by Jill Monroe
“Tonight I’m living life,” she stated. “I’m not going to watch it from the sidelines. I’m going to grab it, feel it and give it a good shake. You see, right now I want to kiss you again, and that’s something I never would have done before, and I certainly never would have told you about it. Because kissing a man can lead to way too many feelings and emotions, and I have to keep that kind of stuff contained in order to succeed.”
“Who told you that?” he challenged.
“Learned it from the best—my parents. I’ve seen way too many people alter their perfectly arranged paths because of sex and relationships. But not me. Never me. My plans—degree, med school, ER, end of story.”
“So what do you do when something, or someone, threatens all that perfect planning?” His fingers traced down her arm, diverting her train of thought.
“I slow it down and console myself that if it’s meant to be, it will be. Only later.” Stella held her breath for a moment. Swallowed. “But with you, I want to make it be. Right. Now.”
He crooked his elbow toward her. “Coming with me, then?”
“Absolutely.”
Arm-in-arm, they dove into the backseat of Tony’s car like two stars escaping from the paparazzi. She wound up across his lap, her legs tangled with his. And as the sun set outside their window and the dark enveloped them, she twined her fingers behind Owen’s neck and his lips found hers.
“Tony, that’s it,” Hayden said from the front seat.
Owen’s lips left hers before their lip-lock could really get started. He kissed her temple instead. “Didn’t take long for them to interrupt. What was that, fifteen seconds?” He grumbled against the sensitive skin of her neck and she giggled.
“Shorter.” Too short. Stella straightened in the seat and pushed what had to be her very unruly hair from her face. She glanced out the window to find out what Hayden was so excited about. “What’s it?” she finally asked, because all she saw were nondescript office buildings and parking lots.
“The first thing I’m not supposed to do,” Hayden said, pointing to her right.
Tony slowed and angled the car in front of a long aluminum building with a you-could-see-it-from-anywhere neon sign of a roller skate, flashing in bright green and blue. How had Stella missed that blinding splash of color?
“You’re not supposed to roller-skate?” she asked. Stella could come up with half a dozen medical reasons a young woman of reasonable health shouldn’t skate, but none of them visibly applied to Hayden.
“Well, it was a long time ago, but my grandparents had some definite ideas of the kind of trouble a girl could get herself into in the darkened corners of a roller rink.”
Now that made sense. “All my preteen angst just came flooding back,” Stella admitted, awash in fond memories. When makeup was experimental (and forbidden) and her best friend had taught her how to practice kissing on her hand at a slumber party. Everything had seemed so important and boys too complicated.
Actually, not much had changed. Well, except for tonight. This thing with Owen felt anything but complicated, and the only important plan was to live this night fully.
“Girls used to whisper and brag how they made out at the roller rink at school,” Hayden confided, her tone a little wistful. She opened the door, and the overhead light popped on, making her blink.
Tony lifted a brow. “You didn’t?” he asked her.
She rolled her eyes. “As if my grandparents would ever have permitted that.”
He rushed around the car and met her at the door, offering his hand to her like a gallant knight. “Allow me to change that.”
“Absolutely,” she said, and reached her fingers toward his.
“What about you, Stella? Was kissing at the rink part of your education?” Owen asked as they scrambled out of the car to stand on the sidewalk.
“Maybe,” she hedged.
Actually, it hadn’t. At a party, she’d been dared to kiss the guy she’d been crushing on and she’d planted the worst kiss in the history of worst kisses on the guy. She’d missed his lips and managed to swipe the side of his nose instead. He’d rolled away to laugh about her with his friends, and she’d ended up borrowing a stranger’s phone to call her mom to pick her up from the party early. That was Stella’s first official lesson in keeping her emotions to herself, and boys at a distance.
Beside her, Owen crooked his elbow in a gentlemanly move that she was beginning to recognize as his signature. “Let’s make it not a maybe,” he said.
