shoulder. “What did we hit?”
“Tree,” he said. “Good thing, too. We were headed for the ditch.”
“Oh, no. Your truck. I’m so sorry.” She pawed at the door, but the handle flexed uselessly under her hand. She was locked in. She tugged at the handle in a panic. She couldn’t get out. She couldn’t…
“Wait.” He grabbed her hands and held them both in her lap. She stiffened, her back tight against the back of her seat, her spine rigid. They’d ended up under a tree that shut out the moonlight so she couldn’t see his face, but she had no doubt he was frowning. Of course he was. She’d wrecked his truck. Ruined the evening, and probably his bumper, too. She wondered if the taillight was smashed. Taillights were expensive.
He shifted her two hands into one of his and pulled her toward him so she could see his face again in the faint glow of the parking lot lights, which seemed oddly distant and far away.
He was, incredibly, laughing.
***
Lane looked over at the terrified woman on his lap and tried to stifle his laughter. She seemed to think denting the truck bumper was some kind of disaster, which only made it funnier. He was anything but angry. In fact, he was right where he wanted to be.
When the truck had flipped out of gear, it had drifted backward across the sloping parking lot, rolling across a small patch of grass and into a grove of trees. They’d almost hit somebody’s SUV, but he’d cranked the wheel in time and the truck had come to rest against the trunk of an enormous pine. The tree’s branches draped around them, drooping almost to the ground. He could barely see the club with its tasteful landscape lights glowing in the distance more than fifty yards away.
Nobody was likely to notice him here. Or Sarah. Or the truck, hidden under the boughs of the tree. He’d yanked the headlights on as he’d floundered for the steering wheel and now he shut them off. It felt like they were deep in a forest, sheltered by the ancient tree, safe in a cave of branches.
“Don’t you want to check the bumper?” Sarah asked.
“No,” he said. “But if I don’t repair this night right away, it’s a goner.”
“This—what?”
“This—I don’t know what to call it. Whatever’s happening between us.”
He kissed her, kneading the back of her neck with his fingers as he slid his lips over hers. She was tense as a jackrabbit caught in the open, frozen but ready to bolt. Teasing her lips with his tongue, he felt her nervousness drain away. Then a new kind of tension took over and it wasn’t nerves but need that made her tremble as she kissed him back.
He moved his lips down her neck, pausing to nuzzle the curve where her shoulder met her neck. She was running her hands over his back, over his shoulder blades, tracing his muscles. When she cupped his hips in both hands he felt a stab of urgency that almost hurt. He pulled at the straps of her dress, tugging them down to admire the simple black lace of her bra. It was plain, but not prim—just practical. What it held, though, was heaven. A few faint freckles spattered her skin as if they’d been poured down her cleavage. They faded where her breasts swelled over the lace and her skin turned to smooth white perfection. He kissed her again and slipped one hand past the lace. Her breast fit his hand perfectly, the nipple hard against the center of his palm.
She gasped and he pulled away to make sure it was a gasp of pleasure. It was. Her head was tilted back, and the dim light from the moon spilled over her shoulder and made her skin glow magically silver, just as it had the night before. He reached up and tugged the straps from her shoulders, moving them slowly down her arms and enjoying the slow revelation of her breasts while he expertly flipped open the clasp at the back.
He bent his head to lick a slow circle around each of her nipples, pink as her lips and perfectly round. His hand moved down to fumble with the hem of that sleek little dress—so professional, so prim. He wanted it gone. He wanted her naked, and he wanted her now.
And she wanted him too. She was pulling at his shirt, tearing the snaps open, but when she hit the last button the