Hot in Hellcat Canyon

by Julie Anne Long

  Whatever had happened to Britt Langley made him want to protect her, and if that meant from him, too, so be it. If she wanted him—­if she really wanted him—­she would let him know. In the same way she’d dropped off that beer this evening.

  They’d both be lying awake burning tonight, he was pretty sure.

  It wasn’t really strategy on his part. But it might work out that way, anyway.

  Then he swiped his hands down his face and turned up the music again, and started the truck.

  CHAPTER 9

  During the last bad winter storm in Hellcat Canyon, a power line had snapped and lay arcing and sparking on the ground in front of Britt’s house until Pacific Gas and Electric came to take care of it.

  Britt’s body felt like that all night long.

  She could feel the tension in J. T. when he’d touched her. She could all but taste how badly he wanted her.

  But now she suspected the man who had once blithely partaken of women as if they were a bowl of peanuts and probably would have blithely partaken of her, too, before last night . . . was being careful with her.

  She was frustrated. Maybe a little amused.

  And also, when she thought about it, unaccountably moved in a way she didn’t necessarily want to feel. Because it made her feel a little exposed. Like that snapped power line.

  He’d ferociously protected her last night. The funny thing was, however . . . she’d felt oddly protective of him, too, from the moment he’d walked into that diner.

  J. T. was missing something, she was pretty certain. She wasn’t certain it was only sex.

  She did know that she needed to make it clear to John Tennessee McCord that part of taking care of herself meant partaking of his body with wild abandon.

  The sooner the better. Or the two of them might never sleep restfully again.

  She must have eventually slept.

  Because she opened her eyes to a soft early-­morning light. She didn’t have to work until this afternoon.

  But an inspiration had brewed while she was sleeping.

  And now she was quite breathlessly eager to call Gary, which was a first.

  She had the pleasure of hearing his morning voice, which was gravelly and very, very irritable.

  “This better be good, Britt. I got an early tee off time and I need all my beauty sleep.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” was his response when she told him why she’d called.

  “Maybe. I just have a hunch.”

  Gary sighed noisily and cleared his throat in a phlegmy way that made her wince. “Okay. I’ll set it up. If you can rent that place to him I’ll know for sure they’re weirder in Hollywood than we ever imagined.”

  She’d scrambled to get ready, but J. T. had beat her to the Greenleaf place.

  She saw him through the trees as she approached in her car. He was standing in front of the house, his head tipped back, hands in his pockets. He appeared to be studying the roof. Probably critically eyeing the gutters. A very guylike pose.

  He turned around when he heard her car. And went still.

  She turned off the engine and shouldered the door open.

  J. T. tracked her with his eyes when she got out of her car.

  Today’s tank top was white and her shorts were denim and the buttons came undone pretty easily.

  He remained absolutely, almost unnervingly, silent.

  And then he smiled. Slowly, crookedly, purely wickedly.

  It was almost knee-­bucklingly sexy.

  He knew why she’d called him.

  That smile was his way of telling her that he would be calling the shots.

  And he would leave her in suspense as to when the shot calling would commence.

  She stood next to him.

  The Greenleaf house was a tiny two-­bedroom Craftsman-­esque residence built circa 1920-something. Geographically, it occupied a fairly indeterminate place in the hierarchy of Hellcat Canyon territory. Sort of in between all those vacation palaces and the deep dark of the hills. She doubted Jonah Greenleaf was trying to make a statement with the location, but you never knew with the Greenleafs.

  And it was kind of falling apart. The porch was caving in; there was a hole in the roof; the back deck was hazardous.

  He was still quiet.

  “There’s only a little hole in the roof over one of the bedrooms,” she said. “I don’t think it needs a whole new roof. You might need to shoo the squirrels out. I don’t think a raccoon has gotten in yet. Plumbing’s good. Wiring’s good. The porch is bad, as you can see. The back deck needs help. Gotta watch your step out there. Nice woodwork inside. Your basic Craftsman.”

  Her words were clipped and nervous because he looked utterly absorbed by what she was saying, while he was clearly thinking something else.

  “Love Craftsman homes.” He said this after a funny pause. As if his thoughts were on a time delay.

  “You’re tucked in off the road here among the trees, but there’s a really wonderful view of the canyon nearby. One of my favorites. I go there a lot. It’s a sort of vista point not far from my place. Kind of set back a bit off the road.”

  “Mmm,” was all he said.

  He patrolled the front of the house, looking a bit like a stalking panther.

  She decided to take his lack of glib commentary as a good sign.

  “If you stand here, you can hear the river. A little creek runs around back of the property. No one can see in through the trees, but you get plenty of sun in the afternoon in the back of the house, especially in the kitchen.”

  They stood together and listened to the creek.

  “Another good sound,” he said.

  It was a reference to last night, and that kiss they weren’t talking but in a way was all they were talking about. It thrummed through every word and every silence.

  He turned to smile faintly at her again. And then strode off suddenly, heading toward the corner of the house. It looked as though he intended to go around the back of it.

  He went stock-­still just as he turned the corner.

