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  Her hands grew restless, gliding down the back of his neck. His shoulders. She twined her fingers into the soft material of his shirt. Frustration settled in her muscles. She didn’t want to have this happen to her. She wanted to be a participant.

  Now it was her turn to unbutton. Jessie pulled away from Cole’s mouth, and their eyes met once more. Her eyes narrowed as he searched her gaze. She impatiently ripped off the top button on his shirt, their eye contact never breaking.

  Jessie made herself slow down. To be seductive. She didn’t want to show him just how desperate she was for him.

  Jessie leaned forward and placed a kiss on his skin as she worked her way down with the buttons. His chest was magnificent, liberal with dark, curling hair and a few jagged scars. She kissed each mark. Cole was all lean muscles and flat stomach from his hard work. She had an image of lazily swinging on that swing outside, sipping iced tea while watching him chop wood.

  She gave him a little of what he’d given her. Touching his skin with first her fingers, then her lips. His muscles flexed and tightened with her caress.

  “I love it when you touch me,” he said. The rawness of his voice making her slick and ready for him.

  The pop and crackle of the fire mirrored her blood. “There,” he said, angling his head toward the area before the fire. “I want to make love to you there.”

  He’d read her mind. “Yes.” Her voice was little more than a sigh.

  “Let me get a blanket.”

  Cole grabbed one of the flannel throws from off the couch and tossed it onto the floor, spreading it wide. He removed his jeans and shoes, and stretched naked on the blanket. An open invitation.

  “Move in front of the fire, Jessie. I want to watch you take off your clothes with the glow of the flames on your skin.”

  She stepped in front of the massive stone fireplace, the warmth heating her naked back. She turned and faced him, loving the heat that entered his eyes when she thrust her breasts forward. She felt sexy and very, very wanted. Cole made her feel that way. Maybe she’d torture him with a slow striptease the way he’d tortured her earlier.

  Jessie tugged at the button at the top of her jeans. Slowly rolled the zipper down, giving him a peek of the pink lacy panties. Yes, she’d chosen girlie pink. After hooking her fingers at the waistband, she rotated her hips to push the jeans lower. Then Jessie wiggled her legs as the material slid down her legs. She kicked them aside, standing before him in only her panties.

  The sheerness of the pink material and the fire rendered those panties see-through. She turned, showing him her back and tugging the lace over her backside.

  “You know what I want. I want to see all of you.”

  She squirmed out of her panties, then turned to face him. He closed his eyes and groaned at the fully naked sight of her.

  “Don’t close your eyes,” she teased.

  A smile tugged at his lips at her turning his own words around on him. Then he met her gaze. And the ache and longing she saw in those depths made her breath catch. She swallowed, all teasing vanished.

  “Come here,” he insisted, as he propped himself up on one arm. Jessie stepped forward and he reached for her. His hand stroked up her calf, sending hot thrills of tension between her legs. She wanted his touch everywhere. She wanted to touch him everywhere.

  She sank to her knees beside him and reached for his cock. Although he’d pleasured her with his mouth, she hadn’t reciprocated. That was about to change.

  “I want to taste you,” she told him. Her hair fell forward as she leaned over his body.

  He groaned as he lay across the blanket. She wanted to tease him. Make him crazy, ready to beg. But tonight wasn’t about the role-playing they’d done in bed before. Tonight was different, for some reason. Her heart was involved. Her mind participated. It wasn’t just her body and her senses.

  She licked her way up the side of his cock. Traced around the soft tip of him with her tongue. Then she took him fully into her mouth. He tensed and groaned below her. Jessie’s whole body focused only on him.

  She wanted to give and give to Cole. She continued to work him with her lips. Her tongue. Her mouth.

  “Jessie, I want you now.” He reached for her shoulders, pulling her up. “Put the condom on me.”

  She grabbed a packet by the hearth, ripping it open with her teeth. With fumbling fingers she stretched the latex down his shaft. Then she straddled him, ready to fill herself.

