Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Holy hell.
Walking on the lakeside road, Wren lifted her hand and noticed it was still trembling.
She’d spent most of the movie with her face in Dane’s strong neck—not a bad place to hang out—his arms wrapped around her.
He’d seemed completely unfazed by the movie and, as she walked beside him, tall, solid, so very masculine, she felt safe from ghouls and beasties, both paranormal and human.
He had a way of calming her fears, reducing her tension, and allowing her space to just be.
To feel what she felt without having to push anything down or away.
Except for the recent bomb he’d dropped and left her to deal with, Alex always took over and removed obstacles—or, if he couldn’t, told her to ignore them.
Dane allowed her the space to work through her issues and find her own solutions.
He made her feel like she could trust herself, trust her choices.
And that was huge.
After a week of thinking about little else but what she wanted from her old life—and whether she should step back into it—she finally understood what going back to Alex would mean.
It would be exactly that. Stepping back. She’d be going back to old habits, to a previous version of herself. To the past, and she didn’t live there anymore. She wasn’t the same person, and she didn’t look at Alex in the same way. She didn’t need him the way she once did.
And, let’s be frank, she couldn’t help questioning how “safe” he really was.
If she looked at his actions, rather than at his words: his proposal to and, essentially, rejection of Jess—there was an announcement postponing their wedding on IG—his running back to Wren, none of them were terribly reassuring.
His actions didn’t exactly scream I will never chase another shiny thing and leave you.
No, she needed something different, something … more. With Alex, she’d be settling into comfort, into familiarity, surface-level safety, and deep down she knew that wasn’t enough for her anymore.
An owl hooted from somewhere within the woods, and she moved closer to Dane, wishing she had the guts to hold his hand, to wrap her hand around his bicep.
She’d had an excuse to cling to him earlier: hanging out on a dark lake watching one of the scariest movies ever made, practically demanded clinging.
But the movie was over, she was a grown woman, and she needed to hang on to her dignity.
But Dane, because he was Dane and a good guy, wrapped his arm around her shoulder and hauled her to his side. It seemed rude not to wrap her arm around his waist, not to drop her head onto his chest.
“You okay, Wren?” he asked, his grip on her shoulder reassuring. She was now. “You were pretty freaked out by that movie.”
“I never expected to be so scared,” Wren admitted. “I mean, being an H-Town kid, I grew up on horror movies, but that one scared the crap out of me. To make it worse, I kept feeling these wafts of cold air, like someone was breathing on my neck, like someone was watching me.”
It had been the weirdest thing; it was as if she’d been sucked into the movie on every sensory level. It had been too real, too in your face. She waved her words away.
“I’m being ridiculous,” she muttered, lifting her free hand to shake the wet ends of her cover-up. The temperature had fallen a little, and the damp fabric against her skin raised goosebumps. She still had a ten-minute walk to Luna’s and couldn’t wait to get in a hot shower.
“Are you cold?”
“Mmm,” she replied, not wanting to whine. “A little.”
He nodded, and instead of taking the next right to walk her to Luna’s, he carried on straight. “My house is just up ahead. Let’s get you into a dry T-shirt at least.”
His house, where they would be alone. Wren swallowed and looked up at his rugged profile in the dappled moonlight.
The chemistry between them was a living, breathing thing, and she knew that she just had to look at him, just had to stand on her toes to reach his mouth, and clothes would start flying.
She wanted that. She wanted him. Wanted the raw and the raging, hot sex and hotter kisses, then slow sex and slow talk. She wanted to explore his long, ripped body, feel all that skin, the hard muscles beneath, taste him … everywhere.
She wanted him.
She caught her breath, stopped, and looked up at him. “Can you offer me a hot shower?”
He looked down at her, his expression enigmatic, but his eyes watchful. “If that’s what you need.”
Wren nodded. “I do. And you in the shower with me.” She bit down on her bottom lip when he didn’t respond immediately. But his gaze sharpened, and she felt anticipation roll through him. “If that’s something that might interest you,” she added, wincing at her too formal words.
