Make Me Lose Control

CHAPTER TWO

JACE JENNINGS STARED down at the innocuous rectangle of plastic. Birthday Girl’s fingers touched one edge, the nails short and painted with clear polish. Transparent, the same as her face.

He’d been able to read every expression flitting across it all night long.

At first, she’d been shy. She was younger than he was, by a decade, he supposed, and he’d had no intention of even engaging her in conversation. But then she’d launched into her martinis-and-birthday confession and he’d found himself drawn in...then drawn to her.

When he’d shared that bit about his childhood—and what had prompted him to do so, he couldn’t say—her quasihuffy, amusing response had tickled his funny bone. Not many people managed to do that.

But Birthday Girl and her “gloom balloon”...

Shaking his head, he felt a grin tugging on the corners of his mouth again.

“You’re leaving me hanging here,” she said now.

He glanced up. She was beautiful. That had struck him immediately. Her shoulder-length hair was a mix of red, gold and brown. Her eyes were an arresting shade of pale blue, her skin creamy, with just a faint spray of tiny golden freckles peppering her small nose. As a builder, he had an interest in and appreciation of the bones of things, and those of this woman were both delicate and elegant. Her mouth was lush, though, its unpainted color a pale rose.

“Well?” she demanded.

And he could read her again, the slight truculence a defensive position. “This could be a dangerous habit, Birthday Girl.”

“This?”

“Propositioning total strangers.”

Her mouth dropped, and she yanked the key card back toward her. “I don’t—”

“Wait.” He placed his fingers over hers. “That came out wrong.”

She was staring down at his hand. Jace knew why. The instant they touched, heat snapped like an electrical shock, then ricocheted through his body. He supposed she felt something similar. All night, he’d been half-hard and her flesh beneath his was taking him the rest of the way.

Slowly, as if retreating from a skittish creature, Jace lifted his hand. Her gaze lifted, too, and those blue eyes zeroed in on his face.

“I don’t make a habit of this kind of thing,” she declared.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” And why the hell would he care if she propositioned a new man every night? But for some stupid reason he’d wanted to hear her say she didn’t out loud. He’d wanted to know that this...connection was something unusual for her, too. Different. Special.

Because it felt damn special to him.

Holy hell, she’d bought him birthday cake.

“We don’t know each other,” he heard himself say, though he’d never told anyone else about those daily frigid showers. It was true. His father had believed in cold water as the cornerstone of making a man out of a boy.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“Divorced.” And his ex was dead now, a recent circumstance that had wrought a huge change in his life. Just the thought of that made him toss back the rest of the whiskey that he’d switched to when the cards came out.

“Girlfriend?”

“No.” He paused, then lifted a brow. “Boyfriend?”

“If I had one, wouldn’t he be the one spending my birthday with me?”

Which made Jace think about what he’d been calling her. Birthday Girl. She hadn’t offered up her real name. He hadn’t corrected her when she misheard his as “Jay.”

This beautiful young woman was really offering up no-strings, one-night-only, stranger sex.

God knows he didn’t deserve it, but—

“Okay, then.” Birthday Girl slid off her stool and onto her feet. He was close and turned in her direction, so she landed between his knees, and swayed there a moment. To steady herself, one hand reached out and clutched his thigh.

Uh-oh. Those martinis were still in her system.

That thought didn’t stop another piercing zing of heat from rocketing from her hand to his crotch, just a few inches north. And it wasn’t only her touch that got to him. There was that sweet little dress she wore that showed a whole hell of a lot of bare leg in the front, then flowed lower around the back.

“I’m going,” she said, still looking a bit woozy. “It’s up to you whether you come with me or not.”

Jace sighed. Of course he was going with her. Whether he crossed the threshold of her room, well, first he had to make sure she got to it safely. He hopped off his own stool, feeling a twinge as his newly healed left ankle found the ground. “I’m right behind you, Birthday Girl,” he said.

Actually, he took her hand, as well.

That was weird. He wasn’t a toucher. When he was with a woman he didn’t worry about keeping her close. But this one was tipsy, he reminded himself, and though he’d been raised by a distant and unfeeling man, in this instance he wasn’t going to take after the old bastard.

