CHAPTER TWELVE
“You think he’s ever going to show?” Jenna said, as she leaned over the pool table and missed a shot that a one-armed, blind man could have easily made.
Reluctantly, Quinn pulled his gaze off the curve of her ass and went around the table to make his shot. The holstered gun hidden under the shirt that Boomer had lent him dug into his abdomen as he leaned over. “Relax. The Mustang is parked out front. Give him a chance to know we’re here.”
He made that shot. And the next and the next, clearing the table despite the torn felt in front of the corner pocket he’d chosen.
Jenna racked the balls Quinn rolled down to her. “It’s been three hours. I can only play pool and fake-drink for so long. The poor potted plant is looking drunk.”
Quinn smiled. “I was wondering where you were putting it all.”
“What about you?”
“The floor drain. I’m switching to beer next. I hate wasting whiskey, even if it’s cheap enough to strip paint.”
Jenna broke without sinking any balls. Panic lay in shallow furrows at the bottom of his belly. These games were supposed to be practice for the real deal. At this rate, they’d never get the drug samples from Moose.
And Moose would be buying her a drink. Alone.
“You okay?” he asked.
Quinn lined up on the nine ball and shot it into the side pocket. And scratched. Holy hell. They were so screwed. How did he ever let Jenna talk him and the rest of the task force into such a screwed-up plan?
He straightened as she came around the table and leaned against the side. “Are you?”
No point in bullshitting her. “I don’t know. A part of me wants to nail these bastards. Another part says Kurt’s dead and there’s nothing anyone can do to bring him back. Or make that better.”
“It’s gonna work out. It has to. We’re in this together.”
“That’s what worries me. There’s no reason for you to put yourself in danger.”
“And there’s a reason for you to be at risk?”
“That’s different.” He didn’t know how. He didn’t think he was being chauvinistic. He didn’t have an issue with women being in the military, or even combat, if that’s how they rolled. But this, with Jenna, was different.
“How?” She laid her cue down and boosted herself up onto the table, tugged the hem of her dress down to her knees, and crossed her boots at the ankle. She wasn’t going anywhere until she got an answer. A real answer.
He traced one of the inlaid diamond sights with his finger and finally said, “You matter. You found a way to help wild mustangs and veterans. You have a list of veterans who are waiting for the chance for you to help them. You have all these people in your life who depend on you, who love you. Friends. Family. The world is a better place with you in it.”
She picked up his hand and traced the ridges, the valleys, the vessels on the back of his hand. She swallowed hard. When she met his gaze, her eyes were soft, sympathetic. “Even if that’s all true. That doesn’t make you expendable. Your CO—”
“Can replace me next week.”
“Your friends—”
“Are dead.”
Her mouth tightened. “Your family—”
“Is ashamed of me.”
She socked him in the shoulder, her knuckle hitting a nerve. “Ow! What the—”
“Quinn Powell, you matter, too. To me.”
The words made his chest tight. He would have told her that she was wrong, but he wasn’t up for an argument. He shook his arm until the sting abated, then stepped between her legs, resting his hands on her hips. “Show me.”
Her eyes narrowed as if she was deciding whether she’d let the subject change slide. “Right here? On the pool table?”
Quinn’s fingertips found bare skin at the back of her dress as he glanced around. A few guys were at one end of the bar, eyes glued to the baseball game. The conversations and the jukebox were quiet. “Might liven this place up.”
Moose bulldozed his way through the front door dragging a couple of baby-sized moose in his wake.
“Looks like that won’t be necessary.” Jenna nudged him away and hopped down. “Showtime.”
“Where you going?”
“Ladies’ room, to freshen up. I’ll be right back.”
* * * *
In the ladies’ room at Cruisers, Jenna stared at her reflection in the mirror above the rust-stained sink. The fluorescent lights flickering overhead sallowed her skin, and highlighted the hollows of her cheeks. She needed to eat more. Not that she’d had much of an appetite lately.
Her stomach growled, though she couldn’t be hungry. She’d been feeding herself a steady supply of doom and gloom all afternoon.
Someone knocked on the door.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
She straightened her dress, readjusted the lace holster around her thigh that Mac had given her to hold the Sig Sauer P938. She pushed her boobs up to make them look perky and readjusted her neckline to show a little more cleavage. Next she put on her game face. This wasn’t a game they could afford to lose.
