Come On Closer (22 page)

When the waves ebbed, just a little, Shane rose and stripped off his clothes. Larkin heard the rustling and opened one eye to observe the body she'd spent far too much time thinking of recently. She wasn't sure
she would ever move again, but Shane seemed to think so. The sight of him, hard and sculpted and wonderfully naked, gave her just enough strength to slide to the floor in front of him.

“We can go upstairs,” he offered, his voice rough.

Larkin shook her head. The rug beneath them was plush enough, and she didn't want to try the stairs right now. Instead, she kissed the inside of his thigh, looked up at him, at the barely leashed need in his eyes, and then deliberately turned around to present her ass to him. She looked over her shoulder, just to make sure he understood.

“Let's stay here,” she said.

His breath was a ragged exhalation. “I love you,” he said. And though Larkin didn't think he even realized he'd said it—he sank to his knees behind her as though nothing had changed—she felt something important shift deep within her, a piece she hadn't thought she would ever find clicking into place as though she'd never been missing it. Maybe for Shane it was just a thing he said, a playful jest.

For her, it was as real as the hands on her hips, as real as the man joining with her, sinking into her with exquisite slowness on a moan that was like music.

She loved him, too. And it was nothing like the girlish infatuation she'd been afraid she'd succumb to. It was infinitely greater, so sweet she ached with it, so endless that it filled every bit of her until she was overflowing with it.

Love. I love. I love you.

It filled her head, pulsing with the rhythm of Shane's hips as he pumped into her, slowly at first, then quickening his pace. He filled her completely at the apex of
each thrust, and Larkin squeezed him tight, loving the sharp hiss of his breath, the sharp, shallow pants of air that matched the tempo of her own. His fingers dug into her hips, and she bucked against him as her own pleasure snapped like sparks, then caught fire.

Larkin looked over her shoulder to see him, body taut and straining as he thrust, and she felt herself sliding toward the edge again. He was beautiful. It was almost unthinkable that he could be hers. And yet . . .

He caught her eye, and the look of raw need on his face nearly undid her. Her name was a broken moan on his lips, and he thrust more quickly, the rhythm wilder, skin striking skin. Larkin arched her back, tossing her head, giving herself over to everything he made her feel. She knew he was close. She wanted to join him, to fall together. As though he knew, Shane curled over her back and reached between her legs, slipping a finger between her slick folds and stroking her while his hips pumped so hard that she had to brace against each thrust.

Her orgasm was a slow implosion of sensation, a sweet burst that only intensified as it spun out. She stiffened against Shane with a cry, and seconds later she felt him let go, climaxing with a guttural moan. For a few blissful seconds, nothing existed for Larkin but her own pleasure and Shane's, so tangled together they might well have been one. She crumpled to the floor, utterly spent, and quickly found his reassuring heat enveloping her. Shane curled around her, making his floor as comfortable as any bed, and placed a gentle kiss in her hair.

He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. And it wasn't until later, when they were snuggled together
like kittens beneath the blankets on his bed, that Larkin wished he would say anything at all. It was such a simple thing, too.

I love you.

She wished he would say it again. She wished he would mean it, and that she could hear it a hundred times a day for the rest of her life just so she could remember that he was real. That
this
was real. For now, she would just have to feel it for both of them and hope that the next time Shane said the words, they would mean just as much to him as they did to her.

I love you, Shane,
she thought as she drifted into deep and dreamless sleep
. I love you.
He was everything she'd never known she wanted. And for now, Larkin thought, she would make that be
enough.

S
hane woke around seven in the morning with vague memories of his alarm going off in the wee hours, of smacking at the alarm until it stopped making that god-awful noise, and finally, of a kiss in the dark that made him forget the alarm completely.

It was going to be a good day.

He sang in the shower. He danced to his car. He picked up donuts and coffee at Brewbaker's on his way to the office. And once he'd settled in, he did the most important thing—he pulled up his application for the position at the high school. He worked on it while his father was loudly berating Barbie for deleting something important. He wasn't quite ready to send it yet, but . . .

Maybe Larkin was right. Maybe it wasn't too late to try things a different way.

Or maybe he was just experiencing extreme postsex euphoria. Either way, Shane hadn't felt so much like
he had the world by the tail in forever. He knew what the difference was. It was Larkin. Maybe she was right that the fat, furry unicorn was her spirit animal. His life definitely felt like it had been hit with a glitter bomb since she'd arrived in it.

This time, when he closed the file on his computer, it didn't feel like he was hiding away some dream he'd never get around to pursuing. He'd begun to feel like he had a real choice. Maybe he was a Sullivan. But Larkin made him think he might just be able to define what that was for himself.

“You're in a good mood,” Aimee said when he strode into Petite Treats on his lunch break. He grinned at the pretty little brunette, who watched him with good-natured amusement.

“I'm always in a good mood.”

“No, you're not. But you are always hungry. What can I get you? Larkin was all inspired today, so we've got a couple of brand-new items. There are the gooey butter cake squares over here,” she said, pointing to a tray of obvious fat bombs in one section of the long glass case, “and she made these chocolate bacon cupcakes that . . . I don't know, we're going to run out pretty soon. Everyone who's had one freaks out and buys more to take home.”

