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“Don’t.” He was thoroughly helpless.
She lifted her face, smiling, and snuggled into him because it seemed like the natural place to be. “Do.”
He turned toward her. His arms pulled her close, instinctively seemed to claim her, the same way he’d wrapped her up and taken her in earlier at the diner. “No, I don’t.” He bent his head to rub his cheek against hers. “Doesn’t matter though. I can learn. Just don’t let me hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me, Russ,” Janina whispered against his throat. “You can’t. It’s not in you.”
“I could,” Russ warned her honestly, enunciating each word with care. “If I wasn’t drunk I probably wouldn’t even be able to talk to you.”
Janina lifted her chin to look at him, gave him a slow, woman-for-her-man-only smile and nuzzled his jaw. “Then drink your beer,” she murmured suggestively, sliding the two not-taped fingers on her left hand inside between the buttons of his shirt. “And let’s go back to my place ’n see what we can do about making you comfortable enough to still be able to talk to me tomorrow.”
Chapter 3
They didn’t make it to Janina’s place.
Instead, Russ smiled his slow, sideways smile down at her and once again didn’t quite brush her mouth with his. Then he released her, downed half his beer, sauntered over to the big, old-fashioned jukebox, fed some coins into it and punched a few select buttons that he didn’t seem to have to look for.
Everything inside her, every nerve, every sense, every particle of her being zinged alert, alive, awake. As though she’d been sleeping every moment before in her life.
Awake.
Electricity charged through her, then exhilarated pulse points, titillated nerve endings, thrilled along her spine and laid a fuzzy, sizzling pool of restlessness in the small of her back.
Whatever leftover aches she had from her bruises fled and she blessed Buddy for unwittingly giving her a moment she’d never otherwise have had the courage to pursue.
Then Russ hooked a glance at her over his shoulder and all thought fled.
He stood in front of the jukebox for a long, drawn-out moment during which Janina’s heart felt as if it beat in some sort of slow-motion animated suspension. The pure masculine intent in the look he sent her snapped the suspension. Her heartbeat turned staccato, her breathing stuttered and the safety that had flooded her moments before fled, to be replaced by a flood of liquid heat, a sense of pure elation, a knowledge and anticipation of a danger she couldn’t wait to face. Want coursed through her veins, sang a tightening song through her lungs, pushed like wildfire into her belly.
He wanted her.
The rawness of what he wanted was written on his face. Her beneath him, her atop him, her around him. Her with him. Her.
And more than that, he needed her.
She read need in his eyes, on his face, and it wasn’t just anybody he needed. It was her, Janina.
Janina caught her breath and rose unsteadily to stand between the bench and the table. He was coming for her. Not Maddie. Not Marg. Not anybody else who’d offered or thrown herself at him.
For her.
Only.
She saw the “only” written on his face, too, and stopped breathing. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She couldn’t…
And then he was there, leaning down to grab his beer, draining what remained of it before he cupped his palms beneath her elbows and carefully lifted her out of her prison to stand in front of him.
“Liquid courage,” he said regretfully. “I’ll be sober in the morning. If I don’t do everything I’ve always wanted to ask you to do now, I may never get around to it again. Okay?”
She swallowed. “Okay?” It came out as a question because nothing in her life could have prepared her for the way he made her feel.
He grinned. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”
She laughed nervously. A teenager if ever she’d been one. “I know. It’s just…I’ve never seen you…like this.”
He shrugged. “I’m never like this. Sober, I don’t know how. Drunk, I don’t usually know how either. Tonight’s different. You make it different. You make me want to be different. You make it special.”
A startled glow went through Janina. She blushed for the first time in what felt like forever. Maybe it was. “I— I don’t know what to say. That’s good. Thank you. Both of them. You—I—”
The oh-so-gentle tip of Russ’s forefinger touched her mouth quiet. “Dance with me?”
“Yes.”
The one word was like magic. Just that quickly the outside fell away, she was in his arms and the music and Russ’s heartbeat were the only things she heard, felt, knew. “When a Man Loves a Woman,” she thought the song was, but couldn’t be sure because the rhythm of her heart keeping time with Russ’s was what she moved to, the feel of his body against hers was all the cue she needed. His hand drifted upward through her hair, his head bent to hers, his tall, muscular body stooped low to accommodate her shorter height and much softer curves. “Perfect” was the only word that came to mind when any word did, and even that single word was a wisp of smoke in the fog of the moment.
“Janie.” His breath was warm, moist against her neck, his whisper disbelieving in her ear.
“I’m here, Russ.” Heedless of the protests in her right wrist and both hands, she reached her arms around him as far as they would go. To hold him, hold on to him. To make sure he was really there, too. “Neither one of us is dreaming. We’re both really here. Together.”
She felt him smile into her neck and fold her tighter into his embrace. “Good. My dreams are vivid, but I usually only imagine I can feel you, touch you, taste you, smell you.” He shifted his lower body uncomfortably and groaned.
