confounded he almost laughed. Except how much he wanted her was no laughing matter.
“Walking up the stairs behind you...yeah. Trust me.”
Famous last words....
14
SHE COULD WALK out the door, hop on her bike and get in a ten- or twenty-mile ride. And she could also stick a pin in her eye.
Lars waited patiently for her decision. There was a quietness about him as he stood, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, his usually laughing eyes serious in his lean face. Her entire body tingled at just the sight of him. She felt a quickening in her womb, the slick wet between her thighs, the ache in her breasts.
She looked away from him, hoping to clear her thoughts. How was she supposed to think while they were standing in a bedroom together?
She worried her lower lip between her teeth. Perhaps she’d overreacted a bit earlier. Her bike would be here with her for the next three months while her...whoa, not her but the marine would be shipping out in a few short days.
There was caution, and then there was stupidity. She’d never been with a man who turned her on the way Lars Reinhardt did...and apparently she did the same thing for him.
She smoothed her hands down her thighs. “I suppose I could spare a hug.”
He opened his arms and it felt like so much more than a simple invitation to hug him. It was a hug and he was just another man, she reminded herself as she closed the distance between them. She stepped into his outstretched arms and embraced him. She closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest, hearing his heart thudding beneath her ear. She inhaled his scent—a combination of sun, man and their earlier sex.
She nestled closer, her arms still wrapped around him. His arms tightened around her, but not hard, more as if she were a delicate treasure he didn’t want to let go.
His chest was hard against her tender nipples. His quiet sigh seemed to ripple from his body into hers on a wavelength of shared desire. Her whole body was a little tender, a little sore, merely heightening her sensitivity.
Lars rested his head against her hair. It occurred to her that this was the longest he’d been quiet since she’d met him. It was another side to the man who was spinning her world into something temporarily fantastic.
His lips brushed against her scalp as his penis pressed against her, evident despite the layers of their clothes.
Like a match tossed amid dry tinder, desire engulfed her in its flames.
There was something powerful in the silence between them. She wrapped her hands around his biceps and turned him around. Three steps behind him was the mattress. Walking him backward, she pushed lightly and he went down like a mighty oak.
He lay on the bed, looking at her like a man who’d just won the lottery.
Foolish man.
He held out his hands to her. “Delphi?”
She stepped between his open legs and placed her hands in his. Palm to palm, kneeling on the bed, she lowered herself to him.
Foolish her.
“Do you think everyone downstairs will know what we’re doing up here?” she said.
“Doubtlessly.” It wasn’t particularly what she wanted to hear, but at least it was truthful. And wasn’t that what she wanted? “But it’s okay. I think they’ve all had sex before.”
She laughed. “I think you’re right.” Besides, the whole town could know, and she wasn’t getting up and walking away now.
She smoothed her fingertips over the fine lines near his eye.
“Too many days spent squinting in the sun. Sunglasses only help so much.”
“The Middle East?”
“Yep.” He caught her hand and brought her fingers to his lips, pressing a soft kiss against them.
He didn’t want to talk about work and neither did she. It wasn’t the time.
She smiled, an unexpected tenderness welling inside her. “I like them. They add character.”
“I’d like to think I manage to have character on my own, Delphi.” Despite his teasing tone, a seriousness underscored his words. “These lines don’t mean anything except I’ve spent too much time in the sun. I could be the biggest bastard in the world and still have these.”
So she might’ve overreacted to his prolonged absence earlier, but he was definitely overreacting to this. Perhaps she unsettled him the way he unsettled her. She hoped so. And she truly didn’t want to overthink any of this—she just wanted to experience him...them, if he’d just quit talking. “Lars...”
“Yes?”
“Sometimes you don’t know when to shut up.”
“You’re in charge. I’ve got a couple of