Falling for the Guy Next Door (6 page)

“Watch your
footing.” Jack’s arm looped around her waist, loosely, ready to
catch her if she fell.

She was
acutely aware of his body brushing against her side again and again
as they picked their way across the uneven ground. Neither of them
said another word, but the silence was filled with a sense of
anticipation rather than awkward. Her heart hammered ten-to-one at
what she was about to do, and not all those extra beats were
unadulterated lust.

Could she
really walk away in the morning without a scratch?

She glanced up
at his profile, a shadowland of ridges and deep hollows. He was a
feast of rugged beauty for her eyes but it was the grin she
couldn’t see now that undid her every time. The very thought of
that lopsided grin scrambling those perfect angles and creasing
softly into his jaw was enough to make her sigh with pure
longing.

Yes, she
decided, yes she could. He’d stripped her pride and left her
wanting, desperately wanting, and that’s what tonight was about. To
prove that he’d got it wrong and sate her body in the process.
She’d never wanted forever, she’d just wanted a little more. She
hadn’t intended to cage him, she’d only wondered when or if she’d
see him again. Apparently that was the death knell to a passionate
sex-affair. He hadn’t actually accused her of being pathetically
clingy, but his actions had left her feeling that and worse.

Well, she
could do the not-a-single-string-attached night of passion without
a pang of emotion other than red-hot ecstasy.

Jack’s Land
Rover was parked near the edge of the field, the last car before
the wooden fence. He’d beeped the remote to unlock it as they
approached, but still guided her around to the passenger side. When
his arm fell from her waist, Megan slid between him and his
intentions to open the door. She was done with waiting. She put her
back against the cool metal and fit her hands on his hips.

He went still
beneath her touch.

“Megan?” His
voice was raw and seemed to be both a question and a rebuke. “What
are you doing?”

She tilted her
face up to him. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the starlight yet, but
she felt the intensity of his gaze.

“Absolutely
anything you want.” She gave a playful tug that caught him unawares
and brought him one step closer. “Your game. Your rules.”

“This is a
mistake,” he growled. Hands pressed to her shoulders, he pushed her
firmly back against the car door. “We are not going to do
this.”

The problem
was, he’d come with, his body slanting over her and his breathing
ragged against her cheek. The muggy August evening air folded
around them, but it was the electrical charge humming between them
that heated her from the inside out. She hadn’t misread the
signals. He wanted her as desperately as she wanted him. Fire raced
through her veins, melting her in all the right places.

Oh, we are
so going to do this and more.
She dipped beneath the front of
his T-Shirt, her nails scraping lightly over bare skin and a
dusting of chest hair.

“Aw, hell.”
The curse was a guttural groan of aching need. His hands came up,
his fingers threading through her hair, guiding her head back as
his mouth covered hers in a demanding kiss, parting her lips and
thrusting his tongue deep inside.

He tasted of
pear and malt whiskey, a blend of pure erotica. She met his
plunging kiss, stroke for stroke, slipping her arms around him,
palms splayed over the rock-hard definition of his back as she
pushed onto her toes and slid up against his body. Her nipples
brushed the cool cotton of his T-Shirt and peaked with tingling
heat.

He broke the
kiss to taste a line along her jaw. “You drive me crazy.” His
tongue flickered over a sensitive spot behind her earlobe that
evoked a moan from deep within her throat. “I can’t think straight
when you’re around.”

I can’t
think straight when you’re not around.
All those months, seven
to be exact, she’d thought she’d die happy if she never set eyes on
Jack Marlin ever again and that was clearly a load of crap. She
arched her neck to give him access as his lips trailed down her
throat and along the groove of her collarbone. “I want you…all of
you,” she whimpered, clawing at his back as the pressure of desire
swarmed in her veins.
I never stopped wanting you.
She knew
better than to let that nugget slip out. “Jack, please…”

He didn’t
leave her begging. In one movement, he had her propped against the
car door with her legs wrapped around his waist and his erection
grinding heat straight through the layers of her cotton trousers
and his thick denim.

