Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Matter-of-factly, he stripped off his soaked flannel and the white Henley beneath, both of which he tossed on the floor with the tattered scraps of her wedding dress.
“W-what are you doing?” she stammered.
He paused, looking at her impatiently. “Getting warm.”
Lily’s mouth snapped shut. She couldn’t help but follow his sharp movements, drawn to the hard muscles of his chest and the faint trail of dark hair disappearing beneath his jeans.
When his hands went to his belt, she squeezed her eyes shut, listening to the sounds of him removing his belt, jeans, and boots.
Oh my.
She peeked. Of course she did. She was cold, not dead. His shoulders and arms were sharp lines of smooth muscle, and the way his bare abs flexed with his movements made her eyes widen. Sheriff Sexy was indeed just that.
A hand landed on her hip, and she jumped, but he only nudged her back farther under the spray. When she wavered, dizzy from the heat and the cold colliding, his big hands clamped to her hips, steadying her. “Careful,” he murmured.
Oh. That felt nice.
It should’ve been awkward, being nearly naked with a man she barely knew, but she was too cold to care.
His hands were large, palms rough against the soft flesh of her hips, dark hair dusting the backs.
They were undeniably masculine hands. Something long dormant twitched to life as she stared at them against her much paler skin.
“I’m okay,” she managed. Her body was thawing, but her teeth still chattered uncontrollably. A violent shiver swept through her, but at least she felt something besides frozen.
An arm slid around her waist, firmly guiding her against a chest dusted with dark hair. She sank against him, grateful again for the strength and heat. They stood under the steamy spray for a few long moments until he shifted. She made a faint sound of protest and followed his heat instinctively.
“Shh,” he murmured, holding her hip to steady her while he leaned over the taps again. “Turning the heat higher. Didn’t want to scald us until we could feel the temperature.”
She caught a glimpse of his back flexing and tight black jockeys before he turned back. Warmth, unrelated to the hot water, curled low in her stomach, taking her by surprise. Residual adrenaline, probably. They had nearly frozen to death out there. Her body was overcompensating.
He settled her against him again, his arms loosely around her waist while the steam curled lazily around them, thickening the air.
Ah. Nice. Something like contentment filled her as she absorbed the heat from his body, and she took as deep of a breath as she could in the tight corset and burrowed closer to his heat.
Gradually, her skin stopped screaming, and new sensations crept in, sharp and impossible to ignore in the tight space of their bodies.
The faint rasp of his breathing. The dusting of dark hair on his chest tickled her cheek and made her want to turn her face in.
The steady thud of his heartbeat echoed through her, a solid, rhythmic pulse that seemed to anchor her in this surreal moment.
His hands against her hips were firm, radiating a heat that penetrated her and slid down, low and thick, like warm honey throughout her body.
Good Lord, what was going on with her? Was she so sex-starved she was imagining things?
Cool gray eyes met hers when she looked up to find him studying her just as intently.
Wet black hair curled over his brow. A high forehead and angular cheekbones looked almost sinister in the flickering shadows, making her shiver involuntarily.
His square jaw was covered in dark bristles, his mouth firm and unsmiling under a dark mustache as he met her eyes with that serious gaze.
She shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold or adrenaline this time.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She knew she must look a mess. Her hair hung half up and half down around her shoulders, and her makeup must be running. She started to pull away self-consciously and then stopped.
“I can’t get this off without help,” she said shyly, pointing at the merry widow.
“I’m sorry to be a pain. It’s one of those old-fashioned ones, and I can’t reach…
” She trailed off in embarrassment and looked down, aware that the corset boning was making her already large breasts push up almost indecently.
There was no help for that. The curse of being a Hart woman—every one of them endowed whether they wanted it or not.
As a classically trained ballerina, she’d cursed her boobs more times than she could count.
They made it hard to find costumes, and her leotards all had to have special supportive cups sewn in.
