Turn Up the Heat (6 page)

I’d do it again.
What we did in the alley.

Her brain might be arguing for sticking to the plan and prioritizing compatibility, but her body was full-speed-ahead for
More
.

I could go talk to him.

Damn,
she was weak. She’d driven two thousand miles in a broken-down beater to escape her own mistakes,
sworn
she wouldn’t make the same ones again, and the shine of sweat on well-defined muscle was doing her in.

Come on, Lily.

If he’d wanted to see her, if
he’d
wanted to do it again, he’d known perfectly well where to find her. The fact that he hadn’t found her, hadn’t come to see her, spoke loudly of his intentions. He’d had what he wanted from her, and he was done.

If she went to talk to him now, she’d just be pathetic.

She washed the orange off her hands, then began straightening the kitchen. Avoiding looking at him as best she could. Just—just checking from time to time to see if he was still there. Like poking a bruise to see if it was still sore.

It was still sore.

She was still on high alert for the motion of that trip wire.

And then, as she watched, the branch he was standing on split and he tumbled out of the tree and out of her sight.

“Oh, my
God,
are you okay?”

A female voice, aflutter with concern. The smell of an orange. Cool, soft hands on his arm.

He’d been taking a slow inventory of his body parts, not quite willing yet to open his eyes. He hadn’t struck his head or lost consciousness, so that was good. He seemed to have feeling in all his limbs, so he probably hadn’t broken his neck or spine. There was no intense pain radiating from legs or arms, so apparently he’d gotten insanely lucky and not broken a bone.

“Kincaid, are you
okay
?”

The female voice knew his name, and now her small hands were beginning to prod him all over, as if she were doing an inventory of her own, which was delight and agony, particularly the one that was moving over his calf and up to his thigh, sending
wake up! wake up!
messages to the one part of his body whose good function he obviously did not need to worry about at all. The other hand was in his hair, as if checking the sanctity of his skull, and it took all his willpower and self-control not to grab the owner of the hands and pull her down into his lap.

Because the female voice belonged to Lily, who had magically appeared out of nowhere when he fell out of the tree. She was touching him all over as if she were some kind of healer who could tell from feel if he’d broken something.

Or maybe she was just as eager for an excuse to touch him as he was (perversely, misguidedly) ecstatic she’d found one?

“I’m okay,” he finally found the wherewithal to say, not so much because of how bruised and scratched he was, but because she’d stolen all the breath from his lungs. He took one of her hands in each of his and removed them from his body. “Except you have to stop that,” he told her.

“Did
I
hurt you?” she asked, obviously horrified.

“No—”

And then they both looked down at his lap where a tent had formed in the loose, light fabric of his cut-off Carhartts.

“Oh,” she said, and blushed. That was ironic, considering that she’d seen it all, and far more, the other night.

“I guess I’m lucky,” he said. “Don’t seem to have broken anything.”

He realized after the words were out of his mouth that they could have been a double entendre, but she let it go, continuing her—now visual—inspection of what he’d done to himself in his fall from the tree.

The worst of his wounds was a long, ragged gash down one calf, and she touched the edge of it and said, “This has to be cleaned. That’s my house. My sister’s house. Can you limp over there and I’ll run in for some first aid supplies?”

He was fine, except for being banged up and cut, which he didn’t give a shit about. But she was looking at him with so much concern, those big eyes alight for him, that he couldn’t make himself turn down her offer. “Sure,” he said. He got to his feet and followed her to her front yard.

“Sit there,” she said, gesturing at the front steps. She disappeared into the house.

When she returned, she had a plastic box of supplies. She set it down beside him and trotted around the side of the house for the garden hose, which she used to rinse the worst of his cuts and scrapes.

It felt good, letting her care for him. He realized that was part of what he’d coveted, watching her in the diner. The way she nurtured people. No one had taken care of him in so long. Possibly no one ever would again. It wasn’t outrageous, was it, to let himself bask in the feel of her hands, smoothing antibiotic ointment on his cut, or the look of concern in her eyes?

