She framed his face in both hands as she glided up and down, up and down. “Last summer, I think you wanted to forget.” She moved a little faster, her breath coming in quick gasps.
“Maybe.” He lost himself in the depths of her eyes. “Now I want to remember. I want to remember how it feels to be loving you.”
“That sounds serious.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement.
“Not that serious,” he lied. His cli**x stalked him, ready to pounce. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you go.”
“I know.” Her h*ps pumped faster. “Don’t think about that now.”
He laughed. “Who’s thinking?” His grip tightened and the blood roared in his ears.
Her voice was low and intense. “Not me. I’m coming. Oh, Alex, this is so…”
“Yeah…” The sound of their ragged breathing drowned out everything but the slap of her thighs against the denim of his jeans as she hurtled toward her orgasm.
She took him with her. As the spasms rocked her body, he erupted, driving upward in an instinctive impulse to plant his seed deep in her womb. He understood that she wasn’t asking for anything but this, sex for the sake of mutual pleasure. But his body, responding to signals hundreds of years old, had other ideas.
His body would just have to get over it. Any thoughts that Tyler had been affected the way he had were dashed once she’d recovered enough to talk.
“Well, that was fun.” She laughed but didn’t meet his gaze. “However, getting unwound from each other will be more of a challenge than untangling a strand of Christmas lights.”
So, they were supposed to keep their comments superficial. He could do that. “How are you at untangling Christmas lights?”
“Pretty good. Let me move first.”
“I think that’s a given. If I move first, you’re going out the door and into the dirt.”
“Hold on to me.”
He cleared his throat. “You bet.”
“I meant that literally, not figuratively.”
“I know.” He wished she hadn’t felt the need to remind him, though. And once she lifted her body free of his, he battled a sense of loss that didn’t bode well for his future peace of mind.
“If I swing around and put both feet on the floor, then I think you can slide out, and I can sit back down in the seat.”
“You must be a whiz at Twister.” There. That was the right tone to set. Fun and games. He hoped he could maintain that attitude.
“I am good at Twister. And cruise ships are also a marvel of spatial economy, so I’ve learned a lot there, too.” She put her right foot on the floor mat. Then, bracing both hands on the back of the seat, she put her other foot on the floor, giving Alex room to duck underneath her and climb out of the cab.
He murmured his thanks, and once she was sitting on the seat, he closed the door, which turned off the dome light. That gave him the necessary privacy to deal with the condom and button up. By the time he came to the driver’s side of the truck and opened the door, she was once again dressed in her jeans and was putting on her shoes.
She’d braced one foot on the edge of the seat so she could tie her laces, and her hair fell forward, obscuring her face so he couldn’t read her expression. He would have thought she was totally cool and in command of herself except for one thing. Her fingers trembled and she was having some trouble tying her shoe.
Apparently she was as shook up by their lovemaking as he was. The breezy way she’d talked to him afterward had been her way of trying to maintain some distance. He’d promised not to cause problems for her, but it seemed he had, anyway.
“Maybe we should just go back,” he said softly as he climbed behind the wheel.
“We can’t.” She finally tied her shoe and switched feet to work on the other one.
“Why not?” He left the door open so she could see what she was doing.
She yanked at the laces, as if that would stop her fingers from quivering. “Because we told everyone we were coming out here to take a look at the sacred site, so we need to look at it. I don’t want to have to make something up if anybody asks what I thought.”
“I can describe it for you, if that’s all you—”
“No, I want to go out there.” She finished tying her shoe and turned to him. “Maybe it will help.”
“I think what might help is me keeping my hands off you for the next four days.”
She gazed at him, her dark eyes troubled. “That’s just it. I don’t want you to. Making love with you seems like the only worthwhile thing in the world right now. Maybe if I stand on that rock, I’ll get my sense of purpose back.”
“All right.” He closed the door and started the engine. “But no matter how that rock affects you, I’m backing off. I’m not about to derail your dreams.”
Chapter 8
THEY RODE IN SILENCE the rest of the way, which turned out not to be very far. Tyler’s body still hummed with awareness of Alex. She was tuned in to his breathing and the subtle sound of denim against the fabric of the seats. Even in the dim light from the dash, she could make out the movement of his thighs as he worked the pedals on the truck.
And she knew, even without looking, that he was aroused again, despite his vow to keep his hands off her from now on. She drew in his musky, masculine scent and imagined she could read his heated thoughts and his desperate attempt to tamp down his desire.
