Roped In. Crystal Green

seem so flabbergasted?

      But there she was, huddled under the bedcovers, her hair a tumble of falling curls and one lone feather that had stayed in during all the excitement. The few others were spread over the bed, like the aftermath of some crash.

      The flush of her cheeks made the green of her eyes stand out in surprised fervor.

      But why was she reacting like this if she’d invited him over?

      Shane got up off the bed, thankful that his untucked shirt covered all evidence of his arousal. Not that she wouldn’t know his state, but…

      Ah, crap.

      “The note…” He lowered his voice. “You wrote me a note.”

      “What?”

      Now he was really confused. He dug into his jeans pocket where he’d stored the paper, then offered it to her.

      She read it, her brow furrowed. She looked adorable, even if she was likely to murder him any moment.

      His body was still pounding from everything that’d just gone on in that bed.

      Nicki Wade. She’d been dressed as a saloon girl, as if it was a comfortable thing for her, but then again, outside of costumes, he’d never thought that Nicki would be so…

      He couldn’t come up with a word that described what she’d conjured up in him. All he knew was that he’d wanted her more than anything now. She was perfect—her scent, like fresh summer grass; her smooth skin; the way she’d fit in his hands; the gasps and moans that had reached right into him, twisting and turning until he was so wound up that it hurt to stand here staring at her.

      It felt as if she’d always been here, waiting.

      “What the hell is this?” she finally said in her own edged whisper as she held that note.

      Either Nicki was playing the innocent or she was truly flummoxed. He was going to go with the latter.

      “Candace,” he said, thinking that he should’ve known better. “She must’ve been setting us up. She wrote that note and put it in my pocket.”

      Nicki was already out of the bed, the covers wrapped around her, even though she still had most of her clothing on. She picked up a TV remote from her nightstand.

      “Nic—” he started to say.

      She threw it at him and he dodged. At the same time, he scooped his hat off the floor.

      “Can we be civilized about this?” he asked.

      “Civilized?” Even their harsh whispers seemed to rock the house. “This is beyond civil.”

      She searched her nightstand for something else to throw, and he darted over to her before she could destroy her entire room.

      He’d clasped one of her wrists in his hand, and he could swear that his skin against hers set them both to sizzling.

      His cock gave an agonizing thud, so he let go of her and she backed away, as if rocked hard, too.

      “I understand why you’re upset.”

      “Just what do you think I am, for you to come over here and…?”

      He offered a grin—one that usually got him out of scrapes—and shrugged.

      Cheeks flushing even more, she tightened the covers around her, but that only served to push up her breasts. Every move she made echoed in his groin, which was still pounding, killing him.

      Nicki made a “come on” gesture with her fingers, so he prepared to explain it all.

      “When a woman invites a man in,” he said, “it’s hard for him to say no. I took the note at face value.”

      “But I didn’t invite you here.”

      “By God, Nicki, I’m sorry.”

      Her chest kept heaving, her skin going redder.

      Then it hit him. Nicki hadn’t exactly kicked him out of bed right away, even though she hadn’t been expecting a man to sneak up on her in costume. In fact, it’d been quite a spell before she’d come out of the whole scenario.

      “Nicki,” he said softly, “even if you didn’t write that note, did you want me to come here?”

      She made as if she were going to grab the pillow from the bed and throw it at him, but then she stopped and plopped down on the mattress.

      He’d hit a target, and it was as if the bull’s-eye was ringing in him, too.

      “Listen,” he said, “if you’d told me at any time to get out, I would’ve.”

      “I was half-asleep when it all started.”

      That made him feel even worse, and she must’ve seen it in the way he wiped a hand over his face.

      “Nicki…”

      “No.” She sighed. “Jeez, I actually believe you when you say that being here was a mistake.”

      The way she said “mistake”…

      Tentatively, he came nearer to the bed. “When I found you sleeping, I thought it was a part of the act suggested in that note.”

      When she looked up at him with those big green eyes, his heart almost broke. There was something he couldn’t figure out, almost as if he was hurting her by explaining everything.

      Nicki gestured toward the door again, as if trying to avoid the same questions he was struggling with. “The door’s waiting for you.”

      Dismissed, just as so many others had done to him, the rascal of the county.

      Her gesture got him straight through the heart. He almost held his hand up to it, because it was as if she hadn’t needed to put that hole in him before seeing through him.

      Silence wedged between them as he kept right on aching. And it wasn’t just in his nethers, either. He was dying to touch her hair. Dying to see what she would do if he just reached out to her, stroking a finger over her cheek, her collarbone.

      Damned hormones. Damned blood still pounding through him, driving him to distraction and agony.

      “Will you tell me one thing?” he asked, unable to help himself.

      “Depends on the question.”

      “How much of a dream was it?”

      She pulled those covers around her even tighter.

      “Nicki?” he asked softly.

      During her hesitation, he found his answer: at some point, even if she’d been sleeping when he’d come in, she’d known what was going on—that it’d been real.

      And she’d let it continue.

      She stood from the bed. “You really should go.”

      An inexplicable urge captured him—a draw that he’d never encountered before. Was it because she was the one woman who didn’t seem to want him?

      All his life, he’d chased and chased, even while running from Pine Junction. Chasing had been the one thing that had occupied him, entertained him.

      But this wasn’t a mere game. Nicki had been a good girl, and he always drew the line at those, because good girls were trouble.

      So why was he still here?

      “That outlaw thing did something for you,” he said.

      From the way she whipped her gaze over to him, he knew that his aim had been true.

      “You don’t need to worry about it,” she said, “because it’s never going to happen again.”

      “You sure about that?” Shane asked. “Because I’d venture to say that you were pretty enthusiastic this time.”

      Nicki