Chapter Two
JJ didn’t go straight to her room after she switched off the lights in the bar and headed up the stairs. She walked past her door, seeking the quiet and fresh air of the pub’s magnificent full-length veranda before she faced Ethan again.
She let herself out, the old floorboards creaking beneath her feet. Ignoring the nearby squatter’s chairs, she walked the six metres to the edge, her hands coming to rest on the waist-high handrail.
The veranda, typical of so many outback pubs—wide and covered and hemmed in by magnificent railings of wrought-iron lacework—was her favourite place to sit and just be. Especially after a long busy night.
She inhaled slow and steady, shutting her eyes, the absolute serenity enveloping her. Nothing stirred on the street below, her last customers having left for home half an hour ago. In fact it was rare that anything ever stirred at two-thirty in the morning in a town of two thousand people.
For this moment in time she was totally alone and she savoured it, knowing that a large, inebriated man waited for her in a hopelessly asexual way.
She opened her eyes, admiring the way the three-quarter moon bathed the wide main street in a milky film, softening the harshness of the black tar. Directly in front of the pub the strip of central parking was interrupted by the town cenotaph engraved with the names of the young men who had left Jumbuck Springs to fight for their country nearly a century ago. The moon, in an eerie celestial tribute, cast an alabaster sheen on it too.
A soft scrape below, across the other side of the street, caught her attention and the hair at her nape prickled as an eerie feeling of being watched assailed her. She automatically took a step away from the railing, back into the shadows cast by the overhanging, corrugated-iron roof. Her gaze flicked up and down the street spearing into dark corners as her pulse tripped a little.
She waited, her ears straining, her breath held.
Nothing.
Nothing moved. Nothing scraped. No-one was there.
Probably just an animal.
She let out her breath, forced her shoulders to relax. Still, she couldn’t suppress a shiver that wasn’t from the warm November night. Nor could she shake the eerie sensation, as she made her way inside and locked and bolted the door behind her.
JJ frowned at the empty couch as she let herself in to her room, the spooked feeling vanishing as crankiness took over. Where in the hell had he gotten to? He usually slept like the dead after a session with Jack.
If he’d walked himself home in his condition …
She pulled her mobile out of her back pocket as she headed for her bedroom, toeing her shoes off and leaving them where they fell as she hit Ethan’s number on her speed dial list. A phone rang from the direction of her room and her frown deepened. What the?
She walked through the open doorway—the door had long ago met a nasty end—to find her missing person very much not missing, but sprawled, half-naked, like he was freaking King-of-the-World, on her bed.
This was every fantasy of hers come to life, and parts of her anatomy south of her navel did a little happy dance.
But parts north of her neck were pretty damn pissed off.
That was her bed, goddamn it. Yeah, it was a little on the old side, the springs creaked and one of the legs was a bit wonky, but it was big and comfy and just right after a long busy night on her feet. It was also the one little corner of her life Ethan hadn’t managed to invade—not physically anyway.
God knew he’d visited plenty in the throes of many a wild wet dream.
But now it too would reek of eau-du-Ethan—liquorice and man. It would be ingrained in the fabric of the mattress, the stuffing of the pillows.
She was never going to sleep again.
JJ glared at his slumbering frame. Long legs, lethal in denim, his button fly already enticingly popped, abdomen all ridged and naked, begging for a finger or a tongue to discover the hills and valleys, dark shaggy hair spread around his head like a freaking halo on her pillow.
Well too damn bad for this broken-down angel. She was the one who’d worked her ass off until two am. Not him.
And she wanted her bed back.
If Ethan wanted to write himself off then hit on her he could suffer the consequences. And in her home, the consequences were the couch.
She marched to the side and hissed, “Ethan!”
Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Weren’t cops supposed to sleep with one eye open?
Or was half a bottle of Jack paralysing to eyelids?
This time she snapped on the bedside lamp and jabbed him hard in the shoulder with her index finger. “Ethan!”
His eyes flew open and one more time tonight she was caught in the loss and pain she’d seen earlier before his thought processes came online and he realised where he was.
“Shit, sorry,” he said as he bolted upright, his abs curling in a most distracting manner. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I got up to go to the bathroom. The bed was a little hard to resist after your god-awful couch. Seriously,” he said pushing a hand through his unruly hair, “I’m buying you another one.”
