Page 56 of Westin
“I’m sorry.”
She rolled her shoulders. “He was a good man, a good father. But he was a little too fond of the women and the drink, if you know what I mean. Got himself shot in some woman’s bed—which is why my mom decided to split town after he died. Too hard to stay in that small town when everyone knew the truth about her marriage.”
Westin dropped to his knees again, sliding over her thighs as he scooted up against the end of the bed. “I was raised by a single mother, too.”
“Oh, my mom didn’t stay single long. She remarried about six months after we moved. Turned out she’d been having a long-distance thing with this guy in Seattle she met while visiting some friends in the area. Within a year, I had a new little brother who was the center of my mother’s world. And then he was joined by twin girls two years later. I was an afterthought.”
Westin kissed her knee. “I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “I can’t blame her. She had a right to go on with her life. But she could have held on to her past just long enough to get me out of the house, you know?”
“That why you chose law enforcement? To get her attention?”
He’d hit that nail right on the head! She made a little noise in her throat, shaking her head, her hair falling around her face. “You should have been a head shrinker!”
He chuckled softly, his lips so close to her knee that she almost moved it so that he’d be forced to touch it. “Thought about it. I thought about a lot of things.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because ranching is in my blood.”
“You see yourself doing this forever?”
“I don’t know.” He gently lifted her leg and separated it from the other, pushing her thighs gently apart as his fingers did a little dance on her inner thigh. “If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said yes. I would have told you it was my dream to own one of the biggest ranches in this area. That I was going to inherit a legacy that was only rivaled by Golden Sphinx.”
“But today?”
“I realized that even if someone handed me the keys tomorrow, I don’t want them. I don’t want to be the kind of a man who comes with that sort of power.”
Westin bent and kissed her ankle, his lips slowly skimming over her skin until he reached her knee. He took his time there, his breath hot and sexy on the back of her knee, the tip of his tongue doing things that made her nipples shrink under the pressure of her arm. She moaned softly as she slowly lay back, adjusting her hips to give him anything and everything he wanted. For the moment, it seemed, he just wanted the back of her knee.
“I wish life was really that simple,” she said as she stared up at the ceiling, the feel of his touch quickly diminishing her ability to think straight.
“What do you mean?”
“I wish I could see that clearly. That I knew exactly what it was I was doing, what it was I should be doing.”
“You’re a badass,” he commented, his ministrations moving to the other leg. “You’re a cop taking down the bad guys.”
“I’m a federal agent,” she corrected, more out of habit than any sense of respect for the job. “I’m a pretty girl pretending to be a stripper or a bartender to trick some idiot into giving up his operation. There’s not a lot of smarts that go into that.”
“There’s a lot of courage.”
“I suppose.”
Bored with her knees, he began to nibble at her inner thighs, his shirt hitting the floor as he shimmied out of it. And then his hands were on her hips, his fingers hooking themselves under the elastic of her panties, tugging at them just enough to set her imagination to the next step, anticipating where he might put his mouth next. She bit her bottom lip to keep a sigh from escaping, wanting this more than she had thought she could.
“You’re so damn beautiful!” His sigh sent hot air brushing over her thigh, up against the core of her. Just that little touch, that spark of heat, sent her nerves into overdrive, making her ache in places that hadn’t ached in a long time. She moved her hips a little, reminding him of where he was, of what waited for his touch. But he ignored that little move in favor of burying his mouth against her inner thigh again, biting down gently, but with enough pressure to send just the slightest jolt of pain through her. This was the most delicious pain she’d ever felt!
“Hmm, you’ve got to stop,” she murmured.
“What do you want me to stop?” He gnawed at her thigh. “This?” And then he ran his tongue along that space between her inner thigh and her panty line. “Is this it?” Then he turned his attention to a spot he had largely ignored until that moment. He nibbled at her core through the soft cotton material that still covered it. “Or this?”
She moaned, unable to even try to hold it back. “Please!”
He chuckled softly. “Am I driving you crazy?” He nibbled at her again, making her writhe a little there on the edge of the bed. “Serves you right. I’ve been going crazy since the moment I set eyes on you.”
“Liar!” She sat up, her arm still over her chest. “You couldn’t have cared less!”