She turned to him…
And froze.
Colin had shed his cut and stood before her in his jeans and a plain white t-shirt that clung to…everything. Men spent thousands of dollars in gym memberships to look like him. Tall, dark, broad-shouldered, defined…he looked nothing like Riley, and with nothing more than his presence, he wiped her ex from her mind.
“No,” she said quietly. “Definitely not that.”
He gave her a tentative half-smile and took one large step toward her. “No?”
She smiled back. “No.”
Another step and he was right in front of her, and she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” he asked, dark eyes sparkling because he’d already figured the answer.
She sighed and nodded.
“Then you’ll be glad to hear I’ve practiced a lot.”
A startled laugh left her lips, and that was when his arms went around her and he kissed her.
They’d already had a taste of one another, so the shock was this new twist, the way he took his time exploring her mouth, tongue dancing against hers. Jenny closed her eyes and softened all over, letting herself fall into the magic spell of it, the perfect melting that came with kissing a talented man.
Time and self-consciousness slid away. Jenny tangled her hands in the front of his shirt and wanted to tear it off of him. It was suddenly essential to see what had been hiding under his clothes. She needed to lay hands to it.
She didn’t realize Colin had been walking her backward until her legs hit the edge of the bed. She sat down, surprised and dismayed when their lips came apart.
But then he reached for the hem of his shirt. Drew it up, and over his head, and off.
Okay. Nice.
He had tan lines, the pecs of a superhero, and a little tattoo over his ribs that she didn’t have a chance to explore. Her stomach grabbed tight, a hard clench of desire as her eyes raked over him. Even if he proved terrible in bed, the stunning visual was worth it.
Then he reached for his belt.
Then she realized she needed to ditch her own clothes.
A shiver stole through her once she was naked, a fast flash of self-awareness she would rather not have had. She hadn’t thought about her body as anything other than a frame for her clothes lately, and she wondered now if she could shift gears, reconnect with the sexual side of herself.
She shouldn’t have worried, she realized, because Colin didn’t hesitate. When they were both down to skin, Colin urged her back across the bed and prowled over her, the mattress sinking beneath his weight. One of his hands went to her waist. She felt his gaze move down and then back up her, bold as any touch. And then his eyes locked onto hers and he grinned. Not the predatory smile she’d expected, but one of pure boyish delight.
“Hot damn.”
She felt a laugh building in her chest. “A good ‘hot damn’?”
“The best.”
~*~
Colin
Jenny had a body built for sex, and he swore it glowed in the lamplight. She leaned up into him, her arms going around his neck, the full curves of her breasts pressing against his chest.
This needed to be good for her: a conviction that swept through him like a chill. Something about the spark in her eyes struck him as a challenge. He didn’t think she’d be one of those silly, flighty females who came unraveled with a single touch. No, he was going to have to work at it, and her gaze was all invitation.
He kissed her. Her mouth was soft and tasted of wine. Her tongue flexed and danced against his.
He felt her foot run down the length of his calf. Felt the soft insides of her thighs flirting against his hips.
Oh hell, he was going to have to start thinking about baseball, wasn’t he?
He broke away from her mouth, kissed her jaw, her throat, the little hollow above her collarbone. Her lotion held a faint hint of vanilla; it filled his nose, funneled into his brain. He was always going to associate vanilla with her afterward, especially once he moved down to her breasts. Pale, and large, and most importantly, real. Christ. He sat back on his heels so he could fill his hands with them. Watch her eyes flutter shut, hear her sharp intake of breath. Her chest lifted as she sought his touch. He lowered over her once more, so he could taste her.
Her hands slid into his hair when he suckled her. She began a slow, rhythmic undulation beneath him, keeping time with the pull of his mouth. “Mmm,” she murmured, and he swore he heard her lick her lips.
He moved lower, trailing his lips down her belly. He found a little line of pale pink he hadn’t been expecting, almost like a scar…
“Colin.” Her voice was husky.
