“You’d better.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “It’s all gone by so fast. This fling, us, my bad behavior blackmailing you into seeing me.”
“You probably didn’t have to blackmail me. You could have just asked me out or something like normal people do.”
“I tried contacting you to do that, Miss Pricklepants, remember? And you never replied to my messages and voicemail.”
“Oh yeah.” She pulled her hand away and folded it into her lap. “It’s been good. I’ve made enough contacts to keep me in paid work for about two years, with the promise of more to come.”
”That’s great and you deserve it. You just needed a chance.”
“Matt?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
The expression on her face made his blood run cold. It was super-exposed, super-earnest, and she didn’t look like the same woman he had met in Sanibel. She looked like a freaking angel and his heart flipped over. “You’re not going to tell me you’re in the Princess Aspen way, are you?”
She looked confused for a moment. “No! Oh my God, no. You know I can’t—that I wouldn’t—”
“Sorry.” He shook his head and chuckled. “It seemed like such a loaded statement.”
She took a deep breath before continuing. “I need to tell you that…I really wish you didn’t have to leave Passion Creek so soon.”
He pressed his lips together to stop a heartfelt, uncontrolled, and honest response from spewing forth. Control. Detachment. “I have to go, it’s the right time. But you’ll be fine, right?”
He heard her intake of breath. “Yes, of course I will.”
She wasn’t very convincing, but what had he expected her to say? She had her dignity. “And this is how we planned it all along.” He nodded, willing her to agree.
“I don’t think I ever got consulted during the planning phase.”
“Okay, sorry, but we have to be honest about this. You chased me in Sanibel. That night happened and then I chased you back. We had a few struggles along the way, but now we’re even, I think.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I guess I made out a lot better in the end.”
He rubbed his chin for a moment and stared up at the stars. “And speaking of honesty, there’s something you should know about the stuff you told me in Sanibel, about the scandalous secrets I pretended to know.”
Her face dropped. “Pretended to know?”
“I tricked you. I’m not proud of it now, but the only thing you really told me was the Pastor Zimmerman thing. The purple penis…”
She swallowed before answering. “So why tell me now?”
God, he felt like a heel, but he needed her to know the truth. “I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder because of something I said. Whatever secrets you have are still secrets unless you’ve told anyone else. Have you?”
“Not the things that really bug me.”
He wanted her to open up to him, but even he wasn’t that selfish. “I guess I have no right to ask about them now, on our last night.”
She looked away. “No you haven’t, not really. And I don’t want to spoil our last night either. Let’s forget about all that.”
He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “This whole journey has been amazing, Piper.”
“It’s cold now.” She stood up and threw the twig she’d been fiddling with onto the dying coals of the fire pit. It smoldered with blue smoke for a second and then burst into red and orange flame. “Let’s go in. Upstairs.”
Her hand slid into his as he watched the flame gutter and die. “Yes, let’s do that.”
Chapter Seventeen
“You’re beautiful,” he said as the bedroom door closed behind his back. He wanted to tell her how much he would miss her, but he couldn’t. It would open a line of conversation that would lead them nowhere and ruin the moment, and the time they had left.
“Sh.” She reached out and gently stroked his cheek. Her delicate touch burned his skin, and he held his breath, unsure how to respond. She had never touched him so tenderly before, or maybe she had, but he’d been in such a rush to have sex with her that he hadn’t noticed. How familiar the feel of her was after spending so many days and hours together. Hours with strangers, hours alone together, and hours of him lying awake at night when she hadn’t been there imagining her lying next to him, their bodies pressed together, naked, fingers entwined in the darkness.
He closed his eyes, leaning into her fingers as they found his lips and traced the outline of them, wanting her to kiss him, waiting for her to make the first move.
“Matt,” she murmured, “you okay?”
His insides melted. No, everything was not okay. This was their last night together and he had no idea how to play it. He had no idea why he felt so strange, so angry. He wanted to hear things come from her mouth that went beyond sex, that went deeper, but he couldn’t begin to imagine what those words would be. Or whether she was even capable of feeling the need to say those words after the way men had treated her so far.
He felt her soft breath on his cheek and her subtle female scent filled his lungs. He pulled her closer and looked down into her apple-green eyes. Raw desire sparkled there, but he was looking for more than that, and his wanting even more from her frightened him.
“I want you,” he murmured, three words he’d said so frequently to her, but this time there was more meaning behind them.
“Then close your eyes,” she whispered and her lips found his, their mouths merging, her tongue insistent, and he felt pressure and heat building with every touch of her hands. He needed her closer and put his arms around her slender waist, pulling her small frame into him, wanting her to feel his strength, to crave his protection.
He groaned as she kissed his neck and throat, small teeth grazing the hard edges of his shoulder, tasting the soft skin of his bicep and making him feel more alive than he could ever remember. He moved his hand up the back of her sweater and felt the deep groove of her spine, the soft angles of her shoulder blades, warm and silky under his touch. “No bra at all this time,” he murmured and swallowed down the sparkle of lust that threatened to make him see stars.
He pulled the sweater over her head and took her breasts in his hands, marveling at the soft, winter-pale skin and the dark red peaks that drove him crazy with desire. His thumbs grazed both nipples and she arched up, pressing herself into him and signaling her need to feel his naked flesh by pulling at his shirt buttons and finding his nipples with her hot, hungry mouth. He shuddered as she nipped at his puckered flesh, inflamed by how sensitive that part of him suddenly felt. Then he dipped his head, his lips trailing over her alabaster skin until her mouth left his chest with a small cry as he found the hard peak of her nipple and sucked it hard.