Walk Away Joe (11 page)

She rolled onto her side, blinked the sleep out of her eyes and glanced pointedly at the piece of grass dangling between his fingers.

“Interesting,” she countered, sitting up slowly and stretching the kinks and stiffness out of her limbs, “that a grown man would resort to schoolboy tricks.”

Leaning back on his hand, he hitched up a knee and draped his arm over it. “Seemed kinder that way.” He tossed the grass aside.

She narrowed her eyes, suspicious of the ornery glint in his. “Kinder than what?”

“Oh, say...” He angled a look toward the thermos. “Kinder than dumping cold water down your back.”

She might not be fully awake, and she might be reading more into it than was wise, but she recognized flirting when she saw it. And Mr. Lambert, though he might claim he didn’t want to, was definitely flirting with her.

She considered the pleasant implication of that notion, considered the thermos, then him. “Umm. I’m humbled by your thoughtfulness. And I could use some of that now.”

He handed it over. Their fingers touched, a little longer than was necessary, and, she could see by the look on his face, a little longer than he thought was wise.

“You have creases on your cheek,” he said finally, when their gazes had touched and tangled for even longer than that telling contact of their fingers.

“And a crick in my neck,” she added, warmed by his soft, indulgent smile. Hiding her pleasure behind a yawn, she gave a full-body shudder, then drank. “How long have I been out?”

“Not long.” His words were dismissive, but his tone told her it had been long enough for him to do some thinking. And some watching. And maybe have a change of heart.

“Sorry.” She grimaced as she hunched her shoulders, then rolled her head on her neck. “I guess I wasn’t very good company.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” One comer of his mouth tipped up in a lazy grin. “I kind of appreciated the silence.”
 

“Yeah?” she asked archly. “Well appreciate this.” She dipped her fingers into the thermos cup and flicked water in his face.

Her surprise attack choked a laugh out of him. “So, she gets cranky when she doesn’t get her full nap in.”

She smiled, catlike and coy and without an ounce of repentance. “She gets even.”

Refilling the thermos cup, she eyed him with a calculated once-over that relayed every devilish, dangerous thought in her head. “Care for a little
more
cold water, cowboy?”

“I wouldn’t do that.” Though he smiled sweetly, his eyes backed up his warning with a promise that the consequences of any rash action would not go easy on her.

“Maybe
you
wouldn’t.” She gave him a long, considering look. “But I’m not you.”

Then she flung the water at him, hitting his chest dead- center.

Eyes wide, she held her breath and waited to see if he’d make good on his threat.

He didn’t say a word. Just looked down at his wet shirt, then up at her. His smile, when it came, was as unexpected as his speed. Both caught her off guard when he lurched for her.

With a surprised scream, she rolled out of his reach, shot to her feet and ran like hell.

He caught her just as she reached Jezebel.

She shrieked again and, laughing, tried to skitter away from him. He was too fast. And too strong. And too determined to make her pay.

Banding one strong arm around her waist, he slung her across his hip like a sack of feed and carried her, kicking and pleading, back to their spot under the tree.

“You are in
sooo
much trouble,” he promised as he plopped her down on her rump and loomed over her. Straddling her hips, he dropped to his knees and pushed her to her back. With his strong thighs riding either side of her ribs, he banded her wrists above her head.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” she cried in a wheedling tone as she bucked and twisted beneath his weight.

“Are you, now?” He looked thoroughly unconvinced and maddeningly arrogant as he smiled his captor’s smile above her.

“Yes..
.yes!”
she insisted with a desperate, wary cry as he bound her wrists with one hand and reached for the thermos with the other.

“Just how sorry would that be, Miz Smartmouth?” His grin was as smug as sin, and his blue eyes were dancing as he tipped the open thermos at a threatening angle over her head.

“Sorrier than a bronc buster flat on his back in the dirt,” she said on a laugh, then shrieked again when he let a trickle of liquid ice spill onto her throat. “You’re going to pay for this, Lambert.”

“This from a woman who is in no position to be making threats.” He chuckled when she glared at him. “Now, come on, darlin’, you can do better. How sorry are you?”

