by Rachel Lee
He went down to the sand, pulling her with him. He muttered her name as he pulled her tight against him, suddenly needing the feel of her body more than he needed his next breath. He shifted one leg over her, to hold her close, expecting her to push him away; instead she slipped her arms around him and pulled him even closer.
The last of his hesitation vanished. He took her mouth again, urgently, fiercely, the fire already licking along his nerves fed by the little sounds of pleasure she made and the way she moved, twisting against him. Her hands slid up under his shirt, over his back, and he nearly lost it at the feel of her fingers caressing his bare skin. He barely resisted the urge to strip off his clothes and then tackle hers, to hell with where they were, in a totally public place.
He couldn’t remember ever being this hot this fast. This woman had a fire he never would have guessed at first glance. He doubted she even realized she had it herself; somehow she’d decided she was a meek, timid thing and wasn’t about to be convinced otherwise.
Sometime he was going to make her see exactly how wrong she was.
But not now.
He shifted his weight, nearly crying out as she moved at the same time, capturing painfully aroused flesh in a sweet, exquisite vice. His hand slid slowly down her side, then over, and he cupped the soft weight of her breast in his hand. He waited, already scant breath held, for her to pull away. But she leaned into his touch, the rounded flesh now full and hot against his palm. He could feel the tight, hard jut of her nipple, and this time the guttural cry escaped him.
He wanted that nub of flesh, wanted it naked in his hands, wanted it in his mouth, wanted to suckle it until she cried out as he had, from the gut, from deep inside, from that place his own fiercely hardened flesh wanted to be.
He fumbled at the buttons of her blouse with hands that were none too steady. Her bra was simple, white, but satin trimmed with a tiny bit of lace. Utilitarian, yet feminine. A very Amelia garment, he thought through the haze that was enveloping him. She moved, and for an instant he froze, afraid she wanted him to stop. But then he realized she was trying to make it easier for him, and the growing heat turned into a pulsing, leaping blaze as he reached behind her and fumbled for an embarrassingly long time with the hooks. But at last they gave, and he tugged the garment away from her breasts.
He sucked in a sharp breath; she’d hidden a lot behind those severe, businesslike blouses. Full and beautifully curved, her breasts were tipped with nipples that in the moonlight appeared a soft pink. More importantly, they were already aroused to tight little peaks, and the sight of them was like a kick in the gut, stealing his breath. His body surged, hard and ready, and his hands shook with the force of it as he reached out to her.
His fingers brushed over those taut crests, and when she cried out in shocked pleasure, the need that had been expanding inside him ratcheted another notch tighter. He thought—no, he knew—he was going to explode, but he couldn’t help himself, he had to touch her again. And again, this time capturing her nipples between his fingertips and plucking them gently.
“Luke!”
The cry of his name broke from her on a gasp, and it was a spur he couldn’t resist. He lowered his head and fulfilled the fantasy that had been torturing him, taking one begging nipple with his lips and flicking it with his tongue.
Amelia arched in his arms, thrusting herself upward to his mouth, crying out his name once more. The awe in her voice was yet another goad to his urgency; she sounded as if she had never felt this before, and that thought was enough to send him perilously close to the edge. He wondered if quiet, reserved Amelia had any idea what she was doing to him.
Quiet, reserved, Amelia.
He felt like he was caught in a swift-running river and headed for the drop. With an effort as great as trying to steer through heavy rapids, he pulled back.
For a long moment he couldn’t get enough breath to speak. And looking at her only made it worse; she was looking at him with eyes that seemed dazed, drugged with passion, not even aware that she was half-undressed, her breasts bare to the sea breeze, the moon and his gaze. He felt that breeze on his back and realized he was a bit disheveled himself, thanks to her questing hands. He made himself look away.
He shivered, not from the coolness of the breeze but from the memory of her shy yet eager touch. He wanted more of it, wanted it all over him, and most of all he wanted it now. Already he was hard almost beyond bearing. He shifted on the sand, trying to ease the ache. He needed a pair of those baggy pants his brother wore, he thought ruefully, if he was going to spend much more time around Amelia.
And he wanted that time. A lot of it.
She moved then, drawing his gaze back to her. She was covering herself, her eyes downcast. In the faint light of the half moon, he could see her expression. All her tangled emotions were showing in her face, uppermost a stunned sort of shock, no doubt that she had let this happen outside on a public beach where anyone could have come by and seen them.
He felt a sudden panic rising in him at the thought that her shock would turn to shame the moment she had recovered enough.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t feel that way.”
“I don’t know how to feel.”
He sighed. “Exactly. That’s why we’re stopping, before we do something you’ll regret.”
Even if it kills me, he added silently,
She was very quiet as they tidied their clothes and returned to the car.
“You’d better drive,” he said.
She nodded silently and went around to the driver’s door and got in. When she began to turn the car to head back toward downtown and the motel, he stopped her.
“Head to your place.” That earned him a startled glance. It took him a split second to realize what she was thinking. “I’ll walk from there. I just want to be sure you get home okay.”
