Twisted Up (17 page)

He turned to the left off the highway to a main street area. On one corner was a diner. On the other was a feed store with a number of pickup trucks backed up to it. Down a bit from the diner was a general store complete with rocking chairs out front filled with old men. It was like a scene from a painting. How pretty and perfect it was. How lively. This straight-out-of-the past town was full of people. Where’d they all come from?

“You look a little dumbfounded,” Joe said from beside her.

“I am.”

“The town’s name is Crooked Creek.” He pulled into a parking spot in front of a… Was that a saloon? It had wooden, swinging doors like one and, judging by the music coming from inside, it sounded like one. Would she find Justin in period costume? Would there be saloon girls with frilly skirts and corset tops?

“It’s a great little town, and it’s one-hundred-percent modern. Internet, phone, satellite sports packages on the television for football and basketball.”

“It looks so old,” she said as she got out and shut the truck door behind her.

“It is. Most of it from the eighteen hundreds. It’s been completely rebuilt in places, refurbed in others. There’s old money ’round these parts. The owner of the bar, Bo, well, some relative of his from way back pretty much owned this town. It had died out when folks started movin’ more toward Dallas. It was a ghost town for a long time, just sittin’ here on the side of the road. There used to be a creek that ran back there in the woods toward a lake. Both are dried up now, but in some places you can still see the bed and how it twisted this a way and that. That’s how the town got its name.”

Ella nodded. There would have to be money to revive a western town like this. “How did it come to be like this?”

“When Bo came back from the first Gulf War, they wouldn’t let him go back to being a cop, so he took the money he had saved and started board by board rebuilding. Pretty soon, others started helpin’ once they realized what he was up to. It took a couple of years to get it up and running. It’s been bustlin’ ever since.”

“And Justin works here?”

“Yep, and the firehouse is a couple streets over along with a couple of bed and breakfast inns. Those are much newer than the buildings on this street. Of course, if you want a big chain store, you need to head closer to Dallas, but even those places aren’t too far away. ’Bout another fifteen- or twenty-minute drive.”

That’s where they’d stopped for Starbuck’s on the way to the airport a few days ago. This little area was a step back in time at first glance, but as she stepped up on the wooden walk and pushed through the saloon doors, she saw exactly how twenty-first century it really was.

Light fixtures made to look like replicas of gas lamps were electric powered. A jukebox poured music into the room. Tables gleamed, though the floor was scuffed from many years of use. It was an eclectic mix, and it meshed in a way she hadn’t thought it would or even should. At the same time, she was well aware she didn’t know anything about interior design and what should or shouldn’t go together.

A guy at the bar looked up at her and then behind her. Joe must have come in as well.

“Hey, Bo. Justin in the back?”

“Yeah.”

Bo looked from her to Joe and back again. “She Justin’s girl?”

Justin’s girl? Had he been talking to everyone about her? No one she knew knew anything about him. Not her friends, her family, her boss, no one. Well, the ones from when she worked in the front office of the downtown hotel knew of him from trivia nights, but she hadn’t let on to them either, that she and Justin were sleeping together now.

“Yep. Mind if she goes to see him?” Joe’s hand pressed against the small of her back and nudged her forward. Over her shoulder, he pointed straight ahead toward another set of double wooden doors. “Go right through there. He should be in the storeroom or on the loading dock.”

Ella nodded once and took a few shaky steps, entirely and uncomfortably aware of Joe and Bo watching her. She didn’t dare look anywhere else for fear there were other eyes staring at her as well. She hadn’t meant to cause any kind of attention to be drawn to herself. She didn’t even take time to calm her thundering heart or take calming breaths or give herself a pep talk. Not like she had before Joe had come upon her on the front porch at the house. No, she just went through the doors and came face to butt with Justin.

He was standing up on the tailgate of a truck, bent over, digging in a box. His ass and her face were literally at the same height. The urge to swat him was strong and just as she raised her hand to do so, he stood straight and turned to jump down.

Her face was now level with his denim-covered cock. She dropped her arm, swallowed hard and licked her lips. A whole other trail of thoughts were swimming through her head now, and she had other urges building up.