But maybe she could forget that lesson. At least for the night. With a nod, she hooked her arm through his and they walked inside together. She kind of enjoyed this linking elbows thing they had going. As if they were a team ready to face danger or fun together. Probably both.
The familiar scents of perfume and cologne and the oil used on the wooden floor of the roller rink made her stomach clench for a moment. Her most embarrassing experience had happened at a place just like this, and she preferred not to dwell on emotions that brought her down. The roller rink had never figured into any of her plans past the age of fourteen.
But she also smelled beer and gourmet pretzels. Patrons leaned against the railing surrounding the rink while sipping on martinis and gin and tonics, not sodas and fruit punch. Owen wasn’t some teenage boy interested in looking cool to his friends. And Stella definitely knew how to kiss a man now. Besides, she was all about living life tonight, not avoiding it. Roller-skating it was.
They joined Tony and Hayden in the lobby of the rink, where the pair was waiting in line.
Hayden greeted her with a smile. “Stella, it’s adult skate night. It’s like this night was tailor-made for us.”
Tony pulled out his cell phone and they laughed and posed for selfies.
“This light is doing weird things to your hair,” Hayden said. “First pink. Then blue.”
Stella fluffed her curly locks. “Try to catch one when I look blond.”
Finally it was their turn at the register. The guys paid the admission, and the four of them exchanged shoes for skates.
The music pumped, a combination of disco from the seventies, new wave from the eighties and bubblegum pop from the nineties. Their skin was awash in silver patterns from the mirrored balls above their heads and the pulsing strobe lights suspended from the ceiling.
They sat on one of the long carpeted benches that lined the skating area and put on their skates. Hayden and Tony quickly laced up, but Stella’s pace was slower so she could take this night all in. She didn’t allow herself to break out of her self-restraint that often, so she wanted to really live this moment—the sound of the music and the laughing couples around them, the thump of the bass beneath her socked feet and the steady warmth of Owen’s shoulder as he sat beside her.
Hayden gave her a wink as they skated off, and in moments Stella lost the other couple in the crowd on the hardwood roller floor.
Owen didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, either. She snuck a peek at his profile. He looked pensive. “Everything okay?” she asked over the din of the music.
He angled toward her and flashed her that amazing smile of his. The one she’d first noticed in the PharmaTest waiting room when it had triggered some secret little voice inside her mind that said exactly.
“I’m thinking that the moment I get out on that floor in my skates, any chance of looking cool and impressing the lady I want is definitely out.”
Stella couldn’t help but laugh. This sexy hunk of a man wanted to impress her, and that made something inside her go all gooey toward him.
The prospect of her carefully honed defenses crumbling should have scared the hell out of her. Her parents had insisted she’d need a tough shell in order to have a life as an ER doctor, so she’d guarded herself from emotion for as long as she could remember.
But tonight she craved more. Her usual choice of guy leaned to the nerdier type—the kind of man who didn’t worry so much about appearing cool because he was so far away from
that descriptor anyway.
With his wide shoulders and strong arms, Owen probably played sports. His easy confidence around her—and, well, everyone—suggested he was the guy who’d always been invited to the popular parties in high school. The kind of guy who saw through girls like her. But not tonight. Owen wanted her, and he wasn’t afraid of saying it or showing it.
Maybe he deserved some honesty from her. “But if you don’t go out on that floor, how will I ever be able to pretend to fall so that you can catch me?” she asked.
The smile dropped from his lips, and in a flash of strobe lighting she caught the intensity of his gaze. Just for a moment. Then the light moved and he was concealed once more.
His thumb stroked the back of her hand and tiny shivers spread through her fingers and down her arm. Imagine what she’d feel if that thumb stroked other needy places on her body? And that naughty little thought brought on a full body quake.
“What was that fantasy about darkened corners Hayden mentioned?”
Stella swiveled on the bench, searching for someplace private where she could replace her teenage roller-skating failure with a warm memory of kissing the hunky guy. Finally. The kind of memory she could think about while on those rough twelve-hour shifts that awaited her in the emergency room.
