by Cindy Gerard
The derive back to the motel was fraught with that same, riotous mix of worry and hope that had held them in its grip all night. Since Jesse had arrived in the ambulance with D.U. and Sloan had driven her pickup, there was no discussion on how he would get back.
“I still owe you dinner,” Sloan said from behind the wheel as Jesse slumped, exhausted, in the passenger seat, the flash of streetlights flickering over the sober planes of his face.
“I’ll take a rain check,” he said wearily.
“You need to eat, Jesse.”
He closed his eyes.
“Then I need to eat,” she insisted, figuring he’d give in for her when he wouldn’t think of himself. “But I’m up for breakfast at this hour. Keep me company?”
He wouldn’t deny her, she knew that instinctively, too. When he didn’t, she turned into the first all-night diner they ran across.
.She was right. He did eat. Not much, but enough that she was marginally satisfied.
They pulled into the motel parking lot at 4:30 a.m. When she killed the motor, a silence edgy with fatigue and worry and a late-settling shock blanketed the sound of the cooling motor. For a moment neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. The soft sound of his denim jeans shifting against the seat finally brought her head around.
He was looking toward her, his blue eyes weary and searching, bleary with a vulnerability that had her reaching out for him.
“He’s tough,” she said, reading his thoughts and covering his big hand with hers. “He’ll come through this. He’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.” He turned his hand until her palm rested in the warm pocket of his. “He’s tough.”
Jesse didn’t look so tough, though. Not right now. And he didn’t look convinced that D.U. would be all right. For that matter, neither was Sloan. But hope was all they had to cling to now Hope, and because of the intimacy the moment created, each other.
She laced her fingers with his, gave them a reassuring squeeze and started to pull her hand away. He held her fast, held on tight. She lifted her gaze, met his in the murky predawn light.
“Thanks.” His voice was rough with emotion. He swallowed hard, worked his jaw. “Just. . .thanks.”
His eyes sketched out the details he couldn’t manage to say. Thanks for being there for D. U. Thanks for being there for me. Why are you here for me?
In that moment, when her eyes met his, Jesse started to come to terms with why. And it stunned him.
She wasn’t here just because she knew he needed her. She was here because this was where she wanted to be. The realization was so numbing he barely heard her urge him to get out of the truck and try to get some sleep.
He stared hard into the eyes of this woman who had quietly and with unshakable strength been his shelter in a storm of uncertainty. He saw so much more than surface beauty. He saw compassion, and resilience, assurance and grace. And underscoring it all, obliterating it all, he saw the one thing he should be turning away from, more for her sake than for his.
The truth of it hit him like a hard fall from a rank bull. She’d decided to let herself love him.
An ache he couldn’t define filled him with emotions so profound, so volatile, he had to let go of her hand before she realized he’d started shaking.
For God’s sake, what was wrong with her? This wasn’t what she needed. He wasn’t what she needed. From the beginning, he’d never wanted to make her fall in love with him. He’d just wanted her to fall a little bit in lust. Just far enough to make it as good for her as he knew it would be for him.
That was all before he’d known about the boy. Before he’d decided that for once in his life, he had to do the decent thing and leave her alone. And he’d been determined to do just that. Until D.U had fallen. Until he’d needed someone and she’d been there, offering a comfort he’d wanted to turn to more than he’d wanted anything in his life.
And she’d gone and fallen in love with him.
It was the worst twist fate had ever pulled on him. Right when he needed her most, right when he needed to lose himself in the sweet, silken heat of her mouth, in the warm, willing curves of her body, he didn’t dare risk the complications. Right when he needed to draw strength from her pleasured moans. . . right when he’d needed her not to need him, when he had an excuse to take what he knew she would willingly offer, she’d changed the rules.
Suddenly he was angry. Angry and confused, and dammit all to hell, it just wasn’t fair. Not to her. Not to him. He couldn’t turn to her now—not now that she’d let herself fall in love with him. Not when she might get to thinking he could love her back.
