by Amy Andrews
“I’m getting Mommy,” he yelled, throwing it over his shoulder as he sped toward the stairs.
Cole didn’t think Jane would want her son dripping water and tracking wet feet through the house, not to mention the slipping hazard, but he’d never taken much heed of that stuff as a kid, either, because he’d been oblivious to puddles and too bulletproof for injury, so he watched Finn disappearing through the back door, calling out to his mother.
Jane was going to be out here soon. Jane, who had kissed him with utter relish last night, unleashing an onslaught that had curled his toes and tightened his balls.
Then run away. Again. For the third night in a row.
And, unlike the previous morning, she’d barely been able to look at him when he’d entered the kitchen, letting him know CC was fine with the swing while her head was in the fridge, then bidding him the briefest of goodbyes before disappearing the second he’d turned his back.
So this should be interesting…
A few minutes later, Finn reappeared, running at the same breakneck speed as before, Jane—in her regulation shorts, tee, and boots—following more sedately behind, looking anywhere but at Cole.
“See, Mommy?” Finn called as he launched himself at the swing with all the confidence and sure-footedness of youth, stepping into the tire and using the rope to haul himself up. “Push me, Cole.”
“Please, Cole,” Jane admonished her son as she drew closer.
“Please,” Finn repeated, too interested in being swung to worry about being chastised over his manners. Cole gave the tire a few pushes. “Higher,” Finn said.
Jane pulled up beside Cole, her boots squelching in the puddle the hose was making. She left a couple of feet between them once again. “Please.”
“Please,” Finn parroted. “Make me fly, please, Cole.”
Cole chuckled at Finn’s infectious enthusiasm, pushing him higher and smiling at the Wheeee! Wheee! exclamations coming from Finn’s mouth.
“Higher!”
Cole pushed him higher, and Jane took an involuntary step closer to the swing. “Not too high, Finny.” Then finally she looked at him, her arms folding, a flash of worry in her eyes. “It is safe, right?”
A few days ago, that question would have needled the crap out of him, but that streak of worry was like a hand squeezing around Cole’s throat. This was her kid; of course she’d be concerned for his safety. “I would never have let Finn on it if I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of it being secure.”
“Okay.” She nodded, worry dissolving to relief in an instant, and Cole wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek. “Thank you.”
“Push me, Mommy.” And then, just as Jane opened her mouth to remind her son of his manners again, Finn said, “Pleeeease.”
She sighed and stepped forward, instructing him to “Hold on tight” as she gave several big pushes, then stood back, falling in next to Cole to make way for the arc of the swing as it twirled around in a broad circle. “Thank you for this,” she said quietly, her eyes fixed firmly on Finn, a smile playing on her mouth,
It was obvious she was enjoying her son’s enjoyment. “Let me guess,” Cole murmured. “You appreciate it?”
She glanced at him, the smile slipping from her face, clearly startled. Did she think he was going to kiss her again? Did she hope? Cole had to admit, that mouth of hers was mighty tempting. But with Finn gleefully wheeee, wheeeee, wheeeeeing in the background, he was excruciatingly aware they were not alone.
She darted her gaze back to Finn, Cole followed suit, and they both watched him for several beats before Jane said, “I’m impressed with your handiwork. The swing does seem solid, and the knot looks competent.”
Cole wasn’t sure if talking about manual labor put her in her comfort zone, gave her some control, or whether it was just preferable to silence, but he could run with it. “I’m good with ropes.”
Another startled glance in his direction. Yeah…maybe he shouldn’t be teasing her in full view of Finn, but Cole couldn’t help himself. He grinned, and for a moment she just stared at him; then a reluctant smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. Glancing back to Finn, she said, “Ropes, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
Even in profile, Cole could see the corner of her mouth tug higher, and his grin grew bigger as she also played this game of whatever the hell it was. “For tying down loads at work sites?” he asked, his tone heavy with faux innocence.
She stepped forward and gave Finn another couple of pushes. “I’ve got to get back to work, Finny. You hold on tight and be good for Cole. Okay?”
“Okay, Mommy,” Finn agreed readily as the tire swung around in slow, wide circles.
She turned, then, taking a couple of steps in the direction of the house, barely faltering and definitely not looking at him as she murmured, “For making pretty marks on my skin,” and continuing on her way.
Cole blinked, then stared after her as her tease hit him square in the junk like a bolt of lightning. His dick underwent a tsunami of swelling. Christ. Thankful for Finn’s preoccupation, he picked up the hose near his feet and shoved it down the front of his board shorts.
…
Jane had no idea why she’d said what she’d said. She’d never been tied up in her life and couldn’t say it was something she was hankering to experience. Sure, in the confines of a relationship, a bit of light bondage could be a thing she might be okay to explore, but frankly, it had been a long time since she’d indulged in any kind of sexy times, and right now she probably needed training wheels, not ropes.
It must’ve been that smile. That playful tone. He’d been flirting with her, and she’d let that go to her head for a moment. It had felt good to be the object of some flirting. It’d been too long. Sure, there’d been men who were interested, who’d flirted with intent, and other men who flirted in a general sense, the kind of flirting that made a woman feel good about herself with absolutely no motive or agenda.