JJ’s anger dissipated as quickly as it had risen. The man was sitting on her bed, shirtless and sleep rumpled, as if it was perfectly normal to be talking about hideous furniture at two-thirty in the morning.
“It’s not meant to be slept on,” she grouched.
“What’s the bloody good of it then?” he grouched back.
JJ sighed. Ethan’s head was level with her waist and the urge to step between his thighs, slide her fingers into his hair and draw his head to her belly, feel his arms snaking around her was about more than she could stand. With her big bed as the backdrop, she was on dangerous ground and her pulse beat, slow and thick, just thinking about the possibilities.
But maybe that was because she was sober.
And desperate.
Although Ethan seemed relatively sober now too. Sure, a blood alcohol level would probably dispute that but his voice was normal, his movements sure and coordinated.
“Maybe if you didn’t let Delia push your buttons quite so much, you wouldn’t have intimate knowledge of my awful couch?”
It was Ethan’s turn to sigh. “You’re right,” he grimaced, raking his hands through his hair again. “But you’re never going to guess what she’s done now?”
JJ’s pulse picked up at the utter desolation in his voice, and she finally understood what people meant when they talked about a sense of impending doom. Delia always had been an A-grade bitch. Who knew what evil she’d thought to visit upon them this time. She watched as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the piece of paper he’d been reading over and over at the bar earlier in the night.
He offered it to her with a, “I think you’re probably going to need to sit for this.”
JJ’s chest tightened as she took the paper and sank to the mattress beside him. Her hand shook as she took in Delia’s stupid, girly, loopy handwriting. Who still dotted their i’s with a teeny circle and wrote with a purple glitter pen in their thirties for crying out loud?
Especially a letter that packed such a punch. Ultimately none of Delia’s pretty could take away the ugly.
“She has got to be fucking kidding,” JJ exclaimed, turning to face Ethan’s steely profile. No wonder he’d sought some liquid solace.
“Nope,” he said. Ethan propped his elbows on his evenly spaced knees, and dropped his face into his open palms. “Despite the glitter, I actually think she’s deadly serious.”
JJ suppressed the urge to tear up the offensive note into a billion pieces. She stood instead and paced up and down the length of the room. She stopped in front of him after a short while.
“She can’t seriously expect that a court is going to give her full custody of a kid she walked out on when she was two years old and, apart from a handful of extremely disruptive flying visits, has had bugger all to do with since?” JJ demanded.
Ethan shifted his hands so they
were only half covering his face and looked at her. “She’s the mother.”
And the absolute defeat in his voice spiked something so violent inside JJ she wanted to smash things. “The mother? The mother! Your mother …” JJ tripped over the words. It had been five years since Elizabeth Weston’s death but it was still so hard to believe she wasn’t ever going to be around again.
“… was more of a mother than Delia’s ever been. Hell, Lacey, your little sister who was eight years old when Connie was born, has been more of a mother. For fuck’s sake, Delia’s own mother has had more to do with Connie!”
Ethan shook his head, dropping his hands to his knees. “What she says in the letter is right though, JJ. Connie’s a fourteen-year-old girl now, who’s going through puberty and … needs a woman’s influence.”
JJ snorted in a way she was damn sure Delia never would have. “A woman’s influence maybe. A stupid, little, princess tramp’s influence? No freaking way!”
Ethan blinked. “Wow. I had no idea you disliked her this much.”
“What’s to like?” JJ snapped. “Her leading you on a merry dance all through our senior year at high school? Or her deliberately getting pregnant to screw up your career prospects and bring you back here? Or maybe her fooling around behind your back with at least two men that we know of? Or how about the pièce de résistance? Her leaving town with that wanna-be country music fool the day her kid turned two?”
Ethan stared morosely at the threadbare carpet. “For what it’s worth, I think this thing with Edward has really matured her. He’s a good guy.”
JJ couldn’t believe he was defending her. Edward may be a good guy but he was also a blind fool. She took up pacing again, stalking to one end of the room then pivoting abruptly once she got close to the wall and marching back again. She stopped after four laps. “Has Delia even asked Connie what she wants?”
“I suspect that’s what Paris is about.”
JJ snorted again, her bare feet chewing up the carpet. “You and I and everyone in this town, including Delia’s parents, know damn well there is no way in hell your daughter will want to live anywhere that you’re not. She worships the ground you walk on.”
