Chapter Nine
THE LAND ROVER idled at the end of Pete’s dark, tree-lined road, where Sawyer had one foot pressed on the brake and his arms wrapped around Sky, as they kissed.
“You taste so sweet,” he said between kisses.
“Marshmallows,” she said quickly, crashing her lips to his again.
Her hand slid over his thigh, pulling a groan from his lungs.
“We should go.” He reluctantly pulled back, then pressed his lips to hers again. “Sky. I can’t stop kissing you.” He buried his hands in her hair and held her still as they claimed each other’s mouths. He wanted to lay her down and make love to her right there in the truck.
Headlights illuminated the interior of the truck from behind, and he forced himself to tear his lips from hers again. They both looked behind them, then laughed as Sky moved back into her seat and buckled up.
“Your brothers are going to hate me,” he said as he turned onto the main road.
“That’s Tony’s truck, and it’s about time my brothers realize I’m a woman, not a little girl.” Her tone was thick with defiance, and it did all sorts of things to his already heated body.
“Would I be taking advantage of that statement if I asked you to come back to my place?”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” she answered with a seductive smile.
“Take advantage, or ask you back to my place?”
“Both.”
The word hung between them, suspended by silent promises that he couldn’t wait to keep.
Fifteen minutes later he drove up the windy narrow road to the seashell driveway that led to his three-story house overlooking the bay. He didn’t need four bedrooms or an acre of dunes, but the family lineage made the large house feel like a home.
He helped Sky from the truck. Her hair was disheveled from their make-out session, and tendrils framed her face as she gazed up at him. Her beauty was subtle and overwhelming at once, and the tantalizing combination of innocence and rebellion dancing in her eyes drew him right in.
“Want to go inside and talk?” he offered, because he’d already said inappropriate things on their first date, and telling her that his body was vibrating with need was probably too forthright for a second date. “There’s so much I want to know about you.”
She hooked her finger in the waist of his jeans. “Me too.”
Her voice was breathy, her eyes heavily lidded and seductive, and when he lowered his mouth to hers, she made a soft sound of surrender the second before their tongues touched. He savored the feel of her warm and yielding skin against him. The floral scent of her shampoo mixed with the salty sea air as it whipped around them, and when she pressed her delicate hands to his sides, keeping him close, it sent a tingling down his spine. He succumbed to the electrifying need burning inside him and pulled her tightly against him. The breadth of his hands covered the width of her back. She moaned, and it ricocheted through him, and the rest of the world failed to exist. The sounds of the sea melted into their heavy breathing.
“Sawyer,” she murmured.
Hearing the desire in her voice sent heat coursing through him as their mouths crashed together again in reckless abandon. Her head tipped back, and her lips parted with another sexy, needful sigh. He sealed his mouth over her neck, kissing her silky skin, loving the quickening in her breathing, the tightening of her fingers. He wanted to be so much closer to her, to know everything there was to know about her, but his body was on fire, and she was clinging to him like he was her anchor—and man, did he want to be her anchor.
“Oh wow,” she whispered.
He pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, “I want you, Sky, so very much of you.”
“I want you, too,” she said breathily.
His chest tightened with her confession. “Not here. I want you in my bed,” he rasped against her ear, before taking her in another demanding kiss. Kissing Sky was taking a toll on his self-control. With his pulse racing in his chest, he pulled back, and he touched his forehead to hers.
“Sky…” Emotions blurred his thoughts. He wanted to take her inside, needed to take her away from the cool air and the dense sand. Desperate to make her his and utterly powerless to find the resolve to pull away, he kissed her again.
Her fingers fisted in his hair. “More. I need more,” she pleaded.
A low growl rolled up his chest. There was nothing romantic about the way their mouths came together. It was a hard, toothy, wet kiss, filled with unstoppable desire.
He swept her, weightless, into his arms. “Can’t wait,” he said, nipping at her swollen lips.
“Hurry,” she urged, spurring his powerful legs into a sprint. With one hand holding her up, he dug into his pocket for his keys and unlocked the door.
He kicked the door closed behind him and carried her up the stairs to his bedroom, where he stood stock-still, unsure where he wanted her first. Now that they were in his bedroom, he didn’t want to rush this moment. He’d thought about making love to her since he’d first seen her in the bar, and now that he knew her, he wanted to make her feel better than she ever had. He wanted to cherish her. He lowered her to her feet, and she melted against him. Her eyes were soft, her lids heavy as her trembling hands pressed against his chest.
SAWYER TOUCHED HIS lips to hers in a tender, sensual kiss, lacking the urgency of moments ago. Sky didn’t know if he sensed how nervous she was or if he’d calmed just knowing she was there in his bedroom. His for the taking. She’d been so lost in sensation outside that she hadn’t been thinking at all, and now she was having trouble forming coherent thoughts.
Standing in the center of his bedroom, with moonlight glistening off the bay just beyond the picture windows and his king-sized bed, her mind reeled. It had been a long time since she’d been with a man. Almost a year. That was a long time. What if she was too out of practice to do things right?
His hands traveled up her sides. His touch was confident, strong. Pleasure radiated through her and she closed her eyes, letting go of her worries. She inhaled a sharp breath as she lifted his shirt, fumbling to push it over his broad chest, wanting desperately to feel his skin against hers. He tugged it over his head and tossed it to the floor. His gaze was hot, his body hard and tight, but when he caressed her cheek with his rough fingers, his touch was gentle.
“You okay?” His thick dark brows knitted together.
She dropped her eyes to her fingers trembling against his chest and splayed them flat, unable to calm her buzzing nerves.
“It’s been a long time,” she admitted.
“For me, too.”
She heard the honesty in his voice.
“Do you want to wait?”
