She stared at his feet braced over three feet apart on uneven logs. His jeans pulled taut across his crotch, and from her worm’s eye view, the man was, well, built. His chest widened from his hips to his shoulders, clad in plaid, blue today, like his eyes. Eyes that narrowed and gave her as good as he got in the inventory-taking.
Moisture pooled as her hands itched, her mouth went dry as her lips tingled at the memory of kissing him. At the way he’d had her at the brink of orgasm with nothing more than a brush of his fingers. She was crazy, wanting a man this much.
He could make her angry in a heartbeat with nothing more than an insolent look. But there was another side to the man, too. A capable, solid side she responded to on many levels. No. Everything about the man was wrong.
She needed roots, permanency, the feeling that her life was finally on an even keel. She didn’t need a man with itchy feet who wouldn’t look back if his home was on fire.
But what she wanted was sex. For the first time, she wanted, with a desire that reached into her marrow, hot, her ligaments, icy, until everything melted and oozed and ran with need to pool in her panties. She squeezed her thighs together.
Eli slid his hard hat higher on his forehead but kept his gaze trained on her. The moment stretched. Electric. Needful. Taut. “You wait right there,” his voice came hard, throaty and firm.
She couldn’t have walked away if he’d been breathing fire with talons for hands. She wanted to be scorched, scratched, taken. And since he wasn’t some mythical creature, but a flesh and blood man with need in his gaze and sex on his mind, she would stand and wait. And want.
He scrambled down off the truck to stand two feet away, facing her. “What can I do for you?”
“Take me. And shut up about it.”
Kylie Keegan was crazy as a loon. He’d offered not five minutes ago. “You changed your mind about tonight and you were right. Sex with you will likely kill me. Or both of us.” He ran his hand through his hair then stared at his fingers. The tremble he saw would only get worse if he stayed. “I’m moving my stuff over to TJ’s.”
“Are you? Right now?” She crossed her arms and took hold of the hem of her tank top.
“You wouldn’t.” He looked around the clearing, but it looked as if everyone had left. Blood pounded down to his cock. Soon he wouldn’t have enough left in his brain to think with. “We already don’t like each other. After sex, we’ll hate each others’ guts. Believe me, it happens.”
She lifted her top over her head and dropped it to the ground. “Then we have nothing to lose, do we?” Her breasts were free to the cooling air, nipples dark purple and hardening as he watched. Infinitely kissable.
She had a tiny waist for such a tall woman and hips he could ride for hours. “Come here, Eli. I’m cold.”
She wedged her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs. The bulge of her hidden fists emphasized her flat belly. Her breasts jiggled and he didn’t need to hear any more.
He drew her close to share his heat. “To be clear because we have a habit of misunderstanding each other: You want sex. With me?”
“I want sex with you.” She wrapped her arms around his waist, her breasts soft against him. “Don’t get me wrong. What I really want is permanence. I want marriage and children and I want the Friendly Inn. But for now, sex with you will be enough.”
Her words rattled around in his brain, his empty, bloodless brain. “Why?”
“It’s going to end anyway, because you’ll be leaving soon. Which means I can relax and enjoy myself and not worry about trying to, um, like you.”
He knew there had to be something wrong, but he was beyond trying to sort things out. She was offering and he was willing. “Maybe we’ll be friends.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Her smile, the first one she’d ever directed at him, blew what was left of his brain to smithereens. He cupped her exquisite jaw between his palms and kissed her.
Her lips went soft, giving, while her mouth was moist and invited him in. He took the invitation and pressed his tongue inside to find hers. She played and coaxed and tantalized.
Different from before, this kiss held no rancor, no anger, just heated invitation and welcome.
He lifted his head, watched while her eyelids drifted open. Her green eyes clouded with desire. “There, I knew we could get it right,” she breathed.
Half his mind said to leave her be, that he had no right to take a woman who wanted the things she did. No matter what she thought, sex between them would change things. She’d start to see him as the man who would give her the home, children and roots she craved.
