Page 29 of Carry on Wayward Son

His chest heaved against mine, and his erection pressed against me. He wasn’t doing anything with it, but I stilled and met his gaze. Those blue eyes were hooded. He could’ve apologized and backed off. Could have joked it off as merely biology.

It wasn’t merely biology.

Jace stared down at me with a hungry expression I recognized because I was certain I wore something similar.

“Feel better?” His voice was a gravel rasp.

“Getting there,” I murmured.

A beat. Two. Neither of us moved.

We had an audience. I’d been aware of that for a while. The two men at the free weights who’d stopped making any effort to look busy. Ray behind the desk with his arms folded and an expression of elaborate neutrality. I didn’t particularly care. I didn’t think Jace did either.

By tacit, silent agreement, we broke apart, each rolling to stand.

The absence of his weight was its own thing to register, an awareness of space where there’d been none. Lack of sensation that made my body protest at the loss.

Neither of us said anything.

Koa uncurled from the corner and stretched, apparently satisfied that the proceedings had concluded. I picked up my stuff. Jace picked up his bag. We nodded at Ray on the way out, and Ray’s expression said he’d be telling this story for years.

The truck was cold, a stark contrast to the heat still radiating through me. Koa leapt into the backseat. I slid into the front and stared through the windshield at the parking lot and was acutely aware of Jace getting in on the other side.

He started the engine. Neither of us spoke for the drive back to the cottage, which took maybe five minutes and seemed like considerably more. My body still ran hot from the fight and from everything that had bloomed from it. I was having a conversation with myself about whether I intended to do something about that, and the conversation wasn’t going the way the sensible part of me wanted it to go.

He pulled into the driveway.

Neither of us moved.

The engine ticked. Koa’s breathing came from the backseat, a steady pant. Nothing moved on the street, though it wasn’t yet evening, so the after-work crowd hadn’t made their way home.

I needed to say something. Or not say something, which was also a choice. Both choices had consequences I could see clearly from here. I sat in a driveway having a crisis of decision-making that was frankly embarrassing given everything else I’d managed to do in my life.

“Do you want to come inside?” My voice came out gratifyingly steady.

Jace turned his head and looked at me with a face all shadows and angles. The ravenous look in his eyes didn’t help the internal debate.

“If I come inside, we’re picking up right where we left off back there.” He paused for a single beat. “So don’t ask if that isn’t what you want.”

I thought about all the reasons this was complicated. The case. The investigation. The things I couldn’t tell him. The things he’d eventually figure out—because he was exactly the kind of person who figured things out—and what happened then. I thought about all of it with complete clarity, and it didn’t change a single thing about what I wanted in this moment.

So little of my life had been about what I wanted.

I lifted my head and met his gaze.

“Do you want to come inside?”

Fifteen

JACE

She didn’t change her mind between the driveway and the door, and neither did I.

I thought briefly—very briefly—about the man I’d seen leaving her cottage, whether whatever had sent her to the gym with that barely leashed, wound-up energy had anything to do with him. It was a question that existed and could wait. She was unlocking the door, and I was behind her, close enough to feel the warmth coming off her. She’d asked me in twice. I wouldn’t make her ask a third time.

The moment the door swung open I walked her through it and kept going until her back met the wall beside it, my hands braced on either side of her head, and did what part of me had longed to do from the moment I’d seen her prowling the beach.

I kissed her.