Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (12 page)

"You could have been killed! Do you know that? You could have fallen and broken your stupid neck!" She took a halfhearted swipe at him with the club. "Who do you think you are--Errol Flynn swinging around on rooftops? You could have been killed!"

Sitting up on the bed, Jake leaned back to dodge a second swing of the club. "Well, I wasn't--but I have a feeling you're bent on rectifying the situation."

Dixie sniffed as the tears began to come in earnest. Aftershocks shuddered through her, and her strength flagged. This time when she swept the golf club in Jake's direction, he caught it by the shaft. In the blink of an eye he was on his feet and had Dixie in his arms. The club dropped harmlessly to the floor.

Dixie fell against his chest gladly, crying into his sweatshirt. She burrowed against him, seeking out his solid strength, his masculine warmth, trying to calm herself with the reality of him. He was safe. He was here.

"Hey," he whispered, burying a hand in the wild curls of her chestnut mane. "What happened to that cool-headed lady who was interrogating me while I was hanging from that ledge?"

"She's crying all over your shirt," she mumbled. She wrapped her arms around his lean hard waist in a fierce grip. "You scared the living daylights out of me."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, bending down to press a kiss to the top of her head. He rubbed his cheek against the silk of her hair and breathed in the scent of lilies of the valley. She was crying because she'd been afraid for him, because she cared for him. That idea warmed him like nothing ever had. He hugged her a little tighter and kissed her ear. "I never meant to scare you, sweetheart. It was supposed to be a surprise."

What the hell? he thought as he rocked her in his arms. If he had to make something up, why not this? It wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to be in Dixie's bedroom all along, anyway.

"I was surprised all right. I thought you were a cat burglar. You're just lucky I left my gun in the truck."

"Yeah. I thought it would have been embarrassing enough explaining falling off the roof. Having you shoot me would have topped that, I guess."

A chuckle escaped Dixie as she tipped her head back and looked up at him. "Were you really climbing up here just to surprise me?"

His smile tightened a fraction. "Can you think of a better reason?"

"I swear, I can't think at all since I met you," she said, shaking her head. "I didn't have you pegged for a romantic adventurer, though." Jake clicked his tongue and gave her a look of mock disappointment. "You shouldn't have had me pegged at all, Dixie. You shouldn't go around trying to pin labels on people."

One corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. "Touch�."

He brushed her tears away with his thumbs and gave her a tender look. "All done crying?" At her nod he gave her a wicked grin. "Good, because I can think of lots better things to do with our time."

He pulled her down to the bed, falling once again on the tangled floral sheets and fluffy comforter. He slanted his mouth across hers in a kiss brimming with sweet passion, and the power of the attraction that sizzled between them burned away his determination to settle questions first. With Dixie warm and willing in his arms he couldn't think why it mattered who or where Devon Stafford was. Dixie was the mystery he wanted to explore--slowly and intimately.

Dixie arched up against him. She tangled her hands in his hair, loving the feel of the silky strands between her fingers, loving the velvety texture of his tongue as it slid against hers. He tasted dark and rich and the feel of him against her was heaven.

She swept her hands across his broad shoulders and down his back, tugging the hem of his sweatshirt up, baring smooth hard flesh with each inch. He broke the kiss long enough to discard his gloves, then the shirt, yanking it over his head and flinging it across the room.

Dixie grinned. "Aren't you gonna go fold that properly and put it in its place?"

"I'm more interested in putting you in your place," he said, leaning over her, his voice a low purr that set all her nerve ends humming.

Her gaze drifted down from the mischief in his eyes to the muscles of his shoulders and chest. He was beautifully sculpted, perfectly proportioned, his tan skin dusted with a scattering of golden hair. She splayed the fingers of one hand over his breastbone and felt the strong pulsing of his heart.

"And where's my place?" she asked breathlessly, lifting her eyes to meet his again.

"Beneath me," he murmured, lowering himself to kiss her. "Around me, tight, hot."

