Hot & Heavy (Lightning 2)

“That’s because you don’t want me to eat your liver with a nice Chianti.”

“Or any other kind of wine, for that matter.” He leans forward and pecks my lips, and now that my defenses have slid back into place, I have no problem looking him in the eyes. His pupils are still blown out from the pleasure, but mine probably are, too.

When he catches me looking, he smiles down at me. I smile back because it’s impossible not to. Partly because I feel really, really good after all those orgasms and partly because Shawn is impossible not to like. He may be wild and impulsive and a total adrenaline junkie, but he’s also, deep down, a really decent, really kind guy. It’s that kindness that’s in his smile right now, that kindness that’s in those eyes that both bewitch and frighten me. The fact that he also gets my weird sense of humor? Big-time bonus points.

He leans down for another kiss—this one deeper and more involved than the last. I welcome it, welcome him, wrapping my arms around his neck and opening myself to him as I start thinking about round two.

And then my stomach growls.

He breaks the kiss on a laugh and climbs to his feet. Before I can get embarrassed, he reaches down and grabs me, pulls me to my feet. “Come on. Let’s get you some food before you decide Hannibal Lecter had the right idea.”

He grabs his shorts and pulls them on. But when I reach for my clothes, he just tugs his T-shirt over my head with a grin. I’m tall, but he’s so much bigger than me that it hits the bottoms of my thighs.

“Seriously?” I ask him, mock posing with one hand on my hip and the other behind my head. “This is the look that turns you on?”

He shrugs. “It’s a guy thing. Besides, you look good in my clothes.”

I don’t know how good I can possibly look in a shirt that could double for a tent, but I know that I smell absolutely amazing. I turn my head surreptitiously, take a couple sniffs of the dark, musky scent that is part Tom Ford cologne, part sexy man and all Shawn Wilson. Seriously, if he could bottle this scent, he’d make more on it than he does catching a ball.

“I’ll have dinner ready in forty-five minutes,” Shawn says as we hit the kitchen. “In the meantime…” He pulls a plate of grapes and cheese out of the fridge, pops it on the counter near the barstools. “Have a seat.”

“Seriously? You just had that ready for me?”

“I like to be prepared.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re a regular Boy Scout, all right.”

He holds his hand up in the Boy Scout oath. “Got all my merit badges and everything.”

“Did you really?” I ask, fascinated by this new side of him. The press paint him as a wild and crazy guy, always down for one fantastic stunt or another.

He sets a tray of crackers on the counter next to the cheese, follows it with a knife and plate. “I did.”

I steal a grape off the plate, pop it in his mouth. “Which one was your favorite?”

“I don’t know. It was twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

“You do too know. I don’t believe for a second that you forgot.”

He inclines his head in a you got me kind of motion. “Climbing was my favorite. And astronomy.”

The climbing doesn’t surprise me at all…and neither does the astronomy, now that I think about it. Shooting stars and all that.

“What about you?” he asks after grabbing a handful of grapes.

“I don’t have any merit badges.”

“Tell me something fun from when you were a kid.”

“Oooh, that’s a hard one.” Harder than he could possibly imagine. My mom didn’t settle down at Soul Studio until I was in ninth grade. Before that, my childhood was mostly us hopping from place to place, her “homeschooling” me in between yoga communes and months-long road trips.

He turns serious, brushes my hair back from my face so he can get a better look at me. “There must be something that stands out.”

“I had a stuffed aardvark named Bear, after my favorite TV show, Bear in the Big Blue House. He came with me everywhere.”

“An aardvark named Bear.”

“You sound surprised?”