Tropical Leopard's Longing (Shifting Sands Resort 8) - Page 42
Her head spinning with axles and undercarriages and oil pans and mufflers, Darla finally stopped listening and simply gazed at Breck. He was explaining something about exhaust systems and oxygen sensors, and he was so animated and so dear that Darla could barely breathe.
It wasn’t just how badly she wanted his touch, it was being with him.
It was the way he laughed, and the way he made her laugh.
It was the way he cared more about how people felt than what they thought of him, so entirely backwards from anyone else she’d ever known.
It was being dirtier than she’d ever been in her life, and feeling cleaner.
This was what having a mate could be, she realized, aching.
And she was so glad she’d been able to know that.
Breck glanced over at her and fell silent as he recognized that she wasn’t listening. “You… okay?” he asked quietly.
Tears sprang to Darla’s eyes. “Yeah,” she said honestly. “I am.”
He reached awkwardly over in the cramped space to touch her face gently with a dirty finger. “I know it’s our last night. I probably should have… fed you chocolate-covered strawberries or massaged you with scented oils, or…”
“This is perfect,” Darla said.
Breck’s face was an art study of dramatic lighting, the single flashlight casting harsh shadows over the planes of his handsome face. “I wanted to give you something that you could take with you. Something no one could take away.”
“You did,” Darla said, meaning it in so many ways. She drew in a careful breath. “Let’s go put that tire on.”
They scooted out from under the van, and Breck directed Darla in wrestling the spare tire onto the lugs but didn’t once offer to help her. He showed her how to put on the nuts
evenly using a star shape to keep it balanced, and let her lower the creaky jack herself and give the nuts a final tighten.
“You did it,” Breck said proudly, as she stood back and tried to brush the worst of the mud from her damp pants. “You changed your own tire.”
“I did it,” Darla realized.
Breck was close behind her, and she shivered.
“Are you cold?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her.
She turned in his arm and looked up at him. The flashlight was wedged in the open van window, pointed at the tire, and it cast the barest light over his face, but her bracelet was glowing bright enough now to reflect in his beautiful eyes.
“You tell me,” Darla murmured, rising on her toes to kiss him.
His arms tightened, and he met her mouth with his own, hungry and desperate.
They made love slowly, removing damp layer by damp layer, kissing and caressing and whispering things that weren’t promises.
She tried to memorize the feel of his shoulders, the way his hair slipped between her fingers, the taste of his mouth. She wanted the feeling of his hand in the small of her back to be imprinted there forever. She pressed her breasts against his kisses, wishing she could bottle the sensation it raised in the hollow of her throat and the pit of her stomach.
The creaky resort van was not the most luxurious of beds, but neither of them cared.
“I love you,” she told him, as they joined at last, wedged awkwardly across the back bench. “I will love you forever.”
He gripped her harder and made a wordless noise of grief and pleasure and agony that echoed the her own conflicted heart.
“I love you,” he told her softly in reply. “I will, always.”
It was the only promise they would ever get.
Chapter 34
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