Chapter Twelve
Ethan had a full head of steam on him by the time he picked up JJ from work on Saturday night—actually early hours of Sunday morning. Between notification from his lawyer this week about the custody proceedings going ahead, Connie staying the night with Delia, the growing sexual frustration of the past week and the visit from Mrs Durrum after dinner about Shane’s pub visit the day before, he was at boiling point.
She was getting a piece of his mind that was for sure. It was that or he was going to do something really dumb like drag her into his arms and kiss her until they were both crazy with it, and wouldn’t that complicate the hell out of things?
The nights were driving him crazy. Lying next to her, close enough to reach out and touch, close enough to feel the heat of her body, to smell the soap on her skin and the shampoo in her hair.
Waking up with some part of him touching some part of her. With an erection that wouldn’t quit. That throbbed and bitched at him, desperate for release. Urging him to take advantage of the situation. To man up.
But … it was JJ. And they had rules. Which he’d created.
He didn’t understand how he could want someone he’d known all his life and up until recently had never thought of in that way.
He was clearly starved of sexual gratification. Marcus had been telling him for years it was unhealthy to go without for so long. And if he’d known he was going to wind up fantasising about his friend JJ, he may just have taken his younger brother’s advice about regular trips into Brisbane.
Because all he could think about now was her. JJ. Taking her, having her—rocking, pounding, thrusting. Over and over again. Making her moan, making her gasp, making her come so loud everyone in Jumbuck Springs would hear her.
And now he had Shane’s harassment adding to his frustration. How the fuck could he keep her safe if she was keeping information from him?
Ethan strode into the pub spoiling for a fight.
At his entrance, JJ looked up from behind the tinsel-lined bar and smiled at him. He gave her a terse nod and watched as her smile slipped a little.
Good—she was on notice.
“Ethan,” Mitch, one of JJ’s staff members greeted, mop in hand.
Ethan nodded again as he started piling bar stools on tables, relieved that Mitch was still there helping her clean up. Mostly because it meant she wasn’t alone at two in the morning. But a little bit because it meant they weren’t alone either.
He’d deliberately kept away until now, until after closing, not trusting himself to hold his temper in front of the customers. So there was another good reason to have Mitch around. God knew if he started his tirade about her irresponsibility now he wasn’t likely to stop and there were just too many damn horizontal surfaces in the pub for his sanity.
He looked up as something bounced off his forehead to find a metallic snowflake hanging from the ceiling. In fact there were probably about a hundred of the things staring back at him along with more tinsel, metallic angels and paper Santas. Any other time he might have laughed. Jumbuck Springs had a snowflake’s chance in hell of seeing a white Christmas.
But he was too mad to see the funny side.
Half an hour later they were done. Mitch had just left and JJ was following Ethan out of the pub, locking the door behind her. Ethan waited until she was done then headed for his police vehicle, parked on the street.
“Is everything okay?” she asked as she followed him.
“Yes,” he threw over his shoulder, trying to get his temper under control. He needed to have a rational conversation with her.
He clicked the remote unlock button and four lights blinked in the night as the locks popped. He’d reached his car door when she said, “Has something happened with the custody thing?”
Ethan looked at her across the car hood. Even with a four-wheel-drive vehicle between them he wanted to haul her close and shake her. “Just get in the damn car, JJ.”
He was pleased when she did as she was told. He was steamed enough without a fit of female petulance. When they were both buckled he revved the engine then screeched the tyres as he took off down the main drag. The radio was playing bush Christmas carols and he stabbed his finger at the off button. The last thing he wanted to hear was Six White bloody Boomers right now.
JJ didn’t say anything for a minute or so, but he could feel her assessing gaze on his profile. “Are you okay?” she eventually asked.
Ethan slammed the car into high gear as he sailed past the turnoff to their street. “No.”
JJ frowned. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere I can yell at you,” he snapped.
Her frown deepened. “Yell at me? What the hell for?”
She had to be kidding right? Ethan’s jaw was so tense he thought it was going to crack. He could smell beer and rum and, in his peripheral vision, he could see the bounce of her breasts in her too-tight T-shirt with every bump in the road.
He was going slowly mad.
“I’m not talking about this now,” he said tersely, applying all his mental faculties to the road illuminated in front of him. “I’m not going to drive and argue.”
“We’re going to argue?” she demanded.
Ethan flicked a grim glance her way. “Hell yeah.”
