Love, Diamonds, and Spades (11 page)

“Quinn, honey, I swear. We’re just friends—”

“I’m not jealous!”

There was an underlying tone of frustrated honesty there that had him pausing. He was missing something here.

She stared at him, looking almost lost. “I wasn’t jealous. Not really. I was annoyed, of course. And yes, I wanted to pull your arms off and smack you with ‘em for daring to put your lips on another woman after everything you said at Desert Confections yesterday.”

“I told you—”

She narrowed her eyes at him then in exasperation. “Oh, please. If you saw me cuddled up with a man the way you were with Dani just now, confiding in him and letting him kiss my tears away, you’d have gone ballistic on his ass.”

“Damn straight,” he growled.

One perfectly arched exactly-you-moron brow winged up to make her silent point.

“Fine,” he conceded. “I get it, okay. You’re right. You have every right to want to yank my arms off and beat me with them. But you have to see it from my perspective. Dani’s one of my best friends, and I’ve always seen her as a little sister. Whereas any man touching you wouldn’t be able to hold onto a single friggin’ platonic thought in his head no matter how hard he tried. Trust me, I know,” he rumbled with feeling.

Her eyes crinkled at the corners over his grousing but she remained silent.

“I’m sure it looked bad,” he continued, brushing his thumb over her still-heated cheek. “And I’m sorry if it hurt you unintentionally. But from now on, don’t stomp off without checking if your baseless ideas about me aren’t in fact insane.”

“I didn’t. Have any ideas about you, I mean. I wasn’t mad at you, honest.”

“I was…scared.”

Concern streaked through his veins. “Scared about what, honey?”

“You and Dani up there. That was an instant replay of one of the worst moments of my past—the night I’d caught Brody having sex with a groupie…when I was pregnant with Cooper.”

A snarl of outrage burst out of Rylan’s chest. What kind of sack of shit cheats on his pregnant girlfriend?

She placed a hand on his heaving chest. “It’s okay. Really. He’s not worth your anger.”

“But he hurt you,” growled Rylan, rage throbbing through him…until a realization hit him like a battering ram. His hands gripped her shoulders. “Are you telling me that I made you feel the way he did?” Tortured anguish roughened his voice. “Baby, please don’t tell me I hurt you that bad just now.”

She quickly slid her hands up to frame his face. “No. No, Rylan. Of course you didn’t. And
that
was what scared me. That’s why I left. I needed to…think.”

With a deep breath that she held for what seemed like an eternity, a calm seemed to settle over her features, before she explained, “Just now, when I saw you two, I felt jealous, of course. But in a possessive way, not a paranoid way. And the reason why…is because I trust you.” Her eyes shot up to his as if to measure his reaction.

Understanding and something a whole lot more weighty hit him square in the chest.

“I mean it’s crazy,” she said more to herself than him. “There you were in almost the exact same position I saw Brody and his little groupie, and I
trusted
you.”

He gently brushed her hair back away from her face. “And that scared you,” he murmured, reiterating her previous statement, feeling so damn much for this woman and her maddening ways. “So you left. To go think.”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” She brought her eyes up to meet his again. “But I was going to come back. I wouldn’t have missed out on the hitting you with your own arms part.”

He shook his head with gruff tenderness. “You make me crazy, you know that?” He held onto her chin to make sure she heard him. “As far as I’m concerned, when you’re in even remote viewing distance from me, no other woman even exists on the planet. And when you’re not, every spare thought I have revolves around when, and how, and how quickly I can get you back in viewing range, or better yet, back in my arms again. You can
always
trust me.”

He pressed a gentle kiss to the tip of her nose. “Believe me?”

Eyes softening, she nodded, replying quietly, “Yes. And while I know this is just going to make you even more overbearing and cavemanish, you should probably know that I feel the exact same way. About you.”

Well, damn.

Steadying his gaze on her liquid blue eyes to try and slow down the now hammering drum beat tattooing the inside of his chest, he brought his forehead down to rest on hers. “Tomorrow’s Valentine concert will probably run later than tonight’s, but I’m heading straight to your house afterward with dessert.” His voice brooked no refusal, throbbing with undeclared emotions now tattered round the edges. “We can watch a DVD, play cards, whatever. So long as we’re together, I don’t care what we do. And if you and Coop are free the next day, I thought the three of us could camp out in your yard like he’d gone on about last week. I got us a big tent so we—”

Quinn grabbed him and halted the rest of his words with her lips.

Surprise immobilized Rylan for all of one heartbeat before he pitched his arms around her and crushed her to him. He never wanted to let go, couldn’t if he’d tried. The pent-up passion she was unleashing slayed his ability to do anything but hang on for the wildest ride of his life.

She kissed them both into a side alley and he nearly swallowed his tongue when she mindlessly slid one knee up his leg. Knowing what her movements were doing to her prim little business skirt was unmitigated torture. Quinn had amazing legs. And she never wore hose or stockings, a fact he knew from looking but not touching per the old ‘nothing below the waist in back and absolutely nothing in front’ rule he’d been tormenting himself with on each of their pseudo dates. He knew she’d been hurt by a lot of jerks in her life and he hadn’t wanted to rush her or make her feel like she had to do anything she wasn’t ready to do again.

But now here she was, ready and offering, and damn it all but he wanted to accept.

Unable to stop himself, he smoothed his hand over her hip until he came in contact with the warm, bare skin of her thigh. Even better than his fantasies. She shifted forward and his knees almost gave out when his fingers slipped under the edge of her skirt completely, dangerously close to curves he really shouldn’t be touching out here in plain view of the world.