Another beam of light flashed across his face, and she caught a teasing glint in his eyes. He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Just to warn you, I’m about to throw down the worst line. Ready?”
Was she? Absolut— Wait a minute, don’t just sit there and passively let this smooth, gorgeous man lay down the moves. This is your night to live. Live it. She gave him the side eye. “It’s not the one about guessing the material of your shirt and it turns out to be boyfriend material, is it?”
He scratched at his chin. “That’s pretty good, and by good I mean terrible. But actually, I can do worse. Much worse,” he assured her.
She pretended to shake out her muscles and roll her shoulders like a swimmer readying for the block. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“When I saw you at PharmaTest earlier tonight, I knew there was no way I’d leave before finding out if your personality was as amazing as your smile.”
Her mouth dried, and she had a hard time swallowing for a moment. “That really wasn’t a bad line,” she confessed, her words rushing out on an abrupt exhalation. She’d expected some kind of teasing comment, and instead he’d dropped the mother of all flirtbombs.
“Worth that darkened corner?” he asked.
The skates slipped from her fingers as she stood. “Oh, yeah. I spotted one, right there by the lockers.” Although truth be told, he didn’t need a line. Stella had wanted to kiss Owen since he’d caught her eye when they’d been filling out the paperwork at PharmaTest. Surely he knew that.
Her heartbeat pounded as they threaded between the people around the rink, seeking the dim nook she’d discovered earlier, perfect for making out. All their other kisses had been spontaneous, moments of daring with no forethought at all. But this next kiss would be deliberate and purposeful. And because of that, this moment felt more important.
She pulled him into the corner and leaned against the smooth wall of painted cinderblock, the coolness seeping into her overheated skin through the thin layer of her shirt. Owen braced his weight on his arm above her head. His gaze moved to her mouth, and a half smile flickered on his lips that quickly changed to an intense hunger.
Yes. She wanted to feel that. Exactly that. He gently stroked her lower lip with his thumb, and her eyes drifted shut for a moment so she could savor how he made her respond. Her blood heated in her veins and anticipation rushed through her. She drew the tip of his thumb into her mouth and he groaned. The harsh sound made her body tremble.
Never had she responded to a man like this. Never had her body craved a man’s caress on her skin so much. Stella hungered for his mouth, his taste.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind over you.”
The raw wonder in his voice triggered a deep yearning inside her. Her knees grew a little shaky and warmth flooded between her legs.
“You’re not the only one,” she admitted, her voice unsteady, and he graced her with that brief half smile again.
Stella reached for him. Her fingers curled into the muscles of his shoulders and urged him closer. He lowered his mouth to hers. It was the barest of strokes, and yet she shivered from that too-slight caress. She breathed in his intoxicating scent as her eyes closed. She locked her hands behind Owen’s neck, his short hair tickling the backs of her fingers. He continued his sensual light exploration of her mouth then finally his tongue traced the seam of her lips.
Stella gasped at the sweet sensation, and then his tongue twined with hers. Exactly.
If fourteen-year-old her had experienced the worst lip-lock at a place like this, the twenty-five-year-old Stella was wiping that memory away for good with this incredible, mind-boggling kiss. This time her lips found their target and she pressed her body against the strength of his chest, her nipples tingling inside the restrictive cups of her bra. She breathed and tasted and felt only Owen. Reveled in the sensations spiraling and building inside her.
A shrill whistle sounded near her ear. And not the silly, exaggerated I-caught-you-making-out kind of whistle. But the teacher-telling-you-to-stop-throwing-dirt-on-the-playground screech that sent a wave of panic through her system even now that she was an adult. Stella broke her kiss-tender lips from his and forced her eyes open.
She had to squint and blink a few times before the picture in front of her eyes righted itself. A man sporting a black-and-white-striped referee shirt skated toward them and waved his hands. The suspect whistle hung around his neck, suspended from a lanyard.
