Free Seeing Stars by Vanessa Grant

graceful and rippling with powerful muscles.
    A storm... perhaps a hurricane. Kissing Blake McKenzie was a wild, breathless experience. Making love with him... what would it be like?
    She'd never been out in a real storm. Until now, she'd watched, safely inside, just as she watched the heavens through glass. On a scale of one to ten, if riding a motorcycle with Blake was, say, an eight... what would it be like to hang on, riding passion's storm with him? 
    When he slid into the car and fastened his seat belt, she felt as if her thoughts were lying exposed for anyone to see... for him to see.
    "How many vehicles do you have?"
    "You've seen the lot now."
    "This is nice." She touched the soft leather of her seat, and breathed in the subtle scent of expensive leather, mixed with the musky scent of his aftershave.
    His mouth curved in a half smile. "This is a classic Corvette, a '54. Nice is far too tame a word for this baby."
    "Apologize to her for me," she said with a grin, feeling more comfortable now, although she knew it was an illusion. The man liked fast cars, fast bikes, fast boats. He might claim to a recent lack of experience, but he had once liked fast women, too.
    He liked speed, and his kisses stirred a storm of sensation she didn't know what to do with. A woman who wanted her life under her own control, a woman who liked things exactly as they were, would be crazy to let herself get blown out to sea in a hurricane with a man like this.
    Tonight, she promised herself, she would enjoy his kisses, but she'd keep both feet on the ground. Then, tomorrow, she'd buy a package of condoms as Jennifer had so sensibly suggested. In a week's time, whether the package had been used or not, she would drive to San Francisco for her second interview with the CTIO people, then on to Pasadena for the professional astronomers' research symposium—two big steps on her way back to her own tame life, her mountaintop, and her stars.
    As long as she didn't let herself get hooked—addicted—to the hurricane, there was no reason she couldn't sign on for the ride.

    Back in the early eighties, when James Denver fought the battle of wills with a punk named Blake McKenzie, telling Mac some home truths he'd never forgotten, James should have covered a bit more territory.
    James's advice about women had been confined to a few tough lectures on the consequences of a man failing to prepare before he let lust take hold.
    But nowhere in the lectures had James said a word about quiet women with blue eyes as deep as a hot July sky. Nowhere had he warned Mac about the way a woman could look so innocent that it grabbed a man right in the gut when she opened her door to him, wearing a dress that would make any sane man embrace madness.
    The scary thing was, Mac knew damned well Claire's dress wouldn't have stirred more than a ritual, instinctive response if Lydia wore it, or any other woman. But on Claire...
    Logically, he had known she would have long legs. After all, she was almost as tall as he was, but he hadn't realized what long legs meant until she walked toward him, all legs and blond hair, lean and supple with a willowy femininity he hadn't realized could make his mouth water.
    Staring at her, his throat painfully dry, his brain must have turned to mush on the spot. Other parts of him were painfully hard, and he was damned if he could remember how a guy got through a whole evening dancing with a woman who had him throbbing so badly he couldn't think.
    He wasn't sure he'd ever had it this bad. It wasn't the sex. Sex was easy, but he'd been around long enough to know it was seldom simple. If it were simple, he'd take Lydia up on the offer she'd been radiating since the divorce, and he would have started an affair with Dawna, his accountant, a couple of years back. But whether Lydia knew it or not, she wanted more than sex, and he knew damned well he'd be playing unfair games if he got involved with a single mom like Dawna Fairchild, who needed a