Lissa heard the catch in his breath and knew it was pain and not passion.
She pulled away from the embrace with one last lingering kiss and jumped down.
“You need your pain pills.”
“I need you,” he said.
“No, you want me. You need the pills,” she said, and got a glass of water, then walked him back to the bedroom.
The room was dark, but the night-light down the hall by the bathroom shed enough light for them to see.
Mack eased down on the side of the bed as she set the water on the nightstand and shook two pain pills into his hand. He downed them gratefully and then stretched out on the bed as she began looking for clothes.
“It’s a damn shame to put clothes on anything that beautiful,” he said.
She paused and looked up. He was flat on his back with a growing erection.
She pointed. “Are you referring to all that?” she asked. “Or all this?” she added, as she turned to face him.
“Come to bed with me, Lissa.”
The deep rumble in his voice made the ache in her belly deepen. She wanted him. There was no question about that.
“Same rules as before?” she asked.
A smile spread across his face. “You work? I watch?”
“Exactly,” she said.
“I can do that,” he said.
She dropped the underwear from her hand, got into bed with him and then got up on her knees. She stroked him until he was hard and pulsing, and then rolled a condom down onto his erection.
Mack’s heart was pounding as he watched her mount him, joining them in one slow, sensuous stroke, then sitting with her head back and her eyes closed as her body adjusted to his girth.
He ran a hand down the length of her leg, wanting so badly to hold her, but she was still motionless. “Lissa?”
“You feel so good,” she whispered, and then started to move.
Those words—the same words she’d said to him once before—rolled him backward in time.
* * *
Mack was laughing as he pulled her from the creek. She was wet from her hair to the water running out of her shoes.
“Are you okay, honey?” he asked.
She pushed the hair out of her eyes and then pointed at the three flat stepping-stones just beneath the surface of the water.
“Moss. That stuff is slick as snot.”
Mack nodded, but he was already noticing the fabric clinging to her curves.
“Yeah, and you have one smokin’ hot body under that wet T-shirt, girl.”
“Mack,” she sputtered as she tried to pull the fabric away from her skin, but to no avail.
“Hey, baby, you don’t have to fuss on my account,” he said.
He smirked, and that started it. She grabbed the tail of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head, then unfastened her bra and let it drop at her feet.
The smile died on his face as his nostrils flared.
“Strip and lie down, smart-ass,” she said. She gave him a little push in the middle of his chest.
Mack didn’t know what was about to happen, but from his standpoint, it couldn’t be bad. He stripped out of his clothes in seconds and stretched out on the ground, waiting to see what happened next.
She pulled off the rest of her clothes then knelt, straddling his legs and cupping his penis. It was already hard and straining. When she touched him, he jerked, then shuddered.
She glanced up at him. His eyes were glazed and fixed on her face. They’d never done this before, but he’d wanted to. She leaned down and licked the tip, and when she did, he groaned.
“Not laughing anymore, are you, Jackson?”
He watched as she closed her eyes and just held him. “Lissa?”
She sighed. “You feel so good,” she said, and then she shook her head from side to side, water flying from her curls like rain.
When the droplets hit his heated body, he jerked again and moaned.
That was when she bent down and took him in her mouth. The high of being in control of his pleasure was heady. Finally his eyelids fluttered shut and his heartbeat was so fast he was sure she could see it pulsing at the base of his throat. And then she took him up and over so fast he lost his mind. By the time he came down enough to talk, she was sitting cross-legged beside him.
“Still feel like laughing?” she asked.
“All the way to the grave,” he drawled, and pulled her into his arms.
* * *
Mack was feeling the same blood rush as before, only this time there was no grass beneath him or the bubbling sound of water over rocks, and she was the one in charge.
When he began to feel tiny muscles beginning to contract around him, he knew she was on the verge. He grabbed hold of her waist and pulled her down hard. The jolt shattered his concentration as he closed his eyes and let go.