His mouth
crashed down on hers once more and her hands pushed through his
hair, grabbing for purchase against the wave of lust swelling from
her core. He worked the top buttons of her shirt loose and slid the
lacy edge of her bra beneath her breast, his thumb thrumming whorls
of agonising pleasure over her exposed nipple. His tongue plunged
hard and deep in possessive strokes that mimicked the slow rocking
motion of his hips that dragged friction between her thighs. A hot
ache spread wild and fast. Too much. Not enough. The same fever
pulsed in his veins. It was in the urgency of his deep exploration
and his ragged breaths when he pulled out to alternate with
slanting kisses that caught and tugged at her lower lip.

This was what
she’d wanted. What she’d needed for so, so long. To tingle, crash
and burn…burn for him.

Suddenly a
wall of laughter, music and chattering slammed into the piece of
night they’d stolen for themselves. Jack’s next slanted kiss slid
all the way off her lips as he pulled away.

She bit down
on a cry of frustration and glanced over her shoulder to see two
couples spilling from the pub’s rear entrance. They strolled in the
direction of the far side of the field, but it was too late. She
felt Jack withdraw from her even before the delicious warmth of his
hand left her breast. There was a sense of iron control to his
movements as he stepped back and slid her gently, firmly to her
feet.

He took
another step back and folded his arms. He might as well have hung a
No Right Of Way
sign around his neck. The passionate high
drained through her confused hormones, leaving her breathless and
slightly dazed.

“Are you
okay?” he asked softly, raw hunger straining at the determination
set in his jaw.

No, she wanted
to scream. With shaky fingers, she adjusted the cup of her bra and
did up her buttons. Her eyes searched his, trying to understand
what had changed. Her throat went dry. “Oh, God, you seriously
meant it when you said this was a mistake.”

“You’d think
so too, if you hadn’t…”

“If I
hadn’t…?” Understanding finally came to her. “You think I’m drunk
and don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Not drunk.”
He gave a wry grin. “But you’ve had enough wine to lower your
inhibitions.”

This just got
better and better. “I don’t need lowered inhibitions in order to
enjoy sex for the sheer hell of it.”

“You do when
you’re still mad at me from the last time you indulged.”

“Don’t flatter
yourself,” she snorted, cursing both his arrogance and the truth.
No way could he ever find out that she’d barely looked at another
man since that night, let alone been tempted. He’d make mincemeat
of that, season it with leftovers from her pride and feed it to his
commitment phobia. “I’ve indulged plenty since.”

His arms
unfolded. He pushed his hands through his hair, then brought them
down and hitched his thumbs in the belt of his jeans. “Would you
care to state a number?” he asked casually.

Too casually.
The suggestion that he might give a damn bristled the hairs at her
nape. The scowl riding his brows and the intensity of his gaze
unwound the anger she’d coiled for the night. This primate ‘you’re
my girl’ thing he had going on was so typical Jack and such a load
of shit. She knew first hand that his actions seldom lived up to
his attitude.

“After you,
Jack.” Her smile was sickly sweet and something that felt a lot
like panic clawed at her belly. She did so not want to hear this
answer. But now the question was out there, and a darkness inside
her, compelling her to press on. “A rough estimate will do. Ten?
Twenty?”

He remained
silent. The pause seemed to stretch to infinity and then he pulled
out that grin that eased his scowl and dimpled his cheek and turned
her knees to butter. Her breath caught and the rest of her ached
for what she’d started and he refused to finish.

Why wouldn’t
he take what she offered and call it his lucky day? She hadn’t been
generating that heat all on her own. He’d been hot, hard and
pulsing between her thighs with no good reason to back down.

All the angst
and over-thinking was her style, not his.

Oh! She glared
at him, her cheeks stinging at the unvoiced accusation. Not again.
Friggin’ unbelievable. This time he hadn’t even waited until the
morning after.

