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  I gave a frustrated little cry.

  He tipped forward on the balls of his feet, brought his face forward, and breathed on my shockingly sensitive pussy. A hot breath, dusting over everything in me that was pounding. I bit my bottom lip, held my breath, and waited. And waited. The nearness of what he could do, what he was going to do and wasn’t doing, made my head spin. Or maybe that was from holding my breath.

  I roped my fingers through his short hair and tugged. “Finn.”

  “What?” His voice came up, muffled, from below.

  I almost laughed. “What are you doing down there?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  I looked down at his hard body crouched in front of me, the shadows of his eyes and cheekbones and nose, his muscled forearms, his thick wrists, his hard fingers brushing me so lightly. “I think you’re killing me.”

  “Yeah?” He met my eyes and slid his finger directly over my clit, fast and light.

  “Yes.” I might have moaned it.

  He did it again, harder, slow and hard.

  “Oh God,” I whispered.

  “Like that?” His words were dark promises, because I knew more was coming. Our eyes locked. He spread me wide with both thumbs and leaned in and gave me a hard, flicking lash with his tongue.

  My head jerked back, banging the truck again.

  “You want more?”

  My fingers tightened in his hair. “More.”

  “Like this?” He slapped my clit lightly, then followed it with a hot lap of his tongue.

  “Oh fuck,” I whispered. My legs were trembling.

  “Fuck yeah,” he whispered back, and bent back to his work

  He had one hand wrapped around my hip, holding me steady, thank God, and pushed my legs farther apart with his other hand. I was shaking, I was so hot and ready. He leaned forward and buried his face in my pussy.

  I screamed, my face to the sun as he slid a thick finger up inside me.

  No more soft, teasing touches now. It was all possessing and taking. My hips rocked forward into his face, slippery and wet, and I cried out in pleasure as he slid another finger up inside me. He worked me good, curling his fingers as he carefully, very carefully, tested my limits, delivering hot, deep, pressured pushes. His tongue slid across my clitoris in rhythmic strokes to match his hand while the day’s growth of hair on his chin and jaw scraped against the sensitive, trembling flesh of my thighs. I felt like I might die.

  I felt like I was alive for the first time.

  I twined my fingers into his hair, closed my eyes, and lost track of everything. Time, weather, if we’d drawn an audience or not. Sun burned red against my eyelids, Finn’s fingers were hot and dangerous and deep inside me, his tongue hard and fast against me, winding me up, harder and hotter. He slid his other hand between my thighs, placed the heel of it against my bottom, and pushed up.

  Bolts of electric heat ripped through me. “I’m going to die,” I whispered wildly. “Don’t stop, please, Finn, please don’t sto—”

  He stopped.

  I gave a strangled cry as he unraveled to his feet.

  “What—why—” I gasped, my head spinning.

  His eyes were dark with desire. He grabbed my wrist and swung me gently around to the front of his truck. “Not yet.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “Lean over,” he ordered, his voice low, and I did, putting my hands on the hot hood of his truck, my bottom up.

  I looked over my shoulder at him. He was perfectly still, his sweaty body motionless as his gaze moved down my body.

  “You look good,” he rasped. I felt good. I felt golden and hot and electric. He stepped behind me and grazed his wide hand up my back, pushing my shirt up as he went. Then he reached down to drag a fingertip up the back of my thighs, pulling up my skirt as he went, exposing my bottom. He leaned down to kiss the small of my back, and I arched for him, pressing the palms of my hands on the hot metal of his truck for him, my hips up. He was so gentle as he slid down me, his lips over my spine, then over the bunched skirt, kissing to the seam of my bottom. My breath hitched, then froze as his hand slid over my bottom, slightly sweaty. His mouth went lower. He kissed the rounded curve of my ass, and I gave a soft whimper. Then he spanked me.

  It ripped a loud cry from me depths. My head whipped back from the power of it, the shocking, perfect power of it, and I moaned. He did it again, and my body exploded, undulating. I cried out, loud, trying to reach back for him.

