“Thank you,” she said.
“For?” He should just walk out the door. He didn’t want to spend his life fighting about who he had been.
“For liking me enough to be faithful even when I was too far away to know if you weren’t.”
Dane clenched his eyes shut as relief tore through him. His shattered heart began pulling itself back together, piece by fragile piece. He’d misunderstood what she’d said completely, and the realization knocked the sails right out of him. He turned and reached for her, as much for stability as for the need to feel her with him. Everything he’d wanted for so long was right there, coming together, and he couldn’t find the words to tell her how much it meant to him. Instead, he looked down into the sea of love in her eyes, and he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her until his heart reassembled, until the pain of thinking he’d lost her melted away and the desire to love her back to being his returned.
“Babe, we have a lot of making up to do.” Dane lifted her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, laying her on the bed. Ten seconds later, he ran out and retrieved the silk tie, then hurried back into the bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him. Her giggles faded behind the closed door.
Chapter Nineteen
LACY MOVED THROUGH the kitchen, humming as she made coffee, eggs, and toast. She’d gotten up while Dane was still sleeping and picked wildflowers from the garden, putting them in a vase in the center of the table.
“Breakfast? This was not on the itinerary,” Dane said as he came out of the bedroom in only his boxer briefs and wrapped his arms around Lacy’s waist from behind. He kissed the back of her neck and slid his hands beneath her satin camisole.
“Neither was last night,” Lacy said, turning to kiss his cheek.
He pulled her close. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as much as I wanted us to get back together. I can’t change my pa—”
Lacy covered his lips with her finger. “Shh…I didn’t know how much I had been wondering about your past until the words left my lips last night and, Dane, I couldn’t have asked for a better response. No more talk about your past, okay?”
“You won’t get an argument from me.” He kissed her neck.
“And I won’t ever bring it up again. That’s done, and I’m working on my fear of sharks, but I think my fear was bigger than just sharks.”
“Bigger?” He kissed her shoulder, her breastbone, her neck.
Lacy closed her eyes, her body purring from his touch. “Yes,” she said in one long breath. “Danica said…Oh hell.” She turned and kissed him. Dane grabbed her ass and pressed her against him. Damn if she wasn’t already wet and ready for him. She pulled back. “Jesus, I feel like a nympho with you.”
He pulled her top over her head. “Good.” He narrowed his eyes and lowered his mouth to her breast.
She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him harder against her. “God, that feels good. Harder,” she whispered. She felt his heartbeat kick up. He licked her nipple, then took her into his mouth again, bringing both hands up and cupping both breasts. “Ah, you're driving me crazy.” She reached for his briefs.
“Oh no, not yet,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to spoil you yet.” He took her in a possessive kiss and then swept her off her feet and carried her back into the bedroom.
“Didn’t you spoil me last night?” she asked as he laid her on the bed.
“Hell no. Last night I devoured you. There’s a difference.”
Standing beside the bed looking down at Lacy with a potent stare, Dane looked more handsome and more virile than he ever had. Sunlight spilled into the room through the sheer curtains, casting a streak across her bare stomach. Dane’s hand disappeared into the streak as he lowered himself to the bed beside her, his strong hand moving in long, hard strokes against her stomach to the hard bones of her ribs, where he curved his hand around to the back and then dragged it along the same path. Lacy’s body thrummed with anticipation. Now he used both hands, pressing every inch of her torso into the mattress, stroking her ribs, her breasts, up her chest to her neck and shoulders, insistent and in control. He lowered his lips along the same path of her curves while he gripped her biceps within his large hands. He kissed his way up to her neck, then claimed her with a deep kiss. Lacy grabbed at his shoulders, needing his hands on her again.
He moved down her body, splaying his hands just above her belly button and kissing the insides of her thighs. Lacy moaned, arching her hips toward him. She covered her eyes with her hand, moving her head from side to side.
“What do you want, Lace?” he whispered.
She laid the back of her hand over her mouth, breathing hard. “You. I want you.”
He licked the crease between her sex and her thigh. “Is this what you want?”
“Yes. God yes,” she said in a heated breath.
He moved to the other side and sucked on the sensitive skin just below that sensual crease. She lifted her hips and reached for his arms, trying to guide him to her center.
“Tell me what you want,” Dane whispered.
Lacy clenched her eyes shut. Showing him was one thing; saying it out loud was another.
He slid his body up along hers, his massive chest a wall of muscle against her breasts. He licked her lower lip, then her upper lip, and when she lifted her head to meet his lips, he pulled back.
“Let me in, Lace,” he said.
“Kiss me.” She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him to her, relishing in the taste of him, the urgency of her desire. She reached for his hard cock and stroked him from base to tip.
Dane grabbed her hand and pinned it above her head. “This is your turn,” he said in a deep, throaty voice. He licked the underside of her arm.
“Jesus,” she said.
“You like?” he asked. Her hand still restrained, he ran his tongue around her taut nipple.
“Dane.” She couldn’t talk, could barely think past the pulsing need between her legs. Then his mouth was on her neck, his teeth grazing her flesh. She moaned when his lips lingered, licking, trailing light kisses across the tender area he’d just loved so intensely. His big hands traveled down her body and gripped her hips. Then his lips were between her hips, just above her damp curls.
