Branded by Firelight, page 10
“Noted,” she said.
She straddled his hips, sliding her arms around his neck, fully aware of the hard bulge beneath her, although she wasn’t quite ready to free it. They had all night to explore each other, and she’d noticed a few things about him earlier that she’d like to investigate further. For instance, he had an indentation in his chest, too close to his heart, that he hadn’t been born with. She had an idea of what it was because the U-shape was plain enough, but not the circumstances behind it.
She leaned forward and kissed it, tracing its outline with her tongue. “How did this happen?”
“Tossed off at a rodeo. You spend enough time with horses, you’re bound to get kicked.”
He was so casual about it.
He had his hands on the bare cheeks of her bottom, distracting her from asking more questions. The pads of his fingers were as rough as she’d expected them to be, and the sensations they caused as they scratched over her delicate skin turned her knees limp. Ragged breaths tore from her chest. She was damp and so, so ready for him.
How did she want this? Hard, fast, and dirty? Or deep, drawn-out, and slow?
Decisions had to be made. After this, they’d only have one condom left.
He eased one of his fingers inside her, then traced it along her slick folds. She sucked in her breath. Her belly quivered, eager for more. Hard, fast, and dirty, it was.
She tore open the condom with her teeth while watching as he unzipped his jeans. The hard length of him jutted upward, the head glistening. He was so gorgeous, she hated to sheathe him. She took him in her hand, then slid from his lap to her knees on the floor beside his chair. She flicked her tongue across his tip, tasting salt, then puckered her lips around the rim, drawing him into her mouth.
He cupped her head in his hands, digging his fingers into her hair, and groaned as he made an obvious effort to remain still. “That feels so freaking good, Claire. You have no idea.”
Oh, she thought she did. He’d done the same thing to her and she’d enjoyed every eye-opening second.
She lifted her head, making one last circle of his rim with the tip of her tongue. She was greedier than he was and had a different ending for this moment in mind. She rolled the condom over his erection as he worked free of his jeans. Seconds later, she was again on his lap with his length in her palm. He took one of her breasts in his hand and drew the tip of the other into his mouth, tugging at the nipple with his teeth. Adrenaline rippled across her nerve endings, and a hot jolt of electricity shot through her belly, leaving her aching and breathless with need. She guided him into position and he thrust upward, as eager and impatient as she was. Her muscles tightened around him. He thrust again, lifting her with the strength of his thighs, and she took him in deep. Every inch of her body felt alive and engaged, equally aware of every inch of him surging inside her, again and again, until she started to shatter.
I can’t hold back any longer,” she gasped out, bracing her weight on her palms pressed against his chest.
He ran his hands over her ribs, stroking his thumbs along the sensitive flesh beneath her breasts as if touching gold. “I’m right here with you, darlin’.”
Ben took one of her nipples in his mouth, tugging at it with his teeth, then lapping it with his tongue. Pleasure lanced through her belly, triggering her orgasm. She clung to him while he coaxed her through it, then rocked against him as he roared out his own release through gritted teeth.
Satisfaction hummed from every pore in her body that she’d done this to him. She remained perched on his lap, her arms around his neck and her chest pressed against his, her face buried in the side of his throat, waiting for the last spasms of their pleasure to abate.
This.
This was a moment she could live in forever.
Chapter Nine
Claire stared at the open gates of the compound with a trepidation that bordered on get me the hell out of here. She was the one who’d dragged Ben to the library, however, and it seemed payback time had arrived.
She wasn’t backing down from the challenge.
The private indoor paintball facility was built to mimic a war zone, but in what Twilight Zone episode, Claire couldn’t begin to imagine. There were two large steel buildings inside the compound and one smaller shed. Two teams of ten—twenty people in all—had signed up for the afternoon. Ben said their team’s goal was to move through each steel building and collect “survivors” without getting taken out by the invaders—AKA the other team. The survivors in question were plastic disks the size of old LP vinyl records, hidden in strategic locations. The disks had a point value to be tallied against body count. The invaders had to work within a time restriction.
“Why can’t we be the invaders?” Claire asked.
“Because our team leader drew the short straw.”
Their team leader was Dallas Tucker, the stripper-turned-doctor from whom Hannah was currently rejecting all house calls. She’d sent Claire a panicked text two nights ago. “He’s at my door. What do I do???” Claire, fresh from a night at the Montreau, had texted her back. “Play doctor with him.” She’d gotten a few rude emojis in response, then nothing but silence. Her guess was that Hannah and her guilty conscience had hidden in a closet until Dallas got bored and went away. If so, Claire hoped he’d try again.
Ben parked next to the first building, which housed the reception area. They went inside to fill out the paperwork and receive their equipment. Claire held up a freshly-laundered, but very stained, pair of camouflage coveralls. The girl on duty handed her a chest protector to go with them, which didn’t bode well.
The other players began to trickle in. Claire knew most of them, even if only by sight. Out of the twenty, including herself, three of them were women. Penny, whose last name she couldn’t recall, was younger than Claire was, possibly Alayna’s age. The third managed the restaurant at the Montreau. Her name was Shanda White, and she’d dated Damon off and on before Jess came back into the picture.
