by Lily Everett
Laughing at herself, Felicity took Zane’s big hand in hers and led him out of the alley and into the chilly autumn sunlight pouring down over Main Street. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Felicity had to struggle not to be derailed by his contagious flirt of a smile. “Does this something start with you naked and end with us horizontal?”
Fighting back a blush, Felicity propelled the two of them down the sidewalk. “No! And watch your step. I mean, don’t watch, here just let me…oops!”
Zane righted himself from his stumble over a crack in the pavement, his fingers gripping tight around hers. “Let me guess. First time leading a blindfolded man around town?”
“You guessed right.” Felicity kept her gaze trained on their path, trying to anticipate any rough or uneven spots that could trip Zane up. “It’s a little nerve-wracking, if you want the truth.”
He lifted a hand toward his face. “We can ditch this if you want.”
“No!” Felicity paused, surprised and a touch embarrassed at her own vehemence. “I mean…not yet. I want to surprise you.”
“Hmm.” Those sinful lips curled into a naughty smirk. “And you like having me under your power.”
Felicity couldn’t deny it. There was something strangely satisfying about the way Zane was allowing himself to be led forward into a mysterious, uncertain future, with no guide in the darkness other than her hand and her voice. “What woman wouldn’t enjoy having a wealthy, world-famous playboy in her control?” she replied lightly, but it was more than that. At least, on her end.
Zane, as always, seemed content with the easy banter, not looking for any deeper meaning. “Lead on, babe. I love surprises.”
Felicity wasn’t at all sure he was going to love this one, but she had to try. Time was running out.
***
Zane was no stranger to sexual games. Unlike his surprisingly innocent wedding planner, this wasn’t his first round of blindfolded shenanigans.
But it was the first time he could remember feeling this charged and ready, this connected to the other person—especially when all their clothes were still on. For Zane, who’d started to find his constant merry-go-round of party hookups and short-term flings boring, this was a major breakthrough.
He knew he was jaded. How could he not be, when he’d spent his entire life making sure he experienced everything near-limitless wealth and power had to offer? But this—what he felt when he was around Felicity Carlson? This was something new. Zane laced their fingers together tightly, climbed into her car when she opened the door for him, and let her drive him over Sanctuary Island’s winding, graveled roads to an unspecified location. He was entirely prepared to throw himself into whatever new adventure awaited him at the end of his blind journey.
But he could never have prepared for what Felicity had in mind. The car stopped and Felicity hurried around to help deal with the seatbelt and the door handle. Zane was pretty sure he could have managed it himself, but he wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to get Felicity’s hands all over his lap.
Entirely focused on her nearness and the fresh apricot scent of her skin, it took Zane a minute to register the smell of salt on the brisk breeze. He froze for an instant, feeling the shifting grit of sand under his soles, and his chest tightened in lung-squeezing panic.
“Are you okay?” Felicity’s alarmed voice pierced the ringing in his ears. “Wait, let me take off the blindfold. We’re there.”
Zane didn’t need the blindfold off to know where she’d taken him. “The beach.”
He blinked his eyes open against the dazzle of the sun off the waves, and stared out onto the scene of all his nightmares.
“I thought…” Felicity faltered, twisting the tie between nervous fingers. “It’s the one potential party location we never really checked out. Not up close and personal.”
Clenching down on the panic and despair that wanted to suffocate him, even when he stood merely at the edge of the road running along the beach, Zane squared his shoulders. “It’s fine. You’re right, we should check it out.”
She was never going to give up on the beach, which even Zane could admit was the most obvious location for the reception. Not unless he could convince her it really wouldn’t work. So that’s what he’d do. He’d step out onto the sand, walk down to the foamy white edge of the water, stare out over the dark, treacherous waves…
“Are you coming?” Felicity asked, raising a hesitant brow at him over her shoulder.
Zane couldn’t move.
He stared down at his feet, willing them to carry him forward, but they were rooted to the gravel shoulder of the road as if he were a centuries-old tree. “You go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Felicity’s eyes widened, and Zane controlled a wince. Even he could hear the raw edge to his voice. “What’s going on? You really don’t want to go down to the beach with me.”
Zane closed his eyes. He couldn’t hide it. And since he couldn’t hide it, maybe the only thing to do was to tell her about it. Maybe then she’d see why the beach was the worst setting in the world for a wedding reception.
“I don’t go to the beach.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the hood of Felicity’s sensible blue sedan, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I haven’t since I was a little kid.”
That was the easy part. He’d said that much before, with a shrug and an easy change of subject, distracting whoever had asked with an invitation to do something more fun, exciting, exotic, and decadent.
The hard part was glancing up into Felicity’s soft, watchful eyes as she studied his face as if she’d be quizzed on it later. “What happened when you were a little kid, Zane?”
There it was. The question he tried never to think about, the memory he’d do anything to erase. But sitting on the hood of Felicity’s car and staring out over the merciless vastness of the ocean, Zane felt the memory swirl up to the surface of his mind, unchangeable and undeniable as the tide.