He lifted his head, glanced up her gorgeous torso, past her breasts and shiny-slick nipples to her face, her low-lidded eyes.
“You’re gonna have to stop dicking around,” she said, “and find a condom already.”
He didn’t known whether he wanted to laugh, or come. So he said, “Right,” and climbed off the bed to retrieve one from his wallet.
A quick fumbling to do the deed. And then it was back to the bed, climbing over Jenny, settling between her legs. Her thighs tightened on his hips. Her hand closed over him – he hissed; he hoped he’d be able to last as long as she needed him to – and she guided him. Urged him with a look, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Pulled his head down to hers with her other hand clamped tight to the back of his head.
He might have gone slow, tried to be gentle. But with her whole body, she said, Come inside me. And so he did. He took her mouth, fiercely, and drove the whole considerable length of his cock home.
It was too much. He knew it at once. That happened all the time, cocky chicks saying they wanted it all…when in truth, they couldn’t handle it.
Jenny tensed, hand spasming against the back of his head, the other clutching hard at his hip. She gasped into his mouth.
Colin lifted his head. “Shit, I’m sorry.” His own breathing was ragged, every muscle painfully tight with the strain of waiting. “I shoulda known. This happens a lot.”
Jenny stared up at him, eyes hazy with pain…but wide and wondrous, too. “I’m just out of habit,” she whispered. She pulled in a deep breath, another. “Oh God, you’re big.”
It took every ounce of restraint not to jackhammer into her when she said that. He gritted his teeth. “Do you want me to–”
Her legs tightened around him, her nails dug into his hip. She was drawing him in, pulling him back down again. “Oh…” A lifting of her spine, lifting into him. “Christ, I want you to fuck me.”
So he did. Gently, at first, still worried he was hurting her. But she murmured encouragements, urged him on with her hips, clawed at his back and arms.
He braced up on one arm for better leverage, saw the tension in her face, her brows knotted together. She closed her eyes tight and turned her face into his bicep, mouth opening against his skin, panting as her nails dug deep grooves into the small of his back. She was chasing it desperately.
So he gave it to her.
It went feral, and he lost track of everything save the tangling of their bodies. He heard her ragged, unmistakably real cry when she came. And he joined her a moment later, every dark corner of his mind shattering as the wave overtook him.
He might have blacked out.
Awareness reclaimed him as his heartbeat began to slow. He at least wasn’t crushing Jenny; he lay on his side next to her, wet and clammy with sweat, breathing like a racehorse. The lamplit room regained its uninspiring shape.
Jenny lay on her back, a hand pressed to her heart, eyes trained on the ceiling.
“You alright?” he asked. His voice was thick.
Her head turned toward him. Her skin glowed with perspiration, and her eyes, though drowsy, radiated a supreme satisfaction that sent pride surging through him.
She smiled, slowly, almost dreamily. “Can I trouble you for a Round Two in a little while?”
&n
bsp; The pride doubled, more potent than any drug in his bloodstream. "Baby, if you spend the night, you can have Round Three.”
Her brows jumped, smile turning cheeky. “Ambitious?”
“Capable.”
She rolled toward him and snuggled in close, hands settling on his chest. “You know I’m gonna make you prove that, right?” Something soft and girlish bloomed in her gaze, as her eyes flicked up to his. A tender vulnerability she probably thought she was hiding with flirtation.
Colin slid an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against him, their sticky skin gluing together. “Yeah. And I’m looking forward to it.”
Fifteen
Jenny
No glass of wine, no pill, no soak in a hot tub could relax her the way Colin had. For the first time in years, not one worry crowded her mind; not one ugly memory chased across her skin. She was completely, blissfully exhausted, even though sleep lay elusive, just out of reach.
She rolled to the left, collided with Colin’s solid shape beside her, and cuddled up against his shoulder. His arm lifted immediately, going behind her shoulders when she picked up her head and gave him room to reach around her. It was a big, heavy arm. She felt comforted, safe within its grasp.
