Long Shot (14 page)

“And I’m two hundred and forty pounds.”

She patted the side of the truck. “I can’t hold that over the cab. Get up in there and hold it while I drive. I’ll go slow and careful. I promise.”

“This is eight million kinds of illegal, you know, driving around with big stuff not strapped down.”

She made a dramatic glance up and down the empty streets, then peered down the long stretch of Route 6, where there were no lights. No cars. “Who’s going to see? And besides, you’re
Leith MacDougall
. Come on, big guy. Pretty soon you’ll be in Connecticut and you won’t be able to go five miles over the limit before you’re thrown in the slammer. Enjoy your freedom, my friend.”

Though he rolled his eyes, he hopped up into the cab and gripped the caber, swinging it up so the narrow tip rested on the truck cab and the thicker end was wedged well into a corner. He crouched, holding the whole thing in place. “Where to now, boss? Where are we relocating this thing?”

He didn’t like the way she smiled at him, so full of secrets. “Keys?”

After a slight pause, he dug into his pocket and tossed them down to her.

“Just up the road,” she said. “Hemmertex. You’re going to throw that big stick for me.”

Chapter

12

H
e wasn’t going to throw. There was no doubt about that. Yet he crouched in the back of his truck as the thing thundered under his boots, going where Jen was driving him. Because he’d lost the silly darts game? Partly. Because he didn’t want to let her go tonight? Most definitely.

The caber was tilted up and over his head, his fingers latched around it from underneath. Funny how the weight and length of a caber could differ from place to place, competition to competition, but the feel of the wood was so similar.

Jen kept her word and drove like an old lady on the way to church. She flicked on the brights as she pulled off Route 6 and headed down the long drive onto Hemmertex land. She crossed the empty parking lot on a diagonal, angling for the large lawn on the northeast side of the building. She killed the engine but kept the headlights blaring into the darkness.

He stood as she exited the cab, and he felt like a giant looking down at her upturned face.

“The athletics field is going to be just beyond that line of bushes. I need to know if it’s big enough.”

“Isn’t that Duncan’s job as AD?”

She grinned. “Duncan isn’t here.”

“We couldn’t do this tomorrow?”

“No time. Booked solid pretty much every minute of daylight from now until the games. I need you tonight, Dougall.”

There was something else in those words, something he’d been looking for, dying to hear. Just yesterday she would have looked away after having said something like that. Just yesterday she would have glossed over it, pretended she hadn’t inserted a hidden meaning. Ignored her own intentions, her own desires.

But right then, she seemed to remember very well how he’d kissed her.

“So.” She planted a hand on the back hatch. “Go on out there, throw the thing and tell me if I have enough room.”

She was damn sure she had enough room. In fact, he could pretty much bet that she’d already been out there with measuring tape and survey equipment and a GPS system to ensure the place was absolutely perfect. She was just playing with him, thinking she was lightening the mood, trying to get him to smile after all the sadness she’d seen inside Da’s house.

They’d had an incredible evening; every second, every laugh, every word nudged them close together. He wasn’t about to let the big giant elephant wedge itself between them. He’d talk her out of throwing. He’d distract her by what they both wanted.

Putting one hand on the side of the truck, he launched himself over, landing heavily on the cracked asphalt. Straightening, he saw her catch her breath. Saw the way her eyes had gone a bit glossy, a bit lost.
Good.
He felt pulled toward her from deep inside, as though the very essence of him, down to his molecules, was calling to her, and she was answering.

“Wow,” she whispered. Or maybe it was more like an exhale, with a curse unknowingly tagged on.

“What?”

She threw an exasperated hand at his chest. “No one should look as good as you do in a green plaid shirt. It’s a ridiculous thing to wear. I mean, really.”

Suddenly it was his most favorite shirt in the whole world. “I can’t throw, Jen.”

“Sure you can.” She reached over and flipped open the truck hatch. The caber, having been braced by the hatch, slid out.

“Jesus!” Leith lunged, caught the stick just before it hit the ground. “Watch the truck!”