He wanted to howl with the outrage of it. Wanted to rail at her for not having any more sense than to set herself up for a letdown. And yet some growing need in him was humbled. Some selfish part of him was proud. That a woman like her would think she could love a screw-off like him. That a woman like her—a woman who would fill a self-serving drifter’s head with notions of forever even when he didn’t have a clue what forever was about—would look at him the way she was looking at him now.
It made him feel as small and as selfish as he’d ever felt in his life. D.U. was fighting for his life; she was making the biggest mistake of hers; and as usual, he was thinking about himself.
He couldn’t handle it. Tearing his gaze away, he rammed a shoulder into the door and let himself out of the truck. He stalked away from her before he could see the startled expression in her eyes. Before he had time to think about getting all tangled up in her arms and her loving and making this a worse mess than it already was.
“Are you going to be all right?”
Her anxious question stopped him in his tracks. Hell, no, he wasn’t going to be all right. But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t dare.
“Get some sleep, Country,” he ordered tiredly.
And then he walked away. Telling himself he was doing the righteous thing, the honorable thing. . .and feeling as if he could plow a fist clean through the nearest concrete wall.
Sloan had just dried her hair after a quick, hot shower. She’d slipped into clean panties and an oversize white T-shirt when she heard the hesitant rap of knuckles on her motel room door.
A quick glance at the clock told her it had been only twenty minutes since Jesse had left her. The rapid beat of her heart told her, without a doubt, that he was back.
She opened the door slowly.
He was slumped heavily against the frame, looking haggard and haunted and resigned.
For a rare change, he was hatless, which somehow added to his vulnerability. His hair was still wet from his own shower, his jaw dark with a long day’s growth of beard. His jeans were zipped but not buttoned, breaking across the arch of his bare feet. His shirt hung open, its tails trailing over his hips.
He looked like a lost soul, weary and beaten. And as he lifted his gaze to hers, relaying so clearly that he was on the verge of apologizing because he didn’t have it in him to stay away from her, she fell a little deeper in love.
“Tell me to go back to my room,” he said gruffly.
She met his eyes, saw the need there. Without hesitation, she held out her hand.
With a weary breath, Jesse let his head drop back against the frame and closed his eyes. “Tell me I’m a worthless bastard of a user who ought to be man enough to leave you alone and get through this by my own damn self.”
“Jesse,” she whispered. “It’s cold. Come inside.”
He turned toward her, stared from her face to her outstretched hand, a dark scowl creasing his brows. “I’m the last thing you need in your life, country girl.”
“I make my own decisions, Jess.” She assured him softly. “The last thing I need in my life right now, is to stand on my feet one minute longer. And you.” She took the choice away from him by tugging him inside the room. “You have way too high an opinion of yourself.”
When he stood as belligerent as a bull in the middle of the room, she squeezed his hands in hers. “I’m no
t made of glass, Jesse. I’m not going to break when you walk back out that door.”
“And I will,” he warned her quickly, vehemently, the lift of his chin daring her not to believe him. “I’ll walk. I’ll walk so fast it’ll make your head spin. You don’t deserve that.”
She touched a hand to his face, cradled his jaw in the palm of her hand, and met his dark look with a steady gaze. “Why don’t you let me worry about what I need and what I deserve. In the meantime,” she whispered softly, “why don’t you just kiss me.”
His heart stalled, slammed, refused to settle.
“Kiss me, Jesse,” she murmured, threading her fingers through the hair at his temple. “Kiss me like you did that night by the river.”
One last time, he tried to get the words out. One last time, he tried to do the right thing.
But when she pressed two fingers to his lips, the right thing started and ended with the woman who pulled him down onto the bed.
He couldn’t think for the want of her. Couldn’t deny the need to hold her close. And all those valiant promises he’d made to himself, the promises he’d made to her, got lost in the promise the haven of her body offered.
