Forbidden

He stared down at his beer.

He’d been aware of the odds of Leah’s not showing. But he had still hoped she would come. He needed to talk to her. And the only way to do that was in public. Because when they were in private…well, suffice it to say he had a hard time keeping his hands to himself and they didn’t get much talking done. As for this particular bar as his choice of public places, well, he’d wanted to make anonymity attractive to her. If he’d chosen a restaurant or someplace closer to her home then the risk of her running into someone she knew would have been high.

But he admitted that perhaps he had jumped the gun a bit when it came to timing. He should have waited a little longer before suggesting they meet.

The only problem was he couldn’t wait. The more time that passed, the more he wanted to have Leah. In his bed. Writhing under his body. Her thighs spread wide for him as her back arched up to meet him. Every second that he wasn’t able to do that ticked by like an eternity until the next second and the next eternity. He felt like he could have died and been reborn at least ten times since he’d rolled back into town. He threw himself into his work refurbishing the old Victorian farmhouse a few miles from the bar, but had to pace himself lest he work himself right out of a reason to stay in the house.

The door opened.

Another faceless man entered.

J.T. picked up the beer bottle and swallowed deeply from it, barely registering that it was warm and tasted like deer piss. He put it back down, fished a couple of bills from his pocket then stepped toward the jukebox. It looked like his only options were to go back to the empty farmhouse or stick around here and get stinking drunk.

LEAH WRAPPED TREMBLING fingers around the doorknob to the Lantern’s Light Tavern and slowly pulled, entering the bar before she could change her mind again. She’d approached the bar no fewer than five times only to head back to her car parked around back. At one point she’d even driven halfway home before hanging a U-turn and coming back to the bar….

Coming back to J.T.

She’d spotted his bike right out front so she knew he was still there. Although she couldn’t really figure out why. Dan would never have waited more than fifteen minutes for her before leaving. She shivered at the change in temperature and temperament, wondering how long J.T. would have waited. Another fifteen minutes? A half hour? An hour?

All night?

She still had on her slacks and blouse that she’d worn that morning. She hadn’t wanted to make a fuss for fear that Sami would pick up on what was going on. As it turned out her daughter had been too wrapped up in her own drama, something to do with her best friend siding with another girl during the volleyball game. Much telephoning between the three girls ensued. When she’d left, Sami seemed to have patched everything up with her best friend, Courtney, and she’d been sprawled across her bed talking about a new boy at school. She’d barely given her mother a halfhearted wave when Leah had told her she was going to Aunt Rachel’s to help her sort through some stuff for the wedding.

And now here she stood, in the middle of a dimly lit bar, her ears filled with the sound of glass clinking, beer being poured and pool sticks hitting cue balls, looking for a man who compelled her to do things she knew she shouldn’t. Looking for J.T.

The sound of a few guitar strums floated on the alcohol-infused air. She looked in the direction of the jukebox and found J.T. bending over it, his back to her.

Her heart lodged tightly in her throat.

J. T. West filled out a pair of jeans like no man she had ever known could. The worn, faded denim was slightly loose around his slender waist and fit him snuggly around his hindquarters, making her fingers itch with the desire to run them down the soft cotton, probing the steel-hard flesh beneath.

He slowly turned, as if sensing her presence, her stare. Leah felt frozen to the spot as her gaze flicked up the denim of his shirt, catching sight of the tanned, hard chest at the neck before staring directly into his simmering golden brown eyes.

In that one moment everything but this moment ceased to exist for her. The bar. The worries of her class. The complaints of her sister. The concerns of her daughter. All she could hear was the thump of the bass in the song and her own heartbeat. Her palms and other, more intimate, parts of her body grew wet, her breasts tightened and her lips longed for the feel of J.T.’s mouth on hers.

Neither of them moved for long, long moments. Then, finally, J.T. pushed from the old-fashioned, upright jukebox and crossed to hold his hand out to her.

Leah gazed at his large, callused fingers and the dark hair kissing his forearms, then blinked back into his eyes.

“Dance with me?”

Leah’s hand shook so violently she was sure J.T. could see it as she slowly placed it in his. A hot, hot shiver rode through her body as she wondered why she felt that accepting his invitation meant so much more than just a dance….

