by Ramsay, Hope
They danced for a long time, and when the last light of day began to fade, he took her by the hand and tugged her away from the tent. She came willingly, a fresh beer in her hand and no shoes on her feet. They strolled up a rolling hill behind the main stable far away from the party, which was beginning to wind down a little.
The cake had been cut. The bouquet had been tossed. The bride and groom had been sent off in a shower of rice. The old folks had gone home, but the Wild Horses kept right on playing music, and the young folks kept right on dancing. They would dance until the bar shut down, and knowing Dash, that wouldn’t be for some time yet.
But it was quiet here a little ways away from the tent. And they had a great view of a red sunset sky.
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” she said, taking a sip of her beer. “Want some?” She offered it to him.
He accepted the bottle and took a sip, letting the yeasty tang fill his mouth. It was cool, and he was thirsty. “I should have gotten one for myself.”
“There’s more where that came from.”
“I’m sorry about the way your father acted before. I get the feeling he’s not one hundred percent behind what you want to do with the Shelby. I find that kind of interesting, seeing as you two used to be inseparable.”
She let go of a long, sad sigh. “That was before the twins were born. Back when you were a Rebel, I was a boy, and Coach was happy with me.”
He chuckled. “You were a boy? You want to explain that?”
“I was allowed to do all kinds of boy stuff. I could climb trees, go fishing, and ride my bike on a hot day without a shirt on.”
“I’d like to see you do that now.”
She rolled her beautiful eyes in his direction. The purple sky made them look almost huckleberry blue. It was so amazing the way her eyes changed color all the time.
“Why is it that when I’m alone with you for five minutes the conversation always ends up being about one or the other of us getting naked?” She snagged her beer back and took a long swig.
“Don’t get huffy with me. You were explaining about how you were once a boy.”
“Yeah, I was. I mean I didn’t know there was any difference between boys and girls. And then my brothers came along. And my innocence was lost.”
“Your innocence?”
“Yeah. I realized they had something different than I had. And then Daddy got the wild notion to paint my room pink and buy me a bunch of Barbies. And suddenly, I wasn’t allowed to run around without my shirt.”
“I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “I guess I made him semi-happy today. I got all dressed up for him. But this isn’t me.” She gestured to the dress.
“Sure it is. You’re you, Molly. In all your glorious contradictions. And regardless of what you happen to be wearing … Or not.”
“Contradictions?”
“You’re a walking contradiction. A woman who can restore a car and knit a sweater, too. All that makes you unique and wonderful.”
He took her hand in his. “You know, when I was a little boy, I used to work in the garden with my mother. I learned all the names of the flowers, and we used to talk about colors. And no one thought there was anything wrong with me enjoying the garden. And then I turned eight. And suddenly Mother didn’t want me in the garden. And Daddy wanted me to play sports and be tough.”
He gave her a mournful kind of smile. “I’m not complaining. I liked sports. I loved to swim out in the river with Luke. I liked playing soccer. Of course, my father never regarded soccer as a real American sport. I guess I gained back a little respect when I was recruited for the varsity football team. But I wasn’t much of a football player. At least I wasn’t the kind of player my father wanted me to be.”
“You’re kidding, right? Simon, you’re the one who won the championship with that field goal. You were the hero of the game.”
“No, Stone was the hero. He masterminded that final drive in the closing minutes. I just kicked the ball.”
“But still, you probably hold all the Rebel records for field goals and PATs in a single season. You never missed. Ever. And we won games because you were always so steady.”
“How can you remember this? You were like four.”
“I don’t really remember. But I’ve been a Rebels fan all my life. I know what’s in the record books. And if you look up placekicker, you find your name after every record. Without you, that team would never have gone all the way.”
He laughed, suddenly embarrassed. She certainly remembered things differently than he did. All he remembered was the anxiety every time he walked onto the field to do his job. He knew damn well that any miss would be remarked upon at home, and he was terrified of being tackled by some of the bruisers on special teams. It wasn’t that he doubted his ability, he just didn’t enjoy American football. Soccer was fun. But no one cared about soccer.
The only thing that held him together week by week was his faith in Coach and Coach’s faith in him. He loved Red Canaday. That man had given him more confidence than any other teacher. And of course there had been Molly, Coach’s daughter—and his good-luck charm.
“I rubbed your head for luck before every kick. And you would look up at me with those incredible big eyes of yours, and I knew I had to succeed because I couldn’t imagine disappointing you.”
He reached out to touch her hair. It was halfway piled up on top of her head, and his hand connected with the last remaining hairpins. He couldn’t help himself. He started taking them out. One by one, unwinding the thick curly tresses. His heart started pounding. What was it about Molly’s hair that turned him on? “Your hair was short then, and curly,” he said.
He had to take a deep breath. Touching her hair was extremely arousing. And by this time, he’d divested it of all the pins. He ran his fingers through it, reveling in the texture. She shook her head to loosen it. It fell down, past her shoulders, like a glossy dark veil.
It was sexy as hell.
