“I’m sorry.” Her knee bumped his. “Your memories are fresher than mine.”
He was quiet for several more heartbeats, then added, “I was in Fallujah at the time. My sister was with her when she died.”
Her fingers on his collar stilled. It had been a while, but she remembered the nightly news reports and pictures of the fighting in Fallujah. “You were a soldier?”
“Sailor,” he corrected. “Navy SEAL.”
She guessed she’d been schooled. “How long did you serve?”
“Ten years.”
“I dated a Ranger once.” For about three weeks. “He was a little crazy. I think he had PTSD.”
“Happens to a lot of good guys.” She was nosy enough to want to ask if it had happened to him, but she was tactful enough not to.
Her fingers slid into the short dark hair at the base of his skull. There was just something about a strong, capable man. Something appealing about knowing that if a girl fell and broke her leg, he could throw her over his shoulder and run twenty miles to a hospital. Or hell, make a splint out of a little mud and sticks. “The Ranger guy said that SEALs are even more arrogant than Marine Recon.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said next to her ear, scattering those warm tingles down her neck and across her chest. “People confuse arrogance and the truth. When President Obama ordered a counterterrorism unit to take down bin Laden, he sent three SEAL teams because we’re the best.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “That’s not arrogance. It’s the truth.” The music stopped and he pulled back far enough to look down into her face.
“We should maybe get a drink.”
A drink would lead to other things and they both knew it. Knew it by the way his green eyes looked into hers and how her body responded. She didn’t know him. She wanted to know him, though. Wanted to know all the bad things that would feel so good. If just for a little while, but she had more sense and a lot to do in the morning. “I’ve got to go.”
Purple and blue chandelier light sliced across his nose and cheeks. “Where?”
“Home.” Where she was safe from good-looking strangers with too much charm and testosterone. “I’m leaving early in the morning and I need to spend a few hours with my daddy before I go.”
She half expected him to angrily point out that he’d barely arrived at the wedding as a favor to her, and now she was leaving. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Thank you again for coming to my cousin’s wedding,” Sadie said as she and Vince moved down the hall toward the bride’s room inside the Sweetheart Palace. “I feel bad that you got dressed up for so short a time.”
“I’m not all that dressed up, and I owed you,” he said, his deep voice filling the narrow passage toward the back of the facility.
Together they entered the bride’s room, and light from the hall spilled through the door and on the rows of salon chairs and empty garment bags. Within the rectangle of hall light, her coat and overnight bag sat in one of the chairs and she moved to it. “You didn’t owe me, Vince.” She picked up her coat and looked at him through the salon mirror. The light cut across her throat and his chest, leaving the rest of the room in variegated shadow.
He took her coat from her hands. “We square now?”
It seemed so important to him that she nodded, realized he probably couldn’t see, and said, “Yes. We’re square.”
He held her coat open behind her, and she threaded one arm and the other into the sleeves. The backs of his fingers brushed her bare arms and shoulders as he helped her with the coat.
Sadie pulled her hair from the collar and looked back across her shoulder at him. Her mouth just below his, she whispered, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His breath brushed her lips. “Are you sure you want to go home?”
No. She wasn’t sure at all. She felt him bend down the second before his mouth covered hers, warm and completely male. So completely male it was like a straight shot burning its way down her chest to the pit of her stomach. The tingles he’d ignited on the dance floor flared, and she opened her mouth. His tongue swept inside, hot and wet and good. Her toes curled in her shoes and she melted back into the solid wall of him. His arms circled her waist and he held her against him. Held her tight even as he pushed her into the lush descent of pleasure. She didn’t know if she would have resisted. Didn’t really get the chance to think about it before he turned up the heat, giving her deep, wet kisses. She tried to catch his tongue, tried to draw him deep into her mouth as her body turned hot and liquid, wanting more. More than just his tongue deep inside.
Desire curled around her, squeezing her with so much pleasure that she didn’t resist when she felt his hands slide up her waist to cup her breasts. Through the thin taffeta his hot hands turned her nipples hard and she moaned deep in her throat. A shiver worked its way up her spine, and she turned to face him.
