Hot in Hellcat Canyon (21 page)

“Thank you,” she said shyly. And somewhat stiffly.

He just smiled at her. Like he knew everything she wasn’t saying.

“I’ll paint it, if you want. Still got some downtime.”

“If you want to.”

“I want to,” he said easily.

“Okay,” she said. It was getting easier to agree to stuff.

He flashed her a smile. “Saw some of the old furniture you refinished up there, too. Nice job on those. You got yourself a little plant hospital, too. You like rescuing things, Britt Langley?”

It sounded a little innuendo-y, that question.

“Mmm . . . maybe I just think that everything should get a shot at being beautiful. Or . . . maybe I think something that’s a little battered and scarred can still be beautiful?”

They locked eyes.

Something in his expression, some light in his eyes, made her feel shy and restless. She found herself turning to walk to the edge of the canyon.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“You were right about this spot. The view
is
pretty spectacular,” he said.

Given that he was currently watching the back of her, she was pretty sure this was a double entendre.

She aimed a quick little smile over her shoulder at him then turned back around.

“It’s different at every time of day. In different lights,” she told him. “With different clouds. In different seasons.”

“I got good at guessing the quality of views and vistas back in Sorry, Tennessee. We didn’t have a TV, so that’s what we watched instead. ‘What color is the sunset tonight, Jeb? It’s purple and orange over at the ridge.’ ‘Yeah, but did you see that big cloud from McCarthy Peak? Looked like an angel.’ ”

She laughed. “I can’t tell if you’re joking. I kind of want it to be true. And I kind of hate that it might be.”

“Well,” he said easily enough, “we did have a TV once, then my dad sold it to get more money for booze, and then we got another one, and then he sold it to get more money for booze, and then we got another one, and we sold it to bail him out of jail . . .”

“Jesus, J. T.”

“The circle of life, right?” He flashed an ironic grin. “Yeah, Dad was worse after Mama left when I was eight. She died when I was ten.”

She was speechless.

“God, J. T., I’m sorry,” she finally said. Softly.
Sorry
sure didn’t cover it. He’d been about her nephew Will’s age then. He’d had his life kicked out from under him, and look what he’d become.

She knew everyone was shaped by their past. Still, she wished she could go back and fix his for him. Take away the fear from that little boy and tell him he was going to be magnificent one day.

“We’ve all got a story,” he said. “So what’s yours, sweetheart?”

Damn.

She knew that wasn’t an innocent question, and he’d walked her on up to it, too, without her even noticing. He was really pretty damn clever, J. T. McCord was.

There was a tense, almost waiting quality to him now.

She looked out over the canyon, thick with trees, going shadowy in places and gilded in others.

“I came to Hellcat Canyon from Southern California,” she said finally.

She didn’t turn around as she said it because she knew exactly how he would hear it.

Ironically, given the slant of the light and the shape of the clouds, she was pretty certain tonight’s sunset was gong to be purple and orange. There might even be a cloud shaped like an angel.

She heard him take a sip of beer. Mulling this bit of non-information.

“California’s a big state. I know, because I drove ten hours from down in Los Angeles all the way up here and there’s still a lot of state left over.”

“Mmm.”

“Looooot of people live in Southern California.”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Which is your way of saying I’ve told you nothing at all.”

“Your words,” he said shortly.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. And then her heart about did a back flip. She was tempted to just do that over and over: Turn away. Turn back. Turn away. Turn back. Just to get that fresh, shocking impact of him over and over.

“We all have life stories, Britt. I sure as hell don’t tell mine in all its glorious detail. You can’t even Google for it,” he added dryly.

“Not even that warm, fuzzy story about the TV?”

“Not even that one. I’m lucky half my relatives can hardly read or write, let alone get on a computer, or my Wikipedia page would be a real eye-opener.”

She laughed.

“So where’d you go to college?” he asked.

She was startled. “How do you know I went at all?”

That was equal parts dodge and curiosity. She was beginning to savor how his mind worked. She genuinely wanted to hear how he’d drawn that conclusion.

