The Firefly Effect (22 page)

I stroll back into the living room twenty minutes later to find Melanie sitting cross-legged on the couch waiting for me. Just the sight of her warms my heart, and not for the first time the thought occurs to me –
I could get used to this.
I’ve become accustomed to her presence. The reassurance of knowing that she’s nearby.

She’s already become a fixture of this place. I know I’ll never be able to stay here again without seeing her in every room. Without remembering the time we spent here together.

And I know, like I knew from the start, that I don’t want it to end. Whatever this may be to her, it isn’t just sex to me. It never was.

I want more.

I just have to hope she’ll eventually reach the same conclusion.

Flopping down beside her, I sigh in contentment as she uncrosses her legs and squirms her way closer. We seem to have developed our own go-to position – me stretched out with her between my legs, my arms wrapped around her as she rests her head against my chest.

She clicks through the movies in the queue. “I’m thinking The Exorcist. I know it’s not really all that gory but it
is
scary as heck. Or would you rather watch something else?”

“No, that sounds perfect.” I turn my head to check the end table, making sure the lantern is still where I left it. I can’t believe with all the bad weather we’ve had that the power hasn’t so much as hiccupped. “Are you cold? You want me to turn the thermostat up some?”

“I’m okay. I have my trusty blanket.” She tugs the fleece blanket off the back of the couch and covers us both with it. “I’d rather be cold than hot anyway.”

“Ha! Boy, did you pick the wrong state to live in.”

“I was born here,” she informs me, as if that explains everything.

“So was I, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is off limits.”

“That reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask. How’d you wind up in Tennessee?”

“Hank – Leah’s dad – took us all on vacation to the Blue Ridge Mountains the Christmas after he and my mom got married. I fell in love with the area. That’s when I decided I wanted to try living there one day.”

“So you just decided it was what you wanted, and you made it happen.” She sounds in awe, as if relocating isn’t something people do all the time.

“That’s how life works, Felony. First you figure out what it is you want, then you do whatever it takes to make it happen. You can’t wait around for circumstances to decide for you.”

Quietly pulling the blanket up to her chin, she presses the remote and starts the movie.

We sit through The Exorcist and are halfway into Rosemary's Baby when, without even a flicker of warning, the electricity dies. The house is cast into pitch darkness, and for a moment we are trapped in silence as we listen to the heavy squall that replaces all other sounds.

“Hm…” I rest my chin on top of her head. “Guess that’s the end of our cinematic viewing experience for the evening.”

In the darkness, I feel her stretch before patting my thigh. “Oh, well. I was thinking about heading to bed anyway.”

“Are you tired already?”

“I never said anything about being tired.”

I am so fucking kidnapping this woman and taking her back to Tennessee with me.

“What’d you do with the light?” she wants to know.

“Right here.” Reaching behind my head, I fumble around for the lantern and almost knock it off the table trying to switch it on. With one unwieldy click the room is bathed in a soft yellow glow.

Crawling over one of my legs to slide off the couch, she picks up the lantern and hesitates, looking down at me uncertainly. “Are you coming?”

“One way or another,” I grin, lazily sitting up.

Trying to mask a smile, she rolls her eyes to the ceiling and shakes her head. I follow behind her as she heads for the bedroom, taking a brief detour through Leah's room to snag the weatherband radio I left in there.

“Think it'll get much worse than this?” Setting the light on the nightstand, Melanie wiggles out of her shorts before bouncing on the edge of the bed.

“This is only the beginning. We haven’t seen anything yet.” I reluctantly tear my gaze away from the tempting sight of white cotton panties and concentrate instead on finding a local radio station. My fingers pause over the knob as an announcer’s clear voice cuts through the crackling static.

…currently centered about two hundred and seventy miles south-southwest of Fort Walton Beach and is expected to make landfall within the next eight to ten hours. Please remember that while the National Hurricane Center has downgraded Elliott to a category one hurricane, this is still a powerful storm packing maximum sustained winds of eighty-five miles per hour and gusts reaching as high as one hundred. For those in our listening range, we urge you to simply hunker down and stay put until Elliott has moved out of the area. Stay off the roads. Do not attempt to travel.

For now, expect heavy rains and high winds to continue throughout the night, with winds steadily increasing as the eyewall moves onshore sometime during the morning hours.

“Well, it’s weakened a little. That’s good news.” I fiddle with the radio until I find some decent music, then move it to the nightstand beside the lantern. “Now…” I turn to face Melanie, crossing my arms over my chest. “Since I have your undivided attention, I believe we have an issue that needs to be addressed. Regarding a snarky little comment you made this morning. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? Any clue?”

As I rather hoped she would, Melanie gives me a baffled look. “What?”