This was all happening so fast. Too fast, and her whole world narrowed and focused on his hot mouth and warm hands, touching her breasts and softly caressing the tips of her hard nipples. His mouth continued to devour hers in hot passion and greedy hunger, and she ran her hands all over his body. His shoulders and chest. The side of his neck and through his short hair.
She was in trouble, big trouble, but she didn’t care. His warm hands on her aching skin felt good. His mouth luscious, the big erection pressed into her pelvis, hard and powerful.
He moved one warm palm to the inside of her cool, bare thigh and slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her short dress. His mouth slid to the side of her neck. “You’re beautiful, Sadie.” His mouth opened on the side of her throat and his hand moved between her thighs.
She gasped as he cupped her crotch through the lace and silk of her panties. This wasn’t happening. This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t let this happen. Not here. Not now.
“You’re wet,” he said against her throat.
Liquid heat, fiery and intense, poured through her veins, and her whole world was reduced to Vince’s hot mouth on her throat and his fingers pushing aside the tiny scrap of lace and silk.
She moaned and her head fell back.
“Do you like this?”
“Yes.” She had to stop him. Now, before there was no stopping. He parted her flesh and stroked where she was slick and wet inside and . . . “Oh God.”
“More?”
“Yes.”
“Wrap your legs around my waist.”
“What?” She was mindless. Mindless to anything but his pleasure-giving hand.
“Wrap your legs around my waist and I’ll fuck you against the door.”
“What?” She opened her mouth to tell him they couldn’t do anything against the door. He had to stop. Stop before—“Oh God,” she moaned as a rush of liquid fire grabbed ahold of her and burned her up from the inside out. “Don’t stop, Vince.” It started between her thighs and spread across her flesh. Her head spun and her ears rang as hot wave after hotter wave of intense orgasm slammed into her. “Please don’t stop.” She squeezed her thighs around his pleasure-giving hand. Her body pulsed with pure lust, over and over; it rushed across her skin until the last ounce of the hot pleasure flowed from the tips of her fingers and toes. Only then did she slowly become aware of where she was and what she’d just allowed to happen. “Stop!” She stepped away. “Stop!” She pushed at his hands and chest. What was she doing? What had she done? “What are you doing?”
“Exactly what you wanted me to do.”
She tugged her top up and the hem of her dress down. This was her cousin’s wedding. Anyone could have walked in. “No. I didn’t want that.” Thank God she couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see hers.
“You just begged me not to stop.”
Had she? “Oh God.”
“You said that a couple of times, too.”
The burning in her cheeks spread to her ringing ears. She closed her coat over her dress and grabbed her overnight case. “Did anyone see us?”
/> “I don’t know. You didn’t seem too concerned about that a minute ago.”
“Oh God,” she said again, and raced from the room.
Sexual frustration pounded Vince’s head and groin. Was she really leaving? When he wasn’t finished? “Wait a minute!” he called out as the tails of her coat disappeared from sight. He stood in the bride’s room in some wedding place in Texas with a huge hard-on. What the hell had just happened? He’d hardly touched her, was just getting into touching her, and she’d gone off.
“Shit.” He let out a breath and looked down at himself, at the tent in the front of his pants. He’d known she’d be trouble. He just hadn’t figured her for a dick tease. Not after she’d shoved her body against his chest on the dance floor. Not after she’d looked up at him like she was thinking about sex. He’d been around enough women to know when they were thinking about getting naked, and she’d been thinking about it plenty.
He sat in a salon chair, adjusted himself to the right, and then leaned his head back into the darkness. He couldn’t leave. Not quite yet. Not until he wasn’t leading with a hard-on. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had his hand up a girl’s dress and she’d left him throbbing and alone. High school maybe.
