Tempt Me Twice 1 (5 page)

After tonight, a trip with Nick was so out of the question. But there was only one other guy I knew who cared enough about me to spend time with my redneck, often mean as rattlesnakes kin.

I glanced down at the floor of the car, where my cell phone still lay. I thought of the gorgeous alpha man in the intensely erotic photo that had shown up in my texts, and an idea began to form.

I had one more week before the January semester of school started, and it wasn’t like I had any better options. Or
any
other options, at all.

So with my teeth firmly set in the notion of getting my family off my back once and for all, and with absolutely nowhere else to go, I set off for Fish Lake, Oregon, with twenty dollars and a bit of room on my credit card and nothing more.

I had no idea what would happen when I got there.

T
he brightness of the midmorning sun looked neon to my sleep deprived eyes as I pulled up in front of Jax’s mechanic shop in Fish Lake, Oregon. Dampness hung in the air, and the pungent scent of algae from the lake colored the deep breath that I took as I climbed out of the driver’s seat of my car and stretched hugely, trying to work out the cramps of being in the same position for too long.

The scent calmed me a bit, the way it had last time I’d been here. I stood for a long moment, listening to the morning sounds of a small town, the crunch of tires on gravel, the squawk of birds as they swooped amongst power lines and barren trees. The engine of my car ticked quietly as it cooled, adding its own rhythm to the pulse of the town.

I couldn’t deny that being back felt good—felt right, even. But I still had a shit ton of nerves jangling around in my stomach. And along the way I’d stopped at a gas station, where I’d filled a thermos with hot water and purchased some instant coffee, so I was wired.

“Chill out, Connor.” I forced the fingers that had clenched into tight fists to relax. They were slick with nervous perspiration, and I rubbed them on the hem of my jeans as I walked slowly, hesitantly, to the wide, yawning garage door of Automovation.

“He’s a friend. He’ll be happy to see you. This will be good.”

Oh God. But what if he
wasn’t
happy to see me? What if he blamed me for ruining his friendship with Nick?

“Shut up.” I muttered to myself then looked around furtively. I hoped no one was listening, because I would sound certifiable.

That kiss probably meant nothing to him. Just get over it.
Though if the kiss had meant nothing to him, then I did have to wonder how many people he’d sent that naked picture of himself to.

With stiff steps, I forced myself into the shop.

The scents of engine oil and gasoline were more familiar then they should have been, and they calmed me even more than the lake air had. The interior of the garage was full of dry heat, despite the fact that the bay door was open wide.

Rock music blared from a crackling radio sitting on a rickety chair, one that was covered with a thick layer of dust. The floor was concrete, oil spots covered with absorbent gravel to prevent slips. Posters of half-naked women adorned the wall space above several of the work benches, and that made my lips twist in a half smirk.

The owner of Automovation wasn’t much interested in girls at all. I turned to seek out Jax’s bay, the furthest to my left. Sure enough, no titty pictures.

If there had been I might have almost been relieved. It would have told me that I had a chance.

Not that I wanted a chance. Well, I did, of course I did, but it was one hell of a bad idea.

Movement by the side of the massive blue truck that sat in Jax’s work bay caught my eye, and then I saw him. Bent over the hood of the behemoth, he had shrugged off the upper half of his coveralls and tied them around his waist, leaving his torso clad in nothing but a thin cotton wife beater shirt.

It clung to him with sweat, emphasizing each ridge of muscle, every sculpted plane of that torso. The skin that was pulled taut over that amazing body was sheened with sweat and smudged with engine grease, and it only made the musculature stand out even more.

Bent over the innards of the car as he was, I had a spectacular view of his high, tight ass, which topped thick, hard thighs that I could all too well imagine above me, spreading my legs wide.

A lightning bolt of heat shot through me as I did nothing but watch him for an entire minute. I wanted to run over and fling myself at him, to feel his arms around me. To smell that masculine soap and engine grease aroma that was so uniquely him.

To feel that tentative brush of his lips on mine, but not just once this time.

