shed roof—>ground.
Sawyer: What am I, 16? And how often did you sneak out?
Clover: None of your business. And my mom’s a super light sleeper, if she hears you walking around she’ll want to be a good hostess and see what you need then she’ll never get any sleep and she needs it tonight.
Sawyer: So out the window I go.
Clover slipped on her jeans and grabbed a sweatshirt to pull over her tank top if it got cold. Shoving her cell in her back pocket, she tiptoed up the staircase from her basement room—sticking to the right side to avoid the squeaky sections—and hustled out the kitchen door that led out to her mom’s garden on the side of the house. The strawberries were out in full force along with spinach, tomatoes, and bell peppers among other things—along with an entire army of bizarre garden gnomes. From lumberjacks to bakers to evil witches to half gnome/half animal hybrids, her mom’s collection had doubled from when Clover still lived at home. It was weird but at least it made finding a birthday gift easy.
She walked around the corner of the house and over to the back gate where Sawyer stood in the light of the full moon staring at the gnome-shaped gate handle.
“Your mom has a weird thing for gnomes,” he said.
“You have no idea.” She opened the gate, intertwined her fingers with his, and walked through. “Come on.”
The line of trees between the backyard and Lake Earhart had been her first playground for adventure filled with hollowed out trees that served as fairy kingdoms, pirates that lived in the branches overhead, and—of course—an entire village of gnomes plotting worldwide domination. When she got older, it was where she’d gone to escape and plan. Now, holding Sawyer’s hand, she looked up at the thick green leaves overhead and the bright wildflowers at her feet and realized that she couldn’t remember a day when she wasn’t running away from the white picket existence she’d been born into. However, instead of running to the trees or the lake beyond them, she went around the globe.
It only took a minute of traipsing through the trees before they got to the small clearing around the lake and her family’s dock that led out into it. Her dad’s boat was moored at the marina at the other end of the lake, but the summer storage box sat at the end of the dock. She hurried over to it and pulled out a blanket so they wouldn’t get splinters in their ass while they sat and figured out how to get through tomorrow without giving her dad a heart attack for real. Then after a few days, she’d break the news to her family from the safety of Harbor City. Chicken? Her? Absolutely.
She sat down facing the lake, it’s waters smooth and inky blue. “We need to come up with the details that will make tomorrow work—and it can’t be the truth because I really don’t want to welcome dad home by giving him a heart attack for real.”
“We already did, remember?” He sat down next to her, close enough that their hips and thighs touched, sending a jolt of electricity dancing along her skin. “The napkin?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s not gonna fly with my family. My mom is like a laser-guided missile when it comes to the truth. Nothing gets past her.”
He shrugged and lay back on the blanket, his arms folded so his hands were behind his head. In a plain white T-shirt and a pair of dark indigo jeans that clung to his hips, he looked like he belonged here in the world she’d grown up in. She shouldn’t be surprised. He’d been as at ease in his office at the top of Carlyle Tower as he’d been at the flea market haggling over the metal medical cart they’d renovated. Unlike her inability to fit into his world, he’d done just fine finding a place for himself in hers.
“So we stick to the truth without elaborating,” he said, bringing her back to the reality of the here and now.
She snorted, just trying to picture her mom not digging for details. “How’s that story go?”
Out in the lake, a fish cleared the surface with a pop and dove back in with a soft splash.
“You fascinated me from the moment I met you and after that we were inseparable.”
“Fascinated you?” It sounded ridiculous. He was a multibillionaire with model-like wife candidates everywhere he turned and she fascinated him. More like was different enough to stoke his curiosity for a few weeks. “Is that what we’re going with?”
“It seems close enough to the truth to work.”
“And after we get back tomorrow night?” Her chest tightened, and she looked down at where her hands were clenched in her lap, letting her hair fall over her face. Damn it. She hated it when Daphne was right. Forget falling for him, she was already halfway there.
“We’ll think of something in the car.”
“No helicopter this time?” she teased, trying to regain some of the emotional high ground from that part of herself that was starting to crumble.
He laughed and rolled onto his side facing her, propping up his head in his hand. “You don’t want to know what kind of favor I’m going to owe Hudson for borrowing that.”
“I thought you and your brother were close.”
“We are, but he’s…well, he’s Hudson.”
Grasping ahold of the conversational lifeline that didn’t have anything to do with lying or saying good-bye, she settled back onto the blanket, echoing his position on his side. “What does that mean?”
“That he’s a guy who seems like he doesn’t have anything on his mind except for ways to burn through his trust fund as quickly as possible, but that’s not really him. He just does a damn good job of hiding who he really is.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask him. We don’t have deep introspective chats about our feelings. Do you with your brother?”
“Bobby?” She laughed out loud. Even the idea of a heart-to-heart with her brother was too weird to be able to form a mental picture of what it would be like. “No. If it doesn’t happen in his lab, Bobby isn’t very interested. He’s got all of his attention glued to whatever experiments he’s working on. He graduated from college at the top of his class while I was still in high school, and he’s two years younger than me.”
