Make Me Lose Control

by Christie Ridgway

The corner of his mouth twitched as the second eyebrow joined the first. “Okay.”

  “This is my third martini.” She gestured toward her current glass, then frowned. “Or my fourth.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ve had nothing to eat yet.” At that, she ran out of things to say. None of what she’d already shared, she realized, gave any rational explanation for why she’d been staring at him. Damn.

  “Is it a four-martini birthday, then?” he inquired conversationally. He murmured thanks as his beer was placed before him. His gaze turned assessing. “I can’t imagine it’s one of the more painful ones.”

  “Oh, um, well.” She shifted her attention to her drink and drew it closer. “Maybe it’s the fire.”

  “Aren’t we safe?” He sipped from his beer. “The highway patrol seemed to know what they were doing when they shuttled me in this direction. They said I might be stuck here for as little as a few hours, though possibly longer.”

  “We’ll be fine.” There was no need to pass along her skittishness. “The fire protection people and the other authorities have a lot of experience.”

  Her quesadillas arrived and the smell of them tickled her taste buds. She could feel the man at her side eyeing them with interest. Enough interest that she felt compelled to offer, “Help yourself. There’s too much for me to eat all by myself.”

  “Oh, I—”

  “Go on,” she said. “We’re fellow refugees of a sort, after all.”

  There was another moment’s hesitation, then she saw his hand reach toward the platter. She pushed half the tall stack of paper napkins that had been delivered with the food toward him.

  What she didn’t do was look at him again.

  Never before had she found a man so attractive, Shay decided. She wasn’t a nun; she’d dated and had been in a couple of longish relationships. But one-night stands were on her Not Ever list.

  Living in a small tight-knit community meant that everyone knew everyone’s else’s business. Since Shay was the product of an extramarital affair and the father of her sister Poppy’s son had hightailed it at the words positive pregnancy test, there was more than enough Walker tattle for people to tittle over. Shay had never been tempted to add to it with a casual hookup.

  Not that the man on the next stool was in the market for a hookup with her. He could have anyone. Though he didn’t wear a ring, for all she knew he was married to the most beautiful woman on the planet.

  “Hey, birthday girl,” the man at her side said. “You really are down in the dumps, aren’t you?”

  She risked a look at him. Whoa. Still unbelievably handsome. His golden gaze swept her face, dropped just briefly, then came back up to meet her eyes.

  That was good, because her nipples were tingling as they tightened into hard buds just from that quick glance. With masterful effort, she resisted squirming on her seat.

  He was still staring at her expectantly and she couldn’t help but notice the faint white lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. Clearly he spent a lot of time outdoors squinting into the sun. They could be laugh lines, she supposed, but he didn’t look like the type who succumbed to hilarity on a habitual basis.

  A question, she remembered now, as he continued staring. He’d asked a question. “Um...” Clever or charming was really beyond her at this point, whether it was due to the martinis or his rampant masculinity. “I really don’t like my birthday,” she confessed.

  “That’s too bad. No good memories about it whatsoever? Not one?”

  Shay’s brow furrowed as she thought back. “I had a pony party when I was eight. We went out on a trail ride and at the end my dad barbecued and my mom served a cake in the shape of a horseshoe.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “It was.” She smiled a little. “When I was thirteen I had a pajama party. My older sisters treated me and my friends to facials, manicures and cosmetic makeovers. That year, the cake was shaped like a tiara.” Also fun.

  “So, when did the day go from tiaras to tragedy?”

  The very next year, when she was fourteen. It was the year her father died and at her birthday party one of the guests had whispered loudly to another that Shay was a bastard and her mother a whore. Though that mean girl had been summarily sent home, in that moment Shay had become very self-conscious of who she was and who she wasn’t.

  Not that she would tell the stranger all that. So she shrugged instead and turned the tables on him. “What about your birthdays? Pizza and laser tag? Cakes shaped like footballs or Super Mario?”

  “We didn’t celebrate birthdays in my house.”

  Shay’s eyes rounded. “What?”

  “My mom was gone early...I don’t remember her. My father, a former Marine, was a hard man. At my house, the showers were cold, Christmas was just another day and the date of your birth was only something to put on a medical form or a job application.” He said it all matter-of-factly, no shred of self-pity in his tone.

  Shay stared at him a moment. Then she swiped up her martini glass and swiveled forward in her seat, unsure how to respond.

  “I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely apologetic, not to mention a trifle embarrassed. “Too much information, right?”

  His discomfort eased hers. She threw him a little pretend glare as she took another sip of vodka. The look was ruined by the hiccup that bounced up her throat. As she swallowed it back down, she caught sight of the corner of his mouth kicking up in that small, amused and very attractive smile of his.

  She tossed another brief glare in his direction.

  “Okay, Birthday Girl, what’s wrong now?”

  “What’s wrong, he asks?” she said, shifting to face him while rolling her eyes. “I was into my four-martini, poor-me birthday routine, though still sharing my appetizer, you’ll recall, when you released the air from my gloom balloon by telling me about cold showers, no Christmas and a complete lack of birthday cake.”

