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Despite her brave talk, Meg’s pulse was racing by the time she and Jason entered the lobby of the Graff, a beautifully restored Victorian hotel. They had to be back at the ranch by daybreak—probably earlier, but neither of them had wanted to drive back to the ranch in their separate vehicles.
Possibly because they were both afraid of coming to their senses.
He took her hand as the elevator dinged and the ornate doors slowly opened onto their floor. They walked down the hall hand in hand. Jason stopped in front of room 304, opened the door and stepped back to allow Meg to go inside first. She snapped on the old-fashioned light and looked around the beautifully appointed room.
“I’ve always wondered what this place looked like inside.” She turned a full circle, then stopped and met Jason’s gaze. “Now I know.”
“Yeah. Now you know.” He moistened his lips. He was nervous. So was she.
“I...” She stopped and considered, then took a step forward, running her hands lightly over his injured ribs. “I don’t want you to have a relapse.”
“That would be an interesting one to explain to Zach.”
“You might have to lie.”
“I’m a terrible liar.”
“I know,” she said as she lightly grasped his silver belt buckle. His eyebrows lowered and she said, “That’s why I know that even though you left, you cared.”
“I did.” He swallowed again. “Not a lie.” He put his hands on hers, holding them on the top of his belt, the wrist splint hard against her arm. “I’m trying hard to talk. Which is why I’m going to tell you that I can’t promise any kind of a future.”
“I know.” She spoke matter-of-factly. “The difference between now and the last time is just that...I know.”
“You’re sure?”
She moved his buckle, popping it free of the leather. Answer enough. His hands settled on her shoulders, pulling her close for a kiss that started slowly, then built with intensity, making her ache as she pressed against his long, hard body, mindful of his ribs, but needing to be close. The buckle dug into her. She didn’t care. She slid her hands over his hard, perfect ass, drew his tongue into her mouth and sucked, felt his rock-hard cock swell even more against her belly.
His lips left hers and traced a fiery path down her neck to the sensitive hollow. One of her spots. A spot he knew well. She pulled air in through her teeth as he lightly sucked before continuing on, pushing the neck of her blouse aside, dipping his fingers inside to skim lightly over her breasts. The parts of her that weren’t already melted went liquid.
He was warm and solid and had too many clothes on. As did she.
She pulled back. “Jason...” Her voice was thick, barely audible, but he took the hint, reaching between them to brush aside the loose buckle and undo the top button of his jeans.
Meg’s hands found his, helped him ease the zipper over his erection. Then she stepped back and gestured toward the bed. “Your boots.”
He sat, his jeans sagging low on his hips, his gaze intense as she first pulled off one boot, then the other, dropping each with a clunk. Now there was nothing to keep his pants from hitting the floor, and that was exactly where she wanted those jeans. Off him and on the floor.
She motioned for him to stand. She’d never taken control before, hadn’t realized he’d be so obedient. Heady stuff, especially when she considered what lay before them. She settled her hands on his waist, loving the feeling of his hot smooth flesh beneath her palms as she slowly pushed his jeans down, caressing lean flanks and hard thighs as the denim traveled earthward, freeing his rather awesome erection.
She’d forgotten how impressive he was and tried not to stare.
Impossible. He was gorgeous. After he shoved his jeans the rest of the way down his thighs and kicked them free, he tilted up her chin. She met his eyes and pushed him back onto the bed. Lowering herself between his knees, she took the head of his cock in her mouth, letting out a tiny breath as the tang of the precum hit her tongue. Her tongue gave a long slow swirl and his hands clutched the sides of her head.
“Meg...”
She looked up, recognized the desperation in his expression. He would explode if she continued her journey along this tempting path. Before she moved back, he reached down and dragged her up on top of him, pressing his hand hard against her denim-clad ass as he held her against his chest, languidly sweeping his tongue against hers in a long slow stroke. Then another. And another. Damp panties became damper.
“Too many clothes,” she protested against his lips.
He sat up and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling the strip of condoms they’d bought on the way to the Graff out of the pocket before tossing the shirt onto the floor. Meg scrambled out of her pants, pulled her shirt over her head. She wanted him. Now. Wanted to feel him thrusting into her, easing the frustrations that had built over the past weeks.
It was not to be.
Once she was naked, he pulled her down next to him, keeping space between them as he raked his heated gaze over her. Then he took her wrists in his, held them against her sides and he shifted positions, slid lower until his face was between her legs. He licked. She bucked against his mouth.
“No fair.” The words barely escaped her lips before he licked again. And again.
“Jason!” She fought to free her wrists, but while she’d had mercy on him, he did not return the favor. She exploded against him, crying out as her sex throbbed against his mouth. Only then did he release her wrists. He stopped long enough to find the condoms, tear one open and roll it on. Then he positioned himself on top of her and pushed the long hard length of himself deep inside of her.
Her back arched again, not in an orgasm, but in the sheer joy of feeling him inside of her once again. She’d thought making love to him would feel like a homecoming. Like re-exploring territory she’d once known so well.
