Welcome to Last Chance (Last Chance #1)(35)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Well, that was all it took. They were out of their clothes inside of thirty seconds.

Dusk had just about fallen, and the light in the room was kind of hazy and soft and purple, and Jane’s body looked like it had been crafted out of Tuscan marble by Michelangelo himself. She was perfect.

She came back into his arms, against him skin to skin as they lay down together. He reached for her breast, and it fit perfectly in his hand. It felt heavy and soft and the nipple pebbled up against his palm. Just touching it took him back to that crazy place where he didn’t have to think about anything.

And then Jane sabotaged all his plans for going slow when she trailed her fingers down his chest and over his hip and took him into her hand and touched him like she knew the way he liked to be touched.

His brain kind of narrowed down, and all he was capable of comprehending was the tension she created inside his body with the slide of her hand. This went on for some time until he had to pull her hand away.

“Uh, you need to quit that now,” he said in a rusty voice.

“Oh?” She looked up into his face with a devilish spark in her eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, pushing her onto her back. “It’s my turn.”

He went back to the spot at the nape of her neck, because he knew that turned her on, and he wanted to give her pleasure. So he went after it, and she squirmed against him, and he felt himself tumbling down into desire so deep he was pretty sure he would drown in it. But what a hell of a way to go.

Oh, sweet Jesus, Clayton P. Rhodes had talented fingers. It probably came from playing piano and violin all those years. Jane opened her eyes and looked up at him. The smirk on his face was so damn cocky and so masculine, and so sultry, and so…

Clay stopped teasing her with his finger, which was probably a good thing, because otherwise she just might have lost it before they got to the main event.

He moved in and kissed her again. And his kiss made her feel like she was the center of his universe—like the young girl she’d once been. It felt like a first kiss. Like a never-before-been-kissed. It swept her away.

She wanted him, now. “I want you, bad,” she said. The words were not eloquent, but Clay understood her meaning.

He held up one finger. “Hold that thought, darlin’, I need to find a condom,” he said.

“Oh, man, I don’t think I…”

Clay grinned. “Not to worry, I’m prepared.”

He rolled half off the sofa-bed and reached for his pants. He pulled out his wallet and found a little foil packet in one of the inside pockets.

“Just like the Boy Scout you are,” she said.

Clay turned back toward her with a little frown, and Jane had this horrible feeling she had ruined the moment. “Is that how you see me?” he asked.

“I meant it as a compliment,” she said.

His gaze narrowed. “You did?”

Oh, yeah, she did. It occurred to her that a Boy Scout was probably the best thing a woman could ask the Universe for. A Boy Scout was better by far than Sir Galahad. White knights had a tendency to go thrashing about the countryside for long periods of time, crusading and bashing people, or jousting with one another to see who was the top guy on the block.

Boy Scouts were much handier. Not only were they always prepared, honest, thoughtful, and patriotic, the average Boy Scout could rescue people, perform first aid, and forage for food in the wilderness.

And Boy Scouts could build fires. Big, big fires.

“Yes,” she said. “I meant it as a compliment. I have a thing for Boy Scouts. Especially the ones who have mastered the art of fire building.”

His eyes flashed. “Fire building, huh?”

“Yeah. Fire building.”

Clay tore open the foil packet and covered himself. “Yeah, well, the thing about building a fire is that you always have to take a few safety precautions.”

“Uh-huh. I know. And I’m sure glad you were prepared.”

He lay down beside her and pulled her back into his arms. “Me, too,” he whispered into her ear.

And then he was pushing his way inside her, and it felt so right. Like some balance had been restored to the Cosmos.

Clay rocked against her and took her up, and up, and up, and up, and up. And then she shouted his name out loud, and she unfolded like one of those pyrotechnic starbursts that filled the sky on the Fourth of July. And oh, how she burned like fireworks, until she was nothing but ash, buoyed up by a midsummer breeze that floated her along for miles before depositing her, ever so gently, back on solid ground.

It was much later that it occurred to her that the windows were open and that anyone walking on Palmetto Avenue would have heard her scream his full name, including the middle initial, P. And that made her smile, and it made her hot, and she wondered if it might be possible for him to make that happen a second time.

Chapter 17

Ray lay in a hard single bed in a dark room in a strange house. He tried not to feel panicky. He had figured pi to the seven hundredth decimal, but this trick for lulling himself to sleep hadn’t worked.

He was scared. He wanted to go home.

What had he done? It had never occurred to him when he had staged the robbery at the store that they would put him in a place like this and treat him like a dummy. He wasn’t stupid. He was just a little mixed up. He had expected to go to live in Stone’s jail. So that Stone could watch out for him when Alex decided to fire him. And then Betty and Clay could get on with their lives.

But things had gotten really confused, and they put him here in this strange place instead of Stony’s jail. And he hadn’t counted on that. He hadn’t counted on missing the hardware store, or Dot’s Spot… or Betty, either.

