“Fuck!” Rick hissed, both hands cradling his skull. Someone on the parlor loveseat whimpered at the noise.
“What’s he doing here?” Boyce asked me. Before I could answer, his gaze skipped over the passed-out girl on the stairs, the girl on the loveseat, and the guy wedged against the media center, drooling on the sofa cushion crammed beneath his head. There were probably people in various states of unconsciousness all over the house.
Arching a brow, I turned and walked back up the curved staircase, sidestepping Shania. I didn’t look to see if he was following, but I knew he was.
I padded down the hall and into my room, kicking a romance novel under my bed as he appeared in the doorway. He filled the space—wide shoulders and broad chest, hands braced on the doorframe, elbows bent, biceps flexed against the sleeves of his close-fitting T-shirt.
My heart thrashed harder than the music had last night.
“Hi, Boyce.” I stared into his dark eyes, unable to distinguish the green. From the opposite side of my room, they looked brown. Black, even. But I knew that up close, his eyes were the dark, multilayered green of a deep, thick forest.
“Hey, Pearl.” He entered the room and slid his big hand over the antique glass doorknob. “Mind if I shut the door?” He watched me closely, his words deliberate.
“Lock it, too,” I said, my voice warbling. I cleared my throat as the door clicked shut and he turned to pin me with those eyes.
He slid the lock into place.
Click.
Without moving nearer, he toed off his boots, which were always haphazardly laced at best. He pulled off his socks, one hand on the dresser.
“Why didn’t you come?” I asked, and he paused, frowning in confusion. “Last night,” I clarified.
His brow cleared. “Maxfield didn’t want to mess with Dover last night.”
“So… you went back to the beach?”
When he nodded, my imagination flooded with the probabilities that gesture implied. I wanted to scour those images from my mind. He wasn’t going to come here to me after going there and—stop.
Chin lifted, eyes narrowed, I clenched my fists to keep from hurling things at him. “Did you find what you were looking for there?”
His shadowed smile made me angrier. Until he said, “Course not. I knew what I wanted and where it was. Last night was about bein’ there for my boy. Right now is me bein’ where I wanna be.”
His gaze slid over me and I shivered. Lips pressed together, he started across the room, footfalls soundless, like a predator after small, easily spooked prey, but he slowed when I reached behind my neck to loosen the ties of my sundress. I pressed the bodice against my sternum, too chicken to let the dress drop to the floor, even with my fuchsia bikini underneath.
“Your shirt,” I said, my voice raspy in the silent room. I’d meant to play music, light candles. But that was last night. Now my white linen drapes were pulled wide to reveal a blindingly blue June morning, all cloudless sky and gently rolling waves that shimmered as if millions of tiny mirrors floated faceup in the cerulean water.
Obediently, he reached behind his head and yanked his shirt off, tossing it onto the floor in his wake as he moved across the room, and my breath went shallow.
I’d seen Boyce Wynn shirtless hundreds of times. I’d watched him grow from a boy to a man. But filling my bedroom, a dangerous fantasy come to life, he was unknown—from the fully developed muscles other boys his age would willingly drug themselves with lethal steroids to get to the freckles darkening the smooth skin of his shoulders, trailing down his arms like smudges on a population map—densely inhabited deltoids moving to sparsely occupied forearms dusted with coppery hair.
Toe to toe, he stood a foot taller than me, one finger hooked in my loosened neckline. His lashes were dark except for the very ends, where they shone red in the daylight. “Let go,” he said. His drawled command was soft, like a suggestion. “I wanna see you so bad.”
I never imagined Boyce Wynn could speak so softly. I relaxed my grip on the dress, and it pooled at my feet.
His perusal of my bikini-clad body was slow and thorough. The tiny hairs all over my body rose, as if straining toward the touch he withheld. His eyes came back to mine and he arched a brow—dark, dark red, like his short hair. “Looks like I’ve got me some unpackaging to do.” His voice had gone gruff.
I swayed at his words, assailed by too many sensations at once. His hands were at my waist, anchoring me, and my palms seared onto his chest. His skin was soft and hot. I inhaled the scent of him—subtle but spicy, piney, like the forest his eyes evoked. A boy who grew up on an island of sand and palms and scrubby dune vegetation shouldn’t have a forest in his eyes.
His hands slid down over my hips and he pressed me close. Through his jeans, I felt the hard evidence of what he wanted pressed into my bare belly. If it feels that big still covered up… My breathing hitched at the thought.
One hand inched up my back and he untied the bottom string of my bikini top before sliding around front to stroke one breast, fingers teasing the nipple under the pink fabric. The mattress hit the back of my thighs as he pulled the upper string and the top came away. He stared while setting me on the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of me and pushing into the space between my legs. I watched, spellbound, as he lifted his chin and sucked a nipple right into his mouth, his hands beneath both breasts, cupping them as though weighing them.
My fingers forked through his hair. Soft and thick, it prickled against my palms. He stood then, lifting me, guiding my legs up and around his waist while his lips shifted to my neck, kissing and sucking gently. I grew dizzier with each lave of his warm tongue. One knee on the bed, he laid me back in the center and stood. I whimpered and he chuckled.
“I’m comin’ back, sweetheart. No worries.” He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. Shoved them down his thighs and off. “You first, or me?” he asked, hands at the strings of the board shorts he’d worn underneath the jeans. Through which a humongous erection was so, so visible.
“You,” I whispered.
He untied the shorts, loosened them, and they dropped to the floor. And oh, I was right. Given the size of the rest of him, I shouldn’t have been surprised. How would that fit? But his hands went to my hips, fingers hooking into the slivers of fabric on the sides of the pink bottoms, pulling them away, and there was no time to weigh the consequences of the disparity between us.