“Uh-huh,” Adam said, trying to keep the sarcastic inflection from his voice, but he must have failed because she reached back and smacked him in the arm.
He let out another laugh and just barely ducked her second smack. Catching her hand in his, he tucked it against her chest. “Your dad is smart as hell,” he said. “And incredibly intuitive. He’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know. He’d give away his last buck. And you, Holly, are the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.”
She played tug-of-war for her hand back and lost. “Fine,” she said, sounding a whole lot less hostile. “Maybe we’ve got some things in common.” She paused. “But I don’t know about giving away my last buck.”
He let go of her hand to slip his just beneath her sweatshirt, his fingers brushing the creamy, soft skin of her stomach. “Once you gave me everything you had.”
“Yes, well…” Her voice was soft now, and thick. With memories? “I’m smarter these days.”
They were both supposedly smarter now, which was a very good thing. Back in those days, there’d been no history between them, no rolled-up jacket as a barrier, no boundaries at all.
He’d given her everything he had, which admittedly hadn’t been jack shit. He wasn’t sure anything would be different now, though he honestly hadn’t given much thought to trying. He was still working on being okay with being among the living, when so many others he’d once known weren’t. He’d mostly accomplished this by burying himself in work, spreading himself too thin so that he’d fall into an exhausted sleep at night.
Tonight wasn’t going to be one of those nights.
Tonight he was going to lie here, wide awake, fighting not memories of war and destruction and loss but memories of a better time.
The best time of his life…
He thought about that for a minute and realized he wanted, needed, her to understand him. Unable to help himself, he let his fingers dance across her abs and felt her muscles quiver. “I told you I wasn’t coming back because I didn’t want you to wait for me.”
“I know. You’ve said.” She tried to roll away, but his arm tightened on her again, holding her still.
“You know that if I’d stayed,” he said, “I’d have kept screwing up my life. I needed to get out of Sunshine, Holly. I needed to become a part of something and learn some discipline.”
“I understood that. You had to go.”
He grimaced at that, which luckily she didn’t see.
She loosened her grip on his forearms and gentled her touch, stroking his skin, her words making him feel like an even bigger asshole. “Seems like maybe you got more than you bargained for,” she said quietly.
He let out a low sound of agreement, then spoke the sentiment he’d held on to for too long. “I just couldn’t have lived with myself, if I’d stayed and dragged you down with me.”
There was a beat of silence. Then she fought to free herself and he let her this time. She rolled over to face him and he expected…hell, he wasn’t sure what he expected. Appreciation for what he’d done for her, maybe? Certainly a softening toward him. Warmth and affection. Maybe even more…
Instead her eyes were flashing the heat of anger and he’d have sworn sparks were shooting out of her scalp. “Look at you,” she said, voice tight. “Making decisions for me. Guess that doesn’t make you any different than any other man I’ve ever had in my life, does it?” She shifted back away from him, accidentally kneeing him in the groin.
Or maybe not so accidentally.
“And you shouldn’t have worried,” she said while he sucked in a careful breath. “Because in case you hadn’t noticed, I managed to drag myself down all on my own just fine.”
“Holly—”
“I’m tired,” she said flatly, turning away from him now, giving him her back and a very cold shoulder. “I’m going to sleep.”
He tightened his mouth to keep it from running away with his good sense. “Fine.”
“Fine.” She sat up and replaced the jacket barrier, making a point of patting it into place before plopping back down.
They both settled and went still. The only sound was their breathing, which seemed far too loud. Long moments went by during which he counted the soft flakes falling out of the sky and lightly fluttering down just outside the opened doorway.
“Adam?” she whispered after a long moment.
He sighed. He didn’t want questions or a visit down memory lane. He wanted solitude and decompression. That’s what he’d always wanted. Except…Except in this moment, he didn’t know what he wanted. She confused the shit out of him, twisting him up, scrambling his brain. He had no idea why he even tried to control his feelings around her. Habit, he decided. He always maintained control, in every aspect of his life. It’s what had gotten him through.
His therapist had warned him that part of the process was learning to let go of that control. Easier said than done.
Not buying his possum act, Holly rolled over to face him, giving him a little jostle. “Adam.” She was peering at him in the dark, trying to see him.
Into him.
Usually just having her look at him the way that she did made every bad thing in his life dissolve into nothing. Now it made him unsettled. They were in far too close proximity for his walls to come tumbling down tonight.
Retreat…
Too bad there was nowhere to retreat to. Which meant he had no choice but to man up. “Yeah?”
