One Good Man(20)

Why would he run away scared? “I promise not to run away, but I can’t promise not to worry.”

She stroked her thumb over his mouth, then rolled onto her side to face him. They were so close that her nipples brushed against his chest when either of them breathed.

“You don’t need to worry about anything,” she said. “I’m not going to fall apart on you, more than I already have, anyway. Or try to trap you into a relationship just because we’ve slept together.”

Now he was simply confused. Was she crying because she wanted a relationship, or because she didn’t? “You trying to trap me hasn’t crossed my mind even once.”

“Good, because that’s not who I am.” She wedged both of her arms between them, plucked at his chest hair with her fingers, twisted her mouth to one side as if trying on the fit of her next words. “It’s just…”

That was all she got out before she started twisting again, plucking again, plucking harder. He grabbed her busy fingers, kissed their tips, then held them still instead of transferring them to the part of his body that, even softened, ached for her touch. “It’s just what, Jamie? You feel this is a mistake?”

She frowned, and cuddled even closer to him, her lips grazing the skin just this side of his armpit. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t think that, but when a woman starts crying on me in bed…”

“I accepted a long time ago that I was going to live my life alone.” She pushed out the words in a rush, as if it was the only way she could let them go. “I’ve tried on a few men, found them comfortable enough, but none of them were men I could see myself still wearing at the end of my life.”

A strange dressing-room metaphor, but he got it. He’d decided to remain a bachelor for much the same reason. Dates offered him company and conversation, and occasionally the chance to share his release instead of flying solo in the shower at the end of the day. But sex wasn’t a relationship. At least not the sex he’d had before.

And that was the problem here, wasn’t it? What he and Jamie had going on was more than physical involvement. “So you don’t want me to run away scared because I feel like I could turn into an old shoe. Is that it?”

She giggled as if picturing a funny image. But then she sighed, growing pensive again. “That’s part of it, yes. But the other part is knowing that after this, we’re going to get up and dress, and hopefully eat, and then you’ll be taking me home. You might touch base every few months to keep me posted on the investigation, but that’s it. I’m never going to get the chance to break you in. I feel like I finally found the buy of a lifetime, and the store closed its doors before I could get inside.”

Because she’d seen the same potential between them that he had. Because she’d quit the idea of exploring it before starting the climb. He had, too. Neither of them wanted to risk screwing up their perfectly good lives. But both feared the real screwup would be in letting this go.

What to do? “You really know how to make a guy feel like a bargain. And how to stretch a metaphor.”

“Hey, at least I didn’t compare you to a piece of meat,” she said, and winked, winding her legs in and out of his. “Thank you for not running away. For letting me spill all of that.”

“Is that it, then?” he asked, though he knew “it” was a whole lot more complicated than getting things out in the open. They were still there to be dealt with. “You stopped me from finishing what I started because of your shopping woes?”

“I was overwhelmed.” She draped one arm around his waist, slid her hand lower, spread her fingers over the cheek of his ass and nuzzled her nose to his throat. “Since living in Weldon, I haven’t done much shopping. It can take a lot out of a girl.”

She’d been living in Weldon ten years. A waste of so much time she could have been doing whatever twenty-somethings were doing then. But he couldn’t think about that now, not when her fingers were walking into places he’d never before allowed anyone access. “I’ve got something to put in you, if you think it’ll help.”

“I think you’re exactly what I need right now.” That was all she said as she urged his lower body closer with the press of her hand to his hip.

The thought of a future with many such days spent in bed beside her…As he rolled on top of her and lowered himself into her welcoming cradle, Kell forced the thought from his mind. They were here together now, and he didn’t want their shared longing for anything else getting in the way of making this memory unforgettable.

Threading his fingers into her hair, he held her still for his kiss, blinding himself to all sensation but that of her mouth. His tongue found hers waiting, eager to please, found it bold. They pressed against each other, rocking, seeking, her lips tugging at his to keep him from moving away.

