Jump Start (Texas Hotzone 1)

Bobby moaned with the intensity of her muscles milking him, dragging him to a dark, blissful place where there was only the shudder of her body against his. The shadows of the past were velvety rich with the present. There was only here, now, the two of them. He buried himself in the depths of her orgasm, buried the anger and regret eating him alive. Let the molten heat licking at his cock melt him farther inside Jennifer, clinging to every last second of the escape until he shook with the effort, unable to hold back. In an instant, Bobby’s orgasm was ripped from the base of his cock, spilling himself into the depths of her body. Bobby buried his face in her jasmine-scented, silky blond hair. Tormented by the pleasure that was both perfection and hell—the pleasure that would force him back into the present. For long seconds, Bobby held her, she held him. Weakness overcame his legs, and he set her on the desk and pressed his forehead to hers. There was so much he wanted to say, so much he should say, but also, so much he wasn’t sure he should say. As she had said, he had no right to come back here and expect more from her than what she was giving him.

Her hand gently rested on his jaw, the anger and demand between them absent, fading away. There was comfort in her tender touch, a sense of understanding that said she felt the vulnerability in him, the rawness of the confession he had yet to make, but he knew, stay or go, he owed her.

He swallowed what felt like a brick in his throat. “Since the Hotzone in San Marcus, we’ll already be halfway to my father’s place in San Antonio when the air show ends. It’ll be late, so we’ll want to find a hotel tonight and see him tomorrow, but I thought…I wanted, no…I need you to go with me to see him.”

Jennifer leaned back, searching his face, surprise glinting in the depths of her blue eyes. Her gaze sharpened and then narrowed. “You haven’t seen him, have you? Not since you left.”

His lips thinned and he shook his head. “No,” he managed to say, his throat as parched as the Iraqi desert.

Shock washed over her face. “Have you talked?”

“A couple times on the phone,” he said, pulling out of her and fixing his pants while she righted her clothing and then leaned back against the desk.

“And?” she asked. “How were the talks?”

A bitter laugh slid from his throat. “You don’t talk to my father,” he said. “He talks. You listen.”

“That good, huh?” she asked softly.

He shrugged. “It is what it is, but I left here because of him.” He ground his teeth. “No. That’s not true. I left because of me. Because I let him get into my head. And, Jen—” he scrubbed his jaw, the roughness of the stubble scraping against his palm “—I won’t lie. He’s still there. Working me over. I don’t have any right to ask you to go with me. I don’t have any right to ask anything of you. But I need you to know why I left, no matter how poor the decision. I need you to know it wasn’t about you. Or rather—it was about you. About protecting you.”

“You barely even drink, Bobby,” she reminded him. “You aren’t your father.”

“Yeah, well,” Bobby said, “he was sober until he turned forty. From there, it was one big slosh fest. Still is from what I can tell from a distance.”

She pushed off the desk, a solemn look on her heart-shaped face as she stopped in front of him. Her hands pressed to his chest, heating the area she touched. She blinked up at him. “You really believe you’re going to turn into him, don’t you?”

“No,” he answered honestly. “I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t come to realize I’m not my father. That my choices, just like his did, will decide my future. But deep down, I know I’m kidding myself if I believe I’ve dealt with this, not until I go and face him.”

She studied. “I wish I would have seen this in you before. I wish I…”

He pulled her close and kissed her. “Stop. Do not even think about making what happened somehow your fault. You do that—you take things on as your own. You didn’t see this in me, because I’m not sure I did. I hid from it. I’ve been hiding from it for seven years. I’m here now. It’s time I face him, and myself.” His gaze brushed her parted lips, wet from their kisses, the sweetness that was so her, without her even trying. “I was young and scared, Jen. I was running. It’s all I knew how to do.”