  But Cole had other ideas. He enfolded her within his arms and gently rolled her onto her back.

  “Look at me.” His voice tight with need.

  Her eyes drifted open. She could look into his gorgeous eyes forever.

  “No games tonight,” he said. “No playacting. Just you and me.”

  She nodded. “Yes. You and me.”

  He entered her then. Slowly slid inside her, and she gasped at the sheer pleasure of this unhurried and deliberate loving.

  He drew himself away, only to thrust back inside.

  She met him this time, drawing him deeper within her body. “Cole, that feels amazing.”

  “Just wait,” he said, his voice strained and very, very sexy.

  Their passion was hot and sweet. She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles behind his back. Wanting to get as close to him as she could. To never let this incredible intimacy end. They were sealed, their gazes locked, their hands together, their bodies joined. “Faster,” she urged.

  His movements slowed, and she almost groaned in frustration.

  “No, you don’t want faster. You want more.” His voice an agonizing promise.

  She wanted more and faster. And she wanted it now. She tried to take the rhythm away from him. His features grew harsh and strained. “Jessie, honey, when you do that, I can’t stay slow.”

  “I don’t want you to be slow.”

  His hips moved and he plunged within her, his thrusts quickening. He was hitting all the right places, and her inner tension built. She gripped him tighter, her orgasm within reach. His fingers slipped between then, and he stroked her clit.

  She came then. Pleasure suffused every muscle. Every bone. His thrusts grew less deliberate. He stroked within her, then tensed. He groaned with his orgasm, the sound so raw and elemental that it almost triggered another orgasm within her.

  He quieted, sucking in deep gulps of air. She did the same.

  Then he spun onto his back, taking her with him. Cole tucked her to his side.

  It was incredible. Unlike any of their sex in the past. Unlike any sex she’d had with anyone else.

  “That was incredible,” he said quietly, above her ear.

  His words mimicked her thoughts. She’d clung to him. It was almost scary. They’d held hands as they made love. They kissed like people who cared about each other. Now she draped herself against his side. Incredible. Yes.

  She nodded as her eyes drifted closed. She was warm from the fire. Sated from Cole. Her eyelids felt so very heavy….

  How long she slept she didn’t know, but she awoke with a start. She was covered by a blanket, but Cole was nowhere around. Jessie stood, awkwardly draping the blanket around her, sarong-style. She had an idea where she’d find him.

  Jessie found him seated on the steps of the porch, deep in thought. She padded barefoot across the planked wood and sat beside him.

  They didn’t speak for several seconds. Just enjoying the night.

  “The stars,” she said, gazing up toward the sky. The first evening stars twinkled above them. Even though the sun hadn’t set, she could already see more stars tonight than at home. Once full night fell, she’d probably be able to spot the Milky Way.

  “You almost forget how many there are when you’re always in the city. I didn’t know how long you’d sleep, but I brought out two cups of coffee. Interested?”

  She nodded, wrapping her fingers around the warm ceramic cup he handed her. He must not have been alone too long. The rich smell of the coffee blended with
the piney freshness of the fall air.

  “This is great. When did you start coming here?” she asked, knowing Cole’s dad didn’t have the kind of money for a place like this. If he had, it would have been sold a long time ago.

  Cole let out a long breath. “Since I was seventeen. This is where my uncle took me, after your father called him. When I was discharged from the hospital, he picked me up and brought me here.”

  Almost no one had known where Cole had gone. Jessie’s father would only say that he was okay, and that he would come back. But she’d been desperate to see him. To know for sure he was fine.

  When Cole did return to school, he’d walked with a different kind of confidence. He’d been more serious, no longer such a rebel. He’d dropped out of every group. And he’d never asked for her help in Latin again.

  Had that been her father’s doing? Or was that Cole’s decision?

