“Janie—” Again he said her name and stopped.
And capitulated.
“All right,” he agreed. Then his lips twitched and he offered her a rueful grin. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, all right?”
“’Bout what?” Janina, reaching for her purse, looked back at him.
Russ picked up the remains of her beer, raised the mug to her in what was halfway between a salute and a silent apology, drained it and shrugged. “The drunk and relaxed man you take home with you tonight will not be the sober, somewhat anal man you wake up with in the morning.”
Janina laughed outright at him. “Russ, I know that man, too. I’ve seen him almost every day for thirteen years and I’ve wanted to take that man home with me longer than I’ve wanted the man I’m with tonight, so I don’t see the problem.”
“You might tomorrow,” Russ muttered darkly.
Janina slid her arms around his waist. “Tomorrow, if I put my arms around you, will you tell me to stop?”
The slow, sideways smile tilted Russ’s mouth. “Prob’ly not.”
“Then shut up about tomorrow and let me drive you home.”
“Because tomorrow I’ll be too inhibited to open my mouth and say anything to you,” Russ finished belatedly, deliberately baiting her, and ducked away laughing when Janina swung at him.
“You—”
Grinning the charming, devilish Levoie grin that Janina associated with his brothers but couldn’t remember ever seeing on him, he offered her a broad, two-handed, supremely innocent shrug. “What can I say? I was an Eagle Scout. Honesty is bred in the bone.”
“That sounds like something your brother Guy would say,” Janina returned dryly.
“Where d’you think he got it from?”
She found herself laughing up at him, astonished herself by teasing him. “Not you.”
Russ draped an arm around her shoulders. A natural move from a man who never made this kind of move naturally. “Yeah, me.”
Janina found herself sliding easily beneath his arm, fitting close against his side where she’d been made to fit, born to belong.
She wanted to touch him, to have as much of him as she could in the here and now, but she couldn’t comfortably fit an arm around him so she settled for pulling his hand down where she could hold on to it, could at least keep her left hand in his.
Could feel every bit of warmth, every pulse in his fingers in the way his fingertips tickled her palm, traced the inside of her wrist, seduced and tempted and… She closed her eyes and her stomach tightened, body vibrated, became heavy, turned to liquid.
And suddenly her panties, that sexy, almost nonexistent scrap of a silk thong she’d put on in hopes of finding him, of being with him, was…wet. She was wet.
For want of him.
From simply imagining him.
“You sure?” She sounded breathless, and was.
The look he sent her from those deeper-than-midnight, clearer-than-the-full-moon, more-powerful-than-any-tide eyes of his when he said, “I’m sure,” made Janina lose her grip on his hand, drop her own to his waist and tip her head up to his.
Her eyes widened when his released fingers quite casually, naturally, instinctively grazed her nipple, brushed her breast, then closed over it to gently squeeze.
And her body burned with awareness, with desire, with excitement…with need. And with the sudden, absolute and potentially embarrassing recognition of where they were and the fact that she wanted complete, utter and immediate privacy. Where was not a factor, so long as it was right now, at once, instantly and without delay.
“Russ?” Urgent, a plea.
He offered her a slow smile. His fingers played with her breast, found her nipple once again. She lifted into the pleasure of his touch, pressed into it, and her breathing grew ever more shallow. They were in public and she couldn’t make herself—and didn’t want to—step away. But heaven help her if she wasn’t alone with him soon…
“We have to get out of here.” The effort it took to manage seven short syllables was amazing.
Without taking his eyes off her face or his left hand off her breast, Russ pushed open the Bloated Boar’s outer door.
“We’re outta here,” he promised.
“Oh.” Stunned, Janina drew a half breath and swallowed the taste of dawn. She’d been so mesmerized she hadn’t even realized they’d been moving. “Good.”
Russ’s laugh was deep, his voice gravelly with need. “Take me home, Janie.”
Urgency became a frantic blast of something beyond want, beyond desire, beyond simple need or even passion, became quite suddenly a critical piece of her existence, a fundamental element of survival, of life. Her life, his life, their life. One life combined. One life only.
“Yes.” Her voice shook, her heart grew three, four, ten sizes—grew big enough to hold a man who stood six foot four-plus inches in a barefoot slouch, but who never slouched. Her knees were jelly. She fumbled for her keys. “Yes, Russ. I will. I am.”
“Good.” He folded to nuzzle the side of her face, her ear. “The night’s short, dawn’s shorter and there’s a lot I want to do with you before I wake up and turn into a pumpkin again, ya know?”
Janina turned her face into his mouth and kissed him furiously, pouring all of herself into it. “It took me a long time to get up the gumption to do it, but I found you now, Russ Levoie, and I’m not letting you back off. So consider this fair warning. You’re making me believe in magic right now and I want it and everything you’ve got to give that goes with it. So you go shy and tongue-tied on me tomorrow, it won’t matter ’cuz I know who you are underneath and I know you want to be with me. So I won’t let who you seem to be intimidate me. You got that?”
Dazed and bemused, Russ ran his tongue around his mouth to taste the kiss she’d left there, then touched the tip of his finger to the stitches in her upper lip. “If we kiss again, will that hurt?”
“It’ll hurt more if we don’t,” Janina whispered, sliding her arms, sprained wrist and all, around his neck.
“Good,” he muttered, “because you taste incredible. I’ve never tasted anything like you, and I really have to kiss you again.” Then he caught her around the waist, lifted her high against his chest and did just that.
His kiss was careful, mindful of her bruises and almost, Janina realized somewhat fuzzily, out of practice.
Then she stopped realizing anything at all, stopped being able to think, stopped being and simply became absorbed in and by the kiss.
Thrilled to it.
The instant held beauty, power and enchantment, oneness and an absolute absence of alone. Breath shared became needed oxygen, air and life, a place beyond passion and pleasure, an existence within heart and soul, pure, complete, without boundaries.
It was a place Janina had never before been.
Arriving there left her breathless.
It made her afraid.
And she never wanted to come back from it.
“Janie.” Russ broke the kiss, raised his head and gave her what she’d craved since she’d been a starry-eyed but not-so-innocent sixteen-year-old schoolgirl ready to worship and adore her tall, dark and hunky hero. “I-40’s right out there, it’s not five hours to Vegas. Four hours with a cop in the car, maybe less.” He groaned