and making tracks for her room, instead she leaned closer, her shoulder bumping his.
She intended it in a friendly way, but the tap became kind of a rub, and when he glanced at her there was another charged moment of energy passing between them. An exchange.
A sexual exchange.
Wow, she thought again. He was the most beautiful, masculine man she’d ever met. Her sister’s fiancé, Ryan, was classic-cinema-star handsome—when you looked at him you thought you should have some popcorn on hand. Watching him breathe was pure entertainment.
With Jay, it was different. Shay wanted to watch him move. Or better yet, move things. Do things. He was a man made to operate a forklift or lay railroad ties or rig a suspension bridge.
He’d separated the cards into two piles, one of which he slid toward her. When she gathered them closer, their fingers touched. Again, Jay flinched.
The sexual spark stung her, too.
“What are we going to play?” she asked.
He gave her a grim look. “War.”
Shay sighed. She could have told him it wasn’t going to work. It was completely clear to her, even after chocolate cake, quesadillas and martinis.
There was no way to battle this pull between them.
And at this point, she didn’t want to.
With another forbidding glance, he slapped down the first card. A deuce.
Hers was a king.
Several minutes later, when the game was over and all the cards were piled in front of Shay, she began to stack them neatly.
“Round two?” he asked. There was a tense note to his voice.
Likely because he thought they’d have to sit here all night playing cards instead of having another kind of round two...around dawn.
In her room at the inn.
They could do that, though, couldn’t they?
Her heart started beating faster and she could feel her pulse thudding in her throat and at her wrists. She’d never propositioned a man before...but now she wanted to. Really wanted to, and hadn’t she promised Mel she’d have fun? Glancing at the clock on the wall, she noted it was after midnight.
It truly was her birthday now. “You know, there are rooms here...” she began.
His gaze was trained on her face. She had the impression he was counting each and every one of her eyelashes. “I was told there’s no vacancy,” he said.
Shay’s hand crept toward her purse, still hanging on the hook. From it, she pulled out the plastic key card, which she placed on the bar’s surface and then slid toward the man at her right. He was turned toward her on his stool, his elbow on the bar. “I reserved the last one,” she whispered.
Hesitating, she ran her gaze over his rugged shoulders, his wide chest, his powerful thighs. If she scooted closer, she’d be between his legs, surrounded by him. Closer to the clean scent that she’d been aware of for hours.
Shay cleared her throat and reminded herself she was due a present. “The bed’s big enough for two.”
JACE JENNINGS STARED down at the innocuous rectangle of plastic. Birthday Girl’s fingers touched one edge, the nails short and painted with clear polish. Transparent, the same as her face.
He’d been able to read every expression flitting across it all night long.
At first, she’d been shy. She was younger than he was, by a decade, he supposed, and he’d had no intention of even engaging her in conversation. But then she’d launched into her martinis-and-birthday confession and he’d found himself drawn in...then drawn to her.
When he’d shared that bit about his childhood—and what had prompted him to do so, he couldn’t say—her quasihuffy, amusing response had tickled his funny bone. Not many people managed to do that.
But Birthday Girl and her “gloom balloon”...
Shaking his head, he felt a grin tugging on the corners of his mouth again.
“You’re leaving me hanging here,” she said now.
He glanced up. She was beautiful. That had struck him immediately. Her shoulder-length hair was a mix of red, gold and brown. Her eyes were an arresting shade of pale blue, her skin creamy, with just a faint spray of tiny golden freckles peppering her small nose. As a builder, he had an interest in and appreciation of the bones of things, and those of this woman were both delicate and elegant. Her mouth was lush, though, its unpainted color a pale rose.
“Well?” she demanded.
And he could read her again, the slight truculence a defensive position. “This could be a dangerous habit, Birthday Girl.”
“This?”
“Propositioning total strangers.”
Her mouth dropped, and she yanked the key card back toward her. “I don’t—”
“Wait.” He placed his fingers over hers. “That came out wrong.”
She was staring down at his hand. Jace knew why. The instant they touched, heat snapped like an electrical shock, then ricocheted through his body. He supposed she felt something similar. All night, he’d been half-hard and her flesh beneath his was taking him the rest of the way.
Slowly, as if retreating from a skittish creature, Jace lifted his hand. Her gaze lifted, too, and those blue eyes zeroed in on his face.
“I don’t make a habit of this kind of thing,” she declared.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” And why the hell would he care if she propositioned a new man every night? But for some stupid reason he’d wanted to hear her say she didn’t out loud. He’d wanted to know that this...connection was something unusual for her, too. Different. Special.
Because it felt damn special to him.
Holy hell, she’d bought him birthday cake.
“We don’t know each other,” he heard himself say, though he’d never told anyone else about those daily frigid showers. It was true. His father had believed in cold water as the cornerstone of making a man out of a boy.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“Divorced.” And his ex was dead now, a recent circumstance that had wrought a huge change in his life. Just the thought of that made him toss back the rest of the whiskey that he’d switched to when the cards came out.
“Girlfriend?”
“No.” He paused, then lifted a brow. “Boyfriend?”
“If I had one, wouldn’t he be the one spending my birthday with me?”
Which made Jace think about what he’d been calling her. Birthday Girl. She hadn’t offered up her real name. He hadn’t corrected her when she misheard his as “Jay.”
This beautiful young woman was really offering up no-strings, one-night-only, stranger sex.
God knows he didn’t deserve it, but—
“Okay, then.” Birthday Girl slid off her stool and onto her feet. He was close and turned in her direction, so she landed between his knees, and swayed there a moment. To steady herself, one hand reached out and clutched his thigh.
Uh-oh. Those martinis were still in her system.
That thought didn’t stop another piercing zing of heat from rocketing from her hand to his crotch, just a few inches north. And it wasn’t only her touch that got to him. There was that sweet little dress she wore that