Drawing her nearer, Jace could smell the sweet scent of her hair. Now he went a bit woozy.

“It’s this way,” she said, tugging him toward a steep staircase off the foyer. Judging by the architecture, the Deerpoint Inn had to be about a hundred years old. On the way inside earlier that night, he’d glanced at the framed magazine article about the place that hung on the entry wall. The building had started life as a boardinghouse for area loggers. Now they’d converted the original fifteen rooms upstairs to just six, each with its own bath.

Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night.

She wobbled on her heels as she mounted the first step, causing him to drop her hand and grasp her hips instead. Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night if she could make it to her door.

Jace, on the other hand, had a very uncomfortable few minutes as he was forced to watch the bunch of muscles in each fine ass cheek as she continued upward. He breathed easier when they made the narrow hallway. It smelled of old wood and roses.

With his fingertips hovering a quarter inch off the small of her back, Jace followed her to a door bearing a brass 6. He took the key card from her hand and inserted it in the slot. The mechanism flashed green and he heard a small snick. He turned the knob and checked out the environs over her shoulder, the room illuminated by lamps at each end of a long table centered beneath a narrow window. Papered walls, dark wood floor covered with a thick area rug with a floral design. A night-light gave him the glimpse of a tiled bathroom through a half-open interior door.

Birthday Girl stepped inside.

Jace realized it was now or never.

Hell, she was beautiful. Alluring. Tempting.

But...

He had a pile of regrets on his plate and using the circumstances—birthday, flames, liquor, lust—to get a quickie shag out of this pretty young thing would be just another black mark on his soul. In the morning, he didn’t want to be something she was sorry for.

There’d been enough of that in his life. From his father, his ex and, most likely, his daughter.

Her head tilted, and the room’s light caught the warm fire in her hair. “Well?”

He couldn’t help but lean toward her. She took a half step, getting closer, and then her eyes closed as she offered up her mouth.

Jace’s cock turned to steel at the anticipation of a kiss written all over her face.

She was more than halfway drunk, he reminded himself.

Too young for him.

Too sweet.

And yet...

She was too appealing not to touch one more time. He pressed the pad of his thumb to her lips—God, so soft and lush—and whispered in her ear. “Many happy returns.”

Then he strode away, cursing himself, the constricting denim of his jeans and his suddenly discovered streak of decency.

Downstairs, the management was trying to make the refugees comfortable in the dining room. Jace opted for his SUV instead, reclining the seat and trying to get comfortable on the stiff leather. By leaving that lovely offer of a night with Birthday Girl on the table, at least his conscience couldn’t nag him, he decided.

Except that it could, of course.

There was still the small matter of his daughter to consider. She was mere miles away, at his house situated on the shores of Blue Arrow Lake. Though he hadn’t seen her in a decade, Jace wasn’t as frustrated as he should have been that their meeting was postponed for another day. Truth to tell, he was grateful for the reprieve.

A lousy night’s sleep seemed a fitting punishment for that.

At first light, when he smelled coffee emanating from the inn, he climbed from his car. His muscles were stiff and he limped inside, his left foot not long out of its soft cast and not yet completely normal. His head ached, too—though not like it had after the debilitating concussion he’d suffered that had made focusing on paper or screen or even spoken words sometimes impossible—and reminded him he’d downed plenty of beer and whiskey the night before.

He wondered how Birthday Girl was faring.

And then he saw her, the back of her anyway, sitting on the same stool she’d occupied yesterday evening. She was dressed in jeans this time, but her auburn hair was unmistakable. Jace paused, uncertain how to proceed. He looked for an open spot at one of the tables in the restaurant, but it wasn’t a big space and some of the patrons were still sleeping, stretched on two chairs.

The only seat free was the one beside her. Why not take it? He’d done the noble thing, hadn’t he? It would have been much more awkward to wake up on the neighboring pillow, after all.

As he approached, his gaze caught that of the bartender’s. He signaled the need for java by miming a mug to his mouth and then he slid into the empty place beside Birthday Girl.

Though she didn’t glance his way, her body stiffened.

Jace hesitated again, his gaze focused on the gleaming wood grain in front of him. Good manners dictated he should at least look at her, not to mention express a friendly “good morning.” But during the course of the night in the SUV, he’d begun to rethink the hours they’d spent sitting together and the unprecedented appeal she’d had for him.

