AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Before she’d started working at Shora, Valerie hadn’t considered herself to be an easy-to-startle woman, but she’d become skittish as a cat in the last half a year. Seeing Tim swoop in from the airport shadows like Batman nearly put a cramp in her heart.
He took her overnight bag, laced his fingers through hers, and rescued her from the curb where she’d been watching for Carine’s borrowed car.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as he pulled her toward the parking deck.
He didn’t respond. He just hitched her bag up higher on his shoulder, kissed her hand, and kept her moving.
“Carine was supposed to pick me up. Does she know that—”
He stopped her—feetandmouth—with an urgent kiss that not only took her breath away but left her plane-cramped legs feeling wobbly as spaghetti noodles.
And then he stared down at her as if he were waiting for her to collapse and wanted to be there to catch her when she did.
“Batman,” she muttered.
Shaking his head, he got her moving again. Not a word crossed his lips between the time they left the curb and he installed her into the passenger seat of his truck. He’d parked in the back of the row at one of those “asshole angles” in which no one could park on either side of him, but with a vehicle that large, Valerie understood why he would.
“You should get something smaller with better gas mileage for when you’re not hauling stuff around,” she teased.
He raised an eyebrow at her as he pulled her seatbelt across her waist.
“Maybe a little Fiat?” She snorted and giggled at her own joke. She was loopy as hell. If she never again flew cross-country twice in thirty-six hours, it’d be too soon. She’d done most of her sleeping in the past couple of days on planes, and plane sleep was hardly real sleep. It was the sleep of the damned and came with neck cramps and knee bruises from the dickheads in the window seats who always waited to go pee right after she nodded off.
She giggled some more and closed her eyes. “Nah, not a Fiat. You wouldn’t be able to fit in a Fiat. Maybe a nice respectable Volvo.”
He shut her door and she put her head against the window, grateful that it was there to prop her up.
When he climbed up into the driver’s seat, she said, “Not that you’re completely respectable, I mean. You do a good job making the people who matter think you are, though. But you and I both know you’re a freak in the sheets. Lowdown dirty good ol’ boy.”
Tim sighed but didn’t bother engaging her. That was fine with her. Nothing in her brain made sense anyway beyond the fact that it was sleepy-time and that Tim’s truck smelled like McDonald’s fries and dreams.
The next thing Valerie saw was Tim’s head in front of her as he released her seatbelt.
She rubbed her bleary eyes and fixed her gaze through the windshield, but it was too dark for her to make out anything distinguishable. She didn’t hear the ocean, so they couldn’t have been at the docks, but she did notice the slope they were parked on.
She turned her head to the right and that’s when she saw the dim lights behind the windows in Tim’s house.
“Ooh,” she said as he lifted her out. “That reminds me. I figured out a second way to fix your house. Don’t worry, it doesn’t require a wrecking ball or pack of matches.”
Grunting, he put her over his shoulder and, with her bag in hand, carried her into his house.
The sounds of the air conditioner and humming refrigerator met them at the kitchen door, and he didn’t put her down. He dropped the bag by the pantry, grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the refrigerator, and hauled her to his bedroom, kneading her ass as he went.
“Opportunist,” she muttered.
Not that she was all that indignant about it. Of the billions of people on the planet, there was probably only one she’d let squeeze her jiggly bits without asking, and he happened to be the broad-shouldered man she was slung over at the moment.
He placed the bottles on the nightstand and set her on the bed.
Without prelude, he bent and took off her shoes—heels, for once, because she hadn’t had a chance to change after her interview—and nudged up her skirt to access her stocking tops.
He rolled them down slowly, kissing the insides of her thighs and knees as he did, and occasionally rolling his commandingBe stillstare up at her.
And she did, for the most part. Maybe her toes curled a little, but she sat commendably still, fisting his covers and grinding her teeth when he teased his nose against her panty-covered crotch.
She put her head back and groaned. “You’re trying to kill me. Is that what it is? You’re going to kill me with a potent combination of sleep exhaustion and arousal. I have no idea what my grandmother could possibly put on my gravestone. Maybe,Here lies Valerie. She was a good girl who came too much.”
