Good Lord, maybe a quick stint in the arctic wind was a good idea after all. How the hell else was she going to cool off?
“Find anything?” Shane called from over her shoulder, blanket in hand.
Bellamy brushed off her overactive imagination to zero in on the plastic crate in the trunk. She yanked it from the car, balancing it on her hip as she replaced the trunk lid. “I’m not sure what’s in it, but I’m not going to stand out here to find out.”
She hustled back to the side door of the garage, noticing the thick layer of snowflakes clinging to Shane’s dark ski cap. Their trip outside had only taken three minutes, and they were both covered in a glittering crust of ice and cold.
“Here,” Shane said, gesturing as he removed his coat to shake the snow from it. “You’re pretty much soaked. We can put this stuff over by the heat vents to dry.” He reached for her coat and gloves as she took them off, throwing them over his arm with his own.
Bellamy scooped up the blanket and the crate, bringing both over to the workbench. She placed the crate in front of her and started rifling through the contents. “Oh, thank God. There are a couple of those heat packet thingies in here. You know, the ones you use to warm your hands. Brilliant.”
After rummaging past two bottles of water and a set of flares, Bellamy struck gold. Protein bars had never looked so good. And the fact that there was a whole box of them made her feel like she’d won the oatmeal raisin lotto.
“Excellent.” Shane nudged a fresh cup of coffee into her hands before looking over her shoulder from behind. He was barely a step away, and she let out an involuntary shiver.
“You’re freezing,” he said, so close she could smell the warm, woodsy scent of his skin.
Bellamy was far, far from cold.
“I, uh…well, it’s kind of snowing.” Great. Because that little mouthful of obvious didn’t make her sound ridiculous at all.
Bellamy squeezed her eyes shut. Come on. They were both grownups, here. She could handle close quarters with a member of the opposite sex without it becoming…
Shane stepped in to reach over her head for the box of sugar packets on the shelf, inadvertently brushing against her. They both froze for a second, his chest a tight fit against her back, and every rational thought Bellamy had been fighting for was lost in a sea of oh, so good.
“You’re trembling.” There was the barest hint of hesitation before he swept her hair over one shoulder, the rough calluses around his fingers a sharp contrast to the heated skin of her neck.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted.
He chuckled, a low rumble that Bellamy felt vibrating under her skin, and his warm breath fanned out over her neck. “No apologies, remember?”
Bellamy answered in a rushing sigh as he wrapped a lean arm around her ribcage, muscles flexing against her with hot suggestion. “Okay. I’m not sorry.”
Leave it to her to botch being seduced. Oh, God, the heat of him, so unyielding against her, was mind-scrambling as hell. She felt him smile into the spot where her neck sloped into the soft knit of her sweater, his lips parting over the skin there in the barest of kisses.
“You are very beautiful when you’re flustered. Did you know that?” Shane held her fast, sliding his mouth over her neck in a trail that threatened to knock her knees out from under her.
“I’m not flustered,” she protested in a low, soft voice she wasn’t convinced belonged to her.
“Mmm.” The kisses teased behind her ear before returning back down her neck, each one shattering her resolve further. “Do you want to be?”
With that, Bellamy loosened her grip on the workbench in front of her and kicked any illusions of holding back to the curb. She swung around, and Shane met the hollow of her throat with a moan.
“Bellamy,” he whispered into her skin before lifting his face to hers. She wrapped her arms around his taut shoulders as he parted her lips with a deep kiss that marked every inch of her. Just when she thought she would explode from the intensity, Shane pulled back, creating just enough space between them to be excruciating.
“This is still a bad idea,” he murmured with a wicked grin, tracing her neck with two fingers all the way down to the top of her chest before stopping to trace a lazy circle over her heart.
“Hideous,” she agreed, running the tip of her tongue in a delicate swirl over his earlobe. Bellamy wasn’t about to be one upped, no matter how hot he made her.
And he made her hot enough to know that the standing O she was bound to experience if he kept it up had nothing to do with the theater.
She worked her way from his ear across the line of his jaw, trailing little, feathery kisses back to his mouth. The friction of his stubbled chin against her lips was almost enough to blow her dwindling composure.
Bellamy gasped, low in her throat, as Shane answered by cradling his hands around her low back to guard against the rough wood of the workbench behind her, brushing his hips against her belly. He nudged her knees apart with his own, leaving no guesswork to his intentions, and she pushed forward to meet his body heat with her own.
Her hands skimmed the lean muscles of his chest, feeling the tight pull beneath his thermal shirt as his palms rounded the curve of her hips to fist the edge of her sweater. With the muted, gray light from outside creating shadows and nuances on the chiseled lines of his face, the look he met her with sent an unparalleled ache between her thighs.
“You’re fucking killing me,” he said, slipping a hand over her skin. Lifting slowly, he brushed the backs of his fingers against her lacy bra, and the light sensation made her nipples instantly hard. She arched into the touch, sweeping her tongue over his in encouragement.
“Do you have any idea how badly I want you?” Shane said, his fingers diving beneath the lace.
“Believe me, I do.” Wetness gathered between her legs as proof as he rolled one nipple between his thumb and forefinger, stroking her slowly enough to make her want to both scream and beg him to never stop. She was powerless to stop her moan, but then his words made it past the thick heat of her body and into her brain.
“Shane.” Her heart skittered as she realized all at once exactly where they were headed and exactly why they couldn’t go there.
“Bellamy,” he replied with a smile so heady that she almost forgot what she was going to say.
She shifted her hands on either side of his face, drawing his shuttered gaze upward so she could meet it. “I, um. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Jenna didn’t throw any condoms in her safety kit.”
The flicker that passed over his dark eyes told her he didn’t have a handy dandy stash of condoms tucked away at work, either. But he was quick on the recovery.
“That’s okay. I can still think of a dozen different ways to make you come with my mouth.” He kissed her again, and oh, God, she loved a man with a creative streak.
“Works for me,” she said. But rather than return his attention to her aching nipple, Shane scooped her toward him, gripping her hips with strong hands and lifting her up to settle her on the workbench.
“Oh!” Bellamy kicked her hips up only a second after he’d lowered her, rolling her weight off of the object was caught beneath her left leg. She lifted her knee to retrieve what turned out to be Shane’s wallet.