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“Why not?”
“Because I was only trying to placate you.”
“Placate me?”
“Because I’ve been very afraid.”
“Past tense? You’re not afraid of me anymore?”
“I don’t want to be.”
She took a step toward him, then another, and kept coming until she was within touching distance. She stuck out her right hand. “Friends?”
He looked down at her hand but didn’t take it. Instead he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him. She bowed her head, so as not to look him in the eye, but she didn’t throw off his hands, or back away, or flinch as she’d been doing any time he got too close.
She took baby steps to shrink the distance between them, then pressed her forehead against the center of his chest. He slid his hands over her shoulder blades onto her back, drawing her incrementally but inexorably closer, and when their bodies were flush, she turned her head and rested her cheek directly over his heart.
He lined his fingertips along the groove of her spine and moved them up and down until one hand came to rest in the small of her back. And stayed. And rubbed circles there and applied enough pressure to tilt her up and form a fit with him in the notch of her thighs that caused her breath to catch.
Then they both stopped breathing.
She tilted her head back and looked up into his face with those limpid eyes, and, when she did, all bets were off. He had to have her. He would go through hell to be inside her. He was sinking, sinking, sinking…
His mouth was almost on hers—so close to kissing her, he could feel the moisture of her breath on his lips, taste it—when he caught himself. He whispered, “You almost got me, Doc.”
She jerked her head back and blinked up at him. “What?”
“I almost fell for it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Hell you don’t. Smelling good. Nothing but sexy you under that shirt.” He dragged his fingers across the top curve of her breast that swelled in the open collar. “Looking soft and sweet enough to make my mouth water.”
He rubbed against her suggestively. “You know what I want, and you thought that if you gave it to me, then I’d be placated and would take you home. You had just as well have climbed up onto an altar and laid yourself out.”
He made a derisive sound. “I appreciate the gesture. Truly. To say nothing of the view.” He angled his head back so he could see down her entire length. “But I’m not into sex with a martyr.”
Angrily, she pushed against his chest and tried to worm out of his grasp.
But he held on and, in fact, yanked her closer, grinding against her open thighs with unmistakable implication. “But here’s a warning, Doc. You give me another opportunity to put my hands on you, and I’m going to put them all over you. Got it? I’m not gonna imagine you naked, I’m gonna see you naked. Offer up yourself again, and I’ll ignore every reason why I shouldn’t fuck you.”
Later, he wondered what would have happened in the next few seconds, if the truck hadn’t slid off the road and crashed into the tree.
Chapter 11
Brakes squealed.
He released Emory and made it to one of the front windows in time to see the rattletrap in a fishtail skid before it plowed into a tree across the road from his gate.
In the same instant he recognized the pickup, Emory streaked toward the door. “Shit!” His hand shot out and caught a handful of flannel shirttail, bringing her up short.
She gave a small cry, but he turned her around, jerked her up hard against him, and clapped his hand over her mouth. “Listen to me. Stay quiet and out of sight.”
She wiggled and tried to throw off his hand.
“Goddamn it, listen to me! Those men? You don’t want them messing with you. They would hurt you bad. Trust me, please. Okay? I’m serious, Doc. You think I’m a threat, you can’t imagine the party they’d have with you.”
Somehow, he got the message across. Her eyes remained wide and fearful, but she stopped struggling.