“Hurry up in there,” a woman said, her fist pounding on the door.
Jenna yanked the door open. “All yours, sweetheart.”
The heels of Jenna’s boots tapped on the concrete as she sauntered back into the bar, injecting an extra little sway in her hips for good measure.
Over by the pool table, Moose handed Quinn a shot of whiskey. Quinn tossed that one back, not wasting a drop on the drain.
Quinn greeted her with, “You owe our friend a game of pool.”
Moose’s face sported assorted bruises and a couple of black eyes. Moose didn’t bother with hello; instead he handed her a shot and said, “Rack ’em up.”
Like Quinn, Jenna threw the whiskey to the back of her throat. Her gut gave the liquor a turbulent toss, and she prayed it wouldn’t come back to haunt her. “Best of five?”
“One game.” Moose rubbed chalk on the end of his cue. “You win, you get the samples. I win, I get you.”
Quinn made a sound at the back of his throat, the kind a wolf does over a fresh kill.
Moose flicked a glance at Quinn. When Moose looked back, his smile went feral. “For a drink.”
Quinn racked the balls with as much enthusiasm as a member of a chain gang headed to the rock quarry.
“I’ll break.” Moose didn’t even feign courtesy this time.
His mini-moose sat at a table in the middle of the bar. One eye on them, one on the television. Neither of them had a drink. They weren’t here for fun.
All the ligaments in her knees went weak. Jenna leaned on her cue against the side of the table. Don’t look at Quinn. Don’t look at Quinn. Don’t look at Quinn. If she did, if she saw any doubt, any fear in his eyes, she’d lose it.
The cue ball shot across the green felt, and a blur of white and primary colors exploded across the table. Moose sank two balls, and Jenna tasted the whiskey again. She swallowed it back down, her throat burning, her eyes stinging. Moose tapped another ball into the corner pocket. Her mouth went dry, and Jenna heard a snap. She fell against the table as her cue gave way.
“Here,” Quinn said, quick to hand her his. “Use mine.”
She dried her hands on the front of her dress. Moose didn’t notice how nervous she was. He also didn’t make the next shot.
Her turn, and like earlier with Quinn, she missed an easy shot. Moose drained two more before it was her turn again. Quinn touched a hand to her back. Strong and steady and stable.
She missed the next shot. The seeds of dread lining her stomach germinated.
Quinn’s touch might have given her strength, but it certainly didn’t give her any skill. She chanced a look at him. He sat on a bar stool, his back against the wall, her cracked cue in his hands. She’d expected to see concern, with perhaps a healthy dose of fear mixed in. But with a wink, he mouthed, “You got this.”
You got this. The tension in her chest eased.
“You’re up,” Moose said.
What she’d been doing clearly wasn’t working, so Jenna scanned the table for the most difficult shot. If she made that shot, she could make them all. Jenna calculated angles in her head, trajectories and forces. Finally, she lined up on the cue ball.
Quinn was in the background of her field of vision. She shifted focus to him, and he smiled, like he read her thoughts, knew her strategy. He nodded once, almost imperceptible.
Taking a deep breath, she focused on the sweet spot of the ball and struck it. It bounced off the side cushion, hit the end, then bounced to the other side, hitting one of Moose’s balls, which tapped hers near the corner pocket. She’d miscalculated the force needed, and her ball was going to fall short of the corner pocket by about an inch. Then, as if in slow motion, the ball hit the frayed felt and rolled into the dip, gathering just enough momentum to sink it into the pocket.
“Whoo!” Jenna hollered.
Quinn double-dimple grinned.
Moose eyed her, his confidence still in place. She had a lot more balls to sink if she stood any chance of winning.
Jenna went around the table, keeping to her strategy of hitting the most difficult shots first. Building her confidence, her momentum, and crushing Moose’s. Finally, she whittled down to the eight ball. She’d sunk much harder shots in the last ten minutes, but this shot held a good likelihood of scratching.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Moose said.
Jenna stopped her cue mid-stroke. “What kind of deal?”
“I give you the samples.”
“And in return?”
“A drink with you.” He looked at Quinn and said, “At the bar.” That Quinn wasn’t invited didn’t need saying. But at least it was in public.
