Hot and Bothered

by Crystal Green

  18

  Rochelle gingerly touched his swelling, reddened jaw, her heart feeling the same way as his new injury looked—wounded and expanding, bruised because of all the punches she’d already landed on him. He was even watching her now as if he were about to ask her why she was here and if she was about to hit him again.

  Should she just come right out and say that she couldn’t be another Cherry Chastain, and that’s why she’d returned?

  She saw his gaze go steely, as if he was armoring himself against her, and she couldn’t blame him.

  “Kat said you were having a bad day when you were at the saloon hours ago,” she whispered, easing into what she’d come to say. “And that you’ve been having a bad couple of weeks.”

  “Kat said she was going to kill you if she saw you again.”

  He’d obviously slept off the booze, his attitude hard, and she fought the urge to stop touching him, to move away and protect herself from the harsh things he was probably going to say. But she was done with the avoidance, done with lying to herself.

  She rested her fingertips against his temple and then pushed back his thick brown hair, just as he’d done for her so many times when she was troubled. He hadn’t told her to get out of his house yet, hadn’t questioned her chutzpah in just walking through the unlocked door, and she took strength from that.

  “Kat didn’t quite kill me when I walked into the bar today, hoping I’d see you there,” she said. “Not after I explained why I was looking for you.”

  It was as if the fortifications in his gaze started to melt, but there were still so many barriers. “You came looking for me once, Rochelle, and it was to ask me to defend you. What’re you going to ask me to do this time?”

  She swallowed. “I want to ask you to trust me.” Her hand shook as she stroked back his hair again.

  He looked so doubtful about trusting her that her veins twisted, cutting off her blood flow until she felt weak. Then again, that’s how she always felt around him—weak and strong at the same time, wrong and right, afraid and emboldened.

  She counted on that last quality now as she went for broke. “I wish you could trust me enough to know that I came back here because I want to learn to love you like you should be loved.”

  Utter silence, enough time for her to realize that, yes, she’d said those words. Finally. Wholeheartedly.

  But he only sat up slowly, his back hunched as he rested his forearms on his thighs, sending her a wary gaze. He looked like a gunfighter who’d been disarmed but still had a lot of maneuvers to make the enemy back off.

  Her, the enemy.

  Everything that’d been building in Rochelle lately rushed out in a torrent of words, unpolished and raw, a rough draft she’d never be able to erase, even if she wanted to.

  “It’s just that I’ve always been alone, Gideon,” she said. “And I got so used to it that I had no idea how to respond to someone giving themselves over to me and asking that I do the same. I’ve always depended on myself, because I knew that I would never let me down. I had no room for anyone who might pull the rug out from under me. I couldn’t imagine giving one more person the opportunity to do that.”

  The skirt she’d worn on the plane rode above her knee, baring it, and her skin was less than a whisper away from the denim covering his leg. Still, she could feel the heat from him, and it swept up and through her like pulsing blood as she went on.

  “You were the first person to ever read a book of mine and see me in it, calling me out for writing Cherry as if she were another reflection of myself. You saw how I shaped my life into hers and vice versa, and maybe it’s because a long time ago I shared something with you that I’d never shared with anyone else. And I’m not just talking about having sex for the first time. I’m saying that I’ve never been so vulnerable with another person, Gideon, and that threw me for the worst curve I’ve ever seen coming at me.”

  He hadn’t reacted at all yet, just kept staring at the carpet, seemingly bulletproof.

  But she wasn’t going to run again. Never.

  “Like Cherry,” she said, “I learned to be clueless about love, to put it aside like it wasn’t there so I’d never feel the hurt of it.”

  Finally, a grim smile took him over. “Maybe you were right about me all along, though. Maybe you should’ve been worried that someday I’d go back to being that quick-draw cowboy. Haven’t you told yourself that? Because, if you haven’t, it’s better you do it now rather than later.”

  She hadn’t expected miracles, and she’d known she would have to work on him. And work she would.

