Oh. My. It was a struggle to find her voice, what with the way her heart was lodged in her throat. “Why don’t you tell me and find out.”
“I want to take you to bed.” He looked up and met her gaze; his was hungry, unsatisfied and frighteningly dark. As if having her in the truck hadn’t been enough of a taste of all the things he wanted to know and to feel, to learn of her. “Now.”
She licked her lips, wanting the same thing, wondering if she’d be smart to resist, or if giving in would be enough to get him out of her system so she wouldn’t miss him after he took her home and left her there.
Because that was her biggest fear, that when she looked back on today, it wouldn’t be the hypnosis that scared her, but the thought of what she’d missed out on with Kell. She slid her palms down her thighs and told him without flinching, “I’d like it very much if you did.”
He got to his feet, held out his hand. She laid her fingers on his palm, and he closed his over them, tugging until she, too, stood. Still, he didn’t say anything. She watched the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed, watched the tic of his pulse in his temple as his blood surged. She wondered if he could see similar signs in her, signs of wanting and impatience and need. Tingles tightened the skin over her chest, like tiny electric charges shocking her.
Kell nudged away their chairs, and she thought briefly that they should cover the sandwiches so the bread wouldn’t grow stale, the bacon cold, the vegetables warm. Thought, too, about returning the soup to the pan, the caps to the bottles of water. Then she thought about nothing more than following Kell to his bedroom.
The food could wait. The things she wanted from him had waited too long already. Whatever happened after today, she was through putting her life on hold, and if nothing else, she’d have him to thank for that.
His bedroom might have been decorated originally by the same person who had put Martha Stewart’s touch on the rest of his place, but he’d put his own mark on the room since. It was lived in, a man’s room, but not a pizza-box, beer-can, dirty-clothes pigsty. Just cluttered with his things.
Boots and athletic shoes and copies of Time and Wired. T-shirts were rolled, rather than folded, and piled on top of his chest of drawers as if he hadn’t had time to put them away. Socks, too. Not matched or bunched into pairs, but dropped into a clothes basket with clean boxer shorts.
His furniture was the color of pecan, the pieces large, his curtains and duvet an abstract geometric pattern in shades of rawhide and rust. He had a bookshelf filled with paperbacks, jug lamps with wide-bottomed shades and a single framed print of a cattle drive she knew was a Frederic Remington.
There was no TV, and for some reason that surprised her. It occurred to her to ask if he read himself to sleep, but he stopped at the foot of the bed, and once there, turned to face her. “Look at me, Jamie.”
She took a deep breath, eased it out and lifted her gaze. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Sex in the garage had been easy. The darkness had been the perfect shield, hiding her physical flaws, her huge case of nerves, masking all the things she knew his eyes would say if she could see them.
She couldn’t escape any of that now, though the flaws and the nerves were nothing when compared to the impact of standing so near, face-to-face, both of them barefoot, and remembering the feel of their joining, of being one. Of knowing a return to that pleasure was as close as his bed.
He brought his free hand to her cheek, stroked a thumb along the ridge of her cheekbone, tucked his fingertips behind her ear and made her shiver. Then he lifted the hand he was holding and pressed her palm to his chest.
“Feel that?”
His heart. It was wild, a flock of birds beating their wings on liftoff, horses’ hooves pounding across the wide-open range. The wind, powering through tree boughs, whitecapping once-calm waves. She nodded, breathed, “Yes.”
“It’s been doing this since I walked into your office yesterday. I can’t make it stop.”
Smiling, she widened the spread of her fingers. His muscles beneath her hand were taut, firm, his flesh resilient. “I don’t think you want it to stop. That would mean you were dead. And I would like you alive for a little while longer. Until I get my fill at least.”
He slid his palm down the side of her neck to her shoulder. “Any idea how long that will take? Because I’ll need to schedule recovery time. I have a feeling you’re going to wear me out.”
“You can tell that already?” She moved both of her hands over his rib cage and settled them at his waist, cocking her head to the side. “After only one time?”