“Afraid you’re going to lose?” Jenna asked.
Moose shrugged. “It’s a way for both of us to win.”
Jenna glanced at Quinn. He raised one hand as if saying “your call.”
She searched for the loophole, tried to calculate all the ways this deal could go tits up. But aside from having to spend a few minutes having a drink with Moose, she was having trouble seeing the downside.
Reaching across the table, she handed Moose the eight ball. “I’ll have a Scotch and soda.”
When Quinn stood, Moose handed him his cue. “You can wait here.”
Quinn said, “Sure,” but in her head, it sounded more like “fuck you.”
Either Moose didn’t notice the tone, or he didn’t care; either way, he led her to the bar, his hand low at the base of her spine.
She stopped. “Buying me a drink doesn’t mean you can put your hands on me.”
His expression was unreadable as he considered what she’d said, his hand now at her hip. The reality was, this man pretty much did whatever he wanted. She and Quinn could try to stop him, but they were outnumbered, and Quinn still wasn’t a hundred percent from the brawl. But she also knew that if she didn’t stand up to Moose now, in whatever dealings they were to have in the future, her hesitation might make him more likely to take advantage.
He dropped his hand and Jenna continued walking.
She took the first available seat. He took the one next to her and glared at the man on the other side of her until the man took his drink to a table.
“Corona,” Moose said. “And a Scotch and soda.”
Sweat pricked out along her hairline. “Why are we here?”
“For a drink.”
“What’s the point? It costs you money. I drink your booze. I go back to my guy.”
“For now.”
“No. For always.” She said it like it was true and not a mere dream. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? A dream?
Some dreams come true.
Which was awful hard to consider when you were sipping Scotch and soda with a lieutenant of one of the most notorious Mexican cartels.
“Besides,” he said. “I have plenty of money.”
“Which I’m sure also means plenty of women. So, what do you want with me?”
The barman delivered the drinks. Moose twirled the frosty bottle in his hand, caught the corner of the label with his thumbnail, and took a long tug. “You’re not like other women.”
She didn’t know quite what to make of that. What she did know, was that she had the perfect opportunity to find out more about Kurt. She didn’t want to blow it. Her stomach rolled, and she gripped her glass tight to keep her hand from shaking. Here goes nothing. “Did you kill Kurt?”
He didn’t react. No surprise, no vehement denial. He took another sip of his beer. Maybe he didn’t remember who Kurt was.
She bobbed her chin toward the side of the bar where the parking lot lay. “The guy with the Mustang.”
“I know who Kurt was.”
“Doesn’t matter to me, mind you. Makes our cut bigger. But it matters to him.” She didn’t have to say who “him” was. “Better he knows up front than he finds out later.”
After a long pause, Moose said, “You wearing a wire?”
Thank you, Quinn. Jenna pulled one edge of her neckline over, then the other, then stood and gave him a slow spin. Her dress fit her form. Any wires would be visible. “Nowhere to hide one.”
That must have satisfied him, because he said, “Why do you think he was killed and didn’t die from an overdose?”
“A hunch,” she said. “Kurt rubbed some people the wrong way. Not a stretch that he’d push someone to their limit.”
Moose took another long sip of his beer, staring at Quinn’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “Wasn’t me.”
Jenna believed him.
Which surprised her more than the fact that he didn’t do it.
He hadn’t looked her in the eye and tried to convince her he wasn’t responsible. He was also completely relaxed. But he also didn’t deny that Kurt had been killed. He’d only denied that it wasn’t him that had done it.
“You’re a smart woman,” he said. “Smart enough to know that your boy will always be a small fish. Ditch him.”
“I prefer minnows to sharks.”
He gave her a toothy, great white grin and downed the last of his beer. Reaching into his pocket, he slapped a folded twenty on the bar and slid it over to her, a paper clip holding it together. “Then don’t be surprised when you’re swallowed whole.”
Moose got up and waved a hand at his boys. They jumped up and swam in his wake out the front door. Quinn was at her side before the door closed.
“You okay?” he asked. Concern and irritation and relief rolled off of him in hot waves.
She palmed the twenty, put it in her lap, and removed the paper clip. Three tiny sample baggies dropped out. The breath whooshed out of her lungs. This was all so real.
