Элли Блейк – Australian Escape: Her Hottest Summer Yet / The Heat of the Night (страница 17)
Oh, well. She’d admit romantic defeat where it came to the estimable Luke Hargreaves, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a very nice catch-up with the boy she’d once known.
And if that pissed off the man on the other side of the table, well, he could lump it.
* * *
An hour later, Avery was so exhausted from being charming she could barely sit up straight. Taking a breather, she let the fifties torch song in the background and the chatter of the three friends float over her.
“You okay, Ave?” Claudia asked, the second Avery closed her eyes.
“Shh,” she said, opening one eye, “I love this song.”
Claudia listened. Then hummed in agreement. “Don’t make ’em like they used to.”
When the men had nothing to say to that, Claude jabbed them both in the arm. “Talk about not making ’em like they used to... Come on. One of you please ask the poor woman to dance.”
“Claude—” Avery blushed. And blushed some more when Luke pushed his chair back and held out a hand. With a cock of his head towards the dance floor he invited her to join him.
She felt Jonah’s eyes on hers, but stopped herself from looking his way. With a smile she put her hand in Luke’s and lifted to her feet before following him to the dance floor to find they were the only ones there.
Without preamble he swung her out to the end of one arm before hauling her back. She grabbed him tight, breathless with laughter, her fingers gripping his upper arms. And then with a grace she couldn’t have hoped for he calmed them into a perfect sway.
She glanced over his shoulder to find Jonah watching her, his white shirt doing its best to cage all that well-earned muscle, the collar slightly askew as if he’d torn the top button open in a hurry, his eyes dark and shadowed in the low lighting. Her stomach sparked, her skin tightening. When he lifted his drink in salute, she knew she’d been staring.
Luke felt...nice, safe. He smelled...clean. He danced...really well. The tiki torches about the edges of her vision wavered and gleamed, catching on jewellery, on sparkles in women’s clothes. It would have been such a nice story to one day tell their grandchildren...if only she didn’t find it easier to wax lyrical about her surroundings than the man in her arms.
Luke started, and turned them both to find Jonah behind him, a finger raised to tap Luke’s shoulder. Yet the interloper’s deep grey eyes were only on Avery’s as he said, “May I cut in?”
Eyebrows raised, a not-so-surprised smile on his face, Luke turned back to Avery for an answer. “What do you think?” he asked. “Should I release you into the clutches of this ragamuffin?”
Should he? Avery felt as if her world were tipping on its axis. But when her eyes slid back to Jonah’s and she felt her entire body fill to the brim with sparks, she knew with a finality that tightened her stomach into a fist that nice and safe weren’t in her near future.
She must have nodded, or maybe she simply drifted into Jonah’s arms. Either way, she didn’t even feel Luke slip away, just that Jonah was there. She had one hand in his, his other hand burning a palm-print into her lower back—her whole body melted.
On the edge of her consciousness, the song came to an end. But they didn’t stop swaying. Her eyes didn’t leave Jonah’s. And his didn’t leave hers.
He pulled her closer still, till—without either of them breaking any indecency laws—every bit of her that could touch every bit of him did. When he lowered his hand so that his little finger dipped below the waistline of her pants, her breath hitched in her throat.
“Avery,” he said, his voice rough and low.
“I know,” she said, and as his arms folded around her she leant her head on his chest, the deep thundering of his heart more than a match for hers.
* * *
Whether it was the cocktails Claude was knocking back or Avery’s sudden rose-tinted view of the world, she couldn’t say—but the rest of the night Luke and Claude seemed to get along without sniping at one another. Which was nice. Or it would have been if Jonah hadn’t kept finding ways to touch Avery. The slide of his foot against hers, resting his hand on her knee, drifting a finger over her shoulder. At that point nice was no longer in her vocabulary.
When the last dessert plate was cleared, and the bill had been paid, Claude sat back with a hand over her stomach. “Who’s going to roll me back to my big beautiful home that I adore so very much?” She glanced at Avery before her gaze slid to Jonah. “Forget that. I’ll be just fine on my own.”
