But first he had to work up the guts.
Pathetic. He’d tangled with the best the Taliban had to offer in the mountain wilderness of Afghanistan, faced off with a shitload of heavily armed jihad extremists on a barren stretch of desert, down to his last round of ammo and his squad ten clicks away.
And he couldn’t find the balls to tell it right, tell it straight, to one unarmed one-hundred-pound woman.
Some Hooah he was.
Janey loved Iowa. From the verdant green timbers and lush pastures dotted with cattle grazing on rolling hillsides to the old-fashioned and original drive-in where Baby Blue treated her to the most decedent turtle sundae she’d ever had.
People waved when Jase and Janey drove down the street. Lifted a finger in greeting when they met them on the road.
“I love it,” she said when they cruised out of town past a lit sign:
You are now leaving Clear Creek, Iowa
Population two thousand, three hundred wonderful
people and one grumpy old man.
It was Mayberry. But in an updated way. Teens wore pretty much what teens wore in Florida or California. They listened to the same music. The little theater on Main Street played the same movies that the multiplexes played in the cities across America.
Okay, so the news reports on the radio included corn and hog futures along with the rundown on the Dow. It was wonderful. It was . . . special. And so was the man at her side.
She’d never had a car date when she was a teen. The boys she’d known hadn’t had money for cars. The life she’d led hadn’t left much time for dating.
This must be what it feels like, she thought as they headed back to his parents’ farm. This must be what it feels like to be on a special date with that guy you’ve been dying to go out with.
And then she got real. This was no date. This was an air bubble in time. Some incredible twist of fate had dropped her inside that bubble and floated her to this Midwest summer night. Where she felt safe. Safe from Edwin Grimm. Safe from the reality of her mother’s murder and all the unknowns that went with it.
Safe enough, evidently, to let her guard down and start thinking sappy thoughts about her and Baby Blue.
They flew along the blacktop road back toward the Wilson farm; the night smelled of cool dew and newmown hay. The car smelled of lemon wax and age. An oldies station played a John Cougar song on the radio. And the man behind the wheel—well, the man behind the wheel was as out of reach to her as a father’s dream of his only son coming home to run the farm was out of reach to him.
It made her melancholy. It made her sad.
And it made her mad, suddenly, that there didn’t seem to be any happily ever afters on the horizon for any of them.
18
It was like the Mustang had a mind of its own, Jase thought when he found himself turning off the blacktop and heading for the gravel pit. Truth was, he wasn’t ready to go back to the house yet.
He checked his watch. Almost ten o’clock.
Yep. The Mustang had taken this road before. Most often this time of night. Most often with a pretty girl snuggled up close to his side. And how convenient was it that the local lovers’ lane was empty when he pulled up to the edge of the rise overlooking the sand pit lake and killed the motor?
He was out of his mind. He had no business bringing her here. Just like he’d had no business giving her the silent treatment after the night they’d spent together. He’d been an asshole about it for as long as he could stand it.
“Pretty,” Janey said quietly beside him.
He looked at her. At this woman who could buy and sell damn near anything she wanted to buy or sell, who had seen the wonders of the world on her tours yet could still look at a gravel pit on a backcountry road and see something pretty.
“It’s a gravel pit,” he pointed out.
“Really? Hm. Looks like a little lake. And it’s still pretty. Look how the moon is shimmering down over the water.”
Yeah. Okay. Jase supposed it was pretty. A little. The moon was big and round and . . . and he was letting himself get sidetracked.
“I’m guessing this is a parking spot.”
She knew more about country life than she’d let on. “Used to be. Don’t know if it is anymore. We used to have parties out here. The landlocked version of going to the beach.”
“Bet the girls fell all over you.”
Jase didn’t know if she was teasing or curious or just making idle conversation. The only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t stop wondering about her.
“And what about you? You must have driven the Mississippi boys out of their minds.”
She gave a little snort. “Not so much, no. I was what you call a late bloomer. Always the smallest one in my class. Skinny as a rail. Didn’t need a bra until I was almost sixteen. So, no. The boys didn’t pay much attention to me.
“Which was probably a good thing,” she added, sounding introspective suddenly. “Some of the ‘friends’ my mom brought around—well. Let’s just say my ugly-duckling looks most likely saved me more than once.”
His stomach knotted when he realized what she was talking about. He shifted in the driver’s seat until his back was against the door, hooked one arm over the seat back, one over the steering wheel. “God, Janey. I’m . . . sorry.”
He could see her perfect profile as the moon illuminated the inside of the Mustang. She shrugged. “Yeah, well, we can’t all grow up in Mayberry.”
She lowered her head. Shook it. “Sorry. That was—”
“True?” he suggested, hating what she must have lived through as a kid.
“Unnecessary.” She shot him a tight, brief smile. “It’s not your fault my mom was a drunk. Besides, you had your own things to deal with.”
Like Jeremy’s death. Yeah. He’d had that. But he’d also had a mother and a father who loved him to help him through it even though they were struggling with their own pain.
“You’re . . . you’re really something.” He searched her eyes when she turned to him. “What you’ve done. What you’ve accomplished. What you’ve overcome.”
