His body hardened and when she pressed against it she moaned. Damn, he thought, his hand sliding down to cup her ass, she was as determined as she’d been six years ago. As dangerous to his defenses.
They were still dressed when they stretched out on the bed. Her scent surrounding them, she crawled over him, kissing his mouth, sucking on his neck. He breathed her in, he reveled in her taste, his body imprinting on hers so that he worried he might end up following her around for the rest of his life like a baby duck after its mama. For a while he let her have her way—he’d done that six years ago, too—but then he had to touch.
He ran his hand along her sleek spine under her shirt, then slipped his palm beneath the denim of her white jeans so he could knead one curved cheek. “Let’s get these clothes off you, sweetheart.”
She glanced up, her mouth still on the bare skin of his chest. She’d unknotted his tie and unbuttoned his shirt; her pubic bone was pressed deliciously tight to his erection, but it wasn’t enough.
With his free hand, he began to draw up the hem of her long shirt. “Please,” he said, feeling more than a little desperate.
Instead of cooperating, she rolled away. Her hands went to his belt. “I want to see you naked first.”
Who was he to complain? He let her fumble for a couple of moments, then decided that was too much torture and made quick work of it himself. As he tossed his shirt aside, getting completely naked, she grabbed at his tie, eyeing it, then eyeing him.
Uh-oh.
That wasn’t a game he’d taught her, nor one he’d played before. Vance called him stuffy and he supposed, with the exception of that mad night of passion with a near-stranger six years before, that he was pretty conservative when it came to sexual matters.
Okay, he wasn’t kinky.
But hell, maybe he could be. Baxter swallowed. “You want me to tie you up?”
She shook her head.
He swallowed again. “You want to tie me up?” That would be more of a challenge.
But that wasn’t it, either. She kneed her way over to him and pressed the silk fabric against his eyes. “Please, Baxter.” Tilting her head, she put her mouth to his as she made a knot at the back of his head. “Let’s do it in the dark.”
And like on that first night, he couldn’t refuse her anything.
He didn’t need his eyes to undress her. He didn’t need his eyes to touch her silky skin, to palm her full breasts, to urge her over him so he could tongue her nipples. They hardened, and he grunted at the goodness of that. She writhed against him, her denim pants abrading his shaft and he grunted again, rolling her over before any damage was done.
Finding the button and zipper of her jeans was easy. Feeling her wriggle out of them while he thrust his tongue into her mouth over and over was a kind of painful bliss.
Then there she was, flush against him. Bare.
Full frontal nudity.
He didn’t need to see anything to feel the ripe softness of her between her legs, that sweet, wet, swollen flesh that was because of his kiss, his touch. Him.
Any man could put a condom on with his eyes closed. But then Addy “helped” him, and his fingers fumbled when he felt her hot breath on the flesh of his belly. She laughed, he cursed, they both went searching for the errant rubber.
Of course she found it first. She could see.
So he groaned again as she rolled it over his length. He lifted into her touch, his hips ready to plunge, to take, to have her. Have Addy.
But once sheathed, he pressed her to the mattress again. Used his mouth to Braille his way from her lips to her nipples to the soft center of her. Holding her legs wide, he kissed her there, too, tongued her, loving the bite of her fingernails in his scalp. As she began to quake in climax, he slid up and inside her, letting her muscles clench him in rhythmic bliss before surging himself, thrusting, until he came.
Breathing hard, he pulled away and flopped to his back beside her. After a second or two, he dozed.
When he came awake, it was night.
No, no. It was his tie, still blindfolding him. He left it there another moment, trying to think. Now that he wasn’t under the influence of driving lust, he wondered what the silk fabric’s purpose had been.
She wanted to keep him in the dark? If that was the case, it had worked. He was as confused about them as ever and concerned about why his intentions were so easily derailed. Days ago all he’d wanted was to apologize.
Not for making love to her six years ago, but for the reckless things he’d said afterward.
