The sand still held the heat from the sun. Waves lapped in ever-decreasing distances from the shore, where they lay as the tide rushed out. "Aren't you kind of hot with all those clothes on?" Lacey mumbled against his ear as she continued kissing him.
He chuckled. "Isn't that supposed to be my line?"
Her mouth was exploring his chest now, her tongue making searching arcs in her quest for his extended nipples. She continued to shove at the material of his shirt, baring his chest further. "Does it matter who said it?" she asked. "It needed to be said."
He laughed again and sat up, taking her with him as he kept his arm around her in the darkness, as if he were afraid he would be washed away by the waves. "What I should have said"—he paused long enough to kiss her with a deep thrust of his tongue—"was that I'm always hot when you're anywhere nearby." He drew slightly away from her and noted their isolation on the beach. "And, yes, the answer to your question is, I think we're both overdressed."
Without another word, Rafe removed her shirt and bra all in one action by taking them off straight over her head. In his eagerness to be naked with her, he hadn't even bothered to unfasten anything.
Lacey didn't give a second thought to the difficulty she would have climbing back into her clothes if she needed to in a hurry. The way his hands were flaming her skin made her feel too hot and bothered to ever want to wear clothes again as long as he was around. Quickly she removed the shorts she had changed into before leaving the condominium and let him breathlessly pull her back into his arms.
The sound of the waves rushing to shore added to their urgency. Lacey thought she had never felt so heated and charged as she did at that moment. His hands slid down her back, around her waist to the silky matting of hair beneath, parting her thighs. Her toes dug into his shins as she answered the invitation of his hips with a response of her own. A slow heat was surging within, around, through her as she clutched his hips, molding him more tightly against her.
His mouth seduced her shoulder with sensuous thrusts of his tongue and a combination of nibbling and sucking that left her limp with longing for more and more of him. She wanted to kiss him, but she couldn't reach him with her mouth. Instead she used her delicate fingers to tell him of the pleasure he gave her, leading her with each crashing wave to even more wondrous sensations.
Lacey moved her hips circularly against him, wanting to know him with each kiss of her body to his. Warmth again, spreading, glowing, spilling within her, carrying her on ever-increasing waves of rapture until suddenly she was out of control, drowning in passion. She moaned his name repeatedly, clutching him so tightly her fingernails tore at his skin. She felt him shaking out of control within her.
Rafe took her with him as he shifted to a more relaxed position on the sand. His arms cradled her more tenderly as his breathing eased. He trailed loving kisses across her cheek.
"It's moments like these," he whispered against her hair, "when I wish the world would go away. You make me feel as if we're the only two people on earth and that all of tins—the sand and the water and the stars in the sky—was put here just for our entertainment."
She nuzzled her face against his neck, squeezing him tightly from the intensity of emotion still churning within her from their lovemaking. She loved this man. She didn't ever want to leave him.
He sighed against her and she could tell he was smiling up at the night sky. "When you're with me like this, Lacey, I don't ever need anything else. My world is complete as long as you're in it."
"For me too," she whispered back, wishing it could always be this way between them. But would it? As intensely as they felt toward each other right now, was there something that might come between them to separate them in the future? She kissed his shoulder and then turned, snuggling against him to burrow into the sand next to him. She could see the stars now. She closed her eyes tightly and wished on one of them; she wanted the love they shared to last.
Afterward, they laughed together as they splashed in the water just offshore, trying to remove the accumulation of sand that clung to them from their lovemaking. Slowly they dressed, their eyes never leaving one another. Then Rafe tucked Lacey beneath his arm as they walked slowly back to the beachhouse and took a much-needed shower together.
That evening their loving carried a new kind of tenderness with it, each in awe of the other, each more sensitively aware. Lacey lay awake in Rafe's arms long after he had fallen asleep, clutching her close to him even in deepest repose.
Maybe she was just one of those women not destined to be married. It had been her only goal with Dominick, but now that she had had this long period without Dominick, without any man of any significance before Rafe had come along, she had realized she could be happy as a single woman. One could never depend on another person for happiness. That was where so many couples she knew had made their mistake. She had nearly done that with Dominick. Happiness had to be created from within, without anyone's help.
Lacey nuzzled against his chest, rubbing her chin gently against the soft hair at his throat. Marriage, if it was to happen, had to be initiated by Rafe. She had already done enough manipulating for marriage to last a lifetime with Dominick, and it hadn't gotten her anywhere, fortunately.
Rafe was not the kind of man to be boxed in. He deserved better. But if he ever did suggest marriage to her, she knew it would be with the kind of commitment that she had always longed for. That would be worth waiting for.
Lacey fell asleep with a smile on her face. Time would tell.
Rafe had been working long hours during his trip to New York the past week. Lacey learned just how much he had done once she was with him again and he filled her in on the details of his days. So the next morning when she woke up before him, she decided to let him sleep. But she had been sleeping too much while he was away from her, using sleep as a means of surviving the days and nights until she saw him again.