  His erection bumped hard against my bottom. I heard crinkly tinfoil and he shifted, then a second later, he sheathed his cock inside me, a single hard, continuous thrust, and I came again, so fast and shockingly good, I cried. My forehead rolled on his truck as his cock pumped into me again, filling me.

  He fisted his hand around my hair, dragged my head back to his, and whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you a long time,” and with another long thrust, he came inside me.

  I felt it, thick, surging heat. My body shook from the power of it. I was dizzy, couldn’t think, wasn’t aware of how hot the hood of the car was, or of the sound of a car starting to crunch down the long rocky road. I was only aware of how hard his body was, how he’d lit me up from the inside out.

  He leaned down kissed the back of my head, then slowly pulled out. I felt like I’d been emptied. He flipped my skirt down and reached for my hand.

  “Are we done?” I asked, feeling stunned.

  “I’m not.” He grabbed me by the hand and took me inside.

  Four

  ~ Finn ~

  I KEPT OUR fingers entwined as I led her inside, partly because I didn’t want her to fall over and partly because I was afraid she might bolt.

  She was doing “beautiful and a little crazy” perfect right now, but I knew Janey Mac, and along with her dirty-sexy smile came a furrowed brow and a red-hot tension that used to emanate off her like waves of heat.

  So if today was simply some cosmic spin-off, some solar flare of Janey Mac, a celestial fuck to off-gas some energy, then three orgasms in almost as many minutes might be enough to bring her back to earth. Reinject some sanity. Make her stop being reckless.

  I had no intention of letting that happen. Because while she might be calming down, I felt as if I was zeroing in. Turning on.

  I led her into the house. It glowed with new wood and polished old wood and sunlight. “Can I have something to drink?” she asked.

  I detoured smoothly to the kitchen. Our fingers stayed entwined. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and held it out, but she shook her head.

  “I think I’m intoxicated enough,” she said in a soft way that wasn’t familiar. But her eyes were bright, and she was smiling at me, so that was good.

  Very good.

  I filled two pint glasses full of water and ice and handed one over. Glistening drops of water spilled over her slim fingers. Everything inside me shouted, Fucking take her now, now, now, and it didn’t really matter if it in was the bedroom or the kitchen table. Or on the floor.

  But she was looking around the kitchen, then she wandered into my living area, so I pulled out one of the huge oak chairs beside the table and sat, waiting for her, holding my urges in check.

  For now.

  “Want some food?” I asked. It was dinnertime, and the last thing I needed was Janey getting faint.

  She stopped dead halfway through the room, her back to me, staring into the living room, where God knew what lurked.

  “You still play,” she said.

  Ah. Right. The instruments. “I still play.”

  I couldn’t decipher her reaction to this bit of news. I couldn’t see her face. Just her body, motionless, her hair swinging lightly against the small of her back.

  Back in the day, music had been part of the scene, where a lot of bad shit had gone down, although at the time, it felt like good shit. Having a chip the size of California on your shoulder made that happen. Music had been my way out of Dodge before I could actually leave. Afterward, coll
ege didn’t work out, but the military did, for eight years. I came out with a lot of dangerous skills and the chip on my shoulder firmly in place. I started building and smashing things for a good bit of money, and playing music for almost none.

  Because, through it all, the disappointments and the anger and the fights and the trips to Dodge Run’s two-cell county jail, and then through the sand and the sweat and the death and destruction and falling bombs and dying friends, had been the music.

  Then my Ranger buddy, Nick Murphy, launched out of the military six months behind me and hauled my ass into his business plans. They were big plans, starting with a pawnshop, my specialty. Now, almost three years later, we owned a high-end pawn business worth a lot of money.

  I eyed Jane’s curving back and decided now wasn’t the time to tell her about the pawn business.

  She’d set her glass on the windowsill and was staring down at my favorite acoustic plug-in guitar.

