Small Town Girl (20 page)

She watched his hand as he tried to straighten it. The scar cut a thin white line across dark hair and bronze skin, akin to a rubber band pulling his fingers into awkward shape. Instinctively, she set the guitar on the floor and reached for his hand.

"Have you seen a therapist?" She hadn't noticed the room's chill until she held the heat of his hand between hers. She rubbed her thumb along the line, feeling him flinch from the pressure.

"Yeah, until the insurance ran out. She said it would take more surgery, and even then, she wasn't certain how much function I'd regain. I haven't got the time or the money right now. There are more important things in the world than strumming a guitar."

"Not for you," she said without giving her words much thought. "That guitar riff of yours really makes the Barn Boys' sound." She had never known it was him until she'd compared the songs done with and without him. Their new bass player lacked Flint's flair.

He tried to pull his hand away, but she wouldn't let him. She circled her thumb over the taut tendons, using the massaging pressure she'd learned to help her mother's circulation.

"My sons are more important than music." He tried to jerk away again.

This time, she made the mistake of meeting Flint's eyes. They burned with the heat of desire, even as he fought to obey her wishes by staying away.

The same hunger yearned in her, and she'd forgotten why she was supposed to deny it. "Your sons need a whole man for a father, not half of one." She'd said a lot of crazy things in her life, spouting off at society and the world in general. This time, she thought maybe she'd made sense.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said angrily, shaking her off.

"I think maybe I do. You're another man when you're into the music. You're not as angry. You listen."

"I listen all the time." He grabbed the guitar she'd set on the floor.

"With your ears, maybe, but not your heart." She took the guitar away and laid it back on the floor, nudging it away with her foot as she leaned toward him. She tapped his chest and almost went up in flame at the contact with firm muscle. "When you're not roiling with anger, you can hear better."

Flint grabbed her arms and dragged her toward him until his whiskers scratched her chin and his mouth was a hair's breadth from hers. "I'm not angry. I'm being sensible and providing a home for my kids," he told her firmly.

She grinned from ear to ear, unsurprised by his action. With their lips only inches apart, she met his gaze again, loving the way he focused on her to the exclusion of all else. "There are two ways to let all that testosterone loose before it fries your brains."

She didn't give him the opportunity to ask what they were, as if he needed to be told. Twisting her arms so she grasped his biceps, she tilted forward and applied her mouth to his.

Chapter Fifteen

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Jo's passionate kiss stoked the embers of desire that had smoldered between them for weeks. The caress of her hands along Flint's bare arms ignited him like a torch.

Freed by her first move from any obligation to hold back, he hauled her into his lap and crushed her against him as he'd dreamed about for weeks. Her warmth seeped through his body into all the cold places of his soul. Hungrily plundering her mouth, he held her tightly to prevent losing her in the next breeze of fate. Jo obliged by wrapping her arms around his neck and hanging on like a tenacious vine. He didn't know why people talked about clinging vines as if they were weak. Good kudzu could bring down a tree.

And he was falling rapidly.

With Jo's curves pressed all up and down him at last, Flint leaned back against the cushions and thrust his hands into her silken mass of curls, tilting her head to better accommodate his kiss. She matched him eagerly with parted lips and a heated tongue that reached straight to his groin. And then she matched his maneuver by sliding her hands into his hair and pulling him closer.

Thrilled to the marrow that he needn't tease and beg, Flint slid his crippled hand between them to finally knead and shape the full firmness of breasts.

Despite her tough attitude, she moaned with vulnerability at his caress. She didn't pull away but pushed into his palm with a demand equal to his own.

After that, there wasn't a chance in hell of turning back. She was right. They were no better than mating dogs. And that was just fine with him. He didn't want to be rational anymore. He wanted every bit of Jo that he could see, touch, hear, and taste. He was a starving man who'd been offered a feast.

Flint ripped Jo's buttons in his eagerness to reach more warm flesh. She slid her palms beneath his shirt and tweaked his nipples until he groaned and jerked the cotton over his head, flinging it across the room.

