Summer's Road (11 page)

Hell. I bit back a groan and rose from the chair, threw her an old shirt from my top drawer. Without saying a word, I turned away from her while she undressed. When she was situated, I grabbed a towel from my adjoining bath and dried her hair best I could. She stood there, letting me. In many aspects of our friendship, she let me take care of her. In others, she put up a wall, ever independent. After so many years together, I knew where the lines were drawn.

I put the book away in my nightstand to have something to do, give myself a moment, before pulling the covers away from the bed, letting her in.

She was still shivering when she lay next to me, curled up to my side, and formed her body to fit mine. This she didn’t do often. Cuddled. We’d watched movies, talked long into the night, but rarely got this...intimate.

“I’m cold.”

I rubbed my hand up and down her back to warm her, trying to conjure an idea for conversation that didn’t involve how hard a certain part of my anatomy was becoming. “What are you going to do with all of us gone tomorrow night?” Rick, Dee, and I were driving to the coast tomorrow for our annual vacation. Summer had a work meeting and was heading down a day late.

“I could always call Peter for company.” Her attempt at a joke was uttered through quivering lips, missing the mark.

What that jerk at the hobby store had said to her about me still rankled, but I tsked in good humor. “What would Matt say?”

She smiled, nailing me right in the chest. “Only joking.”

“Something tells me he’d be a little upset if he saw us right now.” If she were mine, I would tear the other guy’s limbs off.

“We’re not doing anything wrong.”

“Just the same, I wouldn’t want my girlfriend climbing in bed with another guy. Ulterior motives or not.”

“You don’t have a girlfriend. You have
girlfriends
. Plural.”

I didn’t bother commenting on that. None of them were her.

“What do you think of Matt moving to Charlotte?” Her tone was so tentative I knew she wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea. Not for the first time, I wondered why she was with him, other than companionship. They didn’t seem to have any chemistry.

Despite the fear she didn’t feel the same way about me, I cared too much about her to admit the truth before. I was the only family she had left. I’d been her quiet protector, her sounding board, her supporter, and shoulder to cry on. If she were to lose me, literally or metaphorically, it would kill her. Again, I thought about what Rivers had said. She’d just given me an opening. Maybe he was right. We were both at a different place in our lives now than when I’d first fallen. Perhaps being honest wouldn’t derail almost thirty years of friendship.

Consequences be damned. “I need to talk to you. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” I winced. Not exactly how I wanted to begin.

“Really?” The way she drew out the question relayed her anxiety.

I looked down at her, cradled in the crook of my arm. Her dark caramel strands were drying to more of a cornflower and her pale lashes shadowed her cheeks. So damn beautiful. I couldn’t just lay the truth on her, but she needed to understand I was serious about an impending talk. I’m not sure if I did it to hold myself accountable or to prepare her, but I closed my eyes and kissed her forehead. “We’ll talk at Seasmoke, okay?” If this was a mistake, it couldn’t be undone, but we’d deal. Somehow.

She leaned up on one elbow, and when I opened my eyes, she was staring down at me, her face close to mine. I could count all the cobalt specs in her irises, mingling with the twilight and stormy blue. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that was relief in her eyes. Hope, perhaps. This wasn’t her at all. Anyone said the word “talk” and she normally turned into a basket case.

Her gaze traveled over my face. “What’s going on?” Her voice was husky. Tempting.

Earlier, I’d suspected she figured out what I’d been feeling, based off our discussion the other night and my reaction at Rick’s house. I had no doubt now. None. She knew. The way she looked at me...it was something that should have been forbidden between us, something never tested or divulged.

Heat.

Carnal...freaking...desire.

She swallowed, the click like a shout in the room. I don’t think she was breathing. I’m certain I forgot how. We were close enough to share air, for me to draw in her scent. My body tightened in response. She smelled like rain and lilac and everything pure in the world. My jaw clenched, gaze locking with hers.

She lifted a finger to brush a strand of hair from my forehead, her touch lingering longer than necessary. And then, she...bit...her...lower...lip. I followed the movement with my eyes, breath trapped in my lungs. Her hand faltered on my forehead as if suddenly unsure or becoming aware of what she was doing. Yet she didn’t move away.

“Don’t,” I said, the ragged, hoarse voice not my own.

Don’t touch me like that and not mean it. Don’t use me because you’re afraid of where your relationship with Matt is going. Don’t do this now, finally, and then run away.

She swallowed again, her gaze lifting to the hand she stroked over my face. Slowly, inch by excruciating inch, she trailed that finger down my cheek, dangerously close to my mouth. Every goddamn nerve in my body lit like a fuse, burning, cindering.

“Summer,” I ground out the a warning through a painfully clenched jaw. I grabbed her hand, intent on pushing it away, but found I wasn’t capable. Christ, I wanted this so bad my heart hurt and lodged itself in my airway “
Don’t
.” My last plea before I lost my mind, begging her to decide.

Her leg shifted under the sheet, just a slight movement. The sound of her skin sliding against the cotton ramped my pulse to stroke levels. Then her leg brushed my thigh and the room vacated of air, of sound, of anything but her and me. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and that was it. I had no idea if she came toward me or if I closed the distance. All I knew for sure was I was toast.

