by Jill Shalvis
The fire was nothing more than a flicker, and she’d always loved looking at people by the firelight. Somehow it was so revealing, and let her see right through to the heart and soul of a person.
As she was seeing TJ.
Did she want to see through him, right to his heart and soul? It was a deep question, a difficult question, but the simple answer was yes.
His eyes were two dark pools, but his concern and regret rolled over her in waves. His legendary cool was gone. In another time and place, it’d be fascinating. “I told you that you didn’t hurt me,” she said quietly, watching a grimace twist his mouth at her words. “I meant it, TJ.”
He said nothing to that, and she tried nudging him, a smile on her face. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing more about the possible groveling.”
He still wasn’t playing and couldn’t be distracted. “Your first time,” he repeated so softly she barely heard him.
Her eyes drifted shut as she let memories wash over her. Between the wild crush she’d had on him and the time he’d spent stroking her body into a quivery boneless mass of bliss, the pain of his first penetration truly had been shockingly minimal.
In fact, if truth be told, the reality of that night had haunted her through her following sexual experiences. None of them had come close to measuring up.
Which of course, at the time, had only upped her resentment factor.
“If I didn’t hurt you,” he murmured, stroking his hand up her arm to cup her face, “why have you hated me all this time?”
Oh yeah.
That.
She was already sorry she’d turned to face him, and considered switching back around, but his hand went to her hip and held her still as he waited with that bottomless patience she knew he’d earned the hard way.
“I told you, it was fine. I was fine. You were fine, we were all fine. Can you let it go now?”
“Fine,” he repeated, forcing the word out like she’d just insulted his manhood.
“Yes. Fine.” Yet another big fat lie. Which settled it. She was going straight to hell in a handbasket.
Because the truth was, it had been amazing.
So.
Damn.
Amazing.
Not that she intended to share that little tidbit, no sirree. That confession just might kill her. “As for why I was mad,” she went on, knowing he needed to know to move on, “I guess it’s that I got to remember it all this time and you didn’t. I know it’s silly and juvenile, but there it is. So can we stop talking about it now? Or yesterday. Yesterday would be even better.”
He was quiet a moment, and she let out a breath. Good. They were moving on. She began to relax.
“I was out of control,” he said after a few minutes. “And we both know it. I slept with half the population of Wishful and I barely remember a fraction of it.” He sighed, sounding disgusted with himself. “I’ve always said that the past is the past, and it’s never bothered me much—until now.”
She tipped her head up and met his gaze, his filled with regret and a softness that made her heart catch as he touched her face, running a finger over her temple. “I really hate that I don’t remember that night, Harley.”
“I know.” And she did. But it was finally, somehow, okay for her. Besides, she remembered enough for both of them. “Close your eyes, TJ. Go to sleep.”
He closed his eyes, his lashes dark and thick. “In the back of a fucking truck,” he muttered to himself.
She closed her eyes, too, because looking at him made her want to do something stupid, like soothe him, which would be a bit like trying to soothe a wild mountain lion.
“Where it was,” he went on, “apparently, fine.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him speculatively. “Is all this self-flagellation because I used the word fine?”
His wincing expression said she’d hit a bingo, and she had to laugh. “I’m going to sleep now, TJ.”
With that, she turned back over and was very careful not to wiggle. She tried to stay on her side of the sleeping bag, but he put a hand flat to her belly—oh, God—and tugged her back to him.
“For warmth,” he murmured.
Right.
For warmth.
His fingers danced lightly over her skin, and her heart kicked into gear, leaping against her ribs. She couldn’t help it, and she certainly couldn’t control it. His hand was big and warm, his palm was callused, and it felt good.
Too good.
It took her another heartbeat to decide not to fight him, especially since it was warmer all spooned up against him, even if she was incredibly, shockingly, erotically aware of his hand spread wide on her abs, his thumb only a fraction of an inch from the curves of a breast, his pinkie finger actually touching the edging of her panties. She hoped to God that he couldn’t feel her heart reverberating off her ribs and against him.
Exhaustion finally took over, but just as she drifted off, she’d have sworn she heard him mutter “fine” again, like he would an oath, and she smiled as she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 11
TJ was having an excellent dream. He was flat on his back, wrapped in a tangle of warm, feminine limbs, the owner of said limbs working her mouth down his neck toward his chest.
