She settled back with a huff, a flicker of irritation crossing her expression as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips.
“How do you know what I’m bargaining for anyway?” she asked as he sipped the coffee, causing him to nearly burn blisters on his tongue as he took too much of the liquid.
“Because you’re determined to torment the hell out of me,” he growled, setting the coffee down as he glowered over at her. “I’m warning you to stop pushing me like this, Keiley.”
“What am I doing?” Her voice was filled with offended pride, her gaze narrowing on him with a flare of irritation.
“Tempting me.” And doing a damned good job of it.
“Tempting you? Me?” Innocent offense shaped her expression now. And it would have been believable if those hazel eyes weren’t gleaming with satisfaction. “I’m your wife, Mac. It’s not like you’re some priest that I’m tempting with my wicked lusts, you know. How am I tempting you?”
“By being you, damn it,” he growled. “I was restless last night. I got up, smoked a cigarette, and enjoyed the peace for a while. Why should I have to excuse it?”
“Did I ask you to excuse it?”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“So why were you out there smoking when you could have been cuddling and having hot, sweaty sex with me? And why is sex in our bed suddenly so abhorrent to you, anyway?”
He knew it. He knew that was what she had in that sharp little mind of hers.
Mac sat back in his chair and regarded her silently for long moments, considering how far he wanted to let this conversation go right now.
“I don’t consider ha**ng s*x in our bed abhorrent,” he finally answered her. “I thought you were upset over the incident in the barnyard the other day. I thought you needed time to get over it.”
“To get over ha**ng s*x with my husband in our barnyard?”
Okay, when put like that, it sounded ridiculous, but he knew what he had seen in her eyes after the passion had receded.
“Deny the fact that you were upset when you realized you were na**d in the barnyard and had just finished screaming out your orgasm to the sky,” he accused her. “Deny that you were suddenly terrified that we were seen. That someone would gossip about it.”
Her eyes flickered with guilt. “It’s not like we have neighbors.” She tried to blow off the accusation. “No one could have seen us.”
“And if they had?” He wasn’t willing to let her off the hook now. She was pushing him, daring him too often.
She shrugged. “They didn’t.”
“No, Keiley, that wasn’t what I asked you. I asked you, what if we had been seen? What if someone was watching?”
He had asked her that as he f**ked her. He remembered the arousal that burned hotter inside her, the response that had nearly burned him alive as she cl**axed in his arms.
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “It’s not like we were cheating or something.”
“And if our neighbors had seen? What would Becky and Bruce Halloway do? Becky would call her sister, who would call her sister-in-law—”
“Oh, shut up.” She glared back at him. “So what if they told?”
“Gossip,” he pointed out.
Her lips flattened. “As I said, we’re married.”
Mac allowed his lips to quirk into a smile as he decided to let the subject shift. He had planted the idea, planted the consequences. She could consider it from there. “Yes, we’re married. And speaking of gossip, I invited Jethro to come out and visit for a while. He’s been suspended again. I think he needs the break. If anyone gets curious about our houseguest, then he’s just a friend from Virginia. Don’t mention the fact that he was with the Bureau. I get too many damned questions about being an agent as it is. I can’t believe Dad actually told everyone what the hell I was doing.”
The last thing he needed was that the small-town suspicions would soon turn a visit into some kind of rumored cover-up investigation that wasn’t real. It had taken nearly a year for him to convince the damned sheriff that he had indeed resigned from the Bureau and wasn’t working on a secret investigation.
He picked up his coffee and sipped as he watched her closely now. She knew Jethro, not well, perhaps. He had been Mac’s best man at their wedding. He had also been part of the gossip about the club that she had heard before they had left Virginia.
He saw her tense as she made the connection.