Now she was restless, and afraid her constant tossing and turning were going to disturb him. She lifted her head just enough to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Nine o'clock. If it were some ungodly early hour like four or five, she would have snuggled up to Rafe's nicely curving back and tried to drift into sleep again. But at nine o'clock she could be up fixing breakfast to serve in bed, or watching cartoons on TV—no, that was Saturday mornings; this was Sunday. Or she could go for a walk on the beach, and by the time she got back, he might be ready to wake up.
"Rafe," she whispered.
He reached out and patted her leg beneath the sheets. The same way she imagined he would gentle a spirited horse. Lacey smiled. "Are you awake?" she asked.
He turned over, reaching for her as he moved, his eyes open. "No."
"That's what I thought," Lacey said, and kissed his nose. "Well, I am, and unless you have immediate designs on my body, I'm getting up and getting dressed so that you'll have a chance to undress me again."
"Uhm, sounds good," he mumbled, smiling.
"You can feel free to attack me anytime," she told him.
"Uhm. I think I will," he said, "when I wake up. I want to remember what I'm dreaming when I do."
Lacey laughed. "That's how I thought you'd feel. I'm going for a walk on the beach if you don't mind, and when I get back I'll wake you up if you're not up by then."
"Like Sleeping Beauty?" he asked. "With a kiss?"
"Oh, I think I can do better than that," she said, grinning.
He opened his eyes and smiled at her, then pulled her head close to his. "You don't mind if I don't go with you?"
"Not this time. I'll let you owe me one," she said, and then added, "but I might decide to take my payment in some form other than a walk on the beach." She started kissing his ear.
"You know what that does to me," he warned her.
"I'm like an elephant," she answered him, her tongue darting in and around his ear. "I never forget important things like that about you."
He hugged her again, and Lacey took that as a sign she wasn'
t going to get much more conversation out of him now.
She crawled out of the bed and went into the bathroom to splash water on her face, slide into her swimsuit and pull her hair back in a ponytail. She could use some makeup, but Rafe was still asleep in bed and she wasn't planning on meeting anyone.
Oh, damn, damn, damn, Lacey thought. She was on her way back to the condominium after nearly an hour strolling and splashing along the edges of the surf. The sun was beginning to burn her thighs. It was brighter than she had realized when she had first walked outside. She probably was turning lobster red because she hadn't thought to use any sunscreen. She had gotten caught up in her thoughts and had walked farther than she intended before she turned around. The condominium wasn't even in sight when she started back.
But now it was just a short walk farther when she saw a man walking on the beach and thought he looked familiar. Then, before she could even distinguish his features, she knew it was Dominick. She had put him out of her mind when they had driven in on Friday evening. This was one of his weekend escapes. What surprised her was that he seemed to be alone, without some shapely female hanging on to him.
Of all times, Lacey thought, I have to run into him here, looking the way I do. If only the condominium were closer, or if only he would get the hang of the cat and sail out to sea before I get within recognition range of him.
She looked down at the beach. This wasn't the type of sand that yielded great shells. What she needed was a fruit stand or a souvenir vendor to materialize and distract her, someone to delay her progress along the beach long enough to let him go about his business without recognizing her or even realizing someone else was on this stretch of beach with him this morning. But it was hard to find something distracting on a beach that stretched forever—just pure white sand and splashing surf. There wasn't even a clump of seaweed anywhere that she could bend down to examine. And she'd left her shoes in the house, so she couldn't fiddle with sandal straps.
Blast and double blast it all, she thought. She would have to speak to him. There just didn't seem to be any way around it. And triple blast it all for the circumstances, she thought. After all these months, she had planned their eventual chance meeting in very different circumstances.
The way she had imagined it, she would be in the most expensive nightclub in town, preferably with someone worthwhile, like Rafe, escorting her and laying down a lot of money for her entertainment. She would be wearing some slinky creation.
Too late, she thought. He's noticed me and figured out who I am.
There was nothing left to do but grin and bear it, and that's what Lacey started doing long before she got within talking distance of Dominick. If she gave him her brightest smile, it might distract him from looking at the rest of her. She would also much prefer to be wearing a barrel—anything but this skimpy suit that she had brought along for Rafe's benefit—and he still asleep in bed without even noticing it.
It was all Rafe's fault. If he hadn't still been asleep this morning, she might right now be in his arms avoiding this confrontation.
"Lacey," Dominick said. He had stopped what he was doing and had been watching her approach for the last few minutes. "What are you doing here?"
"Walking the beach," she answered. "Great morning, isn't it?"
"Surely you didn't walk all the way from Biloxi."
"No, only the last part," she answered, smiling, not wanting to give him any details about anything she didn't have to. "How about you? I didn't know you knew how to sail a boat." Outside of a bathtub, that is, she added to herself, and let her grin widen, pushing her sunglasses farther up her nose as she pretended studious interest in the simple craft.
"I've been out once before. I'm sort of getting the hang of it."
