‘I don’t like looking stupid or being lied to.’
‘I wasn’t lying to you.’ She continued to meet his gaze head on. ‘I was lying to myself. It wasn’t about you at all. I’ve gotten into the habit of pretending that what happened with Cory was nothing to do with the real me – the person I wanted to be.’
The knot in his gut relaxed. He guessed she was just as uncomfortable exchanging confidences with him as he was.
‘OK.’
She blinked at him. ‘It’s not OK. I haven’t finished yet.’ She sighed. ‘You made me realize that I can’t forget that part of myself. That girl who did such terrible things to get what she thought she wanted out of life.’
‘We all do stupid things, Helen. I’m not real proud of the way I walked away from everyone when I was sixteen.’ He took her hand. ‘We agreed to try to be honest with each other. Why don’t we just keep trying?’
She covered his hand with her own, her nails digging into his skin. ‘How much honesty do you want, Jay? How about if I told you that even when I was really angry with you I still wanted you?’
He pulled her into his arms, buried his face in her hair. ‘I should have stayed and let you show me.’
She brought her hands up and thumped him hard on the chest. ‘Dammit, I shared all that emotional stuff with you and you walked away from me! When you got mad, I wanted to sink my teeth into your skin and hit you until I ran out of strength or breath, whichever came first.’
His cock stirred as her fists came to rest on his chest. He bent his head to take her mouth in a savage, possessive kiss. ‘Hell, I would’ve let you. And then when you were too weak to fight me anymore, I would’ve fucked you until you begged me to stop and then I would’ve fucked you some more.’
She bit down on his lip and he tasted his own blood. Without further thought, he lifted her up until she sat on the workbench. Her briefcase fell to the floor and her short skirt slid up her thighs. He pushed his body between her legs until he was pressed up against her.
‘Kiss me, Helen.’
She slid a hand into his hair and pulled him close. His lips met hers and he outlined them with his tongue before thrusting inside. She tasted perfect to him. A subtle mixture of cool doctor and sexy woman that turned him into a raging fuck-obsessed machine.
She drew back and rested her hands on his shoulders. She was trembling. ‘Do we fight so that we can make up?’
‘Nope, we just like to fight. This is a bonus.’
He kissed her again, more deeply this time until she relaxed into his arms. No woman had ever made him feel this way before. She was like a raging fire. He couldn’t stop himself from coming back even though he knew he might get burnt. His fingers stroked her knee and kept going up until he reached the soft warm curves of her sex. He rubbed her clit through her panties until she moaned into his mouth and lifted her hips into each stroke. His fingers tangled in the rapidly soaking scrap of silk.
He paused to listen. Calculated how many people were left in the building and the likelihood of anyone walking in on them. He decided he liked the odds. The hall door squeaked when it was opened even a crack, which should be warning enough.
With a satisfied sigh, he slipped two fingers beneath the silk and explored her creamy wet pussy. Her clit was already swollen and ready for him.
‘You know how I feel about panties. Take them off.’
He helped her wriggle out of them, then pushed her legs wide so that he could see the slick wetness he’d caused. She gasped as he plunged four fingers inside her and spread them. He kept his thumb over her clit and closed his eyes as her body pulsed and stirred around him.
Keeping his fingers in place, he sank to his knees and stared at her again. He waited for her to complain about being exposed in a public place, but she wasn’t complaining. Her breath came in choppy gasps.
He reached up to the workbench, picked up a long scrap of soft leather and showed it to her. Her eyes widened as he wrapped some of it around his thumb and applied it to her clit.
‘Did you know that cowboy boots can be made out of almost any kind of leather?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Goatskin, shark, lizard, alligator, ostrich . . . good old American bison.’ He rubbed her clit a little harder. ‘This is deerskin, one of the softest. Does it feel good against your skin, Helen?’
He watched the slow play of his thumb, the way the leather darkened as her juices soaked into it. She tried to move her hips against the solid thrust of his embedded fingers but he kept them still and deep.
‘I like deerskin myself. The color, the suppleness and the way it stretches over a last.’
‘A last what?’