She gasped and laughed softly when the same charge that beat through him coiled hard through her, pinching her breasts and spinning wildly, almost violently into her belly. Want, need, more, infinitely more—she’d never felt this before. And whatever it was, he made her feel it by just saying a few words.
“It’s okay, Russ. Me, too. My imagination is pretty vivid, too.”
He lifted his head slightly. “You’re hurt, it’s not okay.”
She kissed a spot as near the center of his chest as she could reach, nuzzled his jaw, brushed her cheek across his. “It is, trust me. I’m not that hurt. Really. Some bruises, a couple stitches, a mild sprain. Nothing to prevent us from what we both want. Together. Now let me take you home, okay? So I don’t have to worry about you.”
Hesitation was plain. “Janie, I don’t… I can’t—”
He stopped. He might be drunk, but he had self-imposed rules that wouldn’t be broken easily. Janina planned to break them all if she could.
“You can’t drive yourself, Russ,” Janina reminded him. “Jonah said you needed somewhere to spend the night. It was my long weekend even before Buddy tripped me, so I’m not working tomorrow.”
“Janie—” Again he said her name and stopped.
And capitulated.
“All right,” he agreed. Then his lips twitched and he offered her a rueful grin. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, all right?”
“’Bout what?” Janina, reaching for her purse, looked back at him.
Russ picked up the remains of her beer, raised the mug to her in what was halfway between a salute and a silent apology, drained it and shrugged. “The drunk and relaxed man you take home with you tonight will not be the sober, somewhat anal man you wake up with in the morning.”
Janina laughed outright at him. “Russ, I know that man, too. I’ve seen him almost every day for thirteen years and I’ve wanted to take that man home with me longer than I’ve wanted the man I’m with tonight, so I don’t see the problem.”
“You might tomorrow,” Russ muttered darkly.
Janina slid her arms around his waist. “Tomorrow, if I put my arms around you, will you tell me to stop?”
The slow, sideways smile tilted Russ’s mouth. “Prob’ly not.”
“Then shut up about tomorrow and let me drive you home.”
“Because tomorrow I’ll be too inhibited to open my mouth and say anything to you,” Russ finished belatedly, deliberately baiting her, and ducked away laughing when Janina swung at him.
“You—”
Grinning the charming, devilish Levoie grin that Janina associated with his brothers but couldn’t remember ever seeing on him, he offered her a broad, two-handed, supremely innocent shrug. “What can I say? I was an Eagle Scout. Honesty is bred in the bone.”
“That sounds like something your brother Guy would say,” Janina returned dryly.
“Where d’you think he got it from?”
She found herself laughing up at him, astonished herself by teasing him. “Not you.”
Russ draped an arm around her shoulders. A natural move from a man who never made this kind of move naturally. “Yeah, me.”
Janina found herself sliding easily beneath his arm, fitting close against his side where she’d been made to fit, born to belong.
She wanted to touch him, to have as much of him as she could in the here and now, but she couldn’t comfortably fit an arm around him so she settled for pulling his hand down where she could hold on to it, could at least keep her left hand in his.
Could feel every bit of warmth, every pulse in his fingers in the way his fingertips tickled her palm, traced the inside of her wrist, seduced and tempted and… She closed her eyes and her stomach tightened, body vibrated, became heavy, turned to liquid.
And suddenly her panties, that sexy, almost nonexistent scrap of a silk thong she’d put on in hopes of finding him, of being with him, was…wet. She was wet.
For want of him.
From simply imagining him.
“You sure?” She sounded breathless, and was.
The look he sent her from those deeper-than-midnight, clearer-than-the-full-moon, more-powerful-than-any-tide eyes of his when he said, “I’m sure,” made Janina lose her grip on his hand, drop her own to his waist and tip her head up to his.
Her eyes widened when his released fingers quite casually, naturally, instinctively grazed her nipple, brushed her breast, then closed over it to gently squeeze.
And her body burned with awareness, with desire, with excitement…with need. And with the sudden, absolute and potentially embarrassing recognition of where they were and the fact that she wanted complete, utter and immediate privacy. Where was not a factor, so long as it was right now, at once, instantly and without delay.
“Russ?” Urgent, a plea.
He offered her a slow smile. His fingers played with her breast, found her nipple once again. She lifted into the pleasure of his touch, pressed into it, and her breathing grew ever more shallow. They were in public and she couldn’t make herself—and didn’t want to—step away. But heaven help her if she wasn’t alone with him soon…
“We have to get out of here.” The effort it took to manage seven short syllables was amazing.
Without taking his eyes off her face or his left hand off her breast, Russ pushed open the Bloated Boar’s outer door.
“We’re outta here,” he promised.
“Oh.” Stunned, Janina drew a half breath and swallowed the taste of dawn. She’d been so mesmerized she hadn’t even realized they’d been moving. “Good.”