“You have a different kind of confidence. Small town girls usually have . . . oh, sass, I guess you’d call it. Like that handful with the guitar at the Misty Cat?”

“Glory Greenleaf?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Sass is sometimes kind of a defense. Sometimes it’s even combative—I’ll get you before you get me, that sort of thing. But you,” he mused, “you’re intelligent and you know it. You don’t have anything to prove. It’s the thing that Truck senses in you, though he’d never be able to put it in so many words. I think he sees it as a judgment of him.”

She was astonished.

And then speechless with admiration.

She met his eyes. His gaze, mild but fearless and amused, dared her to contradict him.

“I watched
Agapé
. You’re a very good actor,” she said finally. Faintly. “You’re really gifted.”

It might have seemed like a whomping non sequitur. But she understood at once what made him not just a good actor, but a truly special, powerful one—this power of quiet observation—and she wanted him to know she understood it.

He just gave a courtly nod.

They both knew being good at something was no guarantee of anything.

“I take it you didn’t go to college?” She strolled over and came to lean next to him, and the speed of her heartbeat ratcheted up. The truck’s hood was pleasantly, almost lullingly warm against her bare skin. His warm bare skin was pleasantly close to her arm. She could lean into him. But she didn’t, not yet, simply for the luxury of ramping up the anticipation.

“Nope. I went from Tennessee to the army to Los Angeles into stardom into whatever this is now. Not sure I had a plan. Just sort of reached for what looked like the next rung further up out of the hellhole that was Sorry. I never could have predicted exactly what happened. But my plan was always spectacular success, no matter what.”

“That took a lot of guts.”

“Or pigheadedness. Or desperation. Or imagination. Choose your word. I didn’t know enough to consider it might be well-nigh impossible.”

She completely understood. “I know what you mean. Life seems so much roomier before you learn that word.”

He smiled at that. “ ‘Roomier.’ Great way to put it. I guess during all those years I always noticed how people who went to college behaved. They held themselves differently. Spoke differently. It was as though knowing just the right word for something, or the history of or the
why
of things . . . every thing you knew was like you had one more piece of a treasure map. It was like you felt you had more a right to even be in the world, if you went to college. I wanted to be like that. Anyway, I never did go. Read a lot, though.”

“In your downtime,” she teased softly, in return.

“In my downtime,” he confirmed. Amused.

She was willing to bet he’d read a lot more than she ever had, and she’d read a
lot
.

It was impossible to imagine this elemental man, who somehow seemed at home everywhere, not feeling at home in the world. Or ever feeling small.

Or being made to feel small.

“I went to UCLA,” she said suddenly. “I studied art and writing. I was working on my master’s for a while. And I read a lot, too. Everything.” She hadn’t said this to anyone in Hellcat Canyon.

She didn’t expound and he didn’t ask her to. She wanted him to know just how right, just how intuitive he was.

He smiled. “Makes sense,” he said finally, draining his beer and adding the empty back to his cooler. “The writing thing. And the art thing. You see things from a slightly different angle. Original minds generally do.”

He sighed then, a sound of pure contentment, hooked an arm about her and then drew her against his body and wrapped her loosely, so that he could rest his chin on top of her head. Her butt was nestled against his groin. She rested her hands on his corded brown forearms. It was both unutterably peaceful and yet so very much the opposite of peaceful, because want hummed between them like a plugged-in appliance. They each settled into the luxury of that sensation. Knowing they could afford to savor. And that savoring was really only honing the edge of something spectacular.

“You still write? Or paint or . . . ?” His voice was a murmur above her head.

“I draw. I stopped for a while, but I started up again.”

They admired the view, changing ever so slightly every second thanks to the shifting light.

“You ever been married?” His voice had gone a little husky.

There they were, at the crux of it.

And yet she sensed he was only looking for confirmation of something he already suspected.

“Yep.”

“Mm.”

He didn’t say anything else. Then again, it was amazing what could be conveyed in one syllable.

