Tiger Bound (2 page)

“Hey, what are you doing?” Deja called to Heath. “I’m going to eat all the pretzels, and your beer is getting warm.”

“Just a sec,” he called back from his room. She’d heard the shower turn off, so she figured he wouldn’t be long. The scent of Heath’s body wash wafted down the hall, doing things to her insides. She switched to her back and breathed deep. In the mornings, when he shaved, the lotion smelled incredible too.

Heath strolled into the room running a towel over his wet hair, which always darkened when he washed it. He tossed the towel on the back of the chair, leaving his hair sticking up in spikes. She laughed, but he still looked sexy as hell. Fresh from the shower, he’d pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt, leaving his feet bare like hers. Deja liked his feet. They were pale and neat, big manly feet with clean nails despite how hard he worked for a living. A woman appreciated that.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

She jumped and turned her head. “Nobody’s looking at you, paranoid.” Heath sat on her ass while she faced down on the couch. She squirmed. “Get off me, you big idiot. You’re heavy. Maybe you should lose some weight.”

When he said nothing, she looked up at him. His wide eyes told her he believed her. The man could not be serious with the amount of hard muscle forming the kind of body a woman would get on her knees to partake of. He moved, and Deja sat up. She scooted over next to him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“Really think I’m fat?”

“No, dummy.”

“I miss him, Deja.”

She gasped at the sudden change of subject. As far as she’d seen, Heath hadn’t cried, not even when the trooper called to tell him Tate had been in a collision and was declared dead on the spot. Tate had had a stroke, the doctors believed, and was dead before he hit the tree. She twisted to face him and brought his head closer to hers. Stroking his cheek like she’d wanted to do earlier, she whispered the only thing she could think of. “I know, baby, and I know it’s hard. You can cry. Something like this, you have to let it out.”

He pulled away and turned his head, his jaw going hard and his lips thinning. “I did that in private.”

“Did you?” She doubted him.

“A little.” He ran his hand through his hair and then over his face. “I have no family left, Deja. I didn’t have much to begin with. My mother died when I was five. You already know that.”

She nodded. “But I’m your family now. The one with the great tan.”

One side of his mouth turned up in a half smile. She didn’t think she’d get much more than that. “Yeah, you’re family, always will be. Like you said, when I marry—”

“Don’t make me smack you at a time like this, Heath.”

Without giving her a lick of warning, he scooped her up in big arms and deposited her onto his lap. They’d never done that before. They joked and wrestled, even smacked an ass in jest, but not this. She didn’t know how to take it and shifted to get down, but his hold tightened, keeping her trapped against his chest.

“Heath?” she asked, hesitating as if speaking to a wild animal,
or a mad man
. Not to say she didn’t like being on his lap, but knowing his thighs were under her ass got her hot, and this wasn’t the time to get all bothered when the man needed support. Casting her lot in with stupid Candi could not happen.

He ran his cheek next to hers, and his lashes tickled her skin. Sooty and thick, darker blond, they were so like his mother’s in the picture. The woman had been a beauty, being no older than Heath was now when she died. She’d never been strong, he told her.

“Is it okay?”

She rested on his chest. “Yes, it’s okay. I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Heath captured her face between his hands like she’d said something wrong. He stared into her eyes, and Deja shivered, scared he’d see the truth of how she felt about him. “Deja, we’ve been playing games a long time.”

“W-what are you saying?” A ray of hope rose in her chest, but she battled it down.
No way he can mean what I think.

His lips touched hers in a feather light kiss that sent chills racing each other down her spine. He stuck his tongue out and laced it along her lips. Deja couldn’t make herself part them, she was so scared. She shook in his arms, but he didn’t give up. He tilted her head back and raised her chin. For a brief moment, he leaned away and captured her gaze with his. Her breath stuttered in her lungs.

“I…” What the heck was she going to say?

He took advantage of her parted lips and covered her mouth once again. He pressed closer, encouraging her lips wider.
I’m burning up. I’m just going to combust right here.
“Mm.” Had she said it out loud? She didn’t mean to. She drew away from him, breaking their connection. To her surprise, Heath let her go, and she climbed off his lap. She put a hand up to her mouth and tried getting control of her breathing before he noticed it.

