Page 5 of Rocky Mountain Devil
Lights sparkled off the shiny disco balls hanging over the school gymnasium floor, sending twinkling flashes over fancy dresses and borrowed suits and tuxes. Stars spun overhead, hung from long threads, and the entire room looked like a throwback to some cheesy eighties movie.
Rafe leaned on the nearest wall and watched with amusement.
Graduation night—small-town style. As the youngest in the Coleman clan, he’d heard stories from his cousins who’d experienced it before, some many years before him. He’d compared their memories to what he’d seen on TV and in the movies, and come up with a pretty realistic set of expectations.
Grad in Rocky didn’t run to rented limos or extravagant hotel banquet halls at an expensive hotel. There was no sneaking off to check into hotels with prom dates to have sex…
Heck, their classmates who wanted to have sex were already having it, and the holdouts wouldn’t bother trying tonight when everyone would be on the lookout for anyone going wild.
His amusement lingered as he searched out one feminine figure, making sure she was having fun and didn’t want to leave.
Pastor Dave’s ban on dating still stood, but for once Laurel’s argument that they were just friends had made a difference. Rafe had gotten permission to pick her up and bring her home, and he was not going to doanythingto mess up at this point. Not with Laurel going away at the end of the summer.
She was off to school, and he would stay in Rocky to help his brother, Gabe, with his new fiancée, Allison, hopefully turn around the Angel Coleman ranch troubles by going organic.
A whole lot of years of friendship were about to come to an end, and there was a knot in his belly as he considered it. A sense of sadness.
She was spinning in a circle, holding her friends’ hands, the girls a tangle of laughter and joy. Heads thrown back, bright happiness pouring off them.
Rafe stepped forward, unable to resist being a part of it.
Bad timing on his part, or maybe it was brilliant. The music changed as he took her hand, pulling her close for a dance. A slow ballad filled the air—something that called for their bodies to be pressed together as they swayed under the flickering lights.
It wasn’t unexpected for his body to react. Especially when Laurel looked up at him, nibbling on her bottom lip, eyes full of trust.
Rafe went hot everywhere.
“Stop wiggling like that,” he ordered. “You’re turning me on.”
She snickered. “Stupid man hormones. You get turned on in a high breeze, Coleman.”
He wondered if it was more than juststupid man hormones. At this point, thinking about her turned him on, but he knew better than to push it. He eased away, trying to create some room so his cock didn’t rub up against her. She didn’t cooperate. Instead, she stepped closer with that determined expression in her eyes.
“Devil woman,” he warned, forcing her to a safer distance as they danced. She gave in to his superior strength, finally going back to the modest clutch that he found just as tempting without being deliberately seductive.
Even him getting a hard-on around her on a regular basis hadn’t messed up their friendship. It’s not as if they were fooling around. Laurel could be pretty blunt when it came to talking about sex—like she was blunt about everything. And he appreciated it, he really did, although sometimes he wished…
He didn’t even know what he wished.
They were in his truck, and he was driving her home when she dropped the bomb.
“I’m going to Bible College in September.”
“Knew that,” Rafe said, taking the long route. The one that took them all the way around Rocky, because he wasn’t ready for the night to end.
She sighed. “You don’t know I’m going on a mission trip first.”
He tightened his grip on the wheel. “Where?”
“Belize. They had a last-minute opening, and I was on the wait list. I’ll be doing volunteer work in an orphanage for two months.”
He did the math and ended up with an aching pit in his stomach. “When do you leave?”
She laid a hand on his arm. “End of next week I head to boot camp.”
“Fuck.”
“Rafe…” Laurel chastised.
