hand is doing at the apex of her womanhood!
She writhes against him, clutches his shoulders with both hands, digs her fingers into his flesh through the soft flannel of his shirt.
His movements are gentle but firm. The pressure builds. No man has ever caressed her in quite this way. It’s as if he knows exactly how to make her cry out for more. She’s never been this excited, this desperate, this famished for a man’s body.
“Don’t stop,” she pleads.
He grins. For a moment she fears he’ll stop simply to taunt her. But to her relief he keeps going. And going. And going.
She feels as if she’s riding a roller coaster. Chugging up, up, up. Breath held in anticipation of the rapturous plunge.
She’s close. So very close. Teetering on the verge. One more second. Oh, yes. Yes. She’s just about to—
“Miss?” The flight attendant’s voice slammed her rudely back to earth.
“Yes,” Kay gasped, feeling breathless, edgy and achy.
“Would you care for another beverage?”
She shook her head. The flight attendant moved on down the aisle. Then Kay realized she was still holding the compact. She glanced into the mirror one last time and was horrified to see Paul Bunyan staring right at her.
Their eyes met in the mirror’s reflection. Her heart raced. Her mouth went dry. He gave her a cocksure smile as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.
Flushed and flustered, Kay snapped the compact closed and dropped it into her purse. She burned weak, shaky, her entire body swamped in heat. This wouldn’t do. She had to compose herself. Immediately, if not sooner.
Unbuckling her seat belt, she got up, slipped into the lavatory and locked the door. Bad idea. This was the scene of the fictitious crime, and she couldn’t escape her own mind.
She wet a paper towel, pressed it first to the back of her neck, then to the hollow of her throat and took several long, slow, deep breaths. For the past few months she’d been plagued by uncontrollable sexual fantasies. It was quite embarrassing, really. As if she was some kind of X-rated, female Walter Mitty.
Perhaps a fling was in order. Find someone to pop her cork, as it were. Perhaps that would put an end to these persistent flights of sexual fancy.
Kay pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off more blushing. This was simply ridiculous. She had to stop entertaining such unsuitable thoughts about total strangers. She took several more deep breaths, tossed the damp towel into the trash, then ran her fingers through her hair. There. She looked fine. Perfectly normal. Perfectly in control. No one would suspect anything to the contrary.
The plane lurched, jostling her as she unlocked the accordion-style door and tried to shove it open, but the silly thing stuck.
The plane pitched again, throwing Kay forward. She put a hand on the door hinges to brace herself, and the door folded open. She raised her head in alarm.
And found herself tumbling headlong into Paul Bunyan’s arms, as if he’d been waiting outside the door just to catch her when she fell.
2
“WHY, HELLO.” Quinn smiled down into the face of a goddess.
What compelled him to trail her to the lavatory, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was that sassy, controlled walk of hers that hypnotized him. Maybe it was her contradictory aura, pushing and pulling him in two different directions. Or maybe it was plain old horniness on his part.
But now he sure was glad he’d followed her. If he hadn’t been there to catch her, she would have pitched head first into the bulkhead opposite the lavatory and bruised her pretty face, and that would have been a crying shame.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” she whispered.
Her voice surprised him. One more irreconcilable fact that added to her allure. He’d expected her tone would be more cultured, aloof, cool and reserved. Instead, the sexy sound of her had him remembering all those nights during high school and college that he’d spun records of throaty-voiced female blues singers at his family’s tiny radio station in Bear Creek.
Unblinking, the goddess met his gaze and held it. The impact slugged him. Her sultry eyes, dark as coffee and surrounded by lashes as impossibly thick as paintbrushes, snagged something deep inside him and refused to let go.
In the brief, endless moment he held her in his arms, he noticed everything about her.
The tiny mole at the left corner of her mouth. The smooth, expertly penciled arch of her brow. The erratic throbbing of her pulse in the hollow of her neck. The slim curve of her waist. Her rich, fresh scent that made him ache to bury his nose in her hair and breathe deeply.
And the unnerving realization that beneath her ultrasoft silk blouse and bra, her nipples were puckered.
It wasn’t cold in the plane’s cramped confines. In fact, it was very, very hot.
Had her breasts hardened in response to him? Quinn almost groaned aloud at the thought.
Was he reading too much into this casual encounter? Was his desire for one last fiery sexual adventure before he found a wife and settled down for good feeding into his imagination and causing him to misread her reaction?
Her lips parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue pressing against her top teeth. She looked as if she might say something to him, but she didn’t.
Oh, Lord, he could feel her stockings rub against the leg of his jeans as she shifted in his arms.
So many thoughts raced through his brain it seemed as if eons had passed. But it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds since she’d toppled into his embrace.
She raised a hand to her cheek to brush away a strand of golden hair. He tracked her movement, peered into those compelling brown eyes once more.
And stumbled. Literally lost his balance as the plane hit another pocket of turbulence. He tipped backward, taking Charlize with him.
They ended up in the middle of the aisle, a jumble of arms and legs. The fall hadn’t knocked the air from his lungs, but nonetheless, he found it hard to breathe with her lying on his chest.
“Are you okay?” There was that breathy whisper again, uncertain, a bit nervous. And unless he missed his guess, tinged with an acute awareness of him as a man.
“Okay,” he replied, hating for this moment to end.
“Please take your seats,” a flight attendant said sharply as she rushed over. “And buckle yourselves in.”
“Let me help you up,” Charlize offered, rising to her feet with amazing agility and grace for a woman wearing three-inch heels and a mean pair of stockings.
He almost laughed at the notion of a slender branch like her helping a tree trunk like himself to his feet. But he liked the idea of touching her again, so he put out his hand, which dwarfed hers,