  His quick smile had vanished, too. She’d tried to meet up with him at his locker at school at least half a dozen times, but he’d always already left for class when she’d finally threaded her way through the between-class crowd. He’d never attended another school dance. It was only school, work and the small apartment above the garage. It was as if he’d completely ended his old life. And her with it.

  She’d grown discouraged, realizing that whatever was between them had been one-sided. Then one afternoon in the school cafeteria, she felt a tingling sensation on the back of her neck. Looking over, her gaze collided with Cole’s. His eyes were filled with such anguish and longing she gasped.

  That yearning, which Jessie had spotted, gave her courage. She made the decision to get him alone after their graduation ceremony. She hadn’t had much of a plan after that. She smiled sadly at her sixteen-year-old naïveté. She must have just hoped things would work out once she got him alone.

  Of course, he’d skipped graduation, choosing instead to return to that unknown place he’d gone to in the summer.

  The next time he’d returned to Thrasher, he had a fiancé, and she’d known it was never to be between them.

  A light breeze ruffled her hair, and her nipples hardened against the blanket she’d brought from the floor. They may have missed their chance then, but she wasn’t about to waste this opportunity now.

  Jessie glanced in his direction. He scanned the trees, the bushes and late-blooming flowers. “This was my uncle’s land. He left it to me.” Cole was looking into the woods, but Jessie wasn’t sure if he saw the trees or his memories.

  “I was an ass. Angry at everyone and blaming everyone for what was happening at home. That first night, my uncle made me hike to a place by the river. You can’t see it from here, but it’s past that high ridge.”

  She looked where he pointed, trying to imagine the seventeen-year-old Cole out here.

  “He gave me a canteen and a compass and left. Told me to find the cabin.” Cole laughed, then took a swallow of coffee. “I walked around for hours, but finally saw the light of the fire through the windows. He’d made grilled cheese.”

  Cole turned toward her. “Best damn grilled cheese I’d ever had.”

  She nodded, knowing he didn’t really need conversation right now. He just needed to talk.

  “The next day we hiked up there again. This time he took my compass.” Cole’s voice was laced with a kind of humorous admiration as he spoke about his uncle.

  “This must be some weird male thing, if you can appreciate it,” she said.

  He gave a low chuckle. “Maybe so.” Then he shifted, facing her. His smile faded, the setting sun casting shadows across his strong features. “He made me face myself. Face being a man.”

  “You’d just gone through a horrible ordeal. And lived. I’m not sure leaving a kid out in the middle of nowhere is the way to go about helping. Your father—”

  “Jessie, I was wallowing in it. Using that—my father, my crappy childhood—as an excuse. Out there, with nothing but the stars and a half day’s supply of water, I had to rely on myself. Learned that I could rely on myself. That I had the strength inside me to take on anything. The elements didn’t care that I had a shit dad, or that I was poor. All I should focus on was how to survive. That’s what I learned out here.”

  “That’s why you return here.”

  Cole nodded. “Yes. There was only one thing I had to prove.”

  “What?”

  “That the faith your father put in me wasn’t wasted. He could have sent me to jail for stealing that car. But he smoothed it out. He made me pay for every cent of damage I did, but I worked extra on the weekends in the garage, and I had that money paid back in full by the time I graduated. I was damn lucky.”

  “How?” But she saw the truth in his words. Despite his rough beginnings, Cole lived his life like a man who thought he was lucky.

  “I had people who believed in me. A lot of kids don’t have that.” His gaze lifted to the stars. “I wish there was a way I could help those kids, like someone helped me.”

  “That’s what you want to do here, isn’t it? With your lottery money, you want to set something up.”

  “Why don’t I show you what I want to do?” He reached for her hand, pointing toward the ridge. “Slip into your shoes, and let’s go.”

  Jessie quickly entered the cabin and donned her clothing. When she returned, Cole was waiting for her, carrying a flashlight. She lifted an eyebrow. “Did you have a flashlight when you were learning how to survive?” she teased.

