“Bloody hell,” Jace said. He was throbbing. He was aching. “I reckon I won’t do your back.”
She laughed, and then she winced. “Ow. Yeah. Sorry. How nasty was that?”
“Pretty bloody nasty. Pretty bloody wonderful.”
She put her palm right on his groin. “Oh, yeah. You know what would be even better?”
“You’re joking.”
“Well, no.” She had a hand under his T-shirt, was stroking up his chest. “I love your body. Take this off and let me touch it. I want to feel you.”
He spared a thought for what a gentleman would do, and then he kicked the gentleman to the curb. He had his shirt off in two seconds, and his jeans off two seconds after that. And when she trailed that one good hand up over his chest, circled delicately around a nipple, then brushed her palm over it? He thought he’d lose it right there.
“If you don’t touch me,” he said, “I’m going to die.” He meant it, too.
She didn’t smile, because it hurt. But there was so much satisfaction in those wicked brown eyes when she trailed her hand down the line of hair from his navel, closed her fingers around him, and squeezed just hard enough.
“Remind me to heal up,” she said, “so I can take this in my mouth.”
“Oh, God.” He had his eyes closed, and then he opened them again, because he needed to see her. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me. Be gentle, and you won’t hurt.”
He got a hand around her left thigh and shoved it carefully up, so her legs parted more, and she moaned. He swore, put his right hand flat on the mattress, and pushed inside her.
Hot. Tight. Wet. He held himself off her, both palms flat on the bed and his triceps rigid, shut his eyes again, and breathed. He needed a moment. But she was tightening even more around him, contracting and releasing, and he couldn’t help it. He had to move.
Keeping it slow, keeping it gentle was about the hardest thing he’d ever done. He set his jaw and did it, and still, every stroke took him higher. He wanted to plunge. He wanted to go hard and deep. And he couldn’t.
She was holding still, and he knew why. Moving would hurt. Her chest was rising and falling with her breath, and he asked, “All… right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Oh, that feels good. Oh, that feels…” Her hips were moving just a little. Just enough. “Keep doing that. Just like that. Nice and slow. Please.”
He did. It was torture, and it was bliss. She was rocking, and he was still holding back. He said, “Talk to me. Tell me what you like.”
She said, “I want it… every way. I want you to take me over a chair. Against the wall. On my hands and knees. I want you to hold my head and . . I want to… I want you to tell me. Please, Jace. Tell me.”
So he did. He told her everything he couldn’t do to her now, everything he was going to do to her later. She wanted it dirty? That was good, because he wanted everything there was. And by the time he’d finished telling her, she was gasping, contracting around him, her spasms gripping him hard, and he was swearing again.
Going higher. Going deep.
And, finally… letting go.
Oh, yeah.
Oh.
Yeah.
She said, when he’d rolled to his back and she could talk again, “Pain pills have a… lot to answer for.”
“I reckon,” he said, “that I’ve got the right sister. Bloody hell.” He was out of breath, too.
“Ha. That’s me laughing, except I can’t.”
“Mm. Want another one? Tablet, I mean, because I’m not giving you another orgasm. Not tempting fate like that again.”
“Oh, I think that could be a very bad idea. On both counts. Would you help me get dressed?”
“Yeah. Help you clean up, too. One sec.” He got out of bed, came back with a warm washcloth, cleaned her off with a touch as tender as those words of his hadn’t been, and got her dressed. Which hurt, but her body was definitely relaxed, and it definitely felt better. “And I know,” he said, “I should’ve used a condom. Put it that you drove it out of my head. I’ve never wanted it that badly in my life.”
“Mm. I’m on birth control.” She was sleepy again. “Call it the triumph of hope over experience.”
His low laugh was her answer. “Want breakfast?”
“Yeah. In a little bit. And my… house.” She was falling asleep. “Clothes. Bed. Out of… yours.”
The last thing she heard was, “Out of mine? Yeah, right.”
The next time she woke, she knew she really had to get up. Except she still didn’t, because Jace heard her starting to try, brought her another cup of coffee to replace the cold one she hadn’t gotten to, and brought up her fully charged phone, too. “Breakfast for you in ten minutes,” he promised.
“Can you make it nothing I have to chew?” she asked. When she took a sip of coffee, her jaw hurt. “Eggs?”
“Eggs,” he promised. “Toast soldiers, no crust.”
She didn’t answer him. She was looking at a notification. Six missed calls. She turned the phone around and showed him the screen. “Good thing I already told you.”
Her phone said Paige. “I’d have had to explain,” she said, “that I had a sister. And why she was calling me six times. I never thought.”
“Thought what?”
She was already pushing the button. It had barely rung when she heard the voice she knew better than her own, because it almost was her own, saying, “Paige? Is it you?” on a rush of breath.