  Her heart lurched.

  He must have seen the blue-­eyed Mary’s.

  This was the thing that decided her. She knew they grew in a sort of unchecked abundance up against the back of this house.

  She didn’t know if it would be a painful memory for him, or a sweet one. But she wasn’t sure it mattered. She had a hunch they meant home to him, regardless, and she knew deep down that John Tennessee McCord needed a place that felt like home, even if he didn’t know it.

  He didn’t turn around for so long she started to worry.

  But she half suspected it was because he didn’t want her to see his expression.

  She cleared her throat. “It’s just . . . I saw them and thought of you, and I just thought . . . I thought the house might give you . . . something to take care of. A fixed point in the sandstorm.”

  He turned back around slowly then and looked at her full on.

  His expression was carefully inscrutable.

  And then his face lit, and his slow smile about yanked her heart out of her chest like a lariat.

  “I don’t mind.” His voice was low, and smoky. It was like being stripped nude and laid down on velvet in a dark room.

  She lost her breath.

  “Can I see inside?” he said mildly.

  She couldn’t speak. She could hear her own breath, swiftly now over the beating of her heart.

  She just turned and climbed up the steps, and he followed.

  She fumbled with the key yet again. She could feel the heat of his body against her skin.

  Behind me. Over me. On me. In me.

  Her dirty little prepositional phrases started up like a chant again.

  She turned the key and pushed open the door.

&n
bsp; He stalked through this room, taking it in thoughtfully. The entire house was maybe a thousand square feet. The living room looked out onto the porch and the woods; the little bedrooms flanked it. It wasn’t as moldy as it might have been, mainly because the hole in the roof was recent and the intense Gold Country summer heat tended to dry things out. The prevailing smell was good, aging wood.

  He stepped into the tiny bathroom, his hand lingering with bemused pleasure over the original porcelain knob. All the fixtures in the house—­knobs, latches, hinges, lights—­were pretty much original. There was a shower over an old claw-­foot tub, and a vintage porcelain sink, a little rusty now, with a separate knob for hot and cold. He tried both, casually. Water spurted from each.

  And still he didn’t say a word.

  She felt like he was mulling over a decision, and it had more to do with her than with this house.

  She found her voice, but it emerged pitched a little high. “Want to see the kitchen?”

  She led him in there.

  He followed in almost dreamlike silence.

  The floors were wood, and a huge old farm sink sat below a little window letting in leaf-­filtered sunlight. A bird flew up to it and split when it saw them.

  A huge, sturdy slab oak table sat in the middle of the kitchen. It was the only piece of furniture in the house.

  Britt touched it. “Jonah Greenleaf owned this house. He made this table. Apparently he was good at stuff like that before they hauled him off.”

  “ ‘Hauled him off’?” J. T. was amused rather than alarmed. He was ready for another Hellcat Canyon story.

  “Drugs. Sheriff Barlow arrested him for running drugs out of the Plugged Nickel. Scary bar up near the Coyote Creek settlement. He’s doing time. Bank repossessed the house and Gary bought it a short time ago. Remember the woman from the open mic? Glory Greenleaf? Her brother.”

  “Mmm,” was all he said.

  The stove was an ancient gas model, gorgeously made. She touched it, too.

  “It works,” she told him. “But you’ll need to get a fridge in there. A wood stove heats the place, and I don’t know if the heat reaches the bedrooms very well. There are fans in the bedrooms, though. Want to check out the back deck? It’s a little on the rickety side.”

  Her voice was still rushed and breathy, as if he’d been chasing her through the house. It was pure anticipation.

  She opened the kitchen door, which creaked on its hinges. She took two steps out onto the deck. J. T. wrapped his hand around Britt’s arm and drew her swiftly backward.

  And then he pointed upward silently.

  Her eyes followed the direction of his finger.

  A huge black widow spider was hovering up high in the web in the eaves of the house over the kitchen door. Clearly hoping not to be noticed.

  “Holy. . . .” she breathed.

  The spider backed swiftly up like a square dancer getting ready to do-­si-­do with a partner, scrambling to get away from them.

  “You know what they say. It’s more afraid of us than we are of it,” he said dryly.

  “Then we’d better get out of the way in case it faints and falls out of that web.”

  Simultaneously, it seemed, they both realized his hand was still on her bare skin.

  She looked down at it, curled around her, and suddenly her skin felt feverish.

  “Britt?” he said softly.

  She raised her head slowly and looked up into his eyes. Which had gone so black she could see herself in his pupils. She couldn’t speak.

  And then his hand slowly, deliberately, slid the length of her arm, down to her wrist.

  A bold, unabashed, caress. And if she had to guess, a statement of intent.

  And he released her.

  Her heart drummed so hard her blood whooshed in her ears. Her every cell was lit up with hunger.

  “Let’s go back inside,” he suggested in something close to a whisper. Oh, so casually. Like the sexual hypnotist he was.

  He turned, apparently confident she would follow.

  Of course she did.

  He held the door for her. It clanked shut behind them. The sound seemed to echo, but then all of her senses were wildly sensitized.

