.

at the same time that the rest of her body became suffused with the loveliest sense of chills and confusion and warmth and safety and…

      And a whole lot of something more. She blinked again. The world, made up of Russ’s face, swam before her eyes. The lump in her throat dissolved, and whatever toughness she’d developed through the years puddled in Russ Levoie’s hands. Tears ran down her face and collected along the lump at her lip.

      “Oh, Russ.”

      “What?” His surprise was the genuine surprise of a drunken man. The distress was a drunken man’s distress, too. Normally Russ knew exactly what to do with crying women—or seemed to. “Janie, don’t cry. I don’t know what to do.”

      “Oh, Russ.” Laughter and wry despair mixed with the tears this time. Janina placed her less injured left hand against Russ’s chest. “You always know what to do.”

      “Don’t.” He was thoroughly helpless.

      She lifted her face, smiling, and snuggled into him because it seemed like the natural place to be. “Do.”

      He turned toward her. His arms pulled her close, instinctively seemed to claim her, the same way he’d wrapped her up and taken her in earlier at the diner. “No, I don’t.” He bent his head to rub his cheek against hers. “Doesn’t matter though. I can learn. Just don’t let me hurt you.”

      “You won’t hurt me, Russ,” Janina whispered against his throat. “You can’t. It’s not in you.”

      “I could,” Russ warned her honestly, enunciating each word with care. “If I wasn’t drunk I probably wouldn’t even be able to talk to you.”

      Janina lifted her chin to look at him, gave him a slow, woman-for-her-man-only smile and nuzzled his jaw. “Then drink your beer,” she murmured suggestively, sliding the two not-taped fingers on her left hand inside between the buttons of his shirt. “And let’s go back to my place ’n see what we can do about making you comfortable enough to still be able to talk to me tomorrow.”

      Chapter 3

      They didn’t make it to Janina’s place.

      Instead, Russ smiled his slow, sideways smile down at her and once again didn’t quite brush her mouth with his. Then he released her, downed half his beer, sauntered over to the big, old-fashioned jukebox, fed some coins into it and punched a few select buttons that he didn’t seem to have to look for.

      Everything inside her, every nerve, every sense, every particle of her being zinged alert, alive, awake. As though she’d been sleeping every moment before in her life.

      Awake.

      Electricity charged through her, then exhilarated pulse points, titillated nerve endings, thrilled along her spine and laid a fuzzy, sizzling pool of restlessness in the small of her back.

      Whatever leftover aches she had from her bruises fled and she blessed Buddy for unwittingly giving her a moment she’d never otherwise have had the courage to pursue.

      Then Russ hooked a glance at her over his shoulder and all thought fled.

      He stood in front of the jukebox for a long, drawn-out moment during which Janina’s heart felt as if it beat in some sort of slow-motion animated suspension. The pure masculine intent in the look he sent her snapped the suspension. Her heartbeat turned staccato, her breathing stuttered and the safety that had flooded her moments before fled, to be replaced by a flood of liquid heat, a sense of pure elation, a knowledge and anticipation of a danger she couldn’t wait to face. Want coursed through her veins, sang a tightening song through her lungs, pushed like wildfire into her belly.

      He wanted her.

      The rawness of what he wanted was written on his face. Her beneath him, her atop him, her around him. Her with him. Her.

      And more than that, he needed her.

      She read need in his eyes, on his face, and it wasn’t just anybody he needed. It was her, Janina.

      Janina caught her breath and rose unsteadily to stand between the bench and the table. He was coming for her. Not Maddie. Not Marg. Not anybody else who’d offered or thrown herself at him.

      For her.

      Only.

      She saw the “only” written on his face, too, and stopped breathing. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She couldn’t…

      And then he was there, leaning down to grab his beer, draining what remained of it before he cupped his palms beneath her elbows and carefully lifted her out of her prison to stand in front of him.

      “Liquid courage,” he said regretfully. “I’ll be sober in the morning. If I don’t do everything I’ve always wanted to ask you to do now, I may never get around to it again. Okay?”

      She swallowed. “Okay?” It came out as a question because nothing in her life could have prepared her for the way he made her feel.

      He grinned. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”

      She laughed nervously. A teenager if ever she’d been one. “I know. It’s just…I’ve never seen you…like this.”

      He shrugged. “I’m never like this. Sober, I don’t know how. Drunk, I don’t usually know how either. Tonight’s different. You make it different. You make me want to be different. You make it special.”

      A startled glow went through Janina. She blushed for the first time in what felt like forever. Maybe it was. “I— I don’t know what to say. That’s good. Thank you. Both of them. You—I—”

      The oh-so-gentle tip of Russ’s forefinger touched her mouth quiet. “Dance with me?”

      “Yes.”

      The one word was like magic. Just that quickly the outside fell away, she was in his arms and the music and Russ’s heartbeat were the only things she heard, felt, knew. “When a Man Loves a Woman,” she thought the song was, but couldn’t be sure because the rhythm of her heart keeping time with Russ’s was what she moved to, the feel of his body against hers was all the cue she needed. His hand drifted upward through her hair, his head bent to hers, his tall, muscular body stooped low to accommodate her shorter height and much softer curves. “Perfect” was the only word that came to mind when any word did, and even that single word was a wisp of smoke in the fog of the moment.

      “Janie.” His breath was warm, moist against her neck, his whisper disbelieving in her ear.

      “I’m here, Russ.” Heedless of the protests in her right wrist and both hands, she reached her arms around him as far as they would go. To hold him, hold on to him. To make sure he was really there, too. “Neither one of us is dreaming. We’re both really here. Together.”

      She felt him smile into her neck and fold her tighter into his embrace. “Good. My dreams are vivid, but I usually only imagine I can feel you, touch you, taste you, smell you.” He shifted his lower body uncomfortably and groaned.

      She gasped and laughed softly when the same charge that beat through him coiled hard through her, pinching her breasts and spinning wildly, almost violently into her belly. Want, need, more, infinitely more—she’d never felt this before. And whatever it was, he made her feel it by just saying a few words.

      “It’s okay, Russ. Me, too. My imagination is pretty vivid, too.”

      He lifted his head slightly. “You’re hurt, it’s not okay.”

      She kissed a spot as near the center of his chest as she could reach, nuzzled his jaw, brushed her cheek across his. “It is, trust me. I’m not that hurt. Really. Some bruises, a couple stitches, a mild sprain. Nothing to prevent us from what we both want. Together. Now let me take you home, okay? So I don’t have to worry about you.”

      Hesitation was plain. “Janie, I don’t… I can’t—”

      He stopped.