Fallen Into You Read online

  Kara leaned back on the couch, still careful to keep the flannel shirt down. Anders took his time looking at her legs, not hiding what he was doing, and soon she was blushing so hard that she felt like she needed cold packs on her cheeks.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said.

  “It’s not every day that I get to rescue a beautiful damsel in distress,” he teased.

  There was that word again: Beautiful .

  Kara watched him as he eased onto the couch beside her. He was letting his eyes feast on her body, but was keeping his hands to himself. She watched him until his eyes met hers. He didn’t blush or apologize or stammer. He simply smiled broadly at her. “You look so good in my shirt.”

  Kara didn’t know what to say. The lamplight cast a warm glow over them. The storm raged outside, the rain falling so hard that it created a cocoon around the house, closing them off from the rest of the world. She could almost imagine that this man was someone special, and that they were trapped in this comfortable house while the rest of the world dealt with a wild storm. The darkness, the rain falling down in sheets, the gray outside the window – it was like being wrapped in a cocoon where they were completely safe and sound.

  He sat down next to her. The denim of his jeans rubbed against her bare thigh. The heat of his body was only inches from hers, radiating like a furnace. He sat quietly, so still and calm that she finally looked up.

  “I want to kiss you so badly,” he said, softly.

  Kara’s heart started racing. She kept looking right at his eyes. “You’re a stranger.”

  “Not entirely…”

  “If it weren’t for circumstance, we wouldn’t be together at all…”

  He smiled at her. “Well we can’t fight circumstance, now, can we?”

  His lips were surprisingly warm and soft against hers. Her heart pounded but she closed her eyes and lifted her face, giving him silent permission to keep doing exactly what he was doing.

  It was entirely wrong and at the same time, entirely right. She was thinking only of that as he leaned even closer and slid his arms around her. She touched his face, feeling the stubble there, and when his tongue pressed against her lips she opened them, allowing him a full taste of her.

  She had never kissed a stranger before, if that’s what he was. She’d never kissed someone she just met, that was the point. Her boyfriend would be beyond angry if he could see what she was doing right now. And her father, a strict traditionalist, wouldn’t be too happy either. But none of that seemed to make any difference at all as Anders carefully slid a hand into her hair, pulling her closer and kissing her harder.

  “Circumstances?” he whispered.

  She swallowed hard. “That’s all.”

  Then she pressed her lips against his again.

  Already the pain in her knees was fading, and it was replaced with another sensation, one that brought all her attention to bear on the center of her body, where the heat was building faster than she had ever felt. She was very aware of the fact that the flannel shirt was riding up higher on her thighs. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Suddenly she felt wanton and naughty, an addictive feeling that made her arch her back and push her sensitive breasts toward him, beckoning him to touch her.

  The moment he slipped his hand under the flannel and ran his cool fingers across her heated skin, she took a quick breath. “What the hell am I doing?”

  “Whatever feels good,” he said, already panting.

  “This is wrong,” she protested, even as she slid her hands into his hair to pull him back to her lips.

  “Entirely,” he said, before his tongue slipped into her mouth again. At the same time, his hand found her breast and massaged it. Her nipple was already hard and sensitive, and she moaned into his mouth as he caressed it.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

  Did she? A series of thoughts popped like firecrackers in her brain. I have a boyfriend. I am more responsible than this. He is a stranger. He helped me. He is absolutely gorgeous. Who would know what happens here? We are alone and we are both adults. It’s entirely out of character. But what’s wrong with that?

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, winning a chuckle from him.

  Long minutes later, the flannel shirt was unbuttoned and she was lying on the couch underneath him. His shirt had been thrown across the room, and his jeans were open just enough that she could slip her hands inside – and when she did, she was very pleasantly surprised by what she found there. He moaned and pushed hard against her hand, showing her exactly what he wanted to do.

  “We can’t go that far,” she protested, even as she opened her legs wider and let him settle in between them.

  “I’m prepared,” he panted into her ear, and she kissed his neck as he pulled a foil wrapper from his back pocket. She had a moment to think about the fact that he had changed clothes after they got back to the house and had slipped the condom into his pocket. Was he planning this all along? Hoping that it would happen? How could he have assumed something like that?

  But even as her mind was questioning everything, her body was singing a different tune. She watched without an ounce of embarrassment as he rose up on his knees, pushed his jeans down, and rolled the condom on. Even before he was ready her hips were rising up to him, beckoning him to finish what they had started. With one long push and two low moans, he was deep inside her, and a moment after that he was moving with slow, steady intent.

  He was just the right size, touching just the right places, and soon Kara was clenching his shoulders and moaning loud enough to wake the neighbors. When the orgasm broke over her it was wild and unbridled, as passionate as the storm that still raged outside. Then there was his answering cry and the throbbing inside her, the completion that made her want even more.

  “Spend the night with your stranger,” he whispered into her ear.

