I stared into his glittering eyes.

Then my mouth whispered, “Your job is pretty intense, Slim.”

He stared into my eyes. Then the sparks disappeared, the warmth invaded and he rolled to his side, back to the back of the couch, taking me with him, his arms tight around me, his legs tangling with mine.

“Yeah, baby, it is. And it can f**k with your head. That’s why when I met a woman whose house always smells like there’s a cake in the oven, who holds tight and presses her tits to my back when she’s with me on my bike, who looks at me like I can make the rest of the world melt away and for her its only me, I know I wanna hold onto that woman.”

To those sensational, warm gushiness inducing words, I blurted, “It’s in my belly.”

I watched him do a slow blink before he asked, “What?”

“It’s tight, a poisonous snake curled up tight. It can get really small, so small, I forget it’s there. But when it uncurls, it swells and gets so big it fills me up, crawls up my throat, so deep up my throat, Brock, sometimes I think it’s going to choke me and, when it starts uncurling, I’m always terrified it’s gonna strike.”

One of his hands slid up into my hair and the skin around his eyes got soft before he whispered, “What he left you?”

“Yeah,” I whispered back.

I watched him lift his chin as his fingers sifted into my hair against my scalp and then he shoved my face in his throat.

And when he spoke again, his voice was thick, thick in a way I knew what that meant, thick in a way I knew what it meant to me and I pushed closer to his long, lean body as he asked, “You gonna work that shit out?”

“I…” His hand tensed on my head and my fingers curled into his tee before I whispered,

“Yeah.”

“You gonna let me help?”

I closed my eyes.

Then I repeated my whispered, “Yeah.”

His arms got tight, drawing me close and I held on.

“You scared, baby?” he asked.

I didn’t repeat my “yeah”, I just nodded.

His arms got tighter and his voice got thicker as I felt his neck bend and his lips say against my hair, “Don’t be. There’s a wild that’s f**ked and there’s a wild that’s just, plain wild. You just hooked yourself to a different kind of wild, Tess, and I swear, baby, swear, ”

his arms squeezed before he finished, “I’ll show you that’s a good, safe place to be.”

I sighed deep and I did this because I believed him.

Then I whispered, “Okay.”

Brock had no response. He just held tight. He did this for a long time. Long enough for me to relax in his arms. Long enough for my fingers to uncurl and then settle flat on his warm, hard chest. Long enough for me to realize that cosmopolitans on a back deck at a really bad baby shower with girls who were good to the core and wanted the best for me didn’t shed even a little light on what I had on that couch in that moment. The only people who knew what was happening there were Brock and me.

And after that time went by, he pushed up, grabbed his beer then settled with his back to the couch, his head to my toss pillows at the armrest, me mostly on his body, his beer in his hand resting on his chest and when I lifted my head to look at him, I saw his quicksilver eyes on me.

Then he muttered, “All right, babe, now tell me about Kentucky.”

I bit my lip.

Brock grinned.

I quit biting my lip and grinned back.

Then I whispered, “I have to take my contacts out and get my glasses.”

His eyes went warm and his mouth got soft as his arm around me loosened and he whispered back, “All right, darlin’, I’ll be right here.”

That made me grin again.

Then I jumped up to take out my contacts and get my glasses.

Chapter Six

Drawback Cancelled

“Fuck,” I heard muttered and my eyes drifted open to see Brock’s tee-covered chest.

We were still tangled together on the couch. Apparently we fell asleep there because early morning sun was shining through the blinds.

I also knew that it was morning because I could hear Fiona Apple singing “Fast as You Can” coming from my bedroom and I knew my alarm had gone off.

“Damn,” I mumbled, shifting and preparing to push up, getting a knee underneath me and a hand in the cushion when suddenly two strong arms locked around me, I found my soft body colliding with Brock’s hard one, his hand slid up into my hair and it guided my mouth to his.

Then he kissed me, long, sweet, deep and wet.

My toes curled, my belly got warm and my body melted into his as one of my hands slid up his neck into his hair curling around the back and holding on.

When he broke the kiss, my head lifted away an inch, my eyes lazily opened and I heard Fiona Apple was getting way louder (and I didn’t care).

“You passed out before we got to the fun stuff, babe,” Brock informed me in a deep, sexy, sleepy, rough whisper.

“I did?” I asked.

“Yeah,” I watched his mouth grin, “right in the middle of talkin’ you just faded away.”

Crap.

How embarrassing.

I stared in his sexy, sleepy eyes and bit my lip.

Brock’s eyes dropped to my mouth.

Then I found myself on my back in the couch, Brock on top and he was kissing me again, longer, sweeter, deeper, wetter and he added some pretty freaking great hand action.

Mm. It felt nice waking up this way.

Fiona quit singing “Fast as You Can” and “Get Gone” started sounding loud from my adamant alarm clock that was a fancy one where you could shove in an MP3 and it woke you soft and nice with music you liked but the longer you let it play, the louder it got.

And we’d let it play for a long time and Fiona’s changing tempo in “Get Gone” from sweet and melodious to pissed off and pounding was filling the house so much even Brock’s fantastic kisses couldn’t block it out.

Clearly mine couldn’t block it out for Brock either since his mouth broke from mine and he muttered, “Fuck, babe, sorry but I gotta turn that shit off.”

“Fiona Apple isn’t shit,” I told him, he gave me a look then knifed off me and prowled to my bedroom.

I watched his ass as he went thinking it would not be good if that look meant he didn’t like Fiona because I loved Fiona. It wasn’t like I played her twenty-four, seven but she got a lot of airtime in Tess O’Hara’s house.