It was just some birthday cake and card games, he’d told himself and the moon, its beam shining through the windshield. Too much booze. In the light of day, she probably wouldn’t be as pretty as he’d thought.

The intense attraction was likely overblown in his mind as well, Jace had decided then. And...

And for some reason right now he didn’t want confirmation of that.

Stop being ridiculous. Just get out a greeting and let reality assert itself. “Good morning,” he finally said, sliding a look at her.

Her face turned toward him. Icy-blue eyes. A faint flush obscuring the tiny freckles on her nose and edging her fabulous cheekbones with a delicate pink. Her rosy lips pursed. “Really?” she said, her voice frosty.

Okay.

Okay, fine.

The booze, the fire and the cake had not caused him to exaggerate anything. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.

Just as sexy.

She made him just as hard.

But the disdainful expression on her face communicated clearly that she was no longer as sweetly dispositioned as she’d been before he’d rejected her generous offer and left her with only the touch of his thumb at the door. He winced. “Birthday Girl—”

She slid from her stool and, with her coffee in hand, stalked off. He stared at the insulted line of her spine and the angry sway of her hips. Oh, yeah. She still made him hard. Very hard.

Jace sighed, shifting on his stool to adjust the fit of his jeans. Damn.

And he’d thought taking her to bed would result in regret. Instead, he’d learned that being a good guy left him feeling no more satisfied than being a bad one.

* * *

HALF HORRIFIED AND half humiliated, Shay escaped toward the stairs that would take her to her room. She glanced back at the bar and saw Jay still in place, his head turned to watch her go.

Another wash of heat rose up her neck and burned her cheeks. In the morning light he wasn’t any less masculine. Still had that charisma in spades, too. She could feel the pull even from here, as if he’d lassoed her waist and was steadily drawing on a rope held between his big capable hands.

The hands she’d wanted on her last night.

But he’d refused her.

Whipping her head around, she stomped up the steps. Until she was free to head back to Blue Arrow, she’d hide out between the four walls of her room at the inn. Inside, she flipped on the television and found the channel offering fire coverage. At the bar, she’d learned the road closures were still in place, but there could be better news at any moment...

Ten hours later, nothing had changed.

Not her confined circumstances, not her humiliation over last night’s rejected overture.

She bounced on the mattress, she punched a pillow, she flung her body across the bed and hung her head over the side. The actions didn’t alter the news on the television—but they did serve to underline her restlessness. If she didn’t get out of this room—soon—she’d go stir-crazy.

But he might still be downstairs. The jerk.

Several times between last night and this afternoon she’d replayed their moments together: her nervous chatter, his birthday cake, the card battle. Too bad the hangover she’d been suffering from hadn’t obliterated her memory. For hours, she’d had a dry mouth and an aching head, as well as instant recall of his amused smile at her half-drunken ramblings, the heat in his gaze as he’d stared down at her before his “many happy returns,” his calloused touch against her upturned mouth.

Without thinking, she pressed her fingertips there. It was as if a brand still pulsed on her lips.

Damn man. He’d walked away from a tipsy stranger and likely considered himself the hero in the scenario.

Jerk.

Her conscience tried to reason with her ire—in truth, wasn’t it actually a decent-guy move?—but she shut down that part of her brain. It was her birthday and a girl should get a pass on logic for at least one twenty-four-hour period a year.

Still, she had to get some fresh air. In her jeans, a simple T-shirt and a pair of sneakers, she crept down the stairs, a bottle of water in hand. The bar and dining room held a scatter of refugees, but no Jay. On a sigh of relief, she pushed open the front door and set out along the quiet streets of the tiny hamlet surrounding the Deerpoint Inn. While she’d never been to the town, which was little more than a crossroads, she’d seen enough of the fire coverage to have gained a general sense of direction. She took every turn uphill and hiked along the narrow roads while committing her route to memory.

Though she didn’t actually venture far, she was moving steadily upward, surprising chipmunks and squirrels who skittered across the asphalt to ascend the trunks of the towering conifers lining the road. Black ravens sailed among the top limbs while blue jays flitted at the lower levels. If she wasn’t used to elevations that were over five thousand feet, she might be laboring for air. As it was, she appreciated the cool breeze on her sweat-dampened skin and welcomed the chance to pause when she came to a break in the trees that offered a glorious view.