Oh yeah…
She paused to dip her tongue into the hollow of his throat, then sucked a patch of skin into her mouth.
“Mmmm,” rumbled out of him and he rolled her beneath him, slipping a thigh between hers, making her gasp in pleasure as she rocked herself on his leg.
Christ, he loved this dream.
With one hand beneath her panties palming a sweet ass, he ran his lips down her throat, over a narrow collarbone and encountered a bra strap.
No problemo.
He simply nudged it down, and then the silk cup, following its path with his mouth to a warm curve of breast. He swirled his tongue over the tip and felt the nipple pebble. With another groan, he sucked it into his mouth just as two small hands fisted in his hair. Then he switched to the other side, and the warm, sweet body beneath his arched up with a soft cry, riding his thigh for all she was worth.
She was hot and getting wet. He could feel her dampness on his skin.
It was like a drug.
Needing more, his hand came around, slid down her stomach and into her panties in front now, finding hot, wet, silky flesh.
His dream lover’s hands were on the move, too, gliding over his chest, toying with the buttons on his Levi’s, which were damned uncomfortable now that he was hard as a rock.
She got the buttons opened, giving him desperately needed room, and he let out a rough exhale that backed up in his throat when she slid her hand home.
It was getting better and better.
He slid a finger into her, brushing his thumb over her center, and she cried out again, arching up as he teased her nipple with his tongue, then his teeth, gliding his thumb in the rhythm her hips demanded. He knew by the way she was panting and writhing that she was close, and by the way she was stroking him that he wasn’t too far behind, and then suddenly she burst with a soft cry and a name on her lips.
His.
He let her down slowly, skimming his hand back up her warm, sated body, his still hard and throbbing.
That’s when she said his name again, in a shocked whisper. “TJ?”
Well, who the hell else? After all, this was his dream. But the panic in her voice impeded into his dream and he opened his eyes.
It was still dark, but his body told him dawn wasn’t too far off. He focused in on the wet nipple right in front of his eyes. His thumb was rasping back and forth over the other one, both breasts being offered up to him by the bra he’d shoved down.
He lifted his head and met Harley’s startled, sleepy, and glazed-over eyes.
Oh, shit.
“We were dreaming,” she said thickly, and then seemed to realize she had her hands down his pants. She yanked them out so fast he winced, and she covered her face.
Getting out of the sleeping bag without touching her, with his body still cocked and loaded, was an exercise in torture. Grabbing her shirt from the log near their heads, where it’d dried in front of the long-dead fire, he handed it to her.
While she pulled it on, he walked to the edge of the clearing.
He was still standing there mentally flogging himself when she cleared her throat.
Grimacing, he faced the music and turned to her, searching her expression for any signs of distress, fury, or more of that gut-wrenching humiliation and shame he’d seen yesterday.
Nothing. She was showing nothing. “Harley, I’m—”
“Sorry,” she said softly at the same time as he did.
He stared at her. “Yeah.”
“That was entirely my fault,” she said.
He was educated. He helped run a successful business. People paid him shocking amounts of money to be good in any of a variety of dangerous, life-threatening situations. Yet when he opened his mouth, the only thing that came out was a brilliant, “huh?”
“I started it.” She let her gaze drop over his bare chest before she caught herself and closed her eyes, pressing the heels of her hands against them. “God. I’m such a slut when it comes to you. You have no idea how much that pisses me off.”
When she whirled away and headed toward her backpack, he stared at her back and felt a reluctant grin tug at his mouth. “You started it?”
He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer.
Even so, somehow knowing she felt that way made him feel a helluva lot better, even if it was possible he was going to die of blood loss from the hard-on he was still sporting. “You started it?” he repeated dumbly.
“I said so, didn’t I?” She was ripping through the mess that was her pack. “It’s almost dawn. I need my camera.”
He moved closer, risking life and limb. “You’re a slut when it comes to me?”
Her head whipped around so fast for a moment he thought she’d turned into the little girl in The Exorcist. “Don’t you dare laugh.” She paused and drew a breath. “Okay. I realize that there’s possibly an etiquette here.” She eyeballed his crotch and grimaced in guilt. “After all, you gave me an, um…”
He arched a brow. “Orgasm?”