She came up on an elbow and he braced himself. She wanted to understand him, the changes in him. He got that. But she couldn’t. She could never understand the places he’d been, the darkness he’d lived.
Her expression held uncertainty.
He should reach out to her, touch her, assure her. But he didn’t trust himself to do that, knowing all too well how easily he could lose himself in the physical attraction between them. He could bury himself deep inside her, finding a desperately needed release. But he would never allow himself to use her that way.
“I have a question.”
Great. “Okay.”
She drew a deep breath. “Why did you really let me come with you today?”
Ten
Holly held her breath for Adam’s answer. She wasn’t even sure he would answer. She didn’t know about him, but being this close was bringing back memories of other times. Better times. Times when they’d gone camping and been alone. But never with a barrier between them.
He spoke, his voice low and a little husky, as if he were filled with the same memories as she. “You weren’t going to ever forgive me if I left you back in Sunshine.”
“And you care why?”
Another pause. “I owe your father,” he said carefully. “And I owe you, too.”
Holly tried to read his face. Carefully blank. He was good at that. Hell, who was she kidding, he was the master at that. She knew he’d learned long ago that nothing good came of sharing his deepest, innermost thoughts, and that alone was enough to break her heart. There’d been a time where she would have given up her soul in order to allow his to be shared, but she’d long ago stopped believing she could get him to believe in her, in them, enough to let her in.
Why that still hurt, she had no idea. “You owe me nothing,” she said. “And my dad—”
“Believed in me when few others did,” he cut in. “He gave me a job when I was seventeen. And then after that drag-racing wreck, he helped me pay for an attorney.”
“The charges didn’t stick,” she started, but he shook his head
“They’d stuck in my head,” he said very softly.
She knew this. She knew all too well how much guilt and horror and regret he’d carried. But she also knew that even if that cop hadn’t died, Adam had never intended to be with her forever. The accident might have been the catalyst for him to leave, but he’d have left her regardless. “Adam—”
“Go to sleep, Holly. Tomorrow we’ll find your dad.”
Hoping that was true, she closed her eyes…an
d then came awake some time later to find that she’d completely disregarded her own decree. She’d rolled right over the bunched-up jacket and onto Adam’s half of the bedding.
And that wasn’t the worst part. She’d vacuum-sealed herself up against the delicious heat radiating off his body. Carefully, without moving a single inch, she took stock. Adam was flat on his back, innocent—which did not help her. Because she knew him, at least she had known him, and there wasn’t much innocence to him. There never had been.
But he was innocent now. It was she who’d climbed all over him.
He was asleep, his silky dark hair falling across his forehead, his body relaxed as she so rarely saw it. She lay there in the crook of his arm, one knee thrown across his legs, her hand settled disturbingly low on his belly, her position speaking of a deep, abiding trust. Trust in this man.
Taking in a breath and holding it, she began to slowly back off of him, but at her movement his muscles rippled like a big cat. His arms came up, pinning her in place, one big hand curled around her shoulders, the other sliding down her back to her butt, gripping a cheek with startling possessiveness. His breathing didn’t change, remaining slow and steady. The tortoise. Except he was more like a cheetah, wild and wily and sneaky as hell. She found his gaze locked on her in the barely there light. “Sorry,” she said, and tried to extract herself delicately.
He tightened his grip to stop her. He wasn’t smiling, but instead looked very serious. Pausing as if to gather himself, he flipped them so that his hard body covered hers. His mouth skimmed her cheek on its slow path to her mouth, giving her plenty of time to say no, but the word got lost in the translation from her brain to her lips. Instead, her body was screaming, Yes, yes, yes. “Adam.”
“You were feeling me up in my sleep.”
“No, I…”
He turned his head and his lips brushed the inside of her arm. Which, she realized, was wrapped tight around him, along with her other one.
She was holding on to him.
He nipped the skin he’d just kissed and she felt herself go damp. Dammit. “Okay, yes,” she said. “But I didn’t mean to.”
He dropped his head low enough to glide that oh-so-talented mouth along her jaw, down her throat, against the hollow of her collarbone. “We’ve both done a lot of things that we didn’t mean to,” he murmured.
She wanted to concentrate on his words, but his mouth was giving her an entire body shiver. “Don’t,” she whispered, clutching at him so he couldn’t escape. She closed her eyes. “Don’t toy with me.”