Earlier, when he’d pulled her close so he could hear her over the band, she’d just melted into him, reminding him that he hadn’t had sex since he’d left Seattle. By the time they’d entered the room alone, he’d been half hard and he’d acted on it. He wouldn’t have kissed Sadie if he hadn’t looked into the mirror, into that slice of light cutting across her pretty mouth and incredible cleavage that had been riding his chest. So maybe it hadn’t been one of his finest ideas, but she hadn’t exactly objected, and he’d gone from half to fully stiff in less than a second.
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. Through the darkness, he looked down at the toes of his loafers. She hadn’t owed him sex, but if she hadn’t wanted to go heels to Jesus, she should have stopped him before he slid his hands to her full breasts. She was old enough to know where kissing and having a man’s hand in her panties ended. She was old enough to know it ended in both people getting something out of it. And yeah, this probably wasn’t the best place to get naked, but there were hotels in town. He’d seen them. He would have let her take her pick, but instead she’d run off like her tail caught on fire. Leaving him with nothing but a hard-on. Nothing but frustration. Nothing. Not even a thank-you.
The light flipped on and Vince looked up as a girl in a Bubble Yum dress walked in. She had long tubes of blond hair pinned about her head. She stopped in her tracks and her eyes widened. One hand went to the top of her strapless dress and she gasped. “What are you doing in here?”
Good question. “Meeting someone.” Vince was used to thinking quick and coming up with plausible lies. He’d been trained to give up just enough information to pacify interrogators. “But I guess she must have left.” He also knew how to change the subject and pointed to her dress. “I see you’re in the wedding.”
“Yeah. My name’s Becca, what’s yours?”
“Vince.” He still didn’t want to risk standing and scaring young Becca.
“Who were you meetin’?”
“Sadie.” The dick tease.
“I just saw her leaving.” She sat in the chair next to his. “She stood you up.”
In ways he didn’t want Becca to know about, which was why he stayed seated.
“Love sucks,” she said, then, to Vince’s horror, burst into tears. She shook her head and her curls bobbed as she told him all about her boyfriend, that dirty no-good dog, Slade. She rambled about how long they’d dated and the plans she’d had for their future. “He ruined everything. He cheated on me with that slut Lexa Jane Johnson!” Becca reached for a Kleenex on the counter behind her. “Lexa Jane,” she sobbed. “She’s as dumb as a wad of hair and been rode more than a rented mule. Why do men go for women like that?”
Instantly Vince’s erection went soft and he was almost grateful for Becca and her hysteria. Almost, but he’d never been the kind of guy who could tolerate emotional females.
“Why?” she asked again.
He figured that had been a rhetorical question. Or at the very least obvious, but she was staring at him through watery eyes like she expected an answer. “Why do men go for easy women?” he asked, just to make sure they were on the same page.
“Yes. Why do guys mess around with sluts?”
He’d never liked the word “slut.” It was thrown around too much and implied that a woman was dirty because she liked sex. Which wasn’t always true.
“Why do guys want that?”
He might be a good liar, but no one had ever accused him of being tactful. “Because some women are a sure thing and don’t play games. You know what she wants, and it isn’t dinner and a movie.”
A frown puckered Becca’s forehead. “Isn’t that emotionally shallow for both people?”
“Yes.” He placed his hands on the arms of his chair and prepared to stand. “That’s exactly the point. Emotionally shallow sex. You get in, you get out, and no one gets hurt.” He rose halfway out of the chair, and Becca burst into hysterics again. Shit. “Well, a . . . It was nice to meet you, Becca.” This was Sadie’s fault, and it was a good thing she was leaving town in the morning and he’d never see her again. He’d sincerely love to wring her neck.
“That’s so immature and dis-disgusting, Vince.”
It was convenient and mutually beneficial, he could have argued, but he didn’t feel like a discussion on sex and morality with Becca, and he wondered how much longer he had to sit there. Thirty seconds? One minute? “Can I get you something before I go?”
“Don’t go.” She swallowed and shook her head. “I need someone to talk to.”