“Sorry, sorry.” She helped him get it out and laid it on the grass just inside the yellow circle made by the headlights.

He moved to the back of the truck, forcing her to follow.

“You’re not actually thinking about welching on the bet, are you?”

He turned around, mid-eye-roll, to find her much, much closer than he expected. There was a soundless
bang
inside his mind and a virtual lurch of his heart as he looked down at her and found himself caught between two worlds.

The thing was, for the last ten years, all he’d had of her was the past. An eighteen-year-old Jen owned the images and memories that had remained in his mind, and they carried such mixed messages. Most good. Some sour.

He realized something profound. It felt better to be with her today than it had back then,
because
of the time spent apart. Because of who they’d become during those years. Because of who they were today.

“I’m not welching,” he said, suddenly finding it difficult to swallow. “I haven’t been—”

“Don’t even say you haven’t been working out.”

“I was going to say training, which is an entirely different thing. And I’m not warmed up at all.”

“So get warmed up.”

The invitation couldn’t have been more intentional, more sexy. Just looking at her mouth fed his brain some pretty wicked pictures—ones sprouted from memories of what she’d once felt like, and enhanced by a man’s experience and exposure. And ones from just a few days ago, when he’d teased himself with her lips. The things he wanted to do to her . . . the things he wanted her to do to him . . .

But.

This had all happened once before. He’d pursued her, caught her, and in the end she’d slipped free, run off. Only this time he was under no assumption that she would stay. After all, neither would he. So why did he still want more? He knew the dangers, the stakes, and yet he wanted to be more to her than someone reappearing out of the past. He wanted her to be more than that to him, but there was no way, in this universe, that that could happen.

Fuck it.

He grabbed her. Just shoved his hand around her waist, pulled her to him with a not-so-tender yank, and wrapped his other arm around her body, fingers splayed between her shoulder blades. He waited for her to protest, to push away, to say something that would contradict her earlier invitation, but then he felt the pressure of her arms around his neck, and it wasn’t gentle at all.

Despite the speed of the embrace, the clinging desperation of it all, the kiss happened slowly. It took forever to reach her mouth, and he savored every millisecond.

The other night against his back door, that hadn’t been a true kiss. This,
this
, was their first kiss.

He thought “first” kiss because it was, in fact, entirely new. A first kiss with this new woman he somehow knew so well. It was the strangest feeling in the world. And also the most wonderful, the most natural. All his other first kisses—yes, even with her that night outside the Stone—had been precursors to true emotion, driven solely by a teenager’s throbbing need. But this time, the emotions were already there. Already strong. His head felt light, spinning. His arms tightened on their own, needing no prodding from his brain. Tilting his head, he deepened the kiss.

Holy hell, her mouth. He couldn’t exactly recall her taste from all those years ago, but it didn’t matter because it was now all new. Jen. Here. Now. The taste on his tongue was exquisite—fine and sweet and rich. They were perfectly in tune, on the same beat, sharing the same need as the pressure and intensity of the kiss evolved into something almost painfully hard and teasingly soft.

In the back of his mind he was sure he’d kissed other women in the past ten years, positive that he’d slept with some of them, too, but the feel of Jen in his arms, in his mouth, erased all that. There were no others. He couldn’t recall a single moment in time when she wasn’t wrapped around him. Couldn’t remember a single one of those bad dates and relationships with unsuitable women.

Her fingers curled into his hair. She’d never been able to do that before, and it caused waves of sensation to ripple across his scalp. She gripped him like he was about to dissolve, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He wasn’t going anywhere.

He was, however, losing it. Fast. The fact that she’d angled her body, turning him so his back hit the lowered hatch, and then essentially started to climb him, didn’t help. If there was anything he needed right now, it was control.

In a swift movement, their mouths never releasing, he flipped her so her back was the one against the truck. There was a moment’s pause, a simple stillness of her mouth that either spoke of shock or dislike, but he didn’t care. He sank down, knees bent, and nudged her legs apart so that he could fit himself against her body. As he expected, it was the perfect puzzle piece, the one you search for on that table of a thousand tiny others.