5

LEAH SMELLED OF THE SUBTLE SCENT of gardenias and one-hundred-percent sweet, hot female.

J.T. slowly tugged her until she stood mere millimeters away. The very tips of her breasts brushed against his chest. The insistent throbbing of his manhood pulsed almost painfully, full with desire for this woman who’d haunted him throughout so much of his life. He rested his right hand on her hip, fighting the urge to press her to him until nothing separated them but their clothing.

It had been so long. Too long. But to give in to his craving to claim her now would only take them where they had already gone. And he wanted more, so much more.

“You waited,” she said quietly next to his ear.

He tightened his grip on her hand and led her in the slow dance, using every ounce of self-restraint he had to keep from rushing things. “I waited.”

He caught the scent of something evocatively familiar. The smell of lemons. And immediately he was transported to the first time they’d ever danced, fourteen years ago on one steamy summer’s eve. The entire campsite had gathered for dinner at the pavilion and the park owners had brought in a country band to entertain those who wanted to make a night of it. By midnight most of the campers had gone back to their trailers or tents, leaving just a few behind.

He and Leah had been two of them.

And she’d asked him to dance.

J.T. closed his eyes now, breathing in the lemony scent of her hair. He found it incredible that she still used the same shampoo that she had way back then. Found it incredible that the mouthy, straightforward, gutsy teenager she had been had turned into the hesitant, self-doubting, fearful woman he now held.

She took her hand briefly from his and wiped her palm on her slacks then returned it to his grip, her smile wavering before she turned her head in the other direction.

What had happened during their years apart to make her change? Or had she changed at all? Was his memory painting a picture of her that he wanted to see but that had no basis in reality? Was this Leah the real one?

No. He had only to think of their brief, unexpected, white-hot affair a year and a half ago to know that the Leah he danced with now was not the woman he’d once known. He knew that because for a brief, exciting time she had turned back into that young woman who had the world and everything in it at her beautiful feet. The judge’s daughter whose only care in the world was how to satisfy her own curious appetites. And J.T. had been the first man she’d welcomed between her toned thighs.

“Josh, I…”

Every muscle in J.T.’s body tightened.

It seemed forever since anyone had used his given name. And since warning Leah against it the last time they’d met, she hadn’t used it, either. No, he hadn’t told her the reason he went by his initials now instead of the name he’d been called his entire life. She’d merely accepted that it was something he couldn’t share.

That she was using the name now told him he wasn’t going to like what he was going to hear.

“Shhh,” he said, drawing her closer.

He heard her breath catch and felt her breasts heave slightly against his chest. He suppressed a groan. Did the woman have even the slightest idea how she affected him? Did she know that right now he wanted her so badly he was nearly bursting with his need for her? Did she know that not a day went by that he didn’t think about her, remember how it had been between them and hunger after her with an intensity that left him powerless to concentrate on anything but the memory of her?

He put his boot between her shoes and nudged her legs apart, naturally filling the gap with his thigh. She gave a small gasp as his taut muscles rested against her swollen womanhood. Oh, yeah, he knew she wanted him. She always had. It was the one weakness he could use against her.

The problem lay in that he didn’t want to use anything against her. Especially not her own betraying emotions.

“I was just remembering the first time we ever danced,” he whispered in her ear, teasing the delicate shell with his breath and watching a shiver wash down the delicate cord of her neck, coaxing tiny bumps over her arms. Her neatly trimmed blonde hair seemed to tremble with the reaction he was inciting in her. “Do you remember, Leah?”

She didn’t indicate one way or another if she’d heard.

J.T. stared at a spot beyond her, allowing the pImages** of that long ago summer to take over. “I remember the heaviness of the air right before it rained later that night. I remember the sounds of the singer’s voice and the chirp of the crickets. The smell of straw and your hair.” He pressed his chin against the side of her head. “The way you looked up at me, so hungry, so confident.”

Leah went briefly still in his arms.

J.T. tightened his grip on her. “And I thought to myself, ‘This is a woman who knows what she wants. And I’m going to give it to her.”’

“I wasn’t a woman, I was a girl.”

J.T. pulled back slightly. “No, Leah. You were a woman.” He grinned. “I’m convinced that you’ve been one since the day you were born.”