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‘Don’t.’
He stepped back before he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t sure where the harsh word had come from. But Parker also knew he couldn’t bear to hear whatever she was going to say next.
And no way could he stand to have her touch him in comfort.
They settled into his car, and he was grateful for the distraction of merging with traffic. The misting rain turned into a steady drizzle and the swish swish swish of the windshield wipers filled the vehicle. Riding in silence, the awkward commute felt longer than it should have, and Parker was almost relieved when they drew closer to her turnoff and he had to ask her for directions.
Once he parked on her street and turned off the car, the rain began to come down a little harder. He slid off his jacket and turned to toss it onto the backseat, noticing her eyes on his chest. And the sharp stab of lust to his groin was unexpected.
‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ he said, gearing up for a goodbye.
‘No need,’ she said. ‘There’s no sense in two of us getting wet.’ She twisted in her seat to look at him. ‘Parker, about the wedding—’
Stomach knotted with tension, he bolted out of the car and rounded to the passenger side, opening Amber’s door. ‘We’re a block away,’ he said. ‘We should get moving.’
He closed the car door behind her with a forceful thunk, because the former stalker had lied to him. She was going to try to convince him to change his mind. And the last thing he needed were two females hounding him about an impossible task.
Amber frowned. ‘It won’t take long to get there, so we can—’
‘We better hurry before the rain gets worse,’ he said, taking her arm.
Leading her up the sidewalk, he glanced at the redhead from the corner of his eye. She had a nice figure. Slim, but curvy enough in the right spots to capture a man’s attention.
‘Parker,’ Amber said, sounding impatient. ‘We need to—’
The skies opened up and began to release a load of rain as if it had grown too heavy to hold. Their mad dash to the awning wasn’t fast enough, and, when they arrived, water dripped down their faces.
Parker turned to Amber, trying hard not to appreciate how good she looked wet.
‘The last time I saw you that soaked you were trying to drown,’ Parker said.
Sending him an overly tolerant look, she opened her mouth to speak again. But Parker had other ideas.
‘There’s something I gotta ask.’ He narrowed his eyes at Amber with a curiosity that was genuine. ‘Were you just pretending to be dead so I would do mouth to mouth?’
The shocked and offended expression on her face was instantaneous, and her mouth dropped open wider. ‘I—’
She blinked and tried again. ‘You—’
‘Hey,’ he said by way of protest. So far his choice of conversation had left her practically mute, which was exactly what he’d planned. ‘You followed me around. I mean, come on, I couldn’t seem to get rid of you.’ A smile split his lips at the memory. ‘I even caught you watching me make out with Susie Frances.’
Pink coloring bled up her cheeks. Parker would never forget the gaping look on Amber’s face when he spied her peeking at them from behind the lifeguard house. He knew his gruff ‘You got some kind of voyeur kink going on there, Ace?’ had been totally out of line. But the expression on her face had been priceless. Poor kid didn’t have a clue what he’d been talking about, but he remembered the look in her eyes.
From an awkward twelve-year-old it had been embarrassingly uncomfortable.
From a beautiful twenty-seven-year-old it made him embarrassingly uncomfortable in his jeans. Case in point, the way her eyes had skimmed over his chest in the car.
‘I did not mean to spy on you while you were with Susie,’ she said.
‘Feel free to keep lying to yourself,’ Parker went on. ‘So...did you?’
She blinked. ‘Did I what?’
‘Pretend to be dead.’
‘Yes,’ she said with a huff of sarcasm that told him it wasn’t true. ‘And vomiting up seawater was part of my evil seduction plan, too.’
‘Come on, you know you wanted to kiss me back then. It was hellaciously embarrassing, let me tell you,’ Parker said.
The color climbed higher up her cheeks. ‘Trust me, I didn’t plan out almost drowning just so I could get your lips on mine,’ she said. ‘Which is a good thing, too, because it would have been a terrible disappointment.’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Because it’s true.’