Dane, being the silent stoic he was, chose not to answer her in words.
Instead, he lifted her to her toes and bent his knees, aligning his mouth with hers.
She felt his soft, heated breath on her lips and wished he’d just kiss her.
Instead of speaking, he covered her lips with his, his mouth sure and experienced, his kiss quietly confident.
As his tongue slid past her teeth to slide against hers, he lifted her with one arm under her butt, plastering her against his chest. Needing more, needing to feel whether he was as excited by her as she was by him—her panties were already soaked, and her nipples ached—she hooked her legs around his hips and rocked into his holy-hell-was-he-too-big-for-her erection.
Would they fit? She was desperate to find out.
Dane kissed her like all he needed was her, like he needed to feast after enduring months of famine.
He held the back of her head with his free hand, changing the angle of the kiss to discover more of her, to find a better, deeper position.
She’d follow him anywhere if it meant more of this particular drug.
She was hooked…
Dane pulled back and rested his forehead against hers. “A family is coming up the road, we’d better stop before we give them an X-rated show.”
She hadn’t heard a thing, had blocked out everything but him.
She turned her head and saw two teenagers ambling toward them, their parents walking behind.
Ignoring their smirks, she slid down Dane’s body, and thankfully didn’t wobble when her feet hit the tarmac.
But maybe that had something to do with Dane keeping a tight grip on her hips.
As the kids passed them, she recognized the girl as being one of the teenagers attending her dance class.
Ally? Alyson? Alyssa? Something like that.
The teenager sent her a shy, embarrassed smile, but Wren knew that as soon as she got home, messages about her and Dane’s clinch would spread.
Within hours, everyone in town would know.
By tomorrow, the story would’ve morphed into something unrecognizable.
Then again, they had been wrapped around each other in that tiny boat…
“Warning, by tomorrow we’ll be naked and doing it against a tree,” she told him. She looked in the direction of the road that would take her to Luna’s. The teenager’s parents smiled as they approached them. “If you want to quell the rumors, maybe I should go home,” she whispered.
“Is that what you really want?” Dane asked, his voice low enough for only her to hear. He greeted the couple with a nod but immediately returned his gaze to her face.
She shook her head, not caring whether anyone knew she spent the night with a hot guy.
He was single, she was single, and it didn’t concern anyone else.
“I don’t care,” she told him, then shoved her tongue in her cheek.
“But it might not be good for the future H-Town doc to be caught making out in the middle of a busy road.”
Dane pulled her closer. “Since I’m not going to be the H-town doctor, I most certainly can kiss you senseless.” Then he proceeded to tell her with his mouth and hands exactly how little he cared for town gossip.
* * *
Standing in the hallway of his house, Dane kicked the front door shut with his foot, then lifted his hands to cradle Wren’s exceptionally lovely face.
Her mouth was a little too wide, her nose a little long, her eyebrows a tad off-center, but she was stunning.
Vivid, warm, and alive, and she turned his blood to lava with one look from her astounding eyes.
With her plastered against him, sometimes on him, for the best part of two hours, he’d fought to control his body, to stop himself from distracting her with a kiss, from doing everything Tad wanted to do just a float away.
But because he was an adult, he’d simply held her and spent the entire time silently groaning and trying to keep her from clocking his hard-as-fuck erection.
Now she was in his house, and he couldn’t quite believe that he was about to sleep with this amazing woman. He pushed aside a piece of hair sticking to her cheek and trailed his fingers down the fine line of her jaw. He needed to, once again, make sure. “Wren?”
She smiled at him, slow and sexy, her hands on his wrists. “Mmm?”
“Are you sure about this?”
At risk of sounding like a dramatic teenager, he’d die if she said no. Then she met his eyes and nodded. “I want you, Dane. I think I have since the moment I saw you working out in the park, the first day I got to H-Town.”
He kissed her lips, keeping it chaste, knowing that when he allowed passion to reign, they wouldn’t come up for air anytime soon, let alone make it upstairs. “Let’s get you in a shower so you can warm up.”