Project Virgin (23 page)

Jesse was in so much trouble.

Would he have stopped himself last night? Had he been making a move or merely making a point? How could he not know?

Michaela wasn’t free. Not
even close. She was in an “open” relationship with a con man that even she didn’t think was all that open—or not open to Jesse, anyway, which he supposed was some kind of backhanded compliment. Lucky him. And that was when she wasn’t preoccupied with her own very high-octane and demanding job, something he, as someone who was equally focused on his own work, found as hot as he did impressive. And
God help him, he wanted a taste of her.

He wanted more than a taste.

Jesse turned and eyed the door to their room, knowing the worst thing he could do was walk back in there, feeling the way he did then. She was warm and soft. The moisturizer she used was gently scented with vanilla and something else that drove him crazy. He’d left her sloped over the arm of the chair, her feet dangling and
one arm thrown over her head as she talked through a set of bullet points with someone she obviously found challenging, something he could tell from her posture but not the cool, professional voice she used.

Which made him feel edgy. Needy. Very, very hungry.

He found everything about her way too hot, if he was honest. The dark hair she’d piled on the top of her head as if she hadn’t given a
single thought to it since she’d shot out of bed this morning. The jeans that clung to her hips with the temptingly low waistline he wanted to explore with his mouth. The same magenta shirt she’d been wearing at Grey’s, layered over a t-shirt and why the hell was he risking frostbite out here, thinking about unwrapping her like his very own Valentine’s Day gift? What the hell was happening to him?

When his phone buzzed again he decided it was divine intervention, giving him one last shot at not being such an asshole.

“Hey, Uncle Jason,” he said, calmly enough, once he glanced at the screen and swiped to take the call.

But Jason Grey never said unnecessary things. Or anything at all, if that was possible. Not even a
hello.

“Did you beat that storm?” he asked instead. “Heard it dumped
on Missoula.”

“It’s still dumping on Missoula,” Jesse said, scowling at the swirl of snow coming down from above, as if it planned to keep snowing forever. And what would be left of him if it did? He didn’t want to think about it. “We had to stop last night when we lost all visibility on I-90. We’re holed up somewhere east of Mount Jumbo.”

Jason made one of those noises of his. It could have
been commiseration. It could have been something else entirely, like incisive commentary on the harsh realities of Montana winters. The again, he could have been clearing his throat because he had a completely unrelated cold.

“What’s the timeframe on getting back here?” he asked, the noise a mystery. “Still going to go all the way to Seattle when the roads clear?”

Jesse had initially figured
he’d fly back to Seattle to deal with the little speed bump in one of his projects this morning, then turn around on Tuesday or Wednesday and subject himself to the big family dinner his grandmother was planning out at Big Sky the following weekend. It took a chunk out of his planned family time, but it couldn’t be helped. Then the weather report had made driving seem like the better option, Jason
had thrown him the keys to the SUV, and here he was.

Losing his mind in a dingy little motel room with a woman he didn’t know well, but knew better than to want.

“Maybe another day in Seattle on the back side,” he said now, like none of that was affecting him. “I should be back in Marietta before the weekend.”

Jason grunted. Jesse interpreted that as warm wishes on his safe travels, there and
back.

“Did you plan this?” he asked, before he could think better of it and stop himself. It was the cabin fever getting to him, he figured when there was no pretending he hadn’t said it. Or the cold making his hands—and all the rest of him, for that matter—feel raw.

“I don’t plan snowstorms,” Jason said in his gruff way. “But they happen all the same. With alarming regularity in these parts,
in case you forgot out there in the big city.”

“I meant Michaela,” Jesse said, already deeply regretting whatever urge he’d had to bring this up. He ran a hand over his face and tried not to imagine the expression his uncle would be wearing right now, all that incredulous scorn mixed with bone-deep grumpiness. “You’re the one who entered me in that damned auction with all that crap about checks
I couldn’t cash.”

“Oh, son.” And Jason let out that laugh of his that sounded a whole lot like another man’s shout, and promised all kinds of retribution Jesse didn’t really care to consider just then. “I don’t do Disney. If I’m the one playing fairy godmother in your little stuck-in-the-snow scenario here, you’re in a world of hurt.”

But of course, Jesse already knew that.

Now his uncle knew
it, too.
Awesome.

He didn’t understand how any of this was happening to him.

Jason hung up on him, still laughing Jesse shouldered his way inside the room, cursing himself for being such an idiot, and nearly ran straight into Michaela as she came bursting out of the bathroom at the same time.

He should have jumped out of the way. He should have done anything but what he did, given where his
head had been all day—but Jesse couldn’t seem to stop himself from grabbing her and holding her there, in front of him and too close to him, his hands wrapped around her upper arms and her pretty face upturned and
right there—

“Your hands,” she said, though there was a storm in her bright hazel eyes, hectic and wild. “Your hands are
so cold
.”

“It’s cold out there.”

She laughed, as if there
wasn’t this tension winding between them. As if they weren’t stuck here, pretending to ignore the raging chemistry between them. He didn’t understand how he wasn’t already inside her, and who cared how complicated it was—

But he did, he reminded himself. He cared. Didn’t he?

“Really?” she teased him, and it took him a second to work out that she was still talking about the cold outside, and
coming off of him like a scent. “I didn’t notice, with all the snow banks and the slippery ice and the treacherous mountain passes.”

“Let me remind you,” Jesse suggested, because he obviously had some kind of death wish, or maybe he just wanted to torture himself.

