Chapter One
THE SCENT OF patchouli and sex hung in the air as Jana Garner slid silently from the sheets in the unfamiliar room. A thin glow from the streetlights seeped between the heavy curtains, cutting a path across Hunter Lacroux’s bare ass. God, he had a perfect ass: firm and squeezable at once. The kind of butt that Jana knew would defy gravity and still be pure perfection well into his graying years. She couldn’t help but admire his powerful physique one last time. Something to draw upon later when she would surely berate herself for hooking up yet again with the unfairly irresistible pigheaded man.
One beautifully sculpted arm arched across his forehead, and the other stretched across the pillow on which she’d slept, revealing the tattoo of the four essential life elements wrapping around his bicep. She’d asked him about it once, and he’d said he was an earthy guy. She didn’t linger on his tattoo for long. His broad chest was too tantalizing, and it led to ripped abs. Abs that, even when he was sleeping, were perfectly defined and lickable. And oh so delicious. Her gaze drifted lower, to hips that held the secrets of perfect thrusts, and—lucky for her—never seemed to tire. The sheets were bunched across his danger zone, which was an ideal location for them, because there were two things about Hunter Lacroux that drove Jana wild: his wickedly dark eyes that made her forget all the reasons why she should never touch him and that trouser snake of his that brought such immense pleasure, it kept her coming back for more.
Hunter was the one man on the planet she should stay away from and the only one she seemed unable to deny. She tiptoed around the bed and picked up her miniskirt and top, searching for her bra and panties and wondering how she’d ended up here again. She’d been out with her sister, Harper, her friend Sky, and Sky’s fiancée, Sawyer, at a bar in Provincetown, when Sky’s brothers Hunter and Grayson and their friend Clark had shown up. She vaguely remembered getting into a heated debate with Hunter. Don’t we always? Hunter knew Jana had been training under her brother Brock, a local boxing champ, for almost three years, and he’d been intent on giving her shit about women infiltrating a man’s sport.
Asshole.
The next thing she knew they were several shots of tequila to the wind and stumbling along Commercial Street to…? She looked around the room. This place, wherever that was. It looked like a motel bedroom, but in reality, knowing Hunter, it could have been a friend’s house where they’d crashed for the night.
Tequila. It was always her undoing. She should know better than to do shots of it anytime—but especially when he was around. She momentarily wondered why her sister hadn’t dragged her ass away from him. Harper knew she had fallen into bed with him before and had sworn off him. Damn her.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Her long blond hair was knotted and tangled, and her eyes were bloodshot. She definitely had that recently fucked look. I really need to stop doing this. Her eyes dropped to the reflection of Hunter. Especially with you.
If she were honest with herself, she’d admit that she needed to stop blaming Harper, too, and take some responsibility for her actions. She was twenty-five, for goodness’ sake, not sixteen.
She stole another glance at Hunter, remembering the way he’d fisted his hands in her hair, tugging until her scalp stung, and nearly growled her name as he found his release. The man was an animal in the sack, better than any man she’d ever been with. She didn’t do relationships, not after a string of horrible breakups and hurt feelings. She’d sampled enough men over the years to be certain of two things. Men as talented in bed as Hunter were hard to come by—although, she mused, easy to come with—and if she were looking to settle into a monogamous relationship, which she definitely wasn’t, it wouldn’t be with a player like him.
She pulled on her clothes and sank down to her knees, looking under the furniture for her panties. Where the hell were they? She checked the bathroom and remembered the feel of the cold marble against her bare ass.
Nope. Panties wouldn’t be in there.
She tiptoed back into the bedroom, grabbed her purse from the chair and picked up her flip-flops. She glossed over his jeans lying by the foot of the bed and his T-shirt by the door in one last search for her lingerie. Her eyes danced over the chair in the corner, the dresser, the…Ohmygod.