He swung full length onto the leather cushions, bringing her with him so she lay sprawled on top, her legs between his. The leather was like a second skin against his bare back. He slid her shirt off so he could admire all that lush flesh in the flickering firelight.

"A golden goddess," he murmured senselessly, nudging her sparkling earrings out of his way so he could kiss his way around her earlobe.

"Eve," she muttered in reply.

He laughed and denied her accuracy. "My muse," he countered. He could swear the heat from her skin eased the pain of his hand.

Using his abs so he didn't disturb her position, Flint curled up enough to taste the ripe buds of her breasts. Her moan of pleasure was sweet music to his ears, a soothing balm to his angry soul. How could he have forgotten the soaring joy of pleasuring a woman?

Not that Joella was one to lie still and let him do all the work. Flint laughed again when she shoved him back down, her slender hands only half-covering his chest. He shifted to his side, trapping her against the couch back so he could plunder at will.

She went for his belt buckle.

He located her skirt zipper first.

She stilled when he ran his hands beneath her waistband and cupped the delicious curve of her buttocks in their silky covering.

He stroked, and she melted into him as if they were two parts of the same whole—flesh against flesh, heads touching, hands rubbing, absorbing the heated sensations of each other's body. Their kisses deepened and consumed, communicating the desire they had yet to fulfill.

As Jo tried to shove Flint's jeans over his hips, a brief flash of rationality hit him. "Condom," he whispered. "Upstairs."

"Pill," she murmured back, nipping at his collarbone and tugging at his waistband. "Clean. You?"

"Yep." And that was the end of rationality for the evening.

When Flint rolled off the couch to kick off his jeans, Jo lay back against the butter-soft cushions and let admiration pump hormones directly into her blood. Flynn Clinton hadn't let his physique go to pot as so many men over thirty did.

The fire played along his naturally bronze skin. Broader in chest than hip, tautly muscled in all the right places, he could have modeled as a Greek god as far as she was concerned. Except she didn't think he could hide all that masculinity beneath a fig leaf.

Before she realized what she meant to do, she leaned on one elbow and kissed the tip of his erection before he had time to return to the couch.

He froze where he stood, with a question behind the burning desire in his eyes.

In answer, she licked the salty taste of him.

She smiled as his fists clenched, and he admirably restrained himself until she'd tested and tasted enough to satisfy her curiosity. A man with that much restraint in the midst of passion was a man who could tumble walls with his bare hands.

That she trusted him enough to do this dissolved all barriers.

When she'd tortured him sufficiently, she wriggled out of her skirt. He was on the couch beside her and had his fingers in her panties before the skirt was past her ankles.

"Let me." He kissed her navel and proceeded downward while his big hands swept the scrap of silk away.

She'd spent weeks imagining this man's hands on her. She wouldn't argue now.

Flint played her with the same finesse as he played his guitar. His talented fingers plucked and strummed and tuned until she reached perfect pitch. Jo screamed her release the instant he applied his tongue.

When he was satisfied she was satisfied, he raised up, parted her knees with his, and shoved deep inside her without missing a beat. It was a coming home and a joyous reunion and a hallelujah chorus all rolled into one.

Jo arched upward until she was full to bursting, savoring the moment as Flint rested his forehead against hers and didn't move. He was seated so deep that he tickled her heartstrings and nearly robbed her of breath. They stole that moment of togetherness, blocking out past hurts and future problems to claim the physical connection of the present.

When fear and regret threatened to raise their ugly heads, Flint shattered them by lifting her hips and thrusting deeper, over and over until the music of their bodies built to a crescendo and crashed with ringing cymbals and a drumroll that refused to end until they dripped with sweat and fell together, satiated and beyond thought.

"Umm, yum," Jo hummed as a warm, rough hand closed over her bare breast.

"My thoughts precisely," a deep voice murmured near her ear.

