“You want to leave?”
“That is just the beginning of what I want.” He tilted his head, watching her, studying her, his eyes hot with appreciation. “I’m tired of being in my own head, Lucy. Worrying constantly if I’m doing the right thing. And I think…maybe you’re tired of that too.”
It was as if he’d read her mind.
“I want to feel something.”
This was her time to back out, to put the right kind of distance between them, but then he leaned in, his breath smelling like beer and gum.
“I dare you,” he whispered.
In the blink of an eye she was on fire for him. The wildness surrounding him—the excitement that crackled in his eyes. It was contagious, that excitement, and she wanted more.
She felt alive. For the first time in a very long time, she felt utterly alive.
Attraction and intent sizzled and burned in the air around them. The bar, the twenty people milling around, all of it vanished and it was just them. In the whole wide world it was just them.
Normally she didn’t think about how long it had been since she’d had sex. Because sex in her relationships was only part of the equation. When lust attacked she could handle it on her own, but the burn in her body was specific to this man.
She wanted him. Needed him. And only Jeremiah Stone would do.
And he was looking at her like he felt the same way.
“Joey,” she said without looking away from Jeremiah. “Don’t call me. I’m busy.”
She reached back, snagged her purse and followed him out the door into the night.
11
The chill in the evening air did nothing to cool her down. If anything, she stepped closer to Jeremiah, longing for his skin against hers, his heat through the thin fabric of his shirt.
She had no idea where they were going—a car, probably. A bed, hopefully.
But once they were in the shadows on the far side of the bar, he turned and jerked her into his arms, rough and wild. She met him halfway, leaning back, her hips against his, her arms around his neck.
She found his lips in the darkness and the night exploded.
Kiss after kiss, a hundred of them, a thousand spilling into each other. She opened her mouth, let in his tongue, and he groaned, pulling her harder against him until she could feel the hard ridge of his erection beneath his zipper.
Yes, she thought, yes and more please, more.
He sucked on her tongue and she gasped, pulling herself into him with her arms, unable to get close enough. She could crawl into his skin and it wouldn’t be enough.
Porn star words were coming to her lips. She wanted to ask him to do things to her they had no business doing against a building.
As if he realized that, too, he broke away, his face tight in the shadows, his lips wet.
Her breath shuddered in her body and she honestly didn’t know what to say or do.
She slid her fingers up under his shirt, feeling the situation gaining a dizzying momentum.
“You’re so beautiful. So alive,” he breathed, pushing her hair back off her cheek. His thumb touched the corner of her mouth and she licked it as it went by. He groaned and brought his thumb back to her lips, tracing the edges with rough calluses.
Frustrated, turned on, she put her teeth to his skin, raking them across his thumb, and he smiled, wicked and dirty.
“That’s how I feel too. Come on.”
He grabbed her hand, putting distance between them, but then stopped. “My house is too crowded,” he said. “So is yours.”
Some of the glitter drained off him, real life returning drip by drip to destroy the excitement, the life, in his face.
“Oh man,” he muttered, his shoulders slumping.
She had no idea why she was doing this, except that she knew her excitement was tied to his and if his died, hers would too, and she wasn’t ready for that. She wanted to see where this kind of desire led.
And she wanted to see him animated. Not worn down. Jeremiah as he used to be, as he could be again, with her.
She tugged his hand, pulling him into the shadows behind the bar, glad the Dumpster was on the other side, until she felt the roughness of the brick against her back. They bumped into something in the dark and he fell against her, kicking aside whatever was at their feet.
It was nothing but darkness back here, with bushes along one side, honeysuckle by the smell of things.
“Someone could come out here,” he said, arching himself, bit by bit, against her. Hips, chest, lips. They were a combination lock, and he knew how it worked.
“They could.”
“They could see us.” Both of his hands pushed up against the bricks by her head, blocking her in. Securing her. It was just them and the heat and the lust and the fire between them. A delight of their own making.