a moment. “And then he seemed somewhat irked when I pointed that out.”
Good God. Vance rolled his eyes skyward, to see the first stars shining above them. On the heels of a single kiss, she’d attempted the full monty with all the sentimentality of an officer drawing up combat plans in a war room. No wonder she’d been left unsatisfied. By a guy she liked okay.
“Frankly, now that I think of it, he probably wasn’t any more experienced than me. He’d moved around a lot, too, which cuts down on a person’s ability to get close to others. But I figured, as another army brat, that meant he wouldn’t become too attached to me.”
Good God, Vance thought again.
“Now you,” Layla said.
“Me...what?”
“Your first,” she said, sounding disgruntled. “I shared. Isn’t that what boyfriends and girlfriends do?”
Ignoring the boyfriends and girlfriends remark, he forced his mind away from Layla’s story and thought back. His first? “It wasn’t nearly as well planned as you’re describing, that’s for sure.”
“No?”
“It was more...impetuous. I had a rubber, mind you, and managed to remember to roll it on, but I’d had months of fooling around with Marianne Kelly before we did the deed when we were sixteen.”
With a little smile, he lay back on the blanket to stare up at that star-studded sky. Layla was hovering over him, her features obscured by the darkness. “Maybe that’s where I went wrong,” she said, a mournful note in her voice. Then she positioned herself beside him, her head pillowed by one arm, her shoulder brushing his. “No fooling around before doing the deed.”
Vance could guarantee it. Still smiling, he thought of those heady hours with his high school girlfriend. No empty houses, no satiny nightgowns, no cold-blooded arrangements. “We snatched time together wherever we could. In the front seat of my first car. On the couch at her house, with her parents just a room away. She even braved the avocado grove once.”
“No,” Layla said, clearly disbelieving. “No girl gets naked when there’re spiders around.”
He clucked his tongue. “Layla, Layla, Layla. There’s fun to be had over clothes. Or by sneaking a hand under them.”
They were lying so close and it was so quiet that he heard her breath catch. His body went on sudden alert as she shivered. He rolled his head toward her. “Cold?” he asked, his voice low.
She shivered again. “A little.”
He reached for the second blanket that was puddled near their feet and pulled it upward, over their bodies. As he drew it toward Layla’s chin, the side of his pinkie brushed her breast. She twitched, and her breath hiccupped again.
Vance’s hand stilled. A breeze found the back of his neck but it was nothing against the new heat pouring through his body. He should stand up now, he thought. It might be a little awkward with the sudden stiffness poking at the placket of his jeans, but the two of them should probably leave here, where they felt as though they were the only two people in the world. Return to Beach House No. 9...
Where, since Addy was out for the evening, they’d be the only two people within the four walls.
Still, maybe between the cliff top and the confines of the house, he’d manage to corral this irrepressible lust, this shouting, insistent, reckless need to touch her, kiss her, teach her what he knew.
Hell! His good sense knew he couldn’t afford that complication.
But then Layla made the internal argument moot.
Her fingers found his. Not to brush them away, but to press them to the sweet, swelling mound of her breast. Sweet Christ. Four days of avoidance, four days of good intentions and four days hoping to cool the smoldering tension disappeared in a burst of steam.
With a groan, he surrendered to the goodness of her under his hand. He rolled to his side, ignoring the awkwardness of the forearm cast between them, and fastened his mouth to hers. She opened instantly, and he painted the inner surface of that heavy upper lip with his tongue. Her body arched, and the stiff jut of her hard nipple was evident under her shirt and bra. He circled it with two fingertips as he kissed her more deeply, plunging now, driving into the wet heat.
She angled toward his body, offering herself to him. His lips drew away from her and traveled across her cheek, finding the hollow behind her ear. He was breathing heavily and when he touched his tongue there, he could feel her reaction