From here, there was no sign of fire. The wind must be carrying the scent of it away, too. And spread out before her were miles of craggy pine-covered peaks and a slice of blue that signaled one of the many local lakes in the distance. She breathed in double lungfuls of the air that was just starting to come down from its afternoon high temperature. It had probably been seventy-five at some point today.

Already she felt calmer, she thought, as she took in more fresh oxygen. She might not have true Walker blood in her veins, but the mountains were still her place. The foundation beneath her feet.

A twig snapped, the sound loud enough to make her whirl and her heart jump to her throat. She put her hand there as she stared at the man who last night and this morning had been seated on the neighboring stool. “You,” she managed to choke out. “Did you follow me?”

Jay held up both hands. “Not exactly. I wanted to stretch my legs. I thought by trailing you I could have a guide of sorts.”

“Unwilling guide,” Shay muttered under her breath.

“Yeah. Sorry.” He paused to suck in air, then half turned. “I’ll go.”

“Wait.” Narrowing her eyes, Shay took a closer look at him. His breath was more ragged than it should be for such a fit man. Altitude, she thought. Clearly, it was getting to him. Stifling a sigh, she held out her unopened bottle of water. “You need a drink.”

He inhaled sharply again. “I think that’s where one or both of us went wrong yesterday.”

Ignoring that comment, she stepped closer. “Seriously,” she told him. “You need water. You’re feeling the effects of the elevation.”

He took the proffered bottle but his expression was dubious. “It wasn’t that long a walk.”

“We’re near seven thousand feet here. Where you came from...?”

“Sea level.”

She nodded. Beach. His tan already announced it. Glancing around, she saw a fallen log a few feet away and gestured to it. “Sit down. Drink. Rest a little.”

He didn’t look happy as he followed her direction.

Shay shook her head, reading his mood. “Don’t worry. Your macho will bounce right back once you descend a few hundred feet.”

“I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Last night I lost at War. Now this.”

His disgruntled tone made her almost smile. “I’m lousy at gin rummy,” she said. “If we played that it would shore up your ego in an instant.”

He glanced over as he settled on the log and stretched out his long legs. “You’re offering another round of cards? Thought you were mad at me.”

Shay shoved her hands in her pockets. She was mad at him—except when her conscience reminded her that he’d done the more honorable thing by refusing her. She’d been under the influence of birthday and booze.

Now that she thought about it, she and her half-tipsy offer had probably been less than flattering—and she had maybe been not all that alluring. Great. The pulsing sexual energy she’d sensed was likely a one-sided figment of her own inebriated imagination. “Can we forget about that?”

His eyes on her, he took a long swallow of the bottle, then lowered the plastic. “I probably can’t forget a moment of it,” he admitted.

Heat crawled up Shay’s neck and she looked down. Okay, so not one-sided? “Um...”

“And I also can’t help thinking it would have been damn good,” the man continued.

The words had her gaze leaping back to him. She stared at his face and into his golden eyes as the sexual attraction spun between them again, the line of it thrumming with energy. She could feel the heated effect of it in her chest, in her belly. Lower.

With a wrench, she cut the connection and turned away, to once again take in the view. Say something, she thought. Something inconsequential. Something to cool this down. She was sober now, and this wasn’t a safe or sane sensation.

“So...” Shay swallowed. “What is it you do at sea level?”

“Construction, mostly.”

Of course. Just as she’d figured. He was a man made to wear low-slung carpenter bags.

“Yourself?” he asked.

“This and that. I’m mountain-born and-bred. Lots of us have to do a variety of jobs in order to meet the alpine-resort prices.” This was all true. The schools in the area were small and though she had a credential, a teaching job had yet to open up. So she kept herself busy—and paid her bills—by tutoring and running some college test prep boot camps. Sometimes she helped out with her sister Mac’s maid service. The temporary live-in tutor job she’d scored until summer’s end was kind of a combination of all three.

Redirecting her gaze to the northeast, she thought about her sister Poppy’s pet project. “And my family has a tract of land and some cabins we’re refurbishing there. We’re hoping to create a quiet and very exclusive retreat for people who want to get away from it all.”