“Seems to me you’re more likely to have trouble than I am,” she said.
He wasn’t sure if it was meant to be sarcastic or just an observation on the way things were, but in either case, he had no rejoinder.
Her home was about what he’d expected: a neat, tidy little cottage. What surprised him was the garden. He couldn’t really see it, not the colors anyway, but he could tell flowers abounded. And many of them had obviously been planted for night scents; the air was redolent with a sweetness that made him want to breathe deep.
For a moment after she parked the car in the small attached carport and they got out, he stood there doing just that.
“You don’t have to see me to the door. I’ll be fine.”
“I won’t be fine until I see you safe inside,” he returned.
She gave him an oddly intent look but didn’t protest as he went with her. She seemed to have a little trouble opening the door, but after a moment it swung inward.
She turned then, and he felt an incredible urge to go right back to what they’d been doing on the beach.
“I’d really like to kiss you good-night,” he said huskily, “but I’m afraid we’d end up going a lot further. And I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
“Thanks for deciding that for me,” she retorted, a little sharply.
He winced. “Amelia, listen. It’s been a hell of a night. Some crazy things happened, you’re not sure how you feel, this is not the time to make a decision like this.”
“Like what? Whether to leap into bed with the notorious Luke McGuire?”
He felt as if she’d punched him, and he wasn’t sure if it was the appellation or just the image her words brought to vivid life in his mind. An image that lingered long after she shut the door.
He was going to need that walk back.
Amelia didn’t know how long she’d stood leaning against the inside of her front door. She only knew that it seemed to take forever before she could move. And that although she should be dead on her feet—it was after two in the morning—she was strangely wired.
You do know that a crash is coming?
Luke’s words came back to her almost tauntingly. She knew he’d meant the post-adrenaline crash, but now it seemed to her to be fraught with many more meanings.
He was right about one thing. She was definitely confused about her feelings. How could she be so terrified and yet so attracted at the same time? How could she have let things go as far as they had with a man everyone said was pure trouble, a man who had a long history of run-ins with the police, a man her friend Jim was suspicious enough of to suspect him of trying to kidnap her? And be contemplating letting them go even further?
This was not what she had envisioned for herself, this radical slipping out of the quiet groove of her life. And certainly not with someone like Luke. Not the scapegrace of Santiago Beach.
It wasn’t until she finally crawled into bed, at last feeling the ebbing of the emotions that had kept her on edge, that it struck her, an obvious fact that she knew she should have realized sooner.
If Luke was as bad as he was painted, he would never have cared that she was confused, hesitant or anything else. Not when she had virtually melted in his arms, beneath his kiss. He would have simply continued to seduce her as he so easily could have. Stopping him, there on the beach, had never even occurred to her passion-drugged mind, and he must have known that. She hadn’t been thinking at all. Not when he was kissing her, not with his hands caressing her, and certainly not when he’d put his mouth to her breast and sent her reeling.
And she knew he’d been there with her; she might not be very experienced, but she knew there were some things that couldn’t be faked, and the kind of arousal she’d felt in Luke was one of them.
But he’d managed to think. And he’d thought of her. He had been the one to call a halt, not her. For her sake.
It’s been a hell of a night. Crazy things happened, you’re not sure how you feel, this is not the time to make a decision like this.
He’d had more concern for her than she’d had for herself. Hardly the actions of a dissolute bad boy.
She wasn’t sure if that made things better, or worse. If it made things easier, or more complicated.
Her last thought, before she finally drifted off, was that a groove was just a shallow rut.
Chapter 12
Luke paused just outside the bookshop door, thought a minute, then pulled it open.
“Oh well,” he muttered a second later.
Amelia, who had been setting out new issues in her small, specialized-for-Santiago-Beach magazine section just inside the door, turned quickly. “What?”
His head snapped around, and he gave her a sheepish grin. “I lost.”
“Lost?”
“I’ve been trying to guess ahead of time who it will be on the door. Today I guessed Captain Kirk, but it was Mr. Sulu.”
She’d looked ill at ease at first, but she was smiling now. At least, she smiled until a woman in the back of the store gave him a wary, sideways look, glanced at Amelia and then scurried past them out the door.
Great, I’m driving her customers away, he thought. But she went on as if it hadn’t happened.
“Right version, anyway. Are you a big fan?”
He shrugged. “I watched them all, but I’m not rabid about it. I think the attraction for me was just the idea that we were still going to be around that far into the future.”
“That’s the attraction for a lot of people,” she said.
For a moment he just looked at her. And gradually her smile faded altogether. Then she looked away, and he felt his stomach knot. He’d tried to give her time, he’d stayed away all day yesterday, had spent his time haunting all the kids’ hangouts and then all the places he used to hang out, hoping to spot his brother. He knew she’d been rattled by the fire that had flashed between them, and he thought she—and he, to be honest—needed time to deal with it.