Quinn laid his hand over hers, trapping the samples between their hands, and linked their fingers. Jenna left the twenty on the bar to cover the drinks, and they left.
Even though they’d been given permission by the drug task force to take possession of the drugs, the good little girl in Jenna was freaking the heck out. She had samples. Of drugs. In her hand.
She glanced around the parking lot. Cop cars didn’t come zooming around the corner, sirens blaring. In fact, the lot was almost empty, and no one was on the street. No cars passed.
At the Mustang, Quinn slipped the drugs into his front pocket and held the passenger door open for her. After he climbed in, she said, “Holy moly. That was messed up.”
That got a tense chuckle out of Quinn.
She fumbled with her seat belt, and he reached across and buckled it for her, since she’d temporarily run out of properly working brain cells and couldn’t manage it herself.
“You were amazing,” Quinn said.
“I almost lost that game.”
“You almost won it, too.”
“I don’t want to be left alone with him again.”
“He creep you out?”
“No,” Jenna said. “That’s what was so creepy. If you ignore the fact that he’s the size of the Incredible Hulk, and part of a drug cartel, he’s a borderline regular guy, but when I asked him if he’d killed Kurt—”
“Whoa, back that shit up. You asked him if he killed Kurt? Are you fucking nuts?” His voice rose, grating like a revving engine about to throw a bearing.
She blew out a long breath, wiped the cold sweat from her brow. What had she been thinking? Was she crazy? Or temporarily insane? “He knew we knew Kurt. Knew he was dead. I thought I’d push that elephant off the table. Told him it didn’t matter to me, but it would to you.”
“Jesus Christ.” Quinn glanced all around them as if expecting the whole cartel to come gunning for them. Still no one on the street. Cartel or otherwise. “Well, what did he say?”
“He said it wasn’t him.” She unknotted her hands in her lap. “I believed him. But I think he knows who killed him.”
“What else did he say?”
“Basically, that I should dump you and be with him. Apparently, he has money.”
“Should we go back to the ranch and pack your bags?”
She shrugged. “Maybe in the morning.” She glanced at his lips, then back up to his eyes. “We’ve got some things we need to do tonight.”
His eyes brightened. And she knew where his mind had gone. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. We’ve got a hot date with a hooker.”
* * * *
On their way to meet up with Agent Soto, Quinn eyed his rearview mirror with great frequency, making sure no one followed. He took side roads, and backtracked, and only when he was certain they were alone did he dare drive to the address St. John had given them.
“You sure this is the right place?” Jenna asked as they pulled into the vacant parking lot of a convenience store that had gone out of business.
“This is the right address.”
If the other side of the tracks had an other side of the tracks, this area would be it. The occasional car drove by. Some fast, like they’d realized they were in a bad part of town and wanted to zip out of there lickety-split. Others drove by slower as if they were looking for something. Drugs? Hookers? A few blocks up, a group of three people hung out at the corner. One of the few corners that had a working streetlight.
Near the corner, a tricked-out lowrider, windows down and music blaring, pulled out of a motel where a dilapidated sign boasted that the establishment had cable TV and room rates listed by the hour. The car stopped at the corner, and someone leaned against the passenger door and exchanged something through the open window.
“Did we just see a drug deal go down?” Jenna whispered.
“I think so. And you don’t have to whisper. They can’t hear you.”
“I know,” she said a little louder, but not by much. “Wait, look.”
She pointed as the lowrider stopped at the corner opposite them and Agent Soto slipped out of the car. The man driving yelled at her through the window, but his words were lost under the deep bass vibrating the Mustang’s windows.
Soto shot the driver the finger with both barrels, and the car sped off in a cloud of smoke and burning rubber. Soto yelled, “Asshole!” as a parting shot as the driver screeched around the next corner.
“I think that’s our cue,” Quinn said. He started the engine and pulled up to the corner until Jenna’s window was next to Soto.
Soto wore the same outfit from earlier that afternoon. She rested her forearms on the window and leaned in.
“Who was that?” Jenna asked.
“My pimp.”
Pimp? Guess they had to make that undercover stuff look real. Jenna made a choking noise, and Quinn wondered if she’d swallowed her tongue.
“Agent Washington, to the rest of the world. How’d it go?”
