Rebecca York - Solid as Steele

She’d been through an emotional wringer during the past twenty hours, and the glimpse into his unhappy background made her want to…

What? Thank him for revealing himself? Or maybe the wounded look in his eyes made her want to let him know that everything was all right. Whatever that meant.

Without fully understanding her own motives, she reached for him and pulled him close.

She’d felt safe in his arms last night when he’d come rushing over to find out what was wrong, and she’d never thanked him for that. She’d only bristled at the questions his job had compelled him to ask.

Suddenly, everything had shifted. When she eased back and tipped her face up, she found that her mouth was only inches from his. It had been a long time since she’d kissed a man, and she’d be fooling herself if she tried to deny that she’d thought of kissing this man. For heartbeats, neither one of them moved, except for their shallow breathing. It wasn’t too late to stop. Somewhere in her mind she knew she should pull away, but she stayed where she was for a charged second and then another.

She wasn’t sure which of them moved to close the gap, maybe both of them.

“Jamie.” He said her name as their mouths met, and he moved his lips over hers in a kiss that was tender and needy and sexy, all at the same time.

Wanting to shut out the world, she closed her eyes so that she could focus on the man who held her in his arms.

She liked the taste of him. The texture of his lips. The heat of his body. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she felt her arms encircle his neck. In response, he gathered her closer as he turned his head first one way and then the other to change the angle of the kiss.

Somewhere in her mind, a voice spoke. This is wrong. You shouldn’t be in his arms. You shouldn’t be kissing him. But it was impossible to heed that voice when it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be close to him like this. As she nestled in his embrace, she could imagine what it would be like to share more than this kiss with him. Not just a sexual encounter but all the emotions she’d kept bottled up inside her for long, lonely months.

His tongue played with the seam of her lips, asking her to open for him, and she did, so that he could explore the line of her teeth, then stroke the sensitive tissue on the inside of her lips.

She made a small sound deep in her throat, telling him she liked what he was doing. When his tongue dipped farther into her mouth, hot, needy sensations curled through her body.

His hands stroked up and down her ribs, gliding upward to find the sides of her breasts, making her nipples tighten. She wanted to beg for more. She’d forgotten where they were. Forgotten why she shouldn’t allow this man such liberties.

She tangled her hands in his thick, dark hair, loving the slightly rough texture. For months she’d wanted to touch him there, and now she had the freedom to do it. Sensations she hadn’t experienced for too long bombarded her body and overwhelmed her mind.

Wanting more of him, she eased back a little so that she could pull open the front of his leather jacket and press her hands against his broad chest.

“Yes,” he murmured, his mouth still on hers.

She rubbed her hands against him, feeling hair crinkle through his shirt. It would be dark and thick and textured like the hair on his head.

Through the fabric, she found a flat nipple, feeling it stiffen at her touch. Her other hand found the placket of his shirt. When she slipped two fingers inside, he dragged in a sharp breath.

Her own nipples had tightened painfully, and she pictured herself dragging his hand to her breasts. Before she could do it, the sound of a car horn intruded into the fog of her brain.

Jerking away from Mack, she looked wildly around and saw a pickup truck pulling into the driveway just ahead of them. An old guy behind the wheel was glaring at them like they’d been filming a porn movie in the street.

Mack cursed under his breath and started the engine. The car bucked as he pulled away from the curb.

Jamie flopped back into her seat, fumbling with the seat belt, her face hot.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he put distance between themselves and the homeowner.

She made some kind of sound that could have been agreement or condemnation. It would be easy to accuse him of taking advantage of her, but she knew that it wasn’t true. She’d been a willing participant in what they’d been doing, and she wasn’t even sure how far they would have gone if they hadn’t been interrupted.

She might have admitted as much, but his next words sent her mind spinning off in an entirely different direction.

“There are some things you didn’t tell me about Lynn Vaughn’s murder,” he said as he put distance between themselves and the guy who’d so rudely knocked them out of whatever fantasy they’d been sharing.

“Oh great. You can’t deal with kissing me, so you’re switching back to Lynn Vaughn?” she said, hearing the grating sound of her own voice.

“Can you?” he asked.

He had a point. She’d ended up in his arms with very little provocation, and she’d started touching him in ways that were totally inappropriate. She had no excuse for that, other than her own emotional instability.

She sighed. “Okay, we can get back to business. What do you want to know?”

“You told me that you’d have dreams about bad things happening to people you knew, and they’d turn out to be true.”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that you knew Lynn Vaughn?”

The question had edged into territory she didn’t want to explore with him. “Why do we have to keep talking about this?”

“Because I’m going to have to call the police if we don’t.”

The threat had the effect Mack must have been striving for. “I didn’t say it, but I did know her. She and I went to high school together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“It wasn’t relevant.”

He looked at her, then turned back to the road. “It could be. Any detail could be.”

When she said nothing, he asked, “Were you close?”

She sighed. “We weren’t best buddies, but we knew each other. I know that when she graduated, she went to the University of Maryland in Baltimore. She became an emergency room nurse.”

“Did you keep in touch with her?”

“No. I kind of avoided Gaptown. I think you can figure out why.”

“Yeah. But why do you think Lynn reached out to you? Did she know about your dreams?”

“I didn’t advertise it. Nobody knew. Except Mom.”

“Would she tell anyone?”

“She kept it between us, because she didn’t want people to know there was something weird about her daughter.”

A FEW MILES AWAY, Fred Hyde was touring the funhouse making sure everything was ready for the evening’s entertainment. He’d had a very satisfying time selecting the exhibits. He’d used some of the same ones as for his last guest. Others were new, and he’d taken down the funhouse mirrors. Those were too much of a cliché. Now he was trying to decide if he was going to use a witch’s face or a demon for the pop-up display on the first floor.

The witch had worked very well. But it might be amusing to give the green-and-purple-faced demon a try.

Still pondering the choice, he went back through his music selections, most of which he’d pulled from the soundtracks of slasher movies, although he also liked that spooky “Night on Bald Mountain.” He’d mixed and matched the tracks, and he hummed along as he listened to some of the cuts, then decided on the disc that started with the Night of the Living Dead and continued on to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.