He took his hand off of her arm and he didn’t even question what he was doing as he reached down, then slid it up under her shirt
and that bulky sweatshirt she wore, sliding his big, ice-cold palm directly against the soft skin of her belly.

Michaela yelped and jumped, then clapped her hands to his as if she wanted to pry it from her body, but he kept it there anyway. Easily. And then the next thing was they’d moved, or he’d backed her into the wall, and she wasn’t making that high pitched noise any longer. And her hands
were still on his, but she wasn’t struggling against him, she was holding his hand right there where it rested against her skin.

And he could feel her tremble underneath his palm, as if it was rolling out of her from deep within.

She was soft. So deliciously, dangerously warm, and the heat of her poured into him, the contrast to his near-frozen hand electric. Almost painful. He let go of her
other arm and put his free hand on the wall, right there near her head. He didn’t step back. If anything, he angled himself closer.

Much too close to her mouth.

He swallowed hard, kept his gaze on hers, and moved the hand against her belly.

Incrementally. Experimentally.

Michaela shuddered. Her face flushed hot and red, her eyes went dark, her lips parted, and he was a goner. He was lost.

He was ravenous.

Her eyes were huge and the glossy, glassy dark made him ache, and he could see her pulse in her neck. Wild. Fast. Exposing her and calling to him at the same time. He leaned closer, as if he might put his mouth on her neck, just to taste her excitement. Michaela tipped her head back, tilting that mouth of hers closer to his.

This was more than thin ice. This was insanity.

The
images in his head were erotic. Pure madness. They wouldn’t have to make it to the bed. He could have her right here. He could pull her leg over his hip and lift her up the smallest bit, lean back and drive home, and take the edge off, fast and furious. Then take her to bed when they caught their breath and indulge himself more thoroughly.

But first, he had to taste her. He had to taste her or
go mad, though he knew, somehow, it wasn’t a madness he could escape. There was no working it out of his system the old fashioned way, not with this woman. Not with Michaela. That one taste would never be enough, it might even make all of this worse.

Jesse didn’t have it in him to care.

He moved his hand again, taking it slowly, deliberately, from that faintly rounded belly of hers and smoothing
his way higher until his fingers brushed the scalloped edge of the bra she’d worn to ward him off last night. He’d never wanted anything more, just then, than he wanted to free her breasts and worship them with his own two hands.

And his mouth. And his teeth. And his tongue.

And she shuddered again, hard and deep, and he thought he might die if he didn’t—

Michaela moved, then. Fast.

She ducked
under his arm and she staggered as she moved back toward the bathroom door. Her phone rang, but she didn’t react. She didn’t even look in its direction. She stared at Jesse, and he thought he probably had the same look on his face, shell-shocked and sensual, as if he was completely destroyed and yet still strung out on that edge.

“There are only so many lines I can cross until I’m not me anymore,”
she said, and her voice was harsh and hoarse and there was a sob in it, too, waiting to crack wide open.

Jesse felt like a wild thing as he stood there, still so hungry for her it bordered on desperation, and he thought for a moment it might actually kill him. He was still keyed-in to her delicate scent, to the heat of her body, to the arousal he could see as plainly as if she’d written it in
marker on her forehead—her flushed cheeks, her too-bright eyes, her shallow breaths.

“Michaela.” Her name was like a song in his mouth, and he still didn’t know what to say. Much less how to say it. None of this was okay with him. None of it was what he wanted.

But he wanted her all the same.

“This isn’t
me
,” she hissed at him, and then she went back inside the bathroom and closed the door.
A quiet click, not a slam, and then the lock turned and he didn’t know if it was to keep him out or her in.

And Jesse stood there in that dim little room with both of their phones ringing too loud and too insistent from their far-off real lives where this never would have happened, need like a fist around him, clenching him too damned tight to breathe.

*

Michaela
had no
idea what woke her that night.

She jolted awake, then gasped for breath while her heart did its level best to climb straight out through her ribs. She sat up in a rush, feeling wild and under attack, and clapped both of her hands to her chest as if she could make her heart behave with her own two palms.

It took one hard kick against her chest to remember where she was. Another to figure
out
why
. That she was still in the same dinky little motel room, on this snowy side-of-the-road, somewhere in Montana, still nowhere close to home. The room was dark. There was only a fitful sometime-light poking through the curtains they hadn’t quite drawn shut over the windows, and it took her much longer than that to realize it was the moon out there, high and bright.

She pulled in a breath
and looked around, sleep still clinging to her.

Jesse.

His name was like a burst of sensation inside of her and she shifted against it, as if that might ward him off, and it took another long moment to realize she couldn’t hear him anywhere in the room. She already knew he wasn’t beside her. He hadn’t taken the bed again with her when she’d finally decided it was time to crawl under the covers
and put this day behind her as best she could.

“It’s a huge bed, Jesse,” she’d snapped at him, pretending she couldn’t feel his palm against her belly all those hours later like one of those cattle brands she’d been so certain she wanted nowhere near her. But she could. She still could. “There’s no reason we can’t share it. We’re not mindless animals.”

He hadn’t said much to her after she’d
come out of the bathroom and managed to face him in the wake of their near-kiss. It had gotten almost as cold inside their room with the heat on as it had been outside, she’d thought, or maybe that had only been the air between them. They’d taken a grim march over the even more treacherous road in the bitter dark to grab something for dinner, had eaten in the same brooding silence once they’d hauled
it back to their room, and it had been Michaela who had turned on the TV to find refuge in as many silly sitcoms as possible, and no matter if she normally hated that kind of thing. It was a laugh track or a lost mind. She’d chosen the former.