Except he wasn’t a little boy feeling safe because his mom had pasted a Band-Aid on his leg. He was a grown man who’d spent almost the last decade getting battered and cut and not having anyone give a shit, and it was absurdly self-indulgent to feel so grateful about a tube of medicine. And he was deluding himself, too, about the innocence of his appreciation. He liked that she was sitting on the steps between his legs, her face at navel level, her slim, sweet hands sending something close to a quiver straight up his inner leg, until it lodged like raw need in his balls. Gave him a hard-on that made the one a few minutes ago look like a pup tent.

Maybe the movement in his crotch caught her attention—it sure as hell caught his—because she looked up at him, then, her eyes straight into his, pupils huge.

And he looked right back.

There they were, the eye contact like flame, and he couldn’t look away even though it hurt to keep looking into those green eyes. There was something in that gaze—so naked and needy—that made him feel like he was the one who was exposed. She’d done that to him the other night, too, bared her secrets and left him feeling like the one who’d been flayed.

He touched her lower lip. He’d had it against his own lips, held it hostage between his teeth, but somehow the feel of it against his thumb was more intimate. Maybe because she was slightly below him on the stoop, looking up at him from under those lashes, shockingly innocent and vulnerable for someone who’d made it abundantly clear that she had a kinky side. And when he ran his thumb across her lip, so his fingerprint caught on a patch of chapped skin, her tongue came out and swept across the sensitive tip of his thumb. His cock twitched in response, and it wasn’t till it did that he realized where her hand was—resting on his upper thigh.
Her
thumb brushed over the hypersensitive head of his erection and he almost came in his briefs.

Aaaaand
here he was again.

He drew his hand away from her tempting mouth and scooted up a stair. Hearing, echoing in his head, Grant’s words:

Do only what you absolutely have to. Keep your nose clean otherwise.

Kincaid’s mind retorted,
By “have to,” Grant, what exactly do you mean?

Because Lily was definitely a compulsion. An addiction, almost.

“I’m dirty and sweaty,” Kincaid said. Translation:
This isn’t going to happen. You don’t want this to happen.

She bit her lower lip. “I don’t care.”

Fuck.

She took the step he’d vacated, slipping herself back between his legs, tilting her head back, her lips already parted. He was such a goner. He bent his head and put his mouth to hers, loving the slickness of her tongue, the way she whimpered and grabbed for his shoulders. She was breathing hard, yanking his hair, digging her fingernails into his back, the nails barely finding purchase in the sweat from his landscaping exertions and from her being so near and so eager. He kissed her and kissed her, drowning in her mouth, forgetting to breathe, tugging her tighter between his legs so he could feel her belly against his torturous hard-on.

“You make me crazy,” he blurted out.

She pulled back to let him see her smile, then kissed him again.

Maybe it was the slip of her tongue against his, maybe the way she squirmed, but he needed to hold her still, needed to keep her from moving restlessly like that, from sliding all over him and lighting up every square inch of his skin. He wrapped his hand in her hair, hard. Knowing it was too tight, knowing he was pulling. Jerking her head back so he controlled the kiss completely, the pressure, the depth of penetration. Telling her he’d control the sex that way, too, because he knew that was what she wanted to hear.

She moaned and bit him, proving him right.

Funny to know so much about someone, and so little.

A car horn honked, Lily broke the kiss, and the driver shot them a dirty look.

“Whoops,” Lily said breathlessly. “I don’t want to get my sister in trouble. You’d better come inside.”

He wanted to. In all the possible ways. But the car horn had fired up his adrenaline and reminded him of how little leeway he had in this world. The next-door neighbor could come home and discover him
not
doing his work, and if he screwed up this job, he might not find another. If he went too far with Lily, if she changed her mind about wanting things rough, suddenly decided that
allowing
wasn’t the same as
consenting
—well, that could bring the cops.

Better to slam this door with her than have the literal metal bars clanging the end of his brief freedom, before he’d even gotten a chance to try to find the will.

“I can’t,” he said regretfully.

Her face fell. She had one of those faces that showed everything, that couldn’t hide. Another thing he liked about her.

“You never come into the diner anymore,” she said.