  J. T. stood in silence near the sink, studying her.

  She stood a few feet away from him.

  The quiet in the kitchen almost had a roar, like a river.

  And then J. T. reached out, curled his fingers into the hem of her tank top, and furled it up as smoothly as a window blind.

  Her arms came up to help him, probably more out of sheer surprise than anything else.

  Now she was nude from the waist up.

  And then, absurdly, he handed the tank top to her.

  As if to say: “There. Problem solved.”

  She took it, with a short stunned laugh.

  The sight of her went straight to J. T.’s blood like Everclear.

  She was smooth and tanned gold except for her breasts, which were white, small, tipped in little pink ruched teepees and curving up at him. Her little waist flared into round hips. Her low rise denim shorts showed him her belly button. He was going to make short work of those shorts.

  Lust sank its talons fully in.

  He made a little sound, almost of pain. The breath went out of him as if he’d been dropped suddenly from a height.

  She dropped the tank top.

  Later he couldn’t remember what happened between that moment and the next.

  Only that one moment she was standing half nude, illuminated in filtered sunlight.

  And the next their bodies and mouths were colliding with greedy near-­violence.

  They all but climbed each other. Her arms went around his neck and he pulled her up roughly against him, his hands slid over the satiny heat of her skin, over the delicate blades of her shoulders, the nip of her waist, sliding down into her shorts to cup her cool, smooth butt. He groaned with a shocking surfeit of pleasure.

  He was awkward and greedy and practically shaking with the effort of asserting some sort of control on all that unleashed lust.

  She was shaking, too. “Oh, God, yes, J. T. . . .” She whispered this against his mouth.

  And she tasted amazing, dark and sweet and hot and set. She kissed with carnal strategy and so did he, each curl of the tongue, each brush of their lips designed to make each other crazy hot. They both knew what they were doing and they were good at it, and if they weren’t wild before they started, they were beasts now.

  In her ferocity she was hurting him a little. But he liked it. He was likely hurting her a little. It only seemed to spur them on. They were both so hungry they’d forgotten how to calibrate and it was all urgency and take take take. She came at him so hard he nearly staggered backward.

  He slid his hands beneath her butt, lifted her up against his swelling cock, and they ground together gracelessly groin to groin, and her head went back on the most erotic gasp he’d ever heard. He buried his mouth in her throat beneath her ear, where the skin was tender and satiny and her heart was beating hard as a kick drum, and he licked, then laid his lips there and her head fell back.

  And he carried her like that three feet to the old slab table and laid her down.

  He hovered over her for a moment of near quiet, and he propped himself above her on his arms and kissed her, more softly now. He was like a drunk man. Her fingers wound through his hair, traced his ears, dragged lightly down his throat and it was like her fingers were magic wands lighting fires everywhere in him.

  He touched his tongue to her nipple, then drew it into his mouth and did fancy twirls with his tongue and then sucked until she was writhing from the pleasure. His other hand savored the silky give of her other breast, his thumb chafing the hard peak. Never let it be said he couldn’t multitask.

  He knew how to ge
t the job done fast. And the job was to make her wet and begging.

  She arched upward, groaned and slid one bare foot up between his legs, and dragged it hard and surprisingly dexterously up over his bulge, and stroked by way of encouragement.

  “God,” he swore.

  He was going to lose his mind.

  “Take them off.” Her voice was ragged.

  He didn’t know whether she meant his or hers, but he started with hers. He dragged her shorts down over her legs, and with them came a practical pair of underwear. Two birds with one stone! She gave a little kick and they were on the floor. He kicked them aside.

  She was completely nude and lying on that table like a feast and he leaned over to kiss her and murmur, “This is going to be fast.” Part apology, part promise.

  “It had better be,” she rasped.

  He got his own jeans unfastened and open and his cock sprang free, and then he dangled his fingers in the dark blonde, neatly trimmed fluff between her legs and then slipped one finger into the slick heat of her, dragged it over her hard again.

  She moaned low, and it tapered into something like a despairing laugh. “J. T. . . . I swear . . . I’m so close . . . please . . .”

  And then he tucked her calves against his rib cage and she locked them around his waist, and he was inside her in a swift thrust. His head fell back and he swore hoarsely at the staggering pleasure. He was sure nothing in this world could ever feel as good as his cock sheathed inside the tight heat of her, right now, in a falling-­down house in the middle of the woods.

  There was no finesse attempt. He was dying for it and she was begging and it was, as he’d promised, fast. He drew back, dove in again, and she hissed at the pleasure of it. And then plunged and thrust with a speed his eighteeen-­year-­old self would have been proud of, and he was going to come with almost embarrassing speed, he could feel it, hovering like a presence about to yank him from his body right into the stratosphere. He kept his fingers on her in a steady rhythm, too, and judging from the moans torn from her this pleasure was nearly impossible to bear, which was reasonably true for him, too.

  And then her body whipped upward and her head fell back and he could hear the raw soundless scream of his name and her fingers clutching the edge of the table as if to brace for an earthquake, as she pulsed around him, absolutely coming apart as she came.