Be Mine(31)

God. Please.

She said his name then. Her body went taut. She threw her head back.

Please. Yes. Come for me. He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Come for me, Jenny.”

She cried out then, her hips jerking against his hold, against his cock. Nate closed his eyes, determined not to come yet. Determined to let her ride every spasm as it shook through her. She sounded just as he’d imagined she would, desperate and wild and beautiful, her voice breaking into little bits of joy that burned straight through him.

He drove himself into her, finally, over and over, until his own climax crashed into him. He clenched his teeth against the painful wave of pleasure, biting back a ragged cry. When he was spent, he eased Jenny down to the bed before he slid free of her body and collapsed to the mattress.

Thank God they’d been at the bed, or he might have simply fallen to his knees like a dying man. He felt as if his soul had been scooped out. Jenny looked similarly weak, from what he could tell past the mess of golden hair that had fallen over her face. Nate reached to the table to grab a tissue and get rid of the condom before collapsing again.

He turned toward her and tried to ease some of the hair from her face. “Are you in there?”

“Sorry,” she whispered before she shoved her hair back. “Here I am.” Her cheeks were flushed already, but they turned pinker as he watched, and her eyes slid down to focus on his chest. “So.”

He tipped his head to try to catch her eye. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.”

Nate suddenly recalled the moment when he’d thought of being slow and careful. Then he recalled that he’d tossed that thought away and f*cked her hard. “Jenny? I’m serious. Are you okay?”

“God!” She turned her face to the mattress and shook her head, spiking his alarm into the red-alert zone. He was reaching carefully toward her when she squeaked. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not usually so...”

“So, what?”

“So...dirty? Oh, God. That was dirty, wasn’t it?”

Relief slammed through him with a force that knocked the air from his lungs. When he could breathe again, he agreed. “Yeah. It was. Filthy, even.”

“Stop!” Her shoulders shook, but he could see from the line of her jaw that she was laughing.

“If you were trying to throw me off, you went about it all wrong. That’s no way to shake a tail.”

“Nate!”

He cupped a hand over her shoulder and turned her toward him. She only resisted for a moment before rolling to her side. Still, she refused to open her eyes.

“Hey.” He dragged a finger along her jaw, then over her lips. Her eyes finally fluttered open. “Did you mean that?”

“What?” she asked warily.

“That you got especially dirty for me?”

Her eyes glittered past her lashes as she watched him. “Maybe,” she finally said.

Pride swelled so quickly in his chest that Nate worried it might press too tight against his heart and cause trouble. It certainly felt as if it was doing damage. “I like that.”

She smiled. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

Actually, it surprised him. Not that he liked intense sex with her, but how much he liked it. His chest still felt strange, warm and woolly with the idea that she’d given him a glimpse of her that others didn’t get. But he let her think it was as simple as she thought it was.

“Jenny...” He swept her hair back again, but this time he let his hand trail over her shoulder, her arm, then her hip. God. Her beautiful hip.

“You like saying my name,” she said with a coy smile.

“It’s because I had to say ‘Ms. Stone’ for so long. It felt like torture.”

“Poor Deputy Hendricks.”

Her sweet, teasing words caused a niggling in his brain. Then a tense tug. And then he remembered. What he’d meant to ask her about. The complications he’d meant to avoid. And now... What had he done?

Shit. This had been a mistake. The knot in his stomach couldn’t make his body regret it, but his brain was a twisting mess.

He had to figure her out before he screwed everything up.





CHAPTER SIX



“TELL ME SOMETHING about yourself,” Nate said.

Jenny smiled at the odd request. After all, they’d just bonked like crazed rabbits.

Her face flamed again. It wasn’t that she was repressed. She’d had a decent sex life. Sometimes she even had a great sex life. But she’d never needed sex that way.

She usually let sex happen to her. Wash over her. But this had been something clawing out from her own soul. Something new inside her. The smell of him. The feel of his skin and hair. It had called forth something desperate.

What if she told him that? How would he respond? She smiled wider at the idea.

“Where are you from?” he pressed.

“Idaho. A town about an hour west of Pocatello.”

“How did you end up here?”

She shrugged, not wanting to get into details. She’d ended up here by running. First from home, and all the chaos there. Then from Ellis, and the life she’d jumped into without thinking. And again, from a life she’d started to build in Montana and then grown tired of. She didn’t want to tell him any of that, but her heart swelled with the knowledge that he wanted to know her. He wanted her.

Swallowing hard, she decided to tell him a little. “I left home the moment I turned eighteen. I married Ellis. Then I wandered for a while. That’s all. Now I’m here.”

“Why’d you leave home at eighteen?”

Because I couldn’t handle taking care of a pill-popping mom, so I abandoned my dad and my sister and drove out of town as fast as my Camaro would take me. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the weight of his palm against her hip. “You know, same old story. My grandfather left me his car when he died. I couldn’t wait to get out on my own. I thought it would be all fun and games.”

“And then there was Ellis?”

She smiled. “And then there was Ellis. Believe it or not, I thought he was a knight in shining armor.”

“But he wasn’t?”

She sighed. “I don’t want to talk about Ellis.”

“I’m still worried. What’s he doing here? Hanging around? Bothering you?”

“Nate.” She opened her eyes to his worried frown. “I can see why you became a cop. You’re protective. Overprotective. But I don’t need that. I can take care of myself. I always have.”

His eyebrows twitched. “Always?”

“Well. You know. For a long time.”

“That’s not what you said.”

Jenny felt like squirming, caught under his silver gaze. “You know how it is.”

“I don’t, actually. I was raised right here in Jackson Hole. My parents and sister still live here. Sunday dinner once a month. And much bigger gatherings for holidays. That was my cousin Luis you saw with me at the bar. None of us went very far at all.”

“Maybe...maybe I just like to run.”

“Maybe you need to. What are you running from, Jenny?”

She pulled her chin slowly in, eyes narrowing at the strange focus of his gaze. She felt a sudden desire to curl tighter. To cover her nakedness.

“Why is he here? You must know.”

Now she did cover herself. She folded an arm across her breasts as she pushed onto her elbow. “Wow. I can’t... Wow. I thought you wanted to learn more about me. But you want to know about him? What is this? Some weird jealousy kink?”

His intense gaze finally flinched to alarm. “No! That’s not what I meant. Look, I saw him. Today. I was looking into another issue and I saw Ellis’s van. I called you about lunch so I could ask you about it. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Whatever energy she’d lost to the sex, Jenny quickly regained through mortified rage. She leaped from the bed. “I thought you wanted to have sex with me!”

He reached for her, and she jerked away, trying not to notice his beautiful body. She hadn’t had time to look, and now she refused to. “I obviously wanted to have sex with you,” he said as he followed her slow retreat across the room. “Come on. We had sex.”

“I’m pretty clear on that!” Boy, was she. She was absolutely aching with that knowledge. Inside and out, her body reminded her with every move that she’d had sex with Nate Hendricks. And he’d come here to investigate.

But...investigate what?

The thought added another layer of awfulness to the moment. A nice, thick layer of guilt. Ellis was up to no good, and now Jenny was helping him.

Oh, God. “Get out,” she pushed past clenched teeth.

“Jenny, please.”

She snatched up her skirt and tugged it on. Her heart beat so quickly it felt like nothing more than trembling. “I thought you came here for me.”