“That’s because
this
is a bad idea,” he said, jabbing his finger to indicate what had just happened, the impossibility of resistance, the chemistry that made him so goddamned stupid.

“Why?”

“I am
not
your kind of guy,” he said.

She glowered at him. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

“I guarantee you I’m not.”

“You think you know me?”

“I know
that.
”

“What kind of guy
are
you?”

He could tell her.
A convicted felon.

It might scare the shit out of her. She might run the other way. And that was what he wanted. It was.

Or it might not scare her. It might turn her on.

He toyed with that for a moment, struggling with how he’d feel about it. If she
liked
that he’d held a knife to a man’s throat. If it became part of her game.

His gut clenched. Because what he’d done, the time he’d served, wasn’t a kink, wasn’t a thing to take pleasure in, get off on, celebrate. It was a terrible thing he’d done, maybe for the right reasons, but maybe not. He didn’t want her to like it.

And besides, he’d gone over this with his lawyer and his parole officer. The importance of being discreet. Word spread fast, particularly in small communities, and there would be enough ways for gossip to leak from Yeowing and make his life difficult without a bunch of people in Tierney Bay knowing his situation. There were plenty of real-world obstacles to his success without his having also to endure the suspicious glances of the homeowners whose property he tended—like Lily’s neighbors, for example.

It would be one thing if she were his wife, his girlfriend, even his lover. But she was…

She was just…

An escape valve. That’s what she was. A way to blow off steam.

“Not relationship material,” he said. “I’m not relationship material.”

“What makes you think I’m looking for relationship material?”

“Look at you. You’re young. You’re sweet—”

She huffed—surprise or scorn, he wasn’t sure.

“You are. I see you in the diner. You like the families. You like the kids. You take time with people. You take care of people.”

She soaked it up, those green eyes bright. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

“It’s true. The other waitresses don’t do that.”

“They’ve got problems at home. They’re tired, have a lot of responsibilities.”

“See, that’s it. You see that about them, and you cut them slack. You see how people have it tough and you want to make it easier for them.”

“How do you know all that?”

But she didn’t say it like she thought he was wrong. She said it like she thought he was right and was a little terrified that he could see it so easily. Like she hadn’t meant anyone to know. Like the tough act she’d put on for Hadley, and to some extent for him, was the only thing she wanted people to see.

“Anyone should see it, looking at you,” he said. “Anyone who bothers to pay attention.”

But he knew from personal experience that some people never bothered to pay attention. And his paying-attention skills had been sharpened by years of having nothing to do but pay attention.

“Well,” she said. “You’re the only person who’s ever said that. So, thanks.” For the first time, she looked shy, tilting her head away. “But you’re wrong about one thing.”

“Yeah, what?”

“I’m not looking for a relationship.”

He’d lost the thread, distracted by the attentiveness on her face when he’d told her what he saw in her. She’d led him right into a snare.

“I’m only here a couple of months. Just till I get my feet under me and earn some money. Then I’m going to Chicago. Soon as I can. So—yeah. I’m not relationship material either.”

Her cheeks got pinker and her chin dropped a degree, which messed up his willpower.

“That. What happened the other night.” She emphasized
happened
in the universal code for
I’m not going to say the words.
“In the alley. Rough.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I liked it that way.” She said it in a rush, as if saying it fast enough would take the shame out of it.

He
knew
that shame. All of a sudden he was angry at having felt it himself. At the fact that she had, surely, felt it before. He wanted to draw the shame out of her, suck it out of her like venom.

He took her chin and tilted it up, so she was forced to look in his eyes. “I know. And I liked that you did.” And he told her with his gaze that he meant it, at the deepest and most primitive level.

She blushed more fiercely, then smiled uncertainly, and he really liked that, the glimpse of her smallish, straight teeth, the lines—almost dimples—that bracketed her full mouth, the way her freckled nose wrinkled.

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I want that. More of that.”

So honest. So primal. It cut right past rational argument and straight to the part of him that only wanted to say yes to her. That had wanted to say yes to her from the first moment he’d spotted her in the diner.

“You working tonight?” he asked.

Her smile got fuller, until, for the first time, it reached her eyes.