“Uh . . . one seventy-seven,” she told him, surprised she could remember it, he had her so dazed. “Down here.”
She led the way, and he followed, swiped the card, and stepped inside.
Not much to it. A motel room. A bed and not much else. And all at once, she was nervous.
He looked at her, still not smiling, pulled a box out of his jacket pocket, and tossed it onto the bed.
“Oh,” she said. “Condoms.” It was why he’d been gone so long. He hadn’t been having second thoughts at all. He’d been doing things right this time. Making sure she was safe with him when he pulled her screaming down the other side.
“That’s right,” he said. “A box of them, because it’s going to take a box for everything I want to do to you.” She was still standing there, barely into the room, but he walked over, sat down on the bed, pulled off his jacket, then his boots and socks, and looked at her. “I suggest,” he said quietly, “that you come on over here so I can get started.”
She could swear her knees were wobbly and knew she was staring at him. She bent to pull off her cowboy boots, but he said, “Oh, no. That’s mine to do. Come over here.”
She did it. She couldn’t have done anything else. A few steps, then he was pulling her onto the bed so she straddled his lap, a knee on either side of him. She would have overbalanced, but she didn’t, because he had her, and he wasn’t letting go.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s right.” His hands were under her top, skimming up her ribs, and she was unbuttoning his shirt, but getting distracted along the way, because he’d tugged her close, was kissing her neck now, sucking at it, using his teeth on her, and she was moaning again.
When he finally lifted his head, it was only to pull the top over her head and toss it to the ground. “This,” he said, his thumbs tracing the low, lacy cups of her bra. “Been wanting to do this for so long. Wanting to see all of this again. Wanting to touch it. So pretty. All mine.”
It was the dark-blue, push-up demibra she’d been wearing that first day, when he’d come into the house and found her in it. He had his lips on her breast now, and they were taking the slow path his thumbs had traced, making every nerve ending spring to attention in their wake, and then the bra was gone, because his sneaky hands had somehow made it behind her back and unfastened the clasp.
“Ah,” he said, and that was all, because his mouth and hands were busy, stroking, biting, working her hard, and she was burning up.
Somehow, he’d turned her. Her back was hitting the mattress, and then she was sprawled crosswise on the white bed. He had her boots off at last, then her socks, and she was lying there in only her little blue skirt. And she still hadn’t managed to get anything off him beyond unbuttoning a couple buttons.
“Come here,” she said, pulling him down by the waist, then rolling fast so he was the one on his back. She managed to get his shirt unbuttoned the rest of the way, one slow button at a time, and she was biting at his neck, beginning to kiss her way down his chest, tugging his shirttails out of his jeans, brushing her hand “accidentally” over his fly and feeling him pulse against her, hearing the intake of breath he couldn’t suppress, and thrilling to it.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t cooperating. He had his hands up under her skirt, was stroking her bottom, tracing the edges of the high-cut underwear, and he was distracting her.
“Stop that,” she said, her mouth against his nipple now. She ran her teeth over it, then sucked hard just to feel him twitch. “I need to . . . get this done.”
“Oh, no,” he told her. “I need to get this done.” He sat up and yanked his shirt off impatiently, and when she went for his belt, he let her unbuckle it, and he pulled it out of his jeans and dropped it onto his shirt. She saw that long white diagonal line of scar tissue, and then she forgot to look at it, because he was kneeling over her, pulling her skirt down over her thighs, down her calves, and off of her.
Once again, he surprised her. He had his hands under her hips, was flipping her over onto her stomach. “I have to look at this,” he told her, while she pressed her cheek into the mattress and gasped, because his hand was stroking over lace trim, over warm flesh, delving and exploring. His other hand was on her lower back, holding her down, and she was squirming.
“Jim,” she said. “Jim.”
He toyed with her, his touch first gentle, then firmer, then back to gentle again. He touched her everywhere, his hands roaming up and down her back, down her bottom, over her thighs, then, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, diving between her legs, probing, circling. Leaving again to touch her sensitive inner thighs, run over the spot at the small of her back, just before she would have gone over. Teasing again and again, merciless, until she was boneless, until she was moaning.
She was going to combust. She needed him so badly, she ached. She began to turn over again, but he said, “No. Don’t move.”
He was unbuttoning his jeans, pulling them off, and she had to touch him. She had to. She was turning despite his words, sitting up, reaching for him.
It had been fourteen years since she’d seen Jim Lawson naked. Fourteen long years since she’d touched all of him. And fourteen years was much too long.
When she ran a hand down the length of him, he groaned, and she felt a thrill of purely feminine power.
“I said . . .” he began.
Her voice came out throaty, like it belonged to somebody else. “Yeah. You did. And now I’m saying. In a little while, you can do whatever you want to me. You can put me in any position you want, and I’ll go there. You can have anything you want from me. But right now, I’m doing this.”
He could have objected, but he wasn’t an idiot.
When she’d been seventeen, he’d been the first man she’d touched. He’d known it, and he’d loved it.
Holy hell, but she’d learned a lot since then.
