Unexpected Family (11 page)

“I’m not talking about this with you.” She sat back down and picked up her coffee, ignoring the look he was giving her.

Finally he returned to his stool and finished his beer in one long swallow. Catching Joey’s eye he lifted his hand for another.

“Is it your intention to get drunk so I have to drive you home?” she asked.

“No, but it’s a good idea, if it keeps you away from guys like him.”

“It’s not, and you know it. You’d have to pay me to take you back to your truck tomorrow morning and miss half a morning of work.”

Joey slid him another beer and he took a quick sip.

“What are you even doing here, Jeremiah? Where are the boys?” she asked, peeved with him. All that quiet heat between them earlier was raging into a different fire and she found herself itching for a fight.

“With their grandparents.” He stared up at the ceiling, stretching his long neck so much that she saw the white skin under the edge of his shirt.

“You all right?” she asked.

His laugh was bitter and dark, like the bad coffee in her cup.

“I do not want to talk about whether or not I am all right. I don’t want to talk. I am so done with talking about myself.”

Okay,
she thought, leaning away. There was a dangerous sparkle around him, something manic in his eyes.

“You want to get out of here?” he asked, and her stomach twisted, torn between desire and better sense.

“And do what?”

His eyes sparkled. “Minigolf. What do you think?”

She laughed, low in her chest, more turned on just sitting here than she’d been in years. Just the prospect of walking out that door with him, the half-formed imaginings of what they would do to each other, made her fingers shake. Her breathing speed up.

Part of her wanted to play a game with him, drag this out. The anticipation was so delicious. And part of her was scared. Scared silly to leave with him. To embark on some affair when she was such a mess. When she liked him so much.

“You want to leave?”

“That is just the beginning of what I want.” He tilted his head, watching her, studying her, his eyes hot with appreciation. “I’m tired of being in my own head, Lucy. Worrying constantly if I’m doing the right thing. And I think…maybe you’re tired of that, too.”

It was as if he’d read her mind.

“I want to feel something.”

This was her time to back out, to put the right kind of distance between them, but then he leaned in, his breath smelling like beer and gum.

“I dare you,” he whispered.

In the blink of an eye she was on fire for him. The wildness surrounding him—the excitement that crackled in his eyes. It was contagious, that excitement, and she wanted more.

She felt alive. For the first time in a very long time, she felt utterly alive.

Attraction and intent sizzled and burned in the air around them. The bar, the twenty people milling around, all of it vanished and it was just them. In the whole wide world it was just them.

Normally she didn’t think about how long it had been since she’d had sex. Because sex in her relationships was only part of the equation. When lust attacked she could handle it on her own, but the burn in her body was specific to this man.

She wanted him. Needed him. And only Jeremiah Stone would do.

And he was looking at her like he felt the same way.

“Joey,” she said without looking away from Jeremiah, “don’t call me. I’m busy.”

She reached back, grabbed her purse and followed him out the door into the night.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE
CHILL
IN
THE
EVENING
air did nothing to cool her down—if anything she stepped closer to Jeremiah, longing for his skin against hers, his heat through the thin fabric of his shirt.

She had no idea where they were going—a car, probably. A bed, hopefully.

But once they were in the shadows on the far side of the bar, he turned and jerked her into his arms, rough and wild, and she met him halfway, leaning back, her hips against his, her arms around his neck.

She found his lips in the darkness and the night exploded.

Kiss after kiss, a hundred of them, a thousand spilling into one another. She opened her mouth, let in his tongue and he groaned, pulling her against him until she could feel the hard ridge of his erection beneath his zipper.

Yes,
she thought,
yes, and more please, more.

He sucked on her tongue and she gasped, pulling herself into him with her arms, unable to get close enough. She could crawl into his skin and it wouldn’t be enough.

Porn star words were coming to her lips; she wanted to ask him to do things to her they had no business doing against a building.

As if he realized that, too, he broke away, his face tight in the shadows, his lips wet. Her breath shuddered in her body and she honestly didn’t know what to say or do.
S
he slid her fingers up under his shirt, feeling the situation gaining a dizzying momentum.

“You’re so beautiful. So alive,” he breathed, pushing her hair back off her cheek, his thumb touching the corner of her mouth and she licked it as it went by. He groaned and brought his thumb back to her lips, tracing the edges with rough calluses.

Frustrated, and so very turned on, she put her teeth to his skin, raking them across his thumb, and he smiled, wicked and dirty.

“That’s how I feel, too. Come on.”

He grabbed her hand, putting distance between them, but then stopped. “My house is too crowded,” he said. “Yours is, too.”

Some of the glitter drained off him, real life returning drip by drip to destroy the excitement, the life in his face.

“Oh, man,” he muttered, his shoulders slumping.

She had no idea why she was doing this, except that she knew her excitement was tied to his, and if his died, hers would and she wasn’t ready for that. She wanted to see where this kind of desire led.

