You Really Got Me (12 page)

It made him want to give her more, to push her even more, because he knew she could do it. He knew what she needed, knew with a visceral, instinctive knowledge. He knew her doubts and fears would fade away the deeper they got into this. But once again, he had to go slow, show her, earn her trust.

And he had to trust himself to do that. That might be the hardest thing of all.

When they both stirred a long while later, Kendall’s fingertips danced across his chest. “Why did you come to Las Colinas?” she murmured.

He kept his eyes closed. “I told you. I needed to start over.”

She moved a little against him, her naked body soft and warm. “But why?”

Somehow he knew that telling her was going to change things between them, and not for the better. Was he ready for this? “You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to talk about the past,” he said lightly, rolling away from her. “Want something to drink?”

“Um. Sure.”

He descended to his kitchen and returned with two beers. He handed her one and slid back into bed, propping pillows behind them, one arm around her. Keeping the conversation carefully off his past, they talked about his house, his neighbor, the weather. When he pressed kisses over her skin anywhere he could reach, her shoulder, the side of her neck, breathing in her scent, she giggled.

It was a sound he hadn’t heard enough of from her. He liked it. He tipped her chin up. “What’s so funny?”

She slanted a grin at him over her shoulder. “Your mouth is cold. And the beers reminded me of an old joke.”

He lifted one eyebrow, smiling back at her, delighted by her amusement.

“How you impress a woman,” she continued. “By complimenting her, kissing her, cuddling her. Send her flowers, hold her, wine her and dine her.”

“Uh huh.” He waited.

“
And how you impress a man is–show up naked
…with beer.”

He laughed. “Hmm. Works for me.”

Her eyes widened. “Hey. I have a case of wine in the trunk of my car.”

He grinned and stroked a strand of hair off her face. “Why do you have a case of wine in your trunk?”

“I don’t even remember now. But I’ll go get a bottle. It’s a really nice Cabernet Franc. I can give you a wine tasting lesson. Naked.” She shot him a sexy smile as he watched her roll out of bed and reach for her clothes.

He
loved
that idea.

“Don’t get dressed,” he said, following her out of bed. “I’ll go get the wine.”

So she grabbed his shirt instead of her own clothes and he stepped into a pair of loose sweat pants. In his shirt, big and loose on her slender frame, her hair tangled around her shoulders, lips kiss-swollen and eyes smudgy, she looked so goddamn sexy he wanted to tackle her and throw her back onto the bed and tie her up forever. Instead, he led the way down to his kitchen where her purse sat on the counter. She handed him the keys to her car with a smile and waited at the door as he retrieved the bottle.

He held it up as he came back into the kitchen. “I don’t have wine, but I do have wine glasses.” He opened the cupboard and pulled out two stemmed glasses.

“A corkscrew?” she asked, peeling off the wrapping on the top of the bottle. He pulled that out of a drawer too, and she handed the wine to him.

He let her pour the wine into the glasses, a deep ruby-plum color. She gave the glass a small, expert swirl, held it to her nose, then sipped it.

“You’re not going to spit it out, are you?” he asked. He didn’t know much about wine, but seemed to remember that tasting wine didn’t involve swallowing it.

“No, I’m not going to spit it out.” She gave him a flirty smile. “I’d rather swallow than spit.”

Jesus, Kendall Vioget had just made a dirty joke, with enough innuendo that his balls tightened. Nice.

Their eyes met and he saw she knew what he was thinking. His dick twitched even as he grinned.

“Taste it,” she urged him. “See what you think.”

He took a sip. Yup, it was red wine. Although it was pretty good. Yeah. Smooth. He took another mouthful. “It’s good.”

“But what do you taste?” Her eyes fastened on his, he paused, then shook his head.

“I don’t know.” How could he concentrate on wine when he was thinking about Kendall’s mouth on him?

“I think it’s spicy—hints of vanilla, plums, maybe a bit of licorice.”

“Oookay.” He tasted it again. Okay, yeah, the spicy part he could get. And yeah, that trace of licorice on his tongue. “Yeah. I get it.”

