She ought to know.
And John Tennessee McCord was allegedly allergic to the “L” word.
She supposed that was something Rebecca Corday ought to know.
“It’s hard to get a perspective on events, and even people, when you’re in the thick of them,” she said. “And it’s hard to know which opportunities are right for you, and which ones you just think you should want.”
He quirked a corner of his mouth. “Yeah . . . wanting . . . that’s a killer. Recently, I had a shot at a part I wanted more than . . . literally more than any other part in my entire career. I wanted it so much it was nearly physical pain. A script called Last Call in Purgatory. Fantastic writing. Set at the end of World War II, about a washed-up formerly brilliant writer who’s kind of a lush and the woman he’s in love with. I auditioned three times. Anyway, I heard back this week. And . . . I didn’t get it.”
“Oh, J. T. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s Hollywood. Anything can happen. But the competition . . . and the wanting . . . you can try to be Zen about it. But that letdown is never not a killer.”
“I think all that means is you’re a competitor. And one thing I learned as a cheerleader is you have to actually learn how to fall in a way that doesn’t break anything essential as well as do those backflips.”
He took this in thoughtfully. “Backflips . . .” he repeated musingly.
As if he was getting ideas about what they ought to do after dinner.
But she knew he was processing what she’d just said.
She took a deep breath. She could do this. She could give a little something else of herself to him.
“For a little while . . . I gave up a lot of stuff I used to love. It just sort of . . . happened that way. But lately . . . I’ve started to think that wanting things . . . really, really wanting things . . . is how you know you’re still alive.”
He said . . . absolutely nothing.
She was beginning to understand that J. T. was likely feeling the most and thinking the most when his expression was least readable.
Some errant, fiercely tender impulse swept through her. Because he might be direct, and he might be tough, but something told her she was getting at places he normally kept protected.
And then his mouth turned up at the corner ruefully. And he leaned toward her, across that lit votive candle.
“By that definition, Britt, I’m more alive than any guy on the planet. Because you have no idea how I much I want you.”
Good God.
He could so easily render her breathless.
She stared at him.
Suddenly they were the only two people on the planet, and neither of them had any purpose or goal or need beyond the physical. And maybe that’s all this ever needed to be.
“Feel like proving it?”
“Think we can get dinner to go?”
“I’ll get you anything you want, sweetheart.”
The maître d’ was next to them before J. T. had his hand all the way up in the air to beckon.
CHAPTER 14
Britt deposited her purse and keys on the little table near the front door, and then closed it behind them.
And J. T. was officially in her house, which was probably the last thing she would ever have imagined a week ago.
“This your mountain lion?”
J. T. bent down to get a look at Phillip, who had greeted them at the door, and held out the back of his hand. It was bumped by a pink cat nose.
“Yep. Careful, he’s vicious.”
“Prrrp!” Phillip trilled and flung himself on his back beseechingly, then rolled.
“I can see that,” J. T. said.
Phillip sprang back up and flung his body at J. T.’s shins and rubbed the length of them.
“Suck-up,” she said to her cat and bent down to scratch the back of him while J. T. scratched the front of him.
And then J. T. stood and began wandering through the front room, looking like a big handsome wild animal picking his way through a new habitat.
He paused in front of a photo of Will and smiled. “This your nephew?”
“Yeah. That’s Will.”
No one could help smiling when looking at Will.
“I have a nephew, too, ’round that age. Hardly ever get to see him.”
“That’s a shame,” she said sincerely.
She imagined it would be awfully hard for ordinary humans to merge into the fast-lane life J. T. lived. Or maybe it was like a carnival ride, and he waved at them each time a rotation of his merry-go-round brought them into view again.
Next he plucked up a deep-orange silk pillow from her sofa, which was a sort of pale shade of olive with a high tufted back. Soft and velvet and unusual, and better yet, a steal from the Goodwill store. It was the one she’d been clutching when she’d watched him in Agapé.
He scanned the room, his expression gratifyingly impressed. “You have an amazing eye for color and form.”
“Don’t I know it.”
That was a little Mae West-ish of her, but she was a little tipsy from the excellent wine at the restaurant.
He grinned at that. “Did you make these, too?”
“Um . . . I made the pillows, from thrift-store silk. I refinished the picture frames. I refinished that trunk . . .”
Oh shit!
She realized too late she’d left her sketchbook on the trunk, and she watched him reach for it in what felt like slow motion.
“Oh . . . that’s just . . . you don’t want to . . . argh!”
But he already had it in his hands. He was staring down at it raptly.
And his face was lit with delight.
“Holy crap, this is Glenn Harwood from the Misty Cat!” he guessed. “Only he’s a walrus. That is freaking brilliant.”
“Don’t turn the—”
He turned the page.
“And this is Sherrie. She’s a lady walrus.” He glanced up at her, thoroughly amused. “Are there lady peanuts in here, Britt?”
“No. J. T., I’d rather you didn’t—”
He turned another page.