  To a lot of people who grew up in towns like mine and Janey’s, music was where the trouble started. To people like the Dantes, that was good. To people like the MacInnees, it was bad. Real bad.

  So this moment was a crapshoot. She could care or not care.

  So could I.

  She crouched and ran her fingers across the Gibson’s rosewood fretboard, then across the strings. A ghostly chord entered the room. She looked over her shoulder at me. She smiled.

  I blew out a silent breath that I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  Maybe Janey had grown up too, figured out that all those lessons we’d learned growing up, about who we were and who we were capable of becoming, were nothing but soul murders, one by one, of the children of Dodge Run.

  ~ Jane ~

  I COULD NOT remove the goofy smile from my face. The wall of instruments in front of me felt like some kind of…celebration. A carnival of music. Two guitars, a banjo, an electric bass on a stand, two bright shiny harmonicas beaming down at me from a shelf, a sturdy, scuffed violin, and one shy, tan dulcimer. And drumsticks.

  It was a jubilee of music.

  A ripply feeling curled weightlessly through my body.

  When I was ten, my mom had taken a day off from being insane and organized and brought me to the beach. I’d waded out into the ocean and got swooped up on a wave. There I was, on top, riding it by accident. For a second, I was terrified. Then I realized I could see everything. Everything. The beach, the tanned bodies and bright bikinis and hot sand. And on the other side of me, nothing but sea. Me and that wave and the blue, blue sea. My belly whooshed with excitement and fear. I was above it all. Untouchable.

  Then that damned thing rolled me into shore so fast and furious I got pitched head over heels and skidded face-first through the sand. I crawled out choking, spitting seawater, with bloody scratches across my face, broken seashells in my hair, and sand in my eyeballs.

  But I never forgot that for one glorious second, I’d been weightless and flying.

  I had that same feeling now, looking at Finn’s instruments.

  I have no idea why. But the smile started inside me, in that weightless place, and I couldn’t have stopped it if Pop been standing there with a strap in his hand.

  “Drums too?” I asked. That’s what he used to play, in the background, thrumming out the beat everyone else moved to.

  He nodded. “All of them.”

  “Some things don’t change,” I said softly.

  “Oh, I’ve changed.”

  I straightened and rested my bottom against the sill of the huge window that overlooked a green meadow. “How?”

  “Well, I’m taller.”

  “Hmmm.” I examined him critically. “You’ve also shaved off almost all the hair on your head but left a lot on your face, and you’re as quiet as ever.”

  He laughed. “I can talk. You want me to talk?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Don’t.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “I mean, don’t change anything. For me. Just be you.” I really, really wanted him to be himself. I really, really wanted to be with the cyclone center of him.

  He nodded, his gaze roaming over my face. I set my glass on the table, sat on the couch, and dragged the guitar onto my lap.

  He smiled. “You play?”

  I started playing “Born Under a Bad Sign,” the one song I can manage on the guitar. Not quite weightless and ripply, but it’s only three chords and I sometimes play only two of them. Kind of hard to mess up. I sang Finn a verse and a chorus while I played my two-to-three chords.

  He watched, his long, lean body kicked back in the chair, one boot out, his elbow on the table beside him so I could see the circle of sweat under his arm darkening his light blue shirt. To me, he looked perfect.

  I strummed the last note with a faint flourish. “Ta-da.”

  He gave me the slow, lazy smile. “Careful, Janey Mac. You might find yourself some trouble, singing like that.”

  I leaned back and tapped the guitar thoughtfully. “How come we never ran into each other more, Finn?”

  “Ran into?” His smile was almost mocking. “We moved in different worlds, Jane.”

  “Yeah, different.”

  His blue eyes watched me. “Would you have noticed me?”

  “Finn, I kissed you.”

  “Right.” But he said it like that didn’t count. I squinted at him.

