He wanted her again.
And he didn’t want to want her again.
Well, welcome to her club. “Thanks for making sure I got home okay,” she said. “Did you check my closet for monsters?”
“Your closet’s monster free. So’s your shower. Nice underwear, by the way.”
She’d hand washed a bunch of it and had left it hanging in the shower to dry. She grinned. “Did you like the black lace?”
“Yeah, I liked the lace. And the yellow satin thong and matching bra.”
Her nipples got perky. This was becoming a habit. She wondered if there was documentation of Pavlovian response involving sexily voiced innuendo and nipples. There should be.
Then he leaned in and put his mouth to her ear. “And while I bet they look hot on you, they’re not my favorite. At least not on you.”
She’d left her hand on his chest, and her fingers involuntarily fisted in his T-shirt. “W-what is?”
Backing her to the door, he put a hand on either side of her head against the wood and let his knee touch hers. “Nothing at all.” Oh, God.
His thigh slid in between hers, and desire skittered across her belly, heating her from the inside out. “Yeah?”
His mouth skimmed her jaw. “Oh, yeah. But back to keeping yourself safe.” He had her pinned to the door, their bodies flush. She couldn’t have fit one of her wafer-thin phyllo pastry sheets between them. She squirmed, trying to get even closer, and discovered to her delight that either his gun had moved to his crotch, or he was hard.
“Do you remember what I told you, Bella?” He ran his lips over her jaw and she let out a helpless moan. “Um-”
He nuzzled just beneath her ear, and she lost her concentration. “Don’t keep the key beneath the mat?” she managed to say. “Before that.”
“You told me-” His mouth was on her neck. He drew on a patch of skin and sucked. “Oh, God, Jacob.”
“Told you what, Bella?” He dipped his tongue into the hollow at the base of her throat.
“T-to have an escape route.” God. God, she needed another taste of him. Just one. “You’re it tonight, Jacob. You’re my escape.” She lifted her mouth and he met her halfway. His hands slid from the wood to her, one cupping the back of her head, the other sliding down her body with a new familiarity that thrilled, and as he devoured her mouth, she couldn’t hold back her moan.
He reached for her shirt-
“Yeah?”
“My bed’s about ten steps away.”
His fingers went still. Then he kissed her lips softly and dropped his forehead to hers, breathing heavy. “This can’t happen,” he said.
She rocked against his raging hard-on. “Hate to break it to you, but your body is in disagreement.”
He looked down at his hands. One cupped her breast, his thumb slowly rasping back and forth over her nipple, making it stand up to attention for him, his other was spread wide over her hip, his fingers beneath the material of her bikini bottoms. He still had a hard thigh thrust between hers, and with a muscle ticking in his jaw, he closed his eyes.
Bella’s hands had been busy, too. Her fingers were curled in the waistband of his jeans, heading for the hidden treasure. When she wriggled them, he groaned. Grabbing her wrist, he dropped his head to the door, hard.
“What are you doing?”
“Knocking some sense into myself.” He opened his eyes and stepped back, face tight, body tense, erection threatening to burst the buttons on his Levi’s. “I’m leaving now.”
“But-”
His hot gaze swept down her body one more time. He pressed in close, kissed her hard and just a little bit rough, and loving it, she kissed him back in the same way, but then he was pulling free, shaking his head as he moved away. He shoved his hands into his pockets as if he didn’t quite trust himself. “We can’t- I can’t sleep with you while this case is open.”
“It’s not your case.”
He let out a long, slow breath, as if struggling for control. “You need to be careful with what you’re saying to me. Only last night, you wanted me to think you were moving to Siberia.”
This was unfortunately true. “Yes, but there’s something I didn’t anticipate.”
He just looked at her.
How to explain that last night, when he’d been pulling off her clothes, his hands everywhere on her, both demanding and somehow gentle at the same time, she’d been aware even then that being with him was going to be different.
Better than anything she’d known.
It’d scared her in the heat of the moment. But now, she wanted to experience it again.
Just one more time…
The fact was, in the dark of the night, he’d made her body sing the Hallelujah Chorus, and in the light of day her body wanted a repeat. “We seem to have a little chemistry problem.”
He didn’t move, but she could see the agreement in his eyes. Plus, he was still hard. Gloriously hard. Her fingers itched to touch, and she reached for him to do just that, until his words stopped her.
“How long are you staying in Santa Rey?”
“I don’t know. Why? Trying to figure out if this still qualifies as a one-night stand?” She smiled. “Because I have no problem with a two-night stand. Maybe even a three-night stand if you play your cards right. And by the way, I don’t have an aversion to daytime sex, either.”
He ran his gaze over her features. Finally, he turned to the door.
“Let me guess,” she said to his back, fascinated by the play of muscles as he reached for the handle. “This time it’s you who’s moving to Siberia?”
When he looked back at her, the heat was still in his gaze. His mouth barely curved in a hint of a smile, testosterone leaking from his every pore. “No. I stick, remember?”
“Then?”
“Maybe I’m just giving you time to absorb what’s happened.”
“The murder?”
“The fact that we’re drawn to each other like a moth to the flame. The fact that it’s only a matter of time before I get you in bed again-if you’re still around. And this time, there’ll be no pretty lies at the end. It is what it is.”
Every single erogenous zone in her body quivered. “And what is it?”
He flashed her a wicked, naughty grin, and opened the door. “Lock the door,” he said, and then he was gone.
JACOB DROVE HOME TO his ranch-style house in the sprawling, rolling hills that backdropped Santa Rey. He’d bought the house back when it was a piece of shit and no one had wanted to live all the way out here, and as a result, he’d gotten it and the land damn cheap. Good thing, as he could never afford it now that the area was in fashion.
He’d slowly fixed the place up one room at a time, using his own hands and cheap labor-his brothers. He’d found that for the price of beer and pizza, he could coax them out on the weekends, and as a result, his place had become Madden central.
So he wasn’t all that surprised when he pulled up and found Cord and Austin in his backyard, drinking his beer and idly watching his two horses roam the pen they’d all worked on putting up.
Austin handed him a beer.
Cord offered an opened tin of cookies, half-empty.
No one spoke until Jacob had taken a long pull from the beer and put away two chocolate-chip cookies, obviously homemade. Since Cord could burn water, he said, “Tell Lexi these were amazing.”
Cord grinned stupidly. He’d finally gotten smart and for the last month had been dating his sweet, sexy next-