He reached for the hem of his T-shirt, pulled the garment over his head and let it fall to the carpet. Then he waited until she was touching him again, her hands back at his waist, his skin burning, before he went on. “I knew what you’d be like before I had you. It’s there in your eyes, in what you say, what you think and do. It was there last night in your driveway.”
“I wanted you last night. It wasn’t the JB. It wasn’t the moon. It wasn’t fear. It was me. I wanted you.”
“I know,” he told her, reaching for the buttons down the front of her blouse, pulling it off and dropping it. Then he reached for the buttons of her fly.
“But you put me off.” She kicked out of her jeans.
He shook his head, then leaned close, soothing her with tiny kisses to her collarbone, his fingers molding her breasts. “We needed today out of the way. And barely managed that.”
She shivered, her nipples tightening, the stirring in her belly now nothing but desire, anticipation, a readying of her sex. She knew how he fit, and she wanted him there, and found her hands cupping his erection where it strained.
“Not yet,” he said, winding their legs like braided strands and backing her into the mattress. Her knees hit, and he lowered her, then left her, taking her panties with him and kneeling at her feet.
She closed her eyes, chilled by the ceiling fan circulating the air, but oh, the heat between her legs. Kell had spread her knees, exposing her sex, and was licking and kissing and biting his way the length of her inner thighs. His mouth was hot, his lips and tongue sure, his teeth sharp enough to sting. She loved it. She wanted more, and curled her fingers into the duvet to hold on.
A butterfly. Tickling, flitting, brushing air as it fluttered its wings. That’s what Kell’s mouth felt like when he reached her sex. He licked her, wet her, blew warm breath to bring her to life, and then he caught her clit with his lips and tugged.
She arched into him, her hips and pelvis coming up off the bed. Oh, he was good as he worked her with his mouth, slipping a finger inside of her to thrust. He knew what he was doing, and she was so close to the edge that she almost let go, but even more than coming again, she wanted to have him with her when she did.
Bringing her heels to her hips, she used her feet to push herself farther up the bed. She wanted him to cover her, she wanted to feel his heaviness, she wanted to have all of him naked, not just his mouth and his hands and his cock. And without her having to ask, he followed, standing first to shuck out of his boxers and jeans.
Their eyes met and held as he crawled over her on his hands and knees, resting his weight on his forearms above her shoulders, and lowering his chest, then his belly, then his hips to align with hers. Though she was half his weight, she welcomed the feel of his body pressing hers into the mattress, because for reasons she didn’t want to stop and examine, he kept the outside world and its threats at bay.
The thought should have made her smile. It sobered her instead. And whatever change came over her expression as she realized the true danger she was facing, Kell saw it and stopped.
12
“THIS ISN’T WHAT you want?” Kell wasn’t sure if he was making a statement or asking a question. He did know there was something wrong here. That wherever they’d been moments ago, the world had shifted and dumped them in a place where he’d yet to find his footing. He was hard, and wanting, and feeling rejected. This wasn’t good.
“Oh, no,” she said, holding on to his arms. “Don’t think that. Please, this is what I want.”She was shaking her head where it rested on the bed between his arms, and he thought she was reassuring him that things were okay, but the sliver of what looked like uncertainty, maybe even regret, left him hanging.
He couldn’t do this if she wasn’t sure. “Jamie, what’s wrong?”
She squeezed shut her eyes, and when she pulled in a breath, it caught as a sob she couldn’t laugh away. “I’m sorry. This is so humiliating.”
For her or for him? He rolled to the side, left one leg on top of hers to keep her beside him. He wasn’t going to let her get away until he knew why she was falling apart.
And then it hit him, the things she’d been through today, the things she’d relived and remembered. Her emotions had to be ragged, and all he could think of was rutting.
He was a toad. “Are you cold?”
She wiped her eyes. “I’m fine, really. I don’t even know what happened. I was thinking about being in danger, and you making me feel safe.”
Yeah. Not a good thing. “And that made you cry?”
She tried to laugh, managed what came out sounding like a hiccup, covered her mouth and turned her head, their gazes connecting. “If I tell you the truth will you promise not to run away scared?”