It wasn’t clear whether the idea would come to fruition, though. Her brother and Mac were still unconvinced, claiming to hold on to the outlandish idea that the property was cursed. Shay was on Poppy’s side, but as the non-Walker Walker, she kept quiet about her wishes on the subject. Because that outside-the-circle feeling was impossible to leave behind. The whispers she’d first heard on her fourteenth birthday had rooted deep in her heart and it didn’t help when to this day she caught old-timers going over the old gossip.

Behind her, she sensed Jay rising. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll head back.”

She swung around, risking another glance his way. “Are you going to be—”

“I’m better now. Fine.”

Looking him over, she decided on a small suppressed sigh that yeah, he was fine. Very fine. Tall, broad, all heavy muscles and long bones that came together in one package that just...just hit her someplace deep. Someplace...private. “Goodbye,” she said softly as he moved onto the road.

One stride away from her. Two.

Suddenly, he turned back. “Let me buy you dinner.”

Her heart jerked at the command in his voice. “I—”

“You owe me that game of gin rummy, remember? My macho needs shoring up. You said it yourself.”

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. He was at least six feet four inches of hot-blooded male, elevation effects or no. “I don’t think—”

“It’s still your birthday. We’ll have more cake.”

Oh, there was that pull again. Her mouth was curving upward and inside she felt a dangerous fever jacking up her temperature and overriding her good sense. “And fewer martinis?”

“Whatever you want.”

Shay sucked in a breath, remembering what she’d wanted last night. What she’d offered, and how he’d rejected her. How low that had brought her.

Now, though, with him looking at her with those warm golden eyes, she felt light, free, like a kite that could soar over the mountaintops and float through the blue, blue sky.

Then the expression in his eyes became more intent as his gaze roamed her face. She was no kite, now, but a woman, sexy and beautiful.

Rubbing her damp palms against the side of her jeans, she moved toward him, unable to do anything but. “All right,” she said. “Dinner.”

Upon their return, they made arrangements to meet in the grill in an hour. Though he still didn’t have a room, the inn had opened up an employee area where the refugees could wash up. Shay took a quick shower then appraised her outfit choices. It was a replay of the jeans or a repeat of last night’s dress. And while she knew it would be wiser to stay casual—and more fully covered—she put on the filmy garment anyway.

When she took the stairs to the restaurant and turned the corner to see him waiting at a secluded corner table, she was glad she’d changed. He was in slacks and a dress shirt, an expensive watch strapped around one strong wrist. He looked confident and successful and when he lifted his gaze to her, once again she felt lit up inside.

While still trembling, just a little, on the outside.

He stood as she approached, his mouth curved in an assuring smile that nonetheless delivered a jolt of nervous anticipation. Surely she’d never felt this dichotomy around a man before. There was a familiarity about him—as if he were someone she recognized—that was at odds with her wary response to the immense attraction he held for her. He pulled out her chair and touched the small of her back to direct her into the seat. It sent a flurry of chills up her spine that tumbled down the front of her in a hot wave.

For a full five seconds, she couldn’t breathe.

There were no martinis. Nor birthday cake or gin rummy. Instead they shared a bottle of wine with an appetizer platter that was a delicious mélange of carmelized Brussels sprouts topped with shavings of a tangy, salty parmesan cheese. Then it was two dinners of seared halibut, rice pilaf and crunchy steamed vegetables.

They didn’t talk of anything consequential, including themselves. At one point he said he was on the verge of asking her name—but that “Birthday Girl” had kind of grown on him. So she didn’t say a word about it. Instead, they made up stories about their fellow refugees. That man in the opposite corner was an antler chandelier salesman, Jay proposed: he sold them off the rack.

The grandmotherly woman at the bar was a Mafia boss’s wife on the lam for offering counterfeit knitting patterns on the internet. Shay added, she’d bought herself a skein of trouble.

Finally it was getting late and the tables were cleared and those patrons without rooms were collecting blankets and arranging themselves for the night. When someone took the extra chairs at their table in order to create a makeshift bed, Jay cleared his throat. “I guess it’s time to turn in.”