Funny, though. Nothing they’d done had been about comfort.
He heaved a deep, contented sigh, ribcage inflating, pushing against her. His voice sounded full of sleep, and masculine pride. “You’re not in a coma yet?”
“I’m not much of a sleeper.” She reached across him, teasing at the pronounced ridges of his abdominals, higher, up toward his chest –
Her hand stilled as a thought struck. “Your tattoo.”
“What about it?”
“I wanna see it.”
He groaned. “Haven’t you ever seen a tattoo before?” But he flipped back the covers obediently.
Jenny sat up and pushed her hair behind her ears as she leaned over him, very aware of his eyes tracking her movements, lingering on her breasts. She felt her cheeks warm, but made no move to cover herself. They were way past the point of shame now; let him look.
The tattoo was small, dark, clean-edged, and appeared new. Old ink had a way of fading to green, but this was deep black. It was a knife. A jagged-edged, sharp-pointed Bowie knife, simply drawn and unshaded.
An image of his brother filled her mind, unbidden. Not allowed to know all the dirty details of the club, she nevertheless knew that Mercy had made a name for himself through his lack of said emotion. They called him an extractor, and she knew he was capable with blades.
Sitting back, her eyes went to Colin’s face. His expression was open and soft with fatigue, and it stilled the sudden chill that had come up inside her at the thought of his brother. “A knife?”
He gave her a tired, lopsided smile. “You want the story, huh?”
“Well, I think half the fun of tats is telling their stories, isn’t it?” She gave him back a smile of her own, for encouragement.
He rolled his eyes, but like any good Southern boy, launched into the tale with relish. “My old man – the one who raised me, anyway” – a shadow flickered across his face, there and gone again as he refocused – “was having a bad hunting year, back when I was about fifteen.” He squinted in thought, looking back through his memories. “Yeah. Fifteen. Pretty sure. Anyway, he was starting to get kinda desperate, which made him do shit that wasn’t always smart or safe when we were out checking the bait lines.”
“Bait lines?”
“You put a chicken carcass on a big-ass shark hook, and dangle it up above the water, anchor it off on a tree. The gator jumps up and gets it” – he clapped his hands together in an imitation of jaws snapping – “and then he’s caught. He sulks underwater, tries to back in under the bank, if he can. We gotta go around and pull ‘em up.”
“Well that sounds fun.”
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s not.” He grinned. “Well, not mostly… Anyway, we were out in the boat, and we finally came up on a bait that’d been taken…”
He painted her a vivid portrait of a thrashing gator, of his damp hands slippery on the stock of the rifle, and the Ruger plunging down into the murky water. Unarmed, with a gator on the line trying to go into a death roll beside the boat, Colin had snatched up his father’s knife…and rammed it down into the top of the beast’s head, straight into his brain.
“You killed it with a knife,” she said, finding it hard to believe…but unable to call him a liar. There was too much detail to the story, the light in his eyes too bright to have been faked.
He nodded. “With a knife.” He lifted his left arm and fingered a long, thin scar that ran from wrist to elbow, just a slight ribbon of paler skin she hadn’t noticed before. “That’s how I got that.”
“You knifed yourself?”
“Scraped it on the side of the boat. When we got home, Dad made me soak it in alcohol.” He shuddered. “You get laid open out there in gator territory, there’s no telling what kinda infection you’re gonna get.”
She shuddered too. “Ouch.”
“So the tattoo,” he said, bringing it back to her original question. “I got that right after I prospected. So I wouldn’t forget where I came from.”
His expression shifted, became more thoughtful, troubled. “From what I can tell, you leave behind whoever you were before when you patch in.”
She couldn’t help but regard him in a new light. As a lover, yes, but she was seeing his resistance as less of an affront to the club, and more as the genuine emotional reaction that it was. He was afraid of losing himself here; and maybe that was scary because he wasn’t entirely sure who he was, or what he’d be losing that slippery sense of self to.