  She grabbed the sleeve of his T-shirt and pulled until he looked at her straight on. “If you’re about to tell me about how you went back to being ol’ quick-draw after I left and warn me away just to see if I’ll backtrack, don’t bother. I heard about what you’ve been doing at the saloon every night, and I don’t care.” She took a breath and then let it out. “I mean, I do care—jeez, believe me when I say that I want to tear the hair out of the head of every woman you were with—but then again I didn’t exactly give you a reason to be a monk, all pure and waiting for me until I changed my mind and came back to you.”

  “Don’t you think that’s who I am, Rochelle? An undependable piece of meat?” Still hard-hearted, still testing her. “Doesn’t that scare you along with everything else about me?”

  It did. Holy shit, it did. But she knew he’d only been getting back at her in a silent, punishing way. She wanted to throttle him for it, wanted to throttle herself.

  She pulled at his sleeve again, but he remained rooted. “I know who you are, Gideon. I always have.”

  It looked like he might crack, but then he seemed to take possession of himself. “How do I know you’re not going to pull the same crap again?”

  She’d asked herself this on the entire plane ride here and then again on the drive from the airport. And no matter how many times her neurotic demons came out to put the hammer to her hopes, she still knew the answer.

  “I wouldn’t have come back to Rough and Tumble if I knew I could live without you,” she said, emotion swelling in her throat. “Believe me, I was trying to do just that—live without you. And it wasn’t pretty.” She swallowed again. “My heart might be even thicker than my head, but both of them are scrambled and no good without you.”

  Now that the words were coming so freely, she wondered where they’d been all along. Hiding? Dormant? Waiting to be let out?

  As he remained silent, it was she who was the one waiting this time, and an eternity of weighted heartbeats seemed to pass as Gideon clenched his wounded jaw, still holding her wrist, his fingers caging her until she bit her lip.

  Silence as his gaze bored into her.

  More silence as she started to lose hope.

  But she wasn’t going to give into the fear. Not anymore.

  Leaning toward him, she laid everything on the line, holding her breath, pressing her lips against his knuckles, kissing softly, exhaling.

  “If you want me to go,” she said against him, “tell me now. Tell me to go to hell or back to my book tour, but just say something.”

  Every one of her breaths against his skin marked the seconds thudding by, and she started to believe that maybe he’d come to his senses while she’d been away; he’d realized that they’d had their fun, and she wasn’t worth his time now.

  She began to shrink into herself, just as she’d done when she was eighteen years old, knowing she’d been such a failure with him, wanting to crawl into the nearest hole . . .

  But then something did break in Gideon, and all at once, he let go of her wrist, burying his fingers in her hair, bringing her mouth to his in a kiss so desperate and passionate that she unwittingly sobbed against him.

  Gideon, kissing her, holding her . . . The seams on his shirt popping as she pulled at him to get closer, closer . . . God
, she couldn’t get close enough.

  He tugged at the front of her suit jacket so forcefully that she found herself crushed against his chest, his lips devouring her with wet, wonderful, out-of-control kisses on her mouth, her chin, her jaw, behind her ear, everywhere. And with each kiss, her heart detonated, blasting up and up and lifting her right along with it.

  It was like the first time for her again—or at least how a first time should be in fantasies. She felt as if her skin were awakening from a sleep, tingling with delicious shivers and blooming with desire. She felt marked with explosions of beautiful red that flowered everywhere, over her flesh, under it, straight toward her heart.

  Then he was panting against her lips, cupping her face, gazing intensely into her eyes. “You’re really here,” he said hoarsely.

  With all the love she’d been denying, she kissed him with heartfelt heat. Then she smiled so he could feel it on his lips.

  “No place I’d rather be,” she whispered.

  ***

  Gideon still felt her kiss on his mouth, even after she pulled away. He tasted her on him—honey from the tip of a beautiful flower—and it was almost like a dream again.