The white lace was almost transparent now that it was soaked, and her pink nipples were as plain as day, poking like diamonds against the delicate fabric. She looked up with another apology on her lips and stopped abruptly.
The sheriff’s eyes roamed over her, dipping lower, and Lily was suddenly aware of her little white satin panties and bare legs.
Leotards and skintight spandex were her regular uniform.
Nonetheless, a flush of embarrassment swept over her body.
Oh well. She needed his help. There was no way she could undo this thing by herself.
She swallowed hard and looked up. “It’s cinched in the back,” she said, embarrassed by the waver in her voice and the strange molten heat unfurling between her legs. Slowly. Insistently. “I can’t… can you…” She turned slightly, cheeks flaming, even as her body shivered from the cold.
What was wrong with her? He was a stranger, and not all that nice of one, either. She should be frozen with fear or wrung out from shock, not humming from heat that had no business being there.
One black eyebrow arched on the sheriff’s face, and she blushed even harder.
He didn’t say a word, just gave a curt nod.
His silence unnerved her even more than anything he could’ve said, but she was increasingly, painstakingly, aware of every breath, every tiny shift in the air between them in the tight space.
Did he feel it too? This strange awareness between them?
She shot a quick glance up, but his expression revealed nothing.
Swallowing hard, she turned around, bracing her shaking hands against the icy tile in front of her.
It was just adrenaline. Cold and adrenaline.
She concentrated on her breathing, which was coming in shallow pants now.
It was the corset. The damn thing was like a cage around her lungs.
The first tug at the laces sent a shiver of relief down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold or the tingle of lust from his knuckles brushing against her back.
Each loosened rung felt heavenly, and she took increasingly deep breaths until he pulled the sopping wet garment free and tossed it outside the stall.
“That’s better.” She sighed, turning automatically—then colliding with him. Her bare breasts pressed against the hard wall of his chest, and she froze, her skin electrifying where it touched his.
He was warm. Too warm for the blizzard outside. Long-legged, broad-shouldered, blocking out the flickering flashlight like a cement wall. Something primal, hot and electric, thrummed through her again, scattering the last of the cold and numbness.
What are you doing, Lily? Step back. Say something funny.
But she didn’t.
She tilted her face up, tracing the droplets on his long lashes, the hard line of his jaw, the inscrutable eyes pinning her in place. They were darker gray now—watching her intently.
And then she saw it. A flicker, a change in his energy, as something hot simmered to the surface between them. She leaned forward, driven by a strange involuntary desire, swaying against him lightly.
The first brush of contact sent a bolt of something wild through her, scattering what was left of her confusion and cold.
She dropped her gaze, shy and yet bolder than she had ever been before.
It was exhilarating to know that he wanted her, too, that she hadn’t lost that feeling of desire and being desired. Thank God.
She pressed even closer. Delicately. Deliberately.
Letting the hard muscles of his thigh press tighter against the warm ache at the top of hers.
Her breathing stuttered and came back in a quick, shallow pant.
What was this? Whatever was happening, she knew she had never in her life felt this much heat for another person.
And that scared her more than anything.
The sheriff’s body was long and lean—around the same height as Tucker’s—but hard with the muscle of a man who didn’t sit behind a desk all day.
She catalogued the differences between Tucker’s softer, rounder body and Sheriff Callahan’s, and shivered involuntarily, rubbing against him just a little more.
The dark hair on his chest teased her nipples into tight little peaks.
He pressed closer, molding his body to hers from chest to hips for a fleeting, too-brief second. An impression of a thick, hot-as-fire erection pressed into her stomach, branding her with its heat.
Oh my God.
Her breath caught, and her eyes snapped to his. He was already looking at her, and for a breathless moment, she saw her own surprise reflected in the slate gray of his eyes. But just as quickly, surprise melted into something else. A slow, pulsing current between them sparked like a live wire.
His hands slid back, big, bold, possessive, cupping her ass and pulling her flush against him. Against the undeniable, thick, rigid length of him, branding her stomach through the thin fabric of his shorts. A fleeting press of scalding heat and hardness.