In the distance, Clay Rhodes was playing a sweet, mournful fiddle tune. The band was down to playing ballads for the remaining couples who wanted to slow dance.
He pulled her against his chest, tucking her head under his chin. She snaked her arms around his neck. They danced, out where no one could see them. The night grew dark, and the crickets harmonized to the distant fiddle.
When the song drew to a close, she looked up at him, moonlight in her eyes. He should stay away from her. Coach had warned him off. And even if Coach was less than what Simon remembered, he was still Coach. And this was still Coach’s daughter. And he’d given Coach his word.
He should back away. He should take her home.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t help himself. He let the southern moonlight and Clay’s fiddle carry him away.
And then he kissed her, and when his lips touched hers, he lost control.
CHAPTER
18
Molly closed her eyes and drank in the sensations. Simon’s mouth was warm and inviting. His hair flowed through her hands like silk as she pulled him closer, deepening his initial kiss.
Hunger of a kind she’d never known seized her. She wanted to eat him up, devour his sweet lips, taste the warm skin on his throat and his cheeks and his ears. She wanted to get closer.
His shirt and tie and jacket were in the way. And so was her dress, even though there wasn’t all that much of it. She remembered the way his body had felt under her hands for those few moments in the river.
But it had been freezing cold then. And it wasn’t now. The night had turned humid and balmy, as only an early-June night could. The moon was shining high above the Carolina pines. It was perfect in every way. Molly just needed to get Simon to spread his jacket on the sword grass at their feet so they could lie down.
She was about to make that suggestion when the Wild Horses struck up “The Watermelon Crawl.” The music boomed up in their direction, reminding her that they were hardly alone or in a private place.
He drew back slightly. “You want to dance?”
He was going to get noble again, wasn’t he? He had told Coach that she’d be home by midnight, and it sure looked like he was going to make good on that promise.
She couldn’t let that happen. For one thing, she was weary of having to follow Coach’s orders all the time. And for another, Simon looked like a great adventure worth having.
He was experienced and older. He could probably teach her things. She just needed to jump in and take control. She needed to take a leap of faith or something.
So she smiled up at him, trying to channel a true, southern femme fatale. “Are you talking about vertical dancing or the horizontal kind?” She let her voice go low and husky.
This earned her a sultry grin. “Either is fine with me.”
Was he giving up that easily? She pressed the point. “You ever seen the insides of the Peach Blossom Motor Court?”
He sobered. “I’m not going to have sex with you at the Peach Blossom. You can put that right out of your mind.”
Damn. That was a definite misstep. Of course he wasn’t about to take Coach’s daughter to the Peach Blossom. “Is that a no to the sex or no to the motel?” What was she going to do if he told her he was putting the kibosh on getting naked?
He chuckled. “Uh, well, I don’t have any objections to getting horizontal.” With that, he swooped in and kissed her again. This kiss was in a whole different league than the one he’d just given her. He moved in like a marauder invading her mouth with the heat and energy of his tongue. She stopped worrying about the idea that he wasn’t interested in sex.
She brought her hands up to the back of his head and pressed him into the kiss, hungry for the rasp of his stubble against her skin, yearning for something deeper, harder, and more intense. She arched back and gave him access to her throat, and he took advantage.
He traced her jaw, the pad of his thumb sending heat and shivers through her. Her knees almost buckled as he ran his fingers across her throat and then followed them with a string of searing kisses that made her feel feverish and alive.
His mouth trailed down to the hollow of her neck and then he bit her again, kind of hard and just wickedly good enough to make her buck against him, like something wild and untamed. That love bite awakened the tides inside her, and she ached for him down deep in her core.
He seemed to understand this because he pushed himself against her, bringing his hand down to the flare of her hip. A deep and inarticulate sound bubbled out of him as he pulled her closer and rocked his hips against her.
And that’s when she knew Simon had lost his self-control. A little, wild part of her thrilled at the knowledge that he was capable of losing control in such an obvious and incredible way. He ground his hips against her, and all she could think in her inflamed brain was that he was magnificent when he let himself go like this.
“Molly, I really do want to get horizontal,” he whispered in her ear.
“Me too. Where? Not here. There are too many people.”
“Mother’s house.”
She pulled back a bit. “Your momma is at home. We can’t—”
“My mother is not in her right mind. She won’t know. We can sneak in like a couple of teenagers.” He gave her a soft kiss on the nose. “Which is kind of exciting. It’s been a really long time since I was a teenager, and I never had the gumption to sneak a girl into my room when I was younger.”
“Gumption? Jeez, Simon, you’re sounding more southern every day. C’mon, let’s go.” She snagged his hand and started pulling him in the direction of the parking lot and driveway. He pulled her up sharp.
“Before we do this, I need to say something.”
“Please don’t. I know Coach disapproves of you and me. But he’s totally confused. He can’t decide if you’re too gay or too old for me. And he’s wrong on both counts. Besides, I’m a big girl. I know you’re not a forever kind of guy. So let’s just have a little fun, okay?”