“Bad girl,” he laughed. “I’m up here.” He jumped down when she didn’t immediately lift her gaze to his face. His fingers touched under her chin and raised her head up. “Good to see you, baby. I wasn’t sure I expected to.”

“Joe brought me.”

“Will have to thank him. But I meant, back here in Texas. I thought you’d go on home.”

“I didn’t.”

“I see that. Why not?”

“The sky.” It was the first thing that had come to mind that didn’t seem to be any kind of threatening to her emotionally. She knew she was going to have to get over her fears, but one step at a time.

“The sky?”

“I want to see it again. Full of stars and a big, bright moon.”

Justin nodded and smoothed her hair over her ear. “And just where would you like to see it from?”

“The swing in your yard.”

“Alone?” His hand slid around the back of her neck and up into her hair where he lightly sifted the strands through his fingers before tightening them into a fist and tugging.

Ella lifted her eyes up to stare into his. “No. With you.”

“Good answer,” he whispered just before his lips touched hers and his arm yanked her hard against his body.

Their tongues met and slid and collided against one another. Her hands fisted in his button-down shirt as the direction of their heads changed so they could deepen the kiss. The arm at her back slid down over her ass and pulled at the fabric until it was bunched up and she felt air flowing between her legs.

“We can’t do this here,” Justin whispered into her mouth and proceeded to kiss his way down her throat to the center of her chest. His teeth went to work on the buttons of her blouse.

Then we should stop.”
Please don’t stop. Please, please, please don’t stop.
Looking around, there was no one. She didn’t see anyone walking around, and she didn’t know where the owner of the truck Justin had been on was. She didn’t think Joe or Bo or anyone else had come outside either.

And it was Justin. She couldn’t stop if the place was set on fire. She wanted him way too damn much to stop. She wiggled her ass where he had her skirt bunched in his fist and he groaned, tearing at her blouse. She heard the rip but didn’t care.

“No panties.”

“You said not to,” she panted.

“Uh-huh. Yep. I did.” He stood to his full height and looked into her upturned face. “But we still can’t do this here.”

“Where can we?”

He laughed and shook his head. He let go of her skirt and tried to repair the damage to her shirt, frowning when he realized he couldn’t. It was well and truly torn. “Don’t you ever stop thinking about sex?”

“Evidently not when it comes to you, but then again, you started it.”

“Maybe I should look into getting you some counseling.”

“Maybe you should look into getting yourself inside me.”

Justin raised a brow and smirked. “Demanding little wench. When did you get so damn bossy?”

Ella pouted and lowered her eyes to focus on the toe of his boot. “I don’t know. I just get horny around you.”

“But why so much that you can’t think straight?”

She huffed and tried to move out of his hold. He wasn’t having any of that and backed away, pulling her with him until she stood between his legs when he took a seat on the truck’s tailgate. “I don’t know, Justin. Honest, I don’t. I just… I sometimes feel that if I don’t… I feel like I need to…”

“Let it out, Ella. I’m not going anywhere, no matter what it is.”

He wasn’t. She knew that. She believed it with all her heart and yet she still found it hard to let him in. His eyes were more gray than green today and were calm and tender. His touch was too. She liked it. She hadn’t liked soft and sensual for so long, hadn’t had it for so long. “I don’t know how else to be. I don’t know how to just enjoy being touched without becoming so frenzied, so impatient.”

“I love touching you, baby. I love hard, rough sex. You know I do. I sometimes like it slow and sweet, though. I need both and maybe you do too, even if you don’t think so.”

He wasn’t completely wrong about that. “I told you to go and get ugly if you didn’t want me gawking at you all the time.”

“Is that really part of why you’re so impatient when we get together? Because you like the way I look?”

“Sorta. You’re gorgeous to me, Justin. You’re young and hot. Every woman who knows you must think the same things I do.” She fiddled with the snaps on his brown checked shirt. He was the only man she knew who could pull off that kind of checkerboard print and still be sexy as the devil. Well, maybe Joe could. “I don’t know why I need it hard and rough and possessive. I don’t know why I need to be taken like that all the time. I just do. I need it.” She hoped he could see and feel the urgency in her eyes, her voice, her tense body language. She didn’t know how to convey it any other way.

