Tempt Me Tonight (20 page)

“Yeah. And?”

He spoke quietly. “I know how people thought of us. If there’d been railroad tracks running through Eden, we’d have been on the wrong side of ’em. It’s not a secret.”

She looked troubled—like maybe she didn’t want to admit what they both knew.

“It’s okay,” Joe promised her. “It’s not news to me.”

“Maybe I
liked
your family,” she said. “Maybe I liked being around people who were so different from
my
family.”

He raised his eyebrows in question, not quite believing her.

“Like, remember how spontaneous your mom was? Remember the time we wanted to make cookies, but she didn’t have the right ingredients, so she tried to improvise? We figured they’d be inedible, but they actually weren’t half bad. Remember how the three of us and Jana laughed the whole time she was mixing them up and telling us she could invent her own cookie recipe and it was going to make her famous?”

Joe hadn’t thought about that in…damn, a very long time. Maybe since the summer night it had happened, a warm breeze blowing through the windows, along with the steady chirp of crickets. Hell, he’d probably been way more concerned with finding a minute to get Trish alone so they could make out than interested in cookies—but she was right, it was a good thing to look back on. On her good days, his mom had been fun and energetic, her mood infectious. “I’d forgotten that,” he said slowly.

“And remember the time your dad souped up the riding lawn mower and we were all buzzing around the yard on it?”

Joe laughed at another rekindled memory. “That was dangerous as hell—we’re lucky somebody didn’t get hurt.”

She shrugged in agreement. “But I’m just saying…I had a good time with your family back in those days. So…maybe you sold them a little short.”

Aw, honey, you don’t know everything. You don’t know about the drinking. Or the yelling. Or the night Mom died.

But he wasn’t going to dump that on her. Not when they were just getting to be friends again. “Maybe so,” he said simply instead.

Crushing a soda can in her hand like some bruiser, Trish said, “We should probably get back to work. If we want to get this finished sometime before midnight.”

“You’re right,” he said.
And I’d like to be doing far different things with you, cupcake, by the time midnight rolls around.

Then he cringed, hoping she didn’t see the lust on his face.
Buddy, you’ve gotta get your animal impulses under control. You’re here to help her with hay—that’s all.
Still, he couldn’t resist saying, “But working together like this isn’t
so
horrible, is it?”

She actually slanted him a grin, then teased him. “Well, no, not
so
horrible, just…”

“Just
kind of
horrible,” he supplied for her.

“Right,” she said, laughing.

And his natural instinct was to playfully tackle her, push her back into the stack of hay bales piled behind her, and kiss her senseless. But instead he just threw his wadded napkin at her—and she said, “Hey, watch it.”

“Or what? You’ll fire me?”

They both laughed as she pushed away a wisp of hair that had escaped her ponytail, and things were suddenly so easy and comfortable that, unlike her, Joe didn’t want the day to end.

Conversation faded quickly enough, however, when they got back to work, loading the wagon and getting the bales into the barn. By midafternoon, the bright hot day was fading into something more warm, humid, and gray. Clouds rolled in from the south, and Joe yelled to Trish over the sound of the tractor, “We’d better step on it if we’re gonna beat the rain.”

“I thought we’d have the whole day,” she shouted back.

“Must have moved quicker than they expected.” Kind of like
him,
with
her,
he thought.

Judging from the sky, which soon grew darker with every minute, he didn’t think there was any way they’d make it—another couple of loads of hay still lay in the fields. But he’d grown up on a farm—they’d had cattle when he was young and had harvested the hay for winter feed—and he’d been in this position at least twenty times before. You almost always thought you weren’t gonna make it, but a lot of times, you did. This just meant it was time to kick it into gear.

Each time he stopped, Trish jumped off the wagon and they both rushed to tote the bales. They didn’t take the time to stack them as neatly as before, which meant they didn’t get as much per load, but speed seemed more important knowing the skies could open any minute.