Above her, he went still. “Is that what you think I’m doing?” His breath was warm against her skin, and he dipped to taste, stirring up all kinds of fire within her. He met her gaze, his own dark and heated as he slid a hand down her leg, pulling it up, around his hip, which grinded into her.
He was hard. His mouth was warm, firm…perfect. Both familiar and yet completely new and exciting.
“Does that feel like I’m playing a game, Holly?”
Before she could respond, he traced a sensual line from her throat to her ear with his lips, teasing the outer shell before lightly sinking his teeth into the lobe.
She sucked in a breath and tightened her grip on him. Bringing up her other leg, she cradled his hips within hers, and her inner ’ho rejoiced.
Just this once, her body begged.
You’ll regret it later, her brain reminded her.
During this tug-of-war between her hormones and few remaining working brain cells, Adam’s fingers drew hypnotizing circles along her body and she helplessly arched up into him. Her body was winning the war. “Adam—”
His hand caressed along her cheek and wove its way into her hair at the back of her neck. Tilting her head up, he waited until she met his eyes, the air crackling with tension. “Are we going to stop?” he asked, voice thrillingly strained, chasing another shiver up her spine.
“No,” she whispered. God, no.
He held her gaze for a long beat while he seemed to wrestle with his own inner battle. Finally he leaned forward and brushed his lips to hers.
Her low moan gave him the access he needed and he deepened the kiss, his tongue stroking hers. She squirmed and wriggled, trying to get even closer. He rolled over her, never breaking the kiss as he cupped the back of her head, his thumbs stroking her throat.
She slid her hands beneath his shirt and over the smooth skin of his back, feeling the carefully leashed power of him beneath her fingertips. She wanted to unleash that power. She wanted that more than she wanted her next breath.
All this time, all these years, she’d never forgotten how he’d made her feel. And she’d wondered, had she done the same to him? Did he remember her touch as much as she remembered his? The truth was, she wanted him to. Wanted to remind him of how it had been. She wanted him to lose control with her, wanted him to wrestle hers away as well while he was at it.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d lost herself in passion and desire. She and Derek hadn’t been together in a very long time. There’d been a few men since, and it had been nice…but she wanted much more than nice. She wanted to completely let go, and she knew Adam could do that. Make her let go.
Her hands went south next, into the back of his jeans to the best buns she’d ever had the pleasure of gripping. When she pulled him into her, his mouth came down on hers—hungry and edgy and demanding. Surely one kiss couldn’t be all that, but this one was.
And she loved it.
Thrived on it.
She tugged at his shirt and he reared up to yank it off. “Careful of your shoulder,” she managed.
“What shoulder,” he said, and then went to work on her clothes.
“No, really,” she said. “You need to—”
He slid her sweatshirt up and her bra cups down, kissing and suckling his way from collarbone to breast.
“Um…” She struggled to hold a thought. “Careful not to strain your stitches—”
“Holly?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” He pulled a nipple into his mouth and his big warm hand slid between her legs, and she completely forgot about his injury. Too many clothes, she thought dizzily. And either the man had the gift of reading her mind or he remembered her body with sharpshooter precision, because he had her completely naked before she could blink.
A man on a mission.
But with the feeling of something cold and wet in her armpit, she squeaked. Adam lifted his head. “Milo, bed.”
Milo sighed at not being invited to the party and ambled back to his spot by the backpacks.
“He thought he was missing something good,” Adam said.
“He is.” Holly shoved his jeans down. Adam kicked them the rest of the way off and braced himself above her. He was hard against her inner thigh and she couldn’t wait another minute. “Please,” she whispered.
He made a low, innately male sound and dropped his forehead to hers. “Condom.”
She went blank. “Oh my God.” Had she actually, really almost forgotten protection? “You’d better have a condom. Tell me you have a condom!”
“I have a condom.” Rising, he strode buck naked—and glorious—to his backpack, returning with a foil packet.
“Okay,” she said on a sigh of relief. “We can be friends.”
But though he slipped back beneath the sleeping bag, he didn’t make a move.
“Are we stopping?” she asked, mirroring his earlier words. “Because I don’t want to.”
His thumb traced her lower lip, and then he bent and sucked on it. “No. Not stopping.” He tore open the foil.
She took the condom from him, rolling it down his length while he watched. By the time it was on, they were both breathing unevenly again. Holly looked up into his face, feeling the flicker of unexpected nerves. For all of her adult life, she’d measured her sexual experiences against Adam. What if he didn’t live up to the memory? Then he slid inside her, and she gasped, helplessly rocking up into
him because it was everything she remembered.
And more.