"Oh, my," Dixie whispered as he pressed himself intimately against her. A low groan escaped her at the delicious sensation of his weight settling over her and at the erotic feel of his maleness straining against her. Already she could imagine the way he would feel inside her--full and throbbing deep within her. "Oh, my, yes," she whispered, stroking her hands down his back and lifting her hips to meet his.

"I want you, Dixie," Jake growled against her throat. "I've wanted you from the first."

"You've got me, sugar," she murmured seductively, tracing a fingernail down the back of his neck. "Make the most of it."

The last tiny shred of sanity slipped from Jake's grasp. His original mission was entirely forgotten. All he could think of now was Dixie. He couldn't get enough of the taste of her or the feel of her soft curves pressing into the hard contours of his body. As with every other time he had gotten too close to her, the electric essence of what made her Dixie completely wiped out his brain's capacity to reason. There was no logic in this, only heat and magic and a desire that seared the very core of him. The attraction that had hummed between them from the first overpowered everything else.

He dragged his mouth from hers and moved downward, murmuring his pleasure as she arched her neck for him. He nibbled kisses along the ivory column, tracing the way first with his fingertips. He lingered at the hollow at the base of her throat, drawing the tip of his tongue over the V of her collarbone and dipping into the shallow well above it. He could feel her pulse there, throbbing, racing, pounding as wildly as his own.

He slid his hand down her robe over her breast. The silk was cool and smooth beneath his palm, the globe beneath it full and ripe. Her nipple hardened to a bead and she gasped as he rubbed the silk fabric over it. Slowly he bent his head and pressed his tongue against the raised pebble of flesh, wringing another gasp from her. He wet the fabric, then blew gently on it. Dixie shuddered beneath him.

Raising up on one arm, he traced the tips of his fingers over the robe to the sash that belted it. With excruciating slowness he untied the wide ribbon until the two sides of the garment slid apart several inches, revealing her nakedness.

Jake trailed a forefinger along her ribs, which rose and fell with each shallow breath. With that same finger he drew the left side of the robe away from her, unveiling more of her body.

She was everything a woman was meant to be. All creamy skin and soft womanly contours. Amber light and shadows emphasized the planes and hollows and slopes. The curve of her hip was a graceful flare, indenting at her small waist. Her breast was large, round and heavy, swollen. Its peak pouted for his attention, the large areola a perfect circle of dusky brown. And below, where her breast met her rib cage, was a--

Jake's heart jolted as his gaze fastened intently on the small tattoo. It wouldn't have been noticeable had she not been on her back; the plumpness of her breast would have hidden it. But there it was--a tiny butterfly. The detail was impeccable, the colors exquisite--saffron and sapphire and fuchsia and emerald.

It was beautiful. It was unique. It was Devon Stafford's. There was no doubt in his mind. The subtle suspicions and hunches rushed to the surface of his mind like air bubbled from the murky depths of his subconscious. The sea star necklace, the lily-of-the-valley perfume, the odd way she held a pen, the angular look of her face as they'd stood in the shadow of the gas pumps at Eldon's. Understanding is such a rare quality in a man. That was a line right out of Full Moon Fever. She'd used it on him the night they'd met. She'd dazed him with it and with the power of her charm. Now the tattoo. It was irrefutable evidence.

Dixie. His curvy down-home Dixie was Devon Stafford, runaway glamour girl, sex symbol of the decade.

He looked at her now, at the cropped-off brown curls and the soft fullness of her face. She was watching him with her big hazel eyes full of expectation and uncertainty. She didn't look anything like the woman who had taken Hollywood by storm. Gone were the long silver-blond locks, the slender body of the health club goddess. The vibrant, emerald green eyes? Contact lenses, of course. The sultry exaggerated pout? Probably collagen injections that had long since worn off. The idol had vanished. All this time she'd been hiding in plain sight, disguised as her real self.

"What's wrong?" she asked, the tremor in her voice betraying her fear that he found her lacking.

"Nothing," he whispered. "Nothing."

Nothing except that he'd been a fool. He'd done exactly what Dixie had accused him of more than once--judged by appearances. She didn't look like the woman on the screen, so he had discounted the clues and ignored his hunches. What he had failed to remember was that the woman on the big screen didn't really exist. Devon Stafford was a creation of Hollywood and they weren't in Hollywood anymore.