He needed to yell and God help him, he hoped she yelled back. They needed to clear the air. Because otherwise this rising tension was going to manifest itself in other ways.
Bad, naked ways.
She was silent for a moment, looking out the window at ghostly gums and the bush flying by. “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”
“Hobson’s Crossing.”
“You’re taking me to lovers’ lane to yell at me?” she asked incredulously. “Jesus, Ethan,” she snorted. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
Ethan gripped the steering wheel harder. She had no idea what kind of a time he could give her. “It’ll be private,” he said. “Even the most diehard teenager will have gone by now. And I was hoping—” his jaw clenched “—that the drive might help calm me down.”
Another snort. “And how’s that working out for you?”
“What do you reckon?” he snapped.
JJ sighed, but didn’t say anything until they took the turn off five minutes later. “Ethan … I’m tired. It’s been a long day, I really just want to fall into bed.”
Ethan shut his eyes briefly as the knot between his shoulder blades pulled tighter. He’d rather she was in bed too—riding him like a prize stallion. “This won’t take long,” he said grimly.
A few minutes of ranting and raving ought to do it. A lecture on her safety and some harsh truths about what exactly a sick-son-of-a-bitch like Shane Gallagher could do to a woman if he had a mind to, should scare the bejesus out of her. Then he’d take her home to their bed and pretend he didn’t want her.
Five minutes later they’d passed over the crossing that divided Hobson’s Creek in two and were pulling up at the rudimentary car park. It was deserted, as he’d predicted.
Ethan switched off the engine and, after the chug of the motor died, silence engulfed them. His headlights illuminated the area in front, playing on the surface of the water and poking into the dark recesses of the creek bank on the opposite side. Large, smooth stones formed a natural edge to the waterhole on their side, where the bottom dropped steeply away to deep water.
Hobson’s Creek was one of the many watercourses that were fed by the springs about an hour’s drive further west and after which Jumbuck Springs was named. It was a place that was as familiar to him as any in the area, but one that had always called to him.
He often came out here to clear his head and think.
“Ethan?” JJ’s soft voice broke into his reverie. “What’s going on?” she asked, her hand sliding onto his forearm.
His pulse leapt and his skin tingled beneath her palm and he almost broke then. Almost reached across and hauled her into his lap, plundered her mouth
with his, ground himself against her. Desire and propriety warred within him as his frustration reached boiling point.
“Don’t touch me,” he snapped, shaking her hand off, fumbling with his seatbelt, reefing his door open, stumbling out of the cab.
He stormed down to the water’s edge following the twin beams of light projecting from his vehicle, his breath heaving in and out. He raked a shaky hand through his hair, dragged in great gulps of the balmy night air as insects hummed around him.
The slam of a door was loud and decisive and he looked back towards the vehicle in time to see JJ storming towards him, wavy hair a-bouncing. “What the hell is the matter with you?” she snapped. “First you drag me out here at two-thirty in the morning like some dumbass he-man—”
She halted in front of him, right in his personal space, the toe of her shoe practically bumping the toe of his boot and Ethan felt his blood pressure rise fifty points.
“—with no explanation and then you act like I have freaking Ebola, like you can’t even stand to be anywhere near me. I didn’t notice you being so goddamn particular that night you were drunk and gagging for it.”
Her chest rose and fell and Ethan tried really hard not to notice. Dear God, did she have no idea? She could have a mixture of rabies, a virulent zombie virus and some strange highly contagious pox from Mars and he’d still want to do her where they stood.
But that was not why they were here.
“Why didn’t you tell me Shane visited you yesterday?” he demanded.
JJ blinked at him and then her face screwed up into some kind of contortion that left him in no doubt she thought he’d gone mad. Maybe he had. “Is that what this is about?”
That was one of the things this was about—the other stuff wasn’t up for discussion. But her incredulous answer—like Shane’s visit had been trivial—cranked his blood pressure up another fifty. “Have you got any idea of some of the things I’ve seen?” he yelled. “Some of the things a pissed-off sicko bastard can do to a woman?”
“Yeah,” she yelled back. “I had a black eye for a month and ribs that still bitch at me in winter.”
Ethan snorted. “You think a few broken bones is the worst that can happen to you? Try that plus deprivation of liberty, and hours and hours and hours of degradation and humiliation. Rape. Torture.”
JJ pulled back from him a little, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Jesus, Ethan. You’re being a little dramatic, aren’t you?”
