Chapter 13
JEREMIAH
“If you don’t stop staring at her, I’m going to pluck your eyeballs out.” Holly’s fingernails scraped against my five o’clock shadow. “You’re making me nauseous.”
“How can I be looking at anyone but you when you’re two inches from my nose and blocking everything with your enormous head, Holly?”
Almost everything. In my peripheral vision, I saw a blur of dessert-hued hair as Lennon twirled off her stool. She was heading for the exit—alone.
I covered Holly’s hands with my own and pried them from my face. “I’ll be back.”
I slipped out the door, ignoring Holly’s dramatic sigh behind me.
There were bears out there. Probably not right by the door, but somewhere nearby.
At the very least, there were raccoons. Raccoons didn’t used to be a problem in Wyoming, but then the rich people came and somehow they brought the raccoons with them.
And now Lennon was outside all alone with the raccoons.
I pushed through the heavy wooden doors and tripped right over Lennon. With a startled yelp, she drove her elbow straight into my ribs.
“Fuck!” I gasped. I doubled over as I struggled to inhale a full breath.
She did a double take over her shoulder, then whirled to face me. “What did I tell you about sneaking up on women in the dark, Jeremiah?” she demanded. She gave my shoulder a not-very-gentle shove. “What. Did. I. Tell. You.”
“Bad,” I wheezed.
“That’s right. Bad. The opposite of good. And now look at yourself.”
Why would I look at myself when I could look at her? So I stared at her while I tried to catch my breath. She shook her head as if she were disappointed in me. Her diamond earring sparkled in the flicker of the fake-flame lamps that hung on either side of the door.
She planted her fists on her hips. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
I held up a finger to indicate that I still needed a moment. She waited. I straightened and bent to the side, stretching out the kink in my ribs from her damned elbow.
“Well?” she demanded.
“You’re missing an earring,” I said.
She blinked at me like it took her a moment to comprehend the words, and then her hands flew to her earlobes to verify. Her face fell. “Shit.” She looked at her feet as if she expected to find her earring there. It wasn’t. “Shit.”
“Expensive?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She squeezed her eyes shut, sighing. “What was I thinking wearing them out here? But I never take them off.” Her eyes popped open. “It must have happened during Blood Ball.” She groaned. “I’ll never find it.”
“I’ll take a look tomorrow.”
She laughed. “For a tiny diamond in a field? Okay. Good luck.”
I rubbed my jaw and shrugged. “I’m pretty good at finding things.”
People, mostly. Information, too. That was what I had done in my prior life.
Search and rescue operations for people we couldn’t afford to lose.
I had to bite back the urge to tell her that I had a one hundred percent success rate.
What the hell was that about? Bragging had always made me uncomfortable.
What did I care about impressing Lennon?
But I did care.
“What are you doing out here, Lennon?” I asked.
“Getting some air. Looking for stars. Alas.” She gestured to the dark, cloudy sky. “What about you?”
“Same. Air. Stars.”
Her head tilted as she considered me. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re always around.
Keeping me warm. Scaring off assholes. Protecting me in games I have no business playing.
So, no, Jeremiah. I don’t think you’re out here counting stars.
I think you’re here for me.” She swayed closer.
Her eyes moved over my face. “Are you going to deny that?”
I shook my head. My heart thumped so hard in my chest I wondered if she could feel the vibrations of it like an earthquake.
She rolled up on her toes. Pressed her lips to mine. The world stilled. It was a shock, her soft, warm mouth. The closeness. The feel. She pulled back before I had fully recovered from it.
I gave her an incredulous look as she rolled back down.
Like hell.
I followed her down until my mouth found hers again. My right hand cupped the back of her head, my left arm banded around her waist, and I bent her back, keeping our bodies tight together. She flung her arms around my neck and fucking smiled against my mouth.
“Finally,” she murmured.
That was all I needed to lick my way in. And there was that thirst again, crackling through my veins like wildfire, burning everything in its wake—reason, sanity, morality—until all that was left of me was this thirst.
She came with me when I straightened and wrapped her legs around my waist. She tasted sweet like tequila, and I was dizzy with thirst. I tilted her back against the wall.
Leaned into her. The sudden rough contact of being pelvis to pelvis with her knocked the breath out of me, and we groaned into each other’s mouths.
And then her lips latched onto my tongue and she sucked. I felt it everywhere. My tongue. My chest. My dick. Everything ached. Everything craved.
The sound I made wasn’t fully human. I wrenched my mouth from hers and dropped my forehead to the wall, panting. It didn’t feel good, the rough wood biting into my skin. I pushed harder.
Slowly I became aware of soft fingers sifting through my hair, tugging gently. I lifted my head and looked at her. Sweet brown eyes with those pretty green rings met mine. Her lips, puffy and pink from kissing, shifted from a smile to a smirk.
“So, you’re saying it’s a bad idea to fuck against the saloon wall where everyone can see us?” she teased drily.
I couldn’t help the hoarse laugh that escaped me. The things this woman said. I never expected it. “Probably. Yeah.”
“Yeah,” she echoed. “Well, that’s a damn shame.”
She unhooked her legs from my waist and I put her on her feet. My brain knew we couldn’t fuck against the wall, but my body was raising excellent points. I couldn’t seem to stop touching her hair, twisting it in my fingers.
