her swollen jaw and to hide her youthful freckles. She even used lip liner and dotted a beauty mark onto her cheek for drama. Putting on mascara, she slipped and poked herself in one eye, which turned red, but she didn’t care. She’d hardly felt the sting.
In the living room, she decided to use the upright post at the edge of the kitchen like one of the dancers’ chrome poles. She put a sax piece with a strong rhythm on the CDplayer and practiced a few turns around the pole as she’d seen the dancers do. She slid up and down, performed some dancerly undulations, and peeled off the blouse, shook off the pants and tossed them around a bit. Not too athletic or dizzying, but decently seductive.
Then she waited for Jackson, her heart rattling in her chest like popcorn in a microwave bag. No way could Jackson resist what she had planned. If he could, she would just die.
J ACKSON GRABBED THE GROCERIES , three plastic sacks to a hand, and hip-checked his car door shut. He’d bought every frickin’ thing Heidi had written down, including twelve-grain bread, fresh spinach—bleh—and vitamins. He was pussy-whipped and he wasn’t even getting any. But he wanted to make it up to her for turning her down.
He shook his head. What the hell had happened to his manhood? Jackson McCall didn’t turn down sex that hot. He’d lost interest the past year or so, but with Heidi he’d been exercising restraint muscles he didn’t know he had. It wasn’t healthy to want a woman this much. Something could get permanently strained…or, hell, broken.
From the garage, he heard music playing inside. Sax. Loud and heavy on the downbeat. Didn’t sound like Heidi to him. She was more of an easy-listening kind of girl. Not this hot, sultry beat. What was going on? He turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door and carried the bags into the town house.
“Hey, there, big guy,” Heidi called to him in the voice of a woman thinking about doing thangs . He moved forward and saw that she’d positioned herself against the support beam between the rooms, one knee bent, foot braced on the post, and she looked downright eager to do thangs.She was all covered up, but she wore Gigi’s do-me heels and her face said do-me, too.
Good lord.
Something was wrong, though. Her hair was pinned up crooked and her right cheek sagged. Plus her lipstick didn’t quite match the shape of her lips.
“Are you all right?” he asked. When uncertainty flew across her face, he corrected himself. “I mean you look…different.”
“I am different,” she said, smiling a slow cat smile and pushing away from the pole. She swayed and her ankles gave way a little in the spike heels. She was loaded? “Different than you think I am.”
Then he remembered. “Did Dr. Dave fix your tooth?” he asked her gently.
“Yes, he did.”
“And did you take something for the pain?” He tried not to smile.
She frowned, reading his meaning. “The shoes are big, that’s why I’m wobbling.” She strode firmly forward and her feet snapped in and out of the heels like they were flip-flops. Gigi had big feet.
He just stood there, sacks dangling, caught by the look in her eyes.
She came right up to him and put her small hands on his chest, fingers spread. She smelled so good. It made him think of spring flowers and sweet cries of pleasure. “You’re exactly what I need, Jackson.” Her words spun through him, her gaze tore him open and he rocked in the white-hot breeze of raw desire.
Behind her, the saxophone moaned like a beast in heat.
Heidi slid her fingers under his T-shirt and stroked his chest. “You feel good,” she whispered.
He fought his reaction, noticing that her lipstick line was definitely crooked and the mole on her cheek had smeared? It was drawn on? Her right eye was bloodshot as hell and both lids sagged. The woman was high as a kite.
“I think you’re the one who feels good,” he said, his blood thudding in his ears.
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