He tucked his chin into the sensitive spot between her ear and shoulder, the one near the small, small, ugly scar that now formed the heart of her flower tattoo.

She was positive he knew how erotic his little bit of stubble felt against the tender skin there. And how his breath sent her nipples erect.

Speaking of erect things, she was beginning to feel one against her backside.

But they just lingered and watched the sun paint the canyon gold, quietly.

She was conscious of the movement of his chest swaying ever more swiftly against her back.

“Red-tailed hawk, right there,” he murmured as the wedge of the bird cut across the sky.

“Looking for dinner,” she mused.

“Sometimes they hunt in pairs. Maybe we’ll see another one.”

As he spoke, he was casually working loose the tie at the waist of her halter top as if it were the most natural thing in the world, an extension of the conversation. Just like they were two animals out here doing what came naturally.

When it was undone it fell open. The breeze slipped in. A glorious sensation against her hot skin.

He slid his hands up over her ribs. His thumbs fanned beneath her breasts, casually, oh, so leisurely, without preamble, cupped them, and then stroked, and traced them with his fingertips, took his sweet time with her nipples. Dear God, the layer upon layer of bliss.

She moaned shamelessly.

She arched beneath his hands, reached back to latch her hands behind his head, her head fell backward and she found his mouth waiting for hers. They met in a take-no-prisoners kind of kiss, hot, deep, thoroughly carnal, and just like that her blood was lava.

He slid his hand slowly, steadily down over her rib cage, her belly, straight into the gap of her shorts’ waistband, right between her legs, where she was already slick and wet and getting wetter. She groaned when his fingers slid over her and lingered to rub, and she arched up against his hand to help him reach exactly where she wanted to be touched.

The man was no frills and knew exactly what she wanted.

Which was exactly the same thing he wanted.

“Take them off,” he murmured, making it sound more like a suggestion than an order.

He tugged at her top button until it came loose to get her started, and she gave a yank and all the butter-soft worn buttonholes gave and the buttons on her shorts rippled open in a cooperative little row. He pushed them down her hips; she shimmied them down to her ankles.

He turned her swiftly, and thrill roared through her as she lay with her cheek down and her arms flat against the still warm hood of his truck.

His hands slid over her back and he sighed with a surfeit of pleasure and satisfaction.

He guided himself into her with a single deep thrust.

He swore softly, a sound that tapered into a groan. She heard the roar of his breath. He palmed her bare cheeks and pulled himself back, then drove himself in again, slowly this time.

She whimpered and it trailed into very nearly a keen of pleasure, which seemed to spur him on. Fast now.

Her breath came in gusts, and half begged, half threatened him with tattered words and threats. “J. T. . . . I swear to God . . .
so good . . .
if you don’t hurry . . .”

She could hear the roar of his breath. And then he was plunging into her, swift and hard, pulling her back against him to take it as deeply as he could, their bodies colliding hard again and again. Her nails skidded along the hood of his truck, and she was already near exploding when his hand sneaked around front between her legs and stroked hard.

Her mouth opened on a ragged, near-silent scream of his name, and she writhed, her body bucking upward, racked again and again by an onslaught of bliss. She could have sworn she saw the whole Milky Way behind her eyes.

“Britt . . .
sweet Jesus . . .
” His voice was a raw scrape. “I’m going to . . .”

The missing word was either
come
or
explode
, but he gave a hybrid groan-battle cry instead and then went still like he’d been shot.

But she could feel his body shaking, too, and even replete, she knew a purely primal satisfaction, that she could have rendered this hot-as-Hades man limp as a rag.

She heaved an enormous sigh. Dear God, she was disheveled and bent over the hood of a truck in the woods. It was as trashily sexy as it got. It was practically porn.

She was too pleased with herself to think too hard about this.

For a moment they were apparently both trying to remember how to breathe normally.

He gave a short, dazed laugh. “You alive?”

“Give me a minute, and then I’ll tell you,” she murmured.