Silky, seductive, resilient. He’d known she would feel like this. He’d known she’d be long and strong and as warm as a winter fire when he stretched out full-length beside her. He’d known he’d find comfort in her arms and solace in her body. And as he searched her face, cast in half shadow by the pale light of the bedside lamp, he knew he was just beginning to glimpse the depth of the beauty of this woman.
Her hair was still damp. He scooped the thick black length of it into his hand to touch and savor its texture and weight. Lowering his head, he buried his face in the heavy, silken mass and inhaled deeply.
“Roses,” he murmured, filled with a wonder and an awe of the emotions just the scent and the feel of her stirred inside him. “You smell like wild roses.”
On their sides, facing each other, he let her hair fall behind her shoulder, then ran his palm across the high, proud ridge of her cheekbone. “You even feel petal soft,” he whispered as his hand traced the curve of her jaw, the slender lines of her throat.
Curling his palm around her neck, he tipped her head up with a thumb beneath her chin, held her dark, yearning gaze with his. “Ever since the first time I kissed you, I’ve dreamed of roses...” He pressed a kiss to her jaw, then touched another to her throat, lingered there, savored. “Wanting nothing but roses...” he whispered on a low, rumbling groan as he finally covered her mouth with his.
He’d kissed a lot of women. He’d never feasted on one before. Never savored so fully, never possessed so completely. He took his time with her lips. Took liberties with his tongue until her breath came as ragged as his, until her mouth was as wanton as he’d asked it to be.
He was finished with wanting. He was finished with the guilt. He’d crossed a line when he’d come begging at her door. So he was taking now. Taking, and testing and tormenting them both with the brush of his mouth over hers, the sweep of his tongue past the seam of her parted lips, the banding of his arm around her as he pulled her ruthlessly close.
They fit seamlessly. Through the worn denim of his jeans, he could feel the supple heat of her body. The contact set a fire that would only be satisfied when it was skin on skin. And suddenly, it had to be now.
With his mouth still on hers, he shrugged roughly out of his shirt, reached for the zipper of his jeans. He swore through his teeth when she beat him to it, relinquished with a groan when she pushed him to his back and rose to her knees beside him to finish the job.
It was the sweetest torment. The darkest desire as he lay supplicant, watching her through glazed eyes as she slowly and carefully worked the zipper down over his burgeoning erection. With a touch, she prompted him to shift his hips. With a determined grip on his waistband, she peeled his jeans down his legs and tossed them to the foot of the bed.
Her eyes were as dark as his thoughts as she took him in her hand, molded her long, slim fingers around him and drove him to the edge of insanity.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, taking her sweet time looking him over from top to bottom and back to that part of him that she caressed.
Beautiful. He’d never been called beautiful before. He’d been called sexy. He’d been called a stud. But he’d never been so humbled or filled with such ridiculous pride that his body would be a source of pleasure for a woman like her.
“Battle scars and all?” he asked through gritted teeth when her gentle touch led him closer to that precarious edge.
“Scars and all,” she assured him, and bent to press her mouth to the slight split in his left eyebrow that he’d picked up in Reno in ’95, the nick in his chin he’d earned along with a ninety-point ride in Oklahoma City, the surgical scar from the repair of his collarbone, the gouge a one-horned monster had taken out of his hide just below his left nipple.
Every caress of her mouth to his skin elevated the savage beat of his heart. Her hair fell over his body like a silken scarf, trailing sensation across erogenous zones he’d had no idea existed.
She was bold and giving. Proud and sure. Brazenly beautiful. He’d been right the first time he’d seen her in Rapids City. She was a bronze-skinned warrior, bred by distant but distinctive Cherokee blood. And he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life.
Knotting fistfuls of her hair in his hands, he lifted her head to his, reared up and wrapped her in his arms. Claiming her mouth as his, he took control again before she drove him over the edge with the thrilling tenderness of her caresses.
