felt strange for a minute, as if his heart had contracted, briefly depriving him of oxygen. His voice came out husky when he said, “Really. A lot of nonfiction. Mysteries and thrillers, anything random that grabs me.”
She liked mysteries, too. They compared authors, then argued about a few books one of them had loved and the other hated. She suggested an author he hadn’t tried, and he did the same. Eventually, they segued to movies, then music. She swam laps three or four times a week at the high school pool, she told him, and admitted to having been on a youth team and her high school team.
She made a face. “I’m not built to be fast, though.”
His gaze dropped to her breasts, and his blood headed south again. As far as he could see, she was built just right.
They slow danced a couple more times. Lina didn’t seem any more interested in line dancing than he did.
She had a couple more drinks. He finished his pitcher but figured he was still—barely—safe to drive, given how long he’d been working on it.
When the bartender came to offer her another refill, Bran shook his head. Lina scowled at him. “Why’d you do that?”
“Honey, you’re sloshed.”
“I’m not your honey.” She slipped off the stool and wobbled, grabbing it to restore her balance. “Not anyone’s honey.”
He was glad to hear that. “You planning to drive home?”
“Don’t know.”
“You’re not.” He took out his wallet and tossed down enough bills to cover both their drinks. “I can call you a taxi, or drive you home.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How come you’re not shlosh...sloshed, too?”
“I’m bigger than you. I can drink more without getting hit as hard.” When he stood, his head swam, but his balance was okay. He wrapped an arm around her, gratified when hers slipped around his waist and she leaned into him.
“’Kay,” she murmured.
They stepped outside into a too-warm June night. A slap of cold air would have felt good. Bran looked around the now-crowded parking lot in perplexity, unable to remember where he had left his Camaro.
He had keys, he knew he did. He patted his pocket. There they were. Just no car.
The neon sign right across the road from the tavern drew his eye. Motel. Vacancy. The “No” part was turned off. As lodging went, it was pretty basic, but decent as far as he knew. It wasn’t on the sheriff’s department radar for drug dealing or prostitution, at least.
“We should get a room,” he decided.
“No hitting on me. You said.”
“I changed my mind,” he admitted. “But if you just want to sleep, that’s what we’ll do.”
“I changed my mind, too,” she confided in a small, husky voice.
Rocketed to full arousal that easily, he steered her across the road into the motel office, where a bored kid who looked to be barely of legal age swiped Bran’s credit card and asked for a signature.
Bran took the key—yes, a real key—as well as the card with their room number on it and collected Lina from the chair where he’d parked her.
The flight of outside stairs was a challenge, but they made it, Lina giggling as he tried to jam the key in the lock. Hell, he was drunk. Sloshed. Plowed. It worried him that she was, too. Did this qualify as taking advantage of her?
The key finally turned and he pushed the door open. He all but fell in. Lina giggled again.
Oh, yeah, she was drunk.
She closed the door behind them and flipped a switch that turned on lamps on each side of the queen-size bed. Bran stood, doing battle with his conscience.
“Will you kiss me?” Lina asked timidly.
He cleared his throat. “I’d like to kiss you. But Lina... Are you going to be sorry in the morning?”
He waited, suspended in fear that she’d come to her senses now. Of course she would. She wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of woman. But, God, he hoped she wouldn’t change her mind.
Little worried lines formed on her forehead as she scrutinized his face. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“No!” He framed her face in hands that shook with an unfamiliar tremor. “Never.” He hesitated. “I’m a cop, Lina.”
“Oh.” She nibbled uncertainly on her lower lip as her eyes continued to search his. “Do you have, um, you know? A condom? Because I don’t. And I’m not on anything.”
“I do. I have a couple in my wallet.”
Paige had refused to go on the pill or a birth control patch until after the wedding. Didn’t he know how all those hormones made women gain weight? No way was she messing with her body right now! Bran had really hated the necessity of wearing a condom, but right this minute, he didn’t want to think about how he’d have felt if he hadn’t had one.
Lina laid a hand on his shoulder and rose onto tiptoe. “Then I won’t be sorry,” she murmured, and brushed her mouth over his.
The kiss exploded. He drove his fingers into that mass of silky hair, tilting her head until he found the perfect angle. Her arms came around his neck and he closed one hand over her bottom, lifting and pressing her against him. That fast, his hips rocked. He had to have her now.
Their clothes flew. T-shirts first, which caused her to start kissing and stroking his chest. Desperate, he found the catch on her bra and released the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen. He propelled her backward until she came up against the bed, then lifted her and laid her down, his mouth capturing a nipple before her back hit the mattress. He licked and teased until she gripped his head and repeated, “Please, please, please.” And then he suckled. The little noises she made had him groaning and pulling back.
He told her how beautiful she was while he yanked off her boots and peeled tiny panties and stretchy jeans off her curvaceous hips and down those long legs.
For a second, one knee planted on the bed between her thighs, Bran stopped just to look. He had never even imagined a woman as sexy as this one. Her body was both delicate and voluptuous, her lips puffy from his kisses, her eyes heavy-lidded. And then there was that richly colored hair, masses of it spread across the bedspread. The disconcerting idea struck him that she also looked vulnerable. If she hadn’t been drunk, she’d be grabbing for something to cover herself.
He reared back to kick off his shoes and unbutton his jeans. Lucky he’d gone into the tavern unarmed, rare for him. His gun was locked in a safe beneath the driver’s seat of his Camaro. A tavern parking lot wasn’t the best place to leave an expensively restored vintage sports car...but damn...he’d never wanted anything in his life the way he did this woman.
His jeans fit so tightly at the moment, he emptied his pockets onto the dresser top before he cautiously unzipped. Jeans and boxers gone, he pulled