“Yes.” She blushed. “That. And I didn’t…” She gestured with her finger in the general direction of his button fly.
“Do me in return?” he finished for her.
She closed her eyes. “I…owe you.”
“Are you offering?”
Her mouth fell open, and he let out a low laugh. Her eyes narrowed and she shoved a toothbrush into her mouth, vanishing into the woods.
He shook his head, grabbed his own toothbrush, and made his way into the woods in the opposite direction.
By the time he got back, Harley was peeling an orange. She looked up at him, for a single beat, her gaze both soft and unguarded, and he felt an odd catch deep inside.
Then she blinked and the moment was gone. She handed him half of the orange.
“Thanks.” He had no idea what she was thinking. “You okay?”
“Don’t worry, TJ. I know what that was. Or rather, what it wasn’t.”
“Okay, good. Maybe you can explain it to me.”
She shoved a piece of orange in her mouth. “We’re going to be okay. All we have to do is get back to where we were.”
“You mean home?”
“No.” She gave him a duh look. “I mean metaphorically. We need to get back to basics. Back to ignoring each other. And/or bickering.”
“I see,” he said, when he really didn’t see at all.
“I mean something real between us would never work,” she said. “Knowing that makes it easier. Right?”
“Right.” Christ, she was making him dizzy. Or maybe that was because most of his blood was still drained out of his brain and in his—
“It’s not like you’re even around to be a boyfriend,” she said, still talking, still under the apparent illusion that he was following her logic. “You’re gone all the time. You like women in your bed but not your life. Et cetera, et cetera.” She sucked on a piece of orange and blew a few of his brain cells.
“So trust me,” she continued. “I don’t look at you and think relationship. Mostly I look at you and think I wish I had something to hit you over the head with.”
He blinked. “So I should stay at arm’s length then?”
“Eight to ten inches should do it.”
She’d walked away by the time the laugh tumbled out of him, but he didn’t remain amused. He’d just been thoroughly put in his place, dumped before he could even think about doing the dumping.
Even more disconcerting, he got it. He got her. Because he knew her better than she wanted to admit. He knew that thanks to her sweet, hippy-throwback parents, she’d grown up with an utter lack of tradition, and he knew she secretly yearned for exactly that.
She wanted a solid, stand-up guy, with a white picket fence and two point four kids. Which is what had drawn her to Nolan. Nolan was one of those solid, stand-up guys, one who’d absolutely give her what she needed.
Unlike him. “Harley—”
“Ignoring each other,” she said. “Remember?”
Yeah.
Her eyes drifted to his bare chest, then darted away, but not before he caught the flare of heat.
“I’m going to have a hard time ignoring you when you’re looking at me like I’m lunch,” he said, reaching for his shirt.
“I’ll work on that. Maybe you could get fat or ugly or something.” Ignoring his laugh, she sat on the edge of the ridge as dawn rode in, banishing the last of the dark, bringing first a deep violet, then a lighter purple, and finally pink into the sky. TJ sat with her, and in silence they watched Mother Nature do her glorious thing.
As the sky lightened, far below a handful of coyotes moved through the meadow, looking for breakfast. TJ counted four coyotes and…“What the hell? That looks like”—he sat up straighter—“a badger?”
“You’ve never seen that?” Harley asked, looking through her camera lens. “The two breeds have a sort of symbiotic relationship when they need to. The coyote can run, but they’re not good diggers. And the badger—”
“Can dig but not run.” He grinned. “They’re working together for breakfast. Amazing.”
The only sound was the hum of insects and early morning bird chatter, since Harley’s long-lens digital camera snapped silently. “Look,” she murmured, leaning into him to show him her LED screen and a gorgeous shot of one of the coyotes up close, nose quivering in the air as the animals caught their scent on the morning air.
“You’re good,” he murmured, turning his face into her hair.
“It’s the camera.”
“It’s more than the camera.” He pulled back and looked at her. “Hell, Harley, you really should come work for us.”
“Why?”
“Well, for money, for one thing. Our clients would pay big bucks for you to document their trips.”
Standing, she pulled on her pack. “I’m going to try to fix the equipment on that west ridge.”
He pulled on his pack also, and they headed out. Normally,
