Chapter 10 #2
Her eyes opened. “I’m sorry, I…” Can’t, she realized. She’d experienced her fair share of lovers, both devoted and otherwise, but never in her life had she been completely swept away by a man. Sex was an escape. She never kept her eyes open. Never whispered a name.
Not even for him.
“It’s me, Red,” he said roughly. “Me, goddamnit.”
He didn’t understand that only made it more difficult, not less. With him, she could really fall, and that terrified her because the fall would be harsh. The fall would hurt.
You couldn’t climb back up after the fall.
Joe stared at her, clearly waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t, couldn’t, he wrenched free and blew out a breath.
“Joe—”
“I know. You just want the oblivion of it. I know.” He shoved his fingers into his hair and turned in a circle. “I wanted that too. I thought I could, but I can’t.” He turned away, reached for the door. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to go?” she asked in disbelief as she sat there halfway to orgasmic bliss. “Just…run away? Really?”
Letting go of the door handle, he came back to her, slid his hands up her hips, and gripped hard.
“You think I’m the one running?” One arm slid around her and brought her up against his body.
The other cupped her breast. Her entire body quivered, and with a sigh, she sank into him, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
He went utterly still, then pulled free again, leaving her to sag back against the sink. “Let’s be clear, Red. You’re the one who runs when I touch you. You’re the one hiding.”
“No. I want you.”
“You want the kick, not the intimacy.”
Okay, yes, damn it, she wanted the kick.
And maybe, deep down, something more. Just a little.
But she needed some help here because it was harder, much harder to accept than she’d expected.
And hell if she’d admit that while he stared angrily at her.
Hell if she’d admit how badly she needed him when all she ever did these days was beg the people in her life to want her. She was sick of that, sick of it.
“So what now?” he asked wearily.
Her eyes burned and not from just the smoke. Her throat wouldn’t work. She was an inch from falling apart, with no idea how to put the pieces back together, and she could only shake her head. “You don’t have to stay. I’m good.”
Had there been warmth and tenderness in his eyes only a moment before? It was all gone now.
“Yeah, you’re good. You’re good on your own,” he said, his stance deceptively relaxed, his anger tautly controlled.
“Too good, I’m thinking. But I’m not leaving you alone tonight, I’m not running.
Do you understand? I’m hanging right here.
” He backed up to the door and crossed his arms over his chest, his gun on his hip, looking big, bad, pissed, and stubborn to boot.
And no less sexy for it either. Feeling like a mess such as she did, she resented that, she really did. “Stay, leave.” She shrugged. “I don’t care.”
But she did, so very much. If he left now, she’d fall apart.
“I’m taking a bath.” Gingerly, she hopped down from the counter.
Lifting her chin rather than whimper at the contact, she pushed off her skirt, then pulled off her shirt.
She ignored his low, choked oath, though the rough sound of it made her nipples hard.
Standing there in a sports bra and panties, she turned her back to him and bent over to turn on the tub.
He swore again.
It did something to her temper, turned it into a smug sort of womanly power, which only increased when she slowly added bubbles to the water.
Oh yeah, if she was miserable, then she’d make sure he joined her in that misery.
The scent of cocoa butter began to override the smoke she couldn’t get out of her nose.
Still facing away, she pulled off her bra and kicked off her panties.
Then she spun around for a washcloth, making sure Joe got the full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view before stepping into the tub.
Given the pained sound that escaped him, the way his eyes landed and skimmed over all of her, including the belly ring, she succeeded. Woo hoo. She sank down beneath the water and abruptly forgot all about being a sex kitten because her cuts burned like fire.
He squatted next to her, mouth tight and grim. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” she said as the bubbles made their way up to her chin.
His eyes never left hers. They were dark and scorching. “You know you’re torturing me, right?”
She lifted her arm and dabbed bubbles onto his nose. “Yes.”
He stared at her, so fierce, so serious. With bubbles on his nose.
From the other room, her cell rang, shattering the silence. Blowing out a breath, he rose and left the bathroom.
Summer sank beneath the water to wet her hair. She sat up, poured shampoo into her hand, and worked on getting the smell of smoke out of her hair. She dunked again and stayed under a moment to let the shampoo rinse out.
Suddenly a hand snaked around her arm and hauled her up. Blinking water out of her eyes, she stared into Joe’s.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Um, washing my hair?”
“Oh.” He let go of her. “Right.”
She stared at him, seeing the fierce angst on his face. “What did you think I was trying to—”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus, Joe, I’m not that distraught over your second rejection.”
Looking taut enough to splinter into pieces, he dropped his chin to his chest. His genuine distress tore at her.