  ***

  Kara woke to the early-morning sunlight streaming through the window. The bed was firmer than what she was used to, but the blankets were of the kind of softness she could get lost in. She opened her eyes to a pounding headache that seemed familiar, somehow – and with a sudden rush, she remembered.

  The tree. The car. The crash in the rain.

  The man who had come to her rescue.

  She turned her head and there he was – sleeping on his back, right beside her. He looked younger when he slept, almost like a teenager with his shaggy hair in need of a cut and the stubble all over his face. His shoulders were hard and toned, the chest of a man who worked hard for a living. On his collarbone right above the blankets was a mark, one that looked suspiciously like an amorous bite.

  Kara stifled a groan of dismay. What the hell had she done?

  Then the image of her boyfriend came to her, and the wave of guilt threatened to take her breath away. No matter what, he could never know about this. He would never understand.

  Hell, she didn’t understand.

  She eased out of the bed, stifling an entirely different groan this time, one of sheer pain. Everything else fled her mind, everything but that intense agony. Her knees felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to them, and for a moment she wondered if she would be able to stand up.

  You have to get out of here!

  She found the strength to stand, and slowly hobbled to end of the bed, where she found the flannel shirt she had discarded there the night before.

  How the hell am I going to get home?

  She slowly walked through the house, staying as quiet as possible. She found her suit, draped over the back of a chair. The fabric was stiff but dry. The colors were faded so badly that she knew she would never be able to use it for work again, but it would have to do for going home. She quickly changed into her old clothes, and then found her high heels and her purse, right where she had left them, by the door. They were warped but serviceable. She slipped the heels on and winced at the pain in her knees, but she had to have something to walk in.

  She paused
at the door, thinking about her car. She fished the cell phone out of her purse and fired it up, relieved to see a very faint signal. It was enough. She scrolled through the contact list until she found the cab company, and punched the “send” button as she stepped out onto the porch.

  She closed the door very quietly behind her. She didn’t even think about going back to say goodbye to Anders. Her manners seemed to have fled along with her common sense. The thought of what she had done with him flooded her again, and her head started pounding even harder.

  Was this the walk of shame? She had never been on one of those before. Hard to believe for someone pushing thirty.

  Maybe I’m just a late bloomer.

  The cab dispatcher picked up. She gave him the street name. “I’ll just be outside waiting,” she said, and hung up after the confirmation that yes, someone was coming to get her.

  The walk of shame…

  She wondered what was worse: what she had done last night or what she was doing right now, sneaking out from a man’s bed without even saying goodbye. What was the etiquette for one night stands? How was she supposed to act after getting it on with a guy she barely knew?

  She looked up at the sky, which was now perfectly clear and blue. There was debris all over the yard, mostly tree leaves and branches that had been brought down by the storm. She could hear the sound of machinery in the distance, and the unmistakable voices of men at work. The power would likely be on again soon.

  And soon Anders would wake up, and he would see that she had left the flannel shirt on the kitchen table, and the used ice packs on the living room floor, and he would find condom wrappers everywhere – on the couch, the floor, and certainly the bed – and what would he think? Was this the kind of thing he did all the time?

  She would never know.

  Kara carefully stepped down from the porch. The steps were agony on her knees. In the bright light she could see that they were both swollen and bruised. But she was grateful for the pain, because it hid what the rest of her was feeling – the tiny bruises and love bites from a man she should never have been with in the first place.

  The last thing she wanted to do was think.

  Kara walked down to the end of the driveway, then to the end of the road to wait for the cab. She never once looked back.

  Chapter Three

  Anders woke up to the sound of the front door closing. He rolled onto his side and rose up on his elbow. The clock on the nightstand said it was seven in the morning. If the clock was working, that meant the power must be back on. The sun was ridiculously bright, a reminder that yesterday’s storm was long gone.

  And so was Kara, apparently.

  Anders collapsed back onto the bed and contemplated going after her. He assumed she would call a cab and be back to wherever home was within ten minutes, in the shower shortly after that, and washing him out of her memory by the time she sat down for breakfast. Even though he was a modern man who truly did understand the psychology of one-night stands and friends with benefits arrangements, it still stung a little to know that she didn’t even bother to kiss him goodbye before she headed for the hills.

  But he supposed he had done his fair share of the same thing, back when he was too young to know any better – which wasn’t all that long ago, truth be told. Anders was only in his late twenties, something that usually shocked the hell out of the old-timers who came into his shop and asked to speak to the owner. They expected someone like his father, God rest his soul, but they got Anders instead – a young man with muscular arms, tattoos here and there and hair that was always a little bit too long. The male drivers usually tried to be a bit condescending to him, but the women…

  Anders grinned up at the ceiling. The women were the ones who came to get their engines tuned up and made it clear that they were lusting after tune-ups of a different kind.