While the Himalayas waited, he would never be that man. Without thought, he caressed her breast and plucked at her engorged nipple. She felt so fucking good pressed against him.
With her offer fresh in his mind, his other half said Kylie was an adult, fully cognizant. She was the one who’d asked. “Are you sure you want this?”
Another lift of her lips that bounced around his belly and lodged in his cock. “I’m sure. Take me, Eli, take me all night long.”
Marnie listened to Dennis’s whine, letting the sound grate along her last nerve. “I want you back here this weekend; I’ve got things to do.”
She saved her work with a click of the mouse and thought of hanging up on him. “What happened with Tisha? Last I heard she was back at work with no problems.”
“She’s fine. She’s great. We worked things out.”
“How?” Dread and suspicion made her grip the phone harder. “Dennis? How did you work things out with her?” But she knew, in the marrow of her bones, that he’d slept with her.
“Did you look at the figures I gave you? Did you talk to those people?” he asked. The people were other club owners in various parts of the country. They all claimed to make terrific profits and even more so since the economy tanked. People need relief in hard times and they were willing to pay and play hard to get it.
“It’s tempting,” she hedged. “You were right about getting the renovations done quickly.” Mike, their DJ, couldn’t hold them for ransom with his claims of bringing in the crowds. She was sick of hearing how the place would be dead without him.
“We’d be open in under a month,” he promised. “Word of mouth would have us full in no time. Believe me.”
“Like I said, it’s tempting.”
“So, now will you be here this weekend? We can go over the finer points.”
She looked at her laptop, made some rapid calculations on how fast the cabins could be built. Holly and Kylie were better at decorating than she was. She trusted their judgement with the cabin decor.
“I’ll be there late tonight. We’ll spend the morning going over everything. Be ready.”
“I’m always ready, baby.”
According to the people she’d spoken to, Dennis had done his homework. His concept for the club was solid. He’d always been good at ideas and start-up. It was the day-to-day grind of a business where he fell down. If the new version of BackLit took off in a way the dance club hadn’t, she’d be able to buy him out sooner.
The sound of TJ’s pickup truck drew her attention to the living room window. As she watched him climb out of the cab, she was struck again by his size and breadth. Absentmindedly, she reminded Dennis of the early morning meeting and ended the conversation.
TJ had opened his plaid shirt and removed his hard hat. His tool belt was gone, too. His shoulders sagged with weariness, but he opened his tailgate and tugged out a thick square of weathered wood. He had to stretch to get both hands on either side as he pulled at it.
When she took a closer look, she gasped. He’d remembered. She warmed at the sight of the weary man making good on a promise made weeks ago.
She dropped the phone to the sofa and yanked open the front door. “TJ! The sign! You remembered.”
“Of course.” He looked at her curiously. “I said I’d fix it up for you.” A man of his word. He tightened his grip and c
arried the heavy wooden sign into his garage as if it weighed nothing.
Some small piece of her heart broke off and sailed out across the yard toward the eldest O’Banion.
“Oh, TJ,” she whispered. “You sneaky thief.”
Freer than she’d felt in a long while, Marnie wandered out to the garage.
She watched TJ for a long time as he sanded the sign Grandad had made. It had been in the ditch for years, a victim of wind and weather. The whine and burr of the sander hid her presence as TJ focused on the work. At the first break in the noise, she moved in. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” He lifted his protective glasses and watched her approach. “Get a head start on the Web site?”
“I did. And then I called Dennis.”
“Oh.” He froze and stared at her, curiosity warring with cool objectivity in his eyes. He wanted her to explain but didn’t want to ask. How soon she’d come to read his fleeting expressions and body language.
“Just for a couple of days.” She walked her fingers from his belt up to his shoulder and back down. Slipping her hand to the bulge in his crotch, she licked her lips. “But first, I thought I could thank you for the sign.”