But this was the first time she’d felt herself responding. The first time she’d wanted to respond. It didn’t change the facts, though. A flirtation, as harmless as it may be, could still have consequences when a four-year-old was in the mix. Now, if it had been just her and she’d found herself sharing a house with a hot Aussie pro-baller for a few weeks one summer, neither of them with careers nor businesses to worry about, then this could be a whole different story.
A story she may well have dived into headfirst. But it wasn’t. So she really should stop flirting with him. And smiling at him. And kissing him.
Cole Hauser was her manny. Her temporary manny. And that was it.
Except he was waiting for her again on the stairs, the setting sun painting his outline golden, and the beers in her hand suddenly felt hot—hell, everywhere felt hot—and when she sat down next to him, all she could think about was kissing him. Not the swing, which was a flaming circle of fire hanging from the tree. Not the breathtaking display of nature. Not the trill of insects on the sultry early-evening air.
Just his mouth and how good it felt and how much she wanted to feel it again. It was like these steps were some kind of external erogenous zone, drawing her closer, tempting her nearer. A hurricane of sensation her brain recognized as a danger zone but her body recklessly ignored.
“Evening,” he said, all low and husky as she sat down.
He didn’t turn to face her as he took the beer off her and cracked the lid, which was just as well because she’d have kissed him again for sure. Just one word and the nearness of his body and she could feel the pull in her cells as if they were the tide and he was the shore.
Jane didn’t respond, just took a long, deep swallow of her beer, her gaze fixing firmly on the slight rotation of the tire under the influence of the gentle breeze fluttering the hem of her dress around her ankles. Maybe if she didn’t look at him she’d remem
ber he was a guy she’d known for less than a week and that she was here to do a job, not neck like a teenager with said guy.
Or maybe she should put on her big-girl panties and tackle it head-on. Yep. That’s what she had to do.
Gathering a breath, Jane turned slightly, risking a look at his profile at the same time he must have decided to risk looking at her, and then they were looking at each other, staring at each other, and Jane lost the breath she’d gathered, and the thought of doing anything other than pressing her mouth to his was so intolerable every nerve synapse in her body twitched in desperation.
Controlled by an imperative she didn’t understand, Jane leaned in, her pulse counting out the beats like an internal metronome as their mouths closed in. What is wrong with me was her last thought as their lips met. And then there were no more thoughts—just a deep, sonorous noise of pleasure and relief. Half moan, half sigh, and all surrender.
From both of them—in unison.
Their lips, moving out of instinct but also practice now, quickly plundered, their tongues tangling and setting up a rhythm Jane already knew as intimately as she knew her own breath. A rhythm they seemed to find so effortlessly at such short acquaintance, accelerating her intoxication, their lips twisting and turning, pushing the kiss harder and deeper and wetter.
God…she was drowning. Her body was humming with an overload of sensations that prickled at her skin, puckered her nipples, and caused an unholy kind of clenching deep between her legs.
She’d had sex that wasn’t anywhere near as good as Cole Hauser’s kisses.
Jane inched her body closer on the step, wanting to be closer, wanting to feel his heat and hardness, map his chest and his abs and run her hands over his thighs. She shimmied her hips and wriggled her bottom, straining to get closer and closer but stopping just shy, millimeters between their shoulders and arms and thighs, because touching him now, in this state of…desperation, could be fatal.
After four nights of this, there was a wild and desperate urge riding her, and touching him with anything other than her mouth felt far too risky. Who knew what chain reaction that could set off? Who knew where it would end?
As if he could feel her reticence to push any further, Cole didn’t encroach on the slither of space between them, either, keeping to his side of it as she kept to hers, his hands gripped firmly around his beer, her hands similarly occupied, just their heads leaning in, their mouths fused in a wicked kind of frenzy.
“Jane…” he muttered, lifting his mouth briefly before pressing his lips to one corner of her mouth, then the other, his tongue swiping between the two points, lingering in the middle to sample the bow of her upper lip. The sensation streaked to her nipples, and Jane moaned, her mouth opening, then claiming his, banishing his teasing and replacing it with something far deeper and dirtier that streaked a hell of a lot lower.
God this was crazy. So crazy. She wanted to throw her leg over him and straddle him and grind herself against him; she wanted to ride him like a cowgirl on these steps and feel him bucking up into her, bucking them all the way to orgasm. Jane was so damn hot for him she was dizzy and shaking and breathless. She had to stop or she was going to touch him, and then they were both doomed.
Wrenching away, Jane forced herself to stare out over the yard again as she took a swallow of her beer, welcoming the coolness of the ale to her overheated system. Cole did the same, and they sat there for long moments with only their ragged breathing between them.
So much for her big-girl panties…
If only she didn’t feel so damn…alive. She hadn’t realized she’d been merely existing until now. Just putting one foot in front of the other, checking off mental lists.
Be a great mom. Be a good boss. Stay friends with her ex. Grow the business. Take some risks but not too many. Make the rent. Pay her bills. Pay her taxes. Put something aside for a rainy day. Oh, and don’t forget to floss.