I think I’m in love with you.
I’ll call you tomorrow.
He’d said that, though that very tomorrow he’d had plans to head off to business school across the country. As for Addy, after taking a post–high school gap year, she’d been signed up to begin college classes in a month’s time. Neither of their future plans had stopped him from saying more, however.
And we’ll find a way to be together. We have to be together.
But the next morning, as he packed his belongings in his car, Baxter had recalled the BSLS. This was not the time for a girlfriend. This was not the time to be dating, even. And for pity’s sake, he was much too young to be thinking about love. So he hadn’t picked up the phone, he hadn’t written her, he hadn’t left her any message...and then had agonized over not doing so during the entire three-thousand-mile trip.
Beyond that, too. For six years. Yet still he’d not made amends.
He fingered the soft swathe of material covering his eyes. She should have choked him with the damn thing while he was sleeping.
Great. So his little getting-to-know-you time had turned into a disaster. They’d gotten as close as two bodies could be, but the blindfold had kept her hidden from him.
It had allowed her an opportunity to escape him, he thought.
And, he realized when he stripped the tie away, she’d done exactly that.
He was once again alone.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS FOUR DAYS FOLLOWING their visit to the ranch before Vance suggested that he and Layla make another attempt at witnessing the green flash. Before that, an unusual July fog had rolled in, obscuring the view and wrapping the beach house in a gray blanket. Outside, the visibility was down to a mere dozen feet and it might have made the interior of No. 9 feel too couple-cozy except that Layla spent most of the days with her uncle Phil at the food truck—apparently gray skies didn’t stifle cupcake cravings in Southern California. In the evenings, Addy was in the mix for dinner and a baseball game on TV or dinner and a girl-movie on TV, depending upon how the postmeal coin toss went.
To be honest, Vance had been grateful for a reprieve from Layla’s exclusive company. After their time at the ranch and then their stop at the tavern...well, he felt a new strain to the relationship. She knew things about him now he hadn’t intended to tell her. There’d been something in that kiss in front of his brother and his ex that went beyond role-playing.
A little distance seemed a fine way to smooth out the new edge, and he suspected she’d been keeping herself busy for the exact same reason.
But he’d made promises, so the Helmet List could not be ignored. With the sun once again visible in the sky, they were going to watch it set.
As they left No. 9, Vance had a new appreciation of Crescent Cove’s clear air and the boundless vista of open ocean. Instead of doing their sunset-viewing from a spot on the sand, he proposed they climb to the top of the cliff directly south of the beach house. There were several footpaths snaking up its rock-and-shrub surface, and he trekked along one of the easier routes behind her, telling himself he was watching her butt to make sure she didn’t fall.
Yeah, right.
Because even with Layla out of the house during the day and Addy in the house at night, his awareness of Colonel Parker’s lovely daughter hadn’t been deactivated.
She was beautiful, of course, in nothing more elaborate than a simple pair of cropped sweatpants and matching lo
ng-sleeved T-shirt, but he also couldn’t put from his mind how she’d gone to bat for him when his mother had made her appearance. And then again with Fitz and Blythe at the tavern. That first meet with his ex could have been hellishly awkward, but Layla had smiled them all through it. And instead of focusing on the blonde who’d dumped him, Vance instead had been hyperaware of the sexy, sunny brunette who’d been sitting across from him.
Which went a long way toward explaining the incendiary quality of that kiss in the tavern, though didn’t for a second lessen the simmering sexual tension. At that thought, he looked at her, only to catch her glancing over her shoulder at him. They both quickly diverted their attention.
He sighed. Yes, there was definitely a new strain to things between them.
Upon reaching the cliff’s summit, he led the way toward a level spot that, while well away from the edge, was at the farthest end of the promontory jutting into the ocean. Water surrounded them on three sides, and when he settled beside Layla on one of the blankets he’d spread, she gave him another quick glance.