She smiled at him, and lifted her glass to her mouth, which he watched and which made him want to kiss that mouth again.

“Cabernet Franc is genetically related to Cabernet Sauvignon, which is more popular, but this one is very successful. The franc grapes are thinner-skinned and ripen earlier, and have lower acidity than Sauvignon grapes.”

“You could tell the difference?”

“Of course. The grapes are different, the leaves have a slightly different shape.”

He shook his head in admiration, loving standing there in his kitchen, watching her drink red wine, wearing nothing but his white shirt, sounding so knowledgeable.

“Back to bed,” he said.

Her smile deepened and she picked up the bottle and turned, sending him a sexy smile over her shoulder as she headed back upstairs. He followed her, her golden-tan legs bare, the hem of his shirt brushing her thighs, and nearly spilled his wine he was so distracted.

She crawled onto the bed and sat cross-legged, holding her wine, and he joined her there, careful not to jostle the bed too much.

“I love how you know so much about wine.”

“It’s what I do.”

“Yeah.”

She held up the glass. “Like I said, these grapes ripen earlier than some others. I’m so worried about the harvest. The weather’s been crazy warm for this time of year and the grapes are ripening really fast.” She sighed. “It’s such bad timing.”

“I’m sure you don’t actually harvest grapes yourself.”

“Yes, I do. I like to be involved.”

He should have known. He gave his head a wry shake.

“And I will definitely be involved in the decisions about what to harvest when.”

“You want to be in control.”

Her gaze flew up to his. She blinked. “Well. Yes.” She looked back down at the ruby wine in her glass. “I like being in control. Except…” She looked up at him through her eyelashes.

Heat shot to his groin and he almost dumped the wine on the sheets. His breath left him all at once. He leaned toward her, brushed a kiss over her mouth, licked her bottom lip and tasted the richness of grapes, the spice of vanilla and the sweetness of Kendall.

They set their wineglasses aside, eyes fastened on each other, but when he went to move over her, she shook her head and with a hand on his chest pushed him onto his back. He smiled at her. “You think you’re going to be on top this time?”

“No.” She moved lower down his body. “I want to do this.” And she bent her head to take his cock in her mouth.

“Ah…Christ, Kendall.”

Her dark hair fell in a silky curtain around her face, tickling his thighs. Her mouth enclosed him in silky heat, her fingers brushed over the sensitive skin of his balls. He lost himself in sensation, in the sweep of her tongue, the heat of her mouth sucking on him, sliding on him.

He wanted to see. He reached for her hair and drew it into a fist at the nape of her neck, watched her cheeks hollow as she sucked. Blood pounded in his veins and electricity lit up every nerve ending in his body, sharp sensations prickling over his flesh. She looked up at him, her mouth on him, eyes wide and shiny. A ragged groan escaped him, the way she looked at him and the sight of her lips around him so erotic. And she looked like she loved it too, which made it even more fucking exciting. His dick surged into her mouth.

Then she moved off him to nuzzle between his legs, to lick his balls, to nip the taut tendons in his thighs. Her fingers brushed over his testicles, then wrapped around his shaft and pulled. Christ Jesus. He let out a ragged hoarse groan. Tingles radiated from her touch, from the tantalizing softness of her mouth and the flickering movement of her tongue as she explored his anatomy in slow, sexy licks and touches.

“Oh yeah, Kendall.” Her thumb rubbed over the sensitive underside of his cock and the top of his head damn near blew off. His fingers gripped her hair. With a small, secret smile and a murmur, her tongue blazed up his flesh from root to tip and then her mouth enveloped him again in long sucking strokes of fiery pleasure. “Oh yeah, suck me, just like that.”

He let himself be consumed by her tender onslaught, by pleasure so shatteringly intense, and tightened his hands in her hair. His chest clenched at the emotion that rose inside him, at what she was doing for him, sweet Kendall on her knees with her mouth on him, so hungry and greedy and apparently enjoying herself giving him the blowjob of his life. God, he could almost laugh at that, except he could barely draw breath into his lungs. It moved him, so much.