It was not.
It was edgy and hot and hard and wonderful. Jason drove himself into her in a way he’d never done before. As if he understood that she was no longer the take-no-chances person she’d once been. She clutched at his back, felt the play of hard muscles beneath her palms as he thrust until, to her amazement, another orgasm started to build, taking her breath, making her gasp against his shoulder before she cried out again. He thrust into her one final time, throbbing inside of her as he brought his forehead down to hers, then took her lips in a gentle kiss.
She pulled his head down to her shoulder, held it there.
He lay in her arms, catching his breath. She closed her eyes, stroking his damp hair, breathing in his scent. Then he slowly lifted his head.
“You make me crazy, Marvell.”
“Two-way street.” She wrapped her arms around him, pulled back down. Held him.
Refused to think about what tomorrow might bring.
Jason insisted on leaving the room keys and the tip on the dresser and exiting the hotel by the rear entrance. “People talk,” he said simply as they headed down the almost empty sideway to the FlintWorks parking lot.
They were going to talk anyway if she and Jason continued to see one another, but Meg felt no need to point that out. He walked her to her truck, then, after she’d unlocked the door, he said, “Do you care if I go first? Because of the deer? My rig is bigger than yours.”
Oh, yes. A one-ton truck was so much bigger than a three-quarter ton.
She smiled a little. “Makes perfect sense.” More than that, it made her feel good. Some day she was going to point out the difference between being protective in a courteous way and protective in a controlling way, but right now...not the time.
She followed Jason’s headlights to the ranch without seeing a single deer. He parked in his usual spot and she parked in hers. It was a long drive, but to her amazement, she hadn’t spent it conjuring up dire consequences to her actions. She felt right about what had happened between her and Jason, and what might, or might not happen in the future. For once in her life, she was good with just letting things be.
She jumped as Jason tapped on her window, then pushed open the door. He held out his hand and she took it, laughing against his neck as he pulled her close, clamping an arm around the small of her back before leaning in and kissing her. “Here’s to being in the moment,” he said.
She liked that. Being in the moment. It was what she’d been doing all summer long, so it seemed appropriate.
“In the moment,” she agreed. She tilted back her head. “Do you want me to ride that colt tomorrow? Or will you continue with your Brandon plan?”
“You’ll ride the colt.”
She smiled, then reached up to caress the side of his face. “Thank you, Jason. For everything.”
Meg rode the paint colt the next day, showing up early at the corrals after skipping breakfast. She didn’t feel like facing her cousins over coffee—not when she had an I-just-had-sex-for-the-first-time-in-two-years glow on. Not when she’d caught herself standing in front of the mirror, her toothbrush in her mouth, lost in a sensual recollection.
It was going to take her some time to settle after last night’s sex-fest—especially if there was a possibility of it happening again.
Jason showed up at the round pen with his business face on, but as they discussed the colt and the other rides that day, he reached out and hooked a finger in her belt, pulling her just a few steps closer.
“How’re you doing?” he asked in a low voice.
Meg glanced past him to make certain they couldn’t be seen from the house, or that Brandon wasn’t lurking in the open door of the barn. She raised her eyebrows. “Sore in places I haven’t been sore in for a while.” When he gave her a look, she explained, “I, uh, haven’t slept with anyone since you.” A frown started to form and she added, “Nothing felt right.”
“But this did.”
“What can I say?” she asked lightly. “You know what you’re doing.”
He gave her belt another tug, which made her go all moist in the panty region, then jerked his head toward the corrals. “I’ll catch Carl. You catch Kenny.”
“Right.” A delicious tingle went through her as he released her and they each picked up a halter from the hooks on the side of the tack shed.
The day passed slowly. She worked the horses with Jason in the morning, rode the fence alone in the afternoon, checking for the hole that had allowed several cows from a neighboring ranch into their hay fields. She found the hole, did a fairly decent fix with the materials she had, and then rode back, arriving at the ranch at dusk.
Jason stepped out of his cabin and helped her untack the buttermilk buckskin.
“Have a moment?” he asked roughly. But it was a good rough. An I-need-you rough.
“I have to meet with Brandon.”
He leaned his arms on the top of the mare’s damp back. “None of my business, but what the hell?”
He spoke in a tone that coupled exasperation with curiosity, with maybe a slight dash of jealousy mixed in.
Meg leaned on the opposite side of the mare, settling her hands on top of Jason’s forearms. “It’s a confidence.”
“One that I can live with?”
“Yes. It’s totally one you can live with.”
“So, you’re saying we both have our secrets.”
One corner of her mouth quirked a little. “Yes. I guess that’s true.”
“When you’re done with Brandon, maybe you’d like to pay a visit to my cabin?”
She stepped away from the mare and picked up the saddle from the rail. “Yes,” she said with a half-smile. “I’d very much like to do that.”
And a little over an hour later, when her legs were wrapped around Jason’s back and he was driving into her, she was so glad she’d paid that visit.