She touched his strong, square jaw. “I’m really okay, you know.”
“Yeah.” He slowly backed away.
“Is my touch that bad?”
“Try that good.” He stared into her eyes, his own glittering with all he felt.
The unspoken promise was there. He’d catch her if she fell.
He’d be there for whatever she needed, and it caught her defenseless and choked her up.
Joe Walker was the real deal, as real as a man could get, and much too much for her to handle.
As if he could read her mind, he surged to his feet. “You might be able to be blasé about this,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her. “But I sure as hell can’t be.”
“Joe.”
“Your mom called. I told her I’d stay with you until dawn.”
Dawn. There were a lot of hours between now and then.
“Finish your bath. Then get into bed and try to sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”
His message was clear. Don’t need me.
The scream shot through Joe like shredded shrapnel. He jerked out of sleep and right off the couch, landing face-first on the floor.
With the last echoes of Summer’s terrified cry echoing in his head, he leapt to his feet in the pitch black living room of her cottage. “Red?”
Only a gasping breath answered him. He rushed toward the sound, tripped over what felt like a cement pipe against his shins, and once again landed flat on his face. Something tumbled down after him, smacking him on the back of the head, making him see stars.
A light flickered on.
He’d tripped over the end table, upending the lamp, which had hit him in the head.
The pain spreading outward to every inch of his body, he flopped to his back and groaned.
Summer stood in the doorway next to the light switch.
Her face was pale, her eyes huge as she held on to the doorjamb like a lifeline.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I was going to ask you that question. Before your furniture beat the crap out of me.” With another groan, he rubbed the back of his head and staggered to his feet. “I was trying to rescue you.”
“That’s okay, the demons were all in my head.”
“A nightmare?”
Eyes still filled with the remembered horror, she nodded.
Everything within him softened in sympathy and understanding. He knew the dreams, knew how haunting they could be. He started at her, manfully not whimpering at the cracking, stinging pain in his shins and the base of his skull.
“I was back there.” Her breath hitched. “I couldn’t get out. I could hear my dad. Screaming—” Covering her mouth with a shaking hand, she looked away.
She wore only a soft white camisole and hot pink bikini panties, but even in the low light of the lamp, he saw goose bumps raised on her flesh. Miles of sleek, smooth, bronzed flesh.
Down boy, he thought, and did the only thing he could. He reached for her. She met him halfway, curling into him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Wrapping his arms around her, he absorbed her tremors and stroked a hand down her hair, down her back.
“Just a dream,” he murmured, and pressed his lips to her temple.
“The flames were biting at me.”
There weren’t words to take those memories away, so he just held her as tight as he could, stroking his hands up and down her quivering body.
Later, he couldn’t name the moment when things shifted from him giving the comfort, to him losing control of the embrace entirely, but it might have been when he felt her lips against his throat.
And then the tip of her tongue.
“Red.” He anchored his hands in a neutral position by fisting them in her hair.
She did the same to him, then lifted her head, lined up their mouths and took his.
And just like that, he sank into her. He couldn’t help it.
There they were, with him wearing only his opened jeans and her in her barely there camisole and panties, naked flesh brushing naked flesh, mouths fused, sharing breath, sharing that soulful connection he’d never been able to find in anyone else. It felt like a homecoming.
Still kissing him, she slipped her hand into his jeans, humming with approval when she wrapped her fingers around the biggest erection he’d ever had.
He put his hands on her shoulders, skimming her straps down. Then he lifted his mouth from hers to watch as he tugged the thin material away from her. Her breasts bounced free, and her nipples hardened for him. “You take my breath,” he murmured, and bent to taste her.
She gasped but kept her eyes open. Progress. He looked up at her in the lamp’s glow and felt his heart clench.
She still had her hands in his pants, and she stroked him, squeezing lightly.
“Slow down,” he warned. “Or I’ll lose it before we start.”
She didn’t slow down.
To make them even, he slipped his hands into the back of her panties, playing his fingers between her thighs in the creamy heat he found there.
Not enough. He dropped to his knees and put his mouth low on her softly rounded stomach, right next to the belly button ring that was going to highlight his fantasies for many nights to come.
God, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
And the tastiest. He nibbled his way lower.
After that, he never remembered who dragged whom to the carpet, or who found the condom, or even who tore off whose clothing, but when he finally sank into her glorious body so wet and ready for him, he felt…
undone. Wrecked to the core. And not just physically.
She captured him heart and soul, and as he leaned over her, touching her face, kissing her mouth, looking into her fathomless eyes so full of emotion for him, he hoped to God she felt the same way.