Come On Closer (21 page)

“Gina said that nobody expected you to come back after college,” she finally said.

That seemed to surprise him. “I thought everybody expected that. Big fish in a small pond and all that.”

“No. She said you were so talented that a lot of people thought you'd head off to Hollywood.” His smile was genuine, and she saw a little of the light come back into his eyes. It was nice to tell him something he didn't already know about what people said around here. To tell him something good about himself that he didn't seem to have seen.

“I'm not that good,” Shane said, but his cheeks flushed with pleasure. “That's . . . that's cool, though. I didn't know people thought that. I didn't think I was surprising anybody.”

“Maybe your dislike of the Cove is coloring your perception.”

“I don't hate it here,” Shane said, his brow creasing. At Larkin's skeptical look he gave her a squeeze and chuckled. “No, seriously, I don't. I
like
it here, even if I complain about it. I mean, Harvest Cove is home. I just don't always like who I am here, if that makes sense. It's a problem, but it's . . . different from what I used to think it was. More complicated, I guess.”

She opened her mouth to speak, briefly
reconsidered, then pushed ahead anyway. “I didn't like who I was at home, either.”

“No?” He rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers, a carelessly intimate gesture that made opening up easier. They could have been the only two people on the planet tonight, for all that the world outside his house mattered right now. “So who were you back in, what was it, Purvis? I bet you were cute.”

She gave him a look. “Sure. If you think angst and attitude are cute. I was nobody. Just a poor kid in the middle of a bunch of other poor kids. I'd hear adults say sometimes that I'd be knocked up by the time I was sixteen, looking the way I did, and they hoped I'd pick somebody with money. Because, you know, clearly a teen pregnancy to land somebody I could mooch off and maybe leave town with was high on my list of acceptable life choices. It made me so angry. I didn't want to be what everybody expected.”

“Looks like we both surprised people,” Shane said. “I stuck around and you took off.”

“If I'd been from someplace like Harvest Cove, maybe I would have stuck around, too,” Larkin replied. “Trust me—my hometown . . . It's the kind of place everyone dreams of escaping. There are just a lot of people who don't. Or can't. Either way, it stays populated. My mother will never leave.”

“Why?”

“Well, I think at some point, between the jobs and the jerks and the partying with her friends and raising my sister and me, she forgot there was a world outside of Purvis. And she quit caring. She's not evil or anything. Just . . . selfish. Careless. I practically raised myself
because she was never very interested in being a mother. Her world is very small. I took off before mine ended up that way, too, because I noticed that dreams have a way of shriveling up and dying if you wait too long.”

His blue eyes reflected an ocean of empathy. “Do you still have family there besides her? Friends?”

Larkin shook her head, remembering. “No. My father stays away, and my grandparents are all gone. My sister, like I told you, is my mother's buddy. I was so determined to leave that I didn't try very hard to make friends. And since I was kind of quiet and awkwardly tall and just plain awkward, having no friends wasn't a struggle or anything. I didn't trust people much. It took me until college to start loosening up a little, when I knew I was going to make it out of Purvis and not have to go back. That's when I started making friends.” She smiled a little, remembering the fear and joy she'd felt in finally connecting to people, real people who wanted to be around her, who liked the things she liked. “I also made some, um, poor life choices, which we've discussed. I balanced it all out eventually, though. I knew what I wanted, what I loved. That's what got me through. It's what saved me, in the end.”

“So what's the Candy Land decorating scheme at Petite Treats and your weird thing about unicorns and Care Bears about?” he asked. “Making up for lost time and a bad childhood?”

Larkin smiled. “Nope. Hate to tell you, but I'm actually just really, really girly. And before you start, don't diss the unicorns. That one beside the cash register is my spirit animal.”

That seemed to amuse him. “Your spirit animal is a fat, fuzzy unicorn?”