“He and I were so different, like opposites.”

Deja blinked at him. Okay, so he wanted to go back to talking about his parents. After that kiss? She’d roll with it. The man might not be in his right head. “That’s not uncommon. Everybody has their own personality.”

Heath seemed far away with his eyes unfocused on the mantel he faced. “He kept telling me to stay calm and not let everything make me fly off the handle. I didn’t think I was that bad, but he acted like it was the end of the world if I got worked up. Maybe he wanted me to be more like her since I looked like her.” He closed his eyes. “I remember her gentle and sad, but then she was sick all the time. Dad said he didn’t know how she hung on so long, and she would tell him it was because of his loving care.”

“You remember that?” She looked at him in doubt. “You were like five or something.”

He nodded.

“Well, you two had your issues. I’ll give you that, but he loved you, Heath. Don’t forget that. It’s the most important part. He loved you for you, and he was proud of you for what you’ve accomplished. Just like you said, the ranch is going good, and you were the one that saved the down payment for it and convinced the bank to give you a loan.”

His attention flicked to her and then to the pretzel bowl. He took her hand and laced his fingers with hers. She got it at last. He was nervous. They had always discussed family, and Heath complained to her about his dad just like she mouthed off about her stepmother, the woman who raised her after her father died of a heart attack. Heath left home to fulfill his dream years ago. She left at eighteen to keep from wrapping her fingers around her stepmother’s throat and strangling the evil wench. Sometimes, she wondered why her name wasn’t Cinderella, but then she had no stepsisters, and no inheritance to steal.
Heath could be my prince, though.

“I was thinking,” he began.

“Yes?”

“We could be lovers.” He dropped the suggestion with baldness, not even making it seem like it was the next step. She realized she had expected him to say they should stop playing games and become a real couple. After all, everyone thought they were together. Some assumed it was an open relationship since once in awhile Deja went out on dates, and Heath kept a woman pretty constantly. Right now, they were both single.

“Lovers?” She hoped her tone didn’t reveal her disappointment, but Heath seemed too tied up into whatever thoughts ran through his mind to notice.

“We’ve been attracted to each other a long time. I’d say since high school.” His cheeks grew pink for some reason. “Well, high school for you probably when I stopped being a tall, scrawny kid, and for me when you started growing breasts.”

Deja burst out laughing. “You dirty beast.” She smacked his arm.

Heath let her hand go and gave her a little shake by the arms. “I’m serious, Deja.”

She stood up and put space between them. With him touching her, there was no way she wouldn’t leap into his arms and tell him hell yes, but doing that might screw up a friendship that had lasted years. They both had a lot to lose as neither of them had anyone else, and she told him so.

“Plus, you’re hurting right now, Heath. I don’t want to jump into bed with you as some sort of sexual balm. It wouldn’t be right for either of us. I might end up resenting you, and you might think I’m nothing but a whore.”

He frowned. “That’s impossible, for the simple fact that you’re hesitating. That shows me you’re a better woman than any I know. I agree, this is a serious decision. Maybe I am thinking about it because I’m feeling…you know…off because of Dad, but it has entered my mind different times for a long while. This isn’t new. I want you to think about it. I want to be your lover. If you find a guy you want to be with, you tell me and I will back off. The same goes for me.”

How hard was it for him to find a woman with them throwing themselves at his head every day? “Okay, I will.”

His eyes widened. “Really?”

She put her hands on her hips and put all her weight into one leg. “Why not? You’re hot as hell and have a body I’d like to explore. Why shouldn’t I consider letting you taste my chocolate goodness?”

Heath’s blue eyes seemed to blaze with fire, and he grazed her entire body from top to bottom with just a look at her suggestive words. The front of his sweatpants all of a sudden defined his hard-on as it extended partway down his thigh.
Okay, if I wasn’t convinced before he’s attracted to me, now I am.

