Too Fast to Fall (Jackson Hole 1.10)

“Sure.”

Nate suddenly recalled the moment when he’d thought of being slow and careful. Then he recalled that he’d tossed that thought away and fucked her hard. “Jenny? I’m serious. Are you okay?”

“God!” She turned her face

to the mattress and shook her head, spiking his alarm into the red-alert zone. He was reaching carefully toward her when she squeaked. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not usually so…”

“So, what?”

“So…dirty? Oh, God. That was dirty, wasn’t it?”

Relief slammed through him with a force that knocked the air from his lungs. When he could breathe again, he agreed. “Yeah. It was. Filthy, even.”

“Stop!” Her shoulders shook, but he could see from the line of her jaw that she was laughing.

“If you were trying to throw me off, you went about it all wrong. That’s no way to shake a tail.”

“Nate!”

He cupped a hand over her shoulder and turned her toward him. She only resisted for a moment before rolling to her side. Still, she refused to open her eyes.

“Hey.” He dragged a finger along her jaw, then over her lips. Her eyes finally fluttered open. “Did you mean that?”

“What?” she asked warily.

“That you got especially dirty for me?”

Her eyes glittered past her lashes as she watched him. “Maybe,” she finally said.

Pride swelled so quickly in his chest that Nate worried it might press too tight against his heart and cause trouble. It certainly felt as if it was doing damage. “I like that.”

She smiled. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

Actually, it surprised him. Not that he liked intense sex with her, but how much he liked it. His chest still felt strange, warm and woolly with the idea that she’d given him a glimpse of her that others didn’t get. But he let her think it was as simple as she thought it was.

“Jenny…” He swept her hair back again, but this time he let his hand trail over her shoulder, her arm, then her hip. God. Her beautiful hip.

“You like saying my name,” she said with a coy smile.

“It’s because I had to say ‘Ms. Stone’ for so long. It felt like torture.”

“Poor Deputy Hendricks.”

Her sweet, teasing words caused a niggling in his brain. Then a tense tug. And then he remembered. What he’d meant to ask her about. The complications he’d meant to avoid. And now… What had he done?

Shit. This had been a mistake. The knot in his stomach couldn’t make his body regret it, but his brain was a twisting mess.

He had to figure her out before he screwed everything up.

CHAPTER SIX

“TELL ME SOMETHING about yourself,” Nate said.

Jenny smiled at the odd request. After all, they’d just bonked like crazed rabbits.

Her face flamed again. It wasn’t that she was repressed. She’d had a decent sex life. Sometimes she even had a great sex life. But she’d never needed sex that way.

She usually let sex happen to her. Wash over her. But this had been something clawing out from her own soul. Something new inside her. The smell of him. The feel of his skin and hair. It had called forth something desperate.