  “Gloom balloon?” He started laughing, husky and low, showing a wealth of even white teeth. The sound of it rolled over her like honey.

  She was so over being intimidated by his good looks, she told herself as she sucked down the rest of the vodka in her glass. You could be gorgeous and built and have the world’s most powerful-looking hands and the warmest surprise of a laugh, but if you’d never had birthday cake...well.

  That had to be fixed immediately, she decided with half-drunken logic.

  Boarder Bartender—in his own immortal words—was “down with that.” Mere minutes after her whispered aside, a server came from the kitchen bearing a big hunk of chocolate cake topped with a lighted birthday candle. As the room erupted in song, Shay realized she didn’t know his first name.

  “Jay,” he said over the loud singing. There was a bemused grin on his face. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  And maybe she was. Or maybe it was the vodka. Whatever the reason, she felt reckless and carefree as they both cozied up to the bar around the piece of multilayered cake. He tried to tell her he didn’t like sweets, which caused her to roll her eyes again, and him to let loose another round of that rough-warm laughter.

  They dueled forks for the last bite of cake.

  Jay ordered another round of quesadillas, so she had more to eat to counteract the effect of the martinis. The night wore on, the crowd around them drinking freely while Shay switched to sparkling water. From somewhere, the management dredged up a motley collection of games. It didn’t surprise Shay that the king of the jungle snagged the only deck of cards for the two of them.

  It was useful to have a predator at her back.

  “You would have been good on the Titanic,” she mused.

  Lifting those golden eyes from the cards he was shuffling, he glanced around. “Is that what this feels like?”

  Shay looke
d, too. In one corner, some men were playing dominoes with ruthless concentration. In another, a group of middle-aged women, with a bouquet of now empty wine bottles working as the centerpiece for their table, launched into a rendition of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”

  “Hmm, maybe Rick’s Café from Casablanca?” Shay suggested.

  “I guess I’d rather be Bogie than the kid who turns into an ice cube.” Then Jay dropped his hand to her bare knee and gave it a brief squeeze. “So...what should we play?”

  Shay stared down. The large palm and long fingers covered her skin like a warm and slightly raspy blanket. The calluses were a workingman’s, just as she’d guessed. Though she supposed she might still register fairly high on the tipsy scale, the alcohol hadn’t desensitized her flesh. It prickled in reaction to his touch, hot chills rushing from the point of contact northward. Involuntarily, her thighs pressed together, prolonging the small thrilling ache she felt between them.

  “Birthday Girl?” he called again.

  Her gaze moved up to his. His golden eyes studied her face. She felt it like another touch, a fingertip, maybe, following the arch of her eyebrows and the profile of her nose. He looked lower, and her lips started to tingle, her mouth going dry inside.

  Her tongue snaked out to her lower lip.

  Jay jerked, his attention jumping from her face to the cards. His hand moved from her and he began dealing them out.

  The sexual hum in her body did nothing to help her brain. It only muddled her thinking, which meant while she should have been edging away from him or sliding off the stool altogether and making tracks for her room, instead she leaned closer, her shoulder bumping his.

  She intended it in a friendly way, but the tap became kind of a rub, and when he glanced at her there was another charged moment of energy passing between them. An exchange.

  A sexual exchange.

  Wow, she thought again. He was the most beautiful, masculine man she’d ever met. Her sister’s fiancé, Ryan, was classic-cinema-star handsome—when you looked at him you thought you should have some popcorn on hand. Watching him breathe was pure entertainment.

  With Jay, it was different. Shay wanted to watch him move. Or better yet, move things. Do things. He was a man made to operate a forklift or lay railroad ties or rig a suspension bridge.

  He’d separated the cards into two piles, one of which he slid toward her. When she gathered them closer, their fingers touched. Again, Jay flinched.

  The sexual spark stung her, too.

  “What are we going to play?” she asked.

  He gave her a grim look. “War.”

  Shay sighed. She could have told him it wasn’t going to work. It was completely clear to her, even after chocolate cake, quesadillas and martinis.

  There was no way to battle this pull between them.

  And at this point, she didn’t want to.

  With another forbidding glance, he slapped down the first card. A deuce.

  Hers was a king.

  Several minutes later, when the game was over and all the cards were piled in front of Shay, she began to stack them neatly.

  “Round two?” he asked. There was a tense note to his voice.

  Likely because he thought they’d have to sit here all night playing cards instead of having another kind of round two...around dawn.

  In her room at the inn.

  They could do that, though, couldn’t they?

  Her heart started beating faster and she could feel her pulse thudding in her throat and at her wrists. She’d never propositioned a man before...but now she wanted to. Really wanted to, and hadn’t she promised Mel she’d have fun? Glancing at the clock on the wall, she noted it was after midnight.

  It truly was her birthday now. “You know, there are rooms here...” she began.

  His gaze was trained on her face. She had the impression he was counting each and every one of her eyelashes. “I was told there’s no vacancy,” he said.