He chuckled, bent to kiss her mound, just above his rubbing thumb. ‘Shoe last. The three-dimensional wooden pattern a bootmaker carves for each customer.’ He licked a strip of the leather into his mouth, tasted her unique scent mixed with the animal musk. Licked her again, harder now, from his knuckles and back over his thumb. She shuddered in his arms.
‘I bet you didn’t know that there are three hundred and seventy-two steps to building a cowboy boot, either.’
‘No, no, I didn’t.’
He withdrew his fingers, studied how wet they were and sucked them clean. Holding her gaze, he wrapped the strip of leather around them.
‘Yup, three hundred and seventy-two. That’s a lot of work for a guy like me, but then I’ve always liked taking my time to get things right.’
‘Jay . . .’
He slowly slid his wrapped fingers back inside her, felt her internal muscles grip him like a fist as she came so hard she almost fell off the worktop. He kept his fingers still as her internal muscles continued to convulse around the leather.
‘Making cowboy boots is a bit like making love.’ He withdrew his hand and unwrapped the leather. ‘Sometimes you just have to be patient.’ He got to his feet, tucked the scrap of leather into his pocket and grinned at her. ‘Do you want to get a beer?’
‘Beer?’
Her outraged, deprived expression made him want to laugh. He made a shocked noise. ‘Dr Kinsale, we’re in a community college full of young impressionable minds. You don’t really expect me to fuck you here, do you?’
Her blue eyes took on a frosty glare. ‘I expect you to drive me to an early grave. And who says I was going to have sex with you anyway?’
‘You are. Make no mistake about that.’
He winked at her and rubbed a hand over the huge bulge in his jeans. She slid down off the workbench and confronted him, hands on hips.
‘I came here to apologize.’
‘You came, all right.’
‘Jay . . .’
He picked up her discarded panties and stuffed them in his pocket alongside the leather, wincing as his fingers brushed his erection. ‘Do you want that beer or do you want to go home to your lonely bed?’
Jay waited as a complex series of expressions flittered over her face.
Finally, she sighed. ‘Oh hell, a beer sounds great.’
He checked that the room was clean, put away his tools and snapped off the lights. Helen waited for him by the door, hands clasped tightly on her briefcase again. Damn, he wanted her so bad – she was like a drug. She was the first woman who’d ever made him eager to keep fucking her, to keep exploring her, to understand her.
Shit
. Not good. Not what he wanted at all. He knew he was in danger but why couldn’t he walk away?
Helen noted Jay’s abstraction as he took her hand and walked her out of the building into the parking lot.
‘Are you sure you want to get a beer?’
He stopped walking and stared at her. ‘Why not? I’m already in over my head.’
She got into the car and started the engine. What on earth did that mean? Was he regretting her appearance and his invitation? Perhaps she was a fool to keep coming back to him. But it seemed she was incapable of keeping away. Somehow his raw honesty helped her deal with the insincere world she normally moved through. He reminded her that there were better paths and other choices.
‘I can drop you home and then leave.’
‘Nope, let’s have a beer. I sure need one.’
She smiled into the darkness as she drove off. For once he sounded as confused as she felt. Was that a good thing or a bad one?
His choice of bar was seedy and ill lit. The mud-colored floor felt sticky under the soles of her shoes. Country music blared from a jukebox, reminding her of her youth and her infatuation with Cory. Several guys, including the bartender, hollered at Jay as he walked in. Cowboy hats were much in evidence as was the faint hint of horse sweat and manure. She’d never realized the city had a thriving underground cowboy club. But then San Francisco was renowned for having a little bit of everything.
Helen averted her gaze from a couple kissing at the bar. The woman rode the man’s thigh, one of his hands clamped firmly on her ass, the other up the back of her skimpy shirt. No one else seemed to notice.
She wondered if she looked as conspicuous as she felt and if everyone was really staring at her. Jay put his arm around her shoulders and maneuvered her into one of the faded red-leather booths. He kept her close, giving her no opportunity to move away from him.
The warm scent of his body engulfed her and she turned her head to nuzzle his checked shirt. Beneath her cheek, his heart thumped steadily in his chest. Two beers appeared on the table, delivered by a waitress who simultaneously beamed at Jay, thrust her breasts in his face and ignored Helen.