But he’d been wrong, it seemed. Maybe she felt like he’d abandoned her after that night on the beach. She wouldn’t even look at him. She was probably regretting that night, regretting that she let him kiss her, touch her, even look at her.
He saw her draw a deep breath, get ready to speak, and braced himself for the letdown, the rejection she would manage to word very gently, but that would still sting like crazy. It was his own fault; he’d left her alone to brood when he should have been reassuring her, or something.
She’d taken over most of his waking hours, and finding out she wanted nothing more to do with him was going to hurt. But he’d been hurt before and lived. He’d— “David’s missing.”
He blinked. “What?”
She lifted her head, and he saw that her expression was troubled, not embarrassed. “He never came home…after that night. His…your mother called me this morning, to find out if I’d seen him.”
Luke tensed, as he always seemed to when his mother came up. It was gut-level, like knowing how to read a river, so deeply ingrained an instinct he doubted he would ever beat it.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth,” Amelia said.
Luke exhaled audibly; David was in big trouble now.
“Sort of,” she amended.
He looked at her quizzically. “Sort of the truth? You sound like I used to.”
“I mean I told her I hadn’t seen him the last couple of days. That’s the truth.”
“Ah. Selective truth-telling.”
She blushed, and he suddenly had an inkling of how against character it was for her to have seen what she’d seen that night and not report it.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t be joking, not when David’s been gone this long. He really hasn’t been back home?”
“She says no.” She looked at him straight on then, her golden brown eyes wide and worried. “That’s over thirty-six hours.”
“Maybe he sneaked back in and she didn’t know it. I used to.”
“She says no. She was working at home.”
His mouth quirked. “Well, I guess she’d know, then. She never hung around waiting for me. What’s she going to do?”
“She only knows he’s been gone overnight. She doesn’t realize he’s been gone since the night before. But she’s going to report him missing if he’s not home by dark. She says she’s given him all the slack she can.”
Luke had an opinion about her idea of slack, but it was pointless to dwell on it now. “I’ve been looking. Hit all the places we used to hang out when I was here, and a couple others I heard about from whoever I found. No luck.”
“I…didn’t realize that was what you’d been doing.”
He nodded. And then, driven by the urge to be honest with her, he added, “I thought you might…need some time. To think and all.”
She lowered her gaze again, but only for a moment. Then she met his eyes straight on. “Oh, I’ve been thinking, all right.”
“Amelia,” he began, not liking the way that had sounded.
“No,” she said, holding up a hand. “Right now we have to focus on David. He needs help.”
His mouth twisted. “Problem is, he doesn’t want it. At least, not from me. You might have better luck with him.”
“You can’t give up on him, Luke. Not like everybody gave up on you.”
“What do you want me to do? I’ve looked everywhere I can think of.”
“And I’ve talked to all of his friends that I know,” she said. “Maybe somebody else knows some other places he might be. Places he’s been found before. Or talked about.”
“If his friends don’t know, who—” He stopped abruptly as he saw where she was headed. “Oh, no. No way.”
“Luke—”
“You want to ask her, you go right ahead.”
“I will, if you won’t. But…don’t you think you should?”
“Should what? Go give Mom a hug and a kiss and tell her how much I’ve missed her?”
“No. Tell her you care for your brother and are trying to help him.”
“Uh-huh. And after that you can sell her the bridge.”
“What do we do, then? Try and talk to Snake?”
“Apt comparison,” he muttered. “And preferable.”
Amelia sighed. “All right. I’ll go.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure she’s heard about you—” Being seen with me? Kissing me? Darn near having sex on the beach with me? He fought down the heat that seemed to be at her beck and call and went on. “Associating with me by now. From Mrs. Clancy, if no one else. You’ll be an enemy in her eyes.”
“Maybe not. She did call me, after all. But so what if it will be uncomfortable. I’ll bet David is more uncomfortable, wherever he is.”
Shame welled up in him. She was right. He was dodging his mother because he didn’t want to deal with things, while his brother, who had no choice, was out there somewhere, hiding, thinking everybody in the world had let him down.
“I’ll close up for lunch as soon as I finish this,” she said, picking up the last stack of magazines in her cart. “I just spoke to her, so I’m sure she’s still at home.”
She wasn’t even going to call him on it. Wasn’t going to try to embarrass him into going. She was just going to handle it. So he didn’t have to.
Nobody had ever stood up for him in this town. Amelia had. Nobody had ever taken over an unpleasant task so he could avoid it. Amelia had.
The child who remembered so well the acid damage his mother could do screamed at him to let her do it.
The man he’d become knew he couldn’t.
“Never mind,” he said tightly. “I’ll go.”
She gave him a startled look. “Why? I said I’d—”
“And I said I’ll go.”
“But you don’t want to see her. And you have every right.”
“What I don’t want,” he said, “is for her to still have this much power over me.”
“You’re an adult now. She can’t do anything to you.”
“So I keep telling myself.”
Amelia looked at him thoughtfully. “You’re in control, Luke.”
He blinked. “What?”