“Sorrier than your sorry hide,” she sputtered, and bucked again, then gasped when her own wild gyrations jarred his arm and sent water spilling all over her chest.

Eyes wide against the shock and cold, she went very still. Above her, he did the same as his gaze surveyed what their horseplay and the water had done.

She didn’t have to look down to see that her pale blue knit shirt clung to her breasts, emphasizing their fullness. She didn’t have to see the damage to know her nipples were defined by wet cotton, hard and peaked with cold and a quivering awareness of Tucker’s heated gaze.

All she had to do was look in his eyes and watch cool blue change to a slow-burning flame. All she had to do was feel the heat of him pressing against her hips and his grip on her wrists change from imprisonment to caress.

∙ ∙ ∙

Tucker felt like he’d been blindsided... by a fire burning out of control, or by a herd of stampeding horses.

He’d pulled some stupid stunts in his life. He’d made some critical errors. But flirting with Sara Stewart this sunny afternoon had been just plain dumb. It had led him straight to disaster.

He’d known it when he started. Yet he hadn’t been able to stop it. And as he gazed down on her fever-bright eyes, watched the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, the wet cotton covering them more enticing than bare skin, he knew it was too late to undo the damage. Too late to turn back. Too late to stop what he’d never intended to start.

“Some people just can’t seem to stay out of cold water,” he said in a gritty voice, his gaze skating hotly from her breasts to her eyes, then back to her breasts again.

As one, their thoughts drifted back to the night when he’d held her, wet and naked and shivering, the cold water drenching them as heavy as their regrets.

Regrets. He’d had his share of them about her... and it looked like he was going to have some more.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into a thick silence that was charged with awareness and desire and had nothing to do with wet clothes.

“That... that’s supposed to be my line.” She forced a shaky smile, then, watching his eyes, drew her lower lip between her teeth.

If the picture she made lying there, her chestnut hair spread thick and wild around her head, wet cotton clinging to her breasts, hadn’t been enough to send him over the edge, the sight of those even white teeth biting into the plump flesh of her lip alone would have completely unhinged him.

“I warned you to keep your distance.” It came out on a growl as his breath became labored and his chest expanded. “I told you what would happen if you didn’t.” His voice relayed his deepest wants, betrayed his resolve to resist her. His desire was too strong to be swayed. As he loomed above her, he saw in her eyes that she knew. The horseplay was over. Another kind of play had begun.

“Lucky for me...” She paused, searching his face as his internal flame inched closer to flash point. “Lucky for me you don’t have any intention of following through with this... this physical attraction you have for me.”

Slowly, slowly, with the summer breeze tickling the back of his neck and her brown eyes burning into his soul, he lowered his mouth to her breast.

“And lucky for me,” he murmured, catching the bead of her nipple between his teeth and teasing it through wet cotton and lace, “I’m not your type.”

She groaned and arched and offered. And it pushed him over the edge. He plundered her breast with his mouth, playing his tongue across her nipple, finessing it to a sweet, budding hardness.

She pulled against the hand shackling her wrists and pleaded with him. “I want to touch you.”

“Oh, no, darlin’.” With hedonistic languor, he inched his mouth away and watched her fire flicker, then burst into flame. “You may have started this little game, but I’m going to finish it. And I’m going to make the rules.

“I set the pace, sweet Sara. I say when. I say how. And right now, I say no.”

Pinning her hands on the ground above her head, he lowered his mouth over hers. His tongue probing. His teeth scraping. His deep growl of pleasure both threat and hunger and a soulful promise that he’d just begun.

He seduced her mouth with tender kisses and whispered urgings that coaxed her to let him delve inside. With a sweetly savage moan, a softly sensual sigh, she opened for him. He stroked her boldly with his tongue, scattered nipping bites to her jaw and the slender arch of her throat, devouring and possessing, leaving her panting and wanting. Leaving him aching with anticipation, breaking with need.

“Tucker.” She sucked in a breath of frustration and begged again to be freed. “Let me go. I want to touch you.”