Sawyer reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, his fingers grazing the shell of her ear and sending a delicious shiver down her spine. “But he came home when he got the call about your dad.”
“It’s family.” Unable to stop herself, she turned her head so that her face brushed against his warm palm. “It’s what you do.”
“You obviously care, so why do you spend all your time avoiding them?” he asked, gliding his thumb across her cheek.
“Are you my shrink all of the sudden?” She pulled away, cutting off the touch she craved so much, and rolled onto her back because if she didn’t she might not be able to later—and that scared her right down to her pink toenails. “Or is this like spilling my guts to the stranger at the bar because I know I’ll never see him again?”
“Sure.” He slipped off his glasses and sat them on the storage box beside them. “Now that the world is a little bit fuzzy, I can be your stranger at the bar. Tell me everything.”
It was both exactly what she wanted to hear and just the words to shred her up a little bit more. Looking up at him—at this man she wouldn’t see again after tomorrow—the knot in her belly unwound, and she knew exactly what she needed to do next. The first rule of adventuring was to enjoy the experience while you could and that was exactly what she was going to do tonight with Sawyer.
…
Sawyer lay on his back on the blanket, looking up at the stars—a true big-picture view—and held his breath. When Clover had brought him out to the lake, he’d half expected her to push him in and try to drown him after the stunt he’d pulled. But she hadn’t. Instead, here they were with one last night together—and he wasn’t about to waste it.
“When I was eleven, I overheard my parents arguing,” she said softly, a ribbon of vulnerability threaded through her voice as she sat up, bent her legs, and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Mom wanted to go on a cruise and dad said he couldn’t imagine being
stuck on a boat for a week with a bunch of drunk strangers. She said something about how she’d had plans to travel the world but everything had changed when she’d gotten pregnant. All she wanted was one week. He agreed. It wasn’t until later that night that I did the math. I was born seven months after they got married.”
The lost look on her face gutted him. He rolled up into a sitting position, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close, the urge to comfort her overriding everything else. “They seem happy, though.”
“They are.” Clover sighed and turned her face so her cheek rested in the pocket of his shoulder. The light from the full moon making her blond hair look like it glowed. “That’s the part I’ve never understood.”
“Business or love, every relationship is compromise.”
She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised in sardonic disbelief. “Tell me more, Dr. Sawyer, of the lessons in love you learned from old chick flicks?”
He grinned down at her and tweaked the button tip of her nose. “Low blow.”
“Just an accurate one,” she shot back. “Look, you’re no more well-adjusted than I am. Look at your family dynamic.”
She pulled back from him and lay back on the blanket, and he followed suit.
From an outsider’s perspective, he could understand why she saw it that way, but there was more to the story that he hadn’t ever talked about with anyone—until now. “You never saw us before my dad died.”
“What was it like?”
“It was…” Words failed him. God, how could he explain it? Staring up at the star-filled night unlike any he ever saw in Harbor City, an achy soreness started in the middle of his chest and spread outward. “Everything it’s not now. My dad’s death was completely unexpected. We didn’t have time to prepare, to think, to plan. It was just like all of the sudden the world had changed. I had to take over Carlyle Enterprises. Hudson and I had to take care of our mom. The international building market softened. Everything was…different.”
“Too many new details,” she said, understanding thick in her voice as she reached out and intertwined her fingers with his and squeezed.
“And they were never my specialty.”
Fuck, now that was an understatement. Still, when he was with Clover all he could notice were the details. The silk of her hair. The smoothness of her skin. The soft smile she gave him first thing in the morning before she woke up. But that wasn’t everything. It was all the little things from her quick mind to her smart mouth to her craving for adventure that made her so damned irresistible—and dangerous to him.
He should get up now. Walk back to the house. Go to bed. Wake up and fake his way through a brunch with a family he’d never see again. But he didn’t move a muscle.
Maybe Hudson was right and all of those RomComs had fucked up his head because sitting here with Clover he couldn’t think of any place he’d rather be. Or maybe it was that being with Clover had begun to feel right, something that if he said out loud would probably send her sprinting toward her next adventure like a world record–holding track-and-field star.
She shifted beside him, turning so she faced him. Echoing her movements, he did the same. They were so close, mouths only inches apart, but neither of them made a move as anticipation began as a buzz in the back of his head and moved south.
Her pink tongue darted out and glided across her plump bottom lip. “I’m not ready to go in yet.”
“And I’m not going anywhere without you.” Dipping his head, he closed the distance between them and claimed the woman he had no right to.
19
This is what Clover wanted—needed—a night that didn’t have a tomorrow, just a now. Tomorrow could take care of itself because tonight she had Sawyer.
Breaking the kiss, she nudged him onto his back, following so she ended up straddling his hips. God, he was sexy as hell, all square jaw, muscles, and hard planes. She leaned forward and traced her lips across his stubble-covered jaw and down his corded neck as she fisted his T-shirt, yanking it higher.
“Off. Now.”
“You are so fucking demanding,” he said with half a laugh.
“Like you aren’t.” She glided her fingertips over the ridges of his abs like a topographical map of heaven, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth. No one was laughing now.