As they worked feverishly, side by side, Joe concentrated on his task, but also on Trish—the shift of her hips, breasts, as she hefted bales up on the wagon, the dew of perspiration lighting her cheekbones and spanning the long line of her neck. It took a rare woman to make this kind of work fun. And he could no longer deny that it had been hard as hell not touching her all day. Being alone with her, in the heat, had slowly stirred his desire to near bursting, and occasional accidental contact had fueled the fire. Now his adrenaline was building as they hurried to collect what he was pretty sure would be their last load.

Sure enough, as the tractor and wagon lumbered through an open gate onto a dirt lane that led to the barn, drops of rain began to pelt his arms. Ah, it felt great at first, cooling his skin after the heat of the day—until a thunderclap sounded, signaling a dense downpour.

Joe actually laughed as he turned to Trish amid the drenching deluge. She sat atop the bales stacked behind him. “We just made it, cupcake!”

She was laughing, too, but his own mirth became stilted, forced, when he caught one glimpse of her in the rain.

Strands of hair that had come free from her ponytail plastered her cheeks and her T-shirt stuck to her skin, too—he could see through it and even through the lace of her bra to take in the dark color of clearly beaded nipples. He went instantly hard, despite the rain, despite everything. Jesus.

Turning back around, partly to make sure he didn’t wreck the damn tractor and partly to quit gaping at her, he maneuvered the load into the barn, killed the engine, and hopped down to the earthen floor.

Taking the few steps to the wagon, he met Trish as she was climbing down and instinctively reached up, planted both palms at her slender waist, and lowered her to the ground with him.

Of course, he didn’t want to let her go now that he had his hands on her.

But he did.

Even if she looked slightly unsettled by having been in his arms. Even if releasing her felt like a huge sacrifice. Even if his cock strained behind his zipper, begging him to pull her into a crushing embrace.

“You know what?” she said as she found her footing. “I’m exhausted. Let’s not worry about getting any of this in the loft. It’ll be fine for now.”

Normally, Joe would have protested—he was a guy who liked finishing what he started. But in this case, it was actually a good idea. “Top layer of hay is wet anyway—it’s best we leave it like this to dry instead of burying it between other bales.” And besides, his thoughts had turned to an entirely different subject now—namely Trish. Wet.

He turned still harder just looking at her—the droplets running down her face, the cotton T-shirt drenched against her curves. The steady cadence of the rain on the barn’s old tin roof seemed to cocoon them.

“Ready to make a run for it?” she asked with a smile, motioning to the faded red truck outside the barn. She clearly had no idea how she looked right now—or what it was doing to him.

Trying again to push back his desire, he replied with a nod and they both dashed out into the downpour toward her dad’s old Ford pickup. His workboot slipped in the mud and she got ahead of him, but when she reached the passenger door and gave it a yank, she couldn’t get it open.

He automatically ran to her side of the truck and reached around her, closing his hand over hers on the handle to help.

He pulled hard, but the damn thing was stuck tight—he couldn’t get it open, either.

Which was when he realized he was touching more than just her hand.

The front of his wet body pressed fully against the back of hers.

He honestly hadn’t meant to do it. He’d just been trying to help her get in.

But suddenly rain didn’t matter.

And getting in didn’t matter.

Both of them went still.

He could have sworn the rain sizzled on his skin, the way he was burning up inside. He’d had hot, urgent sex before—hell, he’d had it with Trish in her motel room—but
this, this
was new, different. His need had been building all day, and now, suddenly, it was ready to burst.

Yet he couldn’t move.

Because he didn’t know how she would react, and because—holy God—he didn’t want to blow this, this good but surely fragile connection they’d built today.

And
because it felt pretty damn good just to press his erection against her ass, feel that hot, raw connection, even if they
were
both getting soaked.

Everything changed, though, when she looked over her shoulder, biting her lip, rain running down her face. Her eyes shone on him like liquid heat, and he knew. He knew.

There was no thought then, only action. He slid one hand around her hip to cup the denim between her thighs and listened to her hot intake of breath. The other he shifted from the door to her wet, pliable breast, so soft and seeming made to fit his palm. “Damn it, Trish, I tried not to do this, I swear,” he growled hot in her ear. “But God help me, I want you. And I can’t stop.”