Too brief. Much too brief.
Then he was gone, easing them apart carefully, and leaving every nerve ending in her body straining toward the place where he’d been. She felt the loss of his heat sharply, and she had to fight not to follow it.
“Warmer now?” he asked gruffly. His cheekbones were flushed, but his eyes were shuttered again. “Tank won’t last much longer. Do you want to wash up while there’s still hot water?”
Embarrassed, Lily nodded. “Yes.”
He slid the glass shower door open. A long, angry scar raked his thigh, half hidden by his Jockeys. She quickly slammed her eyes shut and turned her face into the spray. What was she even doing?
She found a bar of soap and some no-frills drugstore shampoo in the shower and scrubbed briskly as she listened to the muted sounds of him drying off.
Where had that come from? She hadn’t felt anything close to it in years. Maybe ever.
The thought of Tucker made anger bubble inside her, but she scrubbed harder, as if she could wash him away. She’d wasted enough years thinking about him, convincing herself that what they had was enough, that what their relationship lacked in passion, it made up for in comfort.
At twenty-seven, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt raw, electric desire before. That truth unsettled her almost as much as who had ignited it.
She’d started dating Tucker in high school, when she barely knew her own body. Even during their “break” in college, she hadn’t been with anyone else. It had always been him—or so she had believed.
Over the years, whatever spark they’d once had dulled to routine.
Sex was predictable, perfunctory, and far from passionate.
She’d told herself that was normal, that it was just part of being in a long-term relationship.
When she worried he was losing interest, she tried lingerie, even some clumsy attempts at role-playing that had bombed dismally.
One night, inspired by an article in a magazine about spicing up your love life, she’d worked up the nerve to try out some dirty talk. It had taken all her courage, but instead of the reaction she’d hoped for, Tucker had given her a blank stare.
“Babe,” he’d said with a faint look of disapproval on his face that mirrored his mother’s, “that’s not you.”
She’d laughed it off like she’d been joking and never attempted it again.
Between teaching her dance and yoga classes and getting the studio up and running, she was too exhausted to care.
She hadn’t missed their intimacy—at least not consciously—and Tucker hadn’t pursued her either.
In fact, his attention had been increasingly absorbed by the six-packs he brought home more often than flowers.
When was the last time they had been together?
A month? Longer? The question nagged at her as she rinsed the shampoo from her hair, letting the shower’s heat soak in.
It made her sick to think she’d gone to her annual last month, talking to her doctor about getting off birth control so she and Tucker could “start trying soon,” while he’d been sneaking around behind her back.
They’d fallen into such a monotonous routine that it was hard to pinpoint the last time they’d had sex, because it certainly wasn’t missed. Wasn’t that just what happened when you’d been with someone for almost half your life?
Bitterness burned in her throat as the sharper truth landed. He hadn’t been missing sex at all. He’d found it—just not with her.
She rinsed her hair, shut off the taps, and grabbed a towel to wrap around herself. The floor was icy cold with puddles from their clothing, but she was warm now.
Movement outside brought her back to the present. Facing Sheriff Callahan after that slip in the shower made her groan. Why did she always manage to embarrass herself around him?
A sharp knock jolted her.
“I found you something to put on.” His deep voice carried through the door. “I’ll leave them on the toilet.”
The door cracked, and his broad shoulders filled the frame as he set down a bundle of clothes without looking her way.
“Okay,” Lily said, forcing a casual note into her voice. No big deal. She’d just molested the sheriff like a cat in heat, but it was fine. Absolutely normal behavior. “Thanks. I’ll be right out.”
He closed the door. She quickly dressed, slipping into loose gray sweatpants rolled at the waist, a soft navy-and-red flannel, and thick wool socks. The clothes were warm and soft and smelled faintly of clean laundry detergent and that same masculine woodsy scent she’d noticed on his jacket.
She paused, letting the warmth and comfort of them steady her before opening the door.