Six months of time had certainly not dimmed my red hot attraction to him, but I couldn’t help being insecure over whether he still felt the same.

Remaining silent, I crossed the concrete flooring of the garage, my sneakers not emitting so much as a peep. I stopped behind him, a couple of feet between us still.

What was I going to say to him? I had no idea.

Before I could speak, he stiffened. As if he had sensed my presence, he turned slowly. Our eyes caught, and as his ocean blues looked into my own paler grey ones, I knew in that moment that there was no way I’d romanticized the connection between us. Jax might normally prefer men—he might have been in love with my own ex-boyfriend for most of his life—but this
thing
between us, this energy...

Wow.

In my pocket my cell phone buzzed. I ignored it, knowing that it would be Nick. He’d been calling all night.

I was worried about what Nick would think, certainly. I didn’t want to hurt him, and being here in his hometown, with his former friend, would do exactly that. But I was still angry. So what if he wouldn’t have liked it? He’d given up rights to both of us.

But more than that, I wanted to savour this moment. This one, right here and right now, with Jax looking into my eyes like I was the only woman in the world.

“
Kayla
?” His voice sent shivers down my spine. God, what was wrong with me? Only twelve hours earlier I’d been entertaining the notion of getting back together with Nick. Now my entire being was saturated with everything that was Jax.

“Surprise.” My voice sounded weak; I couldn’t help it. Now that I was here, I couldn’t help thinking that my brilliant plan was actually incredibly stupid.

I wasn’t taking a stand against my family. I’d run from one man to another, though that certainly wasn’t how I’d intended it.

Lack of sleep and high running emotions were catching up with me. I felt my face crumple, but I pulled up every last bit of strength that I had into making sure that I didn’t cry.

“Kayla, what’s wrong?” Two long strides and my dream came true—Jax placed his hands on my shoulders, then ran them up and down my arms to warm me, my teeth chattering with the sudden chill of shock.

His touch set the nerve endings in my tender skin on fire, made my nipples contract to the point of pain. But it suddenly felt like everything I’d gone through in the last day and a half was crumbling down on my head, and I couldn’t control the shivers.

“I’m sorry. I—” My voice cut off midsentence—I just didn’t know what to say. Being back here in Fish Lake made last summer meld with the present in my mind, and suddenly all of the feelings I’d had upon first meeting Jax overwhelmed me.

Curiosity. Attraction, of course. Need. Guilt.

Only now he was more than just Nick’s childhood friend—he meant something to me to. Which meant that he had the power to hurt me.

It was all too much. Maybe I’d made a mistake in coming here, because suddenly I found myself unable to deal with everything that lay in front of me. This was a first, since I was the strong one, the one who always picked up the pieces.

As I stood there shivering I just wanted Jax to wrap his arms around me and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

His brow furrowing, Jax let go of me just long enough to grab a hooded sweatshirt off of his workbench. Wrapping it around my shoulders, he frowned down at me.

“You’re not in California here, Kayla. Oregon is cold. Wet cold. You’re going to get sick.”

Agitation was plain in his voice—great, I’d been here for two minutes and I’d already pissed him off. Still, I nodded, and couldn’t do much else. My brain seemed to have shut down completely.

“Todd, I’m taking the rest of the day off.” Jax called out a few instructions to the other mechanic who was working, one who looked a little bit familiar. My schedule back at school was so rigid that I felt panic roll through my gut—he couldn’t just take an afternoon off, especially not for me.

But it seemed that, when you owned your own business, you actually could.

Pushing gently to guide me, Jax took me towards the door at the back of the garage. I knew that the door opened to a flight of stairs, which in turn led to Jax’s apartment, above the garage.

I was mute as I followed him up the stairs, though I enjoyed the warmth inside his home, which soothed the worst of my shivers. I remembered that the place was small, and cozier than I would have expected from someone like Jax.

The air was scented with the bacon that he must have had for breakfast. I hadn’t eaten since the soup at the restaurant with Nick the night before.

My stomach growled, and I jumped, embarrassed.

Jax raised an eyebrow at me and laughed, and just like that, the ice was broken.

