Slow Fever. Cait London

she’d concocted. The tiny waves were exciting, not gracefully waved and tamed but wild and gleaming and soft as silk…just the kind a man wanted to spread his fingers into and feel drag against his body. Then his gaze dropped to lock onto her flattened breasts; her nipples peaked despite the transparent confinement and his mouth went dry.

      Kylie swallowed tightly. She’d forgotten she’d opened the door wearing only the plastic wrap, to keep in the almond and herb oil mixture she’d concocted. The plastic wrap rattled slightly as she shivered, aware that Michael was slowly looking down the length of her body. She closed the door and turned off the living room light, tossing him a big “I want to be alone” hint.

      Michael sucked in the night air and Kylie’s scent and tried to drop his heart rate to a mere full-throttle race. Kylie’s face had lost that round young look, her cheekbones slashing against the blue goo on her face. He mourned the shadows beneath her eyes and welcomed the blue burning slash of her eyes. As a child, she’d fascinated him. As a teenager, she’d made his blood churn. As a woman, she could devastate him. He recognized the hardening of his body and pushed away the thought of having her.

      Anna Bennett’s daughter wasn’t for the likes of him. She’d be after a man’s heart and he was lacking in that area; she deserved a family man, and he’d never wanted those ropes strangling him again.

      Finding Michael Cusack on her mother’s front porch wasn’t exactly calming, a real dent in Kylie’s healing ritual. A massage therapist and schooled in anatomy, and as a woman, she knew after one look down Michael’s tall body that he was in perfect physical shape. From the fit of his black leather jacket, she knew that his biceps, triceps, deltoids, and pectoral muscles would be powerful and bulky beneath her hands. Under his sweatshirt, his flat stomach probably rippled with muscles. She didn’t want to think about the abductor muscles occupying his inner thighs, or the quadriceps of his thighs. Beneath his jeans’ back pockets, his backside’s gluteus maximus muscle would be firm and powerful. Over it all, his skin would be firm and warm and fine.

      Before she closed the door her flush—around the area of the blue mask—amused him, for he recognized a woman’s awareness of him. He also knew how well she could hate. Yet, it was fascinating to watch those blue eyes darken, prowling over his body, evaluating it as if he had potential to fulfill her needs. The sensual tug curled around him, though he knew Kylie would never see him as her heart mate.

      She still hated Michael Cusack, she decided, as she peered out into her mother’s driveway. His metallic gray Cusack Electric service truck was parked next to her white economy pickup; he wasn’t going anywhere. Easing away the lacy curtain that shielded the front porch, Kylie saw Michael sitting on her mother’s porch swing. It was the same porch swing upon which teenage Kylie had tried to vamp him. She’d wanted desperately to see if Michael Cusack’s famed tongue could make steam come out of her ears. Not even the socks stuffed in her bra had added to her allure. Michael had laughed, the very worst offense to a potential first-time vamp.

      Now the long, hard length of his body contrasted with the lace curtain framing him. Kylie held a sofa cushion up to her chest and rapped on the window. He turned to her and when she waved him away, he shook his head and grinned that fascinating beautiful grin as if he were a boy again, a boy who had forever devastated her.

      Kylie dropped the curtain, and grabbed another pillow to cover her backside. She shuttled through the darkened house as fast as her plastic wrapped legs would carry her. She took another sip of her mother’s blackberry wine and shook her head. Michael wasn’t going anywhere until she disposed of him properly.

      Minutes later, she jerked open the door again, quickly tying a flannel robe around her plastic encased body. “People will see you sitting there and you know how the gossip will spread.”

      He lifted an eyebrow and Kylie closed her eyes. “Okay. Come in,” she said with all the warmth of the doomed.

      As she stood holding the door open for him to pass, Michael looked even bigger than she remembered. Though bulkier now, he was still lean and moved gracefully. He carried with him dark tasty edges that she’d never know. He wouldn’t fit on her massage table. She’d have to use the fold-out extensions— Her fingers flexed; she didn’t want to think of Michael’s body beneath her hands…all that lean, long body packed with cords and muscles and wrapped in tanned skin. She wondered if the deep tan on his face matched the shade on his—

      Her fingers flexed again as he dipped his head to take a quick kiss. Stunned, she watched him lick his lips, tasting hers. Her hands ached to grab his hair, those thick shaggy black strands, and to tether him for another kiss. She licked her lips, tasting his and wondered what she had been thinking. His eyes were just as green as she remembered, framed by dark lashes. Humor deepened the lines fanning from his eyes and danced upon his lips as he drawled, “Blackberry wine. You’re tipsy, right?”

      “You’re interrupting my party,” she said when she could struggle past the sizzling burn on her lips.

      “I’ve been there,” he said gently, easing his finger through the curls on top of her head. “Want to tell me about it?”

      “No. Get lost.” If she could have packaged that dark, brooding male scent, she could make a fortune. He smelled of the night and secret longings that most women couldn’t refuse—but Kylie would.

      “Can’t leave. Told Tanner that I’d watch out for you while he and Gwyneth are on their month-long honeymoon.”

      “Big brothers. Who needs ’em?” Kylie muttered, uncaring that her tone reflected her dark and evil mood.

      “What’s the problem?” Michael asked, settling down on the sofa. He stretched his long legs out to the footstool that held her sea salt foot soak, peppermint foot cream, and bright red toenail polish. He placed his hands behind his head and studied her intently.

      Kylie tossed away the uncomfortable, slightly guilty emotion that he had caught her in a criminal act. Anna had never allowed heavy drinking in her home. At the midnight hour and the changing of her life, she wasn’t drunk, but a nice toasty “mellow.” She was taking steps—the next major one was to do her toenails. She was actively dragging herself out of the post-divorce bog. She was jumping from a bad plateau in her life to her future.

      She’d use him. Michael could always be trusted as a confidant. She lit the candles her mother had made, beeswax mixed with chamomile and ylang ylang. She’d shared that with her mother, the love of herbs and their uses and together they’d distilled the chamomile from her mother’s herb garden. Kylie’s plastic wrap rustled as she settled down beside him and indicated the spread of blackberry wine, cheese and crackers and rich, rich chocolate truffles which she had been slathering with her mother’s raspberry jam. Michael poured wine into her glass, sipped and closed his eyes to enjoy. They were chums in this, the appreciation of Anna Bennett, a woman who had loved and tended them. “You’ll have to do,” Kylie said finally as she dipped the chocolate into the jar of raspberry jam.

      She dipped a finger into the jam and suckled it thoughtfully as she studied Michael. “You seem tense. I suppose it’s the reflex you got from back in the days when I was interested in you—when I was a child,” Kylie said, sucking the rest from her fingertips. “I’d give you a massage, but right now I’m concentrating on my healing process and aligning my chakras. I’m in the ceremonial mode now—dispensing with the old to make a clean cut for the new me. I’m not usually self-indulgent, but I’ve got to deal with the pits before moving on. Meditating isn’t cutting it.”

      His breath was rough and had a catching sound. His voice was deep and husky and uneven. “I’ll take a rain check on the massage.”

      “You’re not a massage kind of guy. Well, sports massage maybe. You have to give yourself over to relaxing to get the full impact, and you won’t give a part of yourself away like that. You never have, not even when we were younger. You always seemed sort of coiled and ready to strike. I can’t imagine you really unwound and relaxed,” Kylie said, noting Michael’s honed features, his clean-cut jaw and dark gleaming eyes. The candlelight drifted along his glossy lashes and softened the harsh lines across