Part Time Cowboy (Copper Ridge Book 1) (26 page)

“Do you evaporate soon?” he asked.

“Nope.” She approached the car and him, her heartbeat speeding up a bit when she got near him. “Because I’m real. Surprise.”

He smiled then, and her heart did a full turn in her chest. “In that case, what are you doing here?”

“I was in town working. Your sister dropped me off.”

“Are you ready to head back?”

“Sure. Are there sandwiches?”

“There could be sandwiches,” he said.

“What kind?”

“Get in the car.”

There was something about that authoritative tone that made her shiver all the way down to her toes. He was magic like that.

“Only because you asked so nicely.” She opened the door and got in, and he did the same. “So, you wash your car on your days off?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s either that or leave for shift early, or leave late. And I keep the car parked at the house, so it gets a lot of stuff dropped onto it from the trees.”

“You are so cute,” she said.

“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“What? I like that you don’t lie and you take care of your things. My gosh, except for your lack of inhibition in bed, you’re like a flashback to a black-and-white film.”

“And what is my lack of inhibition like?”

“A flashback to spam emails often found in my inbox. But, like, in a good way.”

He smiled, started the car engine and pulled forward through the car wash, and around, out toward the street. “I haven’t really been to the beach since I’ve been back,” she said, looking out at the ocean.

“Do you want to go?”

“Eh. Sand has its place. It also gets in
places
, so there’s that.”

He snorted. “What the hell sort of things do you do on the beach?”

“Not
that
.
That
we saved for the woods. It’s more private. Actually most of my teenage shenanigans were saved for the woods. We conducted very few on the beaches.”

“Likely why you got away with them. Especially back when I worked nights, I did a lot of drive-by spotlighting on the beaches.”

“Oh, man, that would have been awkward.”

They needed to change the conversation topic since she was starting to get a bit hot around the shirt collar talking sex with him in an enclosed space.

Something about the car turned her on. And granted, she’d been existing in a perpetual state of arousal since Eli had first kissed her, but this was different. It had an edge to it. Maybe it was the fact that, while she was sure it wasn’t this exact car, he’d put her in the backseat of one very similar to it ten years ago, her hands in cuffs.

And maybe it had something to do with the fact that the memory had morphed into something sexy since she’d begun sleeping with him.

Strange, since before it had been such a horrible one. Not because of what he’d done, but because of what had happened after.

Something about the car fantasy seemed like a reclamation of that night. And maybe that was assigning too high of a purpose to her sexual fantasies, but she kind of liked it.

“So you’ve never had sex in your car?” So much for changing the subject.

He whipped his head to the side to look at her. “What? That’s...random.”

“Not really. We were talking about my sex life...in the woods, not on the beach, thanks. And I was wondering about you.”

“No. That’s edging into... Like I was saying, I was with a woman once who was a badge bunny. Which was fine in some ways, but in others got really weird. And...no, I haven’t.”

“So it only seems
weird
to you?” she asked, biting her lip, feeling disappointed. “Not even a little hot?”

“I feel like you’re leading me somewhere.”

“I want you to do it with me in the back of your car.”

He applied the brakes, hard, sending her jerking forward, the belt catching her. “Ow. Glad to know I succeeded in shocking.”

“I didn’t expect that.”

“I guess not.” She looked over at him, his jaw clenched tight, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking of all the places I could pull over and not get caught. I know where I have caught people having sex in cars before, so I’m trying to be original.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, eyes wide.

He took his hand off the wheel and curved it around her arm, drawing it over to his lap, to his erection, hard and thick beneath his jeans.

She moved her palm over him. “Serious indeed.”

That he was doing this for her, that he wanted to do it when it had put him off before, was a thrill she hadn’t realized it would be.

“You have that effect on me.”

He turned away from town, onto a service road that led out into the forest. It wasn’t the preferred location she and her friends had used, but it was similar, she imagined. A pocket deep enough in the woods that people rarely bothered to drive in, especially when it wasn’t hunting season.

Her stomach tightened and she squeezed his cock through his jeans.

“It’ll be over before it starts if you keep doing that,” he said, his teeth gritted.

“Well, we can’t have that. I want my reward.”

“Your reward?”

“I was arrested by you, and put in the back of a car. And it was one of the least fun backseat experiences I’ve ever had.” They were driving over dirt and pine needles now, the pavement ending abruptly as the trees thickened. “Scratch that, it was the worst backseat experience I’ve ever had. Given all that, don’t you think you owe me a better one?”

“I damn well think I do,” he said, pulling into an alcove of trees just off the road. “Get in the backseat.”

She unbuckled slowly, keeping her eyes on him as she did, before opening the door and getting out of the car. It was so quiet the silence seemed to close in around her, around them. It was a strange, intimate openness. Somehow much more public than being in a bedroom, but also much more secluded.

She closed her door, then opened the back door, climbing inside before closing herself in.

He got out of the car and she watched him through the windows as he moved to the back and opened the door, his hands on his belt, sliding it through the loops before joining her inside, closing the door.

“This is way more like it,” she said, leaning back, resting her head on the window.

“Yeah?” He moved over her, leaning in and kissing her deep.

“Mmm. Yeah. Much better than being back here all by myself.”