“J. T. . . . I really wasn’t ready to—”
“Let me guess . . . this angry bull with the big square face is Truck.”
She sighed. “Yeah,” she admitted.
“Britt, these are absolutely brilliant.” He looked up at her, his face ablaze with a warmth and admiration and surprise. “You don’t want me to look at them? But why?”
“I don’t want anyone to look at them, but since you’re already into it . . .”
He forgot to listen to her answer because he was already turning the page. “I don’t know who this little minx is.”
And it was a little minx: slinky and self-satisfied, a little haughty, a little vulnerable.
“Oh . . . that’s Kayla Benoit.”
“Ah, the lady with the boutique she named after herself.” J. T. was amused. “The woman you tried to fling at me as a consolation prize. And the woman she fought with in the street is . . . where is she?”
Britt surrendered and leaned toward him, and paged ahead, right past the horse drawing she didn’t want him to see. “Right here. Casey Carson. You may have noticed her in the Misty Cat picking up her lunch or dinner. I made her a lioness. She’s kind of fierce and open. A little bit innocent, a little bit not.”
He smiled at that description. “I like the bow on top of her head.”
“And her hair is perfect. She always has the best blow-out.”
She exhaled the tension she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when he laughed.
“Britt, these are amazing. I mean, really great. They have so much life and charm. Each drawing practically tells its own story. You ever think about doing a children’s book, an a
nimated series, something like that? You’ve never shown them to anyone?”
“Nope. Well, just my nephew. I guess it’s just I . . . only recently started drawing again. Feeling a little delicate about sharing it with anyone. I feel a little weird about sharing them with you. Let alone the world.”
“Well, a cartoon is a long shot. Best things in life are long shots. And you could make enough money from a book to get, oh, a 1995 Ford Contour.”
She laughed.
And then froze mid-laugh. Because now he was paging backward.
No. No no no.
“J. T., would you like to see my bed—”
It was too late. He froze, staring at the dashing horse, wearing jeans and boots and a black T-shirt.
“Holy sh . . . this is me,” he stated definitively.
Almost accusingly.
She bit her lip.
He looked up at her. “I’m a . . . horse?”
She was never in a million years going to tell him why she’d drawn him as a horse.
She hesitated. “Technically . . . you’re a stallion,” she confessed faintly.
“Because . . . I’m hung like one?” he guessed on a hush that was all stifled hilarity.
“You’re quite adequately hung, but that’s not why.”
“Adequately hung!” he crowed softly, delighted. “Say more dirty things like that to me. I want that on my headstone when I die. ‘He was adequately hung.’ ”
She laughed. “Stop!”
“But why then? Why am I a horse?”
She sighed, gustily. “Do I have to say?”
“Yes,” he decided. “You have to.”
Another silence.
“It’s because . . .”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“It’s a little embarrassing,” she whispered.
He cradled the back of her head in his hand, his fingers dragging softly in the downy hairs there, and she was suddenly incredibly glad for the updo, because her neck was wildly sensitive. If anyone was determined to seduce her, that’s where they ought to start.
She lifted her head up to see his eyes, hot and admiring and tender.
Her eyelids went heavy.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
“I think horses are very handsome.”
He grinned at that. “Great. Go on,” he whispered.
“And a little untamed. And majestic. They have dignity and integrity. They’re at home outdoors. They belong outdoors.”
“All good,” he murmured. “Were you going to mention anything about how much you love to ride them?”
She lifted her head up and studied him in a heavy-eyed assessing way, as if she was picturing doing just that, and by his expression she could tell that look went straight to his groin like a skillful hand.
He cleared his throat. “I didn’t see you in there.”
That was an interesting point. “I guess I just didn’t know what I should be.”
“I know.” He trailed his hand down to her shoulder, snagged the zipper on her dress, and dragged it down, down.
“What’s that?”she murmured.
“A wildcat. Because I just know you’re about to use your teeth and nails to make me wild.”
Her laugh evolved into a soft sigh that tapered into a moan when he slipped his hands into her dress and skated them up and down, up and down, softly, softly.
“It’s true that I can’t promise I’ll go easy on you,” she murmured against his mouth, when it touched hers. Whisper soft.
His hands, the night, her skin, his lips, hers. They were all of a sultry piece, all indistinguishable from each other, all erotic.
They got lost in long, slow, drugging kisses, and long slow, drugging caresses. Kissing just to be kissing. Touching just to touch.
Suddenly it felt serious and right, and it unnerved her.
Britt finally pulled away and tucked her head beneath his chin. And then she sighed and gave a single little shimmy.
And just like that her dress slid from her into a pool at her ankles.
She was nude.
And he was speechless.
“Damn, Britt.” His voice was a rasp.
She took him by the hand. “Show me how you’ll do it lying down.”
Luckily there wasn’t far to go, because the house was little, and so was her bedroom.
