Weaving his hand through her fall of hair, he pulled her closer until her lips were just above his. “Never dare when you can’t see the challenge through.” Then he kissed her deeply and learned just what it was she’d dared.
Of all the kisses they’d shared, this one burned his brain, would forever be in his memories as the kiss that melted him. Suddenly, his jeans were tight in the worst place, and the light denim jacket was too hot. He thrust his tongue into her, claiming her in a way he’d never expected to know. She dueled, meeting his pace, nipping and welcoming him at turns. It was hard as hell to show restraint and not tumble her beneath him with them in very open view of everyone who cared to look.
Thankfully, the next closest couple was several dozen yards away and hardly any more interested in the activities going on around them then he was in them. The only person who had his undivided attention was the woman in his hands.
The sweet scent of her skin filled his lungs with every breath. The deliciousness of her arousal wove around him, making him want more than just the kisses, more than he’d ever wanted before. There’d always been a definite lack of something when he’d had sex with the other women in his life. With Stacee, there was an abundance of that missing element, of passion, of fire and desire, and he knew this would be the woman who would stay with him always if she accepted his nature.
If he was ready to show her.
He withdrew from the kiss, his thoughts in ever growing circles of turmoil. With a seeking thumb, he brushed against her bottom lip, noting the blush swollen warmth. He didn’t have that freedom. Not with her in danger and possibly a target for the ones seeking the lost chips. She panted against him. She wasn’t fairing any better than he was if her heavy lidded looks and flushed pink cheeks were any indication. He took the prudent road and didn’t say one word about that kiss. One word would be all it would take to fall headlong into those eyes and shout at the world to leave them both alone.
“Hungry?”
She nodded. The wanting expression on her face told him food wasn’t even on the list, but it was the only thing he could offer her.
* * * *
He dropped her back off at her house that evening, walking her to the door like any gentleman would have, except the thoughts he had were anything but gentlemanly. They were ravenous and demanding. Every cell in his body craved ripping that dress from her body to see the treasures hidden beneath. The goodbye kiss was much more reserved, gentle. He didn’t have the strength for another assault like he’d received in the park. Another one of her kisses like that and he’d be walking with her right into her bedroom. And he couldn’t. God, how he wanted to, but he couldn’t. Not yet. There was always the possibility of not ever, but he didn’t like the idea of not having her in his life, or the picture it created.
Somehow he’d gone from questioning to nearly accepting in one night. He needed to clear his head. It was happening so fast. He should call one of the others in the pack. He couldn’t. Most of the men were solitary and didn’t do the ‘male bonding’ thing the way human males did. Males of the pack had higher than average alpha tendencies. Most couldn’t stand to be around others for very long without challenging each other in some way. Bloodshed between the pack males was strictly forbidden because of that male dominance trait. It had happened in the past and was punishable in archaic ways.
That only left one choice. He’d have to ride it out. With a final sipped kiss he waited for the sound of her door lock then strode to his vehicle, escaping the hunger that blazed his trail before him.
Once home, he stripped with a vengeance leaving the back light of his home on when he rushed from the porch, landing on four feet easily. With a bounding leap, he was over the rear fence and into the woods behind his property on the outskirts of town. If it couldn’t help his thoughts, running until exhaustion forced his mind blank seemed the next best thing.
CHAPTER SIX
“You’re kidding, right?” Kay teased over coffee late Saturday afternoon, her smile as wide as her eyes with her playfulness. “He’s kissed you into a coma and hasn’t made one grope?”
“Nope,” Stacee answered. “He’s been an incredible gentleman about it.” She felt the blush on her cheeks and didn’t even bother to try to hide it. She loved the tender way Jonas treated her, as if she were precious to him. He hadn’t even tried to caress a boob or grab her ass. She’d have to remedy that and soon. She was melting from the inside out with wanting him. She could still turn and find his scent on her skin from where he’d cuddled with her beneath the blanket the night before, or lick her lips and discover the memory of his taste from his kiss. He was driving her crazy with deep desiring lust and he wasn’t even there. It was crazy how much she missed him.
The two women sat in the warming spring afternoon on the patio of their favorite caffeine hangout, just enjoying the light breeze and the scudding shadows from the racing clouds overhead.
“Wow,” was Kay’s awed reply. She sipped, drawing a thoughtful look. Her next words were subdued. “Your mom isn’t going to like this.”
“Again, nope.”
Stacee played with her straw to her iced coffee, well aware of how her mother was going to react to Jonas.
If she even deigned to speak to him, or her daughter, once she found out he was in law enforcement. Like her father.
“She’s going to have cow.”
“You are such a brilliant wealth of understatement,” she replied dryly.
“Well, you know me best. And still love me, I might add,” she said with a playful laughing wink. “Where is wonder guy today?”
“Probably working. He’s been on this one case for months. I’m just glad it looks like they’ve finally pulled me out of the ‘she knows something’ equation.” She rubbed at her arms, dislodging the chill she got for mentioning it.
“Who? The cops or the bad guys?”
“Both.” At least she hoped so. “I look like a Laila Ali loser because of all of this.”
“It’ll fade.”