“I want you, too.” Her voice came thready, weak. Beautiful. “I want you so much.”

“Right here?” he whispered.

“Right here,” she said. “Right now.”

Discovery:
a formal request by one party in a lawsuit to disclose information or facts known by other parties or witnesses;
or
the act of finding something that had previously existed, but hitherto been unknown; new knowledge, or a new insight.

Trish trembled with the reality of what she’d just set in motion, of what they were about to do. She’d been trying her damnedest to avoid this, and now she was giving in to it. Practically begging for it.

Okay, she hadn’t begged
yet,
but she probably would if she had to. Yeesh.

This was bad.

Or
good,
depending upon your perspective.

Oh hell, when it came to Joe, all the lines were blurred.

But when his hand began to move back and forth between her thighs, his fingers stroking through the denim to her very core, his palm pressing firm to the front of her mound, she quivered in heated delight.
Yes, yes, feel me.

With his other hand, he caressed her breast with the skill of a master, the touch somehow both gentle and rough at the same time. People always said artists were good with their hands. Those people had apparently never been touched by a mechanic.

This made no sense—not in the big picture of her life, not in the promises she’d made to herself these last few days. But even through their jeans, she could feel how hard he was. And after spending the entire day watching him work in the hot sun, looking into those deep blue eyes whenever chance had allowed—oh God, there was no resisting him.

Then both his hands were reaching to the front of her jeans, deftly unbuttoning, unzipping. Then under her shirt, at her hips, pulling down the wet, heavy denim, baring more of her skin to the rain as he lowered her jeans to her thighs.

They were a mile away from anything—the house, the road—shadowed only by the large old locust trees that grew to one side of the barn behind them. Beyond the truck and the gated fence lay an open meadow, freshly cut. She’d never felt at once so exposed to the elements yet so very sheltered—by the rain that seemed to wrap around them somehow, and by Joe’s very maleness, the sweet scent of his sweat, the roughness of his fingertips as they moved over her wet bottom. The rain, she thought, made her feel everything more—every nuance, every sensation. Each tree, the hay, the aged wood of the barn—everything around her possessed its own earthy scent and feel that mixed with Joe’s, and when she put it all together, it smelled like…home.

But in a whole new, unimaginable way. She’d never have dreamed home could be so…hot. Or make her so needful, hungry. “Please.” She heard herself murmur the word. She wasn’t even sure where it had come from or what it meant. Only that the begging had commenced and she didn’t even care.

But when his erection pressed bare and wet against her rear, and she arched for him involuntarily, and his hard fullness came rushing into her—rough, strong, commanding—she knew
exactly
what “please” had meant. It had meant,
Hurry, I need you like I need to breathe.
And now she had him, buried in her warmth, his strokes coming as hard and tumultuous as the pouring rain.

She’d never experienced anything so feral, wild, as Joe’s powerful thrusts pummeling her as she braced herself against the truck, palms pressed flat against the wet steel of the door. Each deep plunge echoed out through her fingertips, down through her thighs. She’d never done anything like this, yet somehow it seemed natural, not even shocking, and she instantly wanted to relish it, luxuriate in each heated bit of hedonistic pleasure. She leaned her head back to feel the cool rain on her face as she drank in his deep plunges below, emitting a low moan at each. She stopped thinking—and simply
felt.
All of it. All of
him.

Behind her, he groaned his own pleasure, and even without being able to see his face as they moved together, she stayed acutely aware that it was Joe inside her—Joe, the boy she’d loved with all that she was; Joe, whom she’d wanted to marry with her whole heart; Joe, who had been her whole world once upon a time.

He murmured heated words in her ear—“So hot,” “So wet inside,” “So good, baby”—and she let them roll down through her like thick, warm honey.

And when his hand slid from her hip over her thigh to dip into the cleft between her legs, the sensation was so overwhelming that she sobbed. “Joe! Oh God, Joe!”
I love you.