“Yes. Don't judge me.” She smiled, glad to see Shane return it. It was strange to have worried so much and then discovered that telling Shane about her past was so easy. Maybe it was because she finally understood how much they had in common, even if they'd taken different paths. They'd each come from tough situations. And they were both still dealing with them, in their own ways . . . though in that, he had it worse. At least her family issues tended to stay all the way across the country.

Hopefully, things would stay that way. For now, she pushed the niggling worry aside.

“I would never judge. Much. So college is where your ‘bad taste in men' thing surfaced,” Shane said. “You know, I'm not really sure that counts as bad taste so much as just being susceptible to smooth talkers. They can be tough to resist. I know. I am one.”

“Hmm,” Larkin said, giving him a poke. “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“Trust me—if I weren't serious, you would have known way before now. I wasn't exactly known for my staying power.”

“Which makes me glad I
didn't
grow up here. I would have caught you at the wrong time.” She would have known him as just another small-town jerk, which meant she would have missed out on a lot, Larkin thought.

“Nah. For you, I would have behaved.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Larkin said, but she savored the sweetness of the sentiment nonetheless. Back then, she wouldn't have been any more ready for him than he would have been for her. Some things just took time. Still, she thought her younger self would have been utterly thrilled to catch a glimpse of the man in her
future. “Anyway,” she continued, “one of the things I like about you is that you're
not
always well behaved.”

“Really,” he said, his slow smile reminding her of the big bad wolf . . . a role she wouldn't object to him playing with her once in a while. She was suddenly very aware that they were curled up together in his nice warm house. Alone.

Well, you wanted to wait until you were sure. So . . . are you?

There was a pleasurable burst of nerves deep in her belly. “So, Master Sullivan, what are you going to do? I'm not the one wondering what it's like to do what I love. I already do. The question is,” she said, allowing him to tug her just a little closer, “are you planning to take Ryan up on his offer and find out for yourself?”

“I can't do that,” he said, eyes lowering. Whether it was out of embarrassment or just a sudden interest in her chest, she wasn't sure. With Shane, it could go either way.

“Why not? You get to stay here, which you said you liked, but you get to try on something new. Something you picked for yourself.”

“I already picked something for myself.” He tugged her into his lap. Larkin allowed it, laughing softly as she situated herself and tried to swat his hands away long enough to finish the conversation.

“
Shane
. You shouldn't pass up an opportunity like this if it's where your heart is. This stuff doesn't come along every day. Don't you think that some things happen for a reason?”

“Things are definitely happening for a reason,” he replied in a low growl, touching his nose to hers, and she knew he'd decided the serious portion of their
conversation was over. In fact, any conversation at all seemed to be rapidly moving off the agenda.

She sighed, planted a firm kiss on his lips, and then looked him in the eyes. “Just promise me you'll think about it. I want you to be happy.”

“I'll think about it,” he said, expression softening with . . . something . . . for a brief moment before he arched one eyebrow with a wicked little smile. “And I
am
happy. Can't you tell?”

She absolutely could, Larkin thought, her face heating. And she had a decision to make.

Are you sure?
she asked herself again.

She leaned her head to the side and began to press light kisses against the sensitive column of Shane's neck. It was like brushing her lips over hot silk, and Larkin could feel the muscles jump when he swallowed. Hard. She could hear his breath catch, could feel his heart beginning to pound where she'd placed her hand on his chest. That was when she knew the answer. It could never have been anything else.

“I have to work in the morning,” she murmured against his skin.

“Oh.” Desire and disappointment mingled in his voice. “I, ah . . . then you might want to stop doing—”

“Could you set your alarm for four? I get up early. I'll have Jo swing by and pick me up on her way to work.”

There was silence as that sank in. Then she yelped as he flipped her onto her back in the blink of an eye, covering her with his body while his hands were on her, everywhere. “Thank God,” he said, raining hot kisses over her lips, her jaw, the sensitive lobes of her ears. “I was getting ready to beg.”

She laughed, gasping when he cupped her breast
and then playfully tweaked the nipple through her shirt. The reverberations from that hot little pinch arrowed right between her legs, where she was already slick and swollen with anticipation.