Difficult to say “good,” so Quinn settled on, “Got the samples.” He started to reach into his pocket, and Soto waved him off.
“You can give them to me at the hotel. I’ll debrief you there.” She opened the door and squeezed into the back. Quite the feat in a two-door car. Soto pointed to the motel a few blocks up.
Quinn chuckled. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Gotta make it look real,” Soto said.
“Anyone going to believe Quinn picked you up with me in the car?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Soto laughed. “You’d be surprised. The girlfriend, the wife, wanting to fulfill her man’s fantasies. Happens all the time.”
“Eww,” Jenna said.
“Hmm, that’s not such a bad—”
Jenna bopped Quinn on the arm. But there was a smile on her face.
“Aw, c’mon, babe.” Quinn laid on the country-twang accent as thick and smooth as creamy peanut butter. “Don’tcha wanna make my wildest dreams come true?”
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” Soto was quick to add.
Jenna waved her hand toward the motel. “You, drive. And you”—Jenna glanced over her shoulder at Agent Soto in the middle seat—“don’t encourage him.”
As instructed, Quinn parked in front of the end room of the motel near a couple of older pickup trucks and a newer BMW. Apparently the establishment catered to all kinds of clients.
Quinn got out and helped Agent Soto out of the backseat. She looped her arm around his and went up on her tippy toes to lay a sloppy, wet one on him, tongue and all, laughing and grinning at him like he was the love child of Idris Elba and Michael Bloomberg.
His face went slack, and Soto said, “Work with me here.”
Quinn’s focus snapped back and he leaned down and kissed her, snagging Jenna by the arm as she walked by. Together the three of them stumbled into the motel room. As soon as the door closed, Soto peeled herself off of him and double-checked that the curtains weren’t gapped.
One of the bedside table lights was on. Soto went around and turned on the other one, as well as the fluorescent in front of the sink and mirror.
“Have a seat,” she instructed Quinn and Jenna, indicating the two-top table in front of the window.
Soto sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress sagged and groaned even though she maxed out at a buck-twenty, tops.
“Nice place you got here,” Jenna said. “Eighties retro floral. Unexpected, but a nice touch.”
Soto was careful not to touch the bedspread with her hands. “Not sure if it’s been washed since they bought it. I hope you two are current on your shots.”
“Anybody else coming?” Jenna asked.
“No. For now, all contact with the task force will be through me. Call or text anytime. But we don’t want you going into the sheriff’s office until we give you the okay. We don’t want to take a chance on someone seeing you there.” Soto held out her hand. “Samples?”
Quinn gladly forked them over. Soto examined the three bags. “Looks like heroin, coke, and crystal meth. I’ll run these to the lab.”
“Will you be able to tell if the heroin was from the same supply that was found in Kurt?”
“Possibly. But it still won’t tell us if his death was accidental, intentional, or murder.”
“Murder,” Jenna said, her tone leaving no doubt that she believed it.
“Jenna?” Soto drew the word out the same way dog owners did when asking the dog with the stuffing coming out of its mouth who’d chewed up the couch.
With guilty, puppy-dog eyes, Jenna glanced over at Quinn.
“Tell her,” he said.
She dug at the piece of fake-wood, plastic-laminate peeling up from the edge of the table and blew out a breath. “I asked Moose if he’d killed Kurt.”
Soto didn’t yell or scream or tell Jenna what a dumbass move that was. She digested Jenna’s answer, her fingers toying with oversized gold hoops dangling from her ears. Then she nodded her head as if she’d come to some internal consensus. “Okay, well, not how I would have approached it.” Soto’s eyes locked on Jenna. “At all. But you can’t take it back now. What did he say?”
“Only that it wasn’t him.”
“What’s your gut tell you? You believe him?”
“Yeah,” Jenna said. “I do. I’m not an expert at these things, but after spending so much time with the horses, you learn to read body language. Humans aren’t so different.”
“So, now what?” Quinn asked.
“Wait for the lab results. Stay away from anywhere you might run into Moose for the time being. The task force will be working on strategies in the meantime.”
Quinn and Jenna left, the car ride home quiet as they both processed everything that had happened that day. He pulled under the Lazy S’s arch and eased the Mustang down the dirt road so the shocks wouldn’t shake his spleen loose.
