Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,18

the nothingness of it all by now, but my heart has foolishly saved a place for you, and all I have to fill it is grief. For the record, I don’t believe in “good” grief. It’s all bad—right down the very last drop. I should know, I’m still grieving for you.

~Izzy

There have been plenty of times I’ve wanted to wring Laney’s neck over the years—mostly for borrowing my clothes without asking, but I have a feeling by the time this night is through, I’ll have amassed an entire new list of reasons.

The Black Bear Saloon is a metropolis of every STD known to man and some that have yet to be discovered. Laney seats me in a dark booth toward the back of the booze-riddled establishment as I await my potential Mr. Friday Night Right.

I keep an eye on everyone who enters the facility, but mostly it’s groups of girls—guys with their arms already wrapped around a coed for the night. Not a single person walks in alone—another sign that I’m a basket case because that just so happens to be the way I walked in.

Holt catches my eye from the bar, and my heart stops. My face floods with heat as I quickly look away. Crap. I’m still not over the trauma of ditching him for no apparent reason last week. Well, other than the fact I wanted that kiss. I wanted to press my lips to his and feel the softness for myself—to set my tongue loose in his mouth and have the thrill of him doing the same. I wonder where it would have gone from there—how far things could have escalated if I blew the ceiling off my self-inflicted boundaries. A vision of us rolling around naked on that shag carpet of his runs through my mind, and I don’t fight it. I let that slow burn in my gut increase in ferocity until I’m sure my body is about to combust into flames. Holt is a wildfire waiting to happen. He’s also a saint for volunteering to teach me the basics, but a part of me wants more, and I can’t figure out what to do with that.

I glance back, and Holt gives a brief smile. His muscles ripple out from under his Black Bear T-shirt like the thick roots of a hundred-year-old tree. I lift my fingers in a mock wave while openly studying his biceps as if I had just discovered new terrain that I’d like to map out with my lips. Holt hasn’t taken those pale gray eyes off me yet. He looks hungry—malnourished as far as his sexual appetite goes, and it’s as if he’s fixed his sights on a scrumptious meal in the shape of my body.

Every inch of me quivers at the prospect. Could I do that? Am I even remotely ready? Just what is it that I’m waiting for?

Holt’s grin expands as he makes his way over. The music shifts to a far more moody song, and suddenly I’m hopped up on adrenaline and false bravado thinking he might ask me to dance. Hell, I think I’ll ask him to dance. Just something platonic to wet my appetite for the things that he might be willing to give me.

“Izzy!” Laney sings in that overly cheery way that lets me know she wants something, and judging by the tall Slim Jim of a man standing by her side, the thing she wants most is for me to join myself at the hip with someone of the opposite gender. “This is Marty McMullen.” She says his name as if there was some underlying meaning in it. She presses a hand into his T-shirt, and it concaves where his chest should be. His hair is long and shaggy. He’s skin over bone for the most part but defined in that sinewy way that cyclists usually are. “He’s a sports enthusiast! Just like you!” She deposits him into the seat across from me. “Well, I’ll let you two kids get to know each other. Drinks are on me.”

He holds up a long, thin finger. “Just a beer is fine.”

“I’ll have one, too.” Wait, I’m driving. And I don’t drink. “Make it a virgin.”

Laney sucks in her cheeks. “One non-alcoholic beer and one regular.”

“You know.” I glance back at the bar where Holt is in action as a crowd of blondes bombard him with their over-glossed lips and Victoria’s Secret enhanced décolleté. “Never mind.” I almost said whiskey. Almost.

Laney takes off, and for