“Yeah … but I’ve never taken her to Paris, have I?”
JJ blew a raspberry this time. The fact that all-about-me Delia had taken her daughter on her honeymoon had shocked the hell out of everyone. But clearly she’d had an ulterior motive all along. “Paris smaris.”
Ethan shook his head. “Connie was pretty impressed.”
JJ stopped in front of Ethan again. “That’s because Connie is a bright girl who isn’t stupid enough to turn her back on the trip of a lifetime from a woman who has never given her anything. She’s smart. That’s how you raised her. But Paris with her mother and new husband for two weeks is a lot different to Princess freaking Delia forever.”
Ethan dropped his head again, his hands coming up to worry the shaggy layers of his hair. “I can’t …” his voice cracked and he stopped for a moment, “… lose her, JJ. I just can’t.”
JJ blinked at the emotion in Ethan’s voice. She’d known him all of his life and never—never—heard him break. Even as his mother’s life drew to an end and the days after and during the funeral he’d been stoic as hell—like a rock. Going through the motions, doing what had to be done, being there for a devastated Connie and Lacey.
He looked up at her and the anguish thickening his gaze lanced right through her middle, clawing a handful of her gut and yanking hard.
JJ threw herself down on the bed beside him. “You won’t,” she said, her hand skating up his back to rest on his shoulder. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
He didn’t look at her, just stared straight ahead at the wall. “I just don’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t there, every day. I just can’t …”
He trailed off and the anger in JJ’s gut burned a little brighter. Delia had better not ever set foot in The Stockman again if she didn’t want to be looking down the barrel of a shotgun.
Purely out of instinct she slid her hand across acres of warm skin from his shoulder to his neck, her thumb brushing against his nape in reassurance. She turned slightly so she could see him properly, her knees pressed against his thigh and she dropped a kiss to his bare shoulder.
“Don’t think like that,” she murmured, her chin propped on his shoulder. “We’ll fight this. It’ll work out, you’ll see.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded, turning to face her, a flare of light flickering in his gaze like the strike of a match. “Courts have been known to do crazier things.”
JJ couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear to see Ethan—good, decent, honourable Ethan who gave up his dreams of making detective in homicide to come back to Jumbuck Springs and marry his pregnant girlfriend—being put through this.
She was so used to him being the strong arm of the law it was something else to see him so … vulnerable. And even if JJ hadn’t loved him since she was six years old and he’d punched Timmy Walker in the nose for calling her a girl, earning the ire of his chief of police father, she’d have still hated what Delia was doing to him.
She grabbed his face, cradling his cheekbones, his whiskers prickling her palms. “Listen to me. I know it because I know you,” she whispered, her voice fierce with conviction. “And I know Connie and how much she adores you. And I know this town. There isn’t one person in this town who won’t vouch for you. Not one.”
“I don’t know,” Ethan said, shutting his eyes. “Delia’s circumstances have changed … Edward comes from some serious money …”
“Shh,” JJ said, refusing to let even a nanosecond of doubt push its way between them. She had to make him see, she had to make it better. She stroked the pads of her thumbs over his shut eyelids. “You’re the good guy, right? And the good guy always wins.” Over the evil bitch princess. “It’s the rules.”
Ethan gave a soft snort, his eyes flicking open, his gaze bleeding like a cut vein. “No, JJ, they don’t.”
“Yes, they do,” she murmured, leaning in to kiss first one eyelid then the other, then his cheek and the dimple in his chin. Comforting him with the only thing she had right now—her words and her touch, like she’d do for anything or anyone who was suffering.
“They do here, in Jumbuck Springs,” she said, her fingers stroking the side of his face as her gaze locked with his. “Cos you’re our guy. And this town would slay a dragon for you.”
Hell she’d slay one all on her own if she had to.
“And if it just happens to be blonde and perky then I say bring it on, bitch.”
One corner of Ethan’s mouth kicked up slightly and she ran her thumb over it as her forefinger traced the indent in his chin, his whiskers spiking at her skin. She smiled back. “There you go,” she murmured. “There’s that trademark dimple.”
“Hmph,” he murmured as his smile broadened. “You got my back huh?”
“Always,” she grinned.
His smile didn’t last long. “Thanks,” he said leaning in to give her a peck on the cheek. “It’s good to have you in my corner.”