During dinner, he’d told Shay he’d spent the night before in his car. She cleared her throat, too. “You know...”

“I know what?”

Her fingertip made an aimless pattern on the tablecloth. She pretended it fascinated her. “The bed upstairs is king-size.”

Silence welled between them when she didn’t say any more.

Then Jay broke the quiet. “Birthday Girl,” he said, his voice low. “Can you look at me?”

Of course she could. It was easy, because he still really didn’t know her—not even her name. But it took a couple of seconds before she managed to comply. His golden eyes studied her, but she couldn’t read the expression in them.

Her face heated as she forced herself to continue meeting his gaze. “I’m saying we could just share it...you know, sleep,” she clarified. “Nothing more than that.”

He reached over and captured her wandering finger, then took her whole hand in his. His thumb, that work-roughened thumb that had pressed against her mouth the night before, rasped over her knuckles, back and forth, making the journey down the shallow valleys and up the low hills slow and hypnotic.

Shay felt the touch everywhere. Feathering along the groove of her spine, ghosting over her tight, tingling nipples, teasing the tender insides of her thighs. Her body was melting, and if something didn’t happen soon he’d have to scoop her out of the chair with a spoon. “Jay,” she whispered. It almost sounded like a whimper.

“We could try sleeping, I suppose,” he mused. “But we should probably be realistic about our chances of ‘nothing more.’”

Who wanted to be realistic? Who wanted to calculate odds? Not Shay. She only wanted him and this time, this time out of her normal world, her usual ordered, good-girl, scandal-averse existence.

Rising to her feet, she turned her hand to clasp his. To tug him up, too. “Let’s go to my room.”

It was near dark inside the space that seemed dominated by the bed. The only illumination came from the glow of the night-light in the attached bathroom. They halted just inside the entry door and Jay cupped her face in his warm hand before lowering his head.

At the touch of his mouth, she jerked, her body moving into his of its own accord. His other arm curled about her hips, keeping her against him and the hardness that pressed into her belly.

She shivered, and he murmured something soothing as his lips feathered over her cheek, down her neck, before returning to her mouth. This time, the kiss went from gentle to greedy. Shay made a low sound in her throat and stood on tiptoe to get closer to him.

He made an approving noise and then swung her into his arms and strode with her to the bed.

What happened next was hot and sweet. He was a tender lover, and gentle, despite the size of his hands and the strength of his body. She supposed he was holding back—a man like him would have ravenous appetites, yes?—but that was all right with Shay, because she was holding back, too.

It felt as if they were encased in a fantasy and she didn’t want to pop its soap-bubble exterior by holding too tight or crying out too loud. With slow, patient touches, he rolled her up and over the orgasm, and when he followed, he buried his face in her neck, his big body shaking against hers.

They drifted to sleep without words.

In the gray light of early morning, they came awake to the sound of car engines revving. Shay gathered the covers close around her shoulders as his eyes opened and he looked at her from the other pillow. “Sounds like the roads have reopened,” she said, her voice quiet.

He ran a hand through his hair, and she remembered the cool, thick softness of it as she’d held his head to her breast the night before. Her nipples sprang to life against the cotton sheet and her face heated, but she didn’t make a move and hoped he didn’t sense her kindling desire.

Their time out of time was over.

He sat up, the sheet pooling at his hips. Through the screen of her lashes, she ran her gaze over the ripples of his chest and abs and stifled a sigh. She’d had her night with all that muscle and skin. It was time to let it go.

Let him go.

He took a shower and while he was occupied she rose from bed and wrapped herself in her robe. When he emerged fully dressed from the bathroom, she was standing at the window, staring into the street and the cars that were cruising by.

The world moving again. Moving on.

He stood close behind her, not touching. “Well,” he said. “Thanks for sharing your evening with me.”

“You’re welcome.” Shay refused to let herself look at his handsome face.

“And your bed,” Jay went on. “I think I owe you for sharing that with me, too.”

Melancholy tried tugging at her, but Shay refused to give in to its grasp. “Maybe someday I’ll demand payment,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Have you lift a hammer or something at our family cabins.”

“Sure,” he said, then he swept her hair off the back of her neck and pressed his lips there in an obvious farewell. “You name the time, Birthday Girl.”