Page 11 of Handling Skylar
“There you go again, pegging me like you’ve known me for years. I want to know all those secrets in your eyes, Sky.”
I took advantage of the silence to study him for a moment as his eyes roamed my face, that intense, brooding look back. The feeling that he was two very different men struck me. One minute he was the charming, smiling gentleman with enough bad boy to make it interesting, hell-bent on getting into trouble and having a good time; the next he was this closed, dark man who kept the door shut on the part of himself he didn’t want anyone to see. I found myself wanting to know what was on the other side of that door. A dangerous curiosity, I thought pulling myself back from asking more questions.
An owl called four round notes, then lifted off from the branches of a nearby cypress tree, its wide wings beating the air, barely making a sound.
The bayou was like its native son, hard, hot, shadowed. The night like dark, heavy black satin, the air sultry with the deep primal scents of earth and water. I shivered, the shudders delicious as they rippled through me, hardening my nipples and giving me an ache in my core that I was certain Jake could satisfy.Forceful, dirty talker.
I ached to get my hands, my mouth and my body on him. I had never felt this way before. I’d been physically attracted to a man, and I’d been mentally attracted, but Jake stimulated everything, all at once, simultaneously.
He boxed me in, his hands on either side of me, catching me by surprise and shuffled closer and closer, until we were almost touching. There was something in his eyes that was resistant and reluctant—forbidden.
“We both have secrets I’m sure,” I managed to say on a breathless whisper. “We both know this is wrong.”
“Why does it feel so fucking right then?” he drawled, his voice stroking over me like long, sensitive fingers.
I reached out and brushed the backs of my fingers over his jaw. “Because you need comfort, a place to rest instead of turmoil. I see that, Jake. But, this isn’t going to help. It’s only going to make it more complicated.” I went for truth to ward off the other, more dangerous feelings.
He lowered his head a fraction, his dark eyes shining as he homed in on my mouth. “Rationally, I get that. I don’t want to think right now.”
“Neither do I. But I’ve never been a stand-in for anyone or anything.”
“I’d never treat you like that.” He rested his forehead against mine, and I heard it in his voice. He’d gotten control. Thank God, because I hadn’t.
“I know,” I whispered.
He brushed his thumb over my mouth. “Sometimes circumstances dictate behavior. I’ve sacrificed enough to convention and towing the line. I’m heartily sick of it.”
“I second that. Frankly, it sucks.”
The gleam in his dark eyes pulled at me like a magnet. He laughed softly. “There it is again, that bold sass,” he growled, that clever, sexy mouth curling up at the corners.
“Well,” I said, more disgruntled than amused. “It does.”
The smile deepening, the magnetism pulling harder, he leaned a little closer. “Especially when you turn me on, all the way on.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re impossible and a first-class tease.”
“It’s not bragging if you can follow-through,” he said, wry amusement twinkling his eyes.
“You’re impossible.”
“Oh, no, sugar,” he teased, leaning in again. “Not impossible, but hard for sure.”
“All the way hard?”
Our laughter drifted away on the sultry air, and awareness thickened the humidity around us. I felt my heart thump a little harder as I watched the gentleman fall away. He looked intense, but it was a softer look than I had seen before, and when he smiled, it was a softer smile, a smile that made my breath catch in my throat.
Just when I thought we were out of the danger zone.
“If you like to see me laugh, I love to see you laugh ten times more. You light up the night,” he said, lifting a hand to brush at the wisps of hair on my cheek. His fingertips grazed the corner of my mouth and stilled. Slowly, deliberately, he hooked his thumb beneath my chin and tilted my face up as he lowered his mouth to mine.
Not smart, Sky, I told myself, even as I felt my lips soften beneath his. I wasn’t strong enough to resist even though I knew I should have. I wasn’t looking for complications and drama. But I had found the one man in this town that would cause plenty because his shrew of a girlfriend would see to it that I did. Jake Sutton was smart, wealthy and still Suttontowne’s golden boy, as controlled, organized and predictable as they came. He had his life planned out perfectly, and I was that monkey wrench that he couldn’t help throwing into the mix. But nothing I thought or did dispelled the fire that sparked to life as he tightened his hold on me and eased his tongue into my mouth.
His soft groan, deep in his throat as he tasted me, sounded like a man who had found something he’d been hungering for. Something he needed as deeply as sustenance and the simple things in life that we all took for granted.
A lost soul looking for a haven.
I wanted to be that haven.
