Bungalow Nights (Beach House No. 9) (40 page)

Would Vance let her go without a word, or would she have to define her reasons for sleeping alone? Snoring, she thought again. There was always the excuse that he snored.

He crossed to the fireplace, going to his haunches to turn on the gas. Blue flames ignited, catching the kindling stacked on the grate. “You were pretty quiet about my decision to leave the army and join the family company,” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder.

She froze. “Uh...I’m so glad for you.” She hadn’t expressed that? His announcement had been met by happy exclamations from his family, followed by even happier tears coursing down his mother’s face. Layla hadn’t considered it her place to comment then. Because...because she’d known it had nothing to do with her.

Though relief couldn’t even begin to describe how she’d felt at the idea that he’d seen his last of combat. Emotion tightened her throat. “I’m so truly, truly glad.”

“That’s good.”

The fire crackled, and he stayed low, staring into it. Unnerved by his stillness, she spoke to his broad back. “So I think I’ll just—”

“I really want to talk.” He rose, but didn’t turn, and there was a new tension emanating from him.

Layla frowned at his stiff shoulders and rigid pose. Talk about what, exactly? Then the answer came to her in a rush. Talk about goodbye, of course. Without his return to the army, he’d feel it necessary to reestablish they still had one of those coming. And soon.

“There’s no need,” she said, trying to sound offhand. Her feet restarted their shuffle toward the staircase. “I’m going to bed upstairs.”

His body turned in an instant. “What? Why?”

“I... Well...”
The goodbye,
she tried to tell him with her eyes.
I get it. We don’t have to discuss it to death.

But then he was in front of her, his big, warm hands cupping her face. “I don’t want you to go, Layla. Stay with me.”

No! Because then she’d want to stay with him forever. Still, her traitorous body swayed toward his. He gathered her close to his wide chest, then leaned down to press a gentle kiss on her lips.

“Yeah,” he said, his breath warm against her face. “Stay with me by the fire and we’ll talk.”

Where had her willpower gone? But it had started the day squishy, and all the emotional events had only pummeled it into further submission. Resigned, she let herself be drawn to the couch and pulled down on the cushions next to Vance. He kept her close, though his gaze focused on the fire.

He’d been tense a moment before, but now she felt his...hesitation? Uncertainty?

Yeah, it wouldn’t be easy to remind someone she shouldn’t harbor false hopes. That they were both moving on, that this monthlong interlude was a mere pause in their real, but separate lives.

As his silence continued, the night seemed to wrap around them. There was the crackling fire, the background shush of the unceasing surf, their breaths, mingling like they would never do again. Layla’s eyes stung and if there was one thing that she’d regret most about her stay at Beach House No. 9, it was how the weeks had peeled away her outer layer of strength. Tears were so close to the surface now.

Yet she didn’t protest when his arms gathered her closer. She found her cheek pressed against his chest, his heavy heartbeat in her ear. Steady. Sure.

She could have lost him today. That moment when he’d been lying in the puddle of gasoline and looking at her with such anxious urgency was burned forever in her memory.
Go, Layla,
he’d said.
Go on
.

Those could have been his last words to her.

Those could have been his very last words ever.

Her heart seized, her veins filling with a cold horror. She’d been almost numb before, and the wine and champagne had helped, but now the fear overtook her and her body began to shake.

She reminded herself he was fine. His heartbeat was unchanged. But she splayed her hand on his chest, trying to convince herself he was as warm and solid as always. Another person she cared for hadn’t been lost.

Panic continued to rattle her bones.

“Layla?” Vance turned her in his arms so he could study her face. “You’re shivering. What’s the matter? Cold again?”

“Not this time,” she said, certain only one thing would quell her sudden anxiety. “Take me to bed.”

“Layla...”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she added hastily.

He winced. “Layla—”

“Other than you’re alive. I want to feel that you’re alive. I
need
to feel you’re alive.”

His thumb ran over her mouth. “Let’s talk first.”

“No.” Words weren’t her friend tonight. She didn’t need a discussion of their nonfuture and she didn’t want him teasing her with his raunchy routine in bed. She loved that, he knew she did, but if Vance took her down, took her too deep into desire,
she
might say the very wrong thing.