And she wanted to see him animated. Not worn down. Jeremiah as he used to be, as he could be again, with her.

She tugged his hand, pulling him into the shadows behind the bar, glad the garbage Dumpster was on the other side, until she felt the roughness of the brick against her back. They bumped into something in the dark and he fell against her, kicking whatever was at their feet aside.

It was nothing but darkness back here, bushes along one side—honeysuckle by the smell of things.

“Someone could come out here,” he said, arching himself, bit by bit, against her. Hips, chest, lips. They were a combination lock, and he knew how it worked.

“They could.”

“They could see us.” Both of his hands pushed up against the bricks by her head, blocking her in. Securing her. It was just them and the heat and the lust and the fire between them. A delight of their own making.

“I suppose.”

His tempting grin was back. “Why, Ms. Alatore, I had no idea you were so naughty.”

I’m not,
she thought.
It’s you. It’s us. I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never felt even a tenth of what you’re making me feel and we still have our clothes on.

He brushed his face against her neck, the rough scrape of his stubble sending sensation racing over and under her skin. His breath kissed her skin, her cheeks, the points of her ears.

Oh, she was melting inside, melting against him. He pushed a knee between her legs as if to keep her up and she thanked him by pressing her hot core against the hard muscle of his leg. Riding it, her own thigh pressed high against his erection, and he leaned his head against the wall beside hers. Groaning low in his throat.

Reckless, wild with adrenaline and lust, she put her hand against the hard muscles of his stomach and slipped her palm down the waist of his pants until her fingers touched the top of his erection. The soft spongy head, the little drops of liquid he couldn’t control.

His hand helped hers unbutton his jeans and she sighed with delight as she had full access to Jeremiah. She cupped him, reached beneath his erection to find all of him, and he growled, clenching her hair in his hands as he kissed her.

Wild, he kissed her with none of the finesse she’d expected from a man like Jeremiah. No teasing. No seduction. It was rabid need and barely controlled. It was Jeremiah as she never, ever thought she’d experience him. Utterly undone and at her mercy. His hips arched into her hands and she stroked him, harder, faster, not sure of where this was going, but not wanting to stop.

“Lucy,” he breathed, biting her lips, sucking on the skin of her neck. “Oh, God, baby, it’s so good. So. Good.”

She didn’t realize but she was bucking her hips against his knee, pushing herself toward her own orgasm even as she pushed him toward his. She felt powerful and feminine and desired in the extreme.

“Baby.” He put his hands over hers, stopping her, though he couldn’t seem to stop himself from pushing himself through their fingers. He hissed, arching his head back and she licked his throat.

His laughter was dark and pained and he stepped back, and she followed but he put a hand at her hip. Between her legs fire raged and she felt as if she’d had a thousand too many drinks.

“I don’t have any condoms.”

It took a second for the words to make sense.

“Do you?” he asked. She would have laughed at his hopeful expression if she’d been able to; instead, she shook her head.

He swore, resting his forehead against hers. “Probably for the better. I don’t want the first time I have sex with you to be outside a bar.”

“That’s very sweet, Jeremiah, but I’m dying.”

His lip quirked. “Dying?”

“You have no idea.”

He glanced down at the shadows between his legs where she knew his erection was probably pounding in time with his heartbeat. Much like what was happening between her legs.

Slowly, one by one, her fingers found him, curled over the hard muscle and skin, until he was back in her palm, stepping toward her willingly.

“There are other things we can do,” she whispered. She took his hand and put it against her breast.

Jeremiah was a smart man and she didn’t have to give him any more hints. His big broad hand, those long calloused fingers, cupped her breast, found the hard point of her nipple and rolled it slowly until the tension hurt. Deliciously.

“Is this what you want?” he breathed.

“More.”

Both hands slipped up under her shirt. Rough, his hands yanked at the lace and silk of her bra; something tore and she loved it.
Yes. Yes, and yes.
A barely in control cowboy, this was what she wanted. What she’d needed and never known.

His fingers pulled at her nipples; his eyes watched her face, gauging just how much pain she liked with her pleasure until he found the combination that made her wild.

She used her thumb to gather what moisture leaked from the top of his erection and spread it down the shaft. And then again. Again. Faster.

“That’s what you want?” he asked through clenched teeth, his hands fumbling at the button at the top of her jeans. In a heartbeat, his hand was down her pants, twisting, shifting until…

“Oh, God. Yes!” she cried as his finger, one and then another, speared into the slick heat of her. His thumb found the hard ridge that made her see stars. Her hand squeezed his erection until he laughed, pained.

“You,” he said, lifting her hand away from his body. “You first.”

He worked her. Owned her.

She cried out, her head tilted back. “You have to be quiet,” he breathed in her ear, even that sensation sending her someplace new.

“I can’t… Oh, Jeremiah.” She put her hands against his shoulders, using him as leverage as she arched herself against his hands, her hips a piston in the night.

He slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Someone will hear.”

She cried out against his fingers, used her teeth against his palm, and in the darkness she found the light of his eyes. Blue fire that burned away everything but what he made her feel.

She didn’t look away. Couldn’t. His hand over her mouth, his fingers inside her, and she came, eyes wide open.

* * *

W
HAT
THE
HELL
WAS
THAT
?
Jeremiah wondered, feeling as if he’d been given a million dollars. The key to the city, a king’s crown. Lucy Alatore was the most passionate, most exciting woman he’d ever had the privilege of touching. Ever.

And he was oddly humbled in the back alley behind this bar.

Oddly reverent.

He lifted his hand from her mouth and kissed her lips in apology. Kissed the red marks on her cheeks his fingers had left. Reluctant to leave the hot, wet pocket he’d found, he slowly slipped his fingers from her. Cataloging every silken inch of her. She shook and trembled, her body jerking in wild aftershocks as his fingers slipped over sensitive skin and then, just because he wanted to, he went back one more time.

“No. Jeremiah,” she breathed. “No more.”

“Sorry.” He buttoned her pants and reached for his, but her hands got there first and at the first touch of her fingers he jerked.

“Baby, I’m…” He felt like a teenager. Young and untried and so close to losing control it was embarrassing. If he just had a second, a minute even, he’d get himself under control so at the first touch of her hand he wouldn’t come all over her like a fifteen-year-old.

But she wasn’t going to give him a minute. Her hands, busy and hot, slipped into the open V of his pants.

“Hard,” she breathed, licking his neck. “So hard.”

Yes. Yes.
He resisted, easing away, but she stopped him.

“Let me,” she breathed, stroking him hard and then harder. Slow and then faster.

His grip on her shoulder was too hard, he knew that, and he was biting his tongue so hard he could taste blood. He was going to embarrass himself, but there was no walking away from this.

He jerked, putting his hand over hers to push her away, but she linked her hand with his, and the sensation was too much. He jerked. And again, spilling himself over their fingers.

All he could hear for several long moments was the pounding of his heart in his ears. His brain was short-circuiting, his wires crossed.

Did I just…all over her…behind a bar?

She shifted, her hands leaving his body, and all sorts of reason and sense rushed in with the cool air.

“Um…” Her fingers were a mess, so was he and he felt like such a child. Such a green boy. Eight months since he’d touched a woman and this is what comes of him. For a man who used to pride himself on being able to say no when the moment required, he certainly had been unable tonight.

He blamed Lucy. Irresistible Lucy.

“Here.” He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket; something was stuck in there with it and it fell to the ground. He ignored it and wiped her hands. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?”

He didn’t look up at her, unsure of what he would see. Diligently he just kept cleaning them both up.

“That was—”

“A mistake?” He felt thin. Like all of the cracks in his foundation were creeping up and over his body, revealing all his weakness.

“Do you think it was a mistake?” She touched his face, lifting his chin so he had to meet her eyes. Her liquid, slightly wounded eyes.

It would be easy to say yes, to bundle all of this up as a one-off, a mistake never to be repeated, but he wanted a repeat. From what was happening in his pants he wanted a repeat immediately.

“No.” He tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket. “But we could have been caught. Who does that, Lucy?”

“We do!” she erupted with light, a glee she’d clearly been suppressing. Her smile was womanly. Her black hair wild around her face, her eyes wide in the half-light.

Beautiful,
he thought.
She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

“I’ve never done anything like that before. Ever.” She made it sound like they’d egged a house, broke into the high school: something innocent and naughty at the same time.

The bark of his laughter startled a bird in the bushes past the stone wall they leaned against.

“Honestly, Jeremiah Stone.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek, a spark against his skin. “That was perfect.”

“Perfect? Perfect would have been a king-size bed. A couple of condoms—”

“Oh, I have no doubt but that you would rock a king-size bed. And I hope to find out all your tricks. But this…” She sighed, her head falling back.

“Just what you needed?” he joked, still uncomfortable, still shaken.

She stood up from against the wall, putting her hands on his cheeks, looking deep into his eyes in a way he found utterly intrusive but was unable to stop.

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t need that, too. Something wild. Something a little dirty? Fun?”

I just need to be touched.
The thought came out of nowhere, and shook him down to his boots. He kissed her lips, and stepped away, needing a little distance from the satiated woman in his arms. The thing that had fallen from his pocket crunched under his boot heel. A half-eaten bag of crackers.

Casey’s after-school snack.

Reality hammered down around him like a cold driving rain.

This is not for you, Stone,
he told himself.
Do not get attached to the fun this woman brings to your life. Those boys, that’s your life now.

“It’s getting late,” he said, “the boys—”

She blinked, the radiance fading as he forced real life upon their wickedness.

“Sure. I, ah… Have you seen my purse?”