She kissed her way down his scar first, stroked his abdomen, his thighs, the same way he’d done to her, teasing him with feather-light touches until he was swaying. When she stood up and pushed him to sit on the edge of the bed, he didn’t exactly resist. And when he had what he’d wished for, back there in that shower, when she was the one on her knees? He lost the power of speech. His hands were in her hair, pulling, tugging, and she was doing it all. Working him over. Taking her time. Making his breath come hard. Making him want to beg.
“You need . . .” he finally said. “We need to stop, or I can’t . . .”
She kept her hand on him, sat back on her heels, and looked at him, and he looked down at her and got a vision of heaven. If heaven was full breasts, white skin, pink lips, green eyes, and red-gold curls. Which, right now, it was. She still smelled like flowers, and all he wanted was for her to keep going. But all he wanted was to be inside all that softness, all that delicious heat. Both things. Right now.
It was greed. It was pure lust. It was grabbing everything he could hold and making it his.
“You going to give me some more of that good stuff?” she asked, her voice a purr.
“Yeah,” he managed to say. “Going to do all that to you. Going to do you good. Got a . . . got a plan. And then I’m going to . . .” He shut his eyes and shuddered, because she’d bent her head to him again.
“Then,” she said, giving him a long, slow lick and then some delicate little kisses that had his hands tightening in her hair, “we’ll call this pressure relief, shall we?”
It was all that and more. It had been much too long, it was much too good, and it was just about too much to take. He was groaning, his hands fisting tight in her hair, his body jerking and shuddering and riding the wave all the way over the top. And she was staying right with him, taking it all.
It was a long few minutes before he got his breath back, and his mind along with it. He lay back across the bed, panting hard, and she went into the bathroom and came back with two glasses of water and handed him one.
He levered himself to an elbow and drank it down, and watched her
doing the same. Kneeling on a white sheet, all white and pink and rose gold, about the best thing a man could possibly find to look at. And all his.
“Miss Hallie Cavanaugh,” he finally said, “you’ve gone and grown up.”
She was still wearing those tiny dark-blue panties, and he had a flash of how they’d looked from behind, curving halfway up her cheeks. He was so satisfied, and he wasn’t one bit satisfied.
He didn’t get around to everything he’d thought of, but he got around to enough. He took his time getting her underwear off, because rubbing her through them, kissing her through the fabric made her squirm so deliciously, and reaching his fingers stealthily under the lace band made her cry out loud, made her hips start moving and her thighs part as if his hands had been there, pushing them apart. And then he took that scrap of blue off her, and he did push her thighs apart, and held them there, too, and that was even better.
It wasn’t like the shower this time. They had all night, so he made it last. He made her moan, and he made her cry out, and after a long, long time, he finally let her come, and then he did it all over again. And when he finally levered himself up her trembling body again, threaded his fingers through hers, held her hands down tight, and slid inside her, and her eyes opened wide with the thrill of taking him in . . . that was something else. She was so warm, so open, and so wet that he knew that if she hadn’t taken that pressure off him, this would have been over much too fast.
“Jim.” Nothing but a soft breath from her parted lips. “Jim.”
“Yeah.” It was his heart, somehow, that was aching now, hearing her say his name like that. “Yeah. It’s me. I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”
Slow and easy, sweet and tender. Watching her eyes drift shut, her mouth open wider, her breath start to come hard again. Feeling her legs come up to wrap around his waist. Keeping hold of her hands, and feeling what that did to her. Knowing how much she wanted him there. Knowing that, whether her eyes were closed or not, she knew it was him. That no other man would have done, just like no other woman would have done for him.
She deserved his best, so that was what he gave her. You can put me in any position you want, she’d said, and I’ll go there. So he did. He turned her over, and it got wilder and hotter. She was on her hands and knees, was calling out with every stroke when he found the right way, the way that worked. And when he got a hand down there and began to help her out, she was backing into him, gasping, begging.
“Please, Jim. Please. Do that. More. Oh, please.”
If she was going to beg him like that, there was absolutely no choice. He did that, and then he did it some more. And when she started to spasm around him, when he heard those soft screams again, when she was biting her fist to try to stop them . . . he was nineteen again. He had Hallie Cavanaugh underneath him, and he was doing her so good, and she was letting him know it. And she pulled him right along with her. Right over the top. She took him up, and then she took him tumbling down, until they were screaming down the hill together. All the way. Straight to the wild side.
THE MIDDLEMAN
Hallie woke slowly the next morning.
The first thing she was aware of was how deliciously sleepy she was. The second thing was how deliciously sore she was. The gentle, throbbing ache between her thighs let her know it hadn’t been a dream, and the satisfaction curling through her entire body let her know it had been good.
She opened her eyes to a room just beginning to lighten, heard soft movement, and turned her head to see Jim coming out of the bathroom, pulling on his shirt and buttoning it over his broad chest.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey yourself.” A slow smile lit up his brown eyes, and then he sat down on the edge of the bed and was brushing her hair back from her face while she reached up to trace the scar at the side of his cheek, loving that she had the right to do it. When he kept touching her, she grasped his wrist and ran her hand up his forearm, just for the pleasure of feeling the bulk of it. And to hold him there so she could smell him. Clean soap, warm man. He smelled like hers. He felt like hers.