“My pleasure,” he said, running his hand across the carved lettering. Tension rested across his shoulders.
“You look tense. Let me take care of that for you.”
“Here?”
“Why not here?” This is where he’d stolen so much of her heart. “There’s no better place.”
“I can think of a few. My bed, for one.” She opened his belt buckle and jeans. “I’d love to reciprocate in the house. After a shower.”
She chuckled, amused that he still didn’t get it. His cock was already hardening as she dropped to her knees.
It wasn’t hard to make him surrender. His protests died the moment her wet mouth enveloped him. He leaned against the bench at his back and braced himself as he accepted her offering.
Salty hot flesh filled her mouth. Earthy scents surrounded her while guttural groans rained down from the solid man she could bring to his knees. A flick of the tongue, a light suction, a stroke of her fingers across his scrotum, and TJ O’Banion was hers to do with as she wished.
She kissed the length of heavy vein that ran from root to tip, tasted the slick bead of essence that wept at his eye. Deep wet strokes of her tongue, fluttering kisses from her lips and sly coaxes from her fingers took him over as she stole control.
“You’re so good,” he groaned, as his cock flexed in her mouth. She loved the moment right before she took his seed, the anticipation, the heady sense of power, knowing this man had lost all reason. Had given his mind and body completely over to her.
When he’d said he loved her, she’d put it down to the heat of the moment, but now she wasn’t so sure, because she was perilously close to saying the same thing as he cupped her head. Orgasm overtook him as she groaned and encouraged him with light flutters of her tongue.
When she looked up into his gaze, he looked troubled. “TJ? What’s wrong?”
“City girl,” he called her and stroked a fingertip from her earlobe along her jaw to her chin. He tilted her to look him squarely in the eye. “You spoke to Dennis. This feels a lot like good-bye.”
“It might have been,” she said, afraid he was right.
“Take the time you need to decide what you want, and call me.”
TJ sat in the dark of his den, his feet up on his desk, the house silent around him. A bottle of scotch kept him company as he drained a crystal tumbler. He reached for another shot and the moonlight caught the label. Jon Dawson’s favorite. This was the same scotch they’d shared that night Kylie had stormed out of Jon’s life.
Regrets. Jon’s life had been full of them. Whenever anyone had asked what those regrets were, TJ denied Jon had ever listed them. They were too dark to share with Jon’s family and the one he needed to talk with most was already dead. Jon had accepted his unmarried daughter’s pregnancy until she’d told him the truth.
She couldn’t even guess at the baby’s father. The night she’d partied in the fraternity house she’d been drunk and high. Vague memories of several men slipping into the room with her would be the legacy she passed to her child.
Sickened by his only daughter’s confession, he’d roared and thundered and threatened until Trudy Dawson had walked out of his life. For years, Jon had denied he’d even had a daughter and wouldn’t allow his sons to speak of her. If her brothers had caught wind of news of Trudy, Jon had refused to hear it.
As dark and as hard a man as Jon could be, TJ was shocked at the reception he gave Kylie. After she drove off in a high lather, Jon had spit on the ground in a vile display of hatred for her exotic looks. To Jon, her almond eyes and straight black hair were the ultimate insult.
TJ had been hard-pressed to even stay with his friend that night. Disgust at the old man’s ranting had nearly sickened him, until he’d seen tears and loss fill Jon’s eyes. “My baby girl,” he’d said, “my baby girl is gone. And I just destroyed any hope of making things right. I wanted her to look like Trudy. I wanted to see my little girl in the child. I saw the face of a man who walked into a room and took advantage—”
“My little girl was incapable of consent. It was rape. I see that now and I…Trudy was right to leave me to my hate. I’d have infected that child.”
TJ had stayed in the end and watched the old man cry his pain away amidst a wash of scotch and tears.
