“I’m still not judging you, by the way.”

  “People here . . . they would judge me.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “They’re good people, but . . . well, that’s the problem here, I suppose—they’re good people. With a pretty particular sense of right and wrong.”

  He just nodded, then gave her a sideways glance. “In fairness, since you’re telling me stuff, I feel like I should tell you something, too. So—just so you know—that night was . . . the best sex of my life.”

  “Really?” The fact was, she knew she was good. Guys told her. Frequently. But still . . . she figured someone’s best came . . . not with a stranger.

  He gave a firm nod, his eyes still meeting hers, and she sensed them both remembering again. More of it. And not the parts with Colt. No, now it was the parts with just the two of them rolling hot and heavy through their minds. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she just did. Images bit at her. How she’d ridden him on the bed. The way he’d held her down and she’d liked it. The spanking she’d demanded.

  Embarrassed even more now, she bit her lip, lowered her gaze, finally forked a bite of her pie into her mouth . It was getting warm, not as good to her as when it was fresh and cool. Still, she chewed the crust, swallowed, and ate another bite—to pass the time, to keep herself busy with something besides memories and awkwardness.

  That’s when his hand rose, when his fingertip moved to the corner of her mouth. “You have a little . . .” She drew back slightly as his touch came, gentle but direct, until she realized—just as he held it up to show her—that he was wiping a little blob of chocolate filling away.

  God, why did looking at the gooey chocolate pudding on his finger feel . . . sexy? Why on earth was it turning her warmer than she already was?

  When he moved it to her lips, though, she knew. It was sexy because she wanted to suck the chocolate off of it.

  Still, she hesitated. When she was Desiree, she knew exactly what she was doing—but when she was Carly, she hadn’t the faintest idea how to . . . be sexy.

  Yet when he applied just a hint of pressure to her lips, her chest went hollow, achy, and she felt herself parting them, letting him slip his finger inside.

  Oh Lord. The very act of something, a piece of him, sliding slickly into her mouth ignited familiar stirrings. Instinctively, she closed her lips around it, gingerly used her tongue, tasted the sweet pudding. Then she sucked it away. Mmm, God. Her breasts tingled. And the spot between her legs spasmed. Just from that.

  He began to draw his finger out—but then he brought it back, sliding in again, and she let him, and she would have sworn it got hotter outside. Their gazes stayed locked the whole time and her stomach contracted as he watched her. Nervousness warred with arousal inside her and she could stave off neither.

  And when finally he extracted his warm, sticky finger all the way, he said to her, low and deep, “No one’s ever sucked my cock as good as you did, honey.”

  The words jarred her, yanked her out of whatever slow sense of seduction she’d been experiencing.

  And before she could weigh it, she followed her next instinct: She drew back her hand and slapped him across the face. Because no one had ever said such a thing to her! Not her, Carly. Not here, in Turnbridge. It was unthinkable.

  Fresh heat—this time from simple anxiety—warmed her skin as Jake lifted a hand to his cheek and glared at her, clearly as stunned by her actions as she was. “What the hell?”

  “You can’t talk to me that way,” she snapped, tense, defensive.

  He lowered his chin, pinned her in place with those sparkling blue eyes. “You didn’t seem to mind it that night. You seemed to like it. You seemed pretty good at it yourself.”

  She remained silent, horrified all over again, then shook her head. “Don’t you get it? I’m not her.”

  “Her?”

  Had he already forgotten everything she’d just so painfully admitted to him? “Desiree. I’m not that person.”

  He was back to looking angry again. “So let me get this straight. Desiree is hot and sexy, and Carly is a bitch?”

  She gasped. No one had ever called her a bitch, either. Now fresh anger rose inside her, too.

  “Well, you just hit me, damn it!” he reminded her. “Right when I thought we were starting to get along.”

  Get along. God, what had she been thinking? She couldn’t get along with him. She couldn’t have any sort of relationship with him, let alone one that had him putting his finger in her mouth, making her as wet in her panties as he had the first time they’d met.