“Maybe?” She trapped her lower lip in her teeth, and when he brushed his thumb over it and said, “Okay,” she breathed a sigh of relief.
He gathered her in close and pressed his hand to the back of her head. “I’m sorry, Sky. I got lost in you.”
She closed her eyes and breathed him in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how nervous I was.”
He tipped up her chin and pressed his lips to hers. “Never apologize for following your heart. When we come together, I want to know it’s what you want with your head as much as your heart.”
“Thank you.”
He kissed the top of her head and held her. She didn’t know how long they stood there, his strong arms wrapped around her, her breathing calming, but it felt like a long time. She seemed to lose all track of time when they were together, which had never happened with anyone else—and she liked it. Sawyer didn’t rush her, or try to move her toward the bed. He didn’t do anything more than be with her, which was exactly what she needed.
How did he know?
“Come with me, sweetheart.” He led her out the bedroom door and down a wide hallway to a spiral staircase. She followed him up to a room with a glass, open truss ceiling. There were enormous pillows on colorful rugs over glistening hardwood floors. Overstuffed chairs were set at odd angles, and a plush sectional sofa, larger than any she’d ever seen, was near the far wall. The walls were constructed of alternating panels of glass and stone, providing views in all directions.
“This is amazing.” She gazed up at the rafters surrounding the glass in the ceiling. The mixture of textures—glass and old, scarred wood—and colors—forest green, yellows, reds, browns, and blues—called out to her, instantly making her feel at home. She could live in this room, with views of the dunes and the bay and the stars gazing down on them like eyes in the night.
“This was my family’s cottage, the one I told you about that my parents had to give up. My great-grandfather built this room. We call it the skycap. He carved his and my great-grandmother’s initials in a heart on the third rafter from the left.”
“Really? Is it still there?” She looked up, trying to find their initials.
“Yes. The people who bought the place from my parents never did anything with the ceiling, as you can see. So it’s still there. And my father carved my parents’ initials in the farthest rafter from the right.” He smiled at Sky. “Family tradition.”
“I love that. It’s so romantic. You must have been young when they sold, then?”
“I was, but I remember spending summers here. My parents and I would go clamming at low tide, and we had this little boat. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was a sailboat big enough for the three of us, and we used to go out and have dinner on the water. Sometimes we’d spend the night on it.”
“That sounds wonderful. My dad and Pete are boat fanatics. I bet Pete would let us borrow his boat one night to stay out on the water.”
He ran his knuckle down her cheek. “You would do that?”
“I would love to do that with you.” She would do anything with him. “I’ll ask Pete if we can borrow the boat. I’m sure he won’t mind.”
He took her hand, and as they sank down to a pile of thick green pillows, she realized that she was no longer nervous.
“This is where I write my songs. Well, when I’m at home and writing. The night you saw me sing, I wrote a song about you. I wrote most of it at the bar, but then I came home, and in the middle of the night I came up here and finished writing it.”
“About me? But we didn’t even speak to each other.”
He stretched out on his side, looking completely at ease and not at all annoyed by her stopping them before they made love. She relaxed beside him, resting her cheek on her arm.
“I didn’t need to hear your voice to feel your energy.”
She lifted up on her elbow, matching his position, and smiled. “If my friends heard you say that they’d think we were cut from the same cloth.”
“I’m not so sure we aren’t.”
She fell silent at that, hearing something deep and longing in his voice.
“I’d love to hear what you wrote,” she said, curious to know what he’d thought of her at first sight.
“Soon,” he promised.
He stretched out on his back and tucked her in close beside him as they gazed out the ceiling at the dark, starry sky.
“Do you believe in wishing upon stars?”
“I used to,” she admitted. Her mind turned to her mother, and the familiar ache that accompanied thoughts of her moved in.
“Me too.” He brushed her hair from her cheek. “Why don’t you anymore?”
She sighed and told him the truth. “Because when my mom died, I knew that all the wishes in the world couldn’t bring her back.”
He tightened his arms around her, and they lay in silence for a long while, gazing up at the stars, each lost in their own thoughts.
“If you could say one thing to your mom now,” he said with a thoughtful tone. “Anything at all. What would it be?”
She rifled through the first few thoughts that sailed through her mind. “There are so many things I want to tell her. I miss you. I love you. I wish you were still here.” She swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. “But if I could tell her only one thing, I would tell her I was sorry.”
Tears welled in her eyes with the confession that struggled to finally be set free. He turned on his side and pressed his lips to her forehead without pushing for an explanation, and that made her want to open up to him even more.
“When she died, I sort of fell apart.” She gazed into his empathetic eyes and was drawn into them. “Actually, I fell apart. There was no sort of about it.”
“That’s understandable. You’d lost your mother.”
“That’s what I told myself as I stopped living my life and allowed myself to lie in bed and wallow in the ache of missing her. It’s understandable to be sad, to grieve. It’s even understandable to go through weeks of crying, making deals with the devil to bring her back. At least, in my opinion it is. Don’t we all want to bargain our pain away? But to allow myself to get so mired down in the darkness of losing her that I couldn’t function? She didn’t raise me like that.” A tear slipped from her eye, and he tenderly brushed it away. “She raised me to be strong and decisive. To face issues head-on.”
“Issues, not losses, Sky. There’s a difference.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know that. But…I found out last night from Grayson that when I fell apart, he took it really hard. I never knew.”
“It’s obvious how much your family loves you.” He kissed a tear away. “You’re lucky, Sky. Love is the foundation of strength in a family. It’s obvious that Grayson’s love for you only got stronger.”
“Yes, but at what cost? How much worry did I cause him when I was hiding in my bed?” She couldn’t stop the truth from flowing. “Pete got so worried about me, he put his life on hold and moved in with me for a while, until we both knew I wasn’t going