“I missed sex,” she said later as they lay together on the damp bedding, their legs entwined. He stroked a hand over her hair and she did the same to his chest. Smoothing the hair, testing the spring of it. Damn but she loved touching him. “I was thinking about what you said about living in the moment.”
“It’s how I’ve lived for most of my life.”
“Not me. Not until recently anyway. I was always half a step into the future, plotting the next phase of my life instead of enjoying the phase I was in. I have a sense that because of that, I’ve missed stuff. And I think that might be one reason that I’m trying to recalibrate the way I live.”
He took hold of her hand, laced his fingers with hers. “I was usually in the moment because I was trying to escape whatever shit was going down in my family.”
Meg felt his heart start to beat faster beneath her cheek as he spoke. She had long ago deduced that his home life hadn’t been stellar, but Jason never talked about his family, other than the occasional oblique reference to wolves and hyenas, and the one time Meg had screwed up her courage and asked for more detail, he’d smiled and said he’d left home so that he didn’t need to think about his family.
He smoothed a hand down her back, curving it around to rest on the side of her hip. “You’ve probably guessed that things weren’t the greatest during my childhood.”
“I have.”
“I’ve left that all behind.”
She wanted to ask what exactly he’d left behind, but instinct, as well as past experience, told her that he’d clam up if she did. So instead she nestled closer, listening rather than looking at him. Allowing him a modicum of privacy as he came close to actually telling her about his life.
“After...” His voice trailed off, as if he was seriously considering his words. “I joined the military, began to see outside my bubble, realized that regardless of my background, that I’m the guy responsible for my actions, and my future and all that. That I didn’t have to treat people the way I was shown as a kid. That I had choices.” He pulled in a breath, his chest expanding beneath her palm. “But in some ways, you can’t escape where you come from.”
The dark words made Meg’s stomach tighten. She lifted her head, took in his very serious expression. The important thing was that he wasn’t withdrawing. “I guess this is where live in the moment comes in?”
He studied her, tracing a lazy finger along the curve of her cheek, then slowly smiled as he threaded his fingers through her hair. “Yeah. I guess it does.”
She smoothed her hand over the hard ridges and planes of his chest and abdomen. “Then maybe we should just focus on the here and now and be grateful for the moment we’re in.”
“Is that enough?”
“I don’t know, Jason. But as I told you before...if I start to feel like I’m wading into dangerous territory, I’ll do something about it.”
The fingers in her hair tightened ever so slightly. “Promise?”
“Yeah. I’m not looking to get hurt here, but I’m not looking to put you into a position you can’t handle, either.” She raised herself up on her elbows. “I’m a realist, Jason.” Or at least she was trying to be. “Let’s see where this takes us.”
“In the moment feels right...for now.” But the long term had him worried. Meg wasn’t going to go there. Wasn’t going to ruin what she had in her grasp in the here and now.
“Then,” she said, easing herself up onto his chest and planting her elbows on the pillow on either side of his face, “let’s keep it in the moment.”
Jason had always lived in the moment, just as he’d told Meg, but he’d never before put blinders on regarding the future, which was exactly what he was doing now. And it bothered him.
No, what bothered him was that he was afraid of the future. His time with Meg was precious—even more so than it’d been two years ago, when the impossible had happened and he discovered that the sweet girl next door wanted him as much as he’d wanted her.
The other women in Jason’s life had been like him—survivors who’d instinctively understood how things operated in his world. The grit, the anger, the crazy swings between highs and lows. Betrayals, feuds. He’d felt comfortable with them, but had no plans of making a life with them. He didn’t want to re-create his childhood. It wasn’t until he’d hooked up with Meg, his impossible dream, that he’d realized he didn’t know how to build a relationship that didn’t include those things.
Fine. He could learn. Maybe.
And if he couldn’t learn? If he failed and reverted to the way his family did things? What then?
It was a question he’d turned over in his mind time and time again during their first months together. Would he fail her? Would he hurt her by not knowing what to do?
By not being about to talk about the things she talked about so freely?
She’d wanted him to talk, and his inability to do so had been the first small wedge between them. He might have been able to overcome it, if his brother hadn’t made yet another rude appearance in his life, reminding him of who he was and where he’d come from. How very far he had to go. So he’d done what he thought was best for both of them, and left.
His excuse had been a little pain now was better than a lot of pain later.
Meg had been right not buying his excuse. Instead of riding away, he should have come forth with the truth, told her about where he came from and why getting involved with him would open up the possibility for trouble in the future. But no. He’d take the coward’s way out while trying to protect her at the same time.
But hell—he’d never opened up to anyone in the past. How was he supposed to have known it was the thing to do then?
And what possible good could it have done?
Right now he had no idea where this thing with Meg was going. Where it would end. But he’d decided to take her at her word. She was strong, and if she felt herself sliding into an emotional danger zone, she’d end things.
Which was a good thing for her.
It was already too late for him. He cared for her. It scared him, but if she could take the risk, so could he.
