Country Roads(72)

“You’re dressed.”

“Because I’m half-human, remember?”

His gaze turned to molten silver as it skimmed down her body, making her feel wanton and daring. She dropped her jeans and lay down on the blanket, stretching her arms over her head and pointing her toes as she basked in the heat of his eyes.

He stood over her, scanning up and down her body, his chest rising and falling as though he’d been racing the river for her bra again.

“I’d pay every penny I have for a picture of you like this.” His voice had the texture of gravel.

“Maybe I could paint a self-portrait.” She arched up, wanting his hands to follow his gaze.

He dropped onto the blanket beside her and rested his hand on her stomach, gently pushing her downward. “Stop, temptress.”

“Why?” Her skin tingled deliciously where his palm lay against it.

He shifted away. “Because…oh hell, I don’t know. Because you need a break.”

“Mmm, don’t they say there’s no rest for the wicked?” He didn’t answer so she rolled her head sideways to see him staring across the water, his beautiful back curved as he draped his arms over his jeans-clad knees. His bare feet were long and elegant like his hands, and his hair glinted with droplets of river water. The image burned into her mind’s eye as her eyelids drifted closed.



Not until he heard her breathing go deep and even did Paul allow himself to turn his gaze back to the infinitely desirable woman lying beside him. He had nearly gone up in flames when she stretched her satin-smooth body out on the coarse red-plaid blanket and offered herself to him. He wouldn’t have been able to withstand one more come-hither glance from her before he yanked her legs wide apart to feast on her and then bury himself inside that wet, welcoming heat.

He was like a horny teenager around her.

Despite her delicious sensuality, he knew she was inexperienced. For God’s sake, she’d told him so, but he would have known anyway. He needed to rein in his nearly insatiable appetite for her.

Truth was he wanted to experience everything he could with her before she disappeared from his life as suddenly as she’d entered it. The last thought sent a shudder through him, and he pushed it away, dwelling instead on the delight she took in the firsts he’d shown her.

Her first foosball game. Her first motorcycle ride. Her first time making love in the water.

What worried him was that he was no longer satisfied with being the first one to show her these things. Now he wanted to be the only one.

And he couldn’t. He couldn’t ask someone with her talent and potential to move to a place he himself could barely tolerate. He let his eyes drift over the gleaming copper hair drying in waves against the blanket, tracing down her arms to the slender fingers that held such genius. Her eyelids hid clear green eyes that saw the world in colors and shapes he never imagined.

Once the art patrons got an eyeful of her Night Mares, she would have that world at her feet. An actual physical pain made him wince as he realized he would not be there to see her reaction to New York and Paris and all the new places she would go.

Because he knew Julia was done with letting her family confine her. Her uncle thought she was going to meekly return to North Carolina after the show, but Carlos was wrong. She had broken those chains by coming to Sanctuary, and no one was going to be able to fasten them on her again.

He dragged his gaze away from Julia and pinned it to a river birch slanting over the water on the opposite bank as he remembered his conversation with Adam Bosch. The man could out-lawyer a lawyer when it came to being cagey about Jimmy’s chances of staying on the wagon.

But Bosch had tried to tell him something about manipulation. That was the part he kept replaying in his mind. Maybe he needed to have a heart-to-heart with his brother. In his bitterness and frustration, he hadn’t given Jimmy a chance to talk. He just shut down when his brother started spinning what Paul saw as his bullshit.

Maybe it wasn’t bullshit anymore.

A pulse of hope coursed through Paul until Eric’s face rose up in his mind.

It didn’t matter what Jimmy promised. If Paul left Sanctuary to follow his own selfish desires and something happened to Eric, he would never forgive himself.

Paul picked up a small stone and hurled it as far across the river as he could.





Chapter 20




A JAB OF discomfort in her hip sent Julia’s eyelids fluttering open to find Paul glaring across the river, his face set in the bleak lines she remembered from Saturday night. She shifted away from the protrusion of rock she’d rolled onto in her sleep and examined him with an artist’s eye. From the defeated curve of his back to the slump of his shoulders to the locked muscles of his jaw, everything spoke of a deep-seated despair. If she had to paint hopelessness, she would use Paul as a model.