She sat down on her bed and pulled him down over her. He practically ripped his lovely shirt off and flung it with violence, as though it was trying to keep him away from her on purpose, across the room, where it settled on a lamp. They were finally skin to skin.
The pleasure of her nipples chafing his bare skin was decadent. She rubbed against him like a cat, and half sighed, half moaned shamelessly, and he hissed in an oath, part endearment, part pleasure. Her fingers followed the seams between the gorgeous etched quadrants of muscle on his chest, and her lips and her tongue and her breath followed her fingers, and she savored the feel of stomach leaping and the hoarse rush of his breath. “Christ. Britt.” He made her name sound synonymous with need. Or want.
She drew her tongue all down that seam that divided his ribs into muscle while his hands destroyed Casey’s updo and trailed her neck and ears in a way that made her wilder still, and she nipped and kissed all down the ferny trail of hair that vanished into his jeans, and then she dragged her mouth teasingly over the bulge in his jeans, and turned her cheek to rub over it there.
And now he was writhing and arching and attempting to reach his buttons. “Jesus . . . help me, you wench . . .”
She laughed and did the honors with a deft tug, and the buttons all rippled open easily. With some less than graceful but ultimately effective fish-out-of-water thrashing they finally got him out of his jeans and underwear and completely nude and his big, lovely hard cock was hers for the tasting.
But he rolled her over so swiftly she gasped.
It was his turn to show her what he could do with his hands and mouth. Slow, strategic, clever, knowing, relentless. In moments she was enslaved. His thumbs rocking and chafing over her nipples, sending fine bolts of delicious lightning through her, until she was more lust than human. His fingers slid between her thighs and feathered, teasing, over the satiny, sensitive skin there, skating just shy of where she was throbbing like a freaking jungle drum, because he was a bastard and clearly he wanted to hear her cravenly beg.
“J. T. . . . please . . . you son of a . . .”
And then he got there and found her hot and wet and she forgave him the torture when he proved he was absolutely maestro with his fingers, and she moaned shamelessly, moving in rhythm with him. “Yes,” she affirmed. “Dear God, yes.”
And then suddenly threaded his fingers through hers and pinned them back and he was over her body, and with one deft knee he had her legs apart and she rose up to lock them around his back.
He thrust in, and moved into her slowly, slowly. His eyes were nearly black and their gazes fused with such intensity, for an instant she literally forgot who was who.
It was clear he was going to try for finesse. He withdrew, and teased both of them by sliding his cock lightly over her wet curls, and she sucked in a long breath from the electric bliss of it, then cursed him for the torture.
And then he was inside her again, and she rose up to take him deeply. He eased back, and then plunged, then eased back, and slowly sank into her again, each time uncovering layers of bliss she really never dreamed existed, each one of those layers building upon the next. Her head thrashed backward and her hips arched up, and she freed her hands from his because she needed to urge him on.
She dragged her fingers over his chest, trailed them over his narrow white hips, slid her palms into the lovely little scoops of muscle on his ass to pull him hard against her. Nipped at his nipples, and dragged her hand
s down to stroke his balls for the pleasure of watching his eyes go blacker still. And his rhythm got steady and faster and she could feel him everywhere in her body.
“Oh. My. God,” she moaned, as she felt the banking of pleasure that promised to be mind-blowing.
“I know, right?” he half rasped, half moaned, both self-congratulatory and awestruck.
“J. T. . . .” It was a raw whisper, half laugh, half plea. Jesus.
He unleashed both of them.
Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as his hips drummed. And then his eyes went hot and dazed and she knew he was racing toward his own release as she rose up to meet hers. And when it came it was cataclysmic, a near killing pleasure, bowing her body upward, racking her with wave after wave of indescribable pleasure.
And she wrapped her arms around him and held him when he went still and as his body shook, her name a tattered rasp.
And then he gently laid his head on her chest, his back heaving, and she ran her hands over it, savoring, feeling both conquered and conqueror and unutterably, unaccountably moved.
Britt opened her eyes to dusty golden sunlight pouring through the high window in her bedroom. A shadow pattern of leaves was using J. T.’s smooth back as a canvas. They must have fallen asleep after they’d ravished each other. It was already warm in the little room.
He was a stomach sleeper. So lovely to know these things about a guy. These little intimacies.
She admired how his eyelashes shuddered on his cheeks in his sleep for a time. Smiling slightly.
His eyes popped open. He smiled sleepily. “Hi.”
“There’s a shadow pattern of leaves on your back. It’s very pretty.”
“Zat so. There’s something pretty in front of me, too.”
“Ha.”
He sighed happily and rolled over and scooped her into his arms, so that his shoulder was her pillow now.
He dipped his head and kissed her shoulder lingeringly. Right where she’d transformed a round, ugly scar into something beautiful. Something that could be kissed by a beautiful man.
They lay like that for a moment of utter, empty bliss.
And he was quiet for so long, his breathing so steady, she thought he might have dozed off again.
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