‘Awesome,’ he said with a dry twist of his lips. ‘My skills are being judged on a one-time incident of giving you mouth to mouth—’ he paused, as if for emphasis ‘—while you were trying to, you know, die.’
‘Sorry,’ she said with a delicate lift of her shoulder. ‘It’s my only basis for comparison.’
In a fit of madness he wanted to wipe that look off her face. ‘Well,’ he said as he stepped closer, hating how rough the word came out. ‘There’s an easy fix for that.’
Hands on her arms, he was vaguely aware goose bumps prickled her skin, and he wondered if it was from the chilling rain...or his touch.
No matter. He intended to be quick in his efforts, to dazzle her with his finesse. Get in; get out. Hopefully blow her mind. Or at least replace a stupid ten-second mouth-to-mouth moment with a kiss that was worthy of being judged. His pride was at stake here.
But when his lips touched hers, she let out a whimper that slayed him and canted her head up, opening her mouth beneath his as if she’d been waiting all night to do exactly that. And if he took advantage of the offer to sweep his tongue against hers, and instantly followed through on the crushing need to repeat the act, well...he was as weak as the next guy when faced with a beautiful woman in his arms.
He might have arched against her.
His breath might have caught in his throat at the glorious feel of her soft body.
Before he knew what he was doing he was shifting closer, his hands in the silk of her hair, and angling her head to increase the contact. To maintain the seductive slide of tongue against tongue. She tasted like maple and smelled like the syrup that matched the color her eyes.
For a heart-stopping moment he pushed aside the fact that she was too sweet. That she was the sort of woman that would expect more than he could give.
That she was the one person who knew the truth about how weak he’d once been.
The mood-killing thought hit like a jolt of lightning, and he tried to pull away. But her soft hand on his neck didn’t allow him to escape too far, now only an inch of space separating them. Her breath was sweet, warm and moist on his lips.
Heart thumping harder than it should have from a simple kiss, he stared into the golden-brown eyes.
And then she feathered her mouth across his in a way that was so soft, so barely there, that Parker didn’t know what to do with the moment. As lips ghosted across his, he frowned, frozen, adjusting to the foreign feel of something no
t focused on the act of sexual gratification. The barely-there touch of skin on skin that managed to gut him so thoroughly. Affect him more than any other more carnal action could have.
And an odd, soft feeling was seeping into his chest. A feeling he didn’t quite know what to do with.
But he did not do sweet. Not in his relationships, not in his work, not in his life. Yet, for some unknown reason, he couldn’t pull away. He didn’t respond, but he couldn’t move, either. Like a stupid deer in the freight-train-lights moment.
When she finally leaned back, her throat was flushed the same shade as her face, her fingers stroking against the hair at the base of his neck. Sending goose bumps, freakin’ goose bumps, down his back.
What the hell?
Rain pounded the pavement around them, gushing off the awning and cocooning them in a rushing wall of water.
‘So,’ Parker finally said. He cleared his throat. ‘I’d say that puts the kiss issue to rest.’
But, man, did it ever create a whole new set of problems.
Because he was staring at her face, still wet from the rain. A drop dripped from her hair and slid down her cheek, slipping past the corner of her mouth, and Parker was struck by the gut-wrenching urge to lick the trail. The slender body in the dress that now clung to curves he hadn’t truly appreciated without the addition of water. And, as if the want wasn’t bad enough, the strand of hair that clung to her temple added an air of vulnerability that was far worse than the feeling of lust.
From this proximity he could reach out and brush the lock from her forehead. Not that he planned on following through, or that he longed to. At all.
Damn it.
‘You seem awfully confident,’ she said softly.
‘I am.’
‘Shouldn’t I have a say?’
Lifting a brow, he waited.
‘It definitely puts the issue to rest,’ she said.
And the smile on her face left him wanting to kiss her again, and he fisted his hand.
He worked in a world of bitterness and darkness and death and she dealt with joy and lightness and happily ever after. He couldn’t bear the thought of being the one to snuff out those good feelings. And he would, too. Every woman he’d left behind him had been just a little more jaded, a little less innocent. Had believed a little less.