He yanked his hand back and pulled away from the kiss at once.
Criminy.
It would be his luck that the first time he actually got to feel those gorgeous legs of hers they’d be in public, unable to do a damn thing more about it. “Quinn, honey, this alley isn’t all that private.”

It was as if she didn’t care. She leaned forward and slid her lips across his jaw, tracing her tongue down his neck before clamping her mouth onto the hard, beating pulse at his throat.

A coarse groan, soft and low, rumbled out of him.

“I love the sounds you make,” she whispered against his skin.

He’d have made the same declaration to her if he’d had any mind left to voice, but he didn’t. She’d stolen all thought from him when her curious hands slipped under his shirt and flexed into his tense lats before scoring his obliques.

But she didn’t stop there. Her fingertips slid down to tease the gap between his painfully clenched stomach and belt buckle, where much hotter flesh was rapidly gravitating to her fingers.

Christ. He barely caught her wrist in time.

Great,
now
Quinn let her inner sex kitten out of the cage. He’d seen that hidden fire in her all along, but evidently, he hadn’t known the half of it. “Sugar, I’m seconds from taking you to my truck and just plain taking you,” he rasped, his voice hoarse.

Her blue eyes eclipsed, and all his good intentions shot straight to hell. A ragged curse spilled from his lips.

“You’re supposed to say no, honey.”

“But I want to say yes,” she whispered.

Instantly, everything turned fuzzy. “Good god, woman.” Somehow—and he had no idea how—he still managed to force himself back, his body fighting every step he took.

Until he heard the delicate, feminine sound of disappointment from Quinn. Just that quickly, his feet simply refused to move another inch. He slid his hands around her waist and pulled her back to him again. “I need one more kiss, sugar. One more to make waiting for the rest bearable.”

When her face lit up, his eyelids lowered tenderly. Damn, this was going to be a hell of a long kiss.

“Concerts never start on time anyway,” he muttered as he bent down and captured her lips in a kiss so sweet he didn’t ever want it to end.

A half hour later, during his band’s set, Rylan found himself finally grasping what it meant to sing from the soul as he felt his throaty ballads resonate from depths his music had never
ever
reached before.

All because of Quinn.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

QUINN LOOKED AROUND
at the yard, taking in every detail of the post-Valentine’s Day campout that Rylan had set up for her and Cooper. The new three-person tent, the fire, the dozen new books for campfire storytime, big flashlights to go exploring in the dark later, the massive selection of food, and games to play in the morning.

Her heart expanded like a giant balloon in her chest.

It was amazing.
He
was amazing.

“How’s that, buddy? Breathing okay?” asked Rylan worriedly as he positioned a humidifier next to Cooper, and then hurriedly switched on the second fan he’d placed next to the camp fire to blow the smoke away from Cooper. He looked up at Quinn. “You think I should get another fan?”

Oh good lord, the man was too much. She went over and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thank you. For all this.”

He hugged her tight, slipping her a quick, hard kiss while Coop was poking at the fire.

…Before running back in the house for ‘one last fan.’

The second he was out of viewing range, Quinn grabbed her phone and texted her sister.

>>> HEY, PEN. CAN YOU BABYSIT COOPER TOMORROW NIGHT?

>>> SURE. WHAT’S UP?

Knowing there was a very good chance she’d hear Penny screaming from all the way over in Pinnacle Peak, she quickly answered by way of another question.

>>> CAN HE STAY OVERNIGHT?

A nanosecond pause before a emoticon ridden text returned with:

>>> YES! OH MY GOD! YOU BETTER GIVE ME DETAILS THE NEXT MORNING!

* * * * *

SOOO, HOW
DOES
one go about bringing up the topic of sex?
Quinn wondered to herself as she fiddled with the remote on the couch next to Rylan.

She tried to remember how it’d been in the past when she’d had sex. It was a lot simpler back then. Pretty much, they pounced, she parted.

Yeah, that wouldn’t work here.

Rylan wasn’t going to pounce. Nope. He was going to be the world’s most aggravatingly patient nice guy until she brought it up first.

Just say you want sex.
It’s sex. Guys like sex.

His hand squeezed her shoulder. “You okay? You seem tense.”

Say it!

“Sweetheart?”

Okay, let’s start easy. Just say words. Anything with words so he doesn’t think you’ve gone mute. Say something!

“I’m not wearing granny underwear!”

Yeah…anything but that.

Rylan went still for a beat before she felt his chest start to shake with laughter.

She buried her face between his collar bones, wedging her head against his chin when she felt him start to respond to her asinine outburst.

He pulled her around front to straddle his lap. “I’m not really sure what to say to that. I guess…I’m…happy for you?” His eyes danced with more muffled humor.

Covering both hands over her face, she gritted out, “I’m going to kill Penny.”

“Sugar, I’m completely lost as to what we’re talking about.” He gently pried her hands away from her face and pressed gentle kisses to her blazing hot cheeks. “How about you back us up a few steps and catch me up here.”

“On every date we’ve been on, Penny told me
not
to wear granny underwear. She went on and on about how I had to wear sexy lingerie. For you.”

Aside from the brief clenching of all those glorious muscles of his, he seemed pretty unfazed. “Babe, you could make a paper bag look sexy.”

Aw, that helped her continue what was officially the worst have-sex-with-me come-on ever. “Well, I didn’t listen to her. I try my very best to do the opposite of what Penny says as much as possible.”

He chuckled. “No comment.”

“So, that’s why I’ve mainly worn skirts and dresses on all our dates—so you wouldn’t see the panty lines from these awful giant-flowered granny panties I bought
specifically
for our dates. To keep us from…you know.”