Long Shot (25 page)

Jen went still in his arms. “Is that—”

“Yeah. I think it is.”

The red potato chip logo cap they’d seen in the hidden corner of Loughlin’s barn before it had burned down.

She sagged against him. “Do you think he did it? Maybe on accident? There were cigarettes there and you need a lighter for those things.”

“Maybe.”

“We’re going to have to tell Olsen about it.”

“Okay.”

She leaned back, settled in to him again. “But not now. The barn’s already burned and I’m not pulling the drummer off the stage when they’re doing so well. As long as he can hold it together.”

Come on, asshole,
Leith thought.
Hold it together.

The warm June breeze swept through the open tent, swirling her scent around him, and he briefly closed his eyes as his cheek rubbed her hair.

“You knew this would go off like fireworks,” he said. “Didn’t you.”

“Fireworks . . .” She tried to pull away, to sit up. “That’s an idea for next year.”

He yanked her gently back against his chest. “Don’t even think about going for your phone.” She relaxed, but just slightly. Then he asked, “Would you do this again next year?”

It took her a while to answer. Her hand came to rest on his forearm, and she drew light lines up and down his skin with her fingernails. “I don’t know if I can. The timing for this was . . . unique.”

It was exactly the same kind of pause she’d given him when he’d asked if they could try to be together. He’d tried not to read too much into it. He had yet to hear her not speak the truth. Her word, even if he hadn’t always agreed with it, was gold, as far as he was concerned.

“Ah, that’s right,” he said. “Your crazy job.” He was joking, but his stomach felt strangely sour.

A silence fell between them as they rocked to the music, clasped together. Then he got up to get another beer, and by the time he got back, she was dancing with Bobbie and Rob and looking gorgeous doing it. Thoughts of crazy jobs and guesses over odd pauses vanished.

Chapter

21

J
en stayed at the games until Chris struck his last fiddle note and the applause died. The music tent had long since been cleared of families, and all that remained were drunken, happy adults. The buses fired up in the parking lot, ready to take the last people back to Westbury, and locals were stumbling home, shouting “See you tomorrow” across the fields.

“Look at that smile,” Leith said, taking her hand and turning her toward him.

She hadn’t been aware of what her face was doing, but now that he said it, she could feel the stretch of her cheeks and the satisfaction in her heart. “It was a good night. Now I think I’m ready for bed.” Her free hand fumbled for her phone as she checked the time. She whistled. “A few hours of sleep before I have to be back here at six.”

The fingers twining with hers tightened, pulling her closer. Shoving her phone back into her purse, she looked up at Leith. Heat sparked in his dark eyes. She knew that look. She knew it, and loved it.

“No sleep yet,” he said. “Come with me.”

As if she had a choice, or desire, not to.

She willingly let him lead her to the parking lot, where the remaining cars were humming to life and pulling away.

“Where’s your truck?”

He looked sidelong at her with a shit-eating grin, eyebrows disappearing beneath the shag of hair. “No truck tonight.”

Jen blinked, finally recognizing what vehicle sat directly in front of her.

“Wow, you still have it?”

“Yep. It’s been sitting in Mildred’s garage, the one at the Old Lady Museum. I couldn’t let it stay down at Da’s. Until the other day, it was the only thing I’d taken away from there.”

Leith exhaled and reached out to run a hand over the gorgeous, low tail fin of Mr. MacDougall’s 1969 Cadillac DeVille convertible. The robin’s-egg blue was exactly as she remembered, as well as the gleam of the white leather seats. The car was as long as a boat and could easily fit three bodies in the trunk. Leith touched it with reverence. Unlike the day he’d dropped her off to look for his father’s scrapbooks, there was no pain, no loss on his face. Only wistfulness. Only love.

Come to think of it, that’s exactly what she’d sensed in him all night.

He walked slowly toward the driver’s side door, hand trailing along the blue, those heated eyes lingering on Jen. She could feel them as strongly as she could feel the cool metal of the car beneath her fingertips.

He glanced pointedly at the backseat. “I want to have sex with you in my car.”

Her first instinct was to laugh, but since he looked so serious, she didn’t. Instead, she studied him. “Trying to relive the past?” Because if he was, this thing between them, whatever it was, wouldn’t last.

He shook his head. “No, not trying to relive anything. You are you, and I am me, and I want us to make new memories. Tonight. Before we both leave Gleann for good. Look, I don’t have a house of my own and the thought of spending our last night here with Mildred’s ghost really doesn’t appeal to me. I’m sure as hell not taking you back to Da’s, and the Thistle is booked up. So can we please have sex in my car? Please?”

