Chapter 31
SUMMER
Iwoke up with a gasp.
One second I was dead asleep and the next I was sitting straight up in bed with my heart hammering like I’d been running sprints. The room was dark. The house was quiet. I pressed my hand flat against my sternum and told myself to breathe.
One of the kids, probably. Ocean had a habit of padding to the bathroom in the middle of the night and being completely incapable of doing it quietly. Or maybe Becca was checking on the kids. Something alerted me. Or maybe it was a dream. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming.
I waited, listening to the darkness, and heard nothing.
I let out a slow breath and dropped back against the pillow.
I stared at the ceiling. My heartbeat slowed.
I closed my eyes and willed myself back under.
It was a ghost. Before, when I’d woken up in the middle of the night for no rhyme or reason, I told myself it was Mom saying hello.
I didn’t remember where I’d heard that, but it brought me comfort.
Maybe she was popping in to tell me she saw Colt hanging out with the family and approved. I liked that idea. I smiled and felt myself drifting back to sleep.
Then I heard it again.
A scrape. Something against the outer wall of the house. Not the settling of old wood. Not my mom saying hello. The sound was definitely corporeal. Maybe a mouse? A raccoon? I sat up in bed, heart returning the breakneck speed and my stomach doing dangerous things.
I turned my head toward the window. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see. The curtain shifted slightly with the breeze from the ceiling fan. I’d left the window cracked before bed, the way I always did in summer. The night air was too good to shut out completely.
I slid out of bed without turning on the light and crossed the room on bare feet.
I could feel my heartbeat in my ears making the whooshing sound of the ocean.
I told myself it was nothing. A skunk on the deck railing.
A branch. One of the neighbor’s cats that liked to patrol the upper deck in search of a mouse.
I prayed for strength because if I had to face a critter, I was going to need it. I pulled back the edge of the curtain and peered out. Colt Anderson was standing on my upper deck.
I made a sound that was somewhere between a shriek and a gasp and clapped both hands over my mouth.
He was right there, leaning against the outer wall with one shoulder, like he was waiting for a bus and not hanging off the second story of someone else’s house at one in the morning.
He was still wearing the dark green henley from dinner. His hair was slightly disheveled.
He smiled when he saw my face appear in the window. That same damn smile that had ruined my life seven years ago in the best way possible. I yanked the window open the rest of the way.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. The words came out sharper than I intended. My heart was still trying to punch through my sternum. “You scared me half to death. How did you even get up here?”
“The lattice on the south side,” he said quietly. “It held. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
He glanced downward and then back up at me with an expression that said we probably didn’t want to inspect the lattice too closely in the morning light. A few years ago, the lattice had been a lot stronger. His shimmies up the lattice back then had been much less dangerous.
“I wanted to thank you again,” he said. “For dinner. For your family. For all of it.”
I stared at him. “You could have texted.”
“I could have.” He shifted slightly, moving a fraction closer to the open window. The deck boards creaked softly under his weight. “But that’s not really what I came for.”
My stomach dropped as he pulled the screen from the window, something he’d done many times. The poor thing was bent from the many removals over the years.
“What did you come for?” I asked. I knew the answer. I could see it in the way he was looking at me. But I wanted to hear him say it.
“I left without what I actually wanted tonight,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper. “I tried to tell myself not to come over, but I’ve been sitting alone in the dark and decided fuck it. I know what I want.”
I swallowed. “What do you want?”
He leaned in, one forearm braced against the window frame, bringing his face level with mine through the open window.
“A proper goodbye,” he said softly. “A kiss. Just one.”
“You climbed a lattice,” I whispered.
“I would have climbed the whole house,” he said simply.
“You’re not a teenager.”
“Wasn’t a teenager when I climbed before. I survived. I’ll replace the lattice, maybe something made from steel just in case I put on a few pounds. Of muscle, of course.”
I laughed softly, finding the man ridiculous but so damn irresistible. I grabbed his shirt and yanked him hard, nearly banging his head against the bottom half of the window.
I gave him the kiss he came for. Maybe a bit aggressive. Like a succubus latching on. My tongue slashed against his.
When he started to pull away I grabbed the front of his henley.
He made a low sound of surprise that dissolved into a quiet laugh against my mouth. “Summer.”
“Don’t go,” I murmured. I decided I didn’t care if it sounded desperate.
I was done making sensible choices tonight.
I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust if I didn’t get that man on top of me.
Inside me. It had been too long and my body and I were done waiting. I was taking what he offered before.
“Yeah?” he breathed.
“Get in here,” I said.
He grinned against my mouth. I stepped back, dropping my hand from his shirt.
He got one leg through the window without any trouble.
Then his shoulder caught the frame and he misjudged the height of the sill.