The hard male body behind her moved closer, curving around her back. A stiff poke against her rump informed her of masculine intentions. She'd better rouse from her pleasant stupor if she wanted to participate. Or stop things now.

She opened one eye and peered over an acre of navy satin sheets. She didn't remember this. "Umm, how did I get here?"

"You demanded all the couch, and I refused to sleep on the floor." The voice was low and silky, and the hand was even better.

"I sleepwalked up here?" She wasn't precisely thinking clearly with lust clouding her brain. She pressed backward, letting him slide between her thighs.

"Something like that." Flint leaned over and nibbled her ear. "Good morning, Starshine."

Then he slid his hand between her legs from the front, and it was a good long time before she cared whether she thought about anything ever again. Flynn Clinton had a way of making a girl feel weightless, timeless, and in a special universe all her own.

Next time Jo opened her eyes, sunlight poured through the picture window that was his bedroom wall. Her stomach rumbled. The Lance crackers from the hospital vending machine weren't designed to last until dawn, much less halfway to noon.

She heard Flint's stomach growl in accompaniment to her own and glanced across the sea of satin to the man who had ravished her more thoroughly than she'd ever been ravished, while playing sweet love songs with her body. She still tingled all over and felt as if she belonged in a harem, taking a wanton bubble bath after a night with the sultan.

Flint lounged with his arm under his head, his splendidly nude body sprawled on top of the sheets, his gaze turned hungrily in her direction.

She wanted more. From his state of semi-erection, she gathered he wanted the same.

And they were both out of their ever-loving minds.

Obviously, she was no longer immune to men, or at least to this one man who hid as much pain or more inside him than she did, a man sensitive enough to notice the people around him, even if he didn't know how to act on what he saw.

She might start thinking she could change a man again if she wasn't careful.

Tearing her gaze away, Jo sat up and looked around for direction. Her clothes hadn't sleepwalked up the stairs with her.

She wasn't shy about her body, but she still felt the sensation of Flint inside her, and her hormones whirled like a tornado centered between her legs, knowing he was watching her every move. She had really done it this time. He was her
boss
.

"Bathroom?" she asked without turning around.

"Across the hall. I'm roughing it out here."

"That's the only way I know to live." Standing, she could see his driveway through the trees. The rain had washed away the summer dust and left the world sparkling with diamond droplets. "There's a fancy white SUV crawling up the drive."

He uttered an expletive and hit the floor running. "I'll bring your clothes up."

She left him dancing into a pair of jeans while she darted across the hall to the shower. It was Saturday. Flint's parents and sons were arriving.

She showered hurriedly, using his smelly shampoo. She had to leave her hair wet after she climbed out because she couldn't find a dryer and didn't have her brush. Flint had dropped her clothes on the bathroom rug and run, but her panties were missing. Wearing this skirt without underwear was almost the most scandalous thing she had ever done. Air tickled where Flint's fingers had been not half an hour ago.

She could hear him down below talking to a shrill female voice.

This was beyond humiliating. She could crawl out a window, except she had nowhere to go. She didn't even have her car.

The knit top and denim miniskirt were meant for the show last night. She couldn't wear them in front of his parents. She wondered what had happened to the dress shirt Flint had provided, but he'd ripped the buttons off it, so it wouldn't be of much use.

She slipped from the bathroom and across the hall to Flint's bedroom. She rummaged until she found a heavy, blue denim work shirt to pull over her sleeveless high-necked shell. The work shirt was loose enough to conceal the fact that her only bra was in the knit top.

She would roast as the day warmed up, but the shirt had a long tail that hung past her hem like a big jacket and held Flint's piney scent, so she felt secure, except for the draft where her panties ought to be.

She checked Flint's underwear drawer and decided his Calvin Klein's might be a trifle noticeable under her skirt, even if she could keep them up, which she probably couldn't.

She turned her mind to other things, determined not to let this faze her. She needed a telephone to check on her mama. She couldn't hide up here forever. At the sound of rising voices below, she decided now might be an excellent time to make her entrance. They couldn't get much angrier.