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Her eyes narrowed in suspicion and he thought maybe he’d skate by, but then she shook her head. “Okay, so maybe that’s the cover you use. But you’re one of his. And you’re not going to tell me ... either because youwon’t, or because youcan’t.”
She fisted her hands in his shirt and stared at him, her face crumpling.
“Why, Travis? You had dreams,bigones. Why did you end up down in the dirt?” She shook him slightly and it wasn’t anger on his face now, but pain.
And that pain gutted him.
It only got worse when she let go of his shirt to slide her hand to the healing wound on his side and carefully trace the area around the injury. “In the dirt, doing shit that damn well could get you killed.Why?”
“Why?” His voice cracked. He couldn’t hide it from her. She’d asked and he’d tell her. He had no willpower when it came to her. But that wasn’t any real news. She’d always been his greatest weakness. “I stopped dreaming fourteen years ago, Iz. What I did with my life after that ... it didn’t matter. I figured I might as well do some good somewhere or other.”
Her face twisted in a rictus of grief and pain while tears swam in the misty green of her eyes.
“Damn you.” Then she reached up and cupped his neck, pulling his mouth to hers.
––––––––
Isabel had given upon the idea of feeling truehappinesswhen she’d realized that Travis Barnes had abandoned her. For years after he’d walked out of her life, everything had existed in swathes of gray with little exception. Color had started seeping back in only after she’d started to truly believe that her father would stay in prison, but even then, the colors were muted.
Sometimes, she still felt like she couldn’t take a deep breath.
But as her mouth touched Travis’s, the world lit up.
It didn’t matter that it was night, the only illumination that of the fire by their sides.
It might as well have been high noon, with the sun shining down on them in all its glory.
The world took on color.
Sensation snapped to life inside her.
The scent of him, musky and male, smelling of the sea and the sun, flooded her senses.
For the first few seconds, he didn’t move, rigid against her.
Then his arms banded around her, one hand shooting into her hair, dislodging the clip she’d used to twist the wavy strands into a loose knot while his free arm clamped around her waist and hauled her to him.
He angled his head to the side, deepening the connection of their mouths and his tongue swept into her mouth.
She moaned and the sound was echoed by him.
His kiss ...
Oh, hell.
She strained against him, her breasts aching in a way that was wholly unfamiliar, while her nipples drew tight and a heavy, relentless pulsing settled between her thighs.
Most of her life she’d gone without experiencing desire, save for a few inexperienced, awkward make-out sessions with the man who now held her, back when they’d both been two teenagers desperate with the throes of young love. She had a couple of lovers, but those hadn’t been really about passion. Loneliness had driven her, not desire.
She might have enjoyed her time with the few men who’d passed in and out of her life, but that was it. A passing pleasure. Nothing more. Even at the time, she’d known she’d only been filling a void. Those men had paled in comparison to the boy she’d loved.
And now...?
These kisses didn’t evencompareto the heat that had passed between her and Travis all those years ago.
Those kisses had been hot.
These kisses threatened to melt her very bones from the inside out.