“I can’t spoil you until you tell me what you want,” he said, looking at her while he licked her skin from hip to hip.
She covered her eyes again. “Dane,” she pleaded.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me,” he urged.
Every nerve in Lacy’s body was on fire. She clenched her eyes shut and whispered, “Lick me.”
“That’s it, baby.”
He ran a finger along her wetness so softly that it sent shimmering heat through her.
“You’re so slick and beautiful,” he said as he lowered his mouth to her and dragged his tongue in slow strokes, teasing her into a moaning, wanting frenzy beneath him. He stimulated her sensitive nub with his finger. She rocked her hips with each stroke, aching for more, for him to deepen the sensation. Clutching the sheet in her fists, she felt her insides swelling, pulsing for more of his intimate caresses.
“Harder,” she whispered.
He thrust his tongue into her. Lacy gasped, riding the shock that tightened the muscles in her thighs and curled her toes.
“Yes. Oh, Dane. Yes.”
His long fingers entered her, and she cried out as he flicked his tongue over her swollen nub, carrying her up, up, up and over the edge of a captivating orgasm. The cries of pleasure that filled the room were so loud, she barely registered that they were coming from her own lungs. She rocked against his willing mouth, whimpering as tiny pulses came one after another as her body descended the glorious climax.
Dane moved up her body and put just the head of his heat into her, teasing her overly sensitive nerves. She gasped for air as he took her mouth with his, his tongue filling her, thrusting as the wide cap of his erection continued
its masterful massage. Her insides climbed toward another peak. She clawed at his hips, using all her energy to pull him deeper inside her. She cried out as he captured her breast in his mouth, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her body begging for more. Her head fell back, breathless, in the wake of her summit.
Her eyes fluttered open and met his. He looked at her with so much love, she felt it like a presence in the room. Her legs fell open.
“Hi, baby,” he said and kissed her lightly on the lips.
She smiled, caught in a sexual blur, unable to even think about speaking. He lowered his mouth to hers again, and Lacy’s pulse sped up again. His mouth was so hot, his tongue so forceful, that she felt a renewed blazing need rip through her. She whimpered into his mouth again. She’d never been like this, not with anyone. She never even knew she could.
He drew back with a swipe of his tongue across her lower lip. “I love making love to you, Lacy Snow,” he whispered.
She opened her mouth to speak at the same time he pushed his full length into her.
“Ah, Dane,” she cried.
He pumped and thrust, their hips knocking against one another. He wrapped his strong arm around her waist and sat up with her legs straddling his waist, and Lacy instinctively took over, meeting each of his thrusts with a stroke of her own. She lowered her head to his chest and sucked on his nipple.
Dane sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and gripped her hips, pulling her deeper onto him. She held on to his shoulders as she rode his cock harder than she’d ever done before. She couldn’t get enough of him. He wrapped his arm around her and in one swift move settled her on her hands and knees before him. Then he drove back into her, his hands flat on her shoulder blades, his hips slapping against her ass as he pumped every blessed inch of himself into her. The cries started deep in her chest and tore through her body with a tangle of exquisite, pulsating pleasure as she cried out again, just as Dane found his own release.
“Lacy. Oh, Lacy,” he said through clenched teeth. He gripped her waist in his massive hands and held her against him as he pumped her full with his love.
He ran a finger lightly above the curve at the top of her ass. “You have the sexiest dimples at the base of your spine,” he whispered, and laid his head on her back.
Lacy closed her eyes, taking pleasure in the attention he gave her body. He gently repositioned her onto her side and wrapped his body around hers. Lacy nuzzled against him, wondering how she could have ever walked away from him in the first place.
Chapter Twenty
IT WAS THREE in the afternoon by the time Lacy and Dane arrived at the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Orleans. Lacy couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt happier. Dane had spent the last twenty-four hours helping her through her fears, taking care of his friend, and showing her just how much he loved her. He’d weaseled his way right back into her heart, and as he reached for her hand with a warm smile, she realized that even if she was never able to overcome her fear of sharks completely, they just might be able to be together after all.
In the center of the lobby was an exhibit featuring the Brave Foundation, complete with a reduced-sized model of a great white shark and several billboards of information and photographs.
“This is all about Brave,” she said.
“Yeah. We want the community to understand what it is that we do,” Dane said.
“Speak of the devil,” said a tall woman from behind the reception desk. She smiled at Dane, revealing deep grooves across her forehead and around her mouth. Her skin had a leathery look, as if she’d spent every free moment in the sun.
“We’ll look at it in just a sec,” Dane said. He turned to the woman behind the counter, who looked to be in her mid-forties, with short, sandy blond hair and green eyes. Beside her stood a tall, lanky young man with short brown hair, wearing a park ranger uniform. His eyes locked on Dane.
“Shelley, how are you?” Dane led Lacy to the desk. “This is my girlfriend, Lacy Snow.” He squeezed Lacy’s hand.
Girlfriend? The term took her by surprise, then settled around her until it felt like a second skin. Girlfriend. “Nice to meet you,” Lacy said.