With a sigh, Luke pushed back his chair before collecting Claude with a hand under her elbow. She whipped her elbow away as if burned. But Luke took her hand and threaded it through his elbow and locked it there tight. “Come on, sunshine. Let’s get back to our crumbling white elephant before it falls into the sea.”
“She’s not crumbling. She has...elegant patina.”
Luke shot Avery a smile, Jonah a told-you-so look, then, with Claude babbling about fresh paint and passion, they disappeared through the door.
Jonah stood and held out a hand. This time there was no hesitation as Avery put her hand in his.
Outside the air was still and sweet, the road back from the beach devoid of crowds, the moon raining its brilliant light over the world. And as soon as Avery’s eyes met Jonah’s they were in one another’s arms.
The moment their lips met, she felt parts of herself implode on impact. Heat sluiced through the gaps, her nerves went into total meltdown until she was a trembling mass of need, and want, and unhinged desire.
The sweet clinging kiss of the day before was a mere memory as Jonah plundered her senses with his touch, with the insistent seduction of his lips, the intimate rhapsody of his tongue.
Desperation riding them both, Avery’s back slammed against a wall, the rough brick catching on her top, her hair, her skin. But she didn’t care. She merely tilted and shifted until the kiss was as deep as it could be.
It wasn’t deep enough.
All those clothes in the way. She tugged his shirt from his jeans and tore the thing open, her eyes drinking in the sight of him as her hand slid up his torso, through the tight whorls of hair, palming the scorching-hot skin, loving the harsh suck of his breath and the way the hard ridges of muscle jumped under her touch.
With a growl he lifted her bodily, till she wrapped her legs around him, her head rolling back as his mouth went to her neck, to her shoulder, the sweet spot behind her ear.
When he tugged her top down an inch, his nails scraping her soft skin, his tongue finding the edge of her nipple, she froze, the tiniest thread of sense coming back to her from somewhere deep down inside. It might be near midnight, but they were in a public place, her legs around his waist, one arm cradling his head, the other beneath his shirt and riding the length of his back.
“Jonah,” she said, her voice a whisper on the still night air.
She felt him tense, then relax, just a fraction, but enough that he lifted his head to rest it against her collarbone, his deep breaths warming her bone deep.
Avery opened her eyes to the sky.
When Jonah had asked her to dance Luke hadn’t been surprised. He’d been waiting for it. Which meant it hadn’t been spur of the moment. Hadn’t been some kind of He-Has-Girl-So-I-Want-Girl reaction.
This big, beautiful, difficult, taciturn, hard-to-crack man had staked his claim.
And scary as the feelings tumbling about inside of her at that knowledge were, the brilliance of them won out.
“Take me home, Jonah.”
He held his breath, his chest pressing hard into hers so that she could feel the steady thump of his big strong heart.
“You sure?”
She slid a hand into the back of his hair, the tight curls ensnaring her fingers.
He growled, and she trapped the sound with her kiss as she strove to make the best mistake of her life.
Avery’s first glimpse inside Jonah’s place—a shack tucked away in the hills behind the cove—held no surprises; the place was a total man cave.
Surfboards and a kayak lined up on hooks in the entrance hall. Battered running shoes lay discarded on a small pile of sand under a top-of-the-range road bike. A slew of mismatched barstools shoved under an island bench in the utilitarian kitchen the only dining option, and along with a big dark sprawling lounge were a recycled timber coffee table covered in boating magazines and mug rings and a projector screen taller than she was.
Avery glanced back towards the front door; but as the last time she’d checked there was still no sign yet of the man himself.
Right in the middle of a pretty full-on make-out session on his porch, Hull had let out a gut-curdling yowl before taking off into the forest. And if Avery’s heart hadn’t already been racing like the Kentucky Derby from that kiss, the sight of big brawny Jonah staring in distress after his dog—sorry, not his dog—had made her heart flip twice and go splat.
She’d given him a shove. “Go.”
After a brief thank-you kiss he’d gone, leaping off the porch, grabbing a man-sized torch from his big black muscle car, and run off into the forest like some kind of superhero.