Blaze: (Naughty Neighbors 1) by Olivia Aycock Page A

of his lips feasting on the soft underside of a breast, a kiss of wet heat followed by a lick of—
    Okay, no. Nope. Not going to happen. Laurie was most certainly not going to fantasize about that. Was definitely not going to let her hand wander down a body slicked by the non-sexy kind of sweat and wallow in the center of her heat.
    If it was too hot to breathe, it was too hot for that .
    And certainly not to fantasies of her new neighbor! A sort-of-kind-of-not-really-but-almost relative. When her brother married his half-sister, what did that make them?
    People who barely spoke to each other . That’s what it made them.
    Laurie peeled herself off her bed and moseyed into the bathroom. Mr. Rochester had claimed a coolish spot draped over the lip of the old cast iron tub. He peered balefully at her through his one seeing eye.
    “Well, you’re just going to have to move or get wet,” she said to the big grey beast, leaning over to turn the lever entirely to the right and push in the stopper. No sense in messing with a shower again. The three quickies she’d taken already today clearly hadn’t done much to cool her. She drew a bath and plunged herself in before it had filled halfway.
    The water was cool…ish. Texas ground water was never truly cool after a summer of skyrocketing temperatures, but if she moved her legs every so often, a pocket of cool water would fill the space. A kind of flip-side-of-the-pillow effect. Probably placebo. But it worked. Even if it hurt her to think how much water she was wasting.
    But dying of heatstroke would kind of be a waste, too.
    Tipping her head back, she imaged ice baths. Or just ice cubes. Melting, dripping, cooling and pooling on her hot skin. Starting at her temple, easing down her cheek, anointing her lips with a kiss of frost before a hot mouth licked and sucked at her full lower lip.
    A thumb would rub the moisture away, beckoning her to open her lips, and a sliver of ice would replace its intrusion. A quick swallow and then a duel of tongues, numb to everything but pleasure. Such pleasure there would be in an ice cube held aloft by a strong hand, a thumb and forefinger guiding its path down, down, down—
    Laurie came up sputtering. Cursing. Terrorizing poor old Rochester with a tsunami of bathwater. Okay, this was getting completely out of control if she was taking a trip back to fantasyland while in the tub.
    Clearly she wouldn’t be satisfied until she was, um, satisfied.
    She was already perspiring after a naked walk from the bathroom back to her bed, and way too keyed up over her bathtime imaginings, so she might as well do something about it.
    Something that required next to no effort.
    She opened her nightstand drawer. “Ah yes, hello, purple one.”
    Once upon a time she had laughed at the vibrator, part of a sample basket vendors at a bridal show had been given to cross-promote. Because what her burgeoning upscale events planning company really needed was a referral from a sex-toy company. Uh huh.
    But she wasn’t laughing at the purple wonder now. No, she wasn’t laughing at all. Without much direction from her, it found just the right spot to make the sauna of her bedroom disappear, to make visions of sparkling light appear at the outermost corner of her mind.
    “Mmmm, yes.” She dipped it down to tease her opening, gathering up her slick arousal, and brought the tip back up over and around her clit. “Yes, so good.”
    She pressed a button and the pattern switched from a low, persistent buzz to an intermittent thump.
    When she closed her eyes, she didn’t see stars, but she did see Grant. His face above hers. Imagined his fingers lazily sweeping over her breasts, circling around and around her taut nipples, but never quite giving them the attention they deserved. She’d cry foul, and he’d smirk in some truly naughty way, but then his head would work miracles down along her body. Sucking at her stomach, biting at her thighs. And licking, long, strong