He slid to a stop beside them. “You can’t do that in here. This is a family place.” He emphasized the word with a disgusted shake of his hand.
“It’s adult skate night,” Owen said after glancing around to confirm that no children had magically appeared in the rink. They’d shared a harmless kiss in the shadows of a darkened corner.
“This isn’t my first lap around the rink,” the referee said. “I know what comes next.”
Yeah, she did, too. Not that either of them would have indulged in such a public place. Then again, how long before her hands found that sweet curve of his ass? Or his fingers toyed with her nipples? Her breasts grew heavy at just the thought of him palming her so intimately.
“Uh, Owen. I don’t want to skate anymore.”
His gaze lowered to hers, his eyes searching in the dark. He must have sensed the sexual cravings that battered her senses, because his spine abruptly straightened and he cleared his throat. Twice.
“Neither do I.” His voice was a whispered promise, and a shiver shimmied between her shoulder blades and settled in the small of her back. Then he focused his attention to the ref. “Sorry if we disturbed anyone. We’re leaving.”
Yeah, she couldn’t wait to be alone with this sexy man. Owen laced his fingers through hers and they moved away, the echo of the ref’s wheels on the floor sounding behind them as he returned to the rink. “Hate adult skate,” he mumbled.
“Tony,” Owen called, finding Tony and Hayden nearly hidden by a row of lockers a few rows away from them.
“Careful, you two,” Stella teased. “There’s a no-kissing policy here.”
“Found that out a moment ago ourselves,” Hayden told her, smiling.
“We’re going to exchange our shoes,” Tony said, and Owen winked at Stella before he left, causing a shaft of awareness down her back.
Beside her, Hayden seemed to be experiencing her own struggles because the woman couldn’t focus on anything but Tony’s backside as the two men walked away.
“Good for you,” Stella told her.
Hayden nodded. “Yeah, it is good. I’ve been working so hard lately, I needed a bit of distraction,” she confessed, her gaze once again straying over to Tony.
“I know what you mean. Everyone always sa
ys how rough the third year of med school is on a person, but I guess I hadn’t realized just how much of a toll it was taking on me until tonight, when I finally relaxed. I don’t think the tension has left my body in two and a half years.”
“Well, tonight I plan to get all tense, then relax. Then tense all up again.” Hayden wiped a hand over her face. “Oh, I make such terrible jokes sometimes.”
But the two of them began to laugh. Hell, Stella had just been discovered making out like an errant teenager at a school dance, but instead of feeling mortified, she was giggling with a near stranger, and it felt great. Really great.
Tony reached for Hayden’s hand just as Owen draped an arm around her shoulders. And that felt even better.
“I don’t know whether to be relieved or frightened to find two women laughing,” Owen teased.
“Oh, it’s both,” Stella assured him, trying to insert every sexy tone she’d ever heard in a movie straight into her voice.
Must have worked, because the smile faded from Owen’s face. “See you guys later,” he said, not even bothering to look away from her to address Hayden and Tony.
Hayden gave her the thumbs-up.
After stopping only to put on their shoes, they fled the rink like two teenagers who’d snuck out of the house without being caught. The cool night air caressed her skin as they stepped outside.
“You don’t mind walking back to the car instead of waiting on Tony and Hayden? I doubt we got too far from PharmaTest.”
But who was to know since they’d spent the entire ride in the backseat in each other’s arms? Stella shook her head; a little night air would do her good.
“How’d you end up at PharmaTest?” he asked, matching the length of his stride to hers as they walked. He draped his arm around her shoulders again; the heat from his body warmed her.
“I volunteer for a lot of medical studies, or at least I used to. I’m in med school now, so I don’t have much time. But since it’s fall break and this was an overnight trial, I thought I could fit it in. What about you?” she asked.
“I knew someone.”
That’s all he needed to say. At some point in his life, Owen had lost a friend. It struck her as something special that he cared enough to try to make sure others did make it to see another day. “That’s the real reason doctors do what we do. To help others.”
