if there was one thing that she’d regret most about her stay at Beach House No. 9, it was how the weeks had peeled away her outer layer of strength. Tears were so close to the surface now.
Yet she didn’t protest when his arms gathered her closer. She found her cheek pressed against his chest, his heavy heartbeat in her ear. Steady. Sure.
She could have lost him today. That moment when he’d been lying in the puddle of gasoline and looking at her with such anxious urgency was burned forever in her memory. Go, Layla, he’d said. Go on.
Those could have been his last words to her.
Those could have been his very last words ever.
Her heart seized, her veins filling with a cold horror. She’d been almost numb before, and the wine and champagne had helped, but now the fear overtook her and her body began to shake.
She reminded herself he was fine. His heartbeat was unchanged. But she splayed her hand on his chest, trying to convince herself he was as warm and solid as always. Another person she cared for hadn’t been lost.
Panic continued to rattle her bones.
“Layla?” Vance turned her in his arms so he could study her face. “You’re shivering. What’s the matter? Cold again?”
“Not this time,” she said, certain only one thing would quell her sudden anxiety. “Take me to bed.”
“Layla...”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she added hastily.
He winced. “Layla—”
“Other than you’re alive. I want to feel that you’re alive. I need to feel you’re alive.”
His thumb ran over her mouth. “Let’s talk first.”
“No.” Words weren’t her friend tonight. She didn’t need a discussion of their nonfuture and she didn’t want him teasing her with his raunchy routine in bed. She loved that, he knew she did, but if Vance took her down, took her too deep into desire, she might say the very wrong thing.
This time, she wanted to drift atop the emotion and only use their bodies to reassure herself that he was whole and here and hers this one last time.
“Please, Vance.”
Instead of answering, he used his thumb on her lips again, and she nipped at it, then took it fully in her mouth. She sucked, swirling her tongue over the pad, and felt his body tighten everywhere.
He tasted good, and she felt dizzy with the flavor of the man. Her shivering stopped as her skin heated under her clothes, the cotton feeling too rough against the tender skin of her belly and at the hollow that was the small of her back. She’d zipped a hoodie over her sundress and she unfastened it now, still using her lips and mouth to suckle Vance’s thumb.
His nostrils were flared, his cheekbones pressing hard against his skin, its color a soft rose-gold in the firelight. His gaze followed her as she released him to stand, then he watched in a clearly stunned silence as she shed the sweatshirt, kicked off her shoes, whipped the stretchy cotton sundress over her head.
Even the panties were too much, so she shoved those off her hips and felt the fire’s warmth on her bare bottom.
“Jesus, Layla,” Vance said. “Sweetheart...”
But the word drifted to nothing as she knelt between his knees and went to work on opening his jeans. He looked astounded, but then she was, too. In their sex she’d never been the aggressor, and maybe it would balance the scales. She wanted to have him at her mercy now, as she’d been at his since the very first time they’d touched.
Her hands fumbled with the denim and soft boxers beneath, but she caught her lower lip between her teeth and persevered. He was hard and hot beneath the material, she could feel him. She wanted that! And she made a little sound of frustration as she couldn’t find a way to bare him.
He laughed a little, the sound male and indulgent, and then, shifting his hips, he reached down and made the proper adjustments until there it was, his erection lying against his flat belly. Her heart pounding, she stared at it, then kneed closer to take the shaft between her palms. Ah. His power at her fingertips now. Then at her mouth.
When her tongue touched the soft skin at its head, he groaned, and his long fingers sifted into her hair. She laved him, circling the thick knob, sliding down the shaft, breathing in the scent of his skin and breathing out against his flesh so that their essences merged this one last time. Her