When they’d finally fallen asleep the night before, his arms had been around her, and her head had been on his chest. They hadn’t talked, but they hadn’t needed to. His hand stroking down her back had felt like everything she needed to hear.
That had been last night, though, and this was the morning after.
“I’ll take off first,” he said now, which wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I parked over at Walmart, behind a couple RVs. Even our cars weren’t in a compromising position.” His smile was lopsided. Rueful. “Hell of a thing, having to sneak around like this.”
“It is. But I need to go home and feed Cletus anyway.”
“Ah. The hellhound.”
“Yeah.”
“OK.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, his hand cupping her cheek. Nothing but tender, but with an assurance that recalled the possessive lover of the night before. “That was one of my better nights, by the way.”
“Yeah.” She swallowed over the lump in her throat. “But you’d better go.”
“Give it half an hour before you leave,” he suggested. “Have some breakfast, maybe.” He didn’t let go of her, though. “This is weird,” he finally said.
“I know. But . . . don’t text me, right? And calling’s probably not great, either.”
“So we just—what? Pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Yeah. We do. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t even tell Anthea. Please, Jim. And please go, before people get out on the roads.”
Now that she was awake, she was anxious. Nervous. What had she been thinking, risking being found with him? They hadn’t left the restaurant together the night before, no, but she’d been holding his hand at the table. “You need to go,” she said again.
“Right.” His face had hardened, and she wanted to explain, but there was nothing to say. He stood up, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the door, and he was gone.
She didn’t stick around to sample the dubious delights of the Hilltop Inn’s continental breakfast. It was better to keep her presence as far under the radar as possible. Instead, she walked down the side of the highway to Sangria Station in the cold, gray light of dawn, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket and her bare legs freezing, climbed into her car, and drove home.
She turned up the driveway thinking about Cletus, because it was easier than thinking about Jim. And then she stomped on the brake with her heart thudding in her chest.
Oh, no.
Jim had changed, eaten breakfast, and was gearing up to head over and pick up Mac from her sleepover when his phone rang.
He glanced at the display. DeMarco.
“Hey,” he said when he picked up. “What’s up?”
“I’m out here at your girlfriend’s house,” the other man said. “Oh, excuse me, your not-girlfriend. Guess she didn’t call you again.”
Jim was already halfway to the door. “What happened?”
“You could call it graffiti. Pretty spectacular, I’d say, by Idaho standards. Not a popular lady, is she?”
Jim swore, and DeMarco said, “I thought you might like to know.”
“She all right?”
“Oh, she’s fine. Plenty tough, isn’t she, considering she’s a teacher, got those big eyes and all. I’m getting it, I guess. Pretty lady. What does she see in you?”
“She doesn’t.”
“That’s right. I forgot. Not your girlfriend. That’s why she didn’t call you. So you coming out, or am I doing this all by my lonesome?”
“I’m—damn. I have to pick up Mac and take her . . . someplace. Be out there in fifteen.”
Which was why, when Mac climbed up in the truck a few minutes later outside Danielle’s house, Jim said, “Sorry, partner, but I have to take you over to Grandma’s for a while. Seems that somebody messed up Ms. Cavanaugh’s house last night.”
She looked at him sideways in that way she had. “You’re no
t on duty today.”
“I know I’m not, but she’s a friend.”
“Then how come you never do stuff with her? How come I never heard of her before she came here?”
“She’s an . . . old friend.”
Mac wasn’t looking one bit happy. “It’s your day off. You said we were going to spend it together. You said we were going to cut firewood and then get lunch. It was going to be a special day.”
He shot her a look, but he didn’t start the truck. “You’re trying to guilt me. I am a good father.” Well, reasonably good. He did his best. “And, what, you’ve been looking forward to stacking all that wood in the trailer? I find that hard to believe.”
“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll be eleven for a whole two more months. There’s plenty of time for us to do things together.”
He choked off the word that had risen to his lips. “Remember how I said things would change when you were fifteen? I was wrong. This right here? This is it.”
Did she have some kind of female radar? He could swear she must, because she crossed her arms and said, “Dad. I’m trying to have a discussion. I’m trying to tell you my feelings.”
“Right.” He put the truck in gear. “Well, I’m having a discussion, too. We’re going to Hallie’s. You’re coming with me, I guess. You can tell me your feelings on the way.”
If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was to control his emotions in difficult situations. Even this one. He could do this.
“So,” he said when he’d taken the turn onto Main that would lead them to Arcadia Ridge, “since you don’t seem to be talking to me, I’ll start. Speaking of friends, I hear you’ve gotten to be good friends with Eli Chambers.”
She’d been twirling a lock of hair around her finger and looking out the window, but now she turned to face him. “He’s in my World Geography class, that’s all. With Ms. Cavanaugh. And he’s not going to be Eli Chambers anymore. His stepdad’s adopting him.”
“Really.” Jim took a second to think about that.
Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4) Page 27
