One Good Man (11 page)

Then she wondered how long he’d lived here, how many women he’d brought home to share his bed. She didn’t know why she was wondering that; it was none of her business, and this strange sense of possessiveness stirring her made little sense. It wasn’t as if they’d exchanged vows while in the garage.

The bathroom Kell had pointed her to when they’d finally made it inside had perfumed soaps and guest towels and nothing to indicate the shower had ever seen use. She’d thought at first he might join her. She had almost asked him to.

He’d hesitated in the doorway as if he wasn’t ready to walk away, or to let her out of his sight, or to lose her. His belt had been hanging loose, his crisp white shirt untucked, his expression as rumpled and used as the rest of him, uncertain, spent. But then he’d backed away, and told her he’d clean up in the master bath. Said for her to take her time, he’d have their very late lunch ready when she was.

And so she hadn’t said anything, just nodded and closed the door, leaning against it and shutting her eyes, hoping to calm the rush of blood through her veins and catch her breath. She’d tied up her hair and stayed beneath the warm spray for twenty minutes. But her legs were still shaking when she followed the smell of the food to the kitchen and found him setting the table for two.

Soupspoons in hand, Kell looked up. He was freshly shaven, his skin glowing, his hair still damp and sticking up here and there. As usual, he had on jeans, but he was barefoot instead of in boots, and wearing a faded maroon Texas A&M T-shirt that showed off his shoulders and arms in ways his dress shirts never could.

He straightened and smiled, stopping what he was doing to stare at her as she stood in the doorway. The moment went on too long, the silence, the snap, crackle, pop of tension in the air, and he cleared his throat, saying, “I wasn’t sure what you’d like. If you’re not into bacon, I’ve got turkey. Or chicken noodle soup instead of the tomato.”

“The tomato is fine. The bacon is fine. And I love Cheetos more than any other chip.” She came farther into the room, pushed from behind by urgency, feeling the sizzle between them nipping at her skin. She wasn’t sure if she should sit, or help, or get drinks…

“Do you want me to—”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t be sorry. I was just as much—”

“Waiting was just too hard—”

“I know. It was. It still is. I want—”

“You want? What? Tell me—”

“To eat?” she ended with because otherwise they were going to linger here forever, wanting each other, and starve.

“Yeah,” he said, dipping his head with a small laugh. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Jamie took a big breath, felt better when she blew it out and most of the stress she’d been holding in with it. She padded the rest of the way across the cool red brick tiles to the circular table and the chair Kell had pulled out for her.

He sat in the chair to her right. There was enough distance between them that neither their arms nor their thighs brushed, but she still felt the heat of his body, the pull of his nearness, the draw. It was hard not to remember the way he’d touched her, the way he’d filled her. He’d been so thick and full, and he’d reached so deep.

She tamped down a rising flood of desire and forced her trembling hand to still before picking up her spoon. She couldn’t, however, stop herself from clenching the muscles of her sex. God, but she wanted him again. “This all smells so good. Thank you.”

“It’s soup and sandwiches. Took all of ten minutes to throw together,” he said, but then when he noticed the arch of her brow, added, “You’re welcome.”

“That’s better. It may be just soup and sandwiches, but you prepared it, and all I have to do is eat.” She dipped up a spoonful of soup, blew softly across the surface, and before she ate, added, “And that makes me very happy.”

“Good. I like making you happy,” he came back with, and she thought she was going to choke.

She took a minute to clear her throat. “So far, you’ve done just about everything right. But then, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not hard to please.”

This time he was the one who almost spit sandwich crumbs everywhere. He got up and grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge, handed her one and gulped down a big swallow of his before responding. “I guess there’s something to be said for low maintenance.”

“Exactly.” She set down her spoon, popped back a Cheeto and chewed. “If I were high maintenance, I’d prefer a pomegranate cocktail to the Jim Beam, a salad of arugula and mixed greens to the Cheetos, and Egyptian cotton to GMC’s leather beneath my knees.”

He tensed, lifted his spoon and let it hover over his bowl. “I don’t think you have to be high maintenance to prefer soft sheets to a truck seat.”

He stopped, though she could tell he had more to say. She prompted him to go on. “But?”

He set down his spoon, rested his wrists on the table’s edge, stared down at his food. “I’m just wondering if you being easy to please means you won’t slap me silly when I tell you I really don’t want to eat.”

Oh. My. It was a struggle to find her voice, what with the way her heart was lodged in her throat. “Why don’t you tell me and find out.”

“I want to take you to bed.” He looked up and met her gaze; his was hungry, unsatisfied and frighteningly dark. As if having her in the truck hadn’t been enough of a taste of all the things he wanted to know and to feel, to learn of her. “Now.”

She licked her lips, wanting the same thing, wondering if she’d be smart to resist, or if giving in would be enough to get him out of her system so she wouldn’t miss him after he took her home and left her there.

Because that was her biggest fear, that when she looked back on today, it wouldn’t be the hypnosis that scared her, but the thought of what she’d missed out on with Kell. She slid her palms down her thighs and told him without flinching, “I’d like it very much if you did.”

He got to his feet, held out his hand. She laid her fingers on his palm, and he closed his over them, tugging until she, too, stood. Still, he didn’t say anything. She watched the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed, watched the tic of his pulse in his temple as his blood surged. She wondered if he could see similar signs in her, signs of wanting and impatience and need. Tingles tightened the skin over her chest, like tiny electric charges shocking her.