She licked her lips to keep from smiling. “Not behind the produce stand.”

Finally he grinned. “Now
that
would be trying to relive the past. No, I’ve got a better place in mind.”

While he drove he held her hand, and even though it could be labeled as a childish form of affection, right then it felt wonderfully adult and intimate. And, oddly, a little sad.

He brought her to the gravel ramp where day-trippers could back their boats into the lake. Trees and tall grass bent over them and the crescent moon dangled crookedly over the water. The stars were out again, Jen thought as he shut off the engine and turned his whole huge torso toward her, just as he’d done their first night together, here in this very car. New memories, she told herself. New memories.

You are you, and I am me.

Leith had one leg bent on the seat, the other thrust under the dashboard, his kilt draped between his knees. He looked like he wanted to devour her.

She pushed herself up and slipped through the opening between the front seats, plopping down in the familiar back. The smell of the leather chucked her into the past, but the sight of Leith, with his longer hair and more powerful body and incredibly masculine confidence, grounded her firmly in the present.

The backseat was wide and deep, and the leather creaked under his weight as he joined her. Expectant, she came to her knees beside him. A slow grin widened his mouth, and he reached around to grab the back of her neck and pull her into him. She took that smile, kissed it right off his face, and licked at the lust dripping off his tongue.

He groaned, his fingers tightening, pressing her mouth harder against his. Then he was grabbing her around her hips, lifting her like a toy, and settling her to straddle his lap like she’d done at the Amber Lounge. Subtle pressure on her hips told her how he wanted her to move, and she gave him a long, slow undulation. It shoved the kilt higher up his thighs. It rubbed her clit against him. She felt herself swell, tingle, go wet. Beneath her, he shuddered.

His abs contracted as he pushed up against her, hard-as-stone thighs flexing. His kiss was made of iron and silk, and it went on and on and on, until he finally broke it. She loved the sound of his ragged breath; she drank it like water.

“I don’t want to lose this,” he whispered in her ear. “I can’t lose you again.”

Pushing back, feeling the air struggle in her chest, she stared into his eyes. A powerful bolt, made of desire and dreams, ripped through her.

“You think I’m going to let you go? Sir, you don’t know how wrong you are.”

“Then show me.” A flash of white teeth. “And I’ll show you.”

She rose up, reached between her legs and tugged up his kilt. She’d already had him, already knew what he tasted and looked and felt like, but for some reason, at that moment, it all seemed brand new. She stroked him over his underwear. “Show me what?”

“New things,” he stuttered.

“Oh, reallllly?”

Then she was falling, tilting back and to the side under no power of her own. But she didn’t worry, not in the slightest, because she was in the arms of a man who had pretty much carried an entire town, and cared for a dying father, and thrown giant tree trunks all over a field.

The white leather sighed against her back. It cradled her and gave her up to Leith, whose body blocked out the stars above, but whose face was half lit by the moon. He tugged on the underside of her knees, tucking them around his hips. Why wasn’t he taking off her jeans? Her body was screaming for him, and it seemed like he just barely had his own under control. He settled himself between her legs, his kilt bunching up between them, his boots making hollow sounds as they struck the side of the interior.

Coming down to his elbows he took her in a tender cradle, his thumbs finding her face, his fingers wrapping around her scalp. Their eyes met, and she knew at that moment she’d never get enough of him, that she’d spoken the truth before. No way in hell was she letting this go. This—
he
—was hers. She’d earned it and he’d earned her. They’d met in a time of their lives when emotions were new and forming, and they’d barely known themselves. They’d had to separate and go make their own lives before finding each other again. She couldn’t look at it as ten years wasted without him, but instead ten years of growth, ten years of learning.

But now he’d put her under siege. There was no hope but to throw up her hands and declare herself conquered.

By the shift in his expression—a sudden clearing of his eyes, the smoothing of the skin around them and his mouth—she dared to think he might have come to a similar conclusion.

“Take off my jeans,” she said, toeing off one boot, but not being able to get enough leverage for both.

He kissed her, then pushed back with a mighty exhale. He yanked off her boots, tossed them into the front seat, and went to work on her jeans. With a rip of the snap and a furious yank on the zipper, his determination might have been comedic if her desperation didn’t echo his. She lifted her hips and he shimmied down the denim, stripping it off her legs, then stared, openmouthed, at the stretch of thin lace between her hip bones.

