Northern Rebel Daring in the Dark - By Jennifer Labrecque Page 0,108
her knees. Sexual arousal and need etched his face, glittered in his eyes. With a slow smile she reached for the soap.
“Your turn.”
* * *
“I can’t get it up,” Tawny said, her frustration evident in the way she shoved her hair back off of her brow. “Do you want to try?”
“Sure. I’ll have a go at it.” God, this would be embarrassing if he couldn’t get it up for her, but there was no guarantee. He put his weight behind pulling up on the window sash. “These older buildings have been painted so many times, sometimes the window’s painted shut.” He felt the smallest amount of give. “I think it’s coming.” Yep. The window gave and opened a few inches. He wrestled it the rest of the way.
“My hero,” she said, teasing him with a smile, but her eyes shone with something that wrapped around his heart.
God, he was hopeless. He felt ten feet tall just because he’d opened the bloody window for her.
“It’s no Arctic blast, but it’s a bit cooler than in here.” The drenching rain had brought little relief from the relentless heat. Steam rose from the pavement below.
“When it rains at home, it’s steamy, too. But New York never smells fresh the way Savannah does after a rain,” Tawny said on a wistful note. She swept back the comforter and top sheet and settled against the pillows propped against her headboard. “At least the sheets are sort of cool.”
She obviously had no intention of sitting in the cloying confines of her den. Suited him fine. He stretched across the end of the bed, a towel around his hips. His damp clothes were draped over the shower rod in the bathroom. She’d had the benefit of fresh clothes and wore a pair of black panties, which were really just plain but very sexy, and a black tank top.
“Do you miss Savannah?” he asked.
“I miss certain things about it. The way it smells after a summer rain. The sound of a horse-drawn carriage on cobblestones. Spanish moss draping trees so old and sprawling they canopy the streets. Have you ever been there?”
“No. I’m not well traveled outside of New York and England.”
She traced a lazy pattern on his calf with her toe. He liked the casual way she touched him, as if she needed to and had the right to. “The slower pace might drive you insane, but you’d love the city itself.”
They lay in the flickering light, with the sounds of New York drifting in through the window, and she painted a picture for him of her birthplace, of the history and architecture and culture. Whether she knew it or not, her voice slowed, took on more of that honeyed Southern accent that always underlay her words. He imagined the two of them enjoying a horse-drawn carriage ride along cobblestone streets beneath moss-drenched oaks.
“You obviously love it. Why’d you leave?”
“I do love it, and in a way it was hard to go, but not really. I left because I needed to.”
“Needed to or wanted to?”
“Needed to. I needed to step out of my comfort zone, discover new places, new things, discover myself.”
She intrigued him with her mix of gutsiness, attitude, open sensuality and insecurities.
“And have you? Discovered yourself?” he asked.
“I thought I had. Tonight’s sort of blown me out of the water. But I think I’ve finally figured out it’s an ongoing process. Every day brings something new and different—some days more than others—like today. I know for certain I’m not the same person I was when I left, and that’s a good thing.”
How did she feel about today’s changes? After this fiasco with Elliott, would she think about moving back home? She didn’t strike Simon as the type to run home to her mother, but he had to ask.
“After this with Elliott, are you thinking about moving back?”
She shook her head and gave him a funny look. Tendrils of loose hair danced across her shoulders. “Not in the foreseeable future. I love Savannah and it’ll always be home—I look forward to my visits—but New York has a pretty firm hold on my heart, as well. What about you? Have you ever wanted to live somewhere else?”
Tawny was easy to talk to and the dark didn’t hurt either. Simon found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone else, perhaps never truly thought about consciously. “When I was a kid spending my summers in Devon, I wanted to stay there forever. When I got older, I realized