  Yes, he had indulged in such things. He had spent more than a few hours late at the shop, checking out what was under a pretty lady’s hood, so to speak. He had even crossed his own moral line once or twice and given a woman a tumble despite the fact that she was wearing a wedding ring the whole time. Anders would never, ever claim he was a saint, or anything even close to it.

  But still…for all the women he had sampled and all the friends he had turned into lovers, there was always something missing. It was nothing he would ever speak of to his male friends, the ones who would bust his balls for acting like a romantic dolt. But sometimes he wondered what it would be like to have a good relationship with someone, the kind of relationship where he was expected to turn down advances from other women and come home at night, where he would get everything he needed and more from the one woman he loved more than anything else in the world. Sometimes when he watched a woman get dressed to leave him after a few moments of bliss, he fantasized that she was actually his, and that she loved him, not just lusted after him.

  But in the absence of love, lust would have to do.

  Anders thought about Kara again, wondering where she was now. Had the cab picked her up yet? His pride kept him from going to the window to look.

  She was definitely a firecracker. She had looked like a damsel in distress on the side of the road, but it was soon apparent to him that this was a woman who would be entirely capable – in other circumstances, that is. It was tough for anybody to be fully capable when they had just put their car into a ditch and gone a few rounds with an exploding airbag. Anders was still impressed by just how together she seemed to be after all that.

  And last night…

  A smile grew on his face. She was slow to get started, but once she started to burn, that fuse was long and hot. She had kept him busy most of the night, stopping only to grab more condoms and load up on ibuprofen for those hurting knees. They had sampled every position – except cowgirl and doggie, of course. Putting her full weight on her knees would have been a buzzkill of epic proportion. But she had given her full enthusiasm to every other thing they had done, and he knew that when it came to cowgirl, she would have ridden him like a spirited pony.

  Anders slipped his hand under the covers. He was naked and just a little sore, but in the good way, the way that said he had been delightfully used. He wondered if she felt the same way – if he had left his mark on her just as clearly as she had left hers on him. He moved a bit in the bed, just to better feel the ache in his groin, and of course he sprang to attention immediately.

  He wrapped his hand around his hardness and started doing what felt good – stroking slowly while he thought about the woman who had just walked out of his front door. He couldn’t have known when he rescued her from the roadside that she would turn out to be so amorous. He closed his eyes and envisioned the way she looked lying underneath him, then beside him, then lying on her belly while he kissed his way down her back. He couldn’t decide which he liked best, so he finally settled on the image of her reclining on the bed, him kneeling over her, watching as she took his hard cock into her mouth over and over again, until she made him explode…for the third time? Or was it the fourth?

  Now he was going to explode again, and it was her fault.

  Anders gritted his teeth hard when he came. After so many orgasms last night he had expected the morning delight to be lackluster, but damn if it didn’t leave him breathless and a little lightheaded. He lay back and took deep breaths, his eyes closed, trying to hold onto the vision in his mind. But all too soon it was gone, and the room felt too cold, and he had a long to-do list waiting for him as soon as he got out of the shower.

  And that list started with Kara’s damaged car.

  ***

  An hour later Anders was standing next to the tow truck and watching as the hydraulics pulled the crashed car up onto the bed. Now he could see what he hadn’t noticed in the pouring rain: the car was a Mercedes, and not one of those sissy ones. It was built like a tank and worth a pretty penny. He thought back to the suit Kara had been wearing. Even as she sat in his truck with that suit soaked through, the qualit
y of it was evident. And those shoes – those red bottoms had triggered a memory of something he read online once, about the guy who made them. They were called Louboutins.

  All of that added up to one thing.

  The woman in his bed last night had been a woman with a lot of money.

  She had been going home when she crashed. Anders turned around and looked at the monster of a tree, then at the road beyond. That way led to the really good part of town, where the houses were huge and the lawns were perfectly manicured by gardeners who were paid year-round to keep the places looking pristine. He had taken on a few cars from up there, but not many – he didn’t have the kind of experience necessary to work on foreign sports cars, and that’s mostly what those people up there were driving. Porsches, Alfas, things like that.

  Shame – he could have done with the business. He’d have loved to open a shop on the main strip or some other place more upmarket, something to really impress his late father who had built the business up out of nothing, but that was well out of reach for now. Anders always felt that he’d gone too soon. He passed away before Anders really had a chance to do anything much with his life at all, let alone do something to make his dad proud.

  The tow beeped as the car came level on the bed. He released the button and walked around the truck, tightening the straps and making sure the car was completely secure for the ride into town. He looked it over with a critical eye. The damage was much more extensive than he had first thought. The front axle had actually snapped when it went into the ditch, and the front of the car had more damage than a simple nose-in stop would cause. He looked at the tree again. Was it possible that the tree was coming down right as she swerved, and not there across the road to begin with?

  Anders stepped back and looked at the car again, then shook his head and whistled. Kara was much luckier than he had thought. If she had been going only a few miles per hour faster, she would have been under that tree instead of up against it.