A throat clearing behind us had us both freezing in place, staring at each other with wide eyes. Slowly we turned to face Cecily.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she deadpanned.
“Nope,” Lennon said breezily. “Just looking at the stars.”
Cecily looked up. The sky was nothing but clouds. She raised her eyebrows at us. “Sure. Anyway, people are starting to head out. Grace is going home with Emma and crashing there. Lennon, you and I are with Tamilee.”
Lennon took a step forward, but I pulled her back by a belt loop. “I’ll take Lennon. We’re going to the same place, anyway.”
Cecily made a huff of disbelief under her breath. “Don’t take this personally, boss, but I need to hear Lennon say she’s okay with that. Girl code.”
Girl code? Because—shit. I had just implied that Lennon was spending the night with me. “I mean, Mateo, Holly, Lennon, and I are all going to the same place.” Great, now it sounded like an orgy. “The ranch,” I clarified. “Not my bedroom.”
Lennon snickered. Heat rose up my neck.
“Sure. Whatever.” Cecily crossed her arms, chin jutting stubbornly. “Still need to hear it from Lennon.”
“I’m fine, Cecily,” Lennon said on a choked laugh. “Jeremiah can drive me home. Thank you.”
If Mateo had thoughts about me dropping him and Holly off at their cabins before Lennon, he kept them to himself. Holly did not. She was still walking up the path to her front door when my phone buzzed with her text.
Holly
I don’t trust her.
Me
You don’t trust anyone.
Holly
That’s not true. I trust Mother Clucker.
Me
This might come as a shock to you, but Mother Clucker is not a person. She’s a chicken.
Holly unlocked the door and flipped on the light, illuminating the middle finger she raised at me.
“That’s an odd way to thank you for the ride home,” Lennon remarked.
“Yeah, well, Holly’s a little odd.” I shifted into drive and circled back onto the dirt road to the guest cabins. “But her heart’s in the right place.”
Lennon bugged her eyes out in mock disbelief, one hand slapping delicately to her chest. “Holly has a heart?”
I chuckled. “She does, something you’d find out pretty damn quick if you hurt someone she loves.” I reflected. “Or Mother Clucker.”
She twisted in her seat to face me. “Okay, what is the deal with that? Why a chicken?”
“Ask her yourself.”
Lennon pulled back, wrinkling her nose. “I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.” I glanced sideways at her. “You know the reason you two don’t get along is because you’re too much alike, right? If you really got to know each other, you’d be inseparable.”
“That is a terrible thing to say.” She flicked my thigh, making me laugh. “Why do you care if Holly and I are friends, anyway? I’m only here until the end of July.”
I didn’t want to think about that. Not her leaving, and definitely not why it might mean something to me for her to get along with people I cared about. “Just trying to prevent carnage, that’s all.”
“You know Holly started it, right? I have been perfectly pleasant.”
“Holly doesn’t warm up to anyone easily.” Especially not people she doesn’t trust. I pulled up to her cabin and cut the engine. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
“It’s ten steps.”
“I’ll walk you to your door.”
She was halfway out of the truck when she paused to smirk at me over her shoulder. “Are you going to give me a gentlemanly goodnight kiss?”
I shot her a look as I unbuckled, maintaining eye contact as I left the truck and came around to her door. “No.”
“No?” Surprise and disappointment flashed in her dark eyes.
I took her hand to help her down. “No. I’m not going to give you a gentlemanly kiss goodnight because I can’t be a gentleman with you right now. If I start kissing you, I’m not going to stop.”
Her face tilted closer to mine. “You could come in.”
Fuck, I wanted to. Saying no hadn’t ever been a problem for me and I didn’t understand why it was now. Yes should feel like love. Safe and manageable. There was nothing manageable about what I wanted to do with Lennon. It was wild and ferocious.
My gaze dipped to her mouth, and I groaned. “I think you might be drunk, honey.”
“Not drunk. Tipsy. Still fully able to consent to this.” She nipped at my jaw. “If you want to.”
“I want to.” Fuck, did I ever. My hands flexed on her hips. “But I can’t.”
With a soft laugh, she ducked under my arm and headed for her door. “All right, Boy Scout.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets so I wouldn’t reach for her and followed her to her door.
She glanced back at me as she dug her key out of her bag. “That’s the weird thing about this place, you know. Everyone here is a Boy Scout.”
Her smile was fuzzy around the edges. Definitely tipsy. She swayed slightly, and I yanked my hands out of my pockets in time to steady her. Touching her was dangerous, but I couldn’t let her fall either. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She whipped the key out of her bag with a flourish, like she expected applause. “I mean, everyone knows CPR. Not just the people who work here. The guests know CPR, too. That’s a Boy Scout thing, right?”
I stilled. “You don’t know CPR?”
“No, I don’t know CPR.” She blew a raspberry. “That’s ridiculous. Where would I learn CPR?”
I stared down at her. She stared back, her doe eyes big and deceptively guileless, like maybe she really didn’t understand what she was telling me. I took the key from her, unlocked the door, and nudged her inside. “Get some rest, Lennon.”
I drove back to the lodge with my dick aching and my head a goddamn mess. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with this woman, but one thing I knew for damn sure. You didn’t come out of the military without knowing CPR. The same applied to first responders.
Lennon Graves had been lying since the first day she came to Mercy River Ranch.