The fact is, sweetheart, that I’d like to fu—uh, screw you into next Friday.”

  5

  NIKKI CHOKED. “OH!” she said once she could manage the words. A tingle spread down her spine and intensified between her legs.

  “Er,” Adam responded sheepishly, looking as if he couldn’t quite believe the words had come out of his mouth. “Sorry. That was probably a little uncensored.”

  “Yeah…but I liked it.” She smiled at him.

  “Did you?” He stared at her intently and then upended his drink as she nodded.

  Adam set down the cup, ditto the ice pack, and got to his feet. He wiped his hands on his jeans as he crossed the carpet to where she sat; her nerves grew taut and the tingle between her legs intensified. She stopped breathing as he came to a stop in front of her.

  “May I?”

  Clearly, he wanted to kiss her. Nikki tilted back her head to look up at him and examined that chiseled, beautiful mouth of his. It was firm and masculine, but also sensual. His lips weren’t full, but she liked the lines of them, the way they curved, the way they smiled. She imagined how those curves would fit to her own lips, fantasized about how they would feel against hers.

  He bent his head, gazed into her eyes. Would he put a finger under her chin to tilt her head back? Would he take her whole face into his hands? She waited in anticipation.

  But she was wrong. Adam didn’t kiss her. She gasped as instead his fingers grazed her breasts. His hands were cold from the drink and the ice, but since the rest of her was inexplicably hot, the sensation was erotic.

  He lifted her breasts and held them as if they were precious, then rubbed his thumbs slowly over the nipples.

  She forgot all about kissing. A moan escaped her and she pushed them farther into his hands, a wordless request for more.

  Adam’s breathing quickened and the pupils of his eyes dilated, went darker.

  Her gaze dropped from his to the formidable bulge now straining against his fly, and his hands tightened on her flesh, kneaded. He continued to tease her nipples, rubbing circles around them and flicking them gently as the sensations drove her half-crazy. Small sounds came from her throat that she couldn’t control, and he seemed to like that.

  “Lick them, Adam,” she said. “My breasts. Please…”

  He dropped to his knees between her legs, needing no further invitation. He pushed the robe from her shoulders and squeezed her breasts together, taking both nipples into his mouth at once, playing them with his tongue, and then sucking hard.

  Pleasure tore a series of whimpers from her throat and he groaned against her body, the masculine sound plucking answering strings inside her.

  Adam pushed her back on the bed. He slid his hands down her body, from her breasts to her rib cage and stomach, all the way to the V of her legs, where he stopped to play a little. She sucked in a breath as those clever thumbs of his circled the damp fabric at her mons, but avoided touching her where she was wild to be touched.

  He pushed her legs up onto the bed so that her heels rested at the edge, her feet dangling down. He spread her thighs and then dipped under her G-string to explore.

  Nikki bucked as his fingers slid cleverly under the fabric, stroked her, and then zeroed in right below the tiny heart-shaped patch of hair.

  “I have to see,” he whispered, and slid the tiny panties to the side.

  For a moment, there was only silence.

  She lifted her head and looked through her own knees at Adam’s face, which was a study in boyish awe.

  “I’m gonna have a heart attack,” he said in strangled tones. “Pun intended.” And he stroked the little heart of hair with fascination, lust and an odd tenderness.

  Her thighs quivered, and he dipped lower, slipped his fingers inside her while still manipulating the eager little nub right below the heart.

  Her whole body began to shake with unfulfilled sexual tension. “Please,” she whispered, hoping that he’d put his mouth on her. But how did she ask a stranger to do that?

  He didn’t, just as he hadn’t kissed her. But he did do blissful things with his fingers, with his thumbs. She was climbing, spiraling, wanting… She lifted off the bed in a mortifying frenzy of need. “Yes,” she said. “Yes…more. Do it. Do me!”

  He laughed softly and obeyed.

  She splintered into orgasm, losing control of her mind, her body and her dignity without caring. “Adam,” she begged, “take me into next Friday, okay? Like you said.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he breathed. “Oh, yeah.” An eternity seemed to pass as he shucked out of his clothes and fumbled a condom out of his wallet. He rolled it onto the long, smooth, thick length of him.

  Then he entered her in one hot, smooth stroke that left her gasping at the fullness, the sense of being possessed, the sudden different kind pleasure that streaked through her body.

  She hadn’t seen his cock at all, but she didn’t need to, now that she felt it, now that she was deliciously impaled. He stopped only for a moment, as if to savor the act of penetrating her. Then he started to move, to pump, to groan with the pleasure of it.

  She tightened around him and ran her hands up and down his back and buttocks as he stroked into her body.

  “You’re so hot, so hot,” he murmured.

  As if he had any idea. Her insides had melted into honey, and every time he slid along the cle
ft of her the temperature rose in streaks and flashes, liquefying her mind into her body until she was one sweet swirl of pleasure, her only focus to reach the very pinnacle of it.

  He took her up, up, up…ever higher until she was saturated with his scent and his power, one with his motions and open, wide open to him. She lost herself.

  And then he pitched her over the edge of climax and her body convulsed and thrashed, while she ignored the raw cries that came, uninhibited, from her throat.

  Adam’s big body pinned her in place as sexual pleasure radiated through her in concentric circles, his soft groans echoing her own.

  Then the aftershocks eddied away, leaving them in a tangle of limbs, gasping, wondering, damp with exertion. Adam rolled off her, his only words profane and heartfelt.

  “You,” he said, “are…something else.”

  She moaned, her body still throbbing in places she didn’t know it could throb. “No, you are. You made me… I mean, I—” She couldn’t possibly be blushing again, could she? “Twice.”

  “Twice, huh,” Adam said. He rolled toward her again. “You sound so shocked. Should we go for the magic three?”

  She laughed raggedly. “I couldn’t possibly. I think something fell off.”

  Adam propped himself up on one elbow. His hair was tousled and his mouth held a wicked curve. Lazily, he traced her nipple with a wayward finger. “You think something fell off, huh? That sounds dangerous. I’d better find it and put it back on.”

  Before she’d registered what he was doing, he spread her legs again and rolled between them. He took a breath and blew it out slowly on her, which was the last thing she’d expected. It tickled; it cooled her; it sent a deep shiver of pleasure through nerves that she hadn’t thought could take any more. Her muscles trembled.

  Clearly, he was fascinated by that tiny heart of shaven hair, because he stroked that as he blew on her again, chuckling as she squirmed.

  Unbelievable, but she felt desire building in her again. If he’d touched her overly sensitive clitoris, she’d have knocked his hand away. But he didn’t. He leaned closer and she could feel his warm breath as he traced the contours of the little heart. She held her breath in anticipation. Would he? Did she want him to? Any moment now, his tongue would touch her.