What? Did he look like a girl? Or even one of those guys who liked to chat about shit? “Why not find one of your girlfriends? I’ll go find one of them if you’d like.” Not that he would actually put much effort into it once he escaped out the door.
“They’ll just tell me to get over it because everyone knows Slade’s a dog.” She shook her head again and wiped her nose. Her red watery eyes narrowed. “I want both of them to catch the crabs and die in a fiery crash.”
Whoa. That was harsh and exactly why he steered a wide path around women who wanted relationships.
“I want them maimed and mangled and I have a hankering to run them over with my uncle Henry Joe’s Peterbilt!”
A pain settled in the back of Vince’s head and he suddenly had a hankering of his own. A hankering for the taste of gunmetal in his mouth.
Chapter Seven
The tap-tap of Sadie’s heels echoed in the old ranch house as she followed the light toward the kitchen. She didn’t even want to think about what she’d just done in the bride’s room at Tally Lynn’s wedding. She hadn’t meant for anything to happen. She hadn’t meant to embarrass herself more than she’d ever been embarrassed in her life, but it all had happened so fast. He’d kissed her and touched her and wham bam. It was over almost before it began.
The only bright spot, the only thing that gave her a modicum of relief, was that no one besides her and Vince knew what she’d done. After she’d run from the room, she’d said a quick good-bye to Aunt Bess and Uncle Jim, and she was sure that if anyone had seen her and Vince, it would have spread faster than a Texas wildfire. Faster than her feet could run from it.
She hadn’t stuck around to say good-bye to her other relatives. She hadn’t wanted to risk running into Vince. She’d send Tally Lynn and the others a nice note once she got home, excusing her rude exodus on a headache or broken ankle or heart failure. The last wasn’t far from the truth. Just the thought of Vince’s big, hot hands all over her made the blood rush from her head and made her feel faint out of sheer humiliation. Although if she was a man, she probably wouldn’t be beating herself up about it. She’d probably consider herself “lucky” and forget it.
The quicker she
got out of Texas, the better. Obviously, Texas made her lose her mind, and it just went without saying that never seeing Vincent Haven again was a big, fat bonus.
She moved past the formal dining room and into the brightly lit kitchen, with its stone floor and yellow daisy wallpaper her mother had hung in the sixties. She expected to see her father sitting at the breakfast nook, nursing a glass of sweet tea. It wasn’t real late and he had probably just returned from Laredo, but instead of her father, the Parton twins sat at the nook, chipped mugs sitting on the table in front of them.
“You two are staying late tonight.” Sadie slipped off her shoes, and the tails of her coat brushed the floor as she bent to pick them up. With the straps of her heels hooked in her fingers, she moved to the refrigerator. She’d said her good-byes to both of them earlier. They really shouldn’t have waited for her. Nice, but unnecessary.
“Oh Sadie, I’m so glad you’re finally home.”
With her free hand on the refrigerator handle, she looked at the two women over her shoulder. “Why?” She glanced from one worried face to the other, and the events of the past hour melted away.
Clara Anne, the more emotional twin, burst into noisy tears.
“What?” Sadie turned toward them. “Is Daddy home yet?”
Carolynn shook her head. “No, honey. He’s in the hospital in Laredo.”
“Is he okay?”
Again she shook her head. “That stallion kicked him and broke some of his ribs and punctured his left lung.” Her lips drew together. “He’s too old to be messing with those stallions.”
Sadie’s shoes fell to the floor with a thump-thump. There had to be a mistake. Her father was always very careful around high-strung stallions because they were so unpredictable. He was as tough as an old saddle, but he was almost eighty. She shook off her coat and moved to the nook. “He’s been around those horses all his life.” Breeding American paint horses had always been more than just a hobby to Clive. He loved it more than raising cattle, but cattle ranching paid better. She hung the coat on the back of a chair and sat next to Carolynn. “He’s always so careful.” He’d been kicked and stepped on and thrown many times but never seriously hurt. Never anything that required more than a few hours in the hospital getting stitched back up. “How could something like this happen?”
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