“Do you want to talk about it?” Savannah’s quiet voice interrupted the whirling thoughts.
“You know. You treated her.” He turned his head to look at her, her gaze darting from the road to the rearview mirror and back again. “Hell, you’re the only one I’m not pissed at because at least you have an ethical reason not to tell me the truth.”
Her brows drawn together into a slight frown, she glanced sideways at him. “You’re really way more intense than you look.”
“Only when I’m angry.” He straightened in the seat and rubbed his palms down his thighs. “Usually, I keep it under control. Tonight, I’m mad at the whole damn world.”
She braked for the last stoplight before the edge of town. “So what do you want to do?”
“Pull in up here.” He pointed at the brightly lit Cue Club set off the road a quarter mile ahead of them. “We’ll grab beers and burgers and go to the lime mine.”
The place wasn’t incredibly busy, and their order didn’t take long. Shanna worked the bar tonight and tried to engage him in conversation, but gave up after his repeated monosyllabic replies. She was a great person and he liked her—any other night, he would’ve felt bad about rebuffing the friendly overtures, but not tonight.
He wasn’t in the mood for small talk.
In the truck, he set the sack of burgers on the seat between them and the brown paper bag holding their beers between his feet. He flicked a hand to the right. “About five minutes that way.”
The abandoned lime mine lay miles outside of town, and he directed her down the red dirt road leading to the upper rim. The road narrowed to a grass track, cedar limbs swiping at the sides of his truck before the vegetation opened up along the rim of the man-made canyon.
Savannah laughed. “This is the middle of nowhere.”
“Yeah.” He made a grab for the steering wheel and shoved it to the left as she braked hard. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”
She killed the engine and leaned forward over the steering wheel. He knew what she was seeing—the wide pit yawning darker than the night around them. She shivered. “This cannot be safe.”
“Oh, it’s not.” He grabbed the sack holding their dinner and shoved the door open. “Come on.”
“Emmett.” Nervousness invaded her voice. She hovered near the cab as he let the tailgate down.
“Honey, walk to the back of the truck. It’s away from the pit. And we’re at least thirty feet from the dropoff. Just don’t go beyond the front of the truck.” He sat on the edge of the tailgate. “Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t let you fall?”
“I didn’t think you meant literally.” She perched beside him, and he passed her a burger from the bag. Night sounds wrapped around them—crickets, an owl, something creeping through the underbrush, and with the city lights gone, stars shone brightly around a glowing moon. The night air was warm and damp against his bare arms, and he inhaled sharply. God, he’d needed this.
She moved the sack and edged closer, her thigh brushing his. “I need to tell you something.”
“Yeah?” He was starting to calm down, the anger and hurt receding under the peace of being out at night and having her next to him, even if nothing was settled between them.
“A couple of years ago, I was engaged and…” Her voice caught on a pained breath. “And he died.”
He closed his eyes against the pain in the simple words. This was it, then, the wall that stood between them, all wrapped up in three little words. He joined their hands, fingers entwined with hers. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” She pulled in an audible little inhale that was close to a sob. “It was bad. There’d been an accident, and they brought him into my ER, into my exam room, and I didn’t even realize it was him…not until after I pronounced him and we realized he and his partner had been mixed up…”
He released her hand and wrapped his arm hard around her shoulders, pulling her into him. A shudder moved through her strong body, and he tightened his hold on her. “I’m so damned sorry.”
She turned her face into his neck and linked her arm around his nape. Tears dampened his skin. “It’s not you, Emmett, it’s not. It’s me, and I don’t know how to…I know I keep saying that, but it’s true and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know.” He tossed his half-eaten burger behind them and folded both arms around her, rocking her into him at an awkward angle. She moved her head, seeking his mouth, and he let her kiss him, let her mesh their lips. The desperation in her kiss wasn’t for him, and he eased his hands up to cradle her head, gentling the contact to a soft halt. He brushed his mouth across hers once and pulled back.
He shifted to retrieve his burger and linked his free hand with hers. Confusion radiated off her in palpable waves. He squeezed her fingers. “When you asked me if I trusted you and I said no, that wasn’t a fair answer. I don’t really trust anyone.”
“Anyone?”
“Well, Landra, when she’s not hiding shit from me,” he conceded. “Clark, mostly because we’ve been running together forever, and Troy Lee because I don’t think he could lie to save his life. Other than that? Yeah, I have trust issues.”
She was silent and he laced their fingers together.
“My dad is an asshole and has cheated on my mom since day one. He’s not the marrying type, but she was pregnant with Landra so they got married. I was supposed to be the thing that saved their marriage a few years later.” He exhaled sharply. “It didn’t work. In this town, everybody knows everything, and what they don’t know, they make up. So Mama had to live with that every day. She kept saying she wasn’t going to take him back, but she did. Every single time.”
“And you had to live with that.” Her quiet sympathy washed over him.
“Yeah, and I didn’t make it easier on her.” He splayed his palm against hers, measuring the length of their fingers. “I only made it worse.”
