“I guess I am,” she finally agreed, letting her hands slip into the water.
Shane moved behind her, the combination of his heat and his touch making her forget about the sink full of kitchenware in need of washing.
Bellamy sighed and leaned into him, her back against his lean, strong chest. “Dishes,” she said weakly, but Shane just chuckled in her ear.
“Leave ’em.” He slid his hands over the front of her hips from behind, fingers curling over denim. A moan shuddered from her as he pressed against her body, pinning her without force against the sink.
“If you insist,” she murmured in a throaty whisper, thrusting her hips right back. With one swift move, Shane swung her around so they were face-to-face. Bellamy arched forward to close the space between them, but the look on Shane’s face stopped her before they could touch.
“God, you’re so fucking perfect,” he breathed, his eyes prickling her skin as they moved over her, as palpable as a touch. He leaned in just enough to slide his tongue over the shell of her ear, and she shook her head against his ministrations.
“But you are,” Shane whispered, sliding his fingers through her hair. “Your hair looks perfect when it’s lying over your pillow in the early sunlight.” He traced his way down her neck with both hands, letting his mouth follow their lead, and Bellamy couldn’t resist the urge to press into his touch.
“Your skin tastes like honey, right here.” He paused to kiss her, lightly scraping his lips over hers with excruciating heat, then dipped his tongue to the spot where her shoulder met her collarbone. “And here, you’re even sweeter.”
Shane lowered the flat of his hands to her hips, sliding them under her thin sweater. Bellamy had no choice but to suck in a breath at the contact of his skin on hers, heat sparking right to the center of her hips before arrowing to her pussy.
“Shane, please.”
“Oh, I’ve barely just begun,” he assured her, stroking the sides of her body with sure, even touches as he lifted her sweater over her head. Her nipples pebbled and strained against the lace of her bra. When he parted his hands over her breasts to balance their weight in his palms, a moan worked its way from Bellamy’s chest to her lips.
“Don’t you see how beautiful you are?” He cupped her breasts over the fabric, making her clamp down on her lip to hold back a whimper. “Here,” he whispered, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “And here,” Shane continued, and Bellamy’s bones threatened to melt right inside the heat of her body. She’d never wanted anyone with so much white-hot intensity, so much pure, uncut desire, and she couldn’t wait another second.
“Shane, please,” she begged. “I want you so much.”
“But I haven’t even gotten to the best part,” he protested in a drawl that rippled up her spine. “The sweetest thing about you is right here.” He paused over her slamming heart, pressing his palm over it with care. “And here.” His hands moved to cradle her face as if she were a treasure. “Your honesty makes you beautiful.” He paused again, this time to let his eyes give her a message that even his words couldn’t.
Bellamy couldn’t do anything other than look into the emotion banked in Shane’s dark eyes. As he led her to his bedroom, over the threshold and over the edge of want and need and reason, she knew she was falling in love with him.
Shane smoothed his hand along one of Bellamy’s curls, catching its softness between the pads of his fingers and the pillowcase. Christ, she was gorgeous with that glow on her face, almost angelic under the sliver of moonlight passing through the curtains.
“Get some sleep, sweetheart.” He placed a kiss on her forehead, inhaling the crisp scent of her for just a moment before pulling back. Her big green eyes focused in on him, unwavering, as they lay side by side in the shadows.
“I’m not really that tired.” She didn’t say anything else, just captured his eyes with hers and held on tight.
She gets you. And she deserves to know the truth.
The thought rattled around in Shane’s head, stark and serious, and although none of the words sounded right, he’d held them in for far too long to keep them buried now. Not when there was a chance Bellamy would understand.
“Shane?”
“Yeah?” The word arrived on a slight tremble, and he opened his mouth to just let the rest out. To tell her that as much as he didn’t want to be away from her, he couldn’t possibly come to the city to see her. To ask her to come back to Pine Mountain instead.
The shrill ring of his cell phone made him jump out of his skin.
“What the hell?” he blurted. He propped himself up on an elbow to squint at the clock. It was barely ten P.M., but still. “No one ever freaking calls me,” he said, fumbling for the phone in the near-dark with his heart still jammed in his windpipe.
“Maybe Jackson left something here.” Bellamy sat up while the phone kept blaring. Finally, Shane connected with the damned thing and snatched it to his ear.
“Hello?” he said, realizing only after the fact that he’d been too shocked to look at the caller ID.
“Shane? Jesus, Shane! Get your ass to the garage right fucking now.” Jackson’s words were as garbled as they were panicked.
Fear bolting through Shane, making him sit upright in bed. “Jax? What the hell, buddy?”
“The garage! Hurry up. I think they just got here!”
Shane could hear voices, indistinct but clipped and serious, muffled in the background. “Who? What the fuck is going on, Jackson?” Dread gripped Shane all the way to his bones, and he jammed his legs into his jeans without feeling a thing.
“Paramedics. Grady had another heart attack, and you need to get down here now.”
25
Shane never took the main road any faster than was necessary, mainly because the forty-foot drop off made it just plain stupid. Plus, the ride between his cabin and the garage took less than ten minutes.
Under the muted moonlight, with his old F-150 protesting like mad, Shane made it there in five, barely stopping to throw the thing into Park before flinging himself out the driver’s side door. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Bellamy through the windshield, presumably grabbing the keys from the still-running truck, but he didn’t stop.
He ran toward the garage, dizzy from the eerie red glow of the ambulance lights that pulsed over the building and the sickening whoosh of his own blood in his ears.
Shane barged through the side door and tried to focus, but there were so many things in the garage that didn’t belong there, he couldn’t process any of them. Bellamy’s Miata was up on the lift, transmission parts littering the floor like scattered toys. The cordless phone lay, sunny side up, in the midst of them, and the display glowed green as if someone was on the line. Jackson stood stock-still in the doorway of the office, his face grave and his cell phone locked in his grip. People Shane had never seen before raced around in front of him, crouching down and shouting things that made no sense.
“Pulse is thready! BP is one-oh-six over seventy.”
“Grady, can you hear me?”
A grunted response from the floor shattered the disconnect between Shane’s brain and everything around him, and all at once, everything crashed from slow motion to real time in an unforgiving snap.