Page 7 of Devil in Disguise
It wasn’t like she hadn’t wanted to check him out before, all those times they’d kissed in the car, in the woods. It wasn’t like she hadn’t wanted to notice. It was surprisingly embarrassing, though, not to know what to do next.
She’d watched porn, of course, like anybody with computer access. It justhappened,though, in porn. Nobody had to ask questions or decide anything, nothing was embarrassing, and nobody was awkward. Whereas in her real life, it had always been awkward, going from kissing to touching, knowing when to say no, trying to figure out why shewantedtosay no. And these past months, Owen had ended it before they got anywhere close. She’d been going backward instead of forward, and she was finally ready to go forward.
She needed to know what would happen next, and how every bit of it would feel. But she needed to dance with him, too.
She pressed herself closer, put her cheek against his chest, felt the muscle through the damp cotton of his white button-down shirt, and for once in her life, couldn’t think of anything to say. They wheeled together on the dock through that song and the next one, floating in a dream, the sky a black bowl pierced by a thousand pricks of silver, with the touch of a breeze coming off the water. She smelled the clean man’s scent of him, felt the hard slab of shoulder muscle under her palm, the bulk of his thighs moving against hers, and let him spin her until the last note died.
When it was over and she was against him again, he didn’t move, and neither did she. His chest rose and fell under her cheek, his hand was strong around hers, and the dock rocked softly underneath them.
Finally, she had to speak. What she said wasn’t what she’d planned. It was, “I love you.”
His hand tightened on her waist, and he said, “You can’t.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can. And I do.”
* * *
He didn’t wantto believe in this. He never had. It was going to hurt in the end, however good it felt before that. It was as dangerous as injecting heroin into your vein, and he could resist it exactly that much.
In other words, not at all.
He held her close for a second more, telling himself,Remember this,and then he picked her up with one arm, felt her arms twine around his shoulders like vines around an arbor, bent his head, and kissed her.
Lips as warm and sweet as candy. The scent of her, like fresh air and clean laundry on the line and flowers, because her secret, feminine heart, underneath all the intelligence and all the rationality and all the sardonic humor, still believed in flowers. The lithe young body, the poreless texture of her skin, and the hand that was on his cheek now, holding him.
He’d just thought,Need to take off my hat,when she was doing it. Holding it flat against his back, and her mouth leaving his, trailing kisses across his cheek, over to his neck, below the beard. She was burying her face there, breathing against him, making him shudder, and whispering, too close to his ear, “I need you so much.”
He was lost.
When he let her go, she shivered. The northern-latitudes chill had arrived with the darkness, and he’d been too wrapped up in her to notice. He said, “Come on. Let’s get you warm,” the words coming out choked.
Up the path to the car, pulling his jacket out of the back seat and wrapping it around her, then having to pick her up and kiss her again, up against the car this time, because she was right there. And when he did it, her legs wrapped around his waist like she knew how to do that. His lips were at the double bad-girl rings in her eyebrow, his hand at the back of her neck, cupping it. Holding her there.
This wasn’t controlled. This wasn’t safe. This was dangerous.
In the car, then, when he couldn’t stand not to be going somewhere with this, cranking the heat as she shivered some more, then driving to the resort, arguing with himself the whole way. About life experience and money and not even starting college yet and six years of age difference, and never mind that his mom had told him last week in her kitchen, apropos of nothing or everything, “The one consolation for the horror of getting my grays colored and looking at myself under those lights for two hours is that no matter how old I get, your dad’s still older. He was Aunt Tammy’s oldest brother, did I ever tell you that? That it was really Aunt Tammy who started it all, because she was my best friend? He was done with high school before I even started. But when I stopped being so little and he noticed me, he listened to me, and he laughed at my jokes, and somehow, in between being impossibly manly and sexy and competent—” She’d laughed at his grimace—“hebecame my best friend. I’m not even sure how that happened.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. He was bringing in her groceries at the time, running over from the shop to help her with them as soon as she’d started hauling them out of the car, the way he’d always done. Now, he started putting them away in the fridge.
“He always said I was more mature than he was,” she went on, ripping the top off a bag of flour and dumping it into the big canister. “I think that just meant that I thought about the washing machine when he was thinking about a new truck, though.”
He said, “I’m going to take a guess on why you’re telling me this, and tellyouthat Dyma isn’t more mature than me.”
“Well,” she answered cheerfully, “that’s probably because you’re an old soul. Maybe she brings you something else you need. Maybe she makes you laugh and makes you think. Maybe she makes you feel strong. That probably isn’t a terrible feeling. Maybe she letsyouforget about the washing machine for a little while.”
He was sure as hell forgetting about the washing machine now. Dyma’s hand wasn’t on his thigh as he drove this time, and it didn’t matter. He felt her like she wasn’t all the way across the car. Like she was imprinted on him the same way she’d been back there on that dock. Against this car.
And then they were at the resort again. Where she was sharing a room with Annabelle, and he was sharing a room with nobody.
5
Four Twenty-Three
The first timeyou had sex, like your high-school graduation, wasn’t actually that big a deal. Unless you were called to the convent or something, everybody did it eventually.
It didn’t feel like that. She kept getting little shocks, pulses of electricity straight to all that erectile tissue, woken up now and doing its job, that made her shift in her seat. Her legs were shaking, too, and not just with cold.
By the time she got herself down from the car at the resort, with Owen’s jacket covering her to mid-thigh, he was around to her side, slamming her door shut and taking her hand. He didn’t say anything, and she tried to think what to say herself and couldn’t come up with a thing.