She brushed his cheek with the back of her other hand. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Anyway, I try not to have anything to do with him, and he makes that pretty easy.” He cleared his throat against a rough tightening. “He didn’t show up at all when I got shot, and I was good with that.”
“It was hard on Landra.”
“Oh, yeah. She’s a total control freak. Mackey couldn’t take it anymore, and they broke up right after the shooting. She quit her job, went to work in Tallahassee and married Frank on the rebound.” He shook his head. “I tried to tell her it wasn’t a good idea, but she wasn’t listening. She hasn’t talked to me in almost a year, but I’m pretty sure that was more about Frank and less about me. So yeah, my family is totally fucked up and I’ve never wanted a real relationship with any woman, and now I’m in this…this thing with you and I want it so bad it scares me and I know that’s the last thing you want.”
“It’s hard.” She rubbed her palm along his, a rueful note in her voice. “I’m afraid to open up again, and it was so easy with Gates—”
“Gates Melbourne?” The name clicked in his brain, and he groaned. He really couldn’t win.
“Yes.” The word wobbled, and he cringed. “Why?”
“He was a good guy. I met him a few times when he was working swing. He and Clark got on like a house on fire.” Melbourne had patched him up in the back of a rig after he and Troy Lee had busted up a bar fight and some drunk asshole had laid him upside the head with a beer bottle. Emmett hadn’t wanted to waste half his shift in the ER…or listen to Landra gripe about how dangerous his job was. A couple of weekends later, Melbourne had been dead after a semi plowed into his ambulance on a run.
“He was the best.” Wistfulness colored the words, and he winced, feeling like a selfish bastard. He couldn’t compete with that.
“And I don’t make it easy.” The words hurt his throat. He wanted to throw something because he didn’t know how to function in this.
“I don’t expect it to be that way with you.” Again, she slid their palms together, a wa
rm point of contact between them. “I’m not the same person I was. I can’t do this the way I did that.”
“Makes sense.” He released her hand, crumpled his hamburger wrapper, and shoved it in the bag with the unopened beers.
“I think you had it right when you said we do today, then tomorrow, then figure out where we are.” A small sigh vibrated through her body. “Although I really hate that idea.”
He made a sound in his throat. As far as conversations went, this one was about as hopeless as he’d ever seen. They were a sad pair.
“And it’s probably not fair for me to stay connected to you like this.” She shoved her own wrapper in the bag and pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them. “You sister and Clark and Rob all seem to think I should let you go.”
“What?” His anger surged so hard that lights danced against the night before him. Landra he got—she was always trying to mess with his life. He didn’t give a damn about Bennett, not really, but Clark? “What the hell?”
“They’re probably all right.”
This was unbelievable. Did no one get the concept of his personal life? Hell, he stayed out of theirs unless they invited him in. But everyone wanted a say in his.
He lifted his phone. “Hey, let’s text Troy Lee and get his opinion. Maybe your sister and, why the hell not, my boss too. Better yet, my mama and your parents, since everybody seems to get a voice but me.”
She laughed. She honest-to-God laughed, and the clear, gorgeous sound defused his ire.
“What?” he asked around a chuckle. Damn it, he didn’t want to find this funny.
“Put that away.” She took the phone and laid it aside. “You really are adorable when you’re pissed off.”
Adorable wasn’t the effect he wanted to have on her. She reached for him, arms around his neck, and pressed to him.
“I don’t want to let you go.” She whispered the words near his mouth, and he looped his arms about her waist, unable to resist the contact. “I don’t like the idea of doing life day-to-day, but I can’t see doing those days without you in them.”
“Then don’t let me go.” He took her lips, and this time he was the desperate one, pressing her as close as he could get. She opened beneath him, and he tasted as deeply as he could get. He wanted to devour her, to make her forget where she ended and he began. He wanted to make her forget a lot more, and the part of his brain still working knew how dangerous and stupid that was, like getting too close to the edge of the pit behind them.
On a small moan of pure need, she shifted in his embrace, straddling his thighs with one leg, lifting higher against him so her face was above his. He let his hand drift down to cup the inside of that thigh over his, tugging her into him, and taking them backward to lie almost face-to-face. The ridges of the truck bed dug into his arm and hip, but he ignored the discomfort and pulled her nearer. Letting his tongue mimic what he wanted to do with his body, he ground his growing erection into the softness between her thighs and stroked his fingers across the heat he found there.
She made a sound that was half-moan, half-laugh. “Emmett, I love what you do to me, but this is really uncomfortable.”
“Yeah.” He leaned up on an elbow, mingled light from the moon and stars letting him glimpse the desire in her face. “There are sleeping bags behind the truck seat. Want me to get them?”
“Um, yeah.” She slid off the tailgate as he did. He opened the cab and rummaged behind the seat. “Why do you have sleeping bags in your truck?”
“Hiking and camping with Clark. They’ve been in there forever. Can’t remember the last time we used them. At least a month before the shooting.” He climbed up and unfolded the first bag and spread it across the truck bed. “There’s a couple of one-person tents back there too, but I’m not trying to put one of those together in the dark.”
