Shotgun Honeymoon

Janina slid her arms around his waist. “Tomorrow, if I put my arms around you, will you tell me to stop?”

The slow, sideways smile tilted Russ’s mouth. “Prob’ly not.”

“Then shut up about tomorrow and let me drive you home.”

“Because tomorrow I’ll be too inhibited to open my mouth and say anything to you,” Russ finished belatedly, deliberately baiting her, and ducked away laughing when Janina swung at him.

“You—”

Grinning the charming, devilish Levoie grin that Janina associated with his brothers but couldn’t remember ever seeing on him, he offered her a broad, two-handed, supremely innocent shrug. “What can I say? I was an Eagle Scout. Honesty is bred in the bone.”

“That sounds like something your brother Guy would say,” Janina returned dryly.

“Where d’you think he got it from?”

She found herself laughing up at him, astonished herself by teasing him. “Not you.”

Russ draped an arm around her shoulders. A natural move from a man who never made this kind of move naturally. “Yeah, me.”

Janina found herself sliding easily beneath his arm, fitting close against his side where she’d been made to fit, born to belong.

She wanted to touch him, to have as much of him as she could in the here and now, but she couldn’t comfortably fit an arm around him so she settled for pulling his hand down where she could hold on to it, could at least keep her left hand in his.

Could feel every bit of warmth, every pulse in his fingers in the way his fingertips tickled her palm, traced the inside of her wrist, seduced and tempted and… She closed her eyes and her stomach tightened, body vibrated, became heavy, turned to liquid.

And suddenly her panties, that sexy, almost nonexistent scrap of a silk thong she’d put on in hopes of finding him, of being with him, was…wet. She was wet.

For want of him.

From simply imagining him.

“You sure?” She sounded breathless, and was.

The look he sent her from those deeper-than-midnight, clearer-than-the-full-moon, more-powerful-than-any-tide eyes of his when he said, “I’m sure,” made Janina lose her grip on his hand, drop her own to his waist and tip her head up to his.

Her eyes widened when his released fingers quite casually, naturally, instinctively grazed her nipple, brushed her breast, then closed over it to gently squeeze.

And her body burned with awareness, with desire, with excitement…with need. And with the sudden, absolute and potentially embarrassing recognition of where they were and the fact that she wanted complete, utter and immediate privacy. Where was not a factor, so long as it was right now, at once, instantly and without delay.

“Russ?” Urgent, a plea.

He offered her a slow smile. His fingers played with her breast, found her nipple once again. She lifted into the pleasure of his touch, pressed into it, and her breathing grew ever more shallow. They were in public and she couldn’t make herself—and didn’t want to—step away. But heaven help her if she wasn’t alone with him soon…

“We have to get out of here.” The effort it took to manage seven short syllables was amazing.

Without taking his eyes off her face or his left hand off her breast, Russ pushed open the Bloated Boar’s outer door.

“We’re outta here,” he promised.

“Oh.” Stunned, Janina drew a half breath and swallowed the taste of dawn. She’d been so mesmerized she hadn’t even realized they’d been moving. “Good.”

Russ’s laugh was deep, his voice gravelly with need. “Take me home, Janie.”

Urgency became a frantic blast of something beyond want, beyond desire, beyond simple need or even passion, became quite suddenly a critical piece of her existence, a fundamental element of survival, of life. Her life, his life, their life. One life combined. One life only.

“Yes.” Her voice shook, her heart grew three, four, ten sizes—grew big enough to hold a man who stood six foot four-plus inches in a barefoot slouch, but who never slouched. Her knees were jelly. She fumbled for her keys. “Yes, Russ. I will. I am.”

“Good.” He folded to nuzzle the side of her face, her ear. “The night’s short, dawn’s shorter and there’s a lot I want to do with you before I wake up and turn into a pumpkin again, ya know?”

