One Good Man(17)
10
“I’M SORRY.” Jamie knew she had nothing to be sorry for, no reason to apologize. She was just saying the words because she knew Kell was disappointed and she had nothing else to give him to take that away.
“Don’t be. What you saw is what you saw,” he said, clicking the key fob that unlocked his SUV, then walking to the passenger side and opening her door.She put her hand on the frame, but turned to him instead of climbing into the seat. “But a tattoo? Who doesn’t have a tattoo these days? Finding it, or the artist, will be the proverbial needle in a haystack. So much time has passed, not to mention he could very well have had the ink done in Mexico rather than Texas. And let’s not even talk about the population of Hispanic males in the state.”
Kell nodded toward her seat, most of his expression hidden in the shadow of his big white hat. “Get in.”
She started to obey but stopped, put off by his bossy issuing of orders, even more put off by the fact that she was spinelessly following them. “Where are we going?”
He shook his head, looking off over hers into the distance. “I’m not sure. Back to Weldon, I guess. To take you home.”
“Can we eat first?” She wasn’t ready to go home, but more than that, she was starving. She’d been too nervous this morning to eat more than her usual muffin, but the bran and the banana were long gone. The coffee, too. “A late lunch or early dinner? Either one will do.”
“Sure,” he said, and when she still didn’t move, wanting more of his attention than his vacant stare, he shook off his distracting thoughts and looked down. One brow went up wryly as he added, “But unless you’re in the mood to walk, you’ll have to get in.”
If she’d known her way around, she might’ve done just that. Walked to the closest restaurant. Physical motion was the best way she knew to clear her mind and harness useless worry. But she was unfamiliar with Midland, so she gave Kell a small bow and climbed into her seat, wishing she hadn’t forgotten her sunglasses. The late-summer sun was blinding as it reflected off the vehicle’s bright white hood.
By the time Kell slid behind the wheel, she was belted in and thinking about food, having pushed aside thoughts of the hypnosis for now—or that was the case until she realized he’d made no move to start the engine.
Food slipped from her mind, and she frowned, asking, “Are you okay?”
He let out a sigh that was heavy, but she couldn’t interpret what the weight of it meant. He could’ve been feeling almost anything, and holding it back.
But then he said, “Give me a second here,” and she knew something somewhere was very very wrong.
“Is everything okay?”
He nodded, his hands on the wheel as he stared down, his chest rising and falling as if he was struggling to breathe. As if he was fighting down words he wanted to say that she might not want to hear.
Was he angry? Disappointed? Frustrated that she’d recalled so little? Whatever it was, she was now officially worried. “Kell?”
His head came up. “I’ve read your case file dozens of times. I know from your statement everything that happened that night. But hearing your story in your own words…thinking about you going through that…” A shudder ran through him, seized him. “Jamie, what you just did…”
She waited a moment for him to go on before saying, “It was nothing, Kell. As in literally, nothing. Refreshing my memory didn’t net you anything but a tattoo.”
“I’m not talking about what you remembered.” He turned to face her; his gaze caught hers, held, pulled. “I’m talking about how brave you were to do that. It looked effortless, but I know it wasn’t. No way was that easy.”
It had seemed easy enough at the time, which surprised her, but mostly she was glad it was over and done. She wasn’t feeling haunted, or fearing that she might later suffer nightmares. The whole thing was more like a dream than a return to that horrible night. She started to tell him that.
And then she stopped. He hadn’t yet put on his sunglasses, and he was studying her closely, his eyes heated, his lips parted, his jaw held taut against the tic of tension she saw there. Suddenly, all she could think about was what had happened two hours ago, when he’d pulled off the road and into the parking lot and she’d nearly stripped out of her clothes. She wanted to strip out of them now.
She forgot about being hungry, about the hypnosis, about everything except the feel of his mouth and his hands. His touch was a memory she knew she would never need help to recall, and her skin began to burn with wanting him.
Before she could think of all the reasons this was a bad idea, she asked, “Do you live far from here?”
His nostrils flared. He shook his head. Except to reach for the key and turn the ignition, it was his only response. He didn’t shift into gear. It was as if he was waiting for permission, wanting to be sure they were on the same page, thinking, craving, the same thing.
Oh, but they were. They were. And she told him so, her heart lodged in her throat, as she softly asked, “Maybe we could go there instead?”
KELL WASN’T GOING TO be able to focus on anything else until he had her. Whether he’d be getting her out of his system by bedding her, or entrenching his desire for her inextricably, he didn’t know.
He couldn’t know without moving inside of her, without feeling her move beneath him.She humbled him. He wanted to soak her up and show her more pleasure than she could bear. And it was taking too long to get home.
The drive from the ranger station to his house was one Kell made most every day. Only when away on assignment did he not cover this same stretch of road. Never before had the trip dragged so interminably.
Both the distance and the time were intensified by the impatience eating a hole in his gut. He could smell her, the soft scent of citrus he’d caught on her skin last night.
Was it only last night when she’d crawled all over him in her driveway? Was it only two hours since she’d unbuttoned her blouse in his lap?
He groaned audibly, and he felt her gaze when she looked over. He made the mistake of doing the same, and groaned again when he saw her teething her lower lip, her skin flushed, her eyes wide and dark, the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat synced with his.
He pulled to a stop at a traffic light, sat and stared straight ahead, his blood pressure rising, his body growing stiff. “I didn’t plan for this to happen. This isn’t something I do.”
“What’s not something you do? Sex?” she asked, the word sizzling on her tongue.
She’d said it. It was out there. Sex. There was no mistaking where this was going. “I don’t…seduce women whose cases I’m working.”
“I know,” she told him. “That goes against your code. So I’m seducing you instead.”
The light changed, and he floored the accelerator, burning rubber into the pavement behind him and feeling like a fool. He was too old to be this desperately horny, but all he could think about was getting his hands on Jamie’s ass without her pajama bottoms in the way.
She didn’t say anything for the remainder of the drive, but gripped the armrest on her door with one hand, curling the fingers of the other into the denim covering her thigh. He imagined her growing wet for him, and bit off a curse when he took the turn onto his street too fast.
He hit the remote on his visor that opened the garage door, and watched it go up as he pulled into his driveway. Once inside the garage, he shifted into park, shut off the engine and used the remote to send the door back down. And then all he could do was wait.
A curtain of darkness descended, enveloping them and heightening Kell’s senses, yet he made no move to leave the SUV. His legs were shaking, his palms sweating, his heart aching, and he could hear Jamie shifting, breathing, kicking off her shoes, getting ready to ease this thing pulsing with a life of its own between them.
The air smelled of heated leather and perfumed skin and hunger, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He reached for the telescoping lever and pushed the steering wheel into the dash, reached for the button that controlled his seat and moved it all the way back.
And then, finally—finally!—he turned in the near blackness and reached blindly for her.
She was waiting, and she fell into his arms, her mouth seeking his, her hands finding his shoulders, her fingers digging in and holding on as if she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go.
Her lips were soft, her tongue eager to please. She tasted like sweet desperation, like sex on fire. When he moved his hands from her biceps to the crease where her hips met her thighs, he found skin. Smooth skin. Bare skin. Warm and sleek and taut.
He groaned into her mouth. The sounds he’d heard as she’d scooted around were more than her getting rid of her shoes. But she had yet to get rid of her top, and he wanted her naked more than he wanted to breathe. He started on her buttons while she lifted her hips and straddled him.
He could smell her now. With her thighs parted, he could smell the damp musk of her sex, and he wasn’t going to be able to wait, or take this slow, or give her time to catch up. As much as he wanted to seduce her, romance her, his body’s demands were much more base.