Every muscle in Lissa’s body was coiled and on the verge of a climax when Mack grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down. After that every conscious thought went flying as the climax rolled through her.
Reality hit only moments before she would have fallen on him. She reached out just in time, bracing herself above him with a hand on either side of his shoulders. Face-to-face, beaded in sweat and trembling, she leaned down and brushed a kiss across his lips.
He fisted his hand in her hair and pulled her back, kissing her again, harder and longer.
“I owe you some serious loving,” he whispered when he finally let her go.
“I have every confidence you’ll pay up,” she said.
Fourteen
It was nearing noon, and Lissa had spent most of the morning writing lesson plans for her substitute teacher and emailing them to the school. She hit Send on the last set of plans, and then shoved the chair back from the kitchen table where she’d been working and got up.
She could hear the deep rumble of Mack’s voice in the back of the house. He’d been on the phone most of the morning, dealing with work back in Summerton and reassuring his staff that his injuries weren’t life threatening. Even though they had reconnected, between a killer and a stalker, their lives were still a mess.
She’d made a grocery list earlier, and started on her way to the bedroom to get her jacket and purse. The clothes she was wearing were comfortable for the fall weather—jeans and a sweater—but she could tell from the way the leaves were blowing out in the front yard that she would need the jacket.
She stopped off in the bathroom to check her makeup, or lack thereof, added a little lipstick and called it good.
Mack walked out of his dad’s office as she left the bathroom. The lanky boy he’d been had grown into an imposing figure of a man. It made her a little weak in the knees as he came toward her.
“Going somewhere?” he asked, noticing the lipstick.
“Supermarket. Do you feel like riding along, or would you rather stay here?” she asked.
In the back of his mind he knew Cain Embry would be on her tail regardless of where she went, but he still didn’t like the thought of letting her out of his sight.
“I’ll ride with you,” he said.
She eyed the zip-front hoodie he had on and then zipped it up a little higher. “It’s cold outside,” she said.
“Thank you, baby,” he said, and he kissed the mole above her lips. “For good luck,” he added.
She laughed. “You don’t have any need for good luck. You just wanted to kiss me.”
“Guilty,” he said as he followed her out the door.
* * *
Louis had been up since before daylight, wrestling with his conscience. He’d had an argument with Reece in the night that had lasted through the wee hours of the morning, and he was scared. Reece had slipped over the edge of reason. He was so fixated on getting even with Melissa Sherman that he seemed oblivious to anything Louis had to say.
Louis knew what it meant to aid and abet in a crime. Mama had told him all about it the last time this had happened. She’d told him that if someone knows about a crime that’s going to be committed and does nothing to try to stop it, then they were considered just as guilty as the one who did the deed. The fact that he actually knew Melissa Sherman made it worse. She was a nice woman and a good teacher, and she was always kind to him. He didn’t want anything to happen to her, and Reece wanted her dead.
He knew what he had to do and knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Reece was still awake. He hadn’t gone to sleep in the daytime like usual, and Louis knew in his gut something bad was going to happen, maybe today. In a panic, he sent a text to Pinky. He needed her to understand instead of second-guess why it happened.
* * *
Pinky Parsons had slept in, skipped breakfast and was having a pizza for brunch. The delivery boy had just left, and she was halfway through her first slice when her phone signaled a text. She wiped her fingers and then reached for the phone. When she noticed it was a text from Louis she frowned. Louis was never the one who ever initiated contact. And then she read the text and began to shake.
“Damn it all to hell,” she mumbled as she quickly called Louis’s number. He answered on the first ring, as if he’d known she would call.
“Mama?”
“Yes, Louis, it’s me! What do you mean, Reece wants that woman dead?”
“It’s what he said. We argued most of the night. I didn’t sleep and now he won’t. He’s going to do something bad to her, and I have to stop him.”
Pinky’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean, you have to stop him? You can’t stop him. He’s—”