“Hi, Lacy. Nice to meet you, too. I was just telling Tom all about you, Dane,” Shelley said. “He wanted to meet the shark hunter.”
Dane smiled. “That would be me, but I prefer researcher or tagger. Hunter sounds like I might hurt the sharks.” He extended his hand, and Tom’s eyes grew wide.
Tom pulled his shoulders back and said, “Yes, sorry. Researcher. Got it. It’s so nice to meet you. I was looking over the exhibit and…wow. That’s all I can say. Pretty cool stuff.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. We tagged an eight-footer the other day. Hopefully, we’ll gain valuable data and tag a few more over the next week or so. It’s nice to meet you,” Dane said.
“I won’t hold you up,” Tom said. His eyes moved to Lacy. “Enjoy the exhibit, Lacy.”
“Thank you,” she said.
They crossed the room, and Lacy scanned the large orange, black, and blue sign that read Brave Foundation, which hung across the top of the exhibit boards with photographs of Dane and Rob lining them. Dane’s dark eyes smiled in every one, his tanned, muscular arms glistening in the sun. In most of the photographs, he was on a boat, leaning over the side, holding the fin of a shark or crouching over a shark that was lying in the center of the boat. She could almost feel the wind blowing his hair askew.
“This is from nine years ago,” she said, pointing to the information posted below the picture of a younger Dane wearing a bathing suit and tank top at the helm of a boat.
“That was a great day. We tagged three sharks that afternoon in Maui. You can just see the edge of Rob’s arm.” He pointed to the right side of the picture. “He was gloating. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
Lacy noticed one common thread in each picture; the exhilaration that radiated from Dane’s eyes was palpable. There was no doubt that the man in those pictures loved what he was doing. She looked at Dane now as he stood beside her studying the pictures, and she knew that he could never give up what he did for a living—and for the first time, she wondered if she could, or if living a life of continuous travel would be overwhelming for her.
“Excuse me, mister?”
Lacy and Dane turned toward the child’s voice.
“Hi there,” Dane said. “My name’s Dane and this is Lacy.”
You included me. God, I love that.
“I’m Ashton and I’m six. My mom said you were the shark guy, and I wanted to know what you’re tracking on the television. All I see are red dots.” Ashton’s barely there blond eyebrows were pulled together above his startling blue eyes.
Dane glanced at the little boy’s parents standing behind him with wide smiles. He leaned down so he was eye level with Ashton. “Come with me, buddy. I’ll show you.” He guided him to the monitor. “This is what we call a live-stream monitor. We put tags on sharks, and if the shark has a satellite tag, then that tag sends a signal to a satellite way up in the sky, past the clouds, and we get to see what that signal means here on the monitor.”
“Why do you need a satellite?” Ashton asked.
“Well, you know how you have to plug your television into the wall to get electricity? The satellite is sort of like that for our tags. We need it to read the signals. You wanna know what we track, right?” Dane asked.
Ashton nodded.
He pointed to the monitor. “Those dots that you see, those are sharks. This monitor shows us where the tagged sharks are swimming. See the different colors?”
“Yeah,” Ashton said. His eyes followed Dane’s finger to the colorful dots.
“Each color tells us how long ago the shark appeared in that location. We call that a ping.”
Ashton laughed.
Lacy watched Dane as he taught the little boy. She swore she could feel her heart opening wider with every word he spoke. He’d make a great father.
D
ane continued. “We can track the temperature of the water and the depth where the tagged sharks swim, and we can even track their swim patterns.”
He looked as if talking about sharks and teaching the little boy came both naturally and comfortably.
“I’m afraid of sharks,” Ashton said.
His father put a hand on his shoulder.
“I have a good friend who’s afraid of sharks, too.” Dane winked at Lacy. “But if you try hard enough to understand sharks, you might realize that they’re not really that scary. They’re just trying to live in the world they’ve been given, just like we are.”
Lacy’s mind took a different turn. She began thinking of ways to wrap the educational side of Brave into their marketing, reaching out to schools and even aquariums, science museums, and the like.
“Do you wear one of those wet suits? My dad says the shark thinks people are seals when they wear them, and that’s why they get bit,” Ashton said, looking at his father.
How often does he have to field the same questions, and how can he answer them over and over without any irritation?
“We do wear wet suits, but not for the reasons you think. You see, Ashton, sharks aren’t interested in eating humans, but they’ve been known to bump their noses into anything they see as potential prey.” He used the back of his hand to lightly tap Ashton’s arm. “Like that. When they do that, they emit electrical signals, like little shocks, and human skin makes those shocks conduct. That’s probably hard for you to understand, but if a person’s skin sends a certain signal to the shark, the chances are greater of an attack. Since wet suits don’t interact with electrical signals like animals and human skin does, we wear them to minimize those chances.”
Ashton’s eyes glazed over, and he reached for his father’s hand.
Ashton’s father stepped forward. “That might be a little over his head, but thank you,” he said.
“No problem. I’m always happy to explain what we do. I’m Dane Braden,” Dane said and extended his hand.
Sea of Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 4) Contemporary Romance Page 18