“No. I just want to get some beach time in.”
“Okay.” I release her, but she doesn’t go far. She stares up at me with a conflicted expression, and I know right then there’s something on her mind.
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” I press. Maybe she’s having second thoughts about spending the next few days with me. Alone. Sharing a room with one king-sized bed and a sexually enticing siren on the wall.
“Wrong? I don’t know if I would use the wordwrong.”She wrings her hands together. “But there is something I think you should know.”
“What?” She has all my attention.
She hesitates, still fiddling with her fingers.
“Alana, you can tell me anything.” I try to ease her nerves. Even though my heart rate is racing a million miles a minute.
“Ryan, I’m—”
Our conversation is cut short when we hear a bellow and a shriek. I immediately push the door open to find Mac traipsing down the hallway with a girl in a bikini slung over his shoulder.
“Hey man! I was wondering when you were going to get here.” His smile is bright, and so are his eyes. Oh boy, I know that look. “This is Candy.” He turns her to face us. The brown-haired girl gives Alana and me a little embarrassed wave before Mac heads into the bedroom directly across the hall.
“Catch ya later!” The door slams closed.
Alana looks up at me with wide eyes, and I just shrug. “Gotta love him. It’s a weakness.”
She laughs loudly, and then we hear an exaggerated moan and a few sighs coming from behind the closed door.
We give each other the same look, then flee the room like it’s on fire and head down to the beach.
Where it’s safe.
* * *
Alanaand I spent the day on the beach; Mac came down an hour later wearing nothing more than a swimsuit and a smile. The guy is an animal sometimes. Now it’s just my girl and me having dinner at a quaint little restaurant with driftwood walls and fishing nets hanging from the ceiling. Not exactly my first choice, but Alana wanted seafood, so here we are. I’m munching on a burger while she’s cracking open crab legs.Ick.
“I can’t believe you eat that stuff.” I pop a French fry into my mouth.
“I can’t believe you won’t even try it.” She dips the pink meat into the small cup of butter then sucks it into her mouth. Okay. That would be the hottest thing imaginable if it wasn’t for the fact that seafood repulses me.
She scrapes out more meat from the shell then dips it in the butter again. Then she leans over the table flirtatiously and offers me two dripping, buttery fingers. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it?” Her tone hits me square in my groin. The exact spot she was aiming for. I’m torn between the desire to suck her fingers and the dread of what she’s holding between them. She sits there patiently waiting for my decision. Her eyes are ablaze, anticipating what will come next. I wonder if anyone else in the restaurant can feel the sexual conflagration roaring around our table, or if that’s just me?
With my heart pounding in my ears, I lean over and open my mouth, never taking my eyes off Alana’s. With a little satisfied smirk and glowing reddish-brown irises, she slips her fingers between my lips, and all I taste is butter and a burning hunger so fierce it threatens to scald my throat.
“Good?” she asks so sweetly I almost believe she has no idea the effect she has on me.
I nod, swallowing the inferno engulfing my voice. “I want more.”
Her eyes flash, both of us knowing this has moved way past my aversion to seafood.
I don’t know what the hell has gotten into her, but I love it. Every fiber is entwining in my body with the impulse to put my hands — and mouth — all over her.Allover her.
Alana and I finish our meals with the thickest sexual tension I think any four walls have ever contained. And by the weathered look of this place, they aren’t going to hold much longer.
Once we’re done and I pay, we stroll down the street past small beach shops, candy stores, and other vacationers. We can barely keep our hands off each other, and everyone notices. This is the most relaxed and open she has ever been. It’s intoxicating. The sound of her laugh, the smell of her skin, the beam of her smile. I want to ask her what’s come over her. Ever since she got in the car this morning, she’s been different. A really, really good kind of different. But I don’t want to ruin the mood or send her running back into the confines of her emotional shell, so I’m just going with it, silently hoping we can talk about it later. Ideally, naked.
“You gonna win me a stuffed animal, or what?” she bumps my hip as we come upon some boardwalk games.
“I don’t know. Am I going to get anything in return for it later?”
Alana smacks me on the arm, but I’m being serious. If she’s going to turn the key, I’m going to rev the engine.