“I grew up in Pennsylvania, in farm country. My parents used to have a vacation condo, though, on the coast. We went there every summer, my parents and me, and my older brother, Michael.”
Felicity perched next to him on the car, the sweet line of her body warm even against the chill of the wind coming off the water. “You have an older brother?”
“Had,” Zane said tightly, around the ache in his throat and the burning behind his eyes. “Past tense. Michael died when I was ten, and he was thirteen.”
“Oh, Zane.” Felicity reached out to him, anguish in her voice and sympathy in her gaze.
It was a fight to let her touch him, not to jerk away from the softness of her curves leaning into him, the steady support of her arm around his shoulders. Part of Zane didn’t want the comfort, didn’t want to think he needed it—and maybe didn’t think he deserved it. But through sheer force of will, he stayed still and let Felicity tug him close.
“I’d say we don’t have to talk about this,” she murmured, pressing her forehead into the space between his neck and his shoulder. “But honestly, I think we do. Or at least, you need to talk about it with someone. And I’m here.”
“Do you think I’d discuss this with just anyone?” Zane grated out, every muscle tense and straining. “I don’t talk about Michael. Ever.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” The words ripped out of his chest, cracking him open. “It’s my fault he died.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Felicity gripped his shoulder more tightly, pulling back to stare seriously up at him.
Startled, Zane jerked away from her. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know you were ten years old,” she said firmly, with no hesitation. “You were a child. No matter what happened, no matter how you feel about it now, it wasn’t your fault.”
Zane smiled, bleak and wintry enough to hurt his cheeks. “Ah, Felicity. You, more than most people, know how much responsibili
ty a child’s shoulders can carry.”
“And, as someone recently pointed out to me, that’s not exactly healthy. But go on—you were about to tell me what happened.”
Striving for the light, easy storytelling tone that had never eluded him before, Zane said, “I’m sure you can fill in the blanks. We were at the beach, and I swam out too far. The waves were bigger than I thought, rougher. I couldn’t keep my feet.”
Without warning, the flat words gained depth and dimension in Zane’s head, sucking him down into the stinging cold blackness of the waves closing over him, picking him up and throwing him down onto the scraping ocean floor. He gulped for air, gasping in shock when he breathed easily.
He wasn’t that kid anymore. He was safe. And Michael wasn’t. “You know, it’s strange. In movies and on TV, when they show a person drowning he’s always waving his arms and calling for help—but that’s not what it’s really like. I just sank. I kept trying to get upright, to push down on the water with my arms, but I couldn’t get them above the surface. And I definitely didn’t have the breath to shout or scream. To this day, I don’t know how Michael even realized I was in trouble. But he did.”
Felicity remained silent, but her slender hand found his much larger one and squeezed. Zane didn’t understand how such a small thing could give him the guts to go on, but it did.
Staring out over the empty, calm ocean, Zane said, “Michael swam out to me and got me turned right side up. He pulled my head above water just as another wave crashed over us, and he…”
For the first time, Zane’s voice broke. Humiliating tears burned like acid behind his eyes, but he clenched his back teeth and got through it. “My brother got his hands under my arms and lifted me up, over his head, and somehow I got on top of the wave and rode it in toward shore a little ways. Enough that I could touch down. I turned to try and find Michael, to grab him and pull him in with me. But he was gone.”
Felicity’s fingers spasmed in his hold. “Zane, oh. Oh my God.”
It was a prayer, more than anything else—a prayer for mercy, for help, for something to ease the pain. But there was nothing. “My brother saved me. And in doing so, he lost his own life.”
Zane dashed the tears from his cheeks and scrubbed his hand over his face. In a choked voice, Felicity said, “Don’t. It’s okay to cry.”
Exploding off the car in a fierce rush, Zane stalked a few paces down the road before whirling to stare at her. “I’m not ashamed of crying. But my brother earned more than a few pointless tears from me. That’s not how he would have wanted to be remembered, and it’s not what he would have wanted for my life. He always wanted the best for me—he was an amazing older brother. I was damn lucky to have him for ten years. And for all the years I outlive him, I have his memory, and what he taught me.”
Felicity slid off the hood, her cheeks paler than the sand stretching down to the water. “What did he teach you?”
“Life is short.” The truth of Zane’s existence was a coal burning in his chest, lodged against his heart and impossible to remove. “No one can say how short, so you’d better live while you can. Every moment, every breath, could be your last. Never let an opportunity pass you by. And have fun. Because Michael will never get to do any of the things he dreamed about, the things we talked about late at night after lights out. So I do them for him. For both of us. That’s how I moved on.”
Something flickered in Felicity’s eyes, then she blinked and it was gone. “It’s strange, when you think about it. We both grew up under a cloud, overshadowed by dark events beyond our control. I responded by holding myself in check and trying to keep as much control as I can…and you let yourself go. You let yourself experience things to the fullest. You wring every drop of happiness you can out of life. I wish I could be more like that.”
“You can,” he promised her, meaning it with everything in him.
“I think…I’m ready to try. If you’ll help me.”