Ethan glared at her, half-crazy with the thought of what Shane might be capable of, sucking in warm air laden with eucalyptus. “No, I’m fucking not.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she dismissed.
“Like what?” he hissed. “Mrs D said he was talking about your honeymoon. There’s a big flashing red light if ever I saw one. How could you be so stupid?”
JJ gasped at his choice of words, but Ethan was beyond rationality. He hated that Shane, who had beaten and abused her, had ever been granted access to her body at all. It drove him crazy thinking that son-of-a-bitch had had his hands on her in any way after how he’d mistreated her.
He wasn’t fit for the privilege.
JJ shot him an icy glare. “What could you have done?” she demanded. “He didn’t touch me, threaten me, harass me—nothing. He came in for a beer and talked a bit of smack. I asked him to leave and he left.” She poked him in the chest. “I handled it.”
Ethan leaned down, bringing his face closer to hers. It was important she understood what he could do. He dropped his voice an octave or two. “I’d have hunted him down and thrown his ass in jail overnight.”
“For what?” she yelled.
“For screwing with me,” he yelled back, his breath puffing aside a stray lock of hair on her forehead.
She glared at him and her anger sparked and crackled like an electrical aura in the glow of the car lights. Her mouth was parted as if she was going to say more, and rough air shunted in and out of it as her chest heaved. The insects that had been trilling madly when they first arrived had fallen silent as if they too were waiting for her next words.
Their husky breath was the only sound to break the night, adding another layer to the already laden atmosphere. Ethan hadn’t been this mad or this turned on in a long time and when her gaze dropped to his mouth he knew he was done for.
“Fuck.”
And then he was grasping her shoulders and hauling her close, slamming his mouth down on hers, demanding she open to him, sweeping his tongue inside her mouth, groaning when she whimpered and grabbed his shirt.
“I want you,” he muttered, pulling away from her mouth, dropping kisses on her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her nose.
“Yes,” JJ murmured, her face turned upwards in offering. “Yes.”
Ethan claimed her mouth again, drinking her in, feeling the heat and the buzz and the tingle spread from his lips to lower parts of his body. His neck, his chest, his belly, his thighs, and when her hands found their way inside his jeans and grabbed his ass, the tingle became a burn that raged out of control. It flambéed all his senses until nothing mattered but her mouth and the wild imperative to fuck her.
His hands pulled at her T-shirt, hers pulled at his. His fingers fumbled with her button and zipper, hers found his with startling accuracy and the noise as she yanked it down ripped through the air like the crack of a whip. Louder than their breath, louder than the urgent wash of his pulse through his ears.
Louder than the breaking of all their rules.
He dragged his mouth away as her fingernails scraped his aching erection. Dear God. “Hold on,” he said.
“Wha—?” she said, but he was already swinging her up into his arms and stalking towards the vehicle. In ten long strides he’d arrived and set her to the ground, pushing her back against the passenger door, kissing her hard, grinding his erection into the juncture of her thighs, greedily sucking up her gasp and her moan as the delicious friction streaked heat to his balls.
“Get naked,” he muttered against her mouth pulling away slightly, giving her room as he hastily tore at his own clothes.
His shirt was up and off in a flash but she just stood there watching, her gaze roving over his chest, looking a little dazed, and he grinned and kissed her again, brief and hard.
“Clothes,” he demanded, pulling back, reaching for her shirt and yanking it up and off as well, tossing it on the ground.
Ethan’s breath hissed out as he feasted his gaze on her breasts clad in a plain black bra. He couldn’t have been more turned on if it had been Victoria’s Secret.
“Oh … man, you are perfect,” he muttered, skimming his hands up her belly to cup her breasts, moulding them, brushing his thumbs against the hard tips he couldn’t see but could feel with every pass.
She moaned and arched her back and nothing could have stopped him from dipping his head, pulling the cups aside and putting his mouth to first one nipple then the other.
The way she gasped “Ethan!”, the way she clutched at his shoulders and pushed into his mouth, fired his blood even more and he lifted his mouth to kiss her again, to plaster her against the door of the car with just his lips and the power if his lust.
She found his open fly again and his erection bucked as her hands dipped inside his undies and wrapped around his girth. Ethan tore his mouth away, his forehead coming to rest on hers as a groan bellowed out from a place so deep and buried it almost hurt.