A hundred thoughts whirled through his head. Theories, questions--oh, the questions! Why had she left? What had gone wrong? Who was the friend she had lost? But he shut them all out as Dixie raised herself up on her elbows and looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Jake?" she asked, her voice as thin as a thread. "Don't you...don't you want me?"

His heart melted at her question and her expression. It didn't matter who she had been. Right now she was a woman doubting herself. She was vulnerable and sweet and he was falling in love with her. Falling in love--not with Devon Stafford, the ideal woman, but with Dixie La Fontaine, sweet uncertain Dixie with the big heart and the shadows in her eyes.

"I want you more than I want air," he said, and it was the truth. His body ached to join hers. "I want you so bad it hurts."

"Then let's do something about it."

Dixie sat up slowly, pushing Jake back onto his haunches. Her robe slid down off one shoulder. She ignored it, her attention riveted on him.

For a minute there she'd been terrified she'd lost him, just as sure as if he'd fallen off the roof. Insecurities had clogged her throat and flooded her eyes. She liked herself just fine the way she was--full-bodied, curvy--but Jake was a perfectionist and his idea of feminine perfection was a blond wraith, a rail-thin creature with tumbling long hair and pouting lips, a woman who no longer existed in the real world.

For just a second she'd almost wished herself...no. She couldn't be Devon Stafford again, not for Jake, not for anybody. She was Dixie La Fontaine and Jake Gannon would have to love her as she was or not at all.

He muttered a few words in a tone of adoration that broke through her misgivings. He raised his hands to cup her breasts, to lift them and knead them with his long strong fingers. He leaned down to bury his face between them as he rubbed her nipples with his thumbs. A shower of sensual sparks rained through her, drowning her in feeling and desire.

When he sat back again she leaned forward to kiss his chest. She pressed her lips to the skin above his heart, drinking in the warm taste of him. She let her hands roam over him, memorizing each line and slope of muscle. She teased his flat brown nipples the way he had hers, then flicked her tongue across each tight nub, chuckling wickedly at the shudder that passed through his big body.

Hungrily she watched the shiver that rippled the washboard surface of his stomach and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans, and she trailed the fingers of one hand after it, as if she might be able to find it again and capture it. Jake sucked in a breath as she dipped two fingers inside his pants and deftly popped the metal button from its mooring. She eased the zipper down one inch at a time, the sound of it seeming loud enough to fill the room. The denim parted, revealing snow white briefs that strained to contain him. Dixie cupped her hand gently over the end of his shaft, and Jake groaned and swore and struggled for air.

He rocked away from her and twisted off the bed. The jeans and briefs came off in one big knot that was flung aside. He turned back toward her, naked and magnificent, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

"Now let's talk about putting things in their proper places," he said with silky, sexy menace, drawing an excited giggle from Dixie.

He pounced back onto the bed and Dixie squealed and laughed and squirmed as he lowered his body over hers and pressed her into the mattress. She gasped and moaned as he slid down her body, pressing his belly against her feminine mound, catching the thrusting peak of her breast in his mouth.

He sucked at her hungrily, greedily, one breast, then the other, tormenting her nipples with his lips and his tongue as his hand moved to torment her elsewhere. Shifting his weight to the side, he slid his fingers through the nest of dark curls covering her femininity and probed the warm cleft between her thighs. She raised her hips off the bed in invitation, but he only teased her, touching, stroking, never satisfying, yet stoking the fire that burned within her until she thought it would consume her in one wild burst of flame. All the while his mouth tugged at her breast, sending shock waves of pleasure shooting through her to twist into the core of her desire.

She begged him shamelessly, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. He seemed bent on driving her stark raving mad. She could feel herself rushing toward that precipice and would have gratefully hurled herself off, but he pulled away at the last second and her sanity came to a screeching halt.

He kneeled between her thighs, watching her face, his own expression taut with desire.

"I hate to bring this up now," he said, panting for air. "But I'm afraid I'm not exactly fully prepared."