  So she pushed to her feet, incensed, and more than ready to end this. “I liked you better in Traverse City,” she told him.

  Finally letting his hand drop from his cheek—notably pink now in the bright sunlight—he peered up at her, his eyes turning darker than usual. “I feel the same way about you, trust me.”

  “Go to hell,” she said, then turned to march away. Down Maple Street. Back toward the festival. And her real life. Toward the people who knew her, loved her, got her.

  But then, no one really got her. No one in the world understood. Hell, if she was honest with herself, not even she understood.

  All she knew was that Jake Lockhart was possibly the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Because he threatened everything she knew about herself. And he was making her look too damn hard at all of it. And because—goddamn it—even now, trudging away from him with her heart beating too fast, she ached for his touch, on her breasts, between her thighs.

  And there for a moment, he’d made her feel like Desiree. Dirty, and happy to be that way. Ready to wallow in it. He suddenly made the line between Carly and Desiree appear frighteningly thin.

  Even as she walked away, she wasn’t sure which side of that line she was on right now.

  Carly hated him and thought he was a pig for what he’d said.

  And Desiree wanted to drop to her knees and do it to him all over again.

  Chapter 7

  Jake had thought about throwing the rest of the damn pie away, out of frustration, but he’d taken it with him. It was good pie, blue ribbon pie, and it had cost him thirty-five dollars. Now he sat eating it at his kitchen table. Feeling angry. He’d been annoyed at her before, pissed at her attitude, irritated by her lying. But after the incident by the railroad tracks, he was mad. She’d fucking slapped him! And not lightly, either.

  He’d been worried the red handprint would still be there this morning, but thank God it had faded overnight, meaning he hadn’t had to explain at work what the newest town cop had done to make a woman hit him.

  Shoving another sweet, chocolaty bite in his mouth, he examined that—her hitting him.

  He’d told her she sucked his cock good. He’d thought—hell, he’d known—they were both getting turned on, and he’d followed the simple urge to expand upon that. And besides, it was true—he’d been paying her an honest compliment.

  And yeah, sure, if he’d just met her, of course he wouldn’t have said anything that vulgar. But given that they’d already spent a night talking dirty to one another, letting it heighten their excitement, he hadn’t even questioned the words as they’d left him. He’d thought it was just more of what they’d already shared.

  God, talk about a complex woman.

  It had kept him tense, his chest tight, all day. When he’d seen Tom at the station, and his friend had looked up with a knowing grin to say, “How’d that pie-eating date go for ya?” Jake had almost wanted to punch him in the mouth.

  But then he’d remembered that none of this was Tommy’s fault. “About like you predicted,” he said without meeting the other cop’s eyes. He’d opened a file cabinet, begun looking for a folder. “And it’s a mistake I won’t make again.”

  “Don’t worry, bud—like I said, we’ll get over to Cherry Creek one night and you’ll forget Carly ever even caught your eye.”

  Huh. As if he could ever forget the things that had taken place between him and Carly. And he was beginning to see her point in a way—he no longer liked the idea that they’d be running into each other from time to time, either. But this idea of finding chicks in Cherry Creek was sounding better to him every minute. “Good. The sooner, the better.” So long as they don’t use fake names and have weird hang-ups.

  Of course, the very thought of her had made his dick feel as tense as the rest of him. At the realization, he’d just rolled his eyes and tried to will it away, tried to concentrate on the information he was looking up, finishing paperwork on an auto accident he’d handled last week.

  After getting home a few hours ago, he’d attempted to keep busy and not think about how pissed off he remained. He’d unpacked a couple of stillunopened boxes of books and CDs in his living room. He’d reheated some supermarket chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner. He’d hooked up his DVD player.

  When he went to the refrigerator for a beer, he’d seen the pie sitting there on the shelf and pulled it out instead. Only he didn’t bother cutting a slice—he’d just grabbed a fork and started eating straight out of the tin.