“Anything.” So many promises, when Zane had managed to make it through his entire life without ever promising anyone anything. But he couldn’t regret it when a slow, tremulous smile bloomed across Felicity’s face.
She leaned back on her elbows against the hood of the car, like a classic pinup girl in a fifties magazine. Crooking one slim finger, she tilted her chin up in invitation. Only the rapid rise and fall of her chest gave away her nerves.
“Come here,” Felicity said, all throaty and husky. “And help me experience life to the fullest.”
In three long strides, Zane was at her side. Her eyes were hot enough to sear his skin, and when he reached for her, she gasped at the hungry slide of his hands up the outsides of her silken thighs.
Clasping her slender waist, he marveled at the feel of her—delicate, fragile, yet somehow totally in control of her own power as a beautiful and desirable woman. It was addictive. Zane’s body throbbed, thick and heavy with the molten beat of his blood.
When Felicity boldly leaned up to grab hold of his collar and pulled him down to cover her, Zane grinned, wild and free. There was nothing on earth like watching Felicity Carlson come apart in his arms. Nothing he’d experienced before in his life of decadent pleasures even compared.
Zane sank into the moment, lost and found in Felicity’s tight embrace.
Chapter 6
“I can’t believe we did that.” Felicity hitched her shoulders against the rear bumper of the car and leaned into Zane. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“No regrets?”
The light ease of his tone was at odds with tension she could feel in his strong, hard-muscled body. The body she’d felt every inch of, pressed against her and moving with her to create sensations she’d never even imagined possible…
Felicity smiled up at him and tried to find the energy to rearrange their rucked up clothing into something passably respectable. “None. Except maybe the fact that we didn’t take the time to get somewhere private where we could undress each other—and maybe find a flat surface.”
At one point, too caught up in each other to notice insignificant details like gravity, they’d slid right off the hood of the car and onto the ground. Cursing fluently, Zane had twisted them at the last second so he landed first and cushioned her fall. Felicity couldn’t help but laugh, even knowing it might piss Zane off. From what she remembered of her Bad Year of college hook-ups, boys did not enjoy it when girls got the giggles during sex.
Well, maybe that was the difference between boys and men, she reflected now as she watched answering humor lighten Zane’s incredible blue eyes. Because Zane had thrown his head back and laughed right along with her, then growled and lifted her above him and made her gasp. She’d never realized sex could be both intimate and playful, intense and silly at the same time.
“Flat surfaces are overrated,” Zane told her, with the air of a wise old man imparting deeply serious advice. “You get more points for style and high degree of difficulty if you go for slanted, bouncy, or otherwise unstable surfaces.”
“You’re unstable,” Felicity retorted nonsensically, lifting her mouth for a kiss.
“But you love that about me.” The words hummed against her swollen, sensitive lips, and Felicity told herself the shiver that shot down her spine was from the sensation…not from the sound of the “L” word in Zane’s rich, deep voice.
She didn’t want to move. All her muscles and bones felt weighted to the ground with spent pleasure and exhaustion. But the ever-present timer in her head kept relentlessly ticking, reminding her that time was running out.
“What I would love,” Felicity said, disentangling herself and struggling to her feet, “would be to nail down a reception location. I’ve planned everything I can without that last piece of the puzzle in place.”
Zane glanced at his wafer thin sports watch. “So. The most amazing sex of your life distracted you for all of…eighty-seven minutes. I must be slipping.”
“Who said it was the most amazing sex of my life?” F
elicity responded tartly, hands on hips.
The smoldering look Zane directed up at her from his boneless sprawl on the ground made Felicity’s thighs tremble and her cheeks heat. There was something unbelievably sexy about Zane’s confidence, especially now that she’d peeked behind the curtain and glimpsed the reasons behind everything Zane did.
His brother’s death had scarred him. Zane might think he was over it, that he’d moved on by living his life a certain way—but Felicity could see that there was still healing to be done. For instance, even now, Zane avoided looking past her and out to across the beach to the sea.
Holding out a hand to help brace him, Felicity felt a thrill when he clasped her fingers and let her tug him up. They were in this together.
“You’re right,” she said, quiet and simple and to the point. “It was the best sex of my life, because for the first time in a long time, I let go and allowed myself to enjoy it. And you’re the one who showed me how. So thank you for that.”
His eyes heated to the color of the blue flames at the heart of a fire. “It was my pleasure, I assure you.”
“Let me show you something in return.” Felicity tried not to beg, but his answer mattered so much.
Zane zipped up his jeans, leaving the top button undone in a way that played havoc with Felicity’s hormones. Shrugging back into his waffle-print cotton Henley shirt, he gave her a wary glance. “The beach?”
She nodded, doing her best to project calm emotional support. “You wanted me to admit that the world wouldn’t stop turning if I let go and had fun. We proved that together. Now let me prove to you that you’re strong enough to stand at the edge of the ocean.”
***
Fair was fair, Zane supposed, swallowing as a chill sweat broke out along his hairline. Ignoring the clenching of his gut, he said, “Sure. What the hell.”