“JJ,” he panted, his eyes shut as she stroked her palm up and down the length of him—once, twice, three times.
Enough. He grabbed her hand and held it still as she tried to stroke him more. “Naked,” he gasped again, reaching for her fly and ripping it down.
She unhanded him to take over and Ethan could finally think again. She pushed at her jeans, wiggling her hips, kicking out of them as he tended to his, first snagging the condom out of his wallet—the just-in-case condom he’d only started to carry since that night at the pub in JJ’s bed.
A
nd then she was naked in front of him and so, so tempting. But he knew if he touched her, started kissing her again they’d be going at it against the cold metal of the car door or on the ground in the dirt. The very least he could do now he’d gone all monosyllabic and Neanderthal on her was offer the relative comfort of his back seat.
“Car,” he said, reaching around her to the handle, lifting it up. The door opened slightly, bumping her closer. Her breasts brushed his chest, his erection jabbed her belly. With a monumental effort he took a step back, snagging her hand, pulling her with him as he opened it all the way.
“Get in,” he said, dropping a quick hard kiss on her mouth. “Now.”
JJ turned and used the footplate to step up into the back seat. Her bare cheeks taunted him and the Neanderthal wanted to grab her right then and there and take her from behind. But then she was in and on her back and wiggling her way along the seat. With the interior light not working, it was darker inside the car, but he could still make out the enticing twist of her hips and legs.
Ethan’s heart pounded, his mouth going dry as a surge of lust washed over him. For a moment he could barely see for the hot tide fogging his vision.
“Ethan?”
The desperation and uncertainty in her voice yanked him out of the mist and he blinked to clear it. She’d raised herself on her elbows and looked at him, a little frown forming a V between her eyebrows. He gazed up the long length of her closed legs, over the dark patch of hair at the juncture, up the slight rise of her belly onto her perky breasts.
She was perfect.
“Ethan,” she whispered and this time it was an invitation as she moved her left leg, placing the foot flat on the floor of the vehicle and spreading her thighs wide.
Ethan followed the movement with his eyes. Trekked his gaze up from her bent knee, all the way along her inner thigh to the centre of her, the delicate detail hidden in shadow. He dragged his eyes away, glanced up and their gazes locked.
“Ethan, I swear to God …” she muttered, her elbows collapsing, her head dropping down onto the upholstery. “Do you need a handwritten invitation or should I just start without you?”
Ethan sucked in a breath as images of watching her pleasure herself blasted like a triple-x film into his brain. “No, ma’am,” he said, tearing at the condom with his teeth.
He was going to be the one to satisfy her this time.
He sheathed himself quickly before vaulting up into the back seat. Her arms reached for him, pulling him into the cradle of her pelvis, her other leg bending up to accommodate him.
And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him back, her sighs and moans filling his head. He broke away, sought and found her nipples and she cried out and lifted her pelvis in invitation when he sucked them. “Ethan,” she panted as she ground herself against him, “Please. I need you in me.”
And he didn’t need a written invitation, just pushed straight into her heat, kissing her long and deep as they both groaned their satisfaction. She fit around him like a glove, clamping him in heat and honey and holding him in thrall with her pants and gasps, the dig of her nails into his ass, her pleas for more.
For harder, deeper, faster.
And he gave it to her, completely lost in the feel of her. He didn’t care that he, the chief of police, was bare-ass naked at lovers’ lane for all the world to see. He didn’t care that he was making a complete hypocrite of himself, after lecturing hundreds of teenagers on the perils of such an activity. He didn’t care that they were making enough noise to rouse his big boss in the big smoke who would definitely not approve of this irregular use of a police vehicle.
He didn’t even care that this was JJ, his friend, because he wanted to make her his lover—and to hell with the rules.
And it was good, damn it, and he never wanted it to end. Never wanted to stop doing this with her. It was just so easy. So good and right and easy. And precious little in his life had ever come this easy.
Figuratively or literally as it turned out. JJ cried out as she bucked under him, her nails digging in to the small of his back as muscles deep inside her clamped down tight around him and her “yes, yes, yes,” filled his head and catapulted his own orgasm into the stratosphere.
Pleasure popped and swirled and fizzed and his cries joined hers as he fell headlong into release.
JJ came gradually out of the haze as her body slowly returned to normal. She wasn’t sure what the hell all this meant, all she knew was that Ethan’s weight felt good and solid on top of her, he felt hard and thick inside her and she wanted more. She wanted it all. She certainly didn’t want to leave this place where magic had happened in case the bubble burst the minute they buckled up.
