Can’t count on anyone these days but yourself.” Beyond the cut grass, the land turned into a grassy, rocky field, which then stretched up into trails that led to the top of the hill and beyond.
“Which is why I saved your damn cat, you miserable old coot,” she said, but too softly to carry very far. “Careful on the trail,” she called out.
“Been walking these hills all of my seventy-two years. Don’t need some green little missie telling me how to handle myself. Just because I’ve been on God’s good earth a mite longer than you doesn’t mean I’m anything less than fully capable.”
She stood on the back porch, the morning breeze carrying his grumbling and muttering back to her until he was well beyond her property line.
“Quite the character,” came Brett’s deep voice just beside her ear. “You weren’t kidding about the crotchety part.”
She startled at the sound of his voice, and he steadied her. With his hands on her hips. Which he left there.
“He’s just mad because I snatched up this property before he could finally convince the town council to let him tear down the old house and add the whole parcel to the land he already owned. He’d have been king of the mountain then. Had I known what having him as a neighbor was like, I might have kept looking and let him have it.” Again with the babbling. But, honestly, his hands were still on her, and she didn’t know quite what to do next. Seemed easier to just keep talking.
She felt the heat of him, just behind her. All that bare skin…he was like a one-man furnace with that heat. Or maybe she was the one with the elevated temperature. She certainly felt feverish…
“You gave my cat away,” he said, his breath warm on her neck. Her feverish neck.
“It, uh—it wasn’t yours, as it turns out.”
“So I heard. Good thing he’s up on all the rules of being neighborly. Are the rest of the residents of Pennydash as…colorful?”
“Never boring, anyway.” Sort of like every second I’ve spent with you. “I’ve met Matilda, the mom cat, by the way. It explains a lot.”
“Psycho senior?”
“Something like that. Let’s just say, I’m not thinking your little pet there was going to be domesticated anytime soon.”
“Well, I think our girl has found a good home. She has a fine career ahead of her. One she can sink her teeth into.”
Kirby groaned, but she was smiling.
“A real corporate climber.”
Now she laughed.
“If there was a draft for mousers, she’d be a first-round pick.”
Kirby ducked her chin and shook her head, but snickered anyway. “If you start in with the ‘my kitten can beat up your kitten—’”
“Hey, I’m just trying to show a little paternal pride here.” He bracketed her hips with his hands, careful not to drag her shirt across the raw skin of her stomach, and pulled her body back against his. “After all, I sent her into the world with the very shirt off my back.”
Which was so very, very true, Kirby thought, feeling the heat of his very bare nakedness emanating right through her thin cotton shirt. “Probably just as well you sent her off when you did,” she managed through a belly knotted up with lust. “She’s already gone through two shirts in two days.”
He pressed his lips just below her ear, and only a superhuman effort could have kept her from tipping her head back to rest on his shoulders. His very broad, very naked shoulders. Turns out she had a ways to go to achieve Wonder Woman status.
“Yeah,” he said, the low rumble of his voice vibrating straight down her spine. “It’d be a real shame if I lost all of my clothes.” He splayed his palms gently across her stomach, pressing the well-washed cotton to her ravaged skin like the softest of bandages. “Whatever would I do?”
“Indeed,” she choked out, which was something of a wonder in and of itself, given the veritable avalanche of images that accompanied that little comment. Her poor imagination couldn’t decide which clip in the erotic slide show to focus on first.
“Kirby,” he said, rubbing his lips along the side of her neck.
She covered his hands with hers, trying, and failing, to find her equilibrium. Things like this didn’t happen to her. She really…really…wanted them to, but as to actually happening? This was a first. “Yes?” she breathed.
“How many beds are there in this house?”
“Uh…” She tried to focus, but it was damn near impossible now that he’d started nibbling. “Ni—nine. Total. Including mine.”
He caught her ear lobe between his teeth and pressed ever-so-lightly. “Would it be too forward of me to tell you that I want to have you on every single one of them?”
Had he not been holding her all but braced up against him, she was pretty sure she’d have slid right to the ground in a puddle of gooey, hormone-soaked lust. She tried to speak, but he was kissing the side of her neck, and all she could manage was a head shake.
How crazy was this? She’d only been fantasizing about this since he’d ridden up on his bike, but fantasies never came true. Not like this. He hadn’t even properly kissed her yet, and he was talking about having her, taking her…dear Lord she wanted him to take her, have her. Anywhere he damn well pleased.
For all she knew, he was some kind of serial killer—a very good-looking, well-dressed, manicured, bank-rolled, hot biker serial killer—who rode around the country seducing poor, orgasm-starved innkeepers into having mind-blowing sex with him, so he could—so he could…well, she didn’t know what exactly, but letting him do this probably was unwise on numerous fronts, the worst of which would be that one. Probably.
Except his hands were all over the front of her now, and she really rather liked them there. Not enough to die a grisly death…but then what, really, were the chances of that? Because, was she really so pathetic that the only reason a guy could want to make love to her on every bed of the inn was because he was a raging sociopath? Had she such a low self-esteem?
He chuckled against the very heated skin of her neck. She was one giant piece of heated skin at the moment.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything against your will.” He slowly turned her around, then crowded her back against the wall next to the screenless door. He grinned. “Unless you like that kind of thing.”
Her eyes widened. Holy hell, maybe he was a socio—He cut off her wild thoughts with a kiss. A kiss so perfect, where his mouth fit hers so effortlessly and beautifully, that by the time he parted her lips and took the kiss deeper, she was pretty sure even catching the glint of a silver blade being lifted over her head wouldn’t have stopped her. Not that her eyes were open at this point or anything.
He lifted his head just a fraction, and she sighed a little at the sudden defection of his lips from hers. “Do I really scare you that much?”
“What? Why—” She broke off, certain she couldn’t pull off the necessary insouciance to make him believe she did this sort of thing all the time, and, that, of course she wasn’t afraid of him. What he didn’t realize, was that she wasn’t so much afraid of what he might do to her…she was more afraid of how she’d feel about it when he finally stopped doing it.
“I don’t—” She started, then stopped, then swallowed and lifted her gaze to his. “I don’t do this. Normally. I mean, I’ve done this. Of course. Just not…not with a guest. It’s not very professional.”
“I think we’ve established that, at least between us, the professional aspect of innkeeper-guest possibly doesn’t apply. What with that whole lifesaving-rescue-dinner part.”
“I know it’s been a bit unorthodox so far,