He reached out, trying to hold on to something, and fell forward, knocking down the framed picture of the beach at sunset.
I lunged and caught it before it could hit the floor but I ended up slamming into the wall with a loud thud.
We both froze. Him half in the window, me cradling the picture. I didn’t dare take a breath. Silence. The house stayed quiet.
He looked at me. I looked at him. I pressed my lips together and carefully propped the picture against the wall.
“I think your window got smaller,” he whispered.
“I think you’re not as flexible as you used to be. All those muscles.”
We both dissolved into silent laughter. My shoulders were shaking and eyes watering but I barely made a noise.
“I’m stuck,” he hissed. “Laughing is not helping this situation.”
That only made me laugh harder. I was in danger of peeing my pants if he kept it up.
“Help me!”
That did it. I dropped to the floor, legs crossed and my hands over my face. He was laughing as well. And then he hit his head. My head was going to explode with my attempts to keep my laughter in. I was going to die.
“Fuck,” his whisper-shout had tears streaming down my face.
I crawled to him, doing my best to help him. The man was at a very odd angle. One arm in. A leg. His head. But his hips and shoulders were still outside. I did the only thing I could. I grabbed the one arm and pulled. It worked. He fell on top of me with a loud thud.
“I’m going to pee,” I squeaked.
“This is the least graceful, most unsexy thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He rolled off me, flat on his back with one arm flung out. “I’m never going to recover.”
“Are you okay?” I managed to ask.
“No. My dignity is shredded.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. I got to my feet and rushed to the door to lock it just in case we’d woken someone up. I turned the lock and turned back around. He was still stretched out on the floor.
“I think I pulled a hamstring,” he said.
I walked back to him and leaned over him. “Want me to kiss it better?” I asked.
“Are you offering?”
“I dragged you through my window,” I reminded him. “I am offering to kiss everything better.”
“In that case…”
He reached up and pulled me down to him by the back of my neck. I went willingly, my knees hitting the floor on either side of his hips. His mouth found mine immediately, hungrier than before. I felt the laugh still caught in my chest dissolve into something else entirely.
His hands moved into my hair, tilting my head back so he could deepen the kiss. A moan escaped my throat, which he quickly swallowed.
“Quiet,” he murmured against my lips. The reminder sent a fresh wave of heat through me.
Right. The house. Everyone sleeping just down the hall.
That only made it better. Far more exciting.
Dangerous. I was an adrenaline junkie and the thought of fucking this man on the floor of my bedroom made me wet.
I pressed my mouth harder against his in response. His hands slid from my hair down my back, finding the hem of my shirt and sliding underneath it. His palms were warm against my skin. I arched into the touch involuntarily.
“Damn,” I moaned.
I reached down and pulled my shirt over my head. I wasn’t wearing a bra—obviously. And I had only been wearing my panties with the shirt. He sat up slowly, one hand coming to rest flat against my stomach. Just resting there. Not moving. His eyes stayed on mine.
“Damn woman,” he said, sliding that hand up and cupping one breast.
He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to my collarbone. His lips moved slowly across my skin, no urgency at all. Somehow that was worse than if he’d been rushed about it. Worse in the best way. My fingers found his hair.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I whispered.
“Doing what?” His mouth moved to the curve of my shoulder.
“Taking your time.”
His lips brushed the side of my neck. I tipped my head to the side without meaning to. I felt him smile against my skin. “I have thought about this for too long to rush through things. I want to savor this. You. This body.”
His hand massaged one breast before tweaking my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. His mouth returned to mine in a slow, languid kiss. My fingers tightened in his hair as his hand moved to my other breast. He took his time. I was already having to work considerably hard at the quiet part.
I pushed him back down to the floor and followed him, my mouth finding his jaw, his throat, the warm skin below his ear. He exhaled slowly through his nose, his hands sliding up my thighs. I slid my hands up his chest, pushing the shirt up until I was pulling it over his head.
I ran my palms flat across his chest, his stomach, feeling the muscles shift underneath. His abs were fucking amazing. “Eight pack,” I murmured.
“What?”
I bent and pressed my mouth to his ribs, just below his heart. “This is not a six-pack,” I said. “Eight abs. I’m going to lick every single one of them.”
His breath caught. I moved lower, dragging my lips across his stomach. His fingers threaded through my hair. Not pulling. Just resting there.
“Summer.” My name sounded like a curse and I loved it.
I looked up at him from where I was. “Savoring, remember?”
He groaned. “Me savoring you.”
“Stop rushing me.”
He dropped his head back against the floor. I felt the breath leave him all at once. I smiled against his skin and kept going.
His hand in my hair flexed and released. I worked at his belt slowly, watching his face while I did. The effort it was costing him to lie still was written clearly across every line of his expression. I had the man in the palm of my hand—literally.