  Sex and guilt. For some reason, people always wanted to cram those two things together. Sometimes for good reasons. But sometimes for completely stupid reasons, like now. He knew about sex and guilt, from way back, but he’d gotten past all that—and he didn’t like being made to feel guilty.

  Aha! That was the problem here—why he was so mad. She was making him feel like he’d done something wrong with her, or to her, and he hadn’t. And given what he knew about sex and guilt—son of a bitch, he wasn’t gonna let some insecure woman foist her idiotic guilt onto him, no fucking way. He didn’t even like that she was trying to. And the more he thought about it—about how selfish that was, about how . . . fucking irresponsible, how careless—the more pissed off he became.

  He’d eaten a sizable chunk of the pie, leaving a jagged, angry-looking edge in the plate, when he found himself pushing to his feet, then grabbing up his car keys from the dish where he kept them by the back door. She might not want anything to do with him, but she was going to have to listen to him, one last time, and then he’d leave her the hell alone—forever. She might have her hang-ups, but that didn’t give her the right to go around blaming other people for them, pulling them into her sick, twisted problems—whatever they may be—and he was going to set her straight on that.

  The last hints of a sunset burned on the western horizon as he started the car, but by the time he made the few twists and turns it took to get from his house on Pinecone Avenue to Main Street, the night was inky black.

  As usual at this hour, the lights upstairs glowed bright, but the shop below was dark. He had no idea if she had some separate entrance to her apartment, so he went to the shop’s front door—the same she’d shut in his face not long ago—and rang the buzzer. It lit up when he pressed it, and he could hear it from outside, so he knew it was working.

  When no answer came, he pressed the button again, and this time he held it down, his irritation—his entire sense of injustice—escalating as the annoying sound bit through the air, even out on the sidewalk. “I’ll stand here holding this thing down all night if I have to, damn it,” he muttered, at the same time lifting a hand to bang on the door’s large window. He was sick and tired of her deciding when and if she would acknowledge him, and he wasn’t willing to wait for the next pie contest. She might want him to be a gentleman, but he’d taken a stab at that and it hadn’t worked, so screw it—he could act like an ass as well as she could.

  He’d pressed on the buzzer for a few long minutes when he finally heard movement inside—the sound of footsteps on a staircase and then stomping toward the door. Had he pissed her off? Good—he was tired of being the only one who felt persecuted here.

  He was ready to tell her he was sick of her making him feel he’d done something wrong. He was ready to say she had no right to foist her useless guilt on him. He was ready to yell at her, get all the frustration and anger she’d caused him off his chest, once and for all.

  She yanked open the door, glaring up at him. “What the hell do you want?”

  And he glared back, ready to let her have it.

  Except . . . she clearly had no idea how prominently her nipples jutted through the thin creamy yellow pajamas she wore. Nor could she know that the streetlight across the way shone on the loose, silky fabric to outline her curvy silhouette underneath. His cock, which had been twitchy all day at thoughts of her, went immediately hard in his blue jeans at the sight. Shit.

  He was so damn fed up with her, so damn mad. But equally as aroused now, too. And that was the part of him that took over his body, his brain, all at once, in a way it never had before.

  He never said a word. Or even made the decision to reach for her. He was simply aware of his hands closing greedily over her waist, his body pressing into her softer one, his mouth coming down on hers as he pushed her back, back, deeper into the shop’s darkness. His head swam with lust and pleasure as her startled gasp subsided and she clutched at his T-shirt. He heard the door shut behind him, closing out the night as his hard-on nestled against her abdomen.

  He kissed her hard and hungry, needing to drink her in, have her in any way he could. Anger remained only on the fringes of his brain now as his whole being gave way to what was happening. After weeks of strange longing and confusion, of heat that flowed between them on sight, he was going to have her again—completely.

  She never spoke, either, or tried to make him stop—thank God. She kissed him back just as wildly, her breath coming in ragged gasps as he finally pressed her into the shop’s back wall, next to the stairs. He freed one hand from where it was buried in the slickness of her pajamas to yank at the pants, digging his fingers inside the waistband. Her arms looped tight around his neck now, her tongue in his mouth as he tugged the pajama bottoms over her ass, panties with them, and let them drop to her feet.