“Yes. I’m fine, baby. I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“What happened? I’ve been trying to reach you for so long. For more than twelve hours. I thought at first that I was having a stroke, my head hurt so badly. It took me all night to realize it was you, because it wasn’t as bad as when you got shot. I didn’t know this time. It was like the reception was fuzzy. I finally got a room in the lodge so I could keep calling you. I was just about to start driving to San Francisco, to the airport. I didn’t know what to do.”
All of that had come out in another rush. “Hold on,” Paige said. “I’m OK. But it’s hard to talk a lot.”
“Where are you?” Lily demanded. “Are you in the hospital?”
“No. I’m at the scary neighbor’s. Jace’s. I didn’t have your keys. Your animals are fine,” Paige hurried on. “He checked.”
“I don’t care. What happened to your head? What happened to your voice? You’re mumbling.”
“I got hit on it. On my face some. And I’m all right.”
“Let me talk to him,” Lily said, sounding fierce as a mother bear. “If it hurts. Plus, I don’t want your version. I want the real story. I want the truth. Wait. Does he know about me? Just say I’m your sister, and I got worried about you or something. Tell him he has to tell me the truth, or I’ll know.”
Paige sighed. “He knows about you. He knows you’re you. Here.” She handed the phone to Jace. “She wants to talk to you. Guess this means I don’t get my breakfast.”
“Nah,” he said. “I can talk and cook.” He took the phone and said, “Hi, Lily. I just realized you have the same voice as well. You and your sister have done a fair job on my brain, between you.”
He took the phone and went downstairs, and Tobias went with him. Paige sat back, sighed, listened to the one-sided conversation, Jace’s calm explanations, his low-key rendition of the night’s events. She drank her coffee, looked out the window. And thought.
Jace came back up, eventually, with the phone in one hand and a plate in the other. He set the phone down in Paige’s lap, put the plate down on the bedside table, and said, “I’m going to help Paige sit up, Lily. She needs to eat her breakfast. I’ve put you on speaker.” He told Paige, “She wants to talk to both of us.”
He got a hand behind her back—carefully—and helped pull her upright, and she might have let out a noise. Lily said, “You’re not all right. I knew it.”
“It’s superficial,” Paige said. “Honestly. He’s just babying me. Hang on. I need to eat these eggs.”
“I’m coming back. Is it going to be superficial next time? I’m coming back.”
“But that’s the thing,” Paige said after she’d swallowed her thankfully-not-chewy bite of scrambled egg with spinach and feta. Jace really could cook. That was a good scrambled egg. “If you come back, it’ll be you they hit.”
“Which would be,” Lily said, “the point. As it’s my place and my responsibility. And they won’t anyway. I’ll just sell my land to Brett Hunter. It’s not worth this. The meeting’s tonight. Go tell them I’ll sell, or if you’re hurt too badly to go, have—” She paused. “You slept with him, didn’t you? Tell me you told him you weren’t me first. I don’t want to sleep with him.”
“Still on speaker,” Jace said. His blue eyes were dancing, and there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth that was a grin trying to escape. “And no worries. You’re safe from that horrible fate.”
“I don’t mean that,” Lily said. “Of course I’m safe. I meant, I didn’t want it to be me. Never mind. You’d have to be a twin. You tell him, Paige.”
She didn’t have to. “I knew the woman I was with,” Jace said. “Even if I didn’t know her name. Will that work?”
Lily’s relieved sigh came right over the line. “Yes. Good.”
Paige had, somehow, polished off most of her scrambled eggs during all that. She’d been hungrier than she’d thought. Now, she picked up a lovely buttery toast finger, made with Jace’s wonderful bread, and said, “Selling or not selling doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about. If my head weren’t so fuzzy, I would’ve figured it out quicker, but I kept falling asleep. Also, Jace is distracting.”
He looked at her, that smile lurking again, and she told him, “If you want a woman who doesn’t kiss and tell, don’t pick a twin.”
“Good to know,” he said. “Fortunately, I have confidence in the outcome of my fitness report.”
“I want to know more,” Lily said, “but not while he’s on the phone. For heaven’s sake, Paige.”
“Lily’s the tactful one,” Paige told Jace, and this time, he wasn’t holding the grin back.
“Got that,” he said. “No dramas.”
Paige said, “One second, baby. I’m finishing this breakfast.” When she’d eaten her toast, she said, “OK. Somebody’s vandalized your shop, and they got a few of your chickens killed, too. I’m sorry about that. Jace has a plan for helping us fix it, and I think he’s doing it soon.” She looked at him. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, the smile vanishing. “I am. Supplies arriving today. I’ll get your house and shop kitted out, no worries.”
“Wait,” Lily was saying. “They killed my chickens?”
“Yes,” Paige said. “But I don’t think that’s who hit me. I think that was somebody else. And I’ll tell you why.”