“Well, you know what they say. What doesn’t kill you makes you strong.”
Yeah, she was strong. So damn strong.
And he needed to do this. “Janey, about the other night—”
She lifted a hand. “You don’t have to say anything. And you really don’t have to say anything about being sorry, because it’s really going to tick me off if you do.”
She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was staring straight ahead. And she was breathing deep and biting her lower lip.
“I’m not sorry. Not about . . . well, that night. It was one of the most amazing nights of my life.”
“Yeah, right. So amazing, you couldn’t even talk to me the next day.” She shoved open the car door. “So amazing, you couldn’t even bear to touch me.”
She was out of the seat and slamming the door behind her so fast that he had to scramble to catch her. She walked toward the edge of the embankment, found a path down the steep slope, and headed down it before he could stop her.
If he hadn’t known he’d hurt her before, he sure as hell knew it now.
“Janey—”
“Do people swim in here?” she cut him off when he caught up with her on the tiny spot of sand that passed for a beach.
“Yeah. I guess. Janey, look, I’ve got some explaining to do.”
“Not to me, you don’t.” She toed off her shoes, then whipped her T-shirt over her head.
He’d known she wasn’t wearing a bra. Hell, she hardly ever wore a bra. Didn’t need one. She was small, she was firm, and, Lord Jesus God save him, now she was stripping off her short skirt.
When she walked into the water, the only things she was wearing were her cross, a gold hoop in her pierced navel, and a tiny pink thong. Oh—and a scowl that told him she wasn’t as mad as she was miserable.
“Janey—”
“Button it,
Opie. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say on the subject.”
Opie? Had she just called him Opie?
He felt the start of a slow, roiling boil heat his blood as she disappeared under the water. She wanted to play nasty? He could play nasty. And he was going to have his say.
“Damn woman,” he sputtered, and, hopping on one foot, tugged off his boot. The other followed, then his shirt and jeans.
Naked as a jaybird, he waded thigh deep into the water, then made a shallow dive toward the spot where she’d gone under. It was what she’d wanted after all. For him to follow her. Damn if he wasn’t going to oblige her.
It didn’t take long to find her. The pit wasn’t very big. When he broke water, he had an armful of squirming, naked woman. And she was as mad as a cat who’d lost her catnip.
“Let. Me. Go.” She fired the words at him like bullets as she raked her hair away from her face, then pushed at his chest.
“How about I just dunk you instead, hothead?”
“How about you just go to hell?”
He pushed her under and held her there for a few seconds while she thrashed and kicked before bobbing up, spitting mad.
“You muscle-bound, immature jerk!” Sucking air and gasping for breath, she popped him in the biceps as water warmed by the heat of the summer day lapped around his chest.
“Immature? I’m immature? You’re the one who’s running away.”
“Look, farm boy—”
He dunked her again.
When he let her up, coughing and fuming and clinging to his shoulders so he couldn’t shove her under again, she let him have it one more time.
“B-. . . bastard!”
“Brat!” he flung back.
“Coward!” she accused, and tried to break his hold.
Like hell he’d let her go. Even though he knew exactly what kind of a coward she thought he was. The kind that had fallen in love with the most amazing woman he’d ever met and was too much of a coward to trust that she might love him, too.
Bowled over by that revelation, he shoved her away, because hanging on in the face of that news didn’t seem like such a great idea after all.
“Fine. I’m a coward.”
“Damn straight you are!”
“I said I was, damn it!” he shouted as she waded toward the beach. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to get over it!” She stopped, turned, her pretty breasts shimmering and glistening wet in the moonlight. “I just . . . want you to . . . to get over it.” Her voice wavered. “And damn you, you are not going to make me cry.”
No. He wasn’t going to make her cry. And he wasn’t so ready to let her go after all. He reached for her. Dragged her up against him. With one arm banded around her waist, he gripped her jaw in his other hand when she tried to look away. Then against all reason, against all sense, he did what he’d been dying to do since he’d left her in that lumpy Mississippi motel room bed.
He lowered his mouth and kissed her. And there wasn’t anything cowardly about it. Fear wasn’t even a distant factor as he slammed his mouth over hers.
He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t sweet. He was a marauder.
He claimed. He demanded. But most of all he possessed as he slanted his mouth over hers, tunneled his fingers into her wet hair, and held her mouth exactly where he wanted it. Under his. Open and wet. Accepting his tongue. Sighing in surrender. Greedy in defeat.
She wasn’t fighting to get away from him anymore. She was fighting to get closer. She wrapped herself around him, knotted her arms around his head, her legs around his waist, and took back as much as he gave.
He skimmed his hands frantically up and down her body, wild for the feel of her. Crazy for the curves of her sweet sexy ass filling his palms, desperate to press between her shoulder blades and rub her breasts against him, experience her diamond-tight nipples sliding against his chest.
He wanted all of her, all at once. And he wanted her yesterday. He lifted her, found a nipple, and sucked. Released. Sucked while she folded her body around him and gave him her other breast, her breath coming in quivering little pants, the cool night air raising goose bumps on her skin.
