‘Drake—’ Kate groaned, her hands sliding from his shoulders to the neck of his shirt, lusting for the feel of his bare skin against her seeking fingers.
‘Yeah, baby, it’s me,’ he said, lifting his head to look down into her silver eyes, drowning in blind desire, before breaking open her kiss-stung lips with his teeth to feast once again on her voluptuous surrender. ‘Who else could it be? Who else knows how to turn you on so hard, so fast? You can be cool and standoffish with other men, but not with me, never with me…’
It was true, and the fact that he knew it and yet still withheld the essence of himself from her should have been humiliating, but it wasn’t, for she could hear the exultation that overlaid the taunting passion in his voice. Something deep and powerful and primitive within him wanted her to be for him, and him alone, regardless of what his private demons were telling him.
A deep rumble tore from his chest, vibrating through her fingertips spread over the warm hollow at the base of his throat, and the big
hand holding her head shifted to her shoulder blades, keeping her still as he worked impatiently at the front catch of her bra through the folds of her tee shirt.
Just as Kate felt the plastic clasp give way, they were wrenched from their mutual absorption by a roar and brief, blaring toot.
Kate jerked back, her dazed eyes following Steve Marlow’s black convertible as it swept out of sight around the corner.
‘Oh, God!’ she said, pushing away his hands and fumbling to do up her bra, not half as deft as he at conquering the small clip through the masking material.
‘I bet he got an eyeful!’ said Drake, with a hint of malicious gratification.
‘Did you know he was going to be coming this way?’ she paused in her pink-cheeked struggles to ask suspiciously.
‘The valley road turn-off is a few kilometres further on, but I didn’t plan this, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past you.’ She frowned.
‘Well, I didn’t. Which is not to say I’m not pleased he saw us.’ He met her glower with a mocking shrug. ‘It’s a guy thing…Here, let me help you with that…’ He put his warm hands up under her tee shirt and boldly drew the cups of her bra together, his fingers brushing her taut nipples a little too often for it to be accidental as he eased the lacy fabric into place around her breasts and neatly snapped the clip into place. ‘There,’ he said thickly, adjusting her breasts for one final time in their snug cocoon, his hands reluctantly trickling away down her quivering tummy. ‘Maybe we should take this into the back seat,’ he murmured, watching her black pupils expand even further into the silver irises.
She cast a guilty look behind them, struggling to find a reason to resist his alluring suggestion. ‘Prince is there,’ she remembered with a relieved gasp, prompting the dog to lift his head at the sound of his name and loose an ear-splitting ‘woof’.
‘There’s plenty of room. He can scrunch up, or hop into the front seat and watch…’
‘I don’t think so,’ she began repressively. Her honey skin became even more flushed under his sultry gaze as she realised he was only teasing. He had never meant her to take his suggestion seriously. She tried to hide her chagrin by adding smoothly, ‘He might be traumatised for life.’
‘I might be traumatised if we don’t,’ muttered Drake, rolling his hips and tugging at the denim to ease the constricted front of his jeans. To her embarrassment Kate realised that he hadn’t even undone his seat belt…she was the one who had been doing all the writhing and squirming.
‘I should have remembered you don’t like making love where there’s any chance of being caught in flagrante,’ he continued to needle, ‘but I thought you said you wanted something different. Now I see you’re all talk and no action.’ He switched on the engine and put his hand on the automatic gear-shift, shifting it out of park in preparation to pull back out onto the road.
Trust him to reduce her demand to the lowest common denominator—sex. Two could play at that game!
Kate stopped fishing under her bottom for the end of her seat belt and grabbed the collar of his shirt, jerking his head down and around so that she could stretch over and plant a deep, soulful kiss on his unsuspecting lips, using her tongue to glide her way into the slippery recesses of his hot mouth.
At the same time, she ran her flat hand firmly down the front of his shirt to the buckle of his jeans. She felt the tension in his stomach and knew he thought she was going to keep on sliding her hand down until it cupped the bulging denim pushing out the zip. Instead she increased the pressure on her hand and thrust it between the denim band and loose hang of his shirt, reaching into the tight space between jeans and skin at the apex of his strong thighs. She felt an electrifying jolt go through his entire body, his shocked jaw sagging open to her exploring mouth as she fanned her fingers out over the silky distension in his briefs, tracing the rigid tip of his erection, feeling it pulse against her circling thumb.
He groaned, his hips lifting, the lunging twist of his chest towards her engaging the locking mechanism of his seat belt, trapping him at the mercy of her exploring touch. He was about to wrench himself free when she cruelly broke off the kiss.
‘What I want different is for me to dictate the choices,’ she purred. ‘And what I choose now is to go home and have a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch, so—carry on, driver!’ And with one last, wicked little tease of his straining manhood she was withdrawing her hand from his pants when another car tooted past, briefly slowing as it drew alongside, this time a big, sturdy, dust-laden four-wheel drive with the personalised number-plate VET KEN.
When Drake had finished cursing a blue streak at her actions he looked over at Kate, buckled into her seat belt and sitting primly upright looking serenely ahead, her hands folded in her lap.
‘You’re as red as a poppy,’ he discovered.
She could imagine. She could imagine far too much, that was her trouble, she thought, smoothing her hair nervously behind her ear.
‘His seat was so high up…do you think he could see what I was doing?’ she couldn’t help asking.
Drake laughed so hard that Kate refused to speak to him all the way back to Oyster Beach, but it was hard to act cool and dignified when you had been spied with your hand down a man’s pants! It didn’t seem fair that her foolish attempt at revenge had rebounded so embarrassingly on herself. Or that she had found it so unexpectedly arousing to toy with Drake in that scandalous way on the open roadside. If Kate was hauled up on a charge of public indecency her mother would have fifty fits—and probably recommend hard time in the slammer!
Even Prince seemed to be having a sly laugh at her expense as he punctuated Drake’s continuing chuckles with an occasional wuffle, and he added insult to injury when he leapt out of the car at the other end and raced around as if he’d just undergone a day at a leisure spa rather than prompted a mercy dash to the clinic to save his life.
Kate apologised stiffly to Drake for the disruption to his day. ‘I hope I haven’t put you and Melissa too far behind in your schedule by dragging you away from your writing for so long,’ she said, and beat a hasty retreat as his lingering smirk turned to a moody frown.