He tilted her chin and kissed the tip of her nose. “I know. I’ll give it to you as much as I can, but sometimes baby, you’ll have to let me touch you soft and gentle. You’re gonna have to let me love you. I’m not goin’ anywhere and neither are you.” He pinned her with nothing more than his gaze. “Are you?”

For a moment, all she could do was stare at him. Was she going to leave again? Was she there to stay? Did he even know how hard it was for her to want to stay? “No, Justin. I’m not going anywhere.”

His grip on her chin tightened and he growled… Actually growled before his mouth took hers again. This kiss was hard, insistent, plundering. It stole her breath, her senses, her very sanity in its violent heat. He gave her exactly what she wanted and she grinned in her mind, answering him with the same violent need flowing through her, but then his kiss changed, softened. He still held her chin, but his grip gentled. His lips caressed rather than demanded. His tongue coaxed rather than took.

It was a genuine kiss of love, of pleasure filled with promise. He could show her desire and let it curl and build and fill her, but could she let him? Could she let him give her that and not get bored with it herself? That was the real fear. She’d always gotten bored before and drifted away until there was nothing left.

Justin lifted his head, his eyes heavy with need and hunger. She understood it, recognized it as the same need and hunger flowing through her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I get bored. Soft and tender and sensual and slow. I get bored. I thought…” She looked at his shirt, focused hard on the shiny little snaps. “I thought if I kept you at arm’s length, if I kept us distanced, then I wouldn’t get bored and end up hurting you.” She looked up, afraid of what she might see reflected back at her. There was nothing but solemn understanding. He really was too damn good to be true, yet there he was, as real as she was. “When we’d meet, it would be so hot and frenzied and we couldn’t keep our hands off one another. It kept it exciting for me and kept me wanting more and now…”

“Now you’re afraid if we make this some sort of permanent relationship, where we see one another a lot, that you’ll get bored sexually and want to move on?”

Ella nodded.

“Oh, baby.” He pulled her in for a quick kiss, and then lingered for a moment. He touched his forehead to hers. “I don’t intend for you to get any kind of bored. We have enough kinks between us to last years and years. Trust me. And if you ever start to get that feeling, come to me, talk to me and believe in me enough to shake up your world again.”

She did believe in him. Despite her own fears, if she didn’t believe in him, she wouldn’t be standing on the loading dock behind a bar outside Dallas, Texas. She’d be at home in Alabama instead, curled up on the couch, eating crappy food and watching even crappier movies about love and happily ever after.

“I know you’re scared. I know you think this will turn out like your marriage. It won’t. I’m not him and you’re not the same woman who married him or divorced him.”

“How do you know?”

He looked confused for a moment. “How do I know what? That you’re not the same woman? Easy. You’re here. You came to me instead of going home.”

Ella thought about it and realized he was right. She couldn’t be the same woman that nine months ago had divorced her husband. She’d changed a lot and she’d changed not only outwardly but inwardly too. It hadn’t been until he’d pointed it out that she’d even realized it.

She nodded and looked at him. Their faces were level with the way he was sitting on the tailgate—his hands were loose on her hips, her fingers were smoothing out his shirt where she’d bunched it up during their kiss and after. “We’ll try it.”

“Damn right, we’ll try it. We’ll make it work too. Nothin’ worth havin’ is ever easy.”

“Especially me?” She smiled, teasing him.

There was a roll of his eyes and a quirk of his lips before he eased her close for a sweet, soft kiss. “Most especially you.”

“What do we do now?”

“We let me get finished working here, and we let me take you home.”

Brow furrowing, she started thinking again. “How are we going to do this, Justin? I live in Alabama. You live in Texas.”

“No idea, but we’ll work it out. I promise, baby.” He eased her back just as gently as he’d eased her forward.

She took a couple of steps so he could stand. She couldn’t
not
worry about it. Worry was her middle name. It’s one of the things she really liked about him. He didn’t worry. He was easygoing, took things as they came, and when they didn’t come on their own, he took action and went to get them. He had the patience of a saint, but only to a point. She guessed everyone had that limit they were willing to go to before they’d had enough. She never thought she’d had it but evidently she did too.