Ben helped Claire get suited up, fitting the anti-fog mask over her face and fastening a bright orange armband in place with Velcro. Then he took her outside to a practice range and showed her how to use the paintball marker. It came with two hundred rounds and an air compressor, and it terrified her. She didn’t like guns.
“No one’s lost an eye yet,” he reassured her. “Plus we’ve got a doctor on our team, so we’re good.”
Those weren’t words of reassurance.
Claire, however, had a solid competitive streak to go along with her need for control. She was also good with detail, thanks to her programming skills, and she saw little things that others might miss.
The first part of the course was a giant warehouse floor at the far end of the main building. A bare light bulb at the entrance and another at the exit left the entire center space in murky darkness. A flash of movement as Claire entered had her dodging a shot that missed her chest by inches. Paint sprayed the wall behind her.
She dove into the closest “house,” a square box built of plywood. Heart pounding, she stood and returned fire through one of the paneless windows. There had to be at least thirty similar-sized houses in here. The enemy could be hiding anywhere.
Ben followed her in. “You’re doing great, Rambo. Next time, try not to shoot at anyone with an orange armband though. They’re on our team.” He peered around the edge of the door. “You want to work your way toward the far wall, checking each of the houses down the left-hand side for survivors. We have to collect three in this building before we can move on to the next. You go first. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
For an answer, he shoved her out into the open, which had her stumbling for the next house in search of cover. A paintball sped past her shoulder, giving her such a head rush from an adrenaline spike that she had to remind herself it was only a game.
Once she was safe and clutching her paintball marker to her chest, she spun around to see if Ben had followed her. He darted from hiding and sprinted toward her position. She fired a shot at his leg and had the satisfaction of grazing his thigh with a streak of paint.
He bumped into her as he ducked shoulder-first through the door, knocking her backward into a wall, shaking the flimsy plywood frame from the force of the impact. The paintball marker fell from her hands.
“Hey! What did I tell you about the orange armbands?” he said, his face mask inches from hers. It was too dark for her to read his expression, but his tone held amusement.
Not that it mattered. She was too breathless from laughing to care. “You’ve never heard of friendly fire?”
“There was nothing friendly about that.” He returned her paintball marker to her. “Frankly, this is a whole other side of you that I’ve never seen.”
The next hour was a lot more fun than she’d expected. She almost made it to the second obstacle course, with Ben providing cover as she zigzagged between houses, before a stinging splatter of paint caught her in the back beneath her left shoulder blade and she was declared dead.
She headed back to the reception area to hang out with the other deceased until the remaining thirteen players were finished. The clock was ticking down against the blue team. Orange team had to keep its survivors alive before time ran out. Only one woman, Penny, was still in the game. Claire had taken out Shanda, who was on the opposing blue team, in the first room of the second obstacle.
“So much for solidarity between women,” Shanda groused good-naturedly at her when she walked into reception.
Claire propped her marker against the wall, beside the six weapons already there, and peeled off her helmet and mask. She finger-combed her hair, which had to be a disaster, and found she was enjoying herself too much to care. “That’s what you get for supporting an invasion.”
The reception area had five picnic tables for seating. Claire picked a spot next to Shanda. They added up their losses—three from the orange team, four from the blue. That put Claire’s team in the lead, and the clock was ticking.
A second blue team player sat down across from her. He was blond-haired and clean-shaven, and slight-framed under the spattered camouflage coveralls. He’d taken a few hits before being declared dead.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.” He took her cold hand in warm fingers. “I’m Jeff.”
Jeff turned out to be a volunteer firefighter who worked at Harbaugh’s Feed and Supply. He was also very funny, and entertained them with his impression of Robin Williams explaining how the Scottish invented golf. He had Claire in stitches by the time the door opened and the remaining members of team orange blew in on a blast of cold air.
Dallas led the procession with Ben a few steps behind. They were covered in paint from head to toe. Ben had an illegal splotch on the back of his helmet. The blue team marched in behind them with their paintball markers raised high in victory.
“Dallie led us straight into an ambush and we lost all of the survivors,” Ben announced cheerfully. “Turns out he’s the type of commander that troops will follow out of morbid curiosity.”
Everyone groaned.
“Sorry, orange team. It looks like dinner’s on us,” Dallas said. He turned to congratulate the blue team leader. “That ambush was pretty clever. It never occurred to me to look up.”
Ben wedged his way through the crowd of players milling about until he reached Claire. He put his arm around her and pulled her in for a quick, casual kiss—the kind a couple comfortable with each other might share and never give it a second thought. It warmed her to her toes. He was proprietary without being possessive, and Claire, who’d never been a big fan of public displays of affection, found that she liked it.
She liked it a lot.
Shanda watched the interplay between them, but if she was curious about the status of their relationship, she left it alone. At least, she did until Ben had moved off to speak to someone else.
“You and Ben are seeing each other?” she asked Claire. She hopped on first one foot, then the other, as she stripped off her coverall, tugging it over her ankles so that the legs turned inside out.
