His hand traveled up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers massaging her scalp. The very feel of her sizzled up his arm, shooting straight through him with a need he’d stamped down for longer than he cared to remember.
God, he wanted her. Not that he could do a thing about it. The woman had just been subjected to a traumatic morning filled with an invasive physical and a police interrogation.
With shaky restraint, Jacob fenced in his own needs and continued rubbing gentle, small circles into her head. A moan whispered from her lips, nothing much, just a small little breath of sound.
A small sound that charged the air.
Her fingers dug into his arms, tighter, then crawled to his shoulders and into his hair. She tilted her face just as she pulled his down to meet her.
What the hell? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this.
But he wasn’t. She was.
“Thank you, Jacob.” She skimmed her lips over his.
Cradling her to him, still half-afraid she might be as fragile as she looked, Jacob brushed her mouth with his in a tender salute. The thread of longing between them pulled tauter, drawing him deeper. Gently he traced her lips, then teased her tongue with his, tasting morning coffee and acquainting himself with the unique flavor of Dee.
She flattened herself to him. Her fingers gripped the neck of his shirt and tugged, hard. “More.”
So much for thoughts of restraint.
His mouth settled over hers with a firm rightness he could have never predicted, and wasn’t quite sure he could handle while maintaining any semblance of sanity.
Dee all but wrapped herself around him as she kissed him back, fiercely, with an intensity that rocked all his plans for reserve. Maybe he’d thawed her a little too much. Her kisses had a frenzied edge that went beyond passion.
A chill settled over Jacob. She didn’t really want him, just somebody, anybody to shake her from the numbing sensation that had come from her messed-up life.
Talk about the proverbial bucket of cold water. If—when—he made love to her it wouldn’t be in the front seat of a truck, and it wouldn’t be because she was running from something.
He wanted her running to him.
“Dee, we have to stop.” With more than a little regret, he untwined her arms from around his neck. “We’re in a parking lot.”
And damned if that didn’t make him start looking over his shoulder again as he’d done during their drive into town. Luckily nobody appeared to be paying any attention to a truck with fogged windows.
She stiffened, then flung herself away against the seat. “I can’t believe I did that. Like you haven’t already got a thousand reasons to think all sorts of crazy things about me, I go adding more ammo to the impression.”
“I’m not thinking anything other than you needed to blow off some steam, and this isn’t the right way. It’s okay.” Well, it wasn’t, but it would be once he could suck in a few more breaths.
Her sigh rippled through the air before she nodded and smiled, a wry, wobbly grin that caressed his hand. “What a first kiss, huh?”
“What?”
“My first kiss. Even if I’ve been kissed a thousand times before, it’s not like I remember any of them. So this is it. My new first. Is that strange or what?”
“Or what.” A new chill seeped through Jacob, dousing his need more effectively than a dive into a snowbank.
Yes, he wanted her, and he couldn’t help but notice she might want him a little in return. But they had a problem.
He’d considered any number of reasons why he shouldn’t lunge across the truck cab and convince her to find the nearest bed—or even ask her out to dinner and a movie. She had a life out there somewhere. He had a mess of a life here.
But he hadn’t considered one fundamental reason to tread warily, if at all.
This woman beside him, a woman who signed into a motel as “Mrs. Smith,” a woman who’d given birth to a child, a woman who might well have a husband, this woman was for all intents and purposes—a virgin.
Chapter 7
H e hated that damned virtuous act of hers. Of anyone, he knew how she really acted in bed.