His hips lifted involuntarily, his thighs tensing. Throbbing sensation coalesced in his balls and his thighs quaked, tension building in his spine with every sweet suckle, with every soft stroke of her fingers, with the edge of her teeth scraping sensitive flesh.

“Kendall.” He couldn’t stand it, his balls so tight. “Kendall…gonna…” And then orgasm rushed over him, and he cried out as she held him in her mouth, his cock jerking with every pulse of semen, his heart pounding with the unbearable sweetness and aching bliss of it. His head went back, eyes squeezed closed against the blinding light exploding in front of them. He held her head as he filled her mouth, her sweet moans of pleasure filling his ears.

They may have dozed off, for a while, in the darkness and quiet of his bedroom, once more wrapped in sheets and each other’s arms. Then they sat up and drank more of the rich wine, decadently naked and sexually sated. He couldn’t drag his eyes off her as they talked more.

“So are you glad you came here? Do you like it in Las Colinas?” she asked him.

“It’s okay.”

“That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.” She studied him over her wine glass, head tipped to one side.

Somehow, he found himself telling her things he hadn’t even admitted to himself. “I thought I wanted something more laid back and…well, easy. But I have to say, I miss the challenge of my old job. The adrenaline rush. Doing budgets and going to charity dinners and planning open houses for kids isn’t quite the same.” He gave a wry smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I love doing things with kids. It’s just different.”

“Not what you wanted after all?”

“I needed a change.” He looked down at his wine. “And I made my decision and here I am, and I’m making the best of it. Some of those charity dinners weren’t so bad.” He grinned. “The ones you were at.”

She smiled back at him.

“The people here are pretty great,” he continued. “It’s a small city, but I’m getting to like it.”

“The people are awesome. So many people have been calling about Natalia, offering to help, offering to pray for her.” She bent her head.

They were calling because of her. Everyone in town liked and respected Kendall. He’d heard it, over and over again. How hard she’d worked since her parents had died. How much she’d done for the town and for the wine industry in Southern California. What a good kid she’d been growing up, especially compared to her wild younger brother.

The missing fiancée. Jason sighed. For a while they’d almost been able to forget about that huge goddamn problem.

He changed the subject and they talked about other things—the people in Las Colinas, the differences between living there and in L.A., music, wine, a thousand little things, before he urged her back down onto the mattress and kissed her till they were both breathless.

Chapter Nine

“Damn FBI will walk in here and take over,” Paul muttered the next morning.

“I know. They’ll try. But I’ll handle them,” Jason said.

Larry eyed him, the lines in his forehead deepening. “You sure you want to do this, Chief?”

Jason pursed his lips. Besides Denny, Larry was the only other person in Las Colinas he’d told about why he’d left the FBI. And he sure as hell hadn’t told him right away. When Jason had walked in the front doors of Las Colinas PD as the new chief a year ago, Larry had hated his guts. Jason had taken the job Larry had wanted, stolen it away from him, in Larry’s mind anyway, and they hadn’t exactly become immediate friends. Then some lowlife scum Larry’d arrested had accused him of using excessive force. Jason had stood behind Larry all through the painful investigation, and now the guy would walk through fire for him. Which Jason wasn’t entirely sure he deserved.

“It’s too late, they’ll be here any time now,” he said. Larry’s mouth tightened. Jason softened his tone. “It’ll be fine. I won’t let them take over.”

Larry nodded and Jason knew that wasn’t what he was worried about. “I know you will.”

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “If anyone can handle ’em, it’s you.”

“Thanks,” Jason said brusquely, his insides knotted. He didn’t know why; it wasn’t that big a deal having to deal with his former employer. Other than reminding him of his biggest failure as a law enforcement officer. “We don’t have enough resources to investigate this properly, especially if it turns out to be more than a runaway bride.” And he had to do this right. Had to. Even if it meant swallowing his pride and ego and calling in the feds.