“From here, it’s like we’re the only people in the world,” she said, draping a smaller throw over her lower legs.
“I could sign up for that,” Vance said. “You’ll do all the cooking and cleaning, of course, and I’ll do...whatever manly things need to be done.”
“I wonder why I’m highly suspicious of this proposed division of labor,” Layla replied, a thread of welcome humor in her voice. “Oh, maybe it’s because you can’t come up with any of your own duties besides ‘manly things.’”
“Hey,” he said, spreading his fingers. “I’m the soldier.”
“If we’re the only two people in the world, it occurs to me we won’t have need of your combat skills.”
“Until there’s spiders to manage,” he reminded her. “Or killer dolphins.”
“Killer dolphins,” she scoffed. But she was smiling and the tension between them eased even more. He smiled back, his spirits lifting, too. Maybe they’d meet with success tonight.
According to sailors, when the flash appears, it means a soul has crossed over.
As if she caught his train of thought, her smile died and she went silent again. Her expression pensive, she turned her attention toward the horizon. The sky was a wash of pinkish-orange, the water the gray of gunmetal, the round sun glowing like molten lava. Vance breathed deep again, and over the shush of the ocean tossing against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, he heard Layla sigh.
He turned to her. The wind had caught her long hair and it swirled around her face. He grabbed a long skein of the stuff and tucked it behind her ear. “You okay?”
“Hmm.” She drew up her knees and linked her arms around them, then flicked him a quick look. “This morning I spoke to your mother about Picnic Day. Details. How many cupcakes she thought we might need, what time we should get the truck to the ranch, that kind of thing.”
He swallowed his groan. “I thought we were the only two people in the world,” he said. “In which case there is no upcoming Picnic Day.”
“Nice try,” Layla said. “But you can’t bury your head in the sand.”
Why not? It was effectively what he’d done when he’d joined the army all those years ago. With relations between him and his family in shambles, he’d buried himself in the sand of war. Stretching out his legs, he fumbled in the pouch of his ragged sweatshirt. The flask he’d stashed there clunked against his cast, and he pulled it out, glad he’d thought to bring it.
“Whiskey,” he said, unscrewing the lid with his unencumbered right hand, thanking God for his renewed mobility. He’d put the brace away three days before. A hefty swallow of the liquor went down smooth. A clean burn of unpleasant thoughts. “You want?”
She eyed him. Then took a sip, sputtered.
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot you’re only good with tequila.”
As if she took the remark as a challenge, she tipped the flask for a second sip. Color flushed her cheeks as she passed it back.
Jesus, she was something. She did something to him, with that soft skin, the top-heavy mouth, those long-lashed eyes that now faced forward again. As he watched, her back stiffened.
“Here we go,” she said, groping for his hand.
After four days of avoidance, he keenly felt her touch. It was as if the small fingers twining with his also had some clutch hold on his heart. Trying to ignore its ache, he turned to the horizon. The sun slipped lower, moving fast now, as if it had suddenly remembered a previous engagement. A golden reflection of it spread against the dappled water and the wind suddenly died. The breakers seemed to quiet, too, as if nature was holding its breath.
Vance knew he was. Tightening his fingers on Layla’s, he leaned his shoulder closer to hers. She trembled a little, and he pressed against her, sharing his warmth. His strength.
The orange orb dropped. And dropped. The top edge seemed to spread and flatten as it slipped the final bit. And then—
Nothing.
His heart twinged in more sympathetic pain, and he damned the thing. It had been nicely numb after Blythe’s defection, but thanks to Layla it now seemed determined to mirror his every mood. Her every mood.
He glanced over. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” she said, her gaze on the now-empty sky.
“We’ll see it next time. I’ll pick the right sunset, and then we’ll see it.” God, once he started on the promises, he couldn’t seem to stop.
“Sure.”
The melancholy on her face made him nuts. “We’ll make a wish on it then,” he said.
She turned her head, perking up a little. “A wish?” Her lips curved.