Janina turned her face into his mouth and kissed him furiously, pouring all of herself into it. “It took me a long time to get up the gumption to do it, but I found you now, Russ Levoie, and I’m not letting you back off. So consider this fair warning. You’re making me believe in magic right now and I want it and everything you’ve got to give that goes with it. So you go shy and tongue-tied on me tomorrow, it won’t matter ’cuz I know who you are underneath and I know you want to be with me. So I won’t let who you seem to be intimidate me. You got that?”

Dazed and bemused, Russ ran his tongue around his mouth to taste the kiss she’d left there, then touched the tip of his finger to the stitches in her upper lip. “If we kiss again, will that hurt?”

“It’ll hurt more if we don’t,” Janina whispered, sliding her arms, sprained wrist and all, around his neck.

“Good,” he muttered, “because you taste incredible. I’ve never tasted anything like you, and I really have to kiss you again.” Then he caught her around the waist, lifted her high against his chest and did just that.

His kiss was careful, mindful of her bruises and almost, Janina realized somewhat fuzzily, out of practice.

Then she stopped realizing anything at all, stopped being able to think, stopped being and simply became absorbed in and by the kiss.

Thrilled to it.

The instant held beauty, power and enchantment, oneness and an absolute absence of alone. Breath shared became needed oxygen, air and life, a place beyond passion and pleasure, an existence within heart and soul, pure, complete, without boundaries.

It was a place Janina had never before been.

Arriving there left her breathless.

It made her afraid.

And she never wanted to come back from it.

“Janie.” Russ broke the kiss, raised his head and gave her what she’d craved since she’d been a starry-eyed but not-so-innocent sixteen-year-old schoolgirl ready to worship and adore her tall, dark and hunky hero. “I-40’s right out there, it’s not five hours to Vegas. Four hours with a cop in the car, maybe less.” He groaned when she wrapped her arms more securely around him and her belly rubbed provocatively but unintentionally against his. His muscles went taut, his breathing went harsh and ragged, his arms contracted around her. “Definitely less. Has to be less. We could go, find a chapel, not an Elvis one, though, and—”

“Yes,” Janina interrupted, wild and giddy from the magic, the enchantment of the moment, the pure unadulterated impossibility that made her sure she should pinch herself to see if she was awake. She had to be dreaming because this was what she’d wanted since the moment she’d picked up her mother’s shotgun and skulked after him without him knowing it to make sure he’d be safe until help arrived the night Maddie Thorn had shot her father and killed her brother in self-defense and Russ had gone to rescue Maddie, the always-victim, again.

But Maddie wasn’t here and Russ was thinking of her, Janina, and only of her. Of her, Janie. And that was what made Janina look deep into his midnight eyes, touch her nose to his and know she wasn’t dreaming. That’s what made her repeat, “Yes,” breathlessly, with her heart in her throat, and then again, shouting, joyous, loud, clear and strong, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Then, laughing and oblivious to her bruises, to the consequences of dreaming without a thought to what came after you woke up—without a nod to anything but the unbelievable reality of having achieved your heart’s desire—she wriggled out of his arms, grabbed his hand and made a beeline across the Bloated Boar’s parking lot to her car.

And no, she didn’t listen to that far-off whisper, that superstitious mother-warning fading in the desert dawn: Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it if you don’t watch out.

By 6:30 a.m., they’d stopped for gas on the other side of Seligman, and Janina was feeling more than wild, beyond anxious, outside of nervous. Russ was no longer quite drunk, but he showed no sign of swaying from the path they’d set out on.

His hand resting on her thigh while she drove had played havoc with her concentration, her pulse and her blood pressure. The hand, the fingertips on her thigh had roamed up and down the inside of her leg, just high enough under her short dress to sketch ticklish, teasing circles that claimed her attention and made her catch her breath before stroking back down to the inside of her knee and letting her almost—almost!—relax.

Then he’d settled his arm around her shoulder, slipped his hand along her collarbone, over her throat, caressed the delicate skin there and slipped his fingers inside the deep neckline of her scooped-neck sundress to draw patterns along the top of her breasts, never quite touching where it ached.