  Except he knew he was more awake than he’d ever been.

  Emotion snaked through him, entangling him in the reality that she was really here, that she’d actually returned, and he caressed her face with his fingertips, memorizing every detail. He wanted to etch her on the backs of his eyelids, wanted to keep her with him even if she was only inches away.

  She’d always been a part of him, no more so than now.

  “I’ve loved you ever since the first day you came to your uncle’s ranch,” he said.

  She leaned into his palm. So content, so at peace now that the games were done and it was just the two of them, face to face, nothing between them.

  “Maybe I did, too,” she said. “But I know I love you now. I need you, Gideon. I haven’t ever needed anyone or anything more.”

  His pulse was careening, throwing him off balance, but even so, he used a slow hand to caress her face. He continued down, over her collarbone, between her breasts, where her suit revealed some cleavage. He took his time undoing the first button, then the next, until she was open to him.

  Her bra was lace, barely containing all of her, her nipples already stimulated for him, pressing with beaded pink tips against the cups. He ran a finger into one, using his knuckle to feel the peak of her.

  Hell, how many nights had he laid there imagining this, never thinking it’d happen again?

  She began to take off his shirt, and he let go of her to help. Then, with rising hunger in her eyes, she eased the jacket off her shoulders, reaching in back of her to undo the bra. It fell forward, exposing all of her—round, perfect, heavy—and he cupped both breasts, pushing them up as they filled his hands. At the same time, she fell back onto the sofa, no longer the aggressor, just inviting him to come to her with welcoming arms.

  His chest met hers with a wash of vibration that she must have felt as strongly as he did, because she hauled in a breath as he leaned his elbows on the pillow below her, then bent to kiss her forehead. He slid down to capture her mouth with his again with easy, forever kisses.

  Her hands roamed his back, exploring him, and he realized that this was how it’d all began years ago in a pile of hay in her uncle’s barn. Kisses, discarded clothes, body on body.

  But, this time, it was going to be perfect.

  He worshipped her with his mouth, first on her neck, making her squirm, and then at her breasts, loving one and then the other. Then at her stomach, lower, his tongue dipping into her bellybutton as he slipped her skirt down, bringing her panties with it until they lay on the floor in a linen puddle. The thud of her shoes on the carpet told him that there wasn’t a stitch left on her.

  Good, because next he used his hands to sculpt every curve, from the swerve of her waist to her hips and down over her legs. When he drew his fingertips to the center of her, already wet for him, he pressed a knuckle against her, circled her clit, and then lightly teased it.

  Just as he had her straining for more, she gasped once, twice, longer and longer until her hips arched and she relaxed.

  Then she fixed that voracious gaze on him.

  But she didn’t push him back as she would’ve a couple weeks ago, bowling him over and taking what she wanted. She waited until he pulled her up by both hands and laid back against a pillow himself, bringing her with him until her hair brushed his face.

  He drew in her honeysuckle scent, which shimmered through him like crushed glass that cut lightly, enticingly. She kissed him, long and deep, then worked off his jeans and boots. She paid his body homage, too, covering every inch of him until his cock was nearly bursting.

  This was how it always should’ve been, he thought, bringing her up and over him until his erection brushed her parted, glistening folds. This was how it should always be, with them so consumed with each other that nothing else mattered.

  He dug his fingers into her hips, pulling her forward, watching as he entered her, then rolled her onto her back so he could look down into her eyes.

  Eyes that sparkled with the same shimmer he’d seen earlier, but there were no barriers between them now, only . . .

  He slid all the way into her, and she inhaled deeply, gouging her fingernails into his arms. And she kept making those sexy, breathy sounds as he filled her again and again, their gazes never disconnecting.

  With every thrust, he saw her irises pulse, echoing the ever-pounding heartbeat in him—open, closed, open, closed, just like a black box trying to force its lid off. Pressure built, swelling that box’s lid, pushing at it while whatever was inside grew and grew.