Kell nudged away their chairs, and she thought briefly that they should cover the sandwiches so the bread wouldn’t grow stale, the bacon cold, the vegetables warm. Thought, too, about returning the soup to the pan, the caps to the bottles of water. Then she thought about nothing more than following Kell to his bedroom.

The food could wait. The things she wanted from him had waited too long already. Whatever happened after today, she was through putting her life on hold, and if nothing else, she’d have him to thank for that.

His bedroom might have been decorated originally by the same person who had put Martha Stewart’s touch on the rest of his place, but he’d put his own mark on the room since. It was lived in, a man’s room, but not a pizza-box, beer-can, dirty-clothes pigsty. Just cluttered with his things.

Boots and athletic shoes and copies of
Time
and
Wired
. T-shirts were rolled, rather than folded, and piled on top of his chest of drawers as if he hadn’t had time to put them away. Socks, too. Not matched or bunched into pairs, but dropped into a clothes basket with clean boxer shorts.

His furniture was the color of pecan, the pieces large, his curtains and duvet an abstract geometric pattern in shades of rawhide and rust. He had a bookshelf filled with paperbacks, jug lamps with wide-bottomed shades and a single framed print of a cattle drive she knew was a Frederic Remington.

There was no TV, and for some reason that surprised her. It occurred to her to ask if he read himself to sleep, but he stopped at the foot of the bed, and once there, turned to face her. “Look at me, Jamie.”

She took a deep breath, eased it out and lifted her gaze. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Sex in the garage had been easy. The darkness had been the perfect shield, hiding her physical flaws, her huge case of nerves, masking all the things she knew his eyes would say if she could see them.

She couldn’t escape any of that now, though the flaws and the nerves were nothing when compared to the impact of standing so near, face-to-face, both of them barefoot, and remembering the feel of their joining, of being one. Of knowing a return to that pleasure was as close as his bed.

He brought his free hand to her cheek, stroked a thumb along the ridge of her cheekbone, tucked his fingertips behind her ear and made her shiver. Then he lifted the hand he was holding and pressed her palm to his chest.

“Feel that?”

His heart. It was wild, a flock of birds beating their wings on liftoff, horses’ hooves pounding across the wide-open range. The wind, powering through tree boughs, whitecapping once-calm waves. She nodded, breathed, “Yes.”

“It’s been doing this since I walked into your office yesterday. I can’t make it stop.”

Smiling, she widened the spread of her fingers. His muscles beneath her hand were taut, firm, his flesh resilient. “I don’t think you want it to stop. That would mean you were dead. And I would like you alive for a little while longer. Until I get my fill at least.”

He slid his palm down the side of her neck to her shoulder. “Any idea how long that will take? Because I’ll need to schedule recovery time. I have a feeling you’re going to wear me out.”

“You can tell that already?” She moved both of her hands over his rib cage and settled them at his waist, cocking her head to the side. “After only one time?”

He reached for the hem of his T-shirt, pulled the garment over his head and let it fall to the carpet. Then he waited until she was touching him again, her hands back at his waist, his skin burning, before he went on. “I knew what you’d be like before I had you. It’s there in your eyes, in what you say, what you think and do. It was there last night in your driveway.”

“I wanted you last night. It wasn’t the JB. It wasn’t the moon. It wasn’t fear. It was me. I wanted you.”

“I know,” he told her, reaching for the buttons down the front of her blouse, pulling it off and dropping it. Then he reached for the buttons of her fly.

“But you put me off.” She kicked out of her jeans.

He shook his head, then leaned close, soothing her with tiny kisses to her collarbone, his fingers molding her breasts. “We needed today out of the way. And barely managed that.”

She shivered, her nipples tightening, the stirring in her belly now nothing but desire, anticipation, a readying of her sex. She knew how he fit, and she wanted him there, and found her hands cupping his erection where it strained.

“Not yet,” he said, winding their legs like braided strands and backing her into the mattress. Her knees hit, and he lowered her, then left her, taking her panties with him and kneeling at her feet.

She closed her eyes, chilled by the ceiling fan circulating the air, but oh, the heat between her legs. Kell had spread her knees, exposing her sex, and was licking and kissing and biting his way the length of her inner thighs. His mouth was hot, his lips and tongue sure, his teeth sharp enough to sting. She loved it. She wanted more, and curled her fingers into the duvet to hold on.

A butterfly. Tickling, flitting, brushing air as it fluttered its wings. That’s what Kell’s mouth felt like when he reached her sex. He licked her, wet her, blew warm breath to bring her to life, and then he caught her clit with his lips and tugged.

She arched into him, her hips and pelvis coming up off the bed. Oh, he was good as he worked her with his mouth, slipping a finger inside of her to thrust. He knew what he was doing, and she was so close to the edge that she almost let go, but even more than coming again, she wanted to have him with her when she did.

Bringing her heels to her hips, she used her feet to push herself farther up the bed. She wanted him to cover her, she wanted to feel his heaviness, she wanted to have all of him naked, not just his mouth and his hands and his cock. And without her having to ask, he followed, standing first to shuck out of his boxers and jeans.

Their eyes met and held as he crawled over her on his hands and knees, resting his weight on his forearms above her shoulders, and lowering his chest, then his belly, then his hips to align with hers. Though she was half his weight, she welcomed the feel of his body pressing hers into the mattress, because for reasons she didn’t want to stop and examine, he kept the outside world and its threats at bay.

The thought should have made her smile. It sobered her instead. And whatever change came over her expression as she realized the true danger she was facing, Kell saw it and stopped.