  He looked at me for a long time, then said, “You were pretty busy.” He reached across the table for his glass. Drops of water slid down from the frosty rim in wet trails.

  “Yeah,” I said glumly. “Busy.”

  “All those events. Saving the world.”

  I nodded, feeling oddly validated. I didn’t expect Finn to get it.

  “Being perfect,” he went on. “Pissing people off.”

  My jaw dropped. “Wh— I—” It was too shocking a statement to be angry about.

  “Was that rude?” he asked. He didn’t sound too worried about the answer.

  “Sort of,” I said, half doubtful, half curious. “I think you’re supposed to say things like, ‘finishing high school’ and ‘hanging out with friends.’”

  “Do you want me to say things like high school and friends?”

  Did I want him to lie? That was the question. Should he be like everyone else, move his mouth and mean nothing?

  I looked out the back window and saw a grassy meadow that sloped gently down to a grove of trees. “No,” I said. “I do not want that.” I reached for my glass. Beads of water were sweating down the side, cold little rivulets. “Was I really like that?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He nodded. “Yes.”

  I let out a breath. “I guess you’re right. I used to spend a lot of time trying to be perfect. Now, I don’t know.” The glass was cold against my fingers. “I guess I’m still wound kind of tight a lot of the time.” I was quiet a second. “I didn’t think I could go out with you back then,” I said, talking more to myself now. “I mean, I didn’t think it was possible. Physically.”

  It sounded crazy, but there it was. Everything with Finn had been a bright, burning flash, like a falling star. Fast kisses, panted breaths, sliding zippers. Anything more was out of the question. You just didn’t do that sort of thing. You didn’t cross the tracks—or the river. You didn’t mix with pawnshop people like the Dantes. You didn’t go after what you wanted. You just…didn’t.

  Or at least, the mayor’s daughter didn’t. Not with the wild Dante brood, who were always being hauled into jail, sobered up, and kicked back out again like cats.

  “Wildcats,” my father used to growl. “Fucking lawless. Earl lets them run wild, and Dilly’s no more use than a wet broom. Not a fit mother. Not right in the head.”

  As if we didn’t have enough of that at home.

  “It’s having those four devil spawn as sons,” Pop would finish, locking me in his gaze, as if he was prescient and could see my invisible desire for Finn. “They all but killed her. That g.d. music and drugging an
d too much drinking. Nothing but trouble.”

  As if we didn’t have enough of that at home.

  Finn’s eyes met mine across the room. He said, “Anything’s possible,” and I said, “I’m glad you still play.” Screw you, Pop.

  “Glad to hear it.” Sunset flowed into the room, across the bottom of his jeans. “What about now, Jane? What’s up with the Sandlers?”

  I blinked. “Who?”

  “The Sandler-Rosses? Your clients?”

  “Oh, right.” I nodded, unsure how my biggest clients had slipped my mind. “They’re my ticket.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Onto maps.” I watched a wobbly wet rim of water form around the base of my ice water.

  Finn watched me a second, then tipped his chair backward, front legs off the floor, and leaned against the wall, his hands laced behind his head. “Just any old map?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Ones you can’t get to from Dodge.”

  “And yet, there you go.”

  I suspected he was making fun of me. “Are you making fun of me?

  He shook his head. “You got out. One of the few. It’s an accomplishment.”

  “So did you,” I said, returning the compliment. Finn had been to college. He’d always been the cleverest Dante and not just with his hands. He’d been offered scholarships to six different colleges for nothing but his grades.

  He shrugged. “I dropped out of college. Joined the military.”

  This was a shocking statement from start to finish. He’d left college? Left his scholarships? Joined the military?

  I felt a little cold and little excited. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but something about the look in his eyes made me not. So all I said was, “Why?”

  His fingers, thick and tanned, skimmed across a drop of water on the table. “Why what? College or the military?”

  “Both. Either. Anything.” Tell me anything about you. I hugged the guitar a little tighter. “You don’t want to talk about the military, do you?”