“Us,” she amended. “This attraction could ruin what we have.” Hope paused. “Of course, it could maybe add to it. Sorry,” she quickly tacked onto that. “That’s the lust talking.”
He looked at her, and now the angle of the moonlight was right for her to see the slight change in his expression. The muscles in his jaw relaxed a bit. No relaxation, though, for his eyes.
“I was managing the lust just fine until I saw you in that dress,” he grumbled.
So, that had been the trigger, but she suspected the stuck zipper had helped some, too. “Well, I was managing it just fine until the Pandora’s-box thing,” she grumbled right back. “And also seeing you get out of the shower. No way am I forgetting that.”
This would have been a good time for one of them to smile just to chill the air between them. But no smiles. Their eyes locked, and she found herself staring at that scrumptious face. She also found herself moving, but Hope soon realized it was because Josh had hold of her waist and was pulling her toward him.
It happened so fast, more like a swish of motion, and she was in his arms with his mouth on hers. Mouth and tongue. She’d thought the other kisses were scorchers, but Hope immediately figured out the difference between a kiss for show with Josh and a real kiss from Josh.
This was a real kiss.
Heck, she’d had third-base foreplay that hadn’t generated this much heat. That probably had something to do with Josh putting his whole body into it. Literally. It wasn’t just his mouth on hers or his chest against her breasts. It was the fact that he hauled her onto his lap. With nothing between them but their clothes, the kiss became more like a head-to-toe experience.
She heard herself moan. Pure pleasure. And she especially liked the way his hand slid over her dress to grip her right butt cheek. He was using the grip to nudge and adjust her so that their zipper areas were aligned. But that’s also when Hope remembered that she didn’t have a zipper.
Or panties.
Josh remembered it, too, because he went stiff when his hand landed on her bare skin.
He stopped the kiss, pulled back and looked at her. “Hell.”
Again, not the romantic thing to say, but along with being on his lap, she was also on the same page with him, and Hope knew those missing panties could be the difference between foreplay and full-blown sex. She’d never actually been thankful for a muffin top, but she was starting to see the advantages of it.
“We’re in a truck,” he said, but he seemed to be talking to himself. Forcing himself to remember that he was just one zipper-lowering away from being inside her.
He groaned, slid his hand from her butt to the front of her. Between her legs. And then Hope was the one moaning. He wasn’t actually touching her there—not yet, anyway—but his fingers were dallying on her inner thigh.
“We’re in a truck,” he repeated, sounding a little crazy now.
Hope felt that, too. She was crazy. And hot. And so ready for him to touch her that she moved things along. She shifted herself enough so that his fingers brushed against the most sensitive part of her body, and it wasn’t her thigh.
Her next moan of pleasure was considerably louder and was tinged with an eager urgency.
“We’re in a truck.” Josh, again. But thankfully his reminder-mantra wasn’t working because he moved his fingers. It was a slippery little slide in just the right spot.
“We’re in a truck,” Hope gutted out. She didn’t know why the words came out of her mouth, but perhaps it had something to do with Josh’s fingers making her mindless.
With their gazes still locked, he added a flick to the slippery slide, and Hope knew she was just one index finger away from an orgasm.
In a truck.
Where someone could come walking up at any minute. That reminder should have stopped her long enough to demand that Josh take her back to the ranch and to his bed. Or to her bed. That part was optional. But before she could get her mouth working to demand anything, there were two dinging sounds.
Their phones.
Hope was surprised that sounds so soft could make it through her lust-crazed mind, but they did, and it seemed odd that both Josh and she had gotten texts at the same exact moment. Even with that oddity, Hope could have ignored them, if there hadn’t been a second pair of dings.
Josh cursed and stopped to take out his phone, which caused Hope to curse because he’d stopped. Since her phone would just keep dinging if she didn’t clear the messages, she took out her cell, too, but she was still close enough to Josh that she saw the message on his screen.
Keep your zipper up and don’t give in to your hankerings and have sex in your truck, his dad had texted.
Obviously, Josh’s dad had had a hunch about his son’s feelings if he knew about hankerings.
Josh scowled and moved on to the cause of his second ding. A text from his mother. Bi bwws dir tiy ri fi.
“My mom can’t text without her reading glasses,” Josh added when Hope stared at him. He tipped his head to her phone. “Who messaged you?”
She showed him the screen with the first text from her mom. Get back here and meet Mark. So help me, you’d better not be having sex with Josh in yours or his truck.
Maybe his dad and her mom had binoculars and could see them from the house. Of course, it was just as likely that her mom had noticed Hope’s own hankerings, too.
While Josh was still watching, she scrolled down the screen to the next one she’d gotten. Remember to find the doodle, her dad had texted.
“My dad can’t text without his reading glasses,” Hope told Josh when he raised an eyebrow.
No way did she want to get into an explanation about what her dad was referring to. But it turned out that she wouldn’t have had a chance to do that anyway because their phones dinged again.
Both Josh and she groaned, and they looked at their screens to see what words or gibberish of reason their parents had to add, but it wasn’t from either set of them. It was a message that Roger Hawley had sent to both of them. And unlike the others, this one wasn’t a meddling annoyance and there was no mention of a truck. However, there was a mention of something that got their attention along with cooling down their lust.
Disappointed with our meeting tonight, Roger had texted. I never did cotton to the notion that it was wise for a man to diddle his boss. Have rethought things and I won’t be doing business with you after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
OVER THE PAST WEEK, two words kept going through Josh’s head. Doodle and diddle. He still wasn’t sure what a doodle was, perhaps an ingredient in those cookies the Applewoods made. But the diddle had come across loud and clear in Roger’s text.