“I’m surprised you remember it,” he said, and this time, there was no judgment in his voice. No disdain.

“I was pretty drunk, right?”

“Yeah, you and everyone else. They kind of scattered and left you to it.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheeks. “I never thought that was very fair.”

“I survived,” she said. “The charges didn’t stick anyway. My rap sheet remains somewhat mythical.”

“Well, you left town anyway. Probably would have ended up getting charged with failure to appear.”

“I needed to leave,” she said, her heart tightening.

His dark eyes turned serious. “I’m sure you did.”

She looked over to the side and saw a glint of silver in the center console of the car. She knew what they were, remembered what it had been like to wear them in the back of the patrol car. Feeling trapped. At his mercy. How different that thought was now. How different it was with Eli, the man as she knew him now.

“Are those handcuffs?” she asked, reaching out and snagging them. “Well, indeed. You just leave these lying around?”

He took them out of her hand. “Not usually.”

“You put these on me that night.”

Emotion passed over his face. Something like regret wrapped in horror. “I had to.”

She smiled. “I know. But in the interest of re-creating things...”

* * *

E
LI
LOOKED
DOWN
AT
S
ADIE
, his heart thudding dully in his throat, making him feel like he might choke. He was so turned on he couldn’t see straight, and somewhere, in the middle of just trying to remember to breathe, he was trying to parse exactly why when his ex had done this, it had turned him off. And why now, with Sadie, it didn’t just seem sexy, it seemed impossible to resist. And heavy with some kind of meaning he was having trouble guessing.

That again had to do with body parts shifting. Heart to throat, blood to cock. Things like that.

And then the handcuffs.

“You really want me to handcuff you?” he asked.

She bit her lips, the action so unconsciously sexy it sent a jolt through his body and down to his dick. “I really do.”

“Why?”

“Do I have to know why something turns me on?” she asked. “If so, I like the idea of putting myself here, of my own free will. Letting you keep me, because I want you to. Because that first time I didn’t have a choice...well, I didn’t have a choice once I’d made the several bad ones I made that got me arrested in the first place.”

“That’s a little twisted,” he said, even as his gut tightened.

“And what’s your point? Isn’t it a little twisted that I came back to town and fell into your arms?” She traced his jawline with her forefinger, a wicked smile on her face. “To tell you the truth, I think you like twisted a little bit.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her down so that she was lying flat on the seat, then he gripped her hands, deftly putting the cuffs on. In many ways, he was more confident in his ability to handcuff a woman than he was in seducing her. He’d just never wanted to combine the two.

“Maybe I do,” he said, his words rough.

She saw things in him. The dark things. The secret things. And he couldn’t deny, something in him liked it. Because it meant he didn’t have to hide. Didn’t have to try so hard to be upstanding.

Very few people would call what he was doing now upstanding, and he knew that. But they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her.

“Now what?” he asked.

“I think you’re the one in charge,” she said, blue eyes wide.

“I guess I am.” He traced her lower lip with the edge of his thumb, his eyes intent on hers, watching to make sure she wasn’t nervous or afraid. “You okay with that?”

Her mouth curved upward beneath his thumb. “It’s kinda what I asked for, right?”

“I promise to make it worth it.”

He lowered his hand to her stomach, pushing her shirt upward, watching the muscles contract as she took a short, sharp breath. He pushed it up higher, his fingers brushing the rounded underside of her breast before sliding up farther, the fabric of her T-shirt folding over his hand as he moved his thumb across her tightened nipple, barely covered by her whisper-thin bra.

Her head fell back, her hands lifted upward, bound by the cuffs.

“Good?” he asked.

“Mmm.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He moved his hands to her jeans, unsnapped them, cursing the stiff denim as he hauled it down her thighs and pushed it, and her shoes and socks, off her legs.

“This was just an excuse to get me to do all the work, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Ah, darn,” she said. “You’re onto me.”

He looked at her, her top pushed up, barely covering her breasts, bright blue panties low on her hips, standing out against her pale skin. “I’m finding it hard to be too upset about it.”

He slipped his finger beneath the waistband of her panties, his breath hissing through his teeth as he felt the soft hair beneath the silken fabric. As he moved lower and felt how wet she was for him. How much she liked this game.

Well, he liked it, too. It was everything he never thought he’d do, things he’d never thought he’d want, and now he was all in, shaking with need. Unable to turn back.

He didn’t even want to.

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her stomach, her skin soft beneath his lips. He breathed in deep, taking in the scent of her arousal, the scent of
her
.

He lifted his head and looked at her, at her flushed cheeks, her blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. This was not his life. This was not the kind of thing that happened to him. Not the kind of beauty he was allowed to indulge in.

He almost couldn’t breathe. Everything in him was bound up, suspended in the moment.

He reached into his pocket and took out a condom, shrugging his pants and underwear down his legs while holding tight to the plastic condom packet. “I did this out of order.” He tugged his T-shirt up over his head, fighting with the tight space of the car.

She giggled. “I’m suddenly remembering why, since becoming an adult with my own bed, I haven’t revisited my backseat days.”

“I never had to use one.”

“Oh, am I your first?” she asked.

“You are. My first for quite a few things in this particular instance. And now, my first woman in handcuffs in more than one way.”