He reached up and took the tab of the zipper on her vest and began dragging it slowly down. “What about it. Want to get naked?”
Jori held still. She knew he was trying to steer her away from her assessment of his earlier actions as symptoms of PTSD. The problem was, it was a damn effective tactic. The carnal hunger that she’d been ignoring for three weeks was out of its box and stomping around her bloodstream in military boots.
He kissed her, expelling his warm breath into her mouth.
Law’s arms wrapped around her, drawing her up against his muscular length, crushing her to him as he took control of her, and of the hunger scorching through him. He palmed her butt, lifting her to grind his instant erection on her. Then he lowered his head and kissed her again.
That’s all it took. All her good intentions went down the drain with the touch of his lips. Jori wrapped her arms about his neck to pull him closer.
Part of Law was more than satisfied by her response. The other part warned him just how far over the line he was headed. He’d only meant to distract her. Expected her to back off. But he couldn’t hang in there when she kissed him like this. His head was in his pants and his dick was doing all the thinking. The urge to push into her and screw them both blind had him trembling.
What had he been thinking? He could no more control the heat between them than he could fly to Mars.
Feeling pretty damn desperate, and a split second from taking the decision out of her hands, he pulled back from the primal blaze that was Jori Garrison.
One second, Jori had half climbed his body. The next, she was dropped back on her heels to steady herself as best she could on legs made liquid by his embrace.
Winded and a little stunned, she grabbed his arm to keep from dissolving in a puddle at his feet. When she looked up at him, eyes dark with desire, he was sorry he’d touched her. “Why did you do that?”
“Just curious. You still want me.” He grinned. “Bad.”
Hard to look at the astonished hurt on her face. Harder still to resist the temptation of her mouth blurred and swelling from his kiss. No surprise when the hurt in her gaze flickered into outrage. He was just pathetically grateful. Without it, they would both have been lost.
“Don’t flatter yourself. So, I’m horny. You’re horny. Big fat deal. You need my expertise with Samantha more than you need in my panties. Keep it tucked in your pants for the other women in your life. I’ll handle my end.”
She was doing great. Letting them both off the hook with that jolt of common sense. It was working right up to the moment he got sucker-punched by something as harmless as her lower lip trembling.
He looked away, his gaze going everywhere, like that of a man overboard searching for a life preserver in a stormy sea. And there it was. His laptop.
“I have business I need to take care of before we continue…” His eyes tracked back to her. “… with training. Make yourself comfortable.”
He saw her split-second hesitation before she answered. “Right.”
Goddammit! She didn’t play fair.
The urge to reach out and soothe, even to apologize, was so strong he felt the pain of restraining himself. His fists clenched and his chest ached. He’d never felt regret whether he was taking or rejecting a woman. And never, even when he knew he was wrong, had he considered apologizing. What the hell was going on?
Jori didn’t notice his dilemma. She had turned away, staring blindly for a second. Bastard! She knew better. He’d warned her. Worse, she couldn’t believe she’d practically begged him to continue.
She sucked in a breath and almost choked on it. “I need some air.”
She pushed back through the front door and moved quickly across the porch and around the side of the house toward the back, anywhere to get away from him so she could breathe.
She inhaled early-December air, the chill a welcome relief from the sexual heat of moments before. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear. But gradually the view won her attention.
The vista was impressive. The land behind the cabin dropped away steeply from an outcropping of shale on which it was built. Below, a thickly wooded valley rippled down and out before climbing the next ridge. Most of the trees had lost their leaves but in the deep underbrush there were still deep veins of green that winter had yet to reap. Higher up, where the foliage had been pruned away by a series of frosty evenings, a throng of trees thrust bare limbs through the slanted sunlight.
If a car hadn’t passed by under her gaze, she would never have noticed the road that snaked through the ridge across the valley. With her vision adjusted, she soon spotted her SUV, too. Had Battise been watching for her, seen her become stranded on the road, and come to her rescue? Why wouldn’t he just say that?
She groaned and bent to lay her head on her arms, folded on the railing. What sort of man treated even kindness as a covert operation?
You don’t know him, Jori. You better not try.
Good advice. If only she’d take it.