Никки Логан – First Love, Second Chance: Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush... (страница 3)
His snort was ugly. ‘Don’t dress this up as self-discovery. This is about the school jock making a play for the school tomboy. And you’re falling for it hook, line and sinker.’ He slammed two hands either side of her face and leaned into her.
She flinched and her heart raced at his closeness.
‘You could be anything you want, Marc. You don’t need me to be it with you. There’s a whole world for us to discover.’
He leaned in further. The tightening in her body where he touched it wasn’t fear. Marc was the only person on the planet she trusted implicitly never to hurt her.
‘What’s wrong with us discovering that together?’ he ground, his chest heaving with restraint. ‘We have history. A bond. What does McKinley have that I don’t have?’
‘I’m only asking for space, Marc. What’s wrong with that?’
His face twisted and he swore. ‘I’ve been giving you space for two years, Beth. Maybe if I’d done
And then suddenly his mouth was crushing down on hers, his body pressing her into the hard limestone of the library wall behind her. Shock stiffened her against the hardness of his chest as his hands slipped down to tangle in her hair and hold her face still for the assault of his lips. She swam in his scent, in his angry heat, in his perfect, practised kiss. The unfamiliar slide of a blazing hot mouth over her own and the furious press of his body. And then the dizzying sensation of their flesh melding into one, his enormous hands sliding around to protect her head from the lumpy wall behind her, his mouth shifting and softening on hers.
And then—somehow—she was kissing him back. Her own mouth moved tentatively against his and her body pressed forward. A choked whimper cracked deep in her throat and Marc worked his tongue past her uncertain lips coaxing them open. His furnace-hot tongue twisted and danced around hers, intensity pooling around her, engulfing all. Her body
Overwhelming and unfamiliar, something she’d never allowed herself to dream. To want.
Suddenly Beth was free and Marc staggered back against the force of her desperate shove. She held up a shaking hand to stop him coming closer. His face darkened as he looked at her.
‘Does McKinley know you kiss like that?’ His chest heaved.
How could he know? They’d never kissed. She’d never kissed anyone. Until today.
She dragged her fist across her lips. ‘Don’t ever—’
‘Beth …’
A world of emotions surged up and spilled over. ‘Don’t
His frown doubled. ‘You don’t mean—’
She lifted tortured eyes to him. ‘Why does it have to be all or nothing with you? I just wanted some space, Marc. Room for us both to discover who we are. That’s all. Did you think you could keep me all to yourself for ever?’
‘I know who I am. And I thought I knew who you were. But I guess not. ‘ He crossed the little clearing in two steps. ‘You want space, Elizabeth? Fine. Take as much as you need. If you’re that desperate, then have a good life with McKinley.’
And then he was gone.
Her best friend.
Like a kite in a wild wind, she’d tried to give him some rope, some height, but instead he’d ripped completely free and was gone. Her fingers trembled as they touched her swollen lips and she slid down the rough library wall until she huddled in a tearless, emotionless, empty heap.
WHO knew silence came in so many shades?
There was the deep, black silence late at night, under the West Australian stars, miles from anywhere. The earthy green silence of Beth’s shambolic warehouse studio, only broken by the splashes of colour from her latest artworks. There was the newly discovered, beige-coloured silence inside her head, where voices and thoughts used to clamour but had now all eased into a comfortable hum.
And there was this one …
The simmering red silence of a man who was not particularly pleased to see her. Not that Beth had imagined he would be. It was why she’d put this off for so long. The awful sound of nothing echoed through the heartbeat thumping past her eardrums. She cleared her throat.
‘Marc.’
He may have been half a house larger than the boy she remembered, but Marc Duncannon had two trademark giveaways and one was the way he stood when he was on guard, legs apart as if readying himself for a physical assault.
Muscular arms stole up to cross in front of a broad chest as he continued to stare wordlessly at her. Twisted humour raced in to fill the aching void inside where she wasn’t letting herself feel. While he’d grown a kick-butt chest in ten years, she was no bigger in that department than when he’d last seen her. Yet another disappointment for him.
Coming here suddenly seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. ‘Are you not even going to say hello?’
He nodded briskly, his lips tight, resenting opening at all. ‘Beth.’
One stony word, but loaded with meaning and breath-stealing in its timbre. More than she’d had from him in over a decade. A total contrast to the way he used to say her name. Beth. Betho. Bethlehem. They’d had their short lifetimes to come up with stupid nicknames for each other. He’d only called her
The day she’d ripped out his heart.
She swallowed past the lump threatening her air supply. Past the welling excitement that she was here—with Marc—again. ‘How are you?’
‘On my way out.’
His hazel eyes darted away briefly but the miracle of any part of him moving seemed to thaw the rest of him out. His whole body twisted and he resumed loading equipment into his four-wheel drive. Beth risked closing the gap, but her breath got shorter with her distance from him, until she either stopped advancing on him or took her last living gasp.
Seeing him again would almost be worth it.
He threw words out like a shark net to entangle her before she got nearer. ‘You could stand there gawping or you could help me load the Cruiser.’
Beth scrambled to help, stunned by the gift of so many words in a row. It wasn’t friendly. But it wasn’t silence. And, given it was possibly the only chance she was going to get, she took it.
‘I went to your old house. Your neighbours told me where you were, ‘ she started to jabber. ‘I heard about your mum. What happened? You two were so close.’
Oh-so-familiar eyes lifted below hooded lids and glared at her. Intense and intensely … adult. ‘That’s what you’ve come all this way to ask?’
Her heart lurched. Marc didn’t do sarcasm when they were kids but it seemed he’d perfected the fine art in the years since she’d seen him.
‘No. I’m sorry …’ It was lame but what else could she say?
He turned to face her and straightened, frustrated. ‘What for, Beth? For turning up unannounced or for dropping off the face of the earth for a decade?’
How could she have forgotten what a straight shooter he was? She took a shaky breath. ‘That’s why I’ve come. I wanted to explain—’
He moved off again. ‘You’ll have to explain some other time. Like I said, I’m on my way out.’
She watched as he tossed a few final items into his dusty black Land Cruiser. A satellite phone. A first aid kit. A wetsuit. She frowned. ‘Where are you going?’
The hard glare he shot her from under the broad ridge of his brow should have had her quailing, if not for the fact that she’d developed immunity long ago, from exposure to much worse. Courtesy of her husband.
‘We’ve had a report of a stranding out at Holly’s Bay. I’m going to check it out.’
‘Stranding?’
‘A whale, Beth. It needs help. I don’t have time to entertain you.’
She fought the bristle his unkind words inspired. She was here to help her healing process, not to pass the time. Would she have put herself through this otherwise? ‘I just need a minute …’
He ignored her and moved around to the driver’s side door and yanked it open. ‘The whale may not have a minute. You’ve already slowed me down.’
She made her decision in a blink. It had cost her too much to come here today; she couldn’t let him just walk away from her. Who knew if she’d find the courage to try again? She sprinted around to the passenger side of the four-wheel drive and leaped in as he started it. Up close and in the confines of a cabin, he was bigger even than he’d seemed at a distance.
‘Get out, Beth.’
His voice certainly fitted the new him. Deep, rough. But still essentially Marc. That part tugged at her. ‘I need to talk to you. If I have to do that on the move, I will. Whatever it takes.’