JJ rolled her eyes as she dropped her hands to her lap. “Don’t be stoopid, dummy. The whole town is in your corner.”
His smile rewarded her and for a moment they just sat side by side smiling at each other. And then something changed, JJ wasn’t sure what. But the smile slowly left his mouth and the atmosphere went from companionable to something thicker, weightier as she realised how close they’d become. How their foreheads were practically touching, their hair rubbing together. The faint smell of liquorice and overproof whisky floated around her and stroked her skin, prickling it as surely as his whiskers had only moments before.
“I should get back to the couch,” he grimaced.
JJ knew it was her cue to agree. To say something flippant and then kick him the hell out of her room. But damned if she wanted to do that. Damned if she didn’t want him now more than ever. A
nd while he may not have been sober as a judge, he was a long way from inebriated.
So she didn’t kick him to the curb—she kissed him.
As far as kisses went, it wasn’t going to end any Hollywood movies. Just the press of her mouth against his, holding still, settling into the moment, testing it out, ready to pull back, to flee should rejection be swift and decisive.
But there was no rejection.
JJ pulled back slightly, her throat thick, her pulse rushing through her ears like freaking Niagara Falls. Her lungs dragged in air she could practically taste, tinted with the essence of him that had been encoded in her DNA from childhood.
But the adult spice of whisky on his breath was a tantalising reminder that they weren’t children anymore. JJ had grown up in a pub. She came home most nights reeking of rum and spilled beer—probably did right at this moment. And there was something wonderfully familiar about it—like home.
Probably something really screwed up about it as well.
Ethan smelled like overproof whisky. But mostly he smelled like home.
The night seemed to be holding its breath around them and she couldn’t bear the silence any longer. “Ethan—”
She got no further, his mouth cutting her off, and whatever she’d been about to say was swept away, along with her common sense and years of keeping her distance.
Ethan groaned as JJ’s mouth opened beneath his, a thousand conflicting thoughts quashed by the enticing wash of desire. It grabbed at his loins and streaked heat up the inside of his thighs. She tasted good and smelled even better, and it didn’t matter that there was a line somewhere that he’d just crossed; only her mouth mattered.
Only the suck of her breath and the play of her tongue and the glide of her palms as they made their way to his shoulders. Only the slow obliteration of his troubles, of the here and now.
No Connie, no Delia, no custody battle.
Taken away from it all for a while.
Just him and her. Male and female. Hard and soft.
Her tongue stroked deep into his mouth and he groaned, welcoming it like a starving man. Like a man who hadn’t had sex in well over two years. Like a man deprived of love and affection.
His hands pushed into her short wavy hair, his mouth demanding more access to hers, taking and rejoicing when she gave it to him, bending her head back, trying to get enough, trying to go to that place where only pleasure existed.
His heart pounded, his breath came in ragged gasps, his hands shook, his groin burned, his erection surged.
Yes. This. He needed this.
The sweet oblivion of a woman’s body. Her softness, her sighs, her touch, her taste. Her deep wet heat.
Their kisses intensified, heads twisting back and forth as they tried to go deeper, get closer, then they were falling back onto the mattress and Ethan revelled in the crush of her breasts against his bare chest.
He ripped his mouth away, the noise of their breathing sawing in and out loud between them. JJ’s face was flushed, her usually clear-eyed stare distinctly glazed, her mouth moist and swollen. A surge of possession spiralled directly to his groin.
“Ethan,” she muttered, her hands reaching for him, but he hung back, grabbing a fistful of her T-shirt and pulling it up. Up and off, over her head, tossing it behind her. He barely glanced at the black bra in his haste to get to the goods below, yanking a cup aside and feasting on a rosy nipple.
It instantly puckered against his tongue and she cried out, ploughing her fingers into his hair, arching her back, and he sucked harder, running his tongue across the engorged tip, his hand reaching for her other breast, freeing it from its cup, his fingers mimicking the actions of his tongue.
He switched sides and her soft whimper, her breathy little gasp of, “Yes,” roared in his head like a cheer squad.
Like a symphony.
It wiped out everything but the taste and the smell and the sound of her. It hardened his dick, clawed red-hot talons into his buttocks and clamped his balls in a vice. He needed to be in her. He needed to feel the lock of her ankles around his waist and the clamp of her internal muscles as he pounded into her.
