“The ocean breeze helped. Would you please sit down so I don’t get a crick in my neck?”
She was already struggling to keep the kiss out of her head. When she sat down next to him, the image grew even sharper. He smelled nice, like an earthy soap and shampoo. It was a struggle to keep the image of him naked in a steamy shower out of her mind.
“So did you like working on oilrigs?”
He set the swing to swaying with one bare foot. Even his feet were masculine. Broad with a sprinkling of dark hair. They swung back and forth for a few seconds before he answered. “I hated every second of it.”
“Then why did you go?”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, causing the scent of shampoo to fill her lungs again. “I just needed some space from Texas.”
“So you won’t go back once you get your inheritance?”
“Hell, no.”
“So where will you go?”
Again, he took his time answering. She didn’t mind. There was something nice about sitting next to him, swaying back and forth to the squeak of the swing chains.
“I’m not sure where I’ll go. Maybe a place with a good culinary school.” When she turned to him with surprise, he laughed. “What? You can’t see a Hennessy Hooligan as a chef?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s just that I wouldn’t have pictured you wanting to do that.”
“What do you picture me doing? Holding up banks and robbing gas stations?”
Before he’d left town, she had pictured him leading a life of crime. But now . . . now she was having doubts that he’d ever committed a crime. She knew the next question she asked would be betraying the trust she’d always had in her father, but she still couldn’t stop herself.
“Did you rob Mickey’s, Jaxon?”
He stopped swinging and turned to her, his gaze direct and unblinking. “No.”
She knew her next words would change their relationship forever. And not only theirs, but also hers and her daddy’s. But she couldn’t stop them.
“I believe you.”
Ever since she’d known him, Jaxon’s face had always been unreadable. Indifferent. Emotionless. But for one brief second, it flooded with emotion. So much emotion, she struggled to read it all. Pain? Relief? Desire? Before she could untangle what she was seeing, she was lifted onto his lap and his warm palms cradled her face.
“Why the hell did you have to go and say that?”
He kissed her.
Not like he had kissed her the other night. This kiss was slow and gentle and achingly sweet. Like she was something precious he wanted to savor. She opened to him and their tongues met in a sultry mating that left her feeling breathless and needy. She wanted to be consumed by Jaxon. To feel his bare skin on her bare skin. To feel her soft curves against his flexing muscles. To feel the bulge pressing against her bottom deep inside her.
Her hands slipped beneath the open edges of his shirt. His skin was as hot and smooth as the night they’d danced together at Honky Tonk Heaven. That night, she kept her hand resting on his shoulder, afraid to move it. Afraid to feel too much.
Tonight, she wanted to feel everything.
She let her hands wander where they would—up the tight rows of his abdominals, over the hard ridges of his ribs, across the muscle slabs of his pectorals that flexed beneath her palms, sending a skitter of heat through her.
She wasn’t what anyone would call experienced. She’d dated in college, but had never done more than heavy groping. But, for some reason, she didn’t feel inexperienced with Jaxon. She just felt . . . lucky. And she wasn’t about to let her luck run out before she had gotten her fill.
When he started unbuttoning her deputy shirt, she drew back from the kiss and stopped him.
“No. I want to touch you.”
He studied her for a moment before he let his hands drop. “Then touch me.”
She slipped his shirt off his shoulders and admired the landscape of skin and muscle for a long moment before she pressed her face in the curve of his neck and shoulder and took a deep, heady breath. When her lungs were full of his freshly showered scent, she kissed her way along his jaw, enjoying the rasp of his stubble on her lips.