Twisting at the hip, he pressed her onto her back beside him, then propped himself up on an elbow so he could watch her face as he took his turn to explore.
He reached to brush a fall of hair away from her face. When it caught on the corner of her mouth, he lifted it free with a hooked finger, smoothed it on the pillow beside her head.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, awed by the picture she made, her eyes as dark as the hair fanned out around her face.
She smiled, caught his hand in hers and brought it to her mouth, brushing a kiss over his knuckles. “That was my line.”
Slowly, watching its descent, he ran the back of his hand down the center of her chest, making her arch for the want of his touch. “But it suits you so much better. You’re much, much prettier,” he murmured, and answered her restless movements by cupping her breast in his hand and then lowering his mouth to caress her through her T-shirt.
“And softer.” He groaned and drew her budding nipple into his mouth. “You are so, so soft.”
He pulled back, fire shooting to his groin when her nipple pearled and pressed against the cotton he’d made wet with his mouth. The sight was almost as provocative as bare flesh. Almost.
She reached for the hem of her T-shirt the same time he did, and together they worked it up and over her head. Then his mouth was on her again, hard and hungry before her head even hit the pillow. His tongue stroked velvet as his hand molded the warmth and fullness of her breast and lifted her so he could draw her deeper inside.
She was so responsive. So wholly and beautifully accepting of his possession of her. So ready to let him touch, and taste and take her anywhere he wanted to go.
When he left her breast to press a kiss to the pulse beating at the hollow of her throat, she knotted her fingers in his hair and told him with a moan how much she loved what he was doing to her.
His fingers cruised over a beautifully erect nipple, then skated down the sweet concave of her belly and delved beneath the triangle of silk covering dark curls. She arched into his hand, uttered his name on a breathless sigh.
The sleek, wet heat of her enfolded his probing fingers, driving the breath from his lungs. For him. She was like this for him. For the need of him. For the want of him. And it drove him to yet another level of desire.
The force of it was dark, desperately demanding. He wasn’t gentle when he cl
utched the silk of her panties in his fist and ripped them from her hips. He wasn’t composed when he groped for his jeans, found the package of protection and roughly shielded himself.
And he wasn’t in control when he covered her body with his, stretched her arms above her head, and spread her thighs with an urgent nudge of his knee. He tried then, he really tried to rally some presence of mind, to slow it down, to be sensitive to her needs.
But when she whispered his name, reached for him, begged him, “Jesse. . .please,” he lost that tenuous grasp on gallantry and with one driving thrust, buried himself deep inside.
And there he stayed. Gloved in velvet, gripped by the sweetest, tightest heat. For a long moment he just lived the sensations, bracing himself above her, his mouth pressed to her throat, his chest pillowed on the glorious cushion of her breasts.
But then she moved, lifted her hips to his, ran those long, graceful hands down the length of his back, spread her slender fingers wide over his hips and pulled him closer.
With a groan that spoke of anguish and ecstasy and surrender, he began to move. Withdrawal was delicious agony, reentry as necessary and as vital as drawing breath. He tried to pace himself. To indulge, to savor, to languish in the richness of her giving, the texture of her sighs. But with each thrust she took him higher, invited him deeper, until indulgence transcended to necessity and the lazy rhythm of love became a driving demand of heat seeking heat, man seeking woman.
With the taste of her on his tongue, the scent of her filling his senses, and her name a ragged cry in his throat, he crested, emptied himself inside her, and lost himself in the pleasure she gave, in the hot, hungry love that she made.
He was a long time coming back to himself. A long time settling his breath, steadying the hand that rose to stroke her cheek. Moisture leaked softly into the hairline at her temple. He felt a sting of pressure behind his eyes as he pressed a kiss there, tasted her tear and rolled onto his back, bringing her with him. Nestling her cheek on his chest where his heart still hammered out the passage from needing to sated, he pulled her leg over his thighs and wrapped her snugly against him.