This time, she wanted to drift atop the emotion and only use their bodies to reassure herself that he was whole and here and hers this one last time.

“Please, Vance.”

Instead of answering, he used his thumb on her lips again, and she nipped at it, then took it fully in her mouth. She sucked, swirling her tongue over the pad, and felt his body tighten everywhere.

He tasted good, and she felt dizzy with the flavor of the man. Her shivering stopped as her skin heated under her clothes, the cotton feeling too rough against the tender skin of her belly and at the hollow that was the small of her back. She’d zipped a hoodie over her sundress and she unfastened it now, still using her lips and mouth to suckle Vance’s thumb.

His nostrils were flared, his cheekbones pressing hard against his skin, its color a soft rose-gold in the firelight. His gaze followed her as she released him to stand, then he watched in a clearly stunned silence as she shed the sweatshirt, kicked off her shoes, whipped the stretchy cotton sundress over her head.

Even the panties were too much, so she shoved those off her hips and felt the fire’s warmth on her bare bottom.

“Jesus, Layla,” Vance said. “Sweetheart...”

But the word drifted to nothing as she knelt between his knees and went to work on opening his jeans. He looked astounded, but then she was, too. In their sex she’d never been the aggressor, and maybe it would balance the scales. She wanted to have him at her mercy now, as she’d been at his since the very first time they’d touched.

Her hands fumbled with the denim and soft boxers beneath, but she caught her lower lip between her teeth and persevered. He was hard and hot beneath the material, she could feel him. She wanted that! And she made a little sound of frustration as she couldn’t find a way to bare him.

He laughed a little, the sound male and indulgent, and then, shifting his hips, he reached down and made the proper adjustments until there it was, his erection lying against his flat belly. Her heart pounding, she stared at it, then kneed closer to take the shaft between her palms. Ah. His power at her fingertips now. Then at her mouth.

When her tongue touched the soft skin at its head, he groaned, and his long fingers sifted into her hair. She laved him, circling the thick knob, sliding down the shaft, breathing in the scent of his skin and breathing out against his flesh so that their essences merged this one last time. Her hands curled around his denim-clad calves, and she rose higher in order to take him deeper into her mouth. He groaned again, arching against the cushions, and the sound made her nipples tighten to aching, greedy points.

She started a rhythm, a sexual, purposeful retreat and advance, and her heart took it up, like a military drummer’s beat driving the pace of the march. Vance’s palm caressed her cheek, and she glanced up at him, struck by the keen glitter in his half-mast eyes. It stalled her a moment, and she just held him in her mouth, sucking lightly as she took in the aroused flush on his face, the stark beauty of his features.

Her heart squeezed in her chest, the rhythm faltering there, too, and she swayed on her knees, dark spots swirling in her vision.

In a second, Vance had pulled her up, taking her into his lap. “You have to breathe, silly girl.” His fingers gripping her chin, he tilted her face toward his. “Breathe.”

The air she sucked in made the black spots disappear—and then she was struck by her vulnerability. She was trembling again, and naked, surrounded by a mostly clothed Vance. She made to climb off him—time to gain the upper hand!—but he tightened the arm about her waist. His other hand lifted to cage one swollen breast.

She moaned.

“Yeah,” he said, blowing aside her hair so he could press a kiss to the side of her neck. “My turn now.”

Pinching her nipple, he moved his mouth upward, ignoring her desperate wiggles. “Vance...”

“Hmm?” he asked, the sound humming against the hollow behind her ear.

“Please...”

He lifted his head and his fingers eased up on her breast. “Please harder, softer? Please more kisses? Please more touches?”

Her mind reeled, thoughts not coalescing. “Just please,” she finally said, aggravated.

His smile was almost sweet. “Of course.” Then he stood, lifting her in his arms.

The bedroom was dark, the sound of the ocean bouncing off the walls. He’d left the windows open, she thought, because the air was cool against her skin and smelled soft and wet. He placed her on the mattress, then came down over her a moment later, his elbows on either side of her head. His body was naked now, his skin delicious against hers.