It irked Claire that suspicion was her first reaction to such an innocuous question. She didn’t think Ben had slept with Shanda, since Shanda used to date Damon and the two men were friends, but she wasn’t brushed up enough on her guy-code etiquette to place bets that he hadn’t.
It was none of her business if he had. That might be what irked her the most.
Her eyes sought him out. He was talking to two other men, analyzing the game as if their lives really had depended on it. A tiny splotch of paint that had slipped past the protective gear stained the side of his neck. He caught her looking at him and he smiled with a full-blown upturn of his mouth that said he was having a really good time and she was a big part of the reason.
Pleasure blossomed even as wonder rocked her back on her heels. He made her happy inside in a way Dennis, whom she’d intended to spend the rest of her life with, never had. That inexplicable rush of pleasure made her equally wary. She’d presumed too much once before and gotten burned.
“We’re friends,” she said.
Shanda draped the coverall over her arm. She looked at Claire, then at Ben.
“Right,” she said.
Ben lost all interest in the discussion on strategy the second he felt Claire’s gaze land on him. Even in a paint-splattered coverall she looked so elegant and pretty, with her slender, straight posture, the slightly-mussed, honey-brown hair, and those long-lashed blue eyes that missed nothing.
She was the first girl he’d ever brought paintballing. He couldn’t say why he’d invited her, other than that it was fun to talk her into doing things she’d normally never consider—she did it to him too, so it seemed only fair—but seeing how well she’d risen to the challenge turned out to be a reward all its own.
There was an equally good chance he simply didn’t like to be parted from her for too long. He’d kissed her good-bye yesterday morning when she’d driven him home after they’d checked out of the hotel, and he’d asked her along on a whim.
He was so glad he had. She was turning out to be damned close to perfect. That comedian Jeff seemed to think so too, but Ben had no worries about the competition in that regard. Jeff’s Robin Williams impersonation might be pretty funny, but it was nothing compared to the night Ben had shown her at the Montreau.
He didn’t want things to end between them. Since she’d said yes to paintball, even when her expression told him it ranked right up there with oral surgery, he held onto hope that she didn’t want things to end either. He planned to try and convince her to stay.
But again, Claire required a light touch. An afternoon of paintball was one thing. Getting a commitment out of her when she was still gun-shy was another. And even he could concede that he wasn’t the likeliest candidate for a long-term, exclusive relationship. He wanted one with her though, and he was willing to work for it.
He had to figure out how.
Once everyone got their gear sorted out and returned, they headed to the Lake Street Tavern in Sweetheart for dinner. Ben turned down Claire’s offer to be the designated driver. She’d have to drive him home, then turn around and drive back to town, and the temperature was dropping. It had started to rain, which brought in fog from off the lake, and he didn’t intend to worry about her being out on the roads alone in poor weather conditions.
The tavern, a favorite gathering place for the locals, was busy despite tourist season tapering off. Country music crooned from speakers mounted in the ceiling, the volume turned low because of the early hour. The dance floor would open up once the kitchen quit serving meals for the evening.
They shoved tables in a back corner together so they could eat as a group without bothering other diners. Ben held a chair out for Claire, earning him good-natured insults from the guys regarding his motives, and demands from the other two women that the rest of the men start taking notes. He settled in on Claire’s right. It gave him a view of the room. Shanda nabbed the chair to Claire’s left.
Ben was of two minds about the two women becoming too chummy. He and Shanda had hooked up one night a long time ago, maybe even in high school, although he had a fuzzy recollection of it at best. He suspected hers wasn’t much better. They’d maintained a polite distance ever since, especially after she began dating Damon.
But Shanda wasn’t really the type of woman who liked other women, so her cozying up to Claire made him nervous. Shanda had no interest in him. He was confident of that. They’d both been scratching an itch way back when, nothing more. Maybe checking what all the fuss was about. She’d already had her eye on Damon, who’d been too brokenhearted over Jess to take notice of her until a few years later on.
Ben decided not to worry over it. It wasn’t as if anyone could tell Claire things about him that she didn’t already know.
And then he heard Shanda ask Claire how Damon and Jess were doing, and Shanda’s interest in Claire became clear. It was a well-known secret in Sweetheart that Shanda had overplayed her hand by dumping Damon one time too often, which in turn had left the field wide open for Jess when she came home. That was why Ben didn’t play those kinds of games.
So how, exactly, did he plan to play things with Claire?
If he moved too fast, he’d scare her away. If he played it too cool, she’d think he wasn’t interested in her beyond getting her naked. Any day now, she could decide she’d seen enough of Sweetheart and it was time for her to move on.
He was still puzzling it out when he drove her home later on.
He pulled his truck into her mother’s driveway and rolled to stop in the shadows at the corner of the house, short of the reach of the yard light over the kitchen door at the side. He shut off the truck’s engine. A small animal skittered across the yard in front of his truck and disappeared around the corner of a storage shed at the back of the house. A drizzle of rain jabbered against the windshield and the glass began to steam up.