“Colin.”
His eyes came to her face, automatically, as quick as his name left her lips.
“The club doesn’t take your identity. It’s just the prospecting year that feels like it. Once you patch, they’re gonna want you – the real you, and what you can bring to the table that’s special.”
“Special?” He snorted.
“Well, something about you has to be special, doesn’t it?” she teased, grinning…and then gasping in mock fright as he snagged her wrist and pulled her down across him. She landed on his chest, her face above his.
His eyes looked very dark in the lamp, hard to read when his face was serious, as it was now. “Okay, so you know the tat story. What about that scar you’ve got? The one on your stomach?”
She tensed, and felt his arms go around her in immediate response. Did she tell him? Was it any worse than anything else she’d already revealed?
“C-section?” he guessed. “You don’t have a kid, do you?”
Well, the truth wasn’t as dire as his imagination, apparently.
Jenny shook her head and swore his arms relaxed a fraction. “No, no kids. Riley was very drunk one night. He didn’t want children, and he got the idea in his head that it might be…a good idea to…prevent me from being capable…”
“Jesus Christ.” Colin jackknifed up to a sitting position, clamping tight to her and taking her with him. Sitting in his lap, encircled by strong arms, she stared down into his face and saw the hot flashes of anger, fear, revulsion, sympathy. A whole kaleidoscope of emotion that brought the sting of tears to her eyes. “Did he…? And Candy let him live? Jesus…”
“No, no, it’s fine.” She put her hands on his hard, smooth shoulders. “He didn’t get farther than cutting me. And not deep. Just a flesh wound.” She attempted a smile and knew it wobbled.
Anger tightened his jaw, brought out the tendons in his neck. He glanced away from her, nostrils flaring. So much like Candy, when he was trying to get his significant temper under control.
“Colin.”
“You probably shouldn’t have told me that.”
“Why not?” she asked, against her better judgement.
“’Cause now I’m gonna have to kill him.”
Sixteen
Colin
Whoever Jud Riley had been prior to taking a knife to Jenny’s stomach, whatever he’d been in his life prior to that, he now existed as one thing and one thing only in the world of Colin O’Donnell. The top of the hit list. Jenny’s ex was Mr. Gets To Die First in Colinland. And he didn’t even have a hit list. Not prior to this moment, anyway. He had one now, starting tonight – this morning, whatever time it was.
It was beyond unthinkable. Yes, Jenny was testy, sharp-tongued, and guarded. So were a lot of women. The smart ones, in any case. She was the sort of woman you had to work a little harder to get hold of. And she was clever, and devoted to her brother, and she didn’t give up all her secrets the second a man tossed a compliment her way. He got that; he appreciated it.
There were men who’d find fault with her, sure. But to do violence against her? To try and cut the womb out of her?
The last time he’d been this seething angry he’d been standing on his half-brother’s doorstep, listening to Ava Lécuyer give him the business about inviting himself into her house. He’d been choked with rage to learn the truth of Larry’s death, to know the man who’d given him a last name wasn’t even really his father.
He was that angry now. Maybe angrier. And Jenny seemed to sense it.
“Hey.” Her hands came up to frame his face and she urged his head front and center again, so they were eye-to-eye. Hers were blue and glittering in the lamplight, full of a new softness he hadn’t yet seen in her. “Riley? He’s not your problem, okay? He’s old news, and Candy’s got it covered. I don’t want you to worry about him. You just need to concentrate on prospecting, and–”
“No offense, sweetheart, but that’s a buncha bullshit and you know it.”
Her brows crimped together. “No, it’s really not.”
“Did you think you could tell me about him, about what he did to you, and I wouldn’t have a reaction to it?”
“Yeah. I did.”
“Well that’s…insulting.” Because it was. More so than he would have thought possible, in fact.
Snow in Texas (Lean Dogs Legacy #1) Page 8