I continue to eye her sternly. As skittish as she can be sometimes, I know I’m taking a chance with this macho caveman routine, but if I can’t reach her one way then there are always other, more direct ways.

“If you’ll recall, earlier today you had the audacity to question my competency as a disciplinarian. Quite frankly, I was insulted. Now I feel I have something to prove. If you doubt my capabilities, then I would be more than willing to put those doubts to rest. Do you have anything to say in your defense before we clear up this little matter?”

Her eyes widen slightly. “
Wha
-aat?”

Sighing, I shake my head in mock exasperation. “That’s what I thought. Well, I’ve always been a firm believer that actions speak louder than words. Take off your clothes, Miss Lane. We’ll let those actions speak for themselves.”

Like I said before…I’ve never been a patient man.

~ Chapter Nineteen ~

Not quite sure what’s about to happen here.

One minute I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, the next he’s got me stripped down to nothing and waiting for him in the darkness.

And why did he switch off the lantern? I can’t see a blessed thing. It’s black as the inside of a tomb in here. I can’t hear anything either, other than the gusty rain outside and the music coming from the radio.

Closing my eyes, I try and relax to the lyrics of some haunting song by Thirty Seconds to Mars. Oh wait, I recognize this. It’s
Hurricane
. Ha! Now that’s a coincidence. Or maybe it isn’t a fluke – maybe someone at the radio station has a sense of humor.

The air is still frigid from the air conditioning, and my skin is starting to pucker with gooseflesh. I can’t attribute it all to the chill – the anticipation of sex with Shane has me shivering just as much as the temperature.

Where
is
he, anyway? What’s he doing? He didn’t leave, did he?

Tentatively, I call out in a soft voice, “Shane?”

I literally jump when he whispers mere inches from my cheek, “Shh.”

“Dammit, you nearly gave me a heart attack! What are you doing?”

“Quiet. Roll over on your stomach for me.” He pulls the pillow from beneath my head and tosses it aside.

Intrigued, I change positions as he asks, turning my face toward the sound of his voice.

“Put your hands above your head.”

Unsure of what he wants, I link my fingers across the back of my head.

“Not like that, Felony. You aren’t being arrested.” I sense a smile in his voice as he takes my hands in his and gently wraps my fingers around the iron bars of the headboard. “There we go. Now keep them here. Don’t move them unless I ask you to.”

“Why not?”

“You were instructed to be quiet. Now be a good girl and do as you’re told.”

Do as you’re told?
Is he serious? I am tempted to inform him in no uncertain terms that I am not anyone’s ‘good girl’ and this chauvinistic power play isn’t going to cut it with me. But even as I open my mouth, I realize I don’t want to. There is something incredibly…
erotic
in his demands.

So I keep quiet. I wait.

For my patience, I am rewarded with a feather-soft kiss between my shoulders. He is standing beside the bed, leaning over me, and every few seconds I feel his warm breath as he selects a new location to brush his lips against. His long hair drags across my skin, tickling me with the light touch of silky strands. My God, the way it feels…that soft hair caressing my naked body…

It’s all I can do to suppress a moan.

He isn’t touching me with his hands. I don’t know where they are. But I can imagine, and the deviant thought drives me wild. I want to touch him, to see if I’m right, and even though he told me not to, I let go of the bars with one hand and grope for him. As my fingers brush against his thigh, I feel a sharp, stinging slap against my backside.

“
Ow!
” I yelp, surprised. Although the fact that he spanked me doesn’t surprise me half as much as the fact that I
liked
it.

His voice is stern. “You were warned to keep your hands above your head. Don’t make me tell you twice.”

My wandering hand returns obediently to the headboard.
Jeez.
This is…interesting.

“That’s better.” He nips my ear gently with his teeth before whispering, “You wanted to know what kind of disciplinarian I am. Well, keep pushing my limits and you’ll find out.”

Oh, so this is his game plan, is it? Well, bring it on is all I can say.

“Spread your legs a little for me,” he orders. “That’s it…right there, that’s enough.”

I bite my lip as he grazes his fingertips along the delicate folds hidden in the apex of my thighs. He’s leaning close enough that I can still feel the soft whisper of his hair skimming across my back. Dear God, is he doing that on purpose? Does he have any idea what it does to me? I shudder at the gossamer sensation, and from behind me I can almost swear I hear a low chuckle.

“Shane…” My whimper escalates to another yelp as he swings his palm down across my bottom again. Damn, that one was harder!

“I thought I told you to keep quiet. Not another word.”

I purse my lips to hide a smile, though I doubt he’ll notice in the darkness. I'm tempted to say something else just to provoke him into smacking my ass again. It’s better than admitting outright that I’m really starting to get off on this.

Before I make up my mind, his fingers find their way between my legs again, sliding their way up and down the slick entrance but going no further.