“Those, too,” she said stupidly, as if he needed direction.

He ran a slow finger just underneath the top edge of lace, back and forth, back and forth, teasing the hell out of her.

“Here’s my new thing for tonight.” His eyes flipped up to hers, and they looked gloriously depraved. “I would really love to try to make you come. Inside here.”

In one motion, his hand dove beneath her underwear and two fingers slipped inside her. So fast, so incredibly easy. The way was slick and welcoming, and she cried out at the pressure, then asked for more when he didn’t move at all. He just watched her, his fingers deep inside.

“You’re asking for more because you know it’s going to happen.” Damn cocksure man with the evil villain grin.

“Give it up, Leith.” She was having a hard time finding words that were true, because she sure as hell didn’t
want
him to give up. “It won’t. Or it’ll take way too long. I know myself.”

Hand still touching her intimately, he leaned down and kissed her.

“I love everything about you,” he murmured. “There’s no such thing as too long. You can take forever and I won’t mind.”

She snaked a hand underneath his kilt, this time not stopping at the barrier of his underwear. She dove inside it, sighing at the feel of steel and soft skin as it filled her palm.

Suddenly he froze, grimacing. “You’ve got something, right? I should’ve asked. Or I should’ve brought them myself.”

She had to smile. “I wouldn’t have gotten in the backseat if I didn’t. My purse.”

He delicately extricated himself from her grip, reached over the front seat, and rummaged around until he found the inner side pocket with the condoms. Shoving down his underwear, but keeping on his boots and kilt, he hurriedly put the thing on. The rush didn’t bother her. She didn’t care. She didn’t want time; she just wanted him.

The moon gave her only one half of his lust-twisted face. The rest of his body was in dim outline, and she tugged at his T-shirt, pulling it free so that she could run her hands up his chest and feel all that power captured inside him.

Curling his fingers around her underwear, he pulled the lace down and snapped it off her leg, letting her go as wide as she needed to be for him. The feel of the kilt wool rasping against her inner thighs was exquisite . . . but not nearly as good as the feel of him inside her.

The entrance was slow and steady, a push that had them both gasping, their eyes locked on where they were joined. He started to move with deep, long motions that rocked the car. She clamped around him. She couldn’t watch anymore, her head falling back to the seat. But he was so deep inside her, moving so well and so smoothly, that she couldn’t stay blind for long. When she opened her eyes, he was staring into her face. There was such severity on his, a deep concentration.

And there was such deliberation with his body, that huge thing that he could use so gently. He was strong but also giving. He was two beings at once, and everything in between, and he was taking her completely out of her mind.

This wasn’t fucking. It wasn’t even sex. Somewhere, between blow jobs in the parking lot and here in the backseat, this whole act had transformed into—oh boy, she never thought she’d be able to even
think
the term without giggling—making love.

Thinking that, even though the term was antiquated and silly, sent a surge of emotion through her, enhancing the gift of his physical sensations. Something about his movement, his strokes, was different that night. Special. They were powerful and focused, and they were doing things to her she instinctively knew were right.

Still, she needed . . . she needed a hand between them, rubbing where she wanted, giving her that extra push, throwing her over the edge. She needed it now, now, now. But there was no space, and he wasn’t giving her any time to think.

Leith touched his forehead to hers, his hair brushing her skin. He gave a mighty thrust, curling upward. It dragged something out from deep inside her, and she let out a ragged cry. He did it over and over, for more minutes than she could ever count. On and on, for forever and a day. Her hands scrabbled at the leather, looking for . . . what? Purchase? Something to hold on to and ride out this wave? Him?

His voice rumbled low. “I found it, didn’t I?”

“Leith . . . oh,
God . . .”

He pulled out again, thrust back in in that upward motion.
There
.

“Stop fighting it. Let go.” Then against her ear: “Be mine.”

This was her last stand, the last measure of control she had over herself when she was around him. But why was she clinging to it? Why wasn’t she letting go? Was she every bit the control freak Aimee and Leith and so many others had made her out to be? If she was fighting it, it wasn’t deliberate.

He pushed in again and again, finding and stroking that invisible spot inside, despite the fact she’d convinced her body it didn’t exist or that it had somehow died or gone numb over the years. The rhythm changed, ramping up, his accompanying grunts turning to music in her ears. The motion pressed the top of her head against the side of the car, and she put her palms to the wall, pushing off. The resistance drove Leith in even deeper.