Page 77 of Hold on Tight

There was something like a collective sigh of relief in the room.

“Well,” Janet said. “We’re so glad you’re here. You and Sam. Welcome.”

It made Mira’s tears flow again. She swiped them away with the back of her hand. “Thank you.”

“What does it feel like? To have an instant family?”

Mira was about to respond. To say that it was a good thing. She was surprisingly comfortable here with them, despite the inquisition. The way they’d welcomed Sam. The way they regarded her warily but without judgment.

But before she could open her mouth, Jake spoke, and she realized the question had never been intended for her.

“Like Christmas in July.”

Chapter 24

“Did you mean that? What you said to your sister? About Christmas in July?”

“Of course I meant it.”

She felt stripped bare, by all the anger and suspicion, all the love and grief, that had been in the room earlier.

Holding him at bay hadn’t kept her from falling. Again. She’d told herself, told him, that she wanted things simple. That she needed space, and time, when all she needed was him.

Him.

Are you guys together?

If it had been her question to answer, she would have said:Yes. And shocked the hell out of herself in the process.

That afternoon, they’d watched the cousins play on the beach, then shared a jovial family dinner where everyone had talked up and over each other, voices weaving and mounting into a cacophony—as an only child of only children, Mira had never experienced anything like it, and it thrilled her that this was Sam’s legacy, his destiny. And all of that, the sweetness, the joy, only amped up the emotions that threatened to boil over.

And then they’d come down here, to the brink of the Pacific, and he’d built them a beach bonfire. First he’d made a circular fire pit from the smooth round rocks that covered the upper half of the beach, then he’d refused her help at gathering driftwood from up and down the beach, even though she could see that he had trouble with his footing on those stones. But she hadn’t tried to convince him. She understood him well enough now to know that it wasn’t important to him to do things the most efficient possible way, but it was incredibly important to him to do them his way, himself.

Now they sat under a blanket on a huge driftwood log in the glow of the fire, and the flickering flames cast his face into beautiful relief. Shadows under his brow, his cheekbones, the hard, hard line of his jaw. There had never been any man she could stare at so happily. No man whose simple physical presence started such a thrum in her body, whose gaze on her face could make her want to give herself over, throw herself open. Body and soul.

Below them, somewhere in the dark, moonless night, the ocean gave off a steady roar that drowned the rest of the world and left them here, alone, in this circle of light.

He tucked his fingertips into her hair and turned her head so he could capture her mouth.

The first kiss was a tease. A nip, a slick, quick entry and retreat.

“You’re delicious,” he said.

She made a sound of protest.

“More?”

She nodded.

“Come here.”

He pulled her down, hitched her legs up so she was straddling him across the log. She fitted herself to him, his erection pressing hard up between her legs, hot against her lips and her clit. She rearranged the blanket around them, and he kissed her again. More a long, slow press and glide.This is what I’m going to do to you later. His hands roaming, finding all the tender, striving parts of her, waking her up, making her moan.

She was dissolving, a peculiar trick of the heat of his body, the heat of the fire, and the flickering light that made everything not quite real. She melted, her whole groin and belly, her thighs, her breasts. Lost definition until he was the only thing holding her on the log.

“Take your pants off,” he said.

“Anyone could see us.”

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