  Then he deftly released the button on his jeans, and pushed at the zipper until his erection sprung free, even if still confined by underwear. He felt frantic to get inside her again—as if nothing would be right until he was buried in her warmth, as if the world would come to an end if he didn’t fuck her as soon as humanly possible. And still they kissed—rough, hungry, raw. He cried out when she scratched his neck.

  And then his cock was out, hard and warm against her belly, and she was whimpering hungrily in his grasp, and he knew bliss was almost his—almost, almost. Grabbing onto her bare bottom, he hoisted her upward against the wall, and her legs curled around his hips, and the tip of his aching shaft was warm, wet with her, in just the right spot, so he thrust hard, driving deep. She cried out, her head dropping back in pleasure, and he felt the moist warmth envelop his dick at last, tight as a hot, slick vise that wouldn’t ever let go.

  His scalp tingled with heat as he resumed kissing her, and she moved against him, fucking him, riding him, and his breath came in hot gasps and growls as he thrust at her, again, again.

  They moved like that together for a few raw, feral minutes until her response began to change—until she was releasing hot, thready whimpers, her undulations slowing, growing more jerky, and he knew a powerful orgasm was about to flood her senses.

  He held on to her tight as she let out high-pitched cries, her head again dropping back, eyes shut, lips beautifully parted.

  And when she lifted her head, met his gaze in the dark, he kissed her hard—once, twice—trying to let her recover a little but still feeling the primal animal urge to fuck her brains out.

  With rough movements, he carried her to the nearest flat surface among the pieces of furniture—a small dining table in the middle of the room—and as he laid her back on it, his mind only barely registered that she’d made it herself. Still inside her, he thrust wildly, over and over, needing her to feel him to her very core, needing to force all his hunger out and into her. Moving inside her, he closed his hands over her breasts through the thin fabric still covering them. He wasn’t gentle—he couldn’t be right now. He squeezed and molded them; he played roughly with her erect nipples, pinching, pulling, making her moan and sob as the coarse pleasure echoed through them both.

  Finally, he yanked at the buttons holding the pajama top closed. He heard one of them land somewhere across the room and couldn’t have cared less. All he wanted was to get to those gorgeous tits at last, and then they were in his hands, flesh to soft, pliable flesh, and he massaged them in rhythm with his hard, wet plunges.

  She cried out, moaning and sobbing, the sounds mixing with his own deeper ones. And when he bent over her, still fucking, fucking, fucking, to suck one beautifully engorged nipple into his hungry mouth, he groaned around it, tugged on it hard, and felt her heels dig into his ass as if to pull his dick deeper inside her. But that was impossible—he was buried to the hilt with each pounding drive. He sucked her tits with wild abandon, showing no mercy, no softness. Neither of them wanted anything soft right now, he knew.

  When he hauled her up into his arms again, she wrapped back around him and it felt so damn good, just for once, to have this woman cling to him a little, make him feel like she wanted him. But that didn’t soften his raw instincts—she’d probably kick him out after this was over, after all. He felt like he had to take all he could get of her, right here, right now.

  He needed a bed, or a couch, something that wouldn’t be hell on their knees—because he wanted to take her from behind now, as he had in Traverse City. But when she began kissing him again, he stalled in place—couldn’t see, couldn’t really walk—and the next thing he knew he’d stumbled into the stairs. They both went down with a thud, fell against the bottom steps together, on their sides; his erection left her for the first time in a long, ecstasy-filled while.

  Their eyes met once more, the only light in the room coming from streetlamps outside, and her gaze remained as heated as he felt. They still didn’t speak—and on any other night, he’d have asked if she was okay from the fall, but he didn’t want to break this hot spell, give her a chance to start a fight. Instead, he reached for her hip as he rose up—and he firmly turned her over on her hands and knees on the steps, and she let him.

 

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