“Please,” he rasped. “I need this. I need you. Just once. Please, Merry. You’ve been driving me mad. I need to taste you.”
Merry turned on the vibrator and gave herself up to the story, just as she gave herself up to his hands in her mind. His hands and mouth and fingers. Oh, God. Yes. His fingers teasing her, then slipping inside her. Driving her crazy until she felt just as mad as he did. Until she was murmuring yes, yes when he unbuttoned his jeans and freed his erection. He eased a hand beneath her knee and pulled her leg high as he positioned himself between her thighs.
“Please,” Merry whispered into the empty room. “Please.” She wanted that. Needed it. She slipped the toy farther along her body, sending delicious shivers racing to branches of nerves that hadn’t stirred in so long. Oh, God, yes. This was going to feel so good, a need she’d ignored so long it had seemed extinct. But it was back now, and her hips strained forward as she eased the vibrator inside her body with a whimper of relief.
And then her world came crashing down. Or at the very least, her door sounded like it was about to crash in. Not that the knock was especially loud, but her senses were a little heightened. And the door was only three feet from her head. And she was lying there with her legs spread and a vibrator buzzing.
Merry froze, eyes wide in panic, hoping that if she didn’t move, the wolf wouldn’t spot her through the tall grass.
When the knock came again, she eased her finger over to turn off the vibrator, alarmed by how loud the silence was afterward. Had that buzzing sound filled the whole room? Had it been audible from the hallway? What if it had been—
“Merry, it’s Shane. Are you home?”
Shane?
No. “Yes!” she yelped in complete panic, trying to bite back the word even as her body volunteered it. Her eyes slid over the blankets, noting the shape of her body beneath the covers, knees parted wide, arm disappearing beneath the cozy bedspread at a suspicious angle. Then her gaze moved to the door.
Oh, God.
“I was hoping to see the brochure. Can I come in?”
“Uh…” Merry finally forced her body to let go of its frozen panic and move. She pulled the vibrator out of herself with a wince of shock, snapped her legs closed and sat straight. “Uh, sure. Just give me a second.” Why had she spoken? Why hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut and let him leave?
Stupid blind panic. Merry shoved the vibrator under the covers and leaped out of bed to race to the bathroom where she’d left her clothes. “Idiot,” she cursed herself at another misstep. She should have just said no. No, I’m not dressed, I’ll see you tomorrow. Except not being dressed had been way too close to the truth: I’m not dressed and I’m frigging myself three feet away from you. Sorry!
She frantically pulled on her jeans and the yellow Doctor Who T-shirt she’d been wearing earlier, then raced back to the living room to yank the covers tight across the bed.
She took a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face and unlocked the door. “Hey!” she chirped as she opened it just enough to wedge herself between him and the room. “What’s going on?”
“Hey.” His answering smile tipped down a little at the edges. “Are you okay?”
“Sure! Yes. Absolutely. Why?”
“You just… Were you working out?”
“Yes, I was working out!” It was the perfect answer for the sweat prickling her hairline and her rapid breathing. But then his eyes traveled down her body to the jeans and bare feet. “Anyway!” She waved a hand.
“Well…I was thinking about you.”
Merry flashed back to her fantasy so quickly that she felt dizzy. Was he about to grab her? Ravish her? Push her against the wall and slip off her shirt? Would she let him? “Me?” she finally breathed.
“All this work you’re doing for Providence. I’ll admit, it seemed silly at first. I can’t say I understand it or even approve. But now that I’m working out there with you
, I’m curious. May I…?”
He gestured toward the door, and Merry automatically opened it, cursing her natural Texas friendliness for digging her even deeper. She watched his gaze focus on the unfolded bed.
“Early night?”
Guilty embarrassment leached from wherever it was the body stored it—spleen? Appendix?—and suffused every cell in her body. “I like to work in bed.” She ignored the fact that her pile of work stuff was still on the kitchen table and grabbed the end of the fold-out bed to flip it back into a couch.
Shane reached out to help, but she gave a mighty heave and it folded with a wretched groan of springs…followed immediately by an ominous rubbery thunk when she tipped the bed up for its last fold.
Oh, shit. Oh, no. She glanced into the shadowy hollow of the couch and saw her pink vibrator lying there on the hardwood like a giant finger of accusation pointing at her. You were jerking off to naked thoughts of an innocent friend. You secretly violated your nice neighbor!
A noise of horror squeaked through her throat, and she shoved the mattress down with so much force that the couch slid two inches. Even though the mattress obediently folded up, it wouldn’t quite close all the way. She remembered the blankets she’d piled on and gave another desperate shove.
“I think it’s stuck,” Shane volunteered as she put all her weight on it. “Here, let’s pull it out again and—”