He thought he might have made some sort of sound, because he could feel his throat vibrate, but he couldn’t hear himself over the way her presence rang in his mind. And maybe he was moving, too, but his body seemed to be following the direction of his heart. Blood thumped in raging rhythms in his dick, and his movements were loose and uncontrolled.

Then she started to move. The slow undulations of her hips, perfectly angling the sweet warmth of her body against his hard-on, suddenly made him intensely aware of himself and his needs. As well as their past and lack of any future.

He wrenched his mouth away, desperate to breathe. Desperate to take hold of reality again. His forehead dropped to the curve of her neck, and he thought the whole world might shake with the force of his heartbeat. Her hands slid from his head, over his shoulders, to rest on his chest. Her cheek felt so warm against his ear.

“Jesus, Jen . . .”

He meant to take a break, to get a handle on himself, he really did. But there was hot, soft skin less than an inch from his lips. His tongue darted out, and it was just that little taste that got him going again. Pushing a hand into the hair that felt as smooth and dark and luxurious as it looked, he tilted her head to an angle he liked and gave himself the exquisite treat of her neck. At first she offered no resistance, and images of how else he could arrange her—on her back, on her knees, on her belly—flashed in smoky, sexy moving pictures behind his eyelids.

Then she pushed him off her, his mouth releasing, and his face was in her small hands. Her mouth was swollen, her eyes clear with wide-eyed wonder.

“I think I missed you,” she said. Then she gave a little shake of her head as if to clear it and even in the very dim light, he could tell she’d reddened. She hadn’t meant to say that; the admission had sneaked out under cover of desire, and he loved it.

“You think?” he teased. With a nudge of his chin, he indicated the big, open back of his pickup truck. “I want to see you up there.”

She glanced dubiously over her shoulder. “Are you forgetting the last time we tried to do it in the back of a truck? We woke up the whole town with the squeaking.”

He ran a loving hand over the taillight. “Aw, that was the old truck with the bad suspension and the rusty fender. This baby’s practically brand new. Made for me in every way.”

She rolled her eyes, but it was with a smile.

“Come on. Get on in.” Then, leaning over to brush her lips with words, he added, “Promise the only thing that’ll be making noise up there is you.”

The way she drew back no more than a centimeter, the way her breath gave a little hiccup, had him shaking with anticipation. If lust had an image, it was her face at that moment. Her body felt so warm and free, but there was still an underlying tension, issuing a challenge he was more than willing to take up. He wanted to explore her new curves with his eyes and mouth and hands. He was dying to know how his larger body would fit into hers.

Maybe it reeked of caveman, but there was something about being that much bigger than her. Something incredibly appealing about having such a delicate, gorgeous thing all to himself, to protect and take care of. Something undeniably humbling about having that small, lovely woman want to take him into her body.

Wrapping his hands around her waist, he lifted her up without any sort of warning, her perfect little ass dropping onto the hatch. She let out a little yelp of surprise, and there was no mistaking the glare in her eye over that one. She looked ready to hop down and then climb back up, just to say it had been on her terms. Fingers splayed over her thighs, he held her in place and smiled up at her.

At last she answered him with a kiss, and a long, lingering lick of her tongue. He groaned and she pulled back with a wicked twist to her lips, just as he was about to go in for something deeper and harder. Hands next to her butt, she scooted back, out of his reach. Looking at him with sparkling anticipation, her face framed between her bent and raised knees, the picture of her made him go completely brain-dead.

She moved farther back. “It’s hard up here.”

He chuckled. “Yep. It certainly is.”

“Walked right into that one.”

“You sure did. There’s a blanket in that metal box by the cab.”

Bad suggestion. Bad, bad suggestion. The second she rolled over onto her knees and started crawling for the silver corrugated box in which he kept some essential tools, his mouth started watering. Her ass swayed as she moved, calling to him. He hopped up, the truck lurching violently but, keeping him true to his word, with no awful squeaky protests.

Jen had one hand on the box and was ready to open it. He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and wrapped a hand around the front of her thigh, dragging her away from the box and closer to him.