Tempt Me Tonight (21 page)

Damn it, she’d almost said that—almost screamed it out in the rain.

But she couldn’t worry over that right now, because he was touching her, in just the right way, sweeping away her sanity, lifting her to an entirely different plane.

She moved against his fingers, fingers that stroked in perfect rhythm, and she heard her heartbeat in her ears, muting the static of the downpour.

“I want to make you come,” Joe said low in her ear.

She bit her lip at the intense pleasure his mere words sent shooting through her as a gripping heat gathered low in her belly, and the moment was so wild and perfect that she didn’t want it to end, not ever.

But her body hurtled forward anyway, so quick, no warning—
oh God, oh God
—until she was crashing into stunning bursts of hot, hard ecstasy that made her cry out and whimper and shudder like a baby in his arms.
Yes, yes, yes. I love you, Joe. I love you.

She held it in again, thank God. And this time didn’t even bother berating herself for it, instead just pushing it aside for now, in lieu of bliss.

He held her tight as the waves settled and reality returned—rain and the scent of it in the trees still mixing with the pungent smell of the hay, and him. Her lover. Her…love? She’d cared for other men and she’d been in their beds, but she couldn’t deny the startling revelation that next to him all men paled, all sex paled, even all…Love paled.

Behind her, his breath came heavy and he whispered in her ear hot, sweet words about how he loved making her come. And she was timid enough when not wearing Spandex that she normally wouldn’t have responded to such a declaration, but without even thinking, for it was so natural, she looked over her shoulder at his rain-soaked face and said, “I want to make you come, too.”

His body jolted as if she’d just delivered an electrical shock, and she reveled in the feminine sexual power flowing through her. His eyes went dark and his mouth slack, as if she’d just drained all his strength with that one sentence. “Aw, Trishy,” he murmured in the rain. His eyes fell shut as he released a heavy groan, then punished her body with strokes so wonderfully hard that, again, she felt them in the tips of her fingers and toes until he spilled himself deep within her.

When he went still, he nearly collapsed against her body, pinning her to the cab of the truck, arms wrapped tight around her waist.

Seconds passed that way, rain still falling as they both recovered in silence.

Trish watched the patterns the raindrops made on the truck’s window, trickling down, realizing for the first time how ridiculously wet they both were, and thinking also how ridiculously
good
this had been.

Except for one thing. That damn
I love you
that kept drifting through her mind. And
drifting
was a generous understatement. She’d nearly shrieked it.

Finally, he loosened his grip on her, then slowly turned her in his arms to face him. She was struck fresh with what a beautiful man he was, his blue eyes shimmering, wet hair dripping around his face, his chin dusted with dark, rough stubble that drew her hand up impulsively, her fingertips trailing down his jaw. Like their passion, the deluge had softened now into only a heavy drizzle, and he gazed long and hard into her eyes with such warmth that it began to melt her all over again.

And then he was kissing her—deep, paralyzing tongue kisses—his embrace warm and almost magnetic as their wet bodies clung together. It was minutes later before the kisses faded to gentleness, to tiny, heated touches of mouths, tongues. And when finally they stopped and stood staring at each other in the light rain, he tilted his head slightly to say, “Are you okay?”

When she started to speak, she grew aware of how deliciously swollen his kisses had left her lips, so only nodded instead.

Joe gazed down on her, utterly amazed. Sex with her before had been incredible—but what they’d just shared defied description. He lifted his hands to her face. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

She dropped her gaze briefly, looking strangely bashful considering what they’d just done. “Maybe you should tell me.”

He grazed his thumb over her lips, continuing to cup her cheeks in his hands, just to feel her skin, the shape of her face, the delicate bones. “You are—I promise. You were a pretty girl, Trish. But you grew up into a very beautiful woman.”

She bit her lip, blushing slightly, and slid her hands up over his wet arms to say, “You grew up pretty good yourself.”

He laughed softly, loving the mere fact that she was in his arms and they’d just had hot, urgent sex out in a field, in the rain. Ever since she’d come home, Trish had fulfilled any and every sexual fantasy a guy could have—plus, she was Trish,
his
Trish. He couldn’t help thinking the whole thing would be pretty damn perfect…if only she would forgive him.