“I’m the one on my back and totally at your mercy,” he said, but the predatory look in his eyes said he was anything but vulnerable.
“As if that’s ever the case.”
His hand went to the small of her back and he rolled her, putting her underneath him. “I guess you’re right.”
Heart racing, she stared up at him, trying to remember to breathe because basic bodily functions seemed amazingly difficult when all she wanted was to take all he was offering. Damn. It shouldn’t be so easy for him to turn her into a boneless mass of want and hunger, but he did. So she fought against it, marshaling all her effort into maintaining at least a sheen of indifference.
Looking up at him through her eyelashes, she gave him her best sex kitten look. “Say it again.”
“Why? Does being right get you hot and wet and needy for me?” Now his fingers were the ones doing the walking, caressing her skin over the thin material of her tank top and sending little jolts of electricity across her skin.
“You do that just by breathing,” she answered, desire making her voice breathy.
Standing up, he reached behind his head and stripped off his shirt and dropped it onto the dock. His pants and boxers followed. Hands on his hips, the moonlight at his back, he stared down at her—more confident and sure of himself than any man she’d ever known. If there was one moment in this adventure she’d never forget, it was this.
“Oh Dios mío,” she sighed.
One side of his mouth quirked up. “I know I’m either doing something right or something wrong when you start talking in another language.”
“Right. You are doing something very, very right.” Except, of course, for the fact that he wasn’t touching her. Not that she’d sit around waiting for that.
Rolling up into a sitting position, she looked her fill—as if that was possible—before moving onto her knees in front of him so that his hard cock was only inches from her mouth. She curled her hand around his girth, her middle finger almost but not quite touching her thumb when she encircled him.
He let out a soft groan as he stared at her hand. “All I had to do was get naked?”
“And stand there looking like the Greek god of moonlight and sexy times.”
“If I agree, then that’s when you say my ego is out of control.”
She licked her lips. “Looks like you’ll have to find a way to shut me up, then.”
“You’re definitely giving me ideas.”
Judging by the gravelly tone in his voice, just the right kind of ideas. She tightened her grip on his cock, stroking it from the base to the head as pre-come pooled on the tip. It wasn’t an invitation she was going to decline. Keeping her tongue flat and wide, she lapped it up as she watched him let his head drop back as he groaned again.
“You can’t stop there,” he said, not a plea but not quite an order.
Tormenting him at a time like this was just the sort of thing she loved to do and he got off on. “Are we negotiating?”
“No.” One word. One order.
Her core clenched. “Good.”
She curled her fingers around his thick forearms and moved them so his hands cupped either side of her head then opened her mouth, wrapped her lips around his swollen head, and took him in as far as she could before retreating. His groan echoed in her ears as she reached behind and cupped his hard ass. That sound, the one that said he was already lost in the moment. God, she was going to miss it, but if she thought about that then she’d miss these last few hours with him and she wasn’t willing to give that up. She’d have the rest of her life to remember.
“You’re killing me.” His fingers tangled in her hair, pulling in
some places, and he joined her efforts and slid his cock through her parted lips. “And you’re still wearing all your clothes.”
She wouldn’t be for long, but she was enjoying this too much to stop now so she sucked him deeper until he filled her mouth completely and the head of his cock dipped down into her throat. Relishing the way his ass tightened under her fingers, she kept it up, taking him in and letting him go, until he held her head firm and withdrew from her mouth with an audible pop.
“I’m beginning to think you’re an exhibitionist,” she teased.
“All I’m thinking is that you have too many clothes on,” he said, his voice as hard as the rest of him. “Take ’em off.”
If she was a more patient woman, she’d make him wait—or have him tear them off of her like he’d done to her panties. But that time was passed. She wasn’t about to deny either of them what they really wanted, not tonight. She slid her jeans and panties down over her hips and then took off her tank top as she stepped out of the material around her ankles.
…
Watching Clover strip was like watching the sun rise after the longest, coldest night of the year. It made the whole world a better place. It made time stand still, and it made him want to be a better man so he’d be worthy of touching even a single inch of her soft skin.
“Jesus, you’re beautiful.”
“I hope you’re not planning to just look,” she said, feathering her fingers across her tits.
“Only for a little bit longer.”
If this was their last night together—and despite what he knew was the right thing to do, he wasn’t willing to agree to that right now—he was going to look his fill, put it to memory. The way her blond hair fell to her shoulders, not long enough to reach the rosy tips of her hard nipples. The flare of her hip as her body curved out from the pinch of her waist. The line of six freckles on the back of her thigh pointing up to her perfect ass. All of that was amazing, but it wasn’t what he really saw when he looked at her standing tall and proud in front of him, daring him to look his fill. It was what he’d seen of her before. The way she’d laughed so loud at one of the flea market dealer’s corny jokes that everyone around them turned to look. The ease with which she jumped into new situations without the slightest hesitation. The tired smile she gave him and the soft, satisfied sigh she made after they were both wrecked from brain-depleting orgasms that made him want to do it all over again just to see and hear it again.
Love in the Dark Page 35