the back cushion, feeling both weary and resigned. “I don’t think that’s the end of it.”
“Sure it is,” Gage said. “You have my personal guarantee.”
She rolled her head to look at him. “Until the next time something unexpected but perfectly innocuous turns up. Then I’ll have another freak-out. Face it. I’m crazy.”
“Skye—”
“I’ll always be jumping to the wrong conclusions and jumping out of my skin, too. I’m never going to get my life back.”
“Sure you will.”
She eyed him with pessimism, then held out her quivering hands. “You think so? Look how I’m shaking.”
“Take some more deep breaths,” he advised. “And let me get you that wine I left in the kitchen. I need a glass myself.”
She babbled at his retreating back. “If it’s for Dutch courage, don’t bother. You won’t have to deal with me and my messed-up sexuality any more tonight. I’ll go home in a minute.”
He glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m too screwed up for you to want to...well, screw. I get it. No one’s interested in doing the deed with a certified loon, even someone who engages in things like the Gage Gorge.”
He muttered a curse and walked into the kitchen.
She raised her voice. “I’m not going to hold it against you or anything. We’ll never mention any of this again.”
“Do you talk this much when you’re in bed?” he asked, his voice floating through the entry.
“I don’t remember being in bed with anyone, ever,” she called back. “It’s past the shelf date of my short-term memory and it wasn’t memorable enough to make it into my long-term banks.”
“Good,” he said, coming back in with a glass in each hand. His face was perfectly calm. As he passed the light switch, he flipped it off with his elbow, and the room went back to romantic and candlelit. “I like a fresh slate.”
“Didn’t you hear a thing I said?” she demanded, taking the wine he held out.
He sat on the other end of the couch and stretched his long legs in front of him. “I heard the forbidden phrase ‘Gage Gorge,’ and for that you will be punished.”
Her eyes rounded. “Ha-ha.” Then she looked down at her wine, aware once again of her dry throat and an odd, illicit tingling sensation below her belly. “What do you mean...punished?”
He shrugged. “Get your sweet ass into the bedroom, and I’ll show you.”
Despite herself, she felt her skin flush. He was just joking around, right? “Is this some outlandish practice you learned in your travels?”
“I’ve been to many foreign places, Skye. Turns out our American Puritan streak means most of us are not very adventurous.”
Oh, he was having fun with her now. “But not you,” she said, then sipped at her wine while peeking at him through her lashes.
“Who was the first to set sail on the raft we made one summer?”
A grin broke over Skye’s face. “I think every mom in the cove was mad at my dad for letting us watch that documentary on the voyage of the Kon-Tiki.”
“We could have used a little better quality control, that’s for sure,” Gage admitted. He lifted the hem of his shirt to expose his flat belly. “I still have the scar from when the raft broke up on the rocks.”
Skye slid closer, the dim light making it impossible to see from so far away. “Where?”
As he set down his glass on a side table, he drew the shirt farther upward. Now she was close enough to get a glimpse of the washboard ripple of his belly and the dark disc of a nipple. Still no scar. “Where?” she demanded again.
“Come a little closer,” Gage coaxed.
It was as if Satan had changed places with him, his voice was so smoky and dark. Skye’s gaze jerked up. His eyes were disguised now, their usual screaming blue two pools of deep shadow. Without touching her, he took her wineglass out of her now-nerveless hand and set it beside his own. Then he lifted his shirt over his head and tossed it away.
“Oh,” she breathed. “You don’t play fair.”
“A little something else I learned along the way.” He gestured toward the top of his rib cage. “My old wound is just about right here.”
Part of her was desperate to get closer, to succumb to his invitation, but her still-jittery nerves and residual queasiness made her pause. All the teasing, all the big talk in the world didn’t mean she could handle the entirety of what came next.
“Do you want to know your punishment,