“Maybe,” he said, letting his lips curve ever so slightly, “we should get out of the rain?”

She laughed, then rolled her eyes, almost as if maybe she’d forgotten they were
in
the rain—easy enough to do given all the other things there’d been to feel.

He pulled his jeans together as she maneuvered hers back up, too, and then he reached for the truck door—only to discover it was still stuck. “Damn thing,” he muttered, but he really didn’t mind since, if not for that truck door, he wouldn’t have experienced such pure, reckless pleasure with her just now. “Other side,” he said, taking her hand and leading her there.

When they climbed up into the truck, Joe slamming the driver’s side door behind him, he didn’t hesitate to pull her wet body right back into his arms and kiss her again. This kiss was more slow, lingering, than what they’d shared outside—but hell, if he didn’t watch it, he’d be taking her in the truck before long.

When the kiss ended, her legs stretched across his lap and he held her in a loose embrace. “So…” he said, looking down at her.

“So…”

He didn’t want to ask her again—but he had to. “Are you okay? About this?”

She looked a little troubled—just what he’d been afraid of, but just what he’d been expecting, too. “I…don’t know.” She avoided his eyes.

“I swear I didn’t plan it this way. I just wanted to help you with the hay. But seems like whenever I’m around you, I want you—bad. And by the way, your T-shirt is way too tight, especially when you get rained on.”

She laughed softly, yet all went quiet but for the sound of the rain on the truck’s roof. Then she lifted her eyes—emerald eyes that had suddenly gone deadly serious. “Tell me about…that night.”

Joe’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t seen this coming. And he didn’t have to ask which night she was talking about. Hell. He lowered his chin slightly, peering at her from under the brim of the soaked hat she’d plopped back on his head at some point. “Do we really have to go there, Trish?”

She looked resolute, like he imagined she must look when she was cross-examining some witness in court. “I think we do. If you really want me to understand.”

Joe rubbed his lips together uncertainly, finally saying, “I don’t expect you to
ever
understand. I don’t have…a good explanation.”

“I still need to hear it,” she said without missing a beat. “I just need to know what happened, Joe. I need you to tell me. Because sometimes, I think the pictures in my head are maybe worse than the truth. Even if the truth is bad, then at least I know, and I can…process it.”

Joe took a deep breath, surprised to find he couldn’t quite look at her when he tried to speak—so instead he focused on the hood of the old truck stretching out in front of him beyond the rain-spattered windshield. He couldn’t see the good in this—he feared it would only stir up the hurt, maybe make her hate him all over again. But if this was what she asked of him, he wouldn’t deny her.

“Do you remember,” he began, “how things were that night? You were leaving, and I…hell, Trish, I wanted you. You know that. I wanted you just like I still want you now. But then…” His voice softened, unplanned. “Then…shit, honey, it was hard as hell. I know girls don’t quite get this, and I also know it sounds lame, but it’s brutal when you’re a teenage boy whose dick is going crazy.”

She flinched, and he said, “Sorry, but that’s how it was. And even though that doesn’t exactly sound…romantic, you know I loved you, cupcake.” He
did
focus on her then, needing her to hear this part more than the rest. “You know that, right? You know I loved you. You know you were pretty much
everything
to me back then, don’t you?”

Her voice came out small, delicate. “I
thought
I was. But later, I didn’t really believe it anymore.”

He pressed his lips together, sighing, his chest tightening at her words. “I loved you more than anything, Trish. Maybe…hell, maybe I loved you too much.”

She blinked. “How can you love someone too much?”

He looked at her long and hard. Forced himself to remember all the feelings roiling through him that fateful night. It wasn’t easy. He’d never been good with feelings of…inadequacy. Not with his dad. And not with Trish.

But he swallowed and forced out the words. “Maybe if I hadn’t loved you so much, I wouldn’t have been so fucking scared.”

Her pretty eyes widened on him. “Scared?
You?
Of what?”