  Shay’s hand crept toward her purse, still hanging on the hook. From it, she pulled out the plastic key card, which she placed on the bar’s surface and then slid toward the man at her right. He was turned toward her on his stool, his elbow on the bar. “I reserved the last one,” she whispered.

  Hesitating, she ran her gaze over his rugged shoulders, his wide chest, his powerful thighs. If she scooted closer, she’d be between his legs, surrounded by him. Closer to the clean scent that she’d been aware of for hours.

  Shay cleared her throat and reminded herself she was due a present. “The bed’s big enough for two.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  JACE JENNINGS STARED down at the innocuous rectangle of plastic. Birthday Girl’s fingers touched one edge, the nails short and painted with clear polish. Transparent, the same as her face.

  He’d been able to read every expression flitting across it all night long.

  At first, she’d been shy. She was younger than he was, by a decade, he supposed, and he’d had no intention of even engaging her in conversation. But then she’d launched into her martinis-and-birthday confession and he’d found himself drawn in...then drawn to her.

  When he’d shared that bit about his childhood—and what had prompted him to do so, he couldn’t say—her quasihuffy, amusing response had tickled his funny bone. Not many people managed to do that.

  But Birthday Girl and her “gloom balloon”...

  Shaking his head, he felt a grin tugging on the corners of his mouth again.

  “You’re leaving me hanging here,” she said now.

  He glanced up. She was beautiful. That had struck him immediately. Her shoulder-length hair was a mix of red, gold and brown. Her eyes were an arresting shade of pale blue, her skin creamy, with just a faint spray of tiny golden freckles peppering her small nose. As a builder, he had an interest in and appreciation of the bones of things, and those of this woman were both delicate and elegant. Her mouth was lush, though, its unpainted color a pale rose.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  And he could read her again, the slight truculence a defensive position. “This could be a dangerous habit, Birthday Girl.”

  “This?”

  “Propositioning total strangers.”

  Her mouth dropped, and she yanked the key card back toward her. “I don’t—”

  “Wait.” He placed his fingers over hers. “That came out wrong.”

  She was staring down at his hand. Jace knew why. The instant they touched, heat snapped like an electrical shock, then ricocheted through his body. He supposed she felt something similar. All night, he’d been half-hard and her flesh beneath his was taking him the rest of the way.

  Slowly, as if retreating from a skittish creature, Jace lifted his hand. Her gaze lifted, too, and those blue eyes zeroed in on his face.

  “I don’t make a habit of this kind of thing,” she declared.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.” And why the hell would he care if she propositioned a new man every night? But for some stupid reason he’d wanted to hear her say she didn’t out loud. He’d wanted to know that this...connection was something unusual for her, too. Different. Special.

  Because it felt damn special to him.

  Holy hell, she’d bought him birthday cake.

  “We don’t know each other,” he heard himself say, though he’d never told anyone else about those daily frigid showers. It was true. His father had believed in cold water as the cornerstone of making a man out of a boy.

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  “Divorced.” And his ex was dead now, a recent circumstance that had wrought a huge change in his life. Just the thought of that made him toss back the rest of the whiskey that he’d switched to when the cards came out.

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No.”
He paused, then lifted a brow. “Boyfriend?”

  “If I had one, wouldn’t he be the one spending my birthday with me?”

  Which made Jace think about what he’d been calling her. Birthday Girl. She hadn’t offered up her real name. He hadn’t corrected her when she misheard his as “Jay.”

  This beautiful young woman was really offering up no-strings, one-night-only, stranger sex.

  God knows he didn’t deserve it, but—

  “Okay, then.” Birthday Girl slid off her stool and onto her feet. He was close and turned in her direction, so she landed between his knees, and swayed there a moment. To steady herself, one hand reached out and clutched his thigh.

  Uh-oh. Those martinis were still in her system.

  That thought didn’t stop another piercing zing of heat from rocketing from her hand to his crotch, just a few inches north. And it wasn’t only her touch that got to him. There was that sweet little dress she wore that showed a whole hell of a lot of bare leg in the front, then flowed lower around the back.

  “I’m going,” she said, still looking a bit woozy. “It’s up to you whether you come with me or not.”

  Jace sighed. Of course he was going with her. Whether he crossed the threshold of her room, well, first he had to make sure she got to it safely. He hopped off his own stool, feeling a twinge as his newly healed left ankle found the ground. “I’m right behind you, Birthday Girl,” he said.

  Actually, he took her hand, as well.

  That was weird. He wasn’t a toucher. When he was with a woman he didn’t worry about keeping her close. But this one was tipsy, he reminded himself, and though he’d been raised by a distant and unfeeling man, in this instance he wasn’t going to take after the old bastard.

  Drawing her nearer, Jace could smell the sweet scent of her hair. Now he went a bit woozy.

  “It’s this way,” she said, tugging him toward a steep staircase off the foyer. Judging by the architecture, the Deerpoint Inn had to be about a hundred years old. On the way inside earlier that night, he’d glanced at the framed magazine article about the place that hung on the entry wall. The building had started life as a boardinghouse for area loggers. Now they’d converted the original fifteen rooms upstairs to just six, each with its own bath.