Stacee waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s just been a hassle at work, trying to talk to someone looking like an abused wife.”
“True, true.”
“But it’s temporary. The damage those goons did to my house…” She curled a lip in a rare flare of anger. “That wasn’t cool. The upholstery bill alone is a nightmare. Every cushion in the living room.” She’d spent the weekend making headway in cleaning her house and writing off damages for the insurance company. That had been oh-so-much fun. She still had a long way to go too.
“Ugh!” her friend groaned in sympathy. “But it’s a good chance to redecorate.” Kay tried to brighten the damage with her usual sense of optimism. It was one of those things that Stacee loved about her best friend, even if she was insane most of the time. Stacee rolled her eyes in silent answer.
Her cell phone rang, and her heart sped up at the ring tone. Only one person had that sound. Kay respectfully lowered her eyes to her drink, seeming to have way more interest in her straw than the coming conversation. Too bad she couldn’t shove cotton in her ears too.
“Hello sweetheart,” he purred when she answered. That melting sensation she felt whenever she thought of him grew with a fast boil that raged hotter at the sound of his voice. “Where are you?”
“At the Mocha Hut with Kay. Where are you?”
“About twenty feet behind you.”
She gasped and whirled. She spotted him leaning against a tree at the farthest edge of the patio in the thicker shadows from the shade trees. He must have either just arrived or just showed himself if Kay hadn’t seen him. He was so still she hadn’t even noticed him at first against the tree. He snapped his phone shut and sauntered over, his eyes on her, and hotter than the sun with hungry desire in their swirling depths.
“How’d he do that?” she demanded gaping over Stacee’s shoulder. That answered that question. Kay hadn’t seen him at all.
“Were you spying on me?” she asked, slicing hi
m a look from below lowered lashes, with no real offense in the demand. She liked the way he looked out for her.
“Keeping you safe,” he replied, unrepentant. “I couldn’t take any more voyeurism.” His grin was lighthearted, but there was a weight in his expression and on his shoulders that hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen him.
“Ha. Ha.” She jabbed him with a stiff finger in the hip in punishment.
He grabbed a spare chair and swung it to their table, sitting at an angle to see outward while he sat next to her.
She lifted an eyebrow questioningly. “Why were you keeping me safe? I thought the connection to me was cleared.”
One of his hands rose to the back of her chair and idly played with the ends of her loose hair. A frown on his sexy mouth made her fear his answer.
“Just a gut instinct.” It was a slow, almost half-hearted reply, but immediately she knew it for what it was.
She knew something had happened. She was learning she could trust his sense of danger, and how to read him. He’d saved her twice. She also knew there was a lot he couldn’t tell her with Kay there. He was playing with her hair to make their meeting seem nonchalant, relaxed, but his eyes never stopped roving the surrounding areas, never stopped scanning and searching. The beauty of it was no one could tell he was doing it just by watching him. The relaxed image was a lie. His subtlety was unbelievable.
Something had changed, or maybe nothing had changed at all. Maybe she’d let herself fall into a sense of safety with the Goon Boys behind bars. How many more people could possibly think she had anything to do with the missing chips? Chocolate chips she’d vouch for, but computer chips? Not a chance in Hell. Absently she twitched her lower jaw, remembering the burst of pain on her face when they’d rushed her at her house.
A light touch on her spine jerked her back to the table and the sweetest aqua eyes she’d ever seen. “Don’t worry, baby,” he told her, his thumb stroking her between her shoulder blades tenderly. “It’s fading fast.”
“I told her the same thing,” Kay remarked over her stirred coffee, clearly not upset over being ignored now that Jonas was there. She’d accepted him as a part of the friend circle in a way that warmed Stacee, which made him fair game to Kay’s acerbic sense of humor. Luckily, he gave as good as he got and had won Kay over pretty quickly too. Their sparring matches would be the stories they’d share with their friends for years to come.
If Jonas was still there. Silently, she prayed she’d get the chance to find out.
* * * *
Jonas tried not to lose his concentration to the naked legs beneath the table. Shorts. The woman had worn shorts. It was bad enough the tank top exposed some of the creamiest skin on her shoulders that he’d ever seen, dappled with sunlight and shadow. He shifted in his chair, forcing the surge from his lower extremities, focusing outward again. There was no such thing as relief around this woman.
He was there to protect her. That was, unfortunately, the truth. His network had picked up a call conversation between one of his marks and someone else looking for the chips. He was sure the someone else was the man behind it all. The man who was going to make the play the chips were intended for. This new development had completely overridden the sexual desire he’d been battling since Friday night.
The courier who’d started the whole chain reaction was just another pawn. The two in jail were a sacrifice. He knew that now. They weren’t going to be bailed out anytime soon either. They’d screwed up and gotten caught without finding a single hint to the chips’ location. The memory chips were still out there. That nugget of information worked in his favor too. If they didn’t have them, he still had a chance at finding them first. He’d been hunting for them with a single-minded intent since the week before. Double checking every option he had, retracing every connection and step he’d made.
