The Sapphire Affair (Jewel #1)(16)

Oh, that soft hair. God, it felt good between her fingers as she slid them through his golden brown strands, tugging lightly.

He groaned and yanked her even closer. The quick shift in tempo moved the kiss up the heat ladder into something hungrier. He held her face in his hands, a thoroughly possessive gesture, as he kissed her so hard his stubble left a whiskery burn.

The evidence of a consuming kiss.

Her mind spun wild with images. Pictures of this night turning into something else. Kisses under the stars. Hips, legs, lips moving together. Him wrapping her tighter in his caress, whispering sweet, dirty things he wanted to do to her. In the heat of his kiss, in the urgency of his touch, she had the raw materials to feed her imagination.

Her heart raced. Her blood pumped. She craved him fiercely.

Which was absolutely loony, since he was a total stranger.

But maybe that’s what fueled her desire. They had no history. They had no past. There was no damage or pain between them. He hadn’t hurt her, he hadn’t lied to her, and he hadn’t tried to fling her business into the trash. No, he had one agenda, it seemed. The same one she had.

Let’s spend the night together.

He backed her up against the wall, next to the dartboard, her spine hitting the wood with a thump. The sound of it was like a door shutting. Like the moment when a kiss turns from we’re trying this on for size to this kiss won’t stop at kissing. He cupped the back of her neck, and his other hand clasped her hip, yanking her against him, so she could feel him.

She could feel all of him.

Lust skyrocketed in her, on a mad dash to cloud her reason, her judgment, to ambush all remaining sanity. To simply crush the logical, thoughtful portions of her brain. Lock them up and throw away the key, so she could go somewhere, anywhere, with Jake and let him—

His phone rang.

A Taylor Swift song.

Instantly, he broke the kiss and sighed deeply, a frustrated sound.

“One of your fishing buddies rescuing you from the woman in a bar who won’t give her name?” Steph asked, catching her breath as she arched an eyebrow.

He shook his head and scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “My little sister. That’s her ringtone.” He swiped his thumb across the phone. “Kylie, give me five seconds,” he said into the phone, then covered the screen. He quickly scanned the bar, on the hunt for something. Steph wasn’t sure what he wanted, and she was still punch-drunk on that kiss, so her brain wasn’t fully processing. He shot out his arm, grabbed a napkin, and handed it to her.

“Give me a number. So I can call you later,” he said.

Did she want to give him her number?

A sob sounded from the phone. Her heart raced with worry. She hoped his sister was OK. She pointed in the general direction of the bar. “I’ll leave it with Marie. I have somewhere I need to be now anyway. But you can reach me later, I guess,” she said, the words coming out in a stumble, like a car sputtering to turn on. Her brain clearly needed a few seconds, maybe even minutes, to string language together again.

“I’ll be back,” he said, then he walked out in a rush.

Steph let out a breath and stared at the empty space where he’d been, then she replayed the last few minutes and knit her brow.

On the one hand, he’d asked for her number.

But on the other hand, he was . . . gone.

Little sister? Was that the new excuse? The escape hatch to jettison a man from a bad date? She had no clue because she’d been out of commission for a couple years. Was that what guys said when they didn’t like the way a woman kissed? What if little sister was an eject button or something? Absently, she raised her fingers to her lips. They still tingled. She ran the pad of a finger over her bottom lip.

“Steph!”

She swiveled around, spotting Marie behind the bar. She had been waiting on tables when Steph first walked in. “It’s been too long,” Marie said, then flashed her a naughty look. “But I see you’ve already gotten to know Jake the Fisherman. Looks like you two were going to gobble each other up.”

A huge grin spread across her face. That was all she needed. Nothing wrong with her lips. That kiss had blown her mind, and likely his, too. Mutual gobbling and all.

She wasn’t going to let self-doubt rule the day. Nope.

“Do me a favor, Marie?” she asked as she snagged a pen from the register and wrote a few words on the napkin. No number for him just yet. If Jake wanted to see her, he was going to have to follow her trail.

“Of course.”

“Actually, two favors. Tell Penny I can’t wait to see her.”

Marie nodded. “She’s camping. Should be back in a few days.”

“She’d better call me while I’m here. Then give this to the hot fisherman if he comes back in here. But don’t tell him my name, OK?”

Marie rubbed her hands together and winked. “Ooh, lover games. And I get to be the messenger. Count me in.”

Steph handed Marie the note, then took off for her first stop on her self-appointed job.





CHAPTER SIX


Pacing along the street with his cell phone pressed to his ear, Jake used his best big-brother voice to try to calm Kylie. “Everything is going to be fine. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

Kylie gulped, like she was hyperventilating. “I don’t know what to do. I barely understand a word the physics professor says. It’s like he’s speaking a foreign language. I don’t know how on earth I’m going to finish school without this science requirement. I suck at science. I can’t do this, Jake. I can’t do this at all.”