“And is it how you remembered it?”
“Yeah. Hotter than I recall. Of course, I don’t remember the women being as beautiful.” I enjoyed her blush a little more than I should have. But she was beautiful and deserved to hear it. Every move she made was graceful, her mouth full and generous, even her quasi suspicion of me was a turn-on. She was funny and confident and nothing like any woman I’d ever come across. And to top it all, she had the face and body that would send a thousand women straight into a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon’s office.
I needed to take a step back. But I wanted to know more about her. I had this pull toward her that I’d never known before. “Have you always lived here?”
“I went to college in New York, but found the city wasn’t for me.” A crackle turned into a rumble then continued straight into a boom. It was as if the storm was building to the ultimate crescendo.
“You have a boyfriend?”
She took another sip of wine and set it back on the table before she replied. “You’ve half asked that before.”
I chuckled. True. Not that I was going to act differently if she told me—either way I needed to keep my distance. I just wanted to meet the man who had managed to land this woman. “And I’m still coming up empty.” I glanced at the rise and fall of her creamy breasts, only barely covered by her camisole, and swallowed. Hard. I really should leave.
“See that?” she asked, pointing up over the ocean. “Lightning. And again.”
“Wow, that nearly cut the sky in half.”
Our eyes locked first in excited, shared understanding and then the connection transformed into something that had nothing to do with the lightning. She looked away first. I would have stayed, my eyes fixed on hers the whole night, if she hadn’t. “The air feels charged with something.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she whispered.
It was an invitation, and not one I wanted to turn down. I wanted to touch her, see if her lips were as soft as they looked.
“I want to kiss you,” I said, shifting so that she, and not the storm, had all my attention.
The thunder rumbled again.
Despite the noise surrounding us, I could only focus on the sound of her breathing. My pulse jumped under my skin, at my neck, in my wrists, in my dick.
I really shouldn’t be doing this.
But it was just a kiss.
And she was so beautiful.
And then it would be over.
I slid my thumb over her bottom lip. “Look at me,” I said.
My gaze flickered down as her breasts rose with her breath. It took every ounce of control not to yank her cami down and put my mouth on that warm, soft, pliant flesh.
As I looked at her, our eyes locked, and this time heat passed back and forth between us, growing more scorching with each passing moment.
She wanted me to kiss her. Maybe even strip her naked on this deck and fuck her hard and long until I knew every part of her.
I groaned, blood rushing to my dick, and leaned in to press my lips softly on the corner of her mouth. Her breath was hot and heavy against my cheek. I dropped my hand to her ass and slid her onto my lap.
Wrapping my hands around her silky hair that smelled of the ocean, I pulled, tilting her head back and exposing her neck.
I’d been kidding myself to think this was just a kiss. I wasn’t sure if it was because it had been so long since I’d fucked someone new or whether it was the storm or just the way Lana looked at me, but my whole body reverberated with lust. I wanted to touch, hold, possess her.
I trailed my teeth along her jaw and she squirmed in my lap. I slid my palms up her thighs and lifted her so she was straddling me.
Just a kiss. Right.
I wanted her closer, so I wrapped my hand around the back of her neck and brought her mouth to mine in a fractured, desperate connection. With my other hand, I pushed her ass against me. The heat of her covered pussy against my erection made me groan. Sliding my tongue against the seam of her lips, I delved deeper. Fuck, I’d forgotten how hot making out could be. The stuff before the fucking. Before my reform, it had been all about release. All about seeing how fast I could have a woman’s mouth wrapped around my cock after making eye contact with her.
But not now. Not out here on the porch with Lana. All I could think about was how I couldn’t fuck her, how I’d never make it that far.
She smelled so damn good. Tasted even better.
She circled her hips and I gasped, breaking our kiss. I was so close it was embarrassing. “You’re so fucking sexy,” I choked out. I wanted to suggest we take this inside, hell, who cared about inside? I wanted to take this up a level or ten. I wanted to see her tits bounce as she rode me, hear that sweet, sexy mouth swear as she came so hard that she forgot what year we were in.
She braced her hand against my chest as I leaned in to kiss her, then climbed off me, sitting back where she’d been when I arrived. “Let’s watch the storm,” she said without further explanation.
I couldn’t argue. Another second of feeling her writhe against me and I’d have been lost, unable to hold back.
She handed me my wine, then took a sip of her own as if nothing had happened. My hard-on and the fact that my pulse was beating out of my neck told a different story.
We sat in silence for a few minutes until the storm ebbed away. “I have to be up early,” she said, standing slowly.
“I wouldn’t want to be the cause of a sleepless night,” I said, even though I wanted to keep her awake for the next week. I stood and brushed her jaw with my thumb. “Good night, Lana.”
When I got to the top of the stairs on my deck, I looked back. She was still on her porch, staring at me, her hair a little rumpled, her silhouette lit up by the moonlight.
She looked like a goddamn movie star.
Eight
Lana
“I made out with someone on Monday night,” I said the moment Ruby answered my call. The shop had been quiet all afternoon, which had left me time to remember Matt’s breath on my neck, the grip of his hand on my ass. Not that it would have been easy to forget even if I was surrounded by a thousand people.
“What?” she yelled. “Who? Were you drunk? And why the hell has it taken you five days to tell me?”
“Four.” Slightly less, actually. Three days, nineteen hours and thirty-six minutes if I wanted to be exact. I ran my finger along the glass cabinet that I had just reorganized, trying not to blush.
“Why did you wait at all? You could have just dialed me up and put me on speaker. I’m your best friend.”
“And a pervert, apparently.”
“Stop stalling and tell me what’s happening. We’ve spoken every day and you’ve not mentioned anything.”
I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told her. Maybe I’d been waiting to run into him again, to be sure he was real. But I hadn’t seen him at all since. His car had stayed in the drive all week, but the only time I’d spotted a light on had been early this morning when I’d gotten up for a glass of water.