  He chuckled. “No, but I’m not seventeen anymore, and I have a hot, sexy woman with me, so I don’t really need to stumble around in the dark.”

  She scanned the area, thinking about the lottery and what he could do with the money. “From what I read in the paper, you each chose your own number. What was yours?”

  “46.”

  “Is that a special number?”

  Cole shook his head. “No, I just read most people would choose their birth date or the age of a child. I did some research and found 46 is one of the least chosen numbers. It would be less likely someone else would choose it, so if we did win, there’d be no other winning tickets.”

  He reached for her hand again, and they walked toward the ridge. “I see rope courses over there. Camping and survival training past the river. Maybe a shop where kids can learn to fix cars. Some kind of skill training. And at the cabin, I see raising my girls. Together as a family again.”

  He spoke with a kind of hesitancy. As if putting voice to his dreams would jeopardize his plans. She knew why he was cautious. Understood his need to keep his dreams grounded. “But that won’t happen if you don’t get the money.”

  He squeezed her hand. “No. Even if Liza does relinquish her claim, there’s always Amber.”

  The terrain grew more steep, and Jessie was glad she’d brought her boots.

  “Amber would come after a piece of your winnings?”

  He nodded. “Big-time.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  They’d finally crested the ridge, the river down below. She watched the current, followed the progress of a branch on the water.

  Finally, Cole spoke. “Amber was everything I thought I was supposed to want. I think I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. She was funny, and always up for an adventure. She made me forget about the past. Forget about my mistakes and just live.”

  It should have hurt to hear him talk about his ex-wife like this. How he’d loved another woman. But for some reason it helped.

  Jessie understood him better.

  Cole hadn’t been rejecting her all those years ago. He’d just been looking for something different. Something she couldn’t provide for him.

  If he hadn’t found Amber, he wouldn’t be the man he was today. The man she lo—

  Oh, hell.

  She loved him.

  Jessie had a sick feeling in her stomach.

  An hour ago she’d made love like a woman in love. She’d even thought of it as lovemaking.

  She was ta
lking to a man about his dreams and aspirations like a woman in love. She broke out in a cold sweat.

  Now she was encouraging a man to speak about the mistakes he’d made…like a woman in love would do.

  “She understood me. My past. She’d been in some trouble, too. Shoplifting, that kind of thing. Getting married seemed like the reasonable, mature thing to do. We both had something to prove. The twins came along quickly. But truly settling down wasn’t what Amber wanted.”

  The wind picked up, ruffling Cole’s hair. Jessie should have grabbed a jacket.

  He sighed. “We came to an agreement. She left the twins with me, and I helped her out of a jam.”

  A jam. Jessie bet that small word contained a multitude of problems Amber had caused for herself. She shivered, and Cole wrapped his arm around her.

  “So far she’s kept her side of the bargain. She’s stayed away. But if that money comes through…she’ll be back, and I’ll have to be prepared.”

  He turned and started toward the cabin. They strolled in silence, listening to the breeze rustling the tree limbs, and the crickets singing their sad, night song.

  Cole had shared himself with Jessie tonight. She doubted many people knew the real details of his life, and she felt a little shaken that he’d chosen to be so candid. Emotions. Sharing. So not in the rules of a fling.

  THE REST OF THEIR WEEKEND passed in a pleasurable haze of lovemaking, the days spent exploring the woods and the nights lazing in front of the fire. But by late Sunday afternoon they were back on the highway to Atlanta.

  Cole pulled up in front of her house, and suddenly Jessie felt at a true loss as to what to do. She’d come to a lot of realizations over the weekend, primarily that she loved the man sitting beside her.

  But now the holiday was over, and she needed to do some thinking without the love haze Cole created.

  “What do you want to do tomorrow night?” Cole asked as he carried her luggage inside.

  “Tomorrow? Did we make plans for tomorrow night?”

  “No.”

  Were they actually at the stage where they assumed they’d do whatever together just because they were…together?