She perched on the tailgate and kicked off her shoes, then tugged her scrub top over her head. He froze, the first bag stretched across the bed and the second folded to create a pillow at the top. He’d not anticipated this would involve getting naked, but what the hell? He was good with that.
He pulled off his polo, letting his undershirt come with it, and toed out of his shoes. She scooted back on the sleeping bag and held out her arms. He lowered himself into her embrace, and she held him close on a laugh. “This is a little better.”
He nuzzled along her jaw and stroked his palms over the soft skin of her shoulders and arms. The curve of her ear enticed him, and he bracketed her waist with his hands. “I can make it even better.”
“A little cocky, aren’t you there, Emmy?” Her breathless challenge shivered across his own ear.
“One, don’t call me Emmy.” He bit down gently on her neck and relished her little gasp. “Two, I’m a lot cocky, but if I remember correctly, I had you screaming my name night before last with nothing but my hand.”
“So you’re more than musically talented.” Her head fell back, and he licked and nibbled his way down her throat. She laid warm hands at his waist, nails a sweet bite on his skin. “Can I call you Em?”
“Yeah, you can call me Em.” He’d almost agree to Emmy with her, especially when those hands of hers cupped his ass and she ground into him, bringing him to a nearly painful level of hard. Clark was right—they’d been fooling around for days, but that’s all it was, fooling around a little on second and third base, mostly with him making the base hits for her.
He was going to die if he ever made it home.
She fumbled his belt open, popped the button, and slid his zipper down. With a firm hand at his shoulder, she pushed him to his back and leaned over him to whisper against his mouth. “I want to find out just how cocky you are.”
Despite himself, he laughed, the sound more of a strangled groan. She delved her fingers beneath the waistband of his boxers, fingertips dancing over his obliques and the sensitive area right above his dick. Shit, she was going to make him cry with the anticipation.
“I don’t suppose you have anything on you?”
He shifted a hip up and grabbed his wallet. She shook her head as he passed the condom into her hand. “You’re not supposed to keep these in your wallet.”
“I don’t think twenty-four hours is going to cause it to degrade that much.” He sucked in a couple of breaths, trying to still the eagerness tying his lower gut in pleasurable knots and tingling into his balls. “And you don’t want the ones that are in the dash.”
“Probably not.” She slid slacks and boxers down his legs, and he tried to kick them off without kicking her. Her fingers danced across his inner thighs, and she bit the tender skin there on his injured leg before he felt her tongue trail along the incision scar.
“Holy…” How was that the hottest thing ever? “…fuck.”
“Is that like your favorite word?” Plastic crinkled and she unrolled thin latex on him before tangling her fingers in the hair curling around his base.
“Is teasing like your favorite thing?” He tried not to buck when she ran a tempting fingertip under his balls, nail a delicious scrape on his perineum. He was wrong about making it home—he was going to die, right here, under those light touches and the expectation they aroused.
“You have no idea.” She dragged her tongue across his scrotum, and he didn’t try to muffle a pained groan. “And I aced anatomy too.”
I’d believe it was his last cognizant thought, and then her mouth was on him, a warm, lush haven even with the latex between them. One hand wrapped around his base, lightly jacking him off, and the other splayed across his abdomen, she built a rhythm with her mouth, pressure and release, a little swirl here and there, that had every muscle in his body tightening further and further, that had pleasure bordering on pain gripping him, until the pressure and tension burst so hard he couldn’t even get a yell from his lungs.
He collapsed, chest heaving and gasps hurting his throat. Her low laughter tickled his ears, and she removed the condom before she draped herself across him, head p
illowed on his shoulder. Hell, he couldn’t see the actual stars, with light patterns continuing to dance before his eyes.
Still gasping, he chuckled and lifted a finger. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll return the favor.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Sounding supremely pleased with herself, she kissed the side of his throat. “You’re a couple up on me, remember?”
“We’re not keeping score. We don’t have that kind of relationship.” Shit, he was sweating, breathing hard like he’d been running with Troy Lee and his insane pace. His heart wanted to pound out of his chest, and he couldn’t get enough oxygen. Could a guy have a sex-induced heart attack at twenty-six? He heaved in a couple of breaths. “Fuck, did I just say relationship?”
“Yes.” She gave a lazy stretch against him. “You did.”
“You’re not going to leave me because of that, right?”
“No.” She wrapped an arm across his waist, lips resting against his pectoral. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“Good.” He folded both his arms about her and hugged her to him. Man, she felt good, all soft and boneless in his easy embrace. He buried his mouth in her hair. “Because that could be damn addictive.”
Silence hovered around them, broken only by his own hard breathing returning to normal and the quiet hum of crickets. He stroked his hand over her tousled hair, unbelievably silky beneath his palm. Nothing was settled between them, but they felt different, almost like he could breathe easy and let go, let himself trust for a little while.
All I Need (Hearts of the South) Page 15
