Unbreakable (23 page)

Before Casper, she’d never brought a man to her bed. The very few…dalliances she’d engaged in had occurred elsewhere. A posh hotel room in San Antonio. Her lover’s home. A blanket under the stars when she’d dated a rancher from Gonzales for several months. Her most sexually adventurous years had been in college. Since then, she’d spent most of her nights alone.

She didn’t mind, really. She wasn’t sure if she hadn’t yet met the right man, or if she wasn’t intended to be part of a couple. She was opinionated and insistent and sometimes rude, and she sure wouldn’t want those qualities in a partner—a thought that had her chuckling into her pillow because of the rude, insistent, opinionated man beside her.

“Why are you laughing at seven o’clock in the morning?” he grumbled.

This from the man who worked cattle at dawn? “Why are you still sleeping at seven o’clock in the…Shit! It’s seven o’clock?” A look at the bedside alarm confirmed it. The alarm she’d forgot to set because she’d been too busy trying to convince Casper dreams were overrated. She groaned. “I am so, so,
so
unbelievably late. And you are, too.”

She tossed back the covers and flew through her morning routine, allowing herself no time to think what it meant that she’d slept so soundly because Casper had been sleeping beside her. Yes, Adelita’s large margarita had helped, but she remembered him being there, remembered pushing her foot toward him and settling her sole at his knee.

Remembered thinking it strange that neither one of them dreamed.

By the time she’d showered and dressed and was hopping into the kitchen on one foot, pulling her shoe onto the other, Casper was pouring her a travel mug of coffee. His face was scruffy, his
T-shirt hanging at his hips instead of tucked into his jeans, one leg of those bunched up at the top of his boot.

He held her gaze as he handed it to her, sipping his own, saying nothing though speaking volumes. His eyes took her in—her still-damp hair flipping on the ends, her lips bare of gloss, her suit jacket folded over one arm—finally shaking his head as he glanced at her legs and her pantyhose. That had her smiling as she took a swallow of coffee. She hated them as much as he did.

They walked to the parking lot together, Casper following her to her car. She couldn’t help but wonder how many of the complex residents knew the strange truck parked beside her was his, or how many would’ve assumed the overnight guest to be hers. Not that there would be any doubt now, the two of them together, in public, when she’d sworn to be circumspect.

Just her luck by the time she saw Boone later, he’d have heard where Casper spent the night. Last time he’d parked at a distance. This time they were side by side. It was too much to hope she could escape discovery a second time, especially with him standing there, so obviously with her.

Great, she mused, sliding into her seat and wondering why in the world she couldn’t stick to her guns. This wasn’t a whole lot different from the near-public display at the Hellcat Saloon. She’d promised Arwen then the same thing she’d promised herself. She would not let things with Casper get out of hand.

And yet here they were, both drinking coffee, neither of them quite put together, Casper barely dressed. Yeah. She was the queen of self-control, rolling her eyes as she turned the key in the ignition…and nothing. Nothing. The car was completely dead.

It hadn’t wanted to start when she’d left Arwen’s after Casper had taken her back there from Mulberry Street, and it had been iffy after work yesterday, but she’d thought the drive home
would charge it. Visiting Bandy’s Garage on her lunch hour had been the plan, but now…Crap.

“Can you give me a jump?”

One hand on her doorframe, the other on the top of the car, Casper leaned in. “You got cables?”

“Good lord. Don’t you?”

“In the flatbed. Not with me.” He straightened, held open her door. “C’mon. I’ll drop you off.”

“I need my car after work to go talk to Boone.”

“Then give me your keys,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll stop at Bandy’s and have Skeet bring you out a new battery. He can drop the car at the bank when he’s done.”

Hoping it
was
just her battery, she gathered her things, locked up the car, and worked the key from the ring while climbing into Casper’s truck. When she handed it to him, he kept hold of her hand, and even when they reached the bank parking lot less than ten minutes later, he didn’t let her go.

She tugged until he finally did, then reached for her jacket in the seat beside her, her purse on the floor, tucking her travel mug in an inside pocket. “Hold on,” he said, and the tone of his voice stopped her.

