Page 237 of The Right Sign

I grip his hand before he can do anything. “Call them tomorrow.”

“It’s early enough.”

“Let’s finish eating.”

He narrows his eyes.

I avoid his gaze and admit, “I believe you, Dare. The problem isn’t that I don’t trust you. It’s that I do. So much. These feelings are new and a bit overwhelming. It’s true that I’m still a little fearful, but it’s not of you. It’s not of us. It’s of the future and what the world might throw at us. But I’m here because I believe we can overcome anything.” I take a sip of the wine, lean over and chase his mouth. Our lips meet in a gentle kiss. Easing back, I sign, “And I promise I won’t leave you either.”

He looks at me, dazed.

Feeling calmer, I pick up the fork and offer him another taste of the food. When he doesn’t move to eat it, I turn the food on myself.

Before I can take a bite, the fork is abruptly removed from my grip and Dare is surging at me. A violent tremor wracks my body as he conquers my mouth so thoroughly that my head lulls back.

While I’m distracted by his roaming lips and tongue, Dare somehow manages to rid me of my shirt and roll my yoga pants to my knees. I only register my nakedness when the heat from his kisses can no longer compete with the balmy wind, tapping against my exposed skin.

A strike of sobriety fills me.What if someone sees?This high up in the penthouse suite, we’re semi-secluded, but there are other hotels on this stretch of the beach.

My protests die before they see the light as the slide of Dare’s tongue has me closing my eyes again. His kisses become purposefully succulent, as if he’s forcing himself to slow down and make love to me with his mouth before we consummate with our bodies.

My eyes flutter open and meet his, a dark and dizzying obsidian.

He slips a hand under my thighs and lifts me. I expect him to take me into the bedroom, but he sets me on the edge of the wicker chair instead. The lumpy weaving makes me wince and Dare notices immediately.

He lifts me again and adjusts me on the edge of the sturdy round table we’d been eating on, shoving aside our plates to make room. My breathing stutters and then gallops as he pushes my dangling legs further apart.

I figure this is a give and take moment and I reach out to undress him.

He snatches my wrist and lifts my hands above my head, pinning me in place with his hungry stare.

All the air flees my body in a whoosh as he kneels and directs those relishing, succulent kisses to somewhere other than my mouth. Uncontainable energy bursts through me. My newly freed hands scramble on the table, skidding across filmy glass and hitting a plate. The dishes crash to the floor, whatever noises they make only serving to spur Dare on.

The skillfulness of his mouth and tongue make me beg him in my thoughts and plead with him in sign, neither of which slows the agonizing bliss that sends white hot lights blazing across the sky. Or maybe that light is inside my own mind. Behind my own eyelids. Tattooed under my skin.

I don’t know.

I don’t know anything anymore.

Except that Dare’s only whet an appetite that’s unquenchable.

By the time I come to, I realize I’m clawing at his belt.

This is an impatience I’ve never experienced. It’s agony to have him touching me and not being able to return the favor. I want to set him on fire. I want to leave him in an equally breathless heap.

But Dare grips my arms and eases me back, licking his lips like a chef ruminating over his favorite meal.

He’s a wild man. Everything about him is raw and addictive and untucked. No perfectly coiffed hair tonight. Now it’s untamed, rifled as much by my fingers as it is by the wind. No perfectly shaved jawline and chin. Now the scruff is thick enough to prickle my skin, adding new layers of sensation to our kiss.

“Do you know,” Dare signs, panting as if he’d been the one on the receiving end of greedy hands and wicked lips, “how gorgeous you sound when you groan?”

“Me?” I sign, my eyebrows climbing. I send a swift glance down at the broken plates near his feet. Wow. Did we have so many dishes tonight? “Are you sure you weren’t hearing those?”

His fingertips slide up my thigh and back down. “You’re joking.”

I can barely remember how to sign right now, much less crack a joke.

“You didn’t know?” Dare looks alarmed. As if the fact that I’m noisy should be a nationally celebrated fact. Like a parade should be thrown.

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