Her stomach dipped as she plucked her bra from the top of the lampshade in the corner of the room, where he must have tossed it last night. He was definitely an aggressive and fun lover. Two admirable traits—if they weren’t attached to bullheaded Hunter. She didn’t know what it was about him that pissed her off, but every time they were together they clashed like oil and water, then tangled in the sheets like starving castaways fed for the first time in years.
One last sweep of the room confirmed that her panties were a lost cause. It wasn’t the first time she’d left panties behind—and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
She opened the door as quietly as she could and stepped into the brightly lit hallway, tiptoeing out the front door. The sign out front read, We rent rooms by the hour! Grab a date and come on in!
Holy crap. That was a new low, even for her. She ducked her head and continued on her thankfully short walk of shame to her car, where she found a piece of paper shoved in the crack of the door. She recognized Harper’s perfectly scripted writing.
J, I tried to dissuade you. Call me later, you big ho! Xox, H
Jana climbed into her car and closed her eyes, letting her head fall back against the headrest. She probably should have thought about the busy day she had today before she’d picked up the first shot last night. She had boxing practice at seven with Brock, and she’d agreed to help out this week at Undercover, her brother Colton’s bar. She started the car, and a quick glance at the clock told her she had four hours until she was supposed to meet Brock, which meant she might be able to catch two hours of shut-eye if she was lucky.
Her cell phone vibrated with a text. Caller ID revealed the name DO NOT RESPOND! She cringed, remembering that she’d programmed that in after the last time she’d slept with Hunter. She opened and read the text anyway. You snuck out again? Seriously? At least when I do that I remember my underwear.
The smiley face at the end of the text told her that she’d now officially hooked up with Hunter too many times. He was getting comfortable, and that was the last thing she needed.
***
HUNTER PULLED UP in front of Grunter’s Ironworks at ten after eight and parked his younger brother’s truck. He and Grayson had been in the metalworking business together for years, and he still never tired of seeing the Grunter’s Ironworks emblem on the building.
He climbed from the truck and checked his phone one last time. He hadn’t expected Jana to respond to his text, but that didn’t stop his gut from knotting at the thought of the saucy little blonde ignoring his message. She was a spitfire of annoyance and sensuality that was hard to ignore. He shoved his phone into his front pocket, chuckling to himself about the little package he’d left for her on his way in to work, and headed into his shop.
Clark Shelton was sitting at his desk with his back to the door, talking on the phone. Hunter and Grayson had grown up with Clark, and they’d hired him to run their business after college. Hunter headed to the back of the shop to begin work on a sculpture he was designing for a local competition. He’d been trying to conceptualize the project for a week, and nothing felt right. But the competition was too big to walk away from. The winner would not only have their work featured in a community beautification project, but would also be awarded a major art contract with a national children’s foundation.
The beautification project, and the competition, were funded by Parker Collins, an actress who was building a summer home in Wellfleet. The project was her way of appeasing local residents who were dismayed over the size of her sprawling summer home. The project included creating massive gardens and a gazebo for outdoor concerts across from the harbor. Hunter was designing a sculpture for the competition, and Grayson was working on designs for the gazebo.
Grayson was leaning over the drafting table. He lifted serious eyes to Hunter.
“Jana get home okay last night?”
“I assume so. Why?”
“You assume so?” Grayson smirked. “She left before you woke up again, didn’t she?”
Hunter scoffed. “Why do you care?”
“Maybe because she’s like a sister to Sawyer, our sister’s fiancé, remember? I don’t want you to fuck up their relationship.”
“Let me worry about that, little brother. Trust me, she was all in. It’s not like I took her against her will.” Hell, she’d been all over him, tearing at his clothes before they’d even made it into the rented room.
“A’right, but if you hurt her, you know Sawyer will go crazy on your ass, and I’m not protecting you.” Grayson laughed. He and Hunter were both over six feet tall, with athletic physiques, but unlike their other brothers, Pete and Matt, they’d spent their lives out alphaing each other. While their brothers seemed to morph into responsible adults the day they became teenagers, Hunter and Grayson had accepted that role in their professional lives, but their personal lives were a different story altogether.