His hand travelled south as his mouth returned to claim hers and it made him hotter, harder, when she lifted her head off the bed as eager for his mouth as he was for her, her lips greedy on his as she whimpered her approval. His fingers found her fly, popping the button and easing the zipper down, slipping inside her underwear, heading straight for the heart of her.
She bucked against his hand and moaned into his mouth and Ethan kissed it up, sucking it away, revelling in her abandon, his tongue thrusting hard into her mouth, matching the shove and lunge of hers.
His fingers skated over the swollen nub, wet and hard, pausing to circle it a few times. Her hands clawed at his back, pushed under his waistband and slid inside his briefs. They grasped at his buttocks and stars exploded behind his eyelids, urging him on.
His fingers sought and found her entrance, slipping inside, first one then the other. She cried out, lifted her hips off the bed.
There. He wanted to be there. Sunk in deep. Snug to the hilt. Feeling her tight and hot and wet. Feeling her clamped down hard around him just like this.
“I want to be in you,” he groaned against her mouth.
“Yes,” she panted, “Yes,” pushing at his jeans, his underwear, pushing them off his hips, exposing his ass. He stopped, rolled off her onto his back, shifting and wriggling and kicking out of his clothes as his heart pounded and his breath roared in his head, vaguely aware she was doing the same, losing her bra, her jeans, her underwear. Yes, yes, yes chanted like a mantra through his blood.
And then she was skating up the bed, clawing at the coverlet, pulling it back, holding her hand out to him and dragging him towards her. Sweet, sweet JJ offering him the solace, the oblivion he so desperately needed. Looking fine, smelling good—like beer and bar and home.
“Now,” she said in his ear as he covered her body with his, her knees drawn up, her hips cradling his, his erection nudging the slick heat at her centre. “Now.”
And when she kissed him hard and deep and desperate he didn’t have it in him not to take what she was offering, what her eyes implored him for and her mouth begged, “Please, please, please,” for. He just followed the dictates of their bodies and pushed into her on a deep guttural groan.
And when her head fell back on a swift gasp of ecstasy his mouth latched onto her neck, kissing and sucking, licking and gnawing, her slight breasts bouncing, her ankles locking around his waist, his hips finding a rhythm that stoked him ever higher.
Ethan lost himself inside her as the primal demands of his libido drowned out finesse, erased reasoning. The bed squeaked, but he barely heard it. All that existed was the blinding imperative to not think, to leave it all behind. To have it all fade to black in the throes of a truly good orgasm. To thrust and rock and pound until he came long and hard. To reach the pinnacle as fast as he could, to leap off the edge and truly leave all his earth-bound worries behind.
He was a cave man. He was a Neanderthal.
He was fucking Cro-Magnon.
And all the time JJ panted, “Yes, yes, yes,” stoking him higher, building him quicker, squeezing his ass, whimpering her pleasure.
And suddenly it was there, boiling up from the root of his cock, pulling everything tight, waves of ecstasy rippling in ever bigger circles from his groin spreading to his thighs, his butt, his belly. Trembling through his arms as they took his weight above her. Finding voice in the bellow that tore from his throat, as his head reared up, and resonated in the air around them.
He didn’t know how long he rocked into her. He just rode the wave until long after it had peaked and crashed all around him. He rode until he was spent. Until his arms gave out. Until his voice cracked.
Then JJ was easing away from him, rolling him gently to his back, pulling up the sheets, moving in close, her head snuggling into his shoulder, her arm over his chest, her finge
rs lightly caressing a still quivering bicep.
His eyes fluttered closed, his lids so heavy it seemed impossible to keep them open. He was so damned tired. But something nagged at him, something important. Post-coital malaise invaded, infecting every cell in his body, tugging him insistently towards sleep, but he prised his eyes open as he grasped what was wrong.
In his haste to get to the goal line he hadn’t thought about her needs at all. Had she even …
“You didn’t—”
“Shh,” she murmured, interrupting his thoughts, her lips brushing his ear and her fingers stroking up and down the entire length of his arm now. “It’s fine … I’m fine … tired,” she said. “Go to sleep.”
Ethan tried to fight it, his brain a fog as he lost the battle with his conscience, his eyelids drooping, the elusive strands of his objections fluttering away like the tail of a kite as the heavy drag of sleep beckoned.