“Evie.” He groaned and hammered into her. Evie’s hands dug into the soft grass as she tried to keep up with the frantic rhythm of his thrusts. This was nothing like the first time, when they’d been shy and uncertain, their hands shaking, bodies trembling. This was wild, free, born of unrequited passion and burning need. Their bodies slammed together, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh as erotic as soft music and candlelight. Zane unleashed. Just as she’d wanted him. And he was everything she’d expected, and more.
Her orgasm built quickly, heating her body, coiling her muscles inside and out. Zane slipped one hand between them and brushed his thumb up and around her clit. Once. Twice. And then he pinched, sending her spiraling out of control.
He stretched over her back, twining the fingers of one hand with hers in the grass, his teeth piercing the sensitive skin of her nape, setting off another ripple of shock waves that sparked along every nerve of her body. Zane pounded into her and then stiffened and groaned, his shaft throbbing as he pumped deep inside her. With a last shudder, he collapsed over her sweat-slick back, pressing soft kisses to her shoulder until they both came down from the ride.
When Evie shivered, Zane drew her up, leaning back on his knees, one arm wrapped around her waist. They breathed together, their hearts pounding in unison. Finally, he pressed a soft kiss to the stinging bite on her neck and gently lowered her to the grass.
*
“Lie with me.” He didn’t wait for her response. Instead, he straightened his clothing and lay on the grass, beckoning to her with his outstretched arm. Evie pulled down her dress and joined him, curled into his warmth, her head on his shoulder, looking up at the stars, brilliant in the dark sky.
“We never did our stargazing anywhere normal,” she said quietly. “Rooftops, treetops, forests, the roof of your car … Except then we talked about deep things like extra-terrestrial beings, and war, and music, and how chemistry teachers always manage to accidentally blow things up.”
Zane chuckled. “That was a useful lesson. We needed a quick explosive one night and I told the brothers how Mr. Cooper cut into that stick of phosphorus and blew up the class. We broke into a school and stole some. Flattened one of the Jacks’ money laundering facilities, a pool hall just outside Devil’s Hills.”
“I guess you didn’t run in with a fire extinguisher and save the day like you did in school.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss to the pulse at the base of his throat.
He curled his arm around her, tucking her into his body. “I threw more phosphorus onto the fire. Watched the building burn to the ground. Thought about you sitting at the campfire on the beach on your graduation night, how beautiful you looked in the firelight, how much I wanted you.”
“All you had to do was cross the fire pit.”
Zane felt yet another stab of regret. So many opportunities wasted. How different would things have been if he’d crossed the fire pit that night, or the playground the day he’d seen her with Mark and Ty? “I didn’t want to get burned.”
He felt her chest rise and fall with laughter. “What about all the nights we lay together under the stars and talked about the future? You wanted to be a firefighter after you put out that fire in the chemistry classroom. I was going to go to college and get my Fine Arts degree. We were going to come back to Stanton so we could see each other every day and meet up for stargazing at night.”
A wave of nostalgia hit him hard, and with it the ache of longing he’d felt every time he was with her. “I got a confession to make. I was never looking at the stars. I was looking at you looking at the stars, wishing I could be inside you. Not easy being a teenager and having the woman of your dreams lying beside you, all sexy and sweet, and not being able to touch her.”
“I was the woman of your dreams?” She tilted her head back, rubbing her cheek over the soft bristles on his jaw.
“Every one.” He’d dreamed about her even after he left, saw her on street corners, heard her voice in restaurants and bars. For years, he couldn’t be with a woman without thinking about her, wondering if another man was touching her the way he touched the strangers he took to his bed, keeping her safe and happy, loving her.
“It must have been hard…” Her voice hitched in sympathy. “When you came back and saw me with Mark and Ty.”
Zane’s body stiffened. That kind of pain wasn’t meant to be dredged up, relived, wielded to torture him again. “It fucking killed me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You had Ty to think about.” Forgiving, but not forgetting. He would have waited for her forever. In some ways, he was still waiting now.