And then a guy she didn’t know had crawled into her bed, started looking after her son and sucking face with her every night, and suddenly, her days had become alive with delicious possibilities.
Which was madness.
This was just a blip, a temporary blip, and then it’d all be over. She’d be back to mental lists and the treadmill of a working mom. So she really needed to cut this—whatever this was—off at the knees because she didn’t want to get too used to Cole Hauser or his mouth. Even now, she was battling the urge to toss her bottle of beer on the grass and climb all over him.
Standing abruptly, she turned and placed her foot on the step above, needing to flee before she did something she knew would have an irreversible impact. If she let herself want this man too much, she might never survive him leaving.
“So that’s what we’re going to do now, you and me?”
Jane’s foot was on the next step when his question halted her progress. She glanced down at him, their gazes locking.
“We’re just going to…sit out here every night and kiss like a pair of horny fifteen-year-olds?”
The right answer was no, absolutely not. But it was exactly what they’d been doing. And now that she was about to flee the scene, once again, the seductive thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they could keep it to just kissing reared its head. Maybe kissing allowed them to blow off some steam without getting into anything too serious.
Like straddling and grinding and groping.
“I don’t know.” Jane was still a little breathless, which gave her voice a husky kind of vibrato. “Maybe.” That was only being honest, right? Maybe it was wrong to admit it, but everything was such a jumble right now. “You got a problem with that?”
It would be good if he did. Like…really good. The last thing she wanted was to keep kissing a guy who wasn’t really into it.
“Nope.” He shook his head slowly. “Not even a little bit.”
And damn if that denial didn’t worm itself right between her legs. “Okay, then,” she said and forced her feet to keep moving. She was almost at the door when his low voice floated to her on the sultry night air and her step, once again, faltered.
“What happens when we want more?”
“I won’t,” she denied. Except she would. God help her, she would.
“Yeah. Me neither.”
Jane had never heard less conviction in a voice—ever. But she was willing to cling to any denial right now, no matter how unconvincing.
…
Cole found it hard to believe that a little over a week ago he’d never met Jane Spencer. Had never known she existed. A week ago, he’d been on a plane, flying to the other side of the world to hole away from everything and everyone and feel sorry for himself in buttfuck nowhere while he waited on a job offer.
And, for all intents and purposes, he had. But there was more than hibernation going on in Credence, Colorado. Way more. And it felt…big.
A woman who knew her way around a toolbox, a woman with a kid, a woman who kept kissing him every night, then running away, had burst into his life and yanked him out of his pity party. A woman he hadn’t known a week ago and who he really should leave well alone.
Yet…he could think of little else.
Thank god for this rugby clinic today giving him something else to think about other than Jane’s declaration last night that kissing him may just become a regular occurrence. And how long before it went beyond kissing?
So far Jane had kept a pretty tight leash on what was happening on those steps. It was as if she was allowing herself a little indulgence each night before bed but no more. Rationing herself to only one wrapped chocolate from the box in case she got greedy and devoured the whole lot in one sitting. And Cole was 100 percent fine with that.
Kissing Jane was pretty much the best thing he’d ever done with his mouth.
But he definitely wouldn’t say no if she wanted to indulge in a little more. I
f she wanted to devour every last inch of him. And that was a problem, because while a fling might be a most excellent distraction from his woes and exactly what he needed right now, Jane Spencer had not been put on this earth to be Cole Hauser’s distraction.
She obviously had to be more circumspect about things, and he respected that.
It was clear Jane wasn’t someone open to a one-night stand or even a short-term fling. In his experience—and yes, thanks to rugby, he did have a bit of experience in this department—women who only wanted a quick tumble in the sheets were exceptionally forward about their desires, either verbally or physically. Which was fantastic. He’d been more than receptive to such an arrangement from time to time, and he admired women who were up-front about their needs.
He also knew when women wanted something deeper than physical fun, when they were after a relationship and weren’t prepared to indulge in one without the other, something that Cole also greatly admired. And he had, on a handful of occasions, gone there as well. There’d been a few longer-term girlfriends over the years.
But Jane was a curious mix of neither. She clearly did want him, did find it hard to resist him, but didn’t fall into the first group, despite it probably best suiting her circumstances because, he had little doubt, if Jane Spencer had set her heart on fucking him, Cole would already be well and truly fucked.
Hell, he’d have third-degree elbow burns right now from all their fucking.
Nor did she fit into the second group. She wasn’t hanging out for more; she wasn’t acting familiar; she wasn’t talking to him about dating and taking things slowly. In fact, she wasn’t talking to him at all. Not about their situation, anyway. About Finn, yes, and about a dozen inane topics when Finn was around, which was 90 percent of the time.
And during the other 10 percent? She was grabbing him and kissing him. But with absolutely zero suggestion they take it further physically or in any other way.
In short, Jane was a conundrum Cole hadn’t come across before, and therefore he had no idea how to act. He’d just been going with the flow, letting her call the shots, but, as he’d said last night, what happened when they wanted more? When kissing turned to touching, when light caresses turned to bold, purposeful petting and the shedding of clothes?