He would do much better just to find a woman who was competent at sailing a cat and let her do the work for him. That seemed more his style anyway. "Have you been sailing all weekend?" she asked, hoping if she kept throwing questions at him it wouldn't give him much opportunity to ask her to explain her own presence.
"I just drove over last night. Got caught in that rainstorm."
She nodded, and started asking "What's that?" and "What does this thingamajig do?" and "How do you make it work?" to make him think he was impressing her by knowing most of the answers. She stood back, put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Very impressive," she said, but what she was thinking was that she liked the colors of the sail. The rest of the thing he could keep, along with his macho captain's image. "Why don't you set her asail? I'll christen you with a handful of sand, thrown snowball-style. How would that be?"
"You're still as offbeat as you always were," he said, laughing.
"Thank you," she said, and grinned even wider. It had been offbeat enough to keep him from marrying her. That must have been something of a success, even though she hadn't seen it that way at the time.
"But what are you doing here?" he asked.
"Walking the beach," she answered. "And leaving in a couple of hours."
"Where are you staying?"
"Here," she answered, evading anything specific. She could walk around to the other side of the condominium instead of entering from the deck side, so he wouldn't know which one she was walking to. "How about you?"
He named a cheap motel she remembered passing on the highway and thought that figured too.
"Well, hop on," she said, impatient to leave him, getting more and more depressed as they stood here together trying to find topics they could discuss, "and I'll give you a shove off."
It took both of them to push the small craft off the sand and past the first breakers. Dominick hopped on and yelled, "Come on! There's room for two."
"I can't," she answered, stepping backward. "I've already had too much sun." She touched her nose and winced; that was going to be sensitive for a while, and then she would probably peel. She stepped farther back and waved, then turned and walked out of the water, her feet and legs encrusted with sand.
Early-morning walks, she decided, were for the birds, preferably seagulls.
Chapter Twelve
So that was Dominick, Rafe thought, standing at the picture window in the bedroom, where he had watched Lacey talking and laughing and touching the man a little while ago. Rafe's hand went automatically to the scar on the side of his face. No wonder she had fallen in love with a man who was as handsome as Dominick. Any girl would. Rafe's lips lifted in a wry grin which anyone watching would have labeled an "I-don't-stand-a-chance" grimace.
He turned at the sound of Lacey shutting off the water in the shower. Then he turned back to the window, where he could still see the dot of the small craft's sail on the horizon.
She had walked into the bedroom mumbling, "Don't ever let me go for a walk on the beach alone anymore."
At first he had thought she would follow that statement by something to the effect that someone on the beach had been harassing her. He had waited in tense silence, giving her every chance to fill in the blanks. Instead she had showed him her reddening arms and thighs. When she took off her sunglasses he could see the pale imprint of where the glasses had blocked the sun from her face.
"Who was that guy you were talking to on the beach?" he had asked, hating himself for letting her see it had bothered him. He had told her she was free to do what she wanted to do when she was away from him—when she was traveling, whenever he was out of town. And he wanted her to enjoy whatever relationships came her way to the fullest extent. He just didn't want to hear about it. He just didn't want to wake up after making love with her all night long to find her chatting away the breakfast hours with another man. Dammit, he thought, I don't want to share her, not even when I'm not around to know about it.
"Oh, him. You'll never guess," she said, and laughed.
Don't start playing guessing games with me, Rafe thought. We haven't played games with each other up until now. Don't play on my jealousy or we both might regret it. "Obviously not, because I've never seen the man
before," Rafe answered, trying to keep cool about this, trying not to let her see how much he was raging inside.
"That was Dominick. Remember, I told you about him?"
Yes, he remembered. The ex-boyfriend. The one she supposedly didn't like. Then why had she been smiling the whole time she was talking to him, and the whole time she had been dressed like that? He took a few minutes to appreciate the swimsuit she was almost not wearing and stopped himself from making a comment about that. "Did you know he was going to be here?" he asked. Had she gotten up early purposely to meet him? Had they been out on the boat together before he had woken up and seen them together? If she was going to go sailing with another man, she should at least have the decency to do it out of sight of his bedroom window.
"I was hoping he wouldn't," she answered, pulling the band out of her hair to let the strands fall around her face in a silky mass. "But when you told me where we were staying, I remembered this was one of his favorite hangouts, so I wasn't surprised to see him this morning. Although I wish it had been under better circumstances."
He could just imagine the circumstances, watching her step naked out of the swimsuit, wondering how many times she had gone to Dominick the way she was coming to him now, pressing her hot and inviting body along the length of his. "Like what?" he asked, not trusting himself to touch her more than superficially around the waist, afraid that he might take his anger out on her.
"Oh, you know," she said, running her finger along his jawline, unaware of how clenched he was holding his teeth together. "Wearing something slinky."
"You don't call that slinky?" he asked, looking at the small scrap of material in a pile on the floor across the room.
"I didn't wear that for him," Lacey answered, sensing some of Rafe's agitation and returning it with some spice of her own. "I wore it for you, but you were too asleep to notice."
"Last thing I noticed was a naked body next to mine."
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