Our lips met, a gentle feather touch, testing the waters of lunacy. Her warm breath exhaled a sweet caress over my mouth as uneven and ragged as my own. My muscles shook from the restraint, locked painfully rigid. I tried to keep still, to let her run the show, but the effort was killing me. Refusing to close my eyes, I watched her, suspended in a state of no-effing-way and this-was-happening.

Hyperaware, I was conscious of every part of me connected to her. Her breasts crushed against my arm. Her stomach pressed along my hip. Her leg tangled around mine. Her hand over my pounding heart. Her hair curtaining our faces. The heat from our bodies melding. And Christ, her mouth teasing the hell out of mine.

She paused a fraction of a beat, then her lids fell closed and she tilted her head, immediately deepening the kiss from barely there to fevered hunger. She ate at my mouth, driving me effing mad with tiny nips, alternating them with languid licks and sucking my lower lip. A weak, needy sound came from her throat—half protest, half encouragement.

There was my permission. Christ. I was only a man, after all. Flesh and blood and, at the moment, filled with more testosterone than the NFL. If I had to pour fifteen years of wanting her into one kiss, hell, I’d do it.

I drove my hand into her damp, rain-scented hair and, grabbing a fistful, I angled her head for better access. My tongue swept inside her mouth, colliding with hers in a slow dance that had me so hard it would leave a permanent zipper impression on my shaft. She tasted like peppermint and chocolate, smelled like sin and innocence wrapped into one perfect bundle. I eased back for air, thought
screw it
, and went right at her.

Heaven strike me, she was better than any warped fantasy I’d conjured in my head. Warm, soft, eager. Seeking more, I rolled, pressing her into the mattress, covering her body with the weight of mine. Her talented, gifted hands threaded in my hair as she arched into me.

I froze, a tether of rational thought connecting my body to my brain. My best friend was underneath me, my mouth devouring hers. Breathless, I broke away, lifted my head. Her heavy lids rose, exposing lust-saturated blue eyes clouded in desire. Her exhale skated over my jaw and stalled.

Then she started to come around, bit by bit, her eyes clearing, until I was forced to sit up and lean on my haunches, severing all contact. The loss was pain. Sheer pain.

Eyes wide with shock, she lifted a trembling hand to her swollen mouth. After taking a moment to recover, her gaze darting everywhere but at me, she tugged the shirt I’d loaned her over her knees and sat up. Her lips parted twice before she uttered anything. “The rain stopped.”

Rain.
Rain?
Was she kidding? My heart was still racing, my pants cutting off circulation, and she wanted to discuss the weather?

She looked at me and quickly away. “Now that we got that out of our system…”

I stilled, then laughed with no amusement. Out of our system? Not even close.

As if seeking something to do with her hands, she settled a palm over her forearm and began kneading. Her nervous tell. “I better go.”

She got as far as the doorway before I recovered. “Summer.” She stopped, but didn’t turn around. “We’ll talk at Seasmoke.”

Without a word, she left.

I
woke from a fitful slumber to some ingrate pounding on my back door. Grousing from little sleep, I reluctantly hauled my ass out of bed and downstairs to let Rick and Dee in.

Rick gave me a once-over. “Man, we’ve been pounding for ten minutes.”

I groaned in response. Mornings sucked. Morning people sucked harder.

Rick followed me upstairs, leaving Dee mumbling something about breakfast.

I sat on the side of my bed and rubbed the grit out of my eyes.

“You look like crap. I’m driving today.” Rick lifted his eyebrows as if I’d explain my dismal state.

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“What’s the matter with you? It’s Fourth of July week. Vacay. Seasmoke. Beach, sun, sand.”

“I kissed Summer last night.”

Rick froze like a comical cartoon and dropped beside me on the bed.

“I told her we’d talk about it at Seasmoke. She high-tailed it out of here faster than a blink.” I lay back on the bed, covering my face with my arm. My chest felt ready to explode all over my bedroom walls from the building pressure.

“What are you going to do?”

As if I had any idea. “Shooting myself seems like a viable option.”

Rick half-laughed, the sound coming out more like a squawk. “Look, you couldn’t keep going on the way you were. Consider it progress.”

Progress. Fifteen years and I’d worked up to kissing her. At my pace, we’d be eighty by the time I made it to third base.

Rick patted my knee and left, so I gradually got up. Summer’s nightgown was draped over the back of a chair by the window. It still had the remnant scent of rain from her drenching walk over. It was dry now. I picked it up with a shaking hand and fisted it between my palms. I closed my eyes to the possibility of losing her and sucked in a harsh breath.

She’d responded to me last night. Hell, she’d initiated the kiss. Whatever torture I was putting on myself, she was equally doing it to herself. But if she didn’t feel the pull between us, then last night would not have gone as far as it had. She would’ve stopped me immediately.

I dropped the nightgown on the chair and picked up my travel bag. Calmer, I headed downstairs. We dumped everything in Rick’s car and closed up the house.

Rick, as if reading my mind, said, “Come on. It’s time.”

I paused by the car door, remembering what had initiated last night in the first place. “We need to stop somewhere before hitting the road.”