“Let me make you something to eat. Then you can tell me what’s going on.” He waved to show me to make myself at home in the apartment, giving me one of those slow, seductive, Jax-like grins before he went, and tired as I was, I felt myself responding.

God, what was this? I’d been attracted to him last summer, but not with this intensity. One smile from Jax now and I had to press my thighs together tightly to assuage the growing ache between them. From where I stood in the front hallway, I could see into his bedroom, the bed made, a tidy lake of navy cotton sheets.

I wanted to take him into that bedroom, feel him push me back onto those sheets. Wanted him to run those hands that were calloused from hard work over my entire body. And that was so not normal for me. My past had made becoming a sexually active adult a challenge, and I hadn’t even been able to sleep with Nick until we’d been together for nearly three months.

I shouldn’t have been imagining any of these things with Jax. I should have been sidling over to shut that bedroom door so that he didn’t get any ideas.

Instead all I could think of was how it would feel, to lie on that bed with his large, hard body stretched out over top of me.

I heard the clatter of pans in the kitchen, and followed the aroma of browning butter. Jax was laying slices of bread into a frying pan. His muscles—oh man, those muscles—flexed with even that small, simple movement, and my mouth watered for more than food.

Down, girl
. I stood silently, just watching. I had no idea what to say. We’d spoken a million times since that one night, but being here, in person, was different. Like we could pretend that everything was normal when we were apart, but in person we couldn’t deny the connection between us, which had morphed into a living, breathing creature, a hungry one that demanded to be fed.

“What brings you to Fish Lake, Kayla?” Turning from the hot pan where sandwiches were sizzling to the fridge, Jax leaned one lean hip against it and crossed his arms over his chest, pinning me with his gaze.

I loved the way my name sounded, rolling off of his tongue. But I couldn’t think when he looked at me like that, so I made a show of strolling through the apartment, looking around at his décor.

“I’m sorry. I feel like an idiot. It looks like I’ve run right to you because I can’t get myself out of my own mess, and maybe that’s true. But I didn’t mean to be a damsel.” I stopped in front of the wall that held all of Jax’s photographs, looking at them as I tried to make my thoughts turn into words.

Maybe I had come to Jax to help me solve my problem, but it wasn’t just because he was a guy. If I’d just wanted a man, Nick could have done it.

No, I knew I’d come to Jax because he could make me feel safe while I did what I had to do. And it wasn’t that I was unwilling to face my past alone... it was that I knew that I would freeze up as soon as I saw the person I would do anything to avoid. And freezing up put me in danger.

“Aah. So it’s a problem, then. Not a social call.” That dark voice contained more than a hint of disappointment, and heat pooled in my belly.

“No. I...” As usual, he saw straight through to the heart of the matter, finding something in my reasoning that I hadn’t even known myself until he’d said it.

Yes, I needed a friend to come with me while I confronted TJ. But also... after Nick had made his offer to me, I’d needed to see Jax again, to see if my feelings were still the same, or if I’d blown them out of proportion in my memory.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. If anything, they were stronger than ever.

“I wanted to see you. Of course I did. But I need your help, too.”

Jax had followed me into the hallway, a sandwich held on a paper towel. Standing beside me, close enough that our shoulders could have brushed but didn’t, he examined the framed piece of art with me.

It was similar in composition to the one I’d seen on my first visit to his place, the one that was attached to his name in my phone’s contacts. A man, this time on his knees. His head was bowed to the floor, so that his face was obscured. Soft camel rope was bound around his wrists, his legs, between thighs dusted with dark hair.

Knowing Jax had likely been the one to put that rope in place sent waves of heat coursing through me.

“Do you like that one?” Jax cast a sidelong glance at me, and I became painfully aware of the way my nipples were pressing against the fabric of my lacy bra.

I swallowed, tried to think of a graceful way to answer that, then decided to just be blunt, as per usual.

“Is it that obvious?” My voice was wry, and slightly embarrassed. I crossed my arms over my chest to hide the evidence, but had to uncross them again when Jax handed me the sandwich.