Ethan’s forehead was pressed into her chest, his breathing still hard. “Let’s go for a swim,” she said.
Ethan lifted his head and her breath caught in her throat at the satisfaction stamped all over his face. He kissed her and her heart just about burst out of her ribcage.
“I don’t think I’m capable of walking,” he murmured, dropping his forehead back on her chest, pressing little kisses along her collar bone.
JJ laughed. She felt light, giddy. She didn’t want this time to end. Back in town a whole bunch of complications awaited them but here it was just her and him. She pushed at his shoulders, “Come on, old man,” she teased.
Ethan groaned and moved to let her up as she shifted out from under him and headed for the open door. Her bare feet hit the ground and she turned to look at him lying stretched out on his belly, his magnificent thighs and ass filling her vision. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Her heart flipped in her chest when he raised his head and looked back over his shoulder at her with a dark knowing gaze. “Promises, promises,” he rumbled.
A minute later he joined her in the creek. The water was cool on heated flesh but not cold and JJ felt invigorated by it. And their sex.
She felt in-freaking-vincible.
It had been tempting, while she’d waited for him, to analyse what had happened just now, but for once in her life she was just going to go with the flow.
Analysis would come as soon as they hit the town limits.
They splashed around and played for a brief time but it wasn’t long before he swept her into his arms again and they were kissing like they hadn’t just both come for Australia. Wet slippery kisses with cool lips and hot mouths.
Things got heated again. They got hard. They got wet.
Their breathing got heavy.
Ethan’s erection was thick against her belly and JJ needed him thick inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him into her, gasping when he filled her with heat and steel.
“God, you feel so damn good,” he groaned into her neck.
Practically boneless, JJ’s head fell back, the stars above her twisting with every long slow thrust.
Ethan groaned again. “We have to stop,” he muttered.
JJ shook her head, her eyes shutting as he slid inside her. “No,” she panted.
He gripped her hips harder. “No condom.”
JJ moaned as he stopped high and hard inside her. “Damn it,” she whispered, angling herself on him to create just the right amount of pressure in just the right spot.
His chuckle was quiet in the dark. “Hold on.”
JJ was vaguely aware of the water swirling around them, of the light movement of air on her bare shoulders, of the stars floating above her, but everything felt disconnected, as she hovered on a sexual high somewhere between so-good and almost-there. The wild pulse between her legs obliterated everything, demanding her full attention.
It wasn’t until Ethan murmured, “Hop up on the edge,” that she became aware of her physical surroundings. Warm stones forming the steep bank behind her back, one of Ethan’s hands braced on the smooth flat rocks of the ledge behind her head, the other on her thigh as he slowly withdrew.
“Oh no, no, no,” she said, clamping tight around him, des
perate to hold him inside her. She shut her eyes, tightened her hold around his neck. “Please don’t stop,” she panted.
“Shh,” he murmured, his hot tongue lapping at the beads of water on the side of her neck. “It’s okay. It’ll be good. I promise.”
“But—” Her protest as he withdrew was cut off by his mouth and she sunk into the kiss, rubbing her belly against his erection as he plundered and stroked and cranked her need ever higher.
Then he was boosting her up on to the side. Water sluiced down her back and belly and flanks. A light breeze stiffened her nipples and she shivered. She looked down at him, his head level with her knees, their gazes locking despite being hidden in shadow.
“Lay back.”
JJ sucked in a tiny breath as everything clenched tight inside her at the gravelly command. She pushed her hands into his wet hair. “Officer Weston,” she said, feigning shock. “I think what you are suggesting is conduct entirely unbecoming of a police officer in a public place.”
He didn’t do or say anything for a moment. Then, still holding her gaze, he slid his hands on her knees and slowly prised them wide apart. She gasped as cool water rushed in swirling and lapping at her heated core. He shifted in closer to her, his head now directly level with her sex, but still only looking at her.
“Lay back.”
JJ felt the wild clench of her internal muscles, and not even a case of sudden-onset paralysis could have stopped her from falling back against the stones behind her. The shallow water of the ledge embraced her but she was barely conscious of it as his hot mouth closed over her, his tongue working her until the earth shifted beneath her and the stars exploded above her and every last cry had been wrenched from inside her.
Until she was his more than she’d ever been.