Chapter Three

“So, are you going to go for it?” Brenda, her friend and coworker asked. Brenda, as dear as she was to Deja, was not always the voice of reason. The woman seemed to love living vicariously through Deja, which was pretty bad since Deja lived a dull life. The occasional drama of telling a guy she needed to end it and the dude behaving like the fool he was—pair that with cussing Candi out at least once a month—made up Deja’s existence. If those incidents constituted fun for Brenda, the woman needed to get out more. Then again, she did say Heath could melt snow in an ice storm, but she admitted she didn’t have the guts to date a white guy. Hence, Deja had to do it.

Deja leaned against the doorframe in their tiny post office with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Her boss hadn’t shown yet today for some reason, so she delayed leaving on her route for a few minutes to shoot the breeze with Brenda. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m tempted, but I don’t know. Girl, if you’d seen… Oh, I can’t tell you that, too yummy.”

“Tell me,” Brenda demanded.

Deja eyed another clerk who worked the back with Brenda. She had no intention of letting her in on what she told her friend. The news would spread around town before she finished her route, and Heath would tell her never mind because she didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut.

With a gesture for Brenda to follow, she headed toward the bathroom, and they crowded inside the room just big enough to fit a wheelchair but not much more. At least they took turns keeping it spotless. The only man in the place, their boss, didn’t chip in, but who needed him to do a half-ass job of it anyway?

“Spill,” Brenda said when Deja got the door shut.

She had been referring to the hard-on when she told Brenda she couldn’t share that part, and it was true. Deja didn’t tell her friend everything. Even as a man, Heath was her best friend. She told nothing she thought would embarrass or shame him. Not that he needed to be. Just the imprint told her a lot. “He kissed me.”

“Tongue?”

“Oh yeah.” A tremor shook her voice at the memory, and her pussy clenched.

Brenda’s eyes went round, and her mouth made a little
O
. Deja knew she guessed her reaction to the kiss by the expression on Deja’s face.

“You gonna hit it?”

That part was the kicker. “He’s just lost his dad. He’s, for lack of a better word, vulnerable. If the roles were reversed, wouldn’t you think he was taking advantage of my weakened state of mind at a time like this?”

“This is Heath we’re talking about, Deja. You love him.”

Brenda’s words took her by surprise. While she spoke often about Heath, she’d never admitted her true feelings deep down inside. “Sure, I love him. He’s family. I—”

“No, girl, you know what I mean. You
love
him, Deja. You’re in love with Heath. Anyone who really knows you like I do can see it. You light up when you talk about him. He’s the first person you mention every morning when we talk, and the last person every evening when we say good night. If you’re gonna fool someone, at least don’t fool yourself.”

Deja clamped her teeth together, not ready to admit a thing, but tears started in her eyes, and she suspected she held them too wide to hold off the flow. Brenda was right, but maybe that meant she should tell him no.

Brenda laid a heavy hand on her arm, never realizing how rough she could be as a bigger woman. Deja didn’t care about her friend’s build, though, because Brenda had a heart the size of Texas, and she’d go to bat for her any day.

“Don’t look like somebody just stole your dog, girl,” Brenda teased, “because he loves you too. He just doesn’t know it yet. Men are thick-headed. It takes a boulder to fall on them to get a clue.”

Deja burst out laughing. “Ouch, won’t he be dead?”

“Thick, I told you. Not even a crack, but look, it’s up to you what you do. I say go for it. He might not know he loves you, but he does, and you love him. That means the sex will be like nothing you’ve had before. It won’t be sex. It will be making love.”

“Brenda James, you are a romantic.”

She shook with laughter. “Guilty.”

Deja agreed to come back after her route so they could have a late lunch and do a bit of shopping together.

* * * *

“So, what do you think of this one?” Brenda asked Deja, holding up a nightie.

Deja wrinkled her nose. “There are no nipples in that thing. Damn, I didn’t even know they had raunchy stuff like this here.”

“Yeah, but do you like it?” her friend insisted. “I know Heath will love it.”

“Girl, please, I could go in there butt naked and it would be all good.” She chewed the inside of her cheek, examining the sheer material of the nightie. Did she even dare? Hell, she hadn’t come to a final conclusion that she’d even say yes to Heath. Yet, here she was, allowing Brenda to talk her into shopping for something sexy for their first time together.