“Actually . . .”

“I know. You want Larkin,” Aimee said with a knowing smile. “Go on. She's in the back, like always. Fair warning, she's probably dancing.”

“That's what I like to hear,” he said, and headed into the kitchen.

He wasn't disappointed. Shane leaned against the wall, stopping to watch as Larkin got her groove on to
some P. Funk. Her dancing, he'd noticed, was a lot better than her singing, and her taste tended toward the booty shaking. He wasn't complaining. She danced across the kitchen, hips swinging, a large batter-coated spoon in one hand.

Larkin sang her praises of The Funk, using the spoon as a mic and striking a pose. She moved like a snake, and if he stood here watching that sinuous wiggling for too much longer, neither of them was going to be getting any work done for the next little while. She still didn't see him, so he danced his way over to her, making sure to shake his butt enough to get her attention. He was more than halfway to her by the time she caught sight of him, at which point she simply went still with an incredulous look on her face. He got his hands up in front of him, boogying down close to the floor on knees that let him know, thanks to a lot of high school football, that they didn't much care for that. Shane gave up on anything that looked like twerking and executed a perfect spin on his heel instead.

She caught him by the hips, laughing, and joined him in his impromptu dance party. Her long ponytail swung as she moved with him, shimmying right up against him and lifting her arms, letting her body do the work. He remembered dancing with her like this at Jake's wedding and being completely in awe. That was when he'd decided nobody else would do.

He'd never been compelled to chase anyone so long. He'd never be sorry he'd persevered, though. She was living proof that the occasional bit of hard work paid off.

Shane took her hand, spun her, and then ignored his knees to dip her low. She squealed with delight, then smiled up at him, her arms around his neck.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself,” she laughed. “I'd ask what got into you, but as long as you keep dancing with me it doesn't really matter.”

“I'm having a good day,” he told her, then pulled her up for a long, hot kiss. Larkin looked thoroughly flustered when he pulled back, her green eyes hazy, lips pink and plump from the attention.

“Well, then,” she said, eyes wide. “Remind me to go home with you more often.”

“I will. How about tonight?”

She laughed. “I could be persuaded. I need sleep, though. This morning was a little rough.”

“I can make accommodations. I'm flexible like that.”

“I'm well aware.” She wiggled her eyebrows, which prompted another kiss, which finally ended in Larkin extracting herself from his clutches and putting the long metal worktable in the center of the kitchen between them. “Okay, you. I'd keep you here as my pleasure slave all day if I had my way, but you have to work and so do I. You're going to have to scoot your very nice butt out of here for a few hours. Want some cupcakes?”

“I can't believe that's actually a question.”

“Good point. Here,” she said, producing a box from the far corner of the kitchen. “I put this together. You know. In case you stopped by.”

That she'd been thinking of him too warmed him up from head to toe, making the thought of going back out into the cold much less daunting. She allowed him to steal one last kiss before he left, which was about the time Aimee poked her head into the room.

“Hey, Larkin, I—oh, oops!”

They turned to look at her, and Larkin gave him a look that was some combination of amused and exasperated before disentangling herself again. “It's fine, Aimee. Somebody's a little friskier than usual today.”

“Feels pretty normal to me.”

Larkin made a strangled sound before turning back to her protégée, who looked decidedly entertained. “What's up?”

“Oh, um, you have a phone call.”

“Yeah? What is it, large order?”

“No.” Aimee frowned. “I'm not really sure. She just said it was important. Some kind of family thing, I think, but it was hard to hear her.”

He saw the shadow that crossed Larkin's face then, the same shadow he'd seen the day she'd refused to pick up her cell phone. His good mood faded, replaced by frustration. This was a part of her life she'd only just started letting him into, and he still didn't have a handle on the relationships between her and the rest of her family, apart from the fact that they seemed basically nonexistent.

“I'll take it,” Larkin said. “Back here, though.” She indicated the phone by the door.

“Got it,” Aimee said. She seemed to want to say something else, but after a moment's hesitation, she forced a bright smile and vanished.

“You want me to stick around?” Shane asked.

“No! No, it's fine. You go on. I'm sure it's nothing.”

“It doesn't look like nothing,” he said. “If you need—”

“I don't,” she said firmly, cutting him off. As though she'd realized how harsh that sounded, her tone was considerably softer when she spoke again. “It really is fine,
Shane. They're all the way out in California. They just find me once in a while. I'm used to it. I can handle it.”

The look on her face didn't give him much of a choice, but Shane didn't like leaving her there. “Let me know when you're done here and we can meet up, okay? We'll get cheesy fries.”

“Sounds perfect,” she said, and sent him off with a kiss and something close to a push. Feeling oddly deflated, he headed back to work, to wait . . . and to worry that the rug he'd finally stopped waiting to have pulled out from under him had just started to slip beneath his feet.

•   •   •

Larkin drove home like a bat out of hell, as angry as she'd been in years.