Holding Molly’s hand was a carnal experience. The brush of her fingertips against his flesh ignited a conflagration inside Simon that toasted his brain and blew conscious thought to smithereens.
He held his breath and set a steady pace down the hill toward the parking lot. Daddy’s Taurus was parked way down the driveway because he’d been late to the party. A tense silence had come up between them, which allowed Simon to actually hear the roar of his own blood in his ears. He was drunk on lust.
It had been so long since any woman had made him feel this way. He almost wished she would babble or do what other women did at slightly awkward moments like this. But Molly wasn’t like that. She was direct. When he opened the car door for her and their gazes met, there wasn’t the least bit of uncertainty in her eyes. Instead, she laid another scorching kiss on him before she slid into the front seat.
And even though Molly was completely incapable of flirting, she still managed to flash her legs at him. She had some really nice-looking legs. It was kind of a pity she hid them all the time.
She looked up at him. “Simon, for God’s sake, shut the door and let’s get out of here.”
She was apparently in a hurry. He needed to slow her down. Because he figured this might be the only time they got to experience each other, and he’d be damned if he was going to rush through it.
He shut the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Ten long minutes later, he pulled the Taurus into the garage that Mother and Daddy had added on to the turn-of-the-century Victorian that had been their home for decades.
He turned toward her. “You need to take off your shoes and be really quiet.”
“I already lost my shoes somewhere at the party. They hurt like a son of a gun.”
He wanted to laugh. She was so natural and fresh and real. “C’mon, follow me.”
He opened the side door that led into the dark kitchen. The television was on in the den. Its blue light flickered in the hallway. Simon gave Molly a sign to stay where she was, and he continued down the hall to investigate.
Angel was sprawled on the couch snoring while some HBO slasher movie played. Simon made a snap decision to leave sleeping assistants where they lay.
He turned and motioned Molly forward while simultaneously giving her the universal sign for quiet.
She looked amazing in the flickering light, with a devilish smile on her face. He took her by the hand and pulled her the rest of the way down the hall to the stairs. Up they went in the near darkness. All was quiet in the direction of Mother’s room. He turned in the opposite direction and pulled her into his own bedroom.
Moonlight, filtered through the magnolia tree in the backyard garden, gave the room a soft glow. The dappled light glimmered in Molly’s hair. He turned toward her, curled his fingers around the back of her skull, and pulled her hard against his body. He kissed her then—not a romantic kiss at all, but a base statement of his needs and wants.
This was what she wanted. So she met his tongue with her own, simultaneously invading his mouth and inviting him in. Soon he had her backed up against the door, and the roar of blood rushing through his ears told him there would be no turning back.
And yet he needed to slow down and control himself. Down deep he wanted so much more than a quick coupling against a door frame. He wanted to pleasure her. He wanted to give her what she wanted, and he knew, even as she bucked against him and gave all the signals of a woman in the throes of some kind of frenzy, that it would be a mistake to confuse Molly with a really experienced woman. She might be liberated, but she wasn’t experienced.
He braced his hands on either side of her head. “We need to slow down,” he said in a husky voice.
She looked up at him out of eyes that glinted in the moonlight. “Why?”
He felt the corner of his mouth tip up. She looked like a fantasy come true. “Because we do.”
She brought her fingers up to play across his chest, and he felt the burn down to his toes. She loosened his tie and pulled it through his
collar. She tossed it aside. Then she started on the buttons of his shirt. “I don’t want to slow down,” she said.
He played with her hair, twirling it around his finger. “But I do.”
She slipped another button through its hole. “You want to seduce me.”
“Yeah.”
She slipped another button loose, and her tongue peeked from the corner of her mouth. She did that sometimes when she was concentrating.
“Well,” she said, “it won’t be hard to seduce me because I surrender.”
He combed his fingers through her hair, drinking in the herbal scent of her shampoo and the musky smell of woman. It felt like someone had put a band around his chest and was pulling it hard. He could hardly breathe.
She pulled the tail of his shirt from his pants and unbuttoned all the rest of the buttons.
“I don’t think you’re all that easy,” he said.
She inched her chin up, and something flared deep in her gaze. “So I’m a challenge, then?”
“Yeah, Molly. You’re a challenge.”
He stroked her hair, and she lowered her gaze to his naked chest. He saw admiration in her stare, and it knocked him for a loop. That look made him feel all hot and bothered and ready for action.
She pushed the edges of his shirt over his shoulders, and he shucked out of it, giving her full rein to touch him. She ran her fingers over his pecs and circled his nipples and stroked his abs, making his breath hitch in his throat. He had never been so turned on by a woman’s touch, especially considering that she hadn’t actually hit any seriously erogenous zones.
It became more than he could bear. “There’s something not quite fair about this situation,” he said as her fingers dipped down below the waistline of his pants.
She looked up at him as she started to undo his belt. “And whose fault is that? You’ve been so busy going slow that I’m leaving you in the dust.”
“Guess I’ll have to catch up.”
“Last one naked is a rotten egg,” she said. It was the same thing Luke always said when he was making a dare. And for just an instant, he lost his concentration.