Again he denied her, brushing his open mouth across her lips as his free hand skated down her ribs to her waist and undid the snap of her jeans.

“Lift up,” he ordered as he dragged her shirt out of her jeans and shoved it above her breasts. With a flick of his fingers, he opened the front clasp on her bra.

And then he felt nothing but Sara. Breathed nothing but Sara. Wanted nothing but Sara. His lips against her throat. His hand on her bare breast, kneading, shaping, lifting her to the hunger of his mouth.

She writhed against his heat. Reveled in his aggression as he suckled and sipped and strafed her distended nipple until he felt her pleasure spike to a level that equaled his own.

Finally, he let go of her hands. Finally, he let her touch him... then wondered why he’d waited so long.

Her hands were magic. Her touch was as soft as down, as gentle as spring rain, as she raked her fingers through his hair, stroked his lowered head and held him to her breast in a caress as erotic as it was tender.

With sensual fascination, he experienced the glide of her fingertips as she traced the planes of his jaw and the stubble of his beard, which he feared abraded her tender flesh. The delicious contrast fueled his fire and elicited a moaning gasp from her when he pinched her nipple between his teeth and tugged.

She cried out when he drew her deeply into his mouth. A torrent of hard, electric wanting swept from that point of devouring contact to sluice through his chest and arc to the spot that had grown hard and pulsing for her. But, more than wanting, greater than physical release, emotions eclipsed desire as he held her, plunging him headlong into need.

He’d never let himself pass that threshold with a woman. He’d never let it get that far. He’d settled for sex and called himself blessed. He’d settled for less and called himself lucky. But with Sara, the one thing he’d denied himself his entire life had become the only thing that mattered. To be more than a lover. To share more than a heated tumble. To look forward to more than one night in her bed with no promise of tomorrow.

With a groan, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. Holding her close, he settled her over his erection with a series of long, lush shifts and the slow, sensual guidance of his hands on her hips. She pressed against him, her eyes telling him how much she ached, how much she wanted, how much she trusted him to do whatever he would do.

His gaze never left her face as he moved his hands to her zipper. His breath stalled thick and heavy in his chest as she dragged her hair out of her eyes and bit her lip between her teeth when he slowly tugged it down.

Her eyes drifted shut on a moan that he answered with one of his own as his hands rose again to her breasts, finding his way through tangled wet cotton and trailing white lace.

“More,” he whispered in a ragged rasp.

Without hesitation, she gave. Bracing her hands on either side of his head, she leaned over him, obeying his command, brushing the tips of her breasts across his open mouth. The silk of her hair kissed his face as he nuzzled and licked and took them both to yet a higher plane of need.

And he wondered if he’d ever get enough of her.

With a desperate moan, she reached between their bodies. When she found the snap at his waist, she hesitated, then raised her gaze to his, asking for permission.

He consented with a deep swallow and a slow blink of his eyes as his mind went hazy with wanting her, heavy with emotion, and strained with the weight of keeping both under control.

“Go ahead, darlin’,” he murmured, shoving the hair from her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. “I haven’t got it in me to say no.”

 
She returned his smile. Confident in her power, bold with desire, she flicked open the brass snap—then froze when a phone rang.

 
Tucker stopped breathing. He closed his eyes and swore. Sara’s hand stilled, her senses confused, her mind intent on disbelieving. Until she saw his face.

 
He’d gone as still as silence beneath her.

 
She stiffened, telling herself, “No way.”

 
But then it rang again, breaking into a silence cluttered with thundering heartbeats and labored breaths.

 
“That,” he said, letting out a hissing sigh, “is really rotten timing.”

 
With another muffled oath, he set her away from him, dragged his hands through his hair, then rose to his feet.

 
He stalked toward Poco and dug his phone out of a saddlebag.

 
Sara lowered her head to her upraised knees and fisted both hands in her hair.

“So much for wide-open spaces,” she muttered as he turned his back to her and spoke in hushed, hurried tones. So much for isolation from the real world. So much for making love with Tucker Lambert.