Her eyes narrowed. “How come you’re not shlosh...sloshed, too?”
“I’m bigger than you. I can drink more without getting hit as hard.” When he stood, his head swam, but his balance was okay. He wrapped an arm around her, gratified when hers slipped around his waist and she leaned into him.
“’Kay,” she murmured.
They stepped outside into a too-warm June night. A slap of cold air would have felt good. Bran looked around the now-crowded parking lot in perplexity, unable to remember where he had left his Camaro.
He had keys, he knew he did. He patted his pocket. There they were. Just no car.
The neon sign right across the road from the tavern drew his eye. Motel. Vacancy. The “No” part was turned off. As lodging went, it was pretty basic, but decent as far as he knew. It wasn’t on the sheriff’s department radar for drug dealing or prostitution, at least.
“We should get a room,” he decided.
“No hitting on me. You said.”
“I changed my mind,” he admitted. “But if you just want to sleep, that’s what we’ll do.”
“I changed my mind, too,” she confided in a small, husky voice.
Rocketed to full arousal that easily, he steered her across the road into the motel office, where a bored kid who looked to be barely of legal age swiped Bran’s credit card and asked for a signature.
Bran took the key—yes, a real key—as well as the card with their room number on it and collected Lina from the chair where he’d parked her.
The flight of outside stairs was a challenge, but they made it, Lina giggling as he tried to jam the key in the lock. Hell, he was drunk. Sloshed. Plowed. It worried him that she was, too. Did this qualify as taking advantage of her?
The key finally turned and he pushed the door open. He all but fell in. Lina giggled again.
Oh, yeah, she was drunk.
She closed the door behind them and flipped a switch that turned on lamps on each side of the queen-size bed. Bran stood, doing battle with his conscience.
“Will you kiss me?” Lina asked timidly.
He cleared his throat. “I’d like to kiss you. But Lina... Are you going to be sorry in the morning?”
He waited, suspended in fear that she’d come to her senses now. Of course she would. She wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of woman. But, God, he hoped she wouldn’t change her mind.
Little worried lines formed on her forehead as she scrutinized his face. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“No!” He framed her face in hands that shook with an unfamiliar tremor. “Never.” He hesitated. “I’m a cop, Lina.”
“Oh.” She nibbled uncertainly on her lower lip as her eyes continued to search his. “Do you have, um, you know? A condom? Because I don’t. And I’m not on anything.”
“I do. I have a couple in my wallet.”
Paige had refused to go on the pill or a birth control patch until after the wedding. Didn’t he know how all those hormones made women gain weight? No way was she messing with her body right now! Bran had really hated the necessity of wearing a condom, but right this minute, he didn’t want to think about how he’d have felt if he hadn’t had one.
Lina laid a hand on his shoulder and rose onto tiptoe. “Then I won’t be sorry,” she murmured, and brushed her mouth over his.
The kiss exploded. He drove his fingers into that mass of silky hair, tilting her head until he found the perfect angle. Her arms came around his neck and he closed one hand over her bottom, lifting and pressing her against him. That fast, his hips rocked. He had to have her now.
Their clothes flew. T-shirts first, which caused her to start kissing and stroking his chest. Desperate, he found the catch on her bra and released the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen. He propelled her backward until she came up against the bed, then lifted her and laid her down, his mouth capturing a nipple before her back hit the mattress. He licked and teased until she gripped his head and repeated, “Please, please, please.” And then he suckled. The little noises she made had him groaning and pulling back.
He told her how beautiful she was while he yanked off her boots and peeled tiny panties and stretchy jeans off her curvaceous hips and down those long legs.
For a second, one knee planted on the bed between her thighs, Bran stopped just to look. He had never even imagined a woman as sexy as this one. Her body was both delicate and voluptuous, her lips puffy from his kisses, her eyes heavy-lidded. And then there was that richly colored hair, masses of it spread across the bedspread. The disconcerting idea struck him that she also looked vulnerable. If she hadn’t been drunk, she’d be grabbing for something to cover herself.
He reared back to kick off his shoes and unbutton his jeans. Lucky he’d gone into the tavern unarmed, rare for him. His gun was locked in a safe beneath the driver’s seat of his Camaro. A tavern parking lot wasn’t the best place to leave an expensively restored vintage sports car...but damn...he’d never wanted anything in his life the way he did this woman.
His jeans fit so tightly at the moment, he emptied his pockets onto the dresser top before he cautiously unzipped. Jeans and boxers gone, he pulled out the couple condoms from the wallet, tossing one packet onto the bedside table and ripping open the second one. His hands were still shaking. He lifted his gaze to see that she had risen up onto her elbows and was staring with an expression that did amazing things to his ego. A blush rose on her cheeks even as her tongue came out to touch her lips.
He got the condom on and crawled forward until he could kiss her again, voraciously this time. He bypassed her glorious breasts and splayed a hand on her belly, circling until his fingers encountered the nest of curls the same honey shade as her hair and just as silky.
She was already so wet, his finger slid between her folds and right into her. She cried out and grabbed his arms.
“Now. Please, now.”
He stroked her for another few seconds, the limit of his self-control, before he spread her thighs and thrust deep.
She looked at him in astonishment and whispered, “Oh,” after which her eyes closed and she tipped her head back.
Considerate was beyond him. Bran couldn’t have gone slow if he’d had a gun to his head. He set a hard, fast rhythm that she matched, clutching at him as her hips rose and fell. He couldn’t have stopped the orgasm that lifted him like a monster wave and swept him forward, either. But she cried out at the same time, her tiny convulsions part of the staggering pleasure.
* * *
THEY MADE LOVE twice more. In the middle of the night, Lina had come back from the bathroom to find him awake, waiting for her.
This morning, she’d slid out of an amazing dream to find it had been real. A man’s hard body spooned her. His erection pressed against her butt and his fingers played between her legs.
She groaned and arched convulsively. He gave a low, husky laugh and closed his teeth on the bundle of muscle and nerves that ran between her neck and shoulder. Then he lifted her leg and slid into her. It felt...amazing. Unlike the night’s tumultuous lovemaking, this time he moved lazily, teasing her by not going as deep as she craved. His fingers circled and pressed until she heard her own small, broken cries.
Suddenly, he groaned, half lifted her to her knees, and drove hard and fast. She came by the third stroke, taking him with her.
They both collapsed. After a moment, he groaned.
“Now, that’s how I like to wake up.”
Lina hadn’t known it was possible to wake up to anything like that. “It was...really good.” She wasn’t even sure she was 100 percent awake. An