“Oh, Layla,” he said, framing her face with his hands. “Shall I tell you what you do to me?”

“Don’t say anything,” she begged. “Don’t talk.” If he did that, he’d ratchet up her desire and she would lose herself in the heat and need, lose her control over her thoughts and her voice and then it would be she who was talking, telling him the truth she hadn’t yet eradicated from her heart. It was only loosely rooted, it had to be, but it was there now, and dangerous to her pride and to her future.

Instead of answering, Vance kissed her, long and deep and drugging. Yes, she thought, thankfully this wasn’t talking, and reveled in the sensation of his tongue sliding against hers. She sucked on it, open to his flavor, letting the heat and weight of his body sink into hers. Her arms went around his neck and her legs twined his hips.

More kisses. A thousand kisses. A night of kisses.

But then he lifted his head to move down her body. Layla panted in the ocean-scented darkness, arching her back as the flat of Vance’s tongue swiped across her nipple. “Look what I’ve found,” he murmured, and then he traveled to the other, greeting it with another wet velvet caress. “You’re hard for me, baby, just like I’m hard for you.”

Oh, God, yes, she felt it. She felt his length against her thigh, the tip of him wet and that made her wetter, too. One hand tried to find purchase in his short hair, but there was only the silky brush of it against the hollow of her palm. How could that be so sexy? But it was, and even sexier in contrast to the way his thick shoulder muscle bunched against the grip of her other hand.

His mouth sucked her nipple deep. Layla tightened her fingers on him, riding the exquisite bliss of the pull. Her mouth opened, and she moaned, the pitch of it turning higher as he paid attention to her other breast, too, kneading the soft flesh, rubbing his thumb against the tight tip.

“I’m thinking about making you come just like this,” he said, lifting his head to blow cool air on her damp flesh. “I’ll just kiss and lick and tug on your pretty breasts until you give it all up for me.”

No, no. She couldn’t give it all up for him. Alarmed, she thrashed under the weight of his body, but that only brought her more exquisite sensation, her hard nipples abraded by the hair on his chest. Her mouth opened on another cry.

“Shh, shh,”
he said, trying to soothe her by trailing wet kisses back up to her mouth. He took her there once more, his possession slow and sure, sending her mind careening off again.

Her control spun away with it. Now it was only Vance’s touch that kept her body centered. He swiped his palms down her belly and along her flank. He reared back, lifting one of her legs so he could trail his tongue up her calf, along the inside of her knee, and on to the twitching flesh of her inner thigh.

He opened her, using his broad palms like blades and then he bent over her, his hot breath the only warning before he was taking her there with his mouth. She jerked at that first velvet stroke and he lifted his head. “You taste so good, Layla, why do you taste so good?”

But he didn’t wait for an answer before he dove low once more and applied himself to savoring her flesh, to exploring every pleated layer and slick surface. She was thrashing again, but he had her hips in his grasp and it was even better to struggle against his strength, his masculine power an aphrodisiac as potent as the gentle stroke of his tongue.

The scent of sex mixed with the scent of ocean. The sound of the waves was louder in the room and as Vance took her up and up, she felt herself tumbling in another direction, slipping against sleek surfaces, twisting and turning toward some elemental center.

Like sliding into a seashell, she thought. The conch, the Buddhist symbol representing the awakening of disciples from ignorance. Because she would never be the same, not with the way Vance was turning her inside out. He flicked his tongue against that most sensitive spot at the apex of her cleft and her skin rippled, every nerve ending responding to the touch. Then he slid two fingers inside her, and they both shuddered. “So hot,” he murmured against her wet flesh. “So soft.”

He turned his hand, penetrating her with a twisting motion that had her arching again. “Vance,” she cried out, protesting, because it was too much or not enough or just wonderful, and she was sliding faster now, into the heart of the spiraled shell.

His touch destroyed her, tearing down all her defenses, until she was just flesh and bone and tissue that yearned for his touch, his lips, his penetration. His mouth was greedy on her hot center, eating at her, the edge of his teeth scraping the sensitized flesh, his tongue piercing the wet channel, making her writhe and shake and beg him for more.