“Yep. That’s a bit of folklore I picked up.” He touched the pillow of her bottom lip with the tip of his forefinger. The surface was unbearably soft. “Tell me, lovely Layla, what does your heart desire?”
Her smile fell. Her lashes swept down to hide her eyes. And Vance cursed himself. Her heart’s desire? It would be to have her dad beside her right now, you idiot, not some substitute. Pissed at his own stupidity, he fumbled again for the flask and took another drink. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just ignore me.”
Instead, she took the whiskey from him and sipped, grimacing as if it was medicine. “What about you, Vance? What would you wish for?”
“That you wouldn’t be sad,” he said, and meant it to the marrow. “That I could take the pain away for you.”
Her head bent as she seemed to consider it. “Maybe you should save that wish for yourself,” she replied after a long moment, lifting her gaze to his. “You’re sad, too.”
“Me? No.” He had annoyances. Grievances. Frustrations. But sadness? “Not that.”
Layla took another sip from the flask. “Come on. Fitz and Blythe...”
He snatched the liquor from her. “I don’t want to talk about them.” It was another reason he’d spent four days avoiding her. There was no need to dig around in that old nonstory.
“We’re going to have to.”
In the waning light, he frowned at her. “I don’t see why.”
“Because we’ll be at your family’s ranch.” She hesitated. “Look, I know we’ve been stepping over the elephant in the living room, but we can’t do that forever. If we’re going to do the pretend girlfriend/boyfriend thing again on Picnic Day, I need to have a better understanding of—”
“What, you haven’t had a boyfriend before?” he asked, throwing the question out like bait. Anything to redirect the conversation.
She made a face at him. “I told you. I’ve had experience. I’ve kissed. I’ve been in relationships.”
Ah, yes, thank you, God. His little fish had gone right for the worm. “Forgive me for finding it hard to see your tough-as-nails father allowing you to kiss anybody.” Even as he said it, he worked hard to put their kisses from his mind, the sweet plumpness of her top lip, the soft velvet of her tongue.
Her laugh was rueful. “Okay, I admit it. He was
an impediment in my younger teenage years. I wasn’t allowed to attend many parties or go out on one-on-one dates. I thought I might die a ninety-five-year-old virgin.”
Vance wasn’t surprised that the colonel had tried to shelter his only daughter. “But in your older teenage years?”
“I had more freedom.” She found the flask that he’d dropped on the blanket between them. “I was a freshman in college when Dad’s latest deployment left me with an empty house—Uncle Phil was at a meditation center for the weekend. So I devised a battle plan to put an end to my untouched status.”
It was almost dark now, but he turned toward her, anyway, intrigued—no, appalled. “A battle plan?”
“A strategy, if you will,” she said. “An agenda. An approach to finally learning what it seemed as if everyone else in the world my age already knew.”
Wow, Vance thought. No romantic daydreams for this girl. No getting swept away by emotion or even hormones for Layla. The soldier’s daughter thought in terms of tactics and maneuvers to get what she was after.
She swigged some more from the flask. “Here’s the truth. I’d had exactly one date that ended in exactly one kiss before the night I engineered to experience the whole shebang.”
“Shebang,” he echoed. “She-bang?”
“Whoops.” Layla released a husky, half-tipsy giggle. “Bad choice of word.”
He snatched the metal canister away from her. “I think we can leave it at—”
“So I had this battle plan,” she continued. “I’d been to the doctor for birth control, I had condoms, I bought a slinky nightgown, I picked a guy who seemed respectful and who I kinda liked.”
“You kinda liked him?” Vance asked, now almost aghast.
“Well, no,” Layla admitted. “I actually liked him okay, but I amended it later...when, you know.”
A chill rocketed up his spine. “No, I don’t know.” And how can I find this asshole? “Did he...what did he do?”
“He just didn’t do it for me.” Layla was silent a moment. “And then he seemed somewhat irked when I pointed that out.”
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