‘Thanks, Dee Dee.’
Helen scooted away from Jay and stared at the retreating waitress. ‘Her name is Dee Dee?’
‘Yeah, what about it?’ Jay raised a beer to his lips.
‘Is that her real name?’
‘I dunno, should I care?’
‘She obviously seems to care about you.’
Jay chuckled. ‘She’s worked here for the last year. That’s all I know about her. Are you jealous, honey?’
Helen just stared at him. ‘I remember you saying you didn’t share. Well, I don’t either.’
He regarded her, his gray eyes inscrutable over the upturned beer bottle. ‘Good to know. Now why don’t you move over here and prove it?’
Helen’s sex responded with a rush of cream. She moved closer, sighed as he slid his fingers up her inner thigh and stroked her already swollen clit.
‘You just sit here nice and quiet, listen to the music and let me play with you, OK?’
Helen glanced around the bar, realized that no one could see what Jay was doing to her, and relaxed into the caress. God, she was so wet she could hear the slick sound of her juices on his fingers.
He penetrated her with his thumb, curling it up to rub against the underside of her clit. Her nipples hardened in an aching rush and she clenched her hand around her beer.
‘Do you want another one, Jay, darlin’?’
Helen didn’t dare look at the waitress as Jay continued to finger-fuck her.
‘Yeah, that would be great. Thanks, Dee Dee.’
‘How about your friend?’ Her tone was much less friendly now.
‘Helen?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She just managed to spit the words out without moaning her pleasure along with them.
Jay’s mouth brushed her ear. ‘You feel good, honey, wide open and ready for my cock.’ She bit her lip as he changed his position, pushing her further back into the corner of the booth, his fingers still working her steadily toward a climax.
‘Can we go then?’
He chuckled into her hair. ‘Not yet. I haven’t had my second beer yet. I need that beer.’
She tried to bite his shoulder but he kept her trapped against the seat. His mouth descended for a leisurely kiss. She kept her mouth closed but he nipped at her lip until she opened for him. Distantly she heard Dee Dee’s voice and the thump of another bottle hitting the table.
Dee Dee cleared her throat but Jay kept kissing Helen until Dee Dee walked away muttering. Helen moaned into his mouth as he worked her sex, unable to care what the other woman must think of her. He shifted his hands and she shuddered as the icy cold lip of the beer bottle slid inside her.
‘See, I told you I needed that second beer. This one’s for you.’
She grabbed Jay’s wrist but he kept sliding the bottle deeper. The coldness of the glass sent her hot passage into a series of spasms and her hips surged up to meet Jay’s fingers. He murmured his approval into her hair and slowly removed his hand and the bottle.
‘Easy, darlin’.’
Deprived yet again of a decent orgasm, she glared at him as he sat back and drank, the muscles of his throat working as he swallowed the second beer. Frustration rose in her and she grabbed her own beer and finished it. She slammed the bottle on the tray and wedged a twenty-dollar bill under it.
‘Are you ready to go now?’
He grinned at her, a challenge in his eyes. ‘Hey, are you buying tonight?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘If it gets you out of here quicker, yes.’
He stood up. ‘OK. Let’s move it.’
Helen pushed her way through the crowd around the bar and found the door. Jay followed her out. She kept one of his hands in hers, as if he was a reluctant child being taken to school. Outside it was still surprisingly warm. Wisps of fog illuminated by the red and orange street lights drifted in between the tall buildings and disappeared into the gloom. Even the traffic noise had lowered to a more bearable point, replaced by the sound of people enjoying themselves.
‘Shall we go?’
Helen tensed as Jay shook his head.
‘Not yet, doc. We have one more place to visit.’
‘We?’
He took a step toward her. ‘Yeah.’ He tried to look scared. ‘You wouldn’t leave me all alone in the big city would you, lady?’
‘At this precise moment?
Yeah
, I would.’
He fell to his knees, pressed his face against her groin and rubbed his cheek against her already sensitized flesh. One of his hands slid up the inside of her skirt and headed for her sex.