The day had been long and stressful, but the low-level buzz of adrenaline in his veins left him awake and a little twitchy. As they approached the big house, Quinn asked, “Want to stop by my cabin for a drink? I found a bottle of whiskey hidden in the top cupboard in Kurt’s cabin. Unopened.”
Jenna scrunched up her face. “Not sure if that’s bad or good. Knowing he’d bought it or knowing he hadn’t had the chance to drink it.”
“Or he could have decided he wasn’t going to drink it. We don’t know. No sense in beating yourself up about it. He was a grown man. He had problems, but he was still responsible for his own actions. That isn’t on you. You were the program director, not his keeper.”
“Yeah,” she said at last.
“Yeah, you believe me? Or yeah, you want a drink?”
“Both, I guess.”
They pulled in at the cabin, his headlights sweeping over Sidney as she walked up the road.
They climbed out, then sat on the top step of the porch waiting for her to reach them.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Okay,” Jenna said. “Got the drug samples, now we have to wait for the testing.”
“Good.” Sidney didn’t act like she was thinking of leaving anytime soon.
Quinn liked her—she was a nice person and a terrific horse trainer—but right then, he wanted a glass of whiskey that he didn’t have to pour down a drain or pretend to drink. And he wanted to do that alone.
Well, alone…with Jenna.
“Something you needed?” Quinn finally asked.
“Yeah, well, Boomer and I have decided we don’t want Pepita riding the bus for the time being. The idea of El Verdugo being back in the area has her a bit freaked out, though she tries to act like it doesn’t. I don’t expect there’ll be a problem, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Sure,” Jenna said. “What can we do to help?”
“Tomorrow, she’s supposed to go to her friend Tarkin’s house after school to work on a project. His mom is picking them up, but I need someone to pick Pepita up afterward. I’ve got that 4-H class I have to teach in Alpine that night, and Boomer is tied up, as well.”
“I’ll pick her up, no problem.”
“You sure? I’d ask Mac, but she’s still not feeling well.”
A quick smile flashed across Jenna’s face before she managed to hide it.
“I’m sure.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll leave you two to it.”
They said their good-byes, and Quinn helped Jenna to her feet. The cabin was stuffy from being closed up all day. Jenna went for the windows and Quinn went straight for the booze. He pulled down two coffee mugs and poured a couple of fingers in each. Glenfiddich. At least if Kurt had been going to drink, it would have been the good stuff.
“Out there.” He bobbed his chin toward the door. “What was that smile all about?”
“What smile?” Jenna boosted herself up onto the counter, and he handed her a mug.
“The one where Sidney told you that Mac wasn’t feeling well and you smiled. Don’t deny it. You secretly have it in for her?” he teased.
“No, nothing like that. Mac’s fantastic and p—”
Quinn nudged her knees open with his hip and stepped between them. “Spit it out.”
She tossed back a mouthful of whiskey. Coughed. Sputtered. “Wow.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “What is that stuff, five hundred proof?”
“Close enough.” Quinn took the mug from her hand. “Stop procrastinating. Mac’s amazing and…?”
“Pregnant.”
“Wow, no shit? What does your dad think?”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
“Not something you can hide forever.”
“That’s what I told her. She’s just trying to wrap her head around the idea first. At least that’s the line she fed me.”
He stared at Jenna’s hand that she’d unconsciously laid across her abdomen when she’d said “pregnant.” He put his hand on top of hers. And for the first time in his life, wondered what it would feel like to know his baby was growing inside the body of the woman whom he loved. What it would feel like to watch her belly grow, to feel his baby kick against his hand…
He shook the thought off and set his mug down next to hers. As tasty as the whiskey would be, a drink wasn’t really what he wanted.
“You didn’t ask me in for a drink, did you?”
He laid his hands on her knees, her skin soft and warm. All he wanted to do was run his hands up her thighs and see what treasures he would find. “I’m not much of a drinker anymore. That whole twelve-hours-from-bottle-to-throttle thing. It became easier not to drink, than worry if I was okay to fly.”
“You haven’t flown in a long time.”
“Saw no reason to pick it up. I’ve had physical therapy to concentrate on. I didn’t have time to drink, or waste being hungover.”