And now the man at the end of the rope had pinned all his attention on Stacee. He had a name for him now too. Gregory Lipton, a low-lying Senator in Washington. That wasn’t much of a surprise. That’s where the most effective deal would be made for something this combustible. The weight of the government on three little memory chips, boards smaller than the length of his stretched palm, but worth a fortune to the right seller.
Worth his country’s safety for the wrong buyer. Every missile launch code, every single triple-threat password. He had no doubt it had taken a lot of hacking and under the table cash to get the chips loaded, and now they were a power play. And Stacee seemed to be the woman with the goods.
He glanced down and almost groaned at his own pun.
His eyes almost fell out of his head when he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples were blatantly obvious, and begging for attention through her shirt. His tongue pushed against his teeth as his cock swelled in his pants. He’d become an unending hard-on around this woman. He wanted to taste their lush tips with a ferocity that stole his breath away. She was driving him insane in no slow order.
He swallowed, swiftly looking up, but not before Kay caught him red-handed, a knowing smirk on her face that went right over Stacee’s head. He gave her an innocent look and went back to his surveillance.
The problem was this time, if she got him into her house, he wouldn’t be leaving, and his nature be damned or not, he wasn’t going to make himself leave her side again either. Not after the nights he’d spent dreaming about her legs wrapped around his waist like a vice. Not after the hours he’d spent with her taste on his lips, the heat of her skin on his tongue. He was a strong man, but even he had a limit to this kind of frustration.
He’d hit that limit Friday night when his run didn’t do a damn thing to ease his frustration and was paying the price for it just by sitting next to her. And he was in no way a masochist. He hadn’t come to terms with what all of that meant yet—there were still many variables in the damn way—but he knew what he had to have, who he had to claim and taste. And if he had to claim her before her feelings, or his, were realized, then so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time. But he was done with the self-torture routine.
With his hand around her waist, he led her from the table when they were done with their drinks. Kay waved as she drove away.
“What’s on the agenda?” he asked, striving for nonchalance. He almost achieved it.
“More house cleaning. I shoved things into the closet and picked up the drawers in my bedroom. It’s all that’s left really.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
She made a harrumphing sound in disagreement. He guessed he couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t his house that had been demolished in the searching. He leaned her against the fender of her car, blocking her from view, feeling her pressed against him in so many delicious ways, places that were begging for the contact. Getting her naked right that second wasn’t likely going to happen sadly. He glanced down when he finished a perimeter sweep. Damn sexy shorts, he cursed silently after he’d made himself promise to not look. He might as well have stopped breathing.
“So tell me the truth.” She wound her arms over his shoulders. “You didn’t just happen to stop here and decide to hang out.”
“Busted.” He exhaled with a wry grin. “I’ve got the buyer’s name.”
“A breakthrough? That’s great!”
He wished he could share her enthusiasm. “The problem is, they can’t be charged until they have the chips, or at least attempt to get them.”
She ran her teeth over her bottom lip in thought. That sexy bottom lip.
“Which leaves…me.”
He nodded, meeting his eyes to hers when she lifted them. He felt the shiver that coursed over her body even as she snuggled closer to him, as if seeking his warmth. He folded her in tighter to his body. He nuzzled the side of her neck, well aware how much his body was enjoying the contact. He let out a slow breath. He was also very aware of the danger Stacee was in because of this whole mess. With him searching for the missing memory chips from his end, and the buyer in Washingto
n doing the same, she was right in the middle. Somehow, he had to keep her safe.
Somehow, he would. He just didn’t know how yet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stacee eased one of her hands into the rich brown of his hair, and his eyes glittered in the sunlight. “You have the most incredible eyes I’ve ever seen,” she told him.
“Thank you.”
With little warning she dragged her nails lightly from his scalp down his neck, mimicking scoring his skin. He arched and growled, throwing his head back as his eyes snapped shut. She’d never had the guts to come right out and tell a guy that she wanted to get as naked as possible and see what came next, but if Jonas couldn’t understand this, then she really was reading him so very wrong. There was an almost animalist intensity to Jonas. Taking a chance, she dragged those same nails down his chest until she reached his last rib, and held on, digging through the cotton of his t-shirt. Muscles jumped and bunched in answer. He tensed from his shoulders to his knees, and she felt it all along her body. She wanted to see him react, not just feel it.
His jaw was tight. When his eyes popped open, the fire she found in them was rich and deep. “Be careful how you play,” he warned her. She tilted, hearing a deeper entendre in the words, but too caught up in the spontaneous wildness of the seduction.
“I want to play,” she informed him, pouting softly. She wanted more than that, and she was pretty sure he knew it.
He lowered until he was right next to her ear. His voice dropped a whole octave, sending shivers cascading down her spine. “Get in.”
She didn’t hesitate to ask why. She found the door handle and slid behind the wheel. He was in on the other side before she’d shut her door.
“Pull out and turn right at Oliver.” She nodded at the crisp directions.
Oliver was a beautiful street with old-style buildings and huge storefronts. Many had historical markers and were kept up as part of the town’s historical presence. He pointed to an alley that was lined on one side by trees. “Park there.” She did. The thick canopy of trees shaded the street and parking between the trunks provided some protection. At least on a Saturday the alley wouldn’t see much traffic.
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