The Darkest Embrace by Megan Hart Page B

the Suburban. With a gasp, she twisted in her seat to look out the back window.
    “Something’s back there,” she said.
    Max looked, too, but the road on both sides was still clear of anything but asphalt and shadows. “Did you see what it was?”
    “No.” Jessie took a few calming breaths. “It was fast whatever it was.”
    “Deer probably. They’re all over up here. Glad we didn’t hit them.” Max shook his head. “Thank God you were paying attention. Hey, you sure you’re okay?”
    He scooted closer to twist a tendril of her hair away from her face. When he leaned in to kiss her, Jessie slipped a hand up to cup the back of his neck, holding him close. The kiss started off sweet but lingered, turning sexy. Max broke it, his lips still so close they brushed hers with every word.
    “We stopped really suddenly. You might be a little sore,” he whispered.
    “Maybe you’ll have to give me a massage,” Jessie whispered back and kissed him again, her mouth open and waiting for his tongue.
    He gave it to her in soft, slow strokes that got faster when she moved against him. His fingers wound in her hair, tugging a little to bring her closer. Everything inside her melted and turned liquid. Heat pooled low in her belly at the soft moan from the back of Max’s throat. Her fingers found the seat belt buckle and unclicked it so she could slide across the bench seat toward him.
    His mouth opened wider, their teeth clashing just a little as she moved. His hand in her hair pulled harder as she dug her fingers into his shoulders with one hand, the other high on his denim-clad thigh. She shivered at the bunch and shift of his muscles under her hand.
    The rap of something hard on Max’s window scared them both into breaking apart. Breathing hard, her heart already pounding from the taste of him, Jessie put a hand to the throbbing pulse at the base of her neck. Max had put out an arm to shield her, but relaxed a little at the sight of a black-and-red plaid shirt and a bearded face peering through the glass. The man on the other side of the window rapped again, a wide gold ring clinking on the glass.
    “Sit back,” Max murmured. He cracked the window a little, smart enough not to open it more than half an inch. “Hi.”
    “Youse okay?” The man leaned a little lower to stare across Max’s shoulder at Jessie from under bushy eyebrows that raised a little when he saw her. “How ’bout you, ma’am? You all right?”
    “Fine. We’re both fine.” Max cracked the window a little more. “Almost hit a deer.”
    “Yeah, they’ll try to run you off the road around here, that’s for damn sure.” He nodded and took a step back from the Suburban as he tapped the roof, then bent again to look in the window. “Where you headed?”
    “We’re going...camping,” Max said with a pause.
    “Oh, up at Romero’s, I bet?” The man’s grin showed white, even teeth too large for his mouth. Jessie had thought him to be a lot older until she saw that grin—now she’d have put him in his late twenties instead of forties, and the change was startling.
    Max glanced at her, then back at the stranger. “You know it?”
    “Yeah, I know it. It’s my brother’s place. It’s up the road a ways. You’ll have to take the next two lefts before you get to the lane. I can go ahead of you, if you want.”
    “That’s okay,” Max said evenly. “We have a GPS.”
    The man guffawed. “Good luck with that. We get shit service out here. Cell phones, too. Might as well use smoke signals for all the good they’ll do. But, hey, if you just take the first two lefts, you’ll get there. You can always stop in at Dave’s Meats if you need more directions.”
    He thumped again on the roof and took another step back. He made a show of looking up and down the road, then at the SUV. “You didn’t hit the deer, did you?”
    “No, I don’t think so.” Max shook his head, already moving to put the SUV in gear.
    “Good.” The stranger’s