He slid his hands farther up her legs, his thumb brushing against something lacy around mid-thigh. He eased a fingertip underneath and tugged. “What’s this?”
“Lace holster Mac let me borrow.”
He brushed his hand over the lace, over the micro-compact Sig held neatly between her thighs. He hissed in a breath, his erection stress-testing his zipper. “That’s fucking hot as hell.”
She smiled. “You like that? I didn’t have anywhere else to put it. I didn’t want to bring a purse.”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning forward and nipping at her bottom lip. “I like it. A lot.” He pulled back a step and looked her up and down. Her high-heeled cowgirl boots weren’t half-bad, either. “Speaking of fantasies…”
Jenna laughed, the low, throaty sound full of amused wariness. “This ought to be good.”
“You and me, those boots, that lacy thigh holster—and nothing else.”
“Soto might get jealous if you don’t ask her along, too. I’m sure she would wear her gun if you were a good boy and asked nicely.”
“I don’t want Soto. I want you.”
“She’s got a nice ass, and boobs that—”
He shut her up with a kiss. He didn’t want Soto’s ass or her boobs or anything else of hers. All he wanted, and all he’d wanted for a very long time, sat right there in front of him.
He planted his hands on her ass and scooted her up against him, the end of the gun nudging up against his hip. As sexy as that was, he wasn’t stupid enough to take chances with a loaded weapon.
“I think I need to take care of this first.” He drew up the hem of her dress until he’d exposed the holster, the gun, and her slender, muscular thigh. Then all he could think about was having those strong legs wrapped around him. He put his fingers on the butt of the gun, and the back of his hand brushed against the crotch of her panties. “May I?”
Jenna held onto the edge of the counter, and her knuckles went white, her breath quick and shallow. “Yeah.” Her voice cracked. “Go ahead.”
He held the bottom row of lace, made sure the safety was engaged, and pulled the gun free, setting it on the counter on the other side of the sink. She didn’t bother smoothing her dress down, which suited him. He resettled against the counter, hitching her legs up over his hips. She locked her boots behind his back.
His hands slid up her thighs, up, up, up, past the lacy holster, up until his fingers came to rest at the top of her thighs, his thumbs stroking the silky edge of her panties. She moaned in the back of her throat, and her head fell back against the cabinet. All he wanted was to rip her panties off, pull his jeans down, and bury himself to the hilt. But he wanted better than that for her.
Especially for her first time.
“You’re a virgin, but you said you hadn’t been in a nunnery, either.” He leaned in and whispered in her ear, “So, tell me, not-Sister Jenna, what have you done?”
He pulled back. Her irises went two shades darker, and her cheeks flushed a sexy shade of red. “I…um…well, you know…”
Brushing his lips against hers, he said, “No, I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”
He continued the light, teasing strokes with his thumbs. The heat, the dampness spread. “You’re so freaking amazing.” He reached down and adjusted himself, taking her hand and pressing it up against him. “Feel what you do to me.”
Her touch was tentative, as if she was afraid she’d hurt him.
“Have you ever felt an erection before?”
“Well, yeah, of course.” But she didn’t look him in the eye when she said it. She traced the outline of him through his jeans, and he lightly leaned into the touch.
“With your hand?” he asked.
“No.”
He guided her hand until she cupped his balls, her touch so light through the fabric it almost had him slobbering like a rabid dog. He swallowed hard and pulled her hand away.
“Hey, I wasn’t finished.”
A strangled chuckle escaped him. “I will be if I let you keep that up.”
He kissed her again, his tongue driving into hers, exploring, exciting, excruciating. With his finger, he traced the vessel on the side of her neck, loved the thrum of her pulse as he deepened the kiss. He drew a line with his other hand from the hollow at the base of her neck down her chest to the scoop at the front of her dress. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
Holy hell.
If he’d realized that earlier, they might never have made it to the bar.
Exploring the skin beneath his finger, he kissed the swell of her breast, edged a thumb across a nipple until it peaked. “How about that? Has anyone ever done that?”
“Yes.”
He stifled the jealous growl. He had no claim on her. When he’d walked away, he’d left the door wide open. Stupid bastard. He took his hand away.
“That doesn’t mean you have to stop.”
“Oh, darlin’, I’m not stopping. I’m just getting started.”