Isabel Sharpe – Feels So Right (страница 3)
“What? What did I do?” Seth dropped his innocent look for a grin and squeezed Bonnie’s shoulder. “Okay, maybe it needs work.”
“We should plan this out.” Angela started counting on her fingers. “Make posters, work on a jingle for a radio spot—G-rated, thank you, Seth. I also think it’s time to bite the bullet and come up with a communal website. Right now we each have our own. What do you think?”
There was general assent, lots of joking, lots of constructive brainstorming and thorough planning. Demi was, as always, impressed by the quartet she’d signed on with. They worked hard and had all done well, though she wasn’t sure about Bonnie, who always went oddly quiet when the others discussed their good fortune. She’d also dropped quite a bit of weight in the last six months or so and never seemed terribly busy in her shop. Demi hoped she was just angsting about her romantic life. Maybe she’d fall in love with a nice rich guy. Demi’s sister had done that. Boy had she. And didn’t let anyone forget it for more than twenty seconds.
The meeting broke up; Demi left the four of them still chatting. She was tired, anxious to get to bed, a little flustered at the idea of seeing Colin again the next day. Often she’d dream about whatever she concentrated on at night, powerful dreams that affected her the whole next day. Tonight before she went to bed, she’d imagine him toothless with bugs crawling all over him. That way she might be able to turn him into an object of disgust.
Yeah, and if
Half an hour later, she was snuggled in bed, listening to the October rain tap on the window, concentrating on Colin, not the way he was, but the way she wanted to dream about him.
Big brown eyes—make those piggy, puffy red ones. His fabulous male scent—now eau de skunky hangover. His rare smile—brown and broken. His build—flabtastic. Plaid pants, platform shoes. Flowered shirt unbuttoned to his waist.
Gold chains …
She gave a huge yawn and nestled deeper under the covers, smiling faintly.
Long, greasy hair.
Another yawn. Take that, Colin …
A knock on the door. She tried to say, “Come in,” but couldn’t make a sound. The door opened. Colin! Except he was about four foot five, wearing a clown costume—white with huge red dots and yellow ruffles, floppy black shoes, giant red nose.
This must be her dream. Perfect.
“Sure.” His voice emerged without problem, deep, resonant, very sexy. Oops, she’d forgotten to change that to an appropriately girlie squeak.
“No.” He moved his hands to the back of his suit.
She tried to say yes, but couldn’t make herself understood, and frowned at him instead, frantically gesturing that he should stop.
Wait, was he growing taller? He was, no! Taller than she was, up to his real height, just over six feet.
Bad clown, bad.
The silly suit melted off. Instead of proper clown underwear, he was wearing boxer briefs that molded to a decidedly not flabby body. The violet walls changed to trees, and suddenly Demi and Colin were lying in a meadow on a blanket, picnic basket nearby, holding glasses of champagne.
Uh-oh.
Then the champagne was gone and he was kissing her tenderly, his body warm and solid against the length of hers … which no longer had any clothes on it. And his briefs were gone, too.
Oh, no.
His mouth tasted hers languidly—upper lip, bottom lip, this corner, that. Then he pulled back and gazed at her from under his brows, causing her blood to race, her body to arch toward his.
He rolled over her, the width of his shoulders making her feel protected, surrounded. She felt him hard between her legs, opened hers wide to welcome him inside.
Then he was pushing into her, filling, stretching, setting her nerve endings on fire. She clasped him around the back, lifted her knees high and wide to bring him in deeper.
He said her name over and over, increasing the pressure and pace until she was gasping, reaching for her climax, reaching, reaching, feeling it start to grow, to burn through—
“Demi, I love you.”
Demi Woke With a jerk, staring with wide eyes up at the ceiling, breath coming fast, body still hot with arousal. Instinctively, her hand went between her legs, and then she stopped herself.
No.
There was no way she could get herself off right now. Because if she did, she’d be imagining Colin making her completely crazy with lust, and when he showed up for real in—she blinked at the clock—six hours, there would be no way she could look him in the eye. And no way she could put her hands on his back and think of anything but the way she’d clasped that same back while he was hot and hard inside her.
Bad, bad clown.
COLIN WOKE WITH a jerk, staring with wide eyes up at his ceiling, breath coming fast.
A dream. Damn it all to hell. He’d been on the last leg of the Ironman World Championship triathlon in Hawaii. He’d already sailed through the two-point-four-mile swim, powered through the one-hundred-twelve-mile bike ride and was approaching the finish line after the twenty-six-mile marathon barely out of breath, legs still strong, in first place by a hundred feet.
What a high. What a feeling. His body ultrafit, lean and strong. All those hours, all those years of training, coming down to this one explosive sprint to victory that would make him world champion. Just him, on top of the field, the dense crowd at the finish line already cheering for him. Stephanie was there, too, long blond hair swept back in a ponytail, blue eyes glowing, beaming with pride. Her man was number one and she was crazy about him.
Then he’d woken up, not on a triumphant path to victory, but in bed, back muscles contorting in agony, pain shooting down his right leg.
From king of fitness to short-term disability after falling off his bike like a six-year-old just learning to ride.
They said he was done. They said his back was too messed up ever to be able to ride long hours bent over his handlebars. They said disc injuries like his could be controlled but not healed.
Bull. Maybe some people could hear “no” and accept it, but Colin wasn’t one of them. “No” just meant he’d have to work harder, train harder. Fine by him. He was no stranger to hard work.
But he shouldn’t have tried to get back to training so soon. Demi had been right, damn it. He’d left her in exasperation last summer, disgusted that an athlete of his caliber should be doing exercises a couch potato could do without effort. Infuriated by her insistence he’d have to cut his recovery expectations to a more “realistic” level. Frustrated that she didn’t understand why his level of fitness couldn’t be compromised, not now, not this year, not when he had so much to accomplish. So he’d left. Tried another therapist, then another, both of whom had babied him even worse than Demi had. Finally he’d decided he could manage his own damn recovery. Who knew his body better than he did?
Pain shot through him, and he tried like hell to breathe through it, not to tense into the spasms, which made them worse.
Yeah, guess what, managing his own recovery had been a bad idea. Everything sounded like a bad idea these days. Including going back to see Demi.
Because there was another reason he’d left her. By the last of—what was it, three, four appointments? maybe five?—he’d spent the entire session desperately trying to keep from having an erection. He had no idea what she did to him, but it was hell. Demi couldn’t hold a candle to his ex-girlfriend Stephanie’s fresh California-girl beauty. Demi was dark; he preferred blondes. And she was withdrawn, where he liked a woman with spirit. She was decently attractive, but not beautiful, with wide eyes and a faint cleft in her chin. She had style and grace to burn, and she exuded peace that both stirred and soothed him.
And her hands …
Not going to think about that. The only thing on his mind in her studio today would be multiplication tables and baseball statistics. Unless the crazy attraction had run its course and he’d react more normally this time. That would be good.
He waited for the attack of pain to subside, then drew one knee up slowly toward his chest to stretch, barely able to get it halfway. His flexibility was crap. He couldn’t work. Couldn’t train.
This sucked.
Yeah, he was being a big poor-me baby, so sue him. He had good reason.
His cell rang. The act of twisting his head to locate his phone on the bedside table caused another spasm, this time in his neck and upper back.
Thirty-four years old and he was falling apart.