His chest burned with the thought. He was going to hell. He had had a thing for Betty Wilkins since he was twelve and she was fourteen and started growing those incredible tits.

Betty had been seventeen and he had been fifteen when she finally let him touch one. She’d let him go all the way with her that same year—a secret he’d kept even from Clay. And man oh man, Betty had always made him feel like his head was scrambled, even before he bumped it on the windshield of Clay’s Dodge.

Ray had kept his thing for Betty secret back then, for a lot of reasons. Betty was older than he was, and she was… well… not the smartest girl he’d ever met. But she was as sweet and hot as one of his momma’s homemade blueberry pies. She could play pool and poker and loved baseball and could bake like nobody’s business. Betty had turned him on and embarrassed him at the same time.

Now the tables were turned. He was much dumber than she was, even though he could do math in his head. They had put him in a home for stupid people.

And that bothered Ray.

But it didn’t bother him as much as knowing that he would miss her. He was going to miss the way she would sneak over to his house with her basket of fried chicken and squash casserole. He was going to miss hav**g s*x with her. He was going to miss the little notes she left in the morning with the little heart-shaped circles over her i’s.

Ray was going to miss holding on to her at night and listening to her tell him that it was okay for them to be together. And he didn’t have to worry about Lillian Bray or the holier-than-thou members of the Ladies Auxiliary saying that he was too dumb to be in love. And he was going to miss the way Betty made him feel—like he was whole and complete and worthy of something more than what he was.

Ray curled in on himself, feeling miserable and alone. This is what he deserved for the way he had treated Betty when he was seventeen and had won the scholarship to Rice University.

He had to let her go. He had to get out of her way, and Clay’s way, too, because his friend was on the point of making some big mistakes all on account of the fact that Clay still felt guilty about that car accident.

Ray would endure. He would keep thinking about pi.

Which he did for a long while, until he heard a noise that wasn’t just the settling of the strange house. Someone was tapping on his window.

Ray sat up in bed and looked at the window that dominated one wall of his little cell of a room. He squinted in the dark.

Betty Wilkins was on the other side looking in. How she managed this remained a mystery until he opened the window and realized she was standing on an extension ladder that didn’t look too steady.

“How did you know this was my window?” he asked.

She smiled that sweet smile of hers. “I snuck in earlier, disguised as a cleaning lady. I saw your name on the door, but you weren’t in the room. So I told a big lie about needing the key to the window lock so I could clean the outside of it. It’s amazing how people look right past a person wearing a uniform sometimes. It’s hard to get good help, these days, you know?”

“Sure, Betty, but—”

“C’mon, let’s go. I’m springing you.”

“But Betty, that’s not—”

“Hush, now, I’m not going to take no for an answer. I’ve got my car, and my life savings, and a bunch of maps that will get us to Vegas. C’mon, now, you’re going to make an honest woman of me if I have to drag you kicking and screaming to the altar. And I’m making it clear right now, I want a preacher dressed like Elvis.”

“But Betty, I stole that money from Clay and I—”

“Ray Betts, you get your butt out of that room, you hear? That had to be the stupidest thing you have ever done. I’m only glad you left that money where folks could find it. And don’t you think I don’t know why you stole that money and then allowed yourself to get caught. You thought you were a burden to me and Clay. Well, I’m telling you right now, Ray Betts, you are not a burden to me. I can’t speak for Clay, of course, but as far as I’m concerned, Clay needs to move on with his life.”

“But Betty, I—”

She stepped up one more wobbly step and stopped his protest by giving him a kiss that rearranged his gray matter once again. “Don’t you like me, Ray?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah, Betty, I like you a whole lot.”

“So are you saying you would rather be in jail than with me?” Her voice wavered a little, and he hated the idea of smiley-faced Betty crying over anything, especially him.

“Don’t cry,” Ray said. “I thought if folks like Lillian Bray ever found out about us they would send me away to a bad place, especially since Pete is sick. Everyone says he’s going to die. And Alex aims to fire me from my job when that happens.”

“Oh, so taking the money and getting put in jail or being sent to a place like this is the answer?”

He thought about that for a minute. “I guess I screwed up.”

“Yes, you did. But it’s okay, darlin’, because you did it for the right reasons. Now, you better come on. Because if we get caught, I’m going to jail. And you don’t want that to happen to me, now, do you?”

“No, Betty.”

She backed down the ladder, and he watched her in the pale light of a full moon. It shone bright on the swells of her br**sts, and the sight of them made him feel a little dizzy.

Big-breasted Betty had just rescued him from a bad place. And that was pretty cool, because Betty Ann Wilkins had the best tits in all of South Carolina—maybe even the Universe—and she had a higher Desirability Index than any other woman in Last Chance, South Carolina.