Russ’s laugh was deep, his voice gravelly with need. “Take me home, Janie.”
Urgency became a frantic blast of something beyond want, beyond desire, beyond simple need or even passion, became quite suddenly a critical piece of her existence, a fundamental element of survival, of life. Her life, his life, their life. One life combined. One life only.
“Yes.” Her voice shook, her heart grew three, four, ten sizes—grew big enough to hold a man who stood six foot four-plus inches in a barefoot slouch, but who never slouched. Her knees were jelly. She fumbled for her keys. “Yes, Russ. I will. I am.”
“Good.” He folded to nuzzle the side of her face, her ear. “The night’s short, dawn’s shorter and there’s a lot I want to do with you before I wake up and turn into a pumpkin again, ya know?”
Janina turned her face into his mouth and kissed him furiously, pouring all of herself into it. “It took me a long time to get up the gumption to do it, but I found you now, Russ Levoie, and I’m not letting you back off. So consider this fair warning. You’re making me believe in magic right now and I want it and everything you’ve got to give that goes with it. So you go shy and tongue-tied on me tomorrow, it won’t matter ’cuz I know who you are underneath and I know you want to be with me. So I won’t let who you seem to be intimidate me. You got that?”
Dazed and bemused, Russ ran his tongue around his mouth to taste the kiss she’d left there, then touched the tip of his finger to the stitches in her upper lip. “If we kiss again, will that hurt?”
“It’ll hurt more if we don’t,” Janina whispered, sliding her arms, sprained wrist and all, around his neck.
“Good,” he muttered, “because you taste incredible. I’ve never tasted anything like you, and I really have to kiss you again.” Then he caught her around the waist, lifted her high against his chest and did just that.
His kiss was careful, mindful of her bruises and almost, Janina realized somewhat fuzzily, out of practice.
Then she stopped realizing anything at all, stopped being able to think, stopped being and simply became absorbed in and by the kiss.
Thrilled to it.
The instant held beauty, power and enchantment, oneness and an absolute absence of alone. Breath shared became needed oxygen, air and life, a place beyond passion and pleasure, an existence within heart and soul, pure, complete, without boundaries.
It was a place Janina had never before been.
Arriving there left her breathless.
It made her afraid.
And she never wanted to come back from it.
“Janie.” Russ broke the kiss, raised his head and gave her what she’d craved since she’d been a starry-eyed but not-so-innocent sixteen-year-old schoolgirl ready to worship and adore her tall, dark and hunky hero. “I-40’s right out there, it’s not five hours to Vegas. Four hours with a cop in the car, maybe less.” He groaned when she wrapped her arms more securely around him and her belly rubbed provocatively but unintentionally against his. His muscles went taut, his breathing went harsh and ragged, his arms contracted around her. “Definitely less. Has to be less. We could go, find a chapel, not an Elvis one, though, and—”
“Yes,” Janina interrupted, wild and giddy from the magic, the enchantment of the moment, the pure unadulterated impossibility that made her sure she should pinch herself to see if she was awake. She had to be dreaming because this was what she’d wanted since the moment she’d picked up her mother’s shotgun and skulked after him without him knowing it to make sure he’d be safe until help arrived the night Maddie Thorn had shot her father and killed her brother in self-defense and Russ had gone to rescue Maddie, the always-victim, again.
But Maddie wasn’t here and Russ was thinking of her, Janina, and only of her. Of her, Janie. And that was what made Janina look deep into his midnight eyes, touch her nose to his and know she wasn’t dreaming. That’s what made her repeat, “Yes,” breathlessly, with her heart in her throat, and then again, shouting, joyous, loud, clear and strong, “Yes, yes, yes!”
Then, laughing and oblivious to her bruises, to the consequences of dreaming without a thought to what came after you woke up—without a nod to anything but the unbelievable reality of having achieved your heart’s desire—she wriggled out of his arms, grabbed his hand and made a beeline across the Bloated Boar’s parking lot to her car.
And no, she didn’t listen to that far-off whisper, that superstitious mother-warning fading in the desert dawn: Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it if you don’t watch out.
By 6:30 a.m., they’d stopped for gas on the other side of Seligman, and Janina was feeling more than wild, beyond anxious, outside of nervous. Russ was no longer quite drunk, but he showed no sign of swaying from the path they’d set out on.
His hand resting on her thigh while she drove had played havoc with her concentration, her pulse and her blood pressure. The hand, the fingertips on her thigh had roamed up and down the inside of her leg, just high enough under her short dress to sketch ticklish, teasing circles that claimed her attention and made her catch her breath before stroking back down to the inside of her knee and letting her almost—almost!—relax.
Then he’d settled his arm around her shoulder, slipped his hand along her collarbone, over her throat, caressed the delicate skin there and slipped his fingers inside the deep neckline of her scooped-neck sundress to draw patterns along the top of her breasts, never quite touching where it ached.
