When the woman reached over, ostensibly to wipe the bar, she lowered her voice and muttered, “Unless a bird did kick you in the head, you’d best pay attention, you daft bastard. She ain’t sweatin’.”
Dev shifted his gaze. It was a sweltering sundown after a hot day, for sure. Elle had the fans going to help with it as well as the flies, but no help for it; a man was going to sweat. Not only the three musclemen his fair sheila had with her, but the group of blokes back at the pool table, some leaning against the wall with their drinks or tapping their smokes in the ashtray on the mantel of the fireplace that was never used. They all bore the signature sweat stains at the usual places. Chest, back, armpits.
In contrast, the woman’s ivory cotton shirt looked as if it had just been pressed and pulled out of the wardrobe. White, always a favorite color for the flies, seemed to have no appeal to them while on her back. They weren’t anywhere near her, whereas those who chose glasses instead of bottles had to keep a hand over them in between swallows to make sure the pests didn’t go for a swim.
As the jukebox started to play the wistful ballad she’d chosen, she turned back to it. When she started to sway, those trim brown daks she wore moved with her curves perfectly. His gonads engaged again like bullets being racked into the firing chamber of a shotgun.
He wouldn’t say she was oblivious to the attention she was attracting, but she didn’t seem one of those shallow girls who needed it to thrive, her beauty her only sense of worth. Rather, he was reminded of a female predator who used wiles to attract her prey, just close enough . . .
His body and mind were screaming at him to go into that trap. Resolutely he turned back to Elle and his beer.
His forearm was braced on the bar, and so he was startled when a slim-fingered hand reached over it to cup one of the three eggs Elle had now placed in a bowl. Elle jumped, her eyes widening. While Dev managed not to react, he hadn’t even heard the woman’s slim, booted feet move across the wooden floor.
Her nails were a feminine length with clear polish, the elegant tips drawing attention to the grace of her hands. Despite the large size of the emu egg, the way she stroked the curves, he couldn’t help but think of how those tips would feel moving over his balls in a similar way. God, he could smell her. All woman, fresh scents of soap and powders and the mysterious things women did to make themselves impossible to resist. And those miles of blond hair, waiting for deeper study, teasing his vision at the corner of his eye.
Forcing himself not to look, Dev nodded his thanks to Elle and lifted his beer to his lips, closing his eyes to savor it as he tilted back. Perhaps it was because he was so aware of her proximity that he anticipated the woman, but he caught her hand a moment before she would have touched his exposed throat. Opening his eyes, he kept his hand firmly closed on her wrist. Intrigued, he noticed her men didn’t react, continuing their card game.
“Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced, love,” he said without rancor.
“I’m a woman who likes to touch fine-looking things,” she responded. Her voice had a Brit and Aussie blending with an unexpected sultry cadence, probably because the sound of it had the smoothness of lava, pouring heat straight into his pants.
She might have said something else, but he missed the next series of words entirely. Like Elle, he wasn’t knocked off his pins by much anymore. But now, confronted with her close up, he was knocked full on his arse.
Her face looked as fragile and protected as a prize winning orchid. The blond hair was truly spun gold, like that found in the mines long ago, when the dust glittered on the walls like an enchanted castle.
Easy, mate. She’s no whore, though by God she’s acting willing enough to take you on. What in hell was a woman like this doing out here? The softness of the skin under his fingertips said she sure as hell didn’t live in the Outback. He noticed how she’d come in on his left side, which avoided the straining long patches of late-afternoon sunlight coming in through the open door and windows.
Nothin’ but trouble there tonight.