Falling Fast (Falling Fast #1) - Tina Wainscott Page 0,53
feel it or not, it doesn’t matter. We’re two people destined to dance for a song or two before we move on. So we’ll have whatever kind of dance you want. Slow and chaste. Fast and hot. But think carefully before you choose, because we’ll have to pick up the pieces when it’s over.”
Voices carried over the wind, and he turned toward the beach. Barely visible in the moonlight, a couple walked hand in hand, their words and laughter garbled on the wind. Summer lovers? Or a committed couple?
She wrapped her arms around him, closed her eyes, and absorbed his confession: Raleigh loved her. But he wouldn’t even let her tell him how she felt. He carried so much. Guilt. Responsibility. Loyalty. And a deep-seated conviction that he wasn’t good enough for her. She worried that his guilt was the heaviest of all of them, and she wasn’t sure he would ever overcome that.
When she shivered, he said, “We should go in.”
She slid down, her legs brushing his on their way to the sand floor. His erection was hard and slick against her skin. Damn but she wanted him, as much as he wanted her. He steadied her before releasing her to the movements of the waves.
He guided her toward shore with his hand on her back, and she almost wanted to lose her footing so he’d anchor her with his arm. But asking him to let her relive her past wasn’t fair to Raleigh; she could see that now. Letting him go, moving on to her new job…that didn’t feel fair to her. And she wasn’t sure what to do about it.
Chapter 10
Raleigh woke to the sun kissing his face. He squinted as he opened his eyes, and it wasn’t the sun or the sky that he saw. It was Mia, with her knees pulled up, her arms wrapped around them. Watching him, and looking a bit chagrined at being caught.
He pulled himself to a sitting position on the chaise lounge. “Were you watching me sleep?”
“Oh, my God, it sounds so…sappy when you say it like that. But, yeah, I was. I woke up at first light, and you were the first thing I saw.” She gestured toward the couch where she’d slept. “I mean, because of the way I was lying. I realized we never got to wake up together during those stolen nights we had. I hated that alarm.”
He rubbed at the center of his chest, where her words burrowed in. “Me, too. I threw out the alarm clock. That beeping always meant the end of our time together.”
She was already made up, her hair brushed, dressed in a loose cotton top that covered her scars. Obviously still not ready to reveal herself to him. “I started breakfast. Figured you’d be hungry.”
He couldn’t help thinking how cozy this was. How close they’d come to making love and waking up tangled in each other the way they had years earlier. “Starved.” He pushed to his feet and made sure he hadn’t kicked off the loose pants in which he’d slept.
“Me, too.” Her gaze slid down over his bare chest to where the waistband rode so low that his hip bones were showing.
He hitched them up. “I’ll help.”
“That would be great.” She led the way into the cottage, the windows opened to air it out. The scent of bacon overrode any lingering paint fumes and made his stomach growl. Breakfast was usually a hard-boiled egg on the run. Now he and Mia would be cooking together, then sitting across from each other. Like that normal couple that they could never be.
He’d told her he loved her. The memory slammed him as he watched her cute ass sway back and forth on her way to the kitchen. He hadn’t meant to; he’d simply had no other reason for saying that he’d give her everything. He could tell that she was afraid he’d made the offer out of pity, and he couldn’t have her thinking that. Pity wasn’t even on the list of what he felt for her.
The silence was heavy as they stood side by side at the stove. Things he wanted to say, things he didn’t want to say, all crowded into his head. She was here for only another few days. Could they handle being close without giving in? Part ways with that closure they both claimed they wanted and not a big fat heartache to go with it?