A week later, the cagey old man had called and had TJ meet him at his lawyer’s office. The deal for the cabins was struck and once everything had been agreed, TJ had read farewell in Jon’s eyes. Within a month, Jon was gone and the wait for the granddaughters’ arrival began.
If TJ had had any idea that seeing Marnie again would have this effect on him, he never would have agreed to build the cabins. He’d have talked Jon out of his crazy codicil. The entire Dawson clan would have sold the property, split the money and gone on with their lives.
Kylie would never have known of her grandfather’s legacy.
Deke would still be drowning in beer after Misty’s betrayal.
Marnie wouldn’t have climbed out of that ridiculous car and swept his heart out of his chest.
Life would have continued on the way it was going. Saturday nights would be spent driving Deke home drunk, week-days would be spent working and wondering when the hell Eli would show up.
He considered chasing after Marnie the way he had before, but it was time she decided. She knew how he felt about her. If she didn’t choose him over her life in the city, it would be for the best. He had no right to talk her into coming back. This had to be her decision. He held out hope that the deep affection he’d seen in her eyes in the garage would count for something, but he couldn’t tell.
She’d had plenty of time to tell him how she felt and she’d chosen not to. Instead, he’d gone back to work on the sign and she’d headed into the house to pack her bag for Seattle.
He shifted the phone to the middle of his desk next to his feet and stared at it, willing it to ring. Marnie was going over the sex club idea with her partner in the morning.
So why was he staring at the phone right now?
20
The scent of Kylie’s fruity bath soap drew Eli along the hall to her room. After working hard all day, he’d insisted on a quick shower. She might still change her mind; the woman had mercurial down pat and she had more to lose than he did with this arrangement. He knew he’d be leaving. He knew he could walk away.
He knew he would move on. He’d spent years perfecting the art of the short-term relationship.
Her bedroom door invited, so he slipped inside to stand with his back against the wall. Steam billowed out of her adjoining bath, water thundered into the tub. Splashing sounds and Kylie’s light singsong voice came to him as he pictured soapy water sliding down her long tanned neck, between her sloping breasts. Some would cascade off her delicious nipples and bounce off the tub flo
or by her delectable feet.
She’d been royally pissed with him earlier. Furious because he’d refused to entertain the idea of new floor plans. Building with logs had it’s limitations. Holes for electrical and cable wiring had to be predrilled in the logs. Each log had to line up exactly to provide space for running the wire.
You couldn’t blithely rearrange the interior once the walls were up. He should have explained when he had the chance, but she’d been too riled to talk with.
She might actually listen after they were too spent to argue.
The water stopped running and he crossed his arms over his chest to wait for her. With one towel wrapped around her body and another in a turban on her head, she stepped out of the steamy bathroom to face him. He held up the bottle of wine he’d brought. “Peace?” he offered. “No arguments or snarky comments. At least for tonight.”
“Tonight’s about our pleasure,” she said breezily. “We can fight tomorrow.” She crossed to the bed to pick up her robe. Turning her back to him, she let the towel drop, exposing her straight shoulders and trim waist. Her legs went on forever to the floor. It was the first time he’d seen her without her hair swinging free. She was beautifully formed; feminine but strong.
He could have bitten his tongue at the incredible play of muscle and silky skin that shone in the light from the bathroom door.
Unfortunately, she slipped on her cotton robe to cover herself. Damn, things had been looking up for a moment there.
She tied the belt and reached up to unwind the turban that held her mass of hair. With the towel undone, a black tangled curtain of hair swept to her hips. “I have to comb it,” she said and walked to the dresser where she picked up a wide-toothed comb.
“Let me, Kylie.” He wanted nothing more than to get his hands on her. To stroke and separate the heavy strands would feel like heaven.
She cast him a glance over her shoulder. “Yes. You may comb my hair.” She handed him a spray bottle that smelled like her soap. The label announced it as leave-in conditioner. He took the comb from her other hand and stood her squarely in front of the dresser mirror.
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