He lowered her back into the water, reached between them, and, watching her eyes flare, ripped off the delicate thong.
His urgency fueled hers. Her small hands found him, rock hard and huge. Too hard for finesse. Too huge to stop this now. Not at this stage of the game. Not as she positioned herself over the tip of his penis and welcomed him home.
He drove inside her with one fierce, possessive thrust. She sucked in her breath on a gasp, clenched around him, and he damn near sank to his knees. Mindless with pleasure, he clutched her slim hips in his hands and moved her up and down along the length of him.
Jesus. Sweet Lord Jesus, if he died right now, he’d die deliriously happy. And so, judging by the look on her face, would she. Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, her hair trailing in the water as it slapped against their bodies to a rocking rhythm made all the more intense by the lap of the water around them.
“Janey,” he murmured. Just, “Janey,” as he drove into her one final time and the top of his head blew off.
She cried out. At least he thought she did. He was so far gone, so far beyond anything he could ever explain, he wasn’t sure of anything but sensation. The pleasure consumed him. Fed a craving she’d created and only she could satisfy.
And satisfied, he finally breathed. Breathed in the scent of her wet hair as he cupped her head in his hand and pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder. Breathed in the scent of summer and sex and the night that closed in around them.
She wilted against him, exhausted and pliable and ruined. He hugged her close, feeling too damn glad that he was the man who’d made her that way.
Two years. Her confession still obliterated him. She’d been celibate for two years.
Awe. Pride. Amazement. He felt it all. Along with the slowing of his heartbeat and the drain of the adrenaline that had kept him on his feet this long.
Still tucked inside of her, he waded to the beach. He wasn’t willing to let her go even as he eased to his knees and laid her down on a makeshift bed of his shirt and jeans.
And he began to move inside her again. Not like a stag in rut this time. Slow. Steady. Aware of the sleek glide of flesh into flesh, the little nuances of body language when she lifted now . . . shifted then . . . sighed and savored as he rubbed her every right way that he knew how.
He leveled himself on an elbow, splayed his hand over her lean belly, bonding with the silk of her skin, the heat of her body, before slipping a finger lower and finding that sensitive nub that he knew would heighten her pleasure.
“Yes?” he whispered, leaning down to suck an earlobe into his mouth. “Here?”
She groaned, shivered. “Yes. There.”
High. He was taking her so high. And he wanted to take her higher. He withdrew slowly, sat back on his heels, and tunneled his hands under her hips.
Her eyes glazed over as he lowered his head, lifted her, and touched her with his tongue. Once. Again. Just a taste. Just a tease. Just a promise of more to come before he slipped his tongue between the lips of her vulva. And licked. And laved and sucked until she was bucking against his mouth, clutching at his shoulders, begging for release, sighing out a shivery little scream when he made her come.
Sweet. God, she was sweet. He nuzzled her wet curls, made one last selfish pass with his tongue, then fit himself inside her again and went the same way she did.
Janey didn’t know how long they lay on the tiny beach. Couldn’t say when he’d rolled to his back and taken her with him, taking her weight, holding her off the ground.
She didn’t know what he was thinking, either. He hadn’t said a word. He just held her close, one arm banded around her from her shoulders to her hips, the other playing with her hair.
For a man who’d been so determined to have his say, he sure was quiet now, she thou
ght, skimming her hand absently over his chest. And for a woman who’d been mad enough to spit nails, she was feeling pretty mellow. It was an illusion, she knew, but for this small little window in time all felt right with her world.
“Janey . . . we’ve got to talk about this.”
His voice was a low rumble against her cheek.
Yeah. They had to talk. But she’d be damned if she’d be the one to orchestrate the conversation. So she said nothing.
And waited.
Finally, he stirred. “Since we don’t seem to get too much talking done without clothes, let’s rinse off, then get dressed.”
“Sure. Fine,” she said, and eased to a sitting position beside him.
She started to stand, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. He leaned up on an elbow, stretched to kiss her. The sweetest, most tender kiss, which made her heart ache.
He pulled slowly away, searching her face.
“What?” He wanted to say something, she could tell.
“Nothing. I . . . I just needed to kiss you.”
Then he stood and walked into the water.
Magnificent, she thought as she watched the moonlight play over the broad expanse of his shoulders, along his slim waist and the tight, taut muscles of his very superior ass.
She sighed and followed him, carefully keeping her distance as she sank down into the water and rubbed the sand off her legs and anywhere else it had gotten attached. Distance, something told her, was crucial at this juncture in their . . . their what? Relationship? Not quite. But not quite not. Whatever it was, it was fragile.
As fragile as she felt when she waded back to shore, pulled her skirt up over her hips, and slipped into her shirt. Her thong was lost forever, sunk to the bottom of the sand pit. At least she hoped it was at the bottom, not floating somewhere where someone would find it and have a good laugh.
She kept her back to him when she heard him wade back toward the beach. Didn’t think she could bear to watch him rise up out of the lake like some water warrior, naked and splendid and wanting to . . . talk, she thought morosely.
Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04] Page 21