He hadn't been the only one waiting for this.

“Begging . . . I think I like the sound of that,” Larkin teased him as he nudged her legs apart and then pressed his hips into her, letting her feel how hard he was. Her laugh turned into a soft moan as she arched to feel more of him.

“I would beg,” he rasped. “I'm not kidding. I think about you all the time.”

“I think . . .
oh
 . . . I think about you, too.” His hand had moved up under her shirt, and she fumbled beneath him to try to unhook her bra. When that failed to do anything but turn her into a human pretzel, she gave up, growled, “Oh, for fuck's sake,” and pulled off both her shirt and bra before tossing them to the floor. Shane was grinning.

“You have a dirty mouth. Why didn't I know that?”

“Normally I don't. It's your fault.”

“Good,” he said, and claimed her mouth in a long, thorough kiss, teasing her tongue with his until she was quivering.

It felt so good to have his body against hers again, moving in a slow, tortuous rhythm that drove her right to the edge of her sanity. She wanted more of him, all of him. When he began to trail hot kisses down her body, Larkin sighed his name. She tangled her fingers in his hair as he began to suckle her breasts, flicking his tongue against the tight buds of her nipples, sucking in long pulls that made her gasp and twist beneath him,
her body becoming deliciously sensitized to even his smallest movements.

He rose up suddenly, and Larkin shivered at the sudden chill. The man was like a human electric blanket, and she wasn't interested in being uncovered right now. She watched him curiously, trying to catch her breath.

“Sit up,” he instructed her, which she managed, if barely. Shane knelt in front of her, pushing her legs apart and settling himself between them. When he reached up to unbutton her jeans, then began to slide them off, peeling them down over her hips, she realized what he was after.

Larkin flushed. “Do you want me to—”

“I don't want you to do anything but enjoy this,” he said. “I've been thinking about doing this to you for . . . oh God, I don't even want to admit to how long. You don't need to know how long I've been having impure thoughts about you.”

“Probably as long as I've been having them about you,” Larkin admitted. “If fantasy were reality, my counters in Petite Treats' kitchen would be way past sanitizing at this point.”

“You're preaching to the choir. That was already on the list.”

“There's a list?” she asked as he pulled the jeans off her ankles and deposited them on top of her shirt. Then he spread her knees wide, dragged her forward so that her butt was on the edge of the cushion, and leaned forward to place a kiss on her lower belly.

“There's a list,” he agreed. “Maybe I'll show you when I check this one off.” He lowered his head then, and Larkin forgot to breathe. Her underwear was just
a thin scrap of electric blue cotton, and when he began to nuzzle her, the material only enhanced the sensation of his mouth against her swollen mound. Larkin melted into the couch as he teased her, licking at the dampened cloth, swirling around the tight nub of her sex. His fingers lightly brushed the insides of her thighs, making her shiver. Her eyes closed, her head rolled back as Shane pleasured her. His tongue, his teeth, even the heat of his breath worked in concert to leave Larkin in a state where she could do nothing but feel.

By the time Shane pushed the cloth to the side to allow him access to the flesh beneath, Larkin was lifting her hips against his mouth, drinking air in tiny little sips while her body wound like a coil. When he slid his finger inside of her, then put his mouth against her bare skin, she bucked against him and stiffened, mouth opening on a silent cry. Her thoughts were a wild tangle of words that were all “This. Yes. Now. God. Yes.”

Shane groaned against her when she clenched around him. “Like that, baby. Just like that.”

He lapped at her once, twice, hard strokes of his tongue while he slid his finger in and out. Larkin felt everything go impossibly tight, squeezing even the breath from her chest. Everything narrowed to a single point of light. A heartbeat, and she burst, back arching, head whipping back as her orgasm consumed her. She faintly heard a wild cry and knew it was her own, but all she could do was hang on and ride the waves of pure pleasure he'd just given her.