“We’re not very high, but the town looks so small from here,” Lia said, voicing the thought I’d just had.
I looked over at her, barely able to make out her profile in the darkness where the moonlight shining into my truck was the only illumination. “Do you still wish you’d left?” I asked softly. It was a fear inside me—not that she’d leave again without telling me, I was determined to let go of that fear after our talk—but that someday she might regret staying in this small town all her life after she’d once dreamed of leaving forever.
She looked over at me and seemed to study me a moment though she couldn’t have seen much more than I could in the low light. “It’s not really that I wanted to leave. That was just a game Cole and I would play. It engaged my imagination.” She looked back out the front window. “I just wanted out of the . . . the smallness of my life, I guess. I wanted to break free of the parameters I thought had boxed me in so tightly. That smallness was inside of me, too, though. And I’m the one who created so many of the painful parameters, and I’m coming to see that. I’m coming to see that sometimes the most damaging borders are inside us. I’ve always tried to, I don’t know, diminish myself, fade into the background, keep quiet, and not make a fuss.” I knew exactly what she meant. I had built my own walls, too.
She suddenly smiled over at me, and it startled me momentarily at how beautiful she was even though I couldn’t make out the details of her features. It was her words, my own deep understanding of exactly what had kept us divided—separate—for so long; it was the feel of the moment, as if we’d suddenly come full circle and it was important. It was the sudden stillness I felt inside. The rightness.
“I love you,” I whispered, because I did and I felt it so strongly right then that I could hardly breathe. I scooted closer to her on the seat and she moved toward me, and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her right up against my body.
“I love you, too.”
“When Cole and I left for college, it was the first time either of us had been on a plane. We’d gone on family vacations but we’d always driven, so that was a first for us. I didn’t like it.”
She laughed so softly it was just the bare whoosh of breath and the tipping up of her lips. She moved a lock of hair off my forehead. “No, farm boy?”
I chuckled. “No. Cole loved it, and I hated it. Go figure. To me it felt . . . wrong to be up in the sky like that. I especially hated being in the middle of the clouds where it was bumpy and I couldn’t see anything. I lost all perspective of where I was.” I paused, remembering back to that moment, the way I’d clenched my fists on my thighs, just needing to grab on to something solid, wanting to fall to my knees and find the sturdy ground beneath me, to breathe in the clean smell of the earth—that anchoring richness. “But then, suddenly, we broke through the clouds into the blueness of that summer sky, and I suddenly had my bearings again. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I could see it, and I knew I’d be there again.” I brushed my lips over hers, just a whisper of touch before I pulled away. “Seeing you smile just now, that’s how I felt. Like breaking through the clouds.”
“Preston,” she whispered, her voice whispery and full of tenderness. I bent my head and kissed her and when I pulled away, she smiled at me, tilting her head teasingly. “I suppose all that sweet talk helped you score with the girls you brought up here?”
I laughed. “You’re the first, and I’d like to score, but we’re taking this slowly so don’t try anything funny with me.”
She laughed. “Kiss me, Preston Sawyer.”
I brought my mouth to hers and our tongues met and tangled, already a familiar dance. I moaned at the sweetness of her and hardened immediately at her taste, the way she sucked at my tongue, the breathy sounds she made, and the softness of her body in my arms. It was a delicious sensory overload and I felt almost drunk with it. Annalia. I pressed forward, and she lay back on the seat. We both laughed when her head softly hit the passenger side door. “Are you okay?” I asked, pulling her back slightly so her head lay on the seat.
“Yeah.”
I leaned over her and took a moment to find spots for my knees so I could support my weight but still have access to her. In this position, especially, I felt so much bigger and stronger than she was, and I thought vaguely about how much trust a woman must have to give to a man to let him come over her smaller, more delicate body in such a way.
“This is what the kids do, huh?” she whispered.
I chuckled. “So I hear.” I leaned in and kissed her again, tilting my head so I had better access to her mouth. She moaned and clutched at my back and my blood pulsed fiercely in that familiar way only she elicited.
I put my hand under her loose top and stroked her skin. She was so silky, so smooth and soft, and her femininity, all the ways she was so different from me, made me feel crazy with need.
I unsnapped the front of her bra and she pressed upward, offering her breasts to me as I used one thumb to circle a nipple slowly and then moved to the other. She broke her mouth from mine, crying out softly. “Tell me what you want,” I said, needing to make sure she liked and wanted everything I was doing. I didn’t ever want to leave her unsatisfied again. I’d always . . . taken. I didn’t ever want to see distance in her expression and disappointment in her eyes after we’d been intimate. And for that, I needed her to voice her desires. We weren’t going to have sex, not yet—I was intent on that—but we were going to go further than the hot kisses we’d shared. I needed desperately to know she wanted it as much as I did.
“I . . . I want you to keep touching my breasts. I want you to put your mouth on them.”
I hissed out a breath, the words uttered in her sweet, breathy voice turning me on even more.
“Unbutton your shirt.” I felt shaky with lust, and I didn’t want to end up damaging her shirt the way I’d done the first time.