It wasn't just as bad as she'd feared—it was worse. Everything she'd worked for, everything she'd done for herself, was in danger of going directly down the toilet . . . and all because she'd had the misfortune to be born to Journey O'Neill.

She pulled into the driveway and saw the fresh tracks from the taxi. Her stomach did a slow roll, and she wished, just for a moment, that she'd let Shane stay. But no. This was her problem, and leaning on him was a bad habit to get into. They were sleeping together, not married, and her feelings for him were still, as far as she knew, hers alone.

Besides, he had his own crazy family. He had enough to deal with.

All fine excuses, to be sure. But the heart of the matter, Larkin knew as she trudged to her door, was that she was embarrassed. Embarrassed at her inability
to shake where she'd come from. The people she'd come from. And at this rate, she never would.

Who in their right mind would want to deal with the O'Neills? She certainly didn't.

She opened the front door—
why
hadn't she found a better hiding spot for the key?—and stepped inside. There, spread out on her couch in a scatter of suitcases, was the only family she had.

“Hey. Guess you already made yourselves at home,” Larkin said flatly. Two pairs of eyes turned toward her, one hazel, one brown.

“Well, there you are,” her mother said in her whiskey voice, scratchier than she remembered. It was probably a few added years of cigarettes, Larkin guessed. Or just time. The years hadn't been kind, though Journey had been beautiful once.

“Yep, here I am. You haven't been smoking in here, have you, Mom?”

“Honey, you know I don't smoke inside.” The hazel eyes narrowed. “Nice to see you, too. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different. I told Amber you wouldn't be happy, but it's not like we had so many other options.”

A painfully thin woman with hair dyed fire engine red waved from the couch. “Hey, sis. Thanks for returning all my phone calls.”

Larkin stared at them, living reminders of everything she'd run from, and felt like she was shrinking. She'd done a lot of work on herself since she'd left home. She'd experienced things that these two never would, done more with her life than they would ever understand. But still, in their presence, she drifted
backward, into the defiant, angry, frightened teenager she'd been a long time ago.

This was why she'd run. Her family was quicksand, and even now she could feel herself sinking.

Larkin straightened her shoulders and tried to remember what Emma had said.
You know just who you are.
She wasn't the girl her mother remembered.

“I didn't return your calls for the same reason I didn't listen to your voice mails,” Larkin said, looking at her sister. “We don't have a relationship. Didn't you tell me that when I invited you to my college graduation?”

“Probably. Doesn't make it true. Any blood test would prove that wrong,” Amber said. “Trust me—this isn't ideal for us, either. We just didn't have a choice.”

Her sister's face, sharply pretty, so full of potential, haunted her. She would have helped get her out, too, if there had been a way. And if there had been any interest.

“There's always a choice,” Larkin replied.

“Well, homelessness was the other one,” Journey said, stretching out her long legs. “That bastard Jojo cleaned out the bank account, and Amber got let go from Petie's. There was no rent money, and the landlord is an asshole.” She was still bottle blond, her once-beautiful face overly tanned, the skin weathered. She was still attractive, in a way, but only a shadow of what she'd been, and it was clear she'd lived hard. Amber was headed the same way, though it would take years to catch up to her mother.

Two peas in a pod. Just like always. And I'm the odd one out.
It was strange to think that there'd ever been a time she hadn't been grateful for that.

“What about Uncle Z?” Larkin asked, lifting a hand
to rub at her temple. “Couldn't he help you out?” For as long as she could remember, the owner of the Bike Shack, where her mother had worked off and on for years, had been “Uncle” Z. He'd helped them out on occasion when things were tight, a big scary-looking biker who was one of the only people Larkin had been a little sad to leave behind. She'd tried to call once in a while after she'd left town, just to check in, but he wasn't much on the phone. Always busy, but always affectionate. She felt an odd pang of nostalgia, thinking of him. Journey was looking at her strangely. “Honey, Z died a couple of years ago. Massive heart attack. You know what a big guy he was. It wasn't, like, a
surprise
. Pedro's got the place now, and he's not half as nice, let me just tell you. Guy can't even spare ten bucks on a good day. Why would he help me?”

The news knocked the wind out of her, though it didn't seem to bother her mother any. Not that it would. People were opportunities to her. When one vanished, she'd simply find another. Right now, it looked like Larkin had been passed the torch.

Thanks a lot, Uncle Z. This is way worse than haunting me. I might even deserve it a little, I guess. You dealt with them for longer than I did.

“Look, we don't want to be in your hair any more than you want us in it,” Amber said, and Larkin finally caught a glimpse of the fear behind the bluster. “We didn't have anyplace else to go.”

“But . . . your dad?” Larkin asked, feeling the old hopelessness well up and threaten to consume her. This wasn't supposed to be her problem. Because this problem wasn't solvable.

Amber shook her head. “He and his girlfriend moved to Lemoore. She's a crazy bitch. No, thank you.”

“But how did you even find me?” That was the big question. She hadn't exactly hidden, but she hadn't kept in touch. She couldn't be the only Larkin O'Neill in the United States, though, granted, there probably weren't many. Besides that, her cell number wasn't listed, just in case. Lot of good that had done.