He knew most people didn’t think much of anything scared Joe Ramsey. The Ramseys were tough, mean, the kind of people who’d kick your ass if you looked at them the wrong way. And Joe could only remember a couple of times in his life when he’d ever felt truly afraid. The night his mom had crashed her car into that tree. And before that, the summer after graduation, when he knew Trish was leaving him. “I was afraid you’d never come home.”

She drew back slightly. “I was supposed to come home in two weeks.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean I was afraid you’d never come home for
good,
like we planned. I was afraid you’d never really come home to
me.
”

She blinked again, looking stunned. “Why?”

And Joe sighed. Wasn’t it obvious? It had felt
plenty
obvious to
him,
but he’d been too cool, too Ramsey tough, to ever tell her. “Trish, you had dreams. You wanted to be something, you wanted to see other places. We had this plan of getting married, keeping things the same, but when you talked about college, about the city—your eyes lit. In a way they never lit up for
me.
You wanted more than me and Eden, and I knew it.”

He saw her draw in her breath, her legs still angled across his lap—he saw the memories well in her eyes. The wisps of hair around her face were starting to dry, to draw into loose, tiny blond curls. “I did want to see new places, Joe, I’d
always
wanted that, ever since I was a little girl. And college was going to be my time for that—my time to do new things. But when I made my plans to leave, coming back was the
main
thing in my mind. By the time I was set to go, I didn’t even really want to anymore.”

He let out a breath, trying to see her, really see her heart. Who was she? The farm girl with the ponytail who’d put up hay with him today? Or the confident, worldly lawyer he’d met at the Last Chance almost a week ago? “Are you sure, Trish?” he asked slowly. “Are you sure those new things might not have changed what you wanted? Are you sure that meeting new people, new guys, wouldn’t have made it so that Eden and me seemed kind of…same old, same old?”

He appreciated the fact that she didn’t just rush to say she was sure—her eyes saddened softly as she thought about it. “I guess I can’t
really
be sure of anything, Joe—given the way things happened, I guess we’ll never know for certain. But I can tell you that I loved you completely, and on the night before I left, all I really wanted was to come home in four years and marry you.”

“I guess I thought,” he went on, “that if we had sex before you left that it would be more like…we were real, solid. More like you were really gonna stay mine.”

She leaned back against the seat next to him, looking tired, her gaze on her knees. “You have no idea, Joe, how much I wanted to be with you that way. There was just a part of me that wasn’t ready.” She raised her eyes back to his then. “Which leads me back to that night. I need to know what happened after you left me.”

He let out a heavy breath. He didn’t like remembering that part, but looked like he didn’t have a choice. “Hell, Trish, what can I say? I was eighteen and horny as hell. Frustrated, too. And I guess I was hurt that you’d said no again, when you were leaving, and when I’d really thought…”

“That was my fault, I know. I’d promised you.”

He sighed. “I was heading home when a car blinked its lights at me. I pulled over, thinking it was Kenny—but it was Bev.”

She stiffened in his lap but said, “Go on.”

“She had beer and I drank it. We talked about the usual crap. And then…we talked about you. I was getting drunk fast and I guess I told her you were leaving and that I was bummed about it.” He stopped, remembering. Some parts he recalled only vaguely, through the haze of alcohol, but other moments were all too vivid. “Well, Bev was never one to miss an opportunity, so she said if
she
were my girlfriend that she wouldn’t be going away, that she’d be staying here with me.”

Trish cringed slightly, but he tried not to feel it, tried to keep going, so he could get through this.

“I wasn’t used to drinking much, so I guess the beer made me feel sorry for myself. And I guess…hell, I guess it was nice to hear someone make it sound like that was good enough—just me, just this town.” He paused. He was getting to the hard part, the part he’d rather forget, the mistake that had screwed up his future. At the moment, it all felt too recent, like yesterday.

“I got in her car at some point. And she started kissing me. And I knew it was wrong, Trish, but right then…” He considered sugarcoating this part but didn’t. She wanted honesty from him—she was going to get it. “Right then, I didn’t care. I was drunk, and it was…too easy to let her.”

“What then?”

He balked, staring at her. Was she serious? “You know what then.”