She’d fed that desire with her behavior, and she took full responsibility for the turmoil she’d created for both of them. She’d been the one who’d suggested they work together on tomorrow’s event. Yes, he’d initiated the kiss in the barn, but she’d wanted it as much as he had.
So they’d talked themselves into the idea that they could have a lighthearted affair and then go their separate ways. But now her future plans seemed like pale, lifeless things compared to the warmth of the Chance family unit and the heat she and Alex had created in the past few hours. She was terrified by that. She’d worked too long and too hard to abandon those plans on a whim, just because the image of a different future had appeared tonight.
“It’s up ahead,” Alex said. “I don’t know if you can see the rock yet. It doesn’t stick very far out of the ground.”
Tyler peered into the darkness. “I think I see it.”
“I’ll swing around so the headlights will help you catch some of the sparkle.” Alex veered to the left and then turned the truck so it was parked across the road. The headlights illuminated the surface of a flat rock about the size of a cruise ship’s lifeboat once it was lowered into the sea.
“Huh.” Tyler gazed at the subtle white stripes of varying widths, some only a few inches, some more than a foot. They did indeed sparkle. “It’s quartz.”
“Yep.”
“My folks would love this rock. Quartz is supposed to be good for meditation, and it’s also a healing stone.”
“Which fits with the local lore about this place,” Alex said. “Emmett told me that years ago he tried digging down to find the bottom of the rock, and after about seven feet he gave up. I’m sure somebody with special equipment could measure the depth, but nobody’s ever done that.”
“So it’s like an iceberg,” Tyler said. “We’re only seeing the smallest part of it.”
“True.” He gazed out the windshield at the rock.
“I guess now would be a good time to test its powers. Rain’s supposed to have a purifying effect on the quartz.”
“I read that.”
She glanced over at him. “You read up on crystals?”
“I thought I might as well, once I’d made up my mind to take a trip out here. I resisted the idea for weeks, thinking it was too mystical for me. Plus, Crystal is my ex’s name.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Josie’s the one who finally convinced me to come out here. She said I was still angry, which wasn’t doing me any good, and maybe it was perfectly appropriate to use a crystal to stop being angry with Crystal.”
“Was this after I was here?”
He nodded. “Maybe a month or so after.”
“I can sure believe you were still angry in August. There was an edge to you, something a little fierce about the way you made love.”
He looked stricken. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I know we got kind of wild in the hayloft, but—”
“No, nothing like that. It was more a mental thing. I could sense that anger Josie was talking about.”
“Do you sense it now?”
“No.” She hesitated. “But I think…I think you’re still wary.”
“You’re calling me wary? You, the person who’s scared to death that marriage is contagious?”
“Yes. You’re wary. If I suddenly reversed course and said I was giving up my career and wanted to settle down here at the Last Chance with you, I’ll bet you’d run in the other direction.”
He held her gaze for several long seconds. Then he looked out at the rock sparkling in the headlights. “We haven’t known each other long. I’d hate like hell to make another mistake.”
“You think it was your fault that the marriage didn’t work out?”
“No, but we shouldn’t have married in the first place. If I’d thought about it beforehand, I might have realized that Crystal would get bored. She needed more excitement, more action, so she finally went out and found it.”
Tyler frowned. “I’m sorry.” She’d suspected that Crystal had cheated on him, but hadn’t been sure until now.
“It was just a bad combination.”
“You mean a loyal person hooking up with a disloyal person?”
He smiled. “Thanks for that. I meant that I was focused on work, and she hadn’t expected that from me because I was a party animal when we met in college. So was she, and she never changed. I did.”
“I think that’s called growing up.”
“Or is it just different needs? You’re not really like her, but the job you love is full of parties and exotic destinations. My ideal life would be putting in a hard day’s work and relaxing quietly at home with…somebody special.”
That sounded way too appealing, and she found herself longing to be that somebody special in his cozy scenario. Dangerous, dangerous thinking if she expected to stay on course. With that kind of temptation, she could get sucked into the marriage-and-baby whirlpool before she knew what was happening.
“You’re right,” she said. “We do have different visions of how we want to live our lives.”
“That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m going to see what the rock has to say.” She opened her door. “Would you mind leaving the engine running and the lights on while I get out?”
“Nope.” He put the truck in Neutral and set the emergency brake. “I’ll come with you.”
She thought about snakes as she hopped down from the truck, but she also didn’t think Alex would have let her get out if he’d been worried about her safety. She trusted him to do the right thing. She just didn’t totally trust herself.