“You missed
the part where I said ‘your game, your rules.’ Is that what you’re
afraid of? Seriously? That I’d wake up sober beside you and demand
more than you’re bloody able to give?” She covered the precious
distance he’d claimed to jab a finger at his chest. “Where did you
get this warped idea of me? Maybe I wouldn’t normally sleep with a
guy unless I feel there’s some potential for a future, but I’ve
never expected a life-long commitment from anyone up front.”

She jabbed at
his chest again. He glanced down, then up to meet her hard stare
again, but made no effort to stop the jabbing. He looked a little
shell-shocked.

“I’m a big
girl, Jack, I know that sometimes things work out and sometimes
they don’t…and you know what? Maybe sometimes I’m entitled to enjoy
a fling without your preconceived notions making me feel worse than
shit.”

She paused to
gulp down a much-needed breath.

He took the
gap with a drawled, “Are you done?”

I’m just
getting warmed up.
This fight had been brewing inside her for
far too long and Kate had been spot on. It was exhilarating to
finally get it out of her system.

She shook her
head, giving one last jab before standing back.

“And for the
record, I never expected more than a couple of nights from you. Why
would I, when you’ve never let a single visit over-stay three
days?” Her voice pitched in anger. Of course she’d dealt with
stirrings that went deeper than sex, but she’d never put that on
Jack. She’d known his limits and she’d kept well within them. “What
I did expect was respect, for me as a woman, for our
friendship.”

“I’ve always
respected you.”

Yeah, right.
“I wasn’t a stranger you picked up in a bar and never had to see
again.”

“Come on,
Megan, that isn’t why—”

“You changed
your cell number,” she said, feeling the chill rippling over her
spine all over again. That moment of discovery was, quite possibly,
the most humiliating moment in her life.

“My phone met
with an untimely accident.” His expression indicated he still
didn’t get it. “I got an emergency replacement from a different
service provider and ended up staying with the new contract.”

“The very next
day?” That’s how long she’d waited before calling, hoping to gain
some measure over her anger so they could have a calm and collected
conversation. “That’s quite a coincidence.”

Suddenly he
couldn’t meet her eyes. He grimaced and studied her feet.

“I thought
not.” She gave a disgruntled laugh. “I had no intention of stalking
you! Stupid me, for believing we could have a rational discussion
about how to play through our attraction without making life
impossible in the future. Sex was always going to complicate
matters, but I thought once we’d burned through the passion, we
could find a way to go forward without too much baggage.”

Now she was
done. She was trembling from head to toe, her heart pounding,
pushing tears to her eyes. She fingered the bulge of her keys at
her hip pocket, but she was over the limit and couldn’t drive. She
clamped her jaw and glanced across the field to the welcoming light
that hung over the pub’s rear entrance. That option involved too
many explanations she wasn’t ready to give. She supposed the
two-mile walk home in the dark wouldn’t kill her, but what the
hell!

Megan spun on
her heels and yanked open the Land Rover’s passenger door. As she
slid into the seat, however, she decided she wasn’t quite done.
What she had to say next would probably confirm his worst
suspicions: she was an emotional wimp, a sucker for
happy-ever-after. But this was her unzipped and she needed it all
out there, whether he could handle it or not.

Jack hadn’t
moved a muscle, hadn’t said a word.

“I wasn’t
trying to chain you down to a commitment. When I asked where we
went from there, it was an opening to lay down some ground rules we
could both live with.” She couldn’t meet his gaze, kept her eyes
level with his chest. “You and Frank were all the family either of
you had. You spent so little time here with him as it was, Jack, I
didn’t want you to have yet another reason to stay away.”

She pulled the
door closed and settled into her seat. Her head fell back, her eyes
squeezed tight to hold the tears in that were closing around her
heart and swelling her throat. She hadn’t realised how much that
unleashed fight had been holding her together. Now it was gone and
she was falling apart. The pressure on her chest had lifted too, a
weight she’d grown so accustomed to, she almost missed it. She
wanted to weep like a baby and she wasn’t even sure why.
Relief…perhaps? Right or wrong, she cared what Jack thought of her
and for the longest time, he’d been thinking the worst.