  He didn’t know how long he could stand it, the pulsing, the pushing, but just when he thought he couldn’t take anymore—

  The box blew open, spilling everything into the air, coating his brain with melting darkness until it slid away from his vision, showing him Rochelle smiling up at him, pulling him down to her as she sighed, as she opened for him, too, on a delighted cry of completion.

  History rewritten, Gideon thought, kissing her, breathing her in, never letting her go.

  The first real chapter of their own story.

  Epilogue

  Kat’s mind wasn’t an easy one to change, but by some miracle it happened.

  She held back a grin that wouldn’t quit as Rochelle and Gideon canoodled in the corner of the Rough & Tumble’s courtyard on a July night that had the ceiling fans inside working overtime and the jukebox playing lazy country songs. It was near closing, and they’d been helping Kat with cleanup in the courtyard after that damned Jimmy Beetles had gotten into it with a one-percenter outlaw from an out-of-state MC. The bikers had crushed a few chairs outside during their fight, and Kat was sure as shit billing the nomad rider for it. She was also going to charge him for the drinks she could’ve sold after she’d cleared everyone out of the saloon.

  Gideon had helped break up the fight after seeing that Rochelle was safe. Not that Rochelle had stayed away from the brew-ha-ha, because Kat had caught her peeking out of the door like she was taking notes on how to fight for a future novel. But all had ended well. Hell, ever since Rochelle had finished her book tour and bought that mansion in Seven Hills, everything seemed to have a fine ending. Gideon was the happiest cowpoke in the region, and it was all because of l-o-v-e.

  And that meant Kat couldn’t hate Rochelle. Turned out she wasn’t such a bad egg anyway.

  Kat tossed a rag at the cuddlebirds, and Gideon caught it, even in midkiss—some peripheral vision that was.

  “Get a room,” she said.

  Rochelle smiled, snuggling against Gideon. “I have a lot of extras at my place, if you should ever need one yourself, Kat.”

  Yeah, yeah, more teasing about Isaiah. The assholes in this saloon never seemed
to stop when it came to her long-distance boyfriend. But Kat didn’t want to talk about it, because he was off on some sociocultural anthropology trip for his graduate degree, and she hadn’t been able to afford to go. Rochelle had offered to sponsor her, but Kat couldn’t stand the thought of owing anyone anything. Besides, matters had been rocky with Isaiah for a while now—there were things Kat had never told him, mostly about how she’d gotten the knife wound on her ribs that she managed to hide every time Isaiah and she saw each other. How she kept her shirt on with him, she didn’t know, but she just kept telling him that they should wait until he graduated to go all the way. His patience was running thin, too.

  Kat motioned toward the door. “Thanks for your help, you two, but I’ve got the rest of cleanup covered. I just need to sweep the courtyard and I’m home for the night.”

  “Until you’re back here at the break of dawn,” Gideon said. “You gotta slow down, Kat.”

  Rochelle kissed him, and he melted into a smile. Love bunnies. Yuck.

  “Out,” Kat said.

  Rochelle hugged her good night, and after Kat squiggled away from her, she went inside, turned off the jukebox, and headed back to the courtyard with a broom and pan. But on the way out the door, she saw a customer in a dark corner who hadn’t been swept out with the rest earlier.

  This woman had shoulder-length silver hair held away from her face by a bandana, and in spite of the warm night, a light gray sweater and tidy jeans covered the rest of her. No makeup, no jewelry, she wore wire-rimmed glasses and looked like a local ranch owner or some such, although Kat couldn’t place a name to the face.

  She did look familiar, though, and throughout the night, as the woman had sipped on nonalcoholic beers and concentrated on her backlit e-reader, Kat had tried to get information about where she came from. Nope. The lady had only kept her nose in whatever she was reading, except while Jimmy Beetles was fighting outside. Even then she hadn’t moved from her seat, as if she was used to being around two dipwads kicking the shit out of each other.