Crazy Hot by Tara Janzen

words were out, husky and heartfelt, before he had time to think. He wanted a room, a room with a bed and her naked in it. He wanted the rest of the night and into the morning. He wanted to know what turned her on and the chance to drive her out of her mind, just the chance.
    The look on her face said he could do it. She would come undone for him, completely undone. It was a hell of a temptation, to take her and make her his.
    “No.” The word was barely a breath of sound, but he heard it loud and clear.
    “No?” He slowed the movement of his thumb across her skin, his brows drawing together. What part of what he was feeling wasn't she feeling?
    She gave her head a small shake and turned toward Jeanette, her movements jerky, her voice strained. “No, I . . . uh, don't think, well, I . . . uh, I have to call Nikki, and I need to make sure Wilson is okay, and then what about those other guys, Branson and the man with him?” He let her go. There was no need to push. She'd melted for him with a kiss. He could take it from there—take it all the way home. A grin curved his mouth. He was going to like chasing her just fine, little Miss McKinney with her careful buttons and careful job and completely wild kisses.
    “Christian Hawkins is checking them out,” he reassured her, reaching around and opening the door. “He'll call when he has something.”
    She whirled back to face him. “Christian Hawkins? That's who you were talking with? The one who went to jail for life?”
    “Actually, they only held him a couple of years.” Just long enough to change him forever. To change his nineteen-year-old streetwise toughness into pure tempered steel with a razor's edge. Nobody fucked with Christian Hawkins anymore. Nobody fucked with Superman.
    “But he murdered a senator's son.” The accusation was flat, chiseled in the granite of common knowledge.
    That was the damned thing about the media. They were more than happy to splash a man's sins all over page one, but his redemption barely made the paper, especially when someone powerful wanted the truth kept quiet.
    “No, he didn't, but not much got printed about his release.” And that was an understatement if Quinn had ever heard one.
    “He was innocent? Good God.” Her hand came up to her mouth, then dropped to the base of her throat. “The papers crucified him.”
    Quinn would never have used the word
innocent
in connection with Hawkins even before prison, but he hadn't deserved what had happened to him for being a street kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    “He survived,” he said, summing up the salient facts in two words.
    “I remember him,” she said, her embarrassment momentarily forgotten. “I remember talking with him at Rabbit Valley.
Survivor
is a good word to describe him.”
    “You spent time with Hawkins?” Son of a bitch. Hawkins had never mentioned talking with Doc McKinney's hot granddaughter.
    She nodded. “We were actually together quite a bit. Wilson liked him, put us both on supply crew a number of times. It was hard for him, thinking one of his summer boys had committed murder.”
    “Yeah,” Quinn said absently, imagining it had been hard, but mostly he was remembering supply crew, the damned elusive supply crew. He'd never gotten assigned to it, not once. Regan and Hawkins had been assigned to practically every one. But what he remembered was Regan sitting in the truck cab with the graduate students, and Hawkins always being in the bed of the pickup, going along as muscle to hump the supplies into the truck.
    Now he was wondering how many times Regan had ridden back from town in the bed of the pickup with Hawkins.
    Son of a bitch.
    “Well, there's a good chance he'll be coming by your house sometime, maybe even tonight. He might need to talk to you, or Wilson again, or catch up with Kid.” Damn. He was jealous. What a kick in the ass. It was ridiculous, especially after that kiss. But there it was, because he knew Hawkins, and he knew