He moved anyway, kissed her jaw, her neck, from her shoulder to her collarbone to the hollow of her throat. To her breasts. She kneaded his biceps and kept him there, pulling him up her body when he tried to go down. He smiled against her skin, then returned to nuzzle his face to hers as he slid his sheathed cock inside her.

When he hit bottom, he stopped, feeling her tighten around him, feeling her shudder, still and release. She pulled her hips away, withdrawing to make him follow, pushing down into the mattress, and he did. He didn’t want to lose the feel of being cloaked within her, of being lost inside her, of being one, and he surged deeper.

Jamie gasped, and he wanted to kick himself for not thinking of her comfort, focused only on the things he craved, but then she shifted, tilting her hips to accommodate him more fully.

And then she whispered hoarsely, “Give me more.”

He laughed, growled, a deep gravelly noise that felt as rough in his chest as it sounded in the air. “How much of me do you want?”

“How much you got?” she came back with, digging her heels into his rump and holding him tightly in place.

It was no longer a question. In this woman, he had met his match. He crawled farther up her body. “How much do you think you can take?”

She arched her back, ground her clit against the base of his shaft, her hips rolling beneath him and drawing shuddering groans from them both. “I think we’d better just stick to the sex.”

He laughed again, this time as a cover-up, because knowing it was too late for just sex, he was going to lie. “That I can do.”

“Then do it,” she told him.

With his forearms above her shoulders bearing the bulk of his weight, he began to stroke, his mind on what his body was doing, his thoughts centered on his cock, on her sex, his concentration on nothing but physical pleasure. Or so he told himself as he drove deeper, harder, pumping long and slow, a piston firing, sparking to life.

Her breathing told him how close she was, and he moved where she told him to with a nudge of her knee, a bump from her fist, a bucking up of her lower body into his. She made sounds, anxious sounds, moans of desperation, mindless huffs and grunts, squeaks of impatience as she reached for the end.

She found it, crying out as she came, her head and shoulders pushing into the bed, her chin lifting. He watched her face; tension drained in a rush, and the smile that followed sent him over the edge. His orgasm ripped through him, a blast of sensation that staggered him, pulsing waves that flattened him. Even his knees betrayed him. He collapsed like a rag doll, spilling himself in a flood.

Jamie held his weight, held him, soothing him with her hands that rubbed his back and shoulders, quieting him and bringing him back with her voice that whispered, “Shh,” over and over again.

As if he had the energy to speak, the brain to search out coherent thought, the need to say anything besides words of emotion he knew were best left silenced. For now, anyway. Telling her what he was feeling while her body still claimed his was cliché. Sex talk. Heat of the moment. Endorphins tickling his tongue. Not truth.

He wasn’t ready for the truth. The truth scared him. He’d known since childhood what he wanted to do with his life. He accepted that chasing bad guys brought him into harm’s way more often than he liked.

He’d decided that was a risk he was willing to take, but not one he was sure was fair to ask a partner, a lover, a wife, to take on. He wasn’t going to give up his calling, so he’d given up hoping to share his life.

He came with a lot of heavy baggage, though that wouldn’t stop him from taking on the baggage of someone he loved. He’d just never thought he’d find someone in similar circumstances, a partner, a soul mate, someone who understood, who could take on all his baggage in return.

And so it scared him to think that he had. In Jamie.





13



WHEN JAMIE AND KELL finally left his house, the sun was long set, the street lamps shining down along with the light of the moon. Jamie wanted to stand in Kell’s driveway and wrap herself up in him as she’d done only twenty-four hours ago in hers. Only twenty-four hours? Could it be?

And all that had happened in it. The way she’d climbed over him naked in his garage, in the dark, in the seat of his SUV. The way he’d fed her, cared for her, listened to her fears, and loved her as if…as if he meant it.He didn’t. He couldn’t. She knew that. He was her Texas Ranger and she was his case. More fraternization than they’d already engaged in was asking for more trouble than they were already in. And she was pretty sure that they were in a lot. A very big lot.