She thought of her boss impatiently waiting for her to arrive, thought of today’s scheduled conference with Greg Barrett and Philip Hart, thought about waking this morning, spineless and at peace. “Casper. I’m late,” she said, but she didn’t open the door.

“Then you’d better hurry up and pay me.”

“Pay you?”

“Cab fare. You didn’t think I was doing this for free, did you?”

“Actually, I did.” She took in his look, the heat, the expectation, the little bit of resignation that he was asking for the moon.
The moon that never came through for the Jaynes. A piece of her heart began to tear, and she stopped it by saying, “I guess you want to be paid with something besides cash.”

He cocked back, his thighs spread and the corner of his mouth smug and hopeful. “Well, sweet thing, since getting you to fork over cash takes an act of God, or a ball-strangling legal agreement—”

She cut him off before they got into another money scuffle. “What do you want?”

“How ’bout a little kiss?” He pointed to the center of his lips. “Right here. All soft and warm the way you’re so good at.”

“A little one,” she said, giving him a measurement with her forefinger and thumb and ignoring the ragged pull in her chest. “
Pequeño
. That’s it.”

“C’mere then,” he said, and reached for her, his voice a low, raspy brush that brought gooseflesh to her skin. “You know I like it when you talk dirty.”

“That wasn’t dirty. That was Spanish.” But she scooted across the seat and leaned to brush her lips over his.

When she moved away, he held her shoulder and kept her there, extending the kiss, the press of his lips harder, then deepening the kiss, parting her lips with his tongue. She groaned and gave in, kissing him back the way she wanted even though she’d agreed to a much safer contact. She didn’t want to walk into her office wet from wanting him.

It was too late, of course. Already her body was making room for his, opening, heating, growing loose and hungry. She leaned into him, wrapping an arm around his neck as he lifted her close, as he urged her into his lap, her back to his door as he leaned over her, bearing her down, sliding his hand beneath her skirt to her crotch.

He growled when he met her pantyhose, dug his fingers into
the fabric of the cloth panel, and tore, working his way through the opening he’d made to the one he wanted, the one hidden behind her panties, the one slick with her moisture and anxious. She shuddered, a breath of air touching her, teasing her. Telling her he was close.

And then he was there, pushing his way through her folds and into her, two fingers, then a third, and groaning into her mouth. She curled her hands around his shoulders, digging for purchase and straining, clenching, contracting her muscles and wishing for his cock because of the way he fit her, the way he knew her.

His tongue played with hers, sliding along hers, flicking and fucking until her skin felt too tight to hold the push and the pull of her need. She wanted to care that they were parked in front of the bank, that the tinted windows of his truck wouldn’t hide her from anyone walking by. Co-workers. Customers. The man who signed her paycheck. The man who signed his.

But she was caught in Casper’s snare and helpless. He did this to her, made her forget how important her reputation was, how hard she’d worked to restore it. That she’d sworn to never again be put in a position to worry that her behavior would be her downfall, or the ruination of someone she couldn’t imagine not being a part of her life.

And look at the position she was in now—her legs spread, her pantyhose torn and worthless, her skirt rucked up over her hips, Casper fingering her in the parking lot of the bank. What was she thinking? Or why wasn’t she thinking? Wouldn’t that be the question needing an answer most?

But instead of pushing off his lap and shoving him away, she forced her conscience and common sense out of the truck’s cab, allowing only her lust to remain. She writhed against Casper’s
hand, pushed her mound into his palm, grinding her clit and feeling the rise of his cock beneath her.

And then his hand was gone, and he was forcing her to sit up, reaching for his belt buckle and button fly. He lifted his hips and shucked his jeans down his thighs, his cock thrusting against his belly, his legs thick and muscled. She closed her eyes to let the tingles and electric buzz build to sweep through her body.

She wanted to straddle him, to feel him inside of her, pulsing, bold and hard and insistent. Instead she leaned forward and took him in her mouth, tasting him, the salt and the smooth cap of his head. Veins stood rigid along his shaft, and she followed them with her tongue.

He bucked up into her mouth, groaning, his hand holding the back of her head, his fingers threaded through her hair like fence posts through grass. “Goddamn, woman. All I asked for was a little bitty kiss.”

She fought a smile and pursed her lips to suck him hard, pulling her mouth the length of his cock until she held nothing but the head. She swirled her tongue around him, using the end against the slit, then the underside seam, then the flat of the surface that was so tight she thought it might burst.

He was hot, so hot, and so ready, moisture weeping from his tip, slick and sticky. She swept it away, spread it with her tongue, wetting him with his pre-cum and her saliva, her pussy throbbing as she remembered the feel of him inside of her, how tightly he fit, how he stretched her to near bursting, too.

She was done. She needed him. She let him go, sitting up, hiking her skirt to her waist and tearing the hole in her pantyhose to make the room she needed. Then she straddled him, her knees on his seat at his hips, and reached between their bodies,
taking his cock in her hand, sliding the ripe head through her folds to smear the moisture gathered there.

And though she was ready and wanted this more than anything, she stopped because of what she saw in Casper’s gaze—an asking that had nothing to do with the size of the kiss she’d promised. He was staring, studying, looking for something she didn’t know she had to give him. Something bigger than sex. They’d agreed this was all they wanted—bodies and heat and satisfaction.

Her pulse drumming in her neck, she squeezed his cock and said, “Don’t look at me like that.”

He shook his head, and where she was expecting a grin, she got something else entirely. A something that seemed a hopeful kind of sad, breaking her heart when emotions weren’t supposed to be here. This was a reckless kind of sex, physical and dangerous, but it was not what he was asking.

She was still holding on to him, and he reached for a lock of her hair, rubbing it, tucking it behind her ear. “I’m not sure how I’m looking at you, so I’m not sure I can stop.”

“You know, and you can. You very well can,” she said, and guided him to her opening.

He shrugged, swallowed, but still didn’t grin. “Seems a lot easier for you to say than me to do.”

“You’re going to ruin everything.”

That got to him. She saw it in the tightening of his mouth, in the deepening of the grooves at the corner of his eyes. “That’s nothing new, Faith. I’ve always ruined everything for everyone.”

And then she pushed him inside and slid to sit on him, burying him deep until any movement she made he made, too, because he was part of her. She placed her hands on the seat back on either side of his head, riding him slowly, her hips moving up then down then pausing.

“What?” he asked, his hands at her waist to guide her, to urge her to go on.

“Please don’t ruin this,” she said, her voice gruff, her throat aching, her chest too tight to breathe.

“If you have to tell me that, I’m pretty sure it’s already too—”

She stopped the rest of his words with her mouth, pressing them back with her lips, pushing them into his throat with her tongue. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, not about things being ruined or things he wanted from her. He was inside of her, filling her, owning her and giving himself up to her. He was hers, and it frightened her to think she held so much of his trust.

Her hips moved, her thighs, her stomach, as she worked his cock. His hands stayed put at her waist, guiding her where he wanted her to go. To the left, then up, to the right, stop, forward, and down. Over and over she did what he wanted, did what she wanted, pleasing them both.

And all the while she kissed him, deep kisses with her tongue and what she thought might be her heart. Tender brushes of her lips to the edge of his rushed out on a breathless moan, his sound, her sound, the sound of a connection she wasn’t ready for.

The truck rumbled beneath them, the vibrations tickling through his cock to her core. She shuddered as his tip prodded her deeply, intimately, reaching her where she thought she was safe. She wanted him in her body, but letting him in to touch more than the physical parts of her was too much of a risk—for now. Most likely forever.

She shook her head, pushing the thoughts away. She couldn’t think about forever. She didn’t even want to think about now or where she was or the risk she was taking. Not when there was so much to feel. Holding on to the muscles bunched between his shoulders and neck, she let her head fall back and rode
him, the steering wheel scraping her back, his cock scraping her clit.

He leaned forward, wrapped his lips around her nipple, and sucked it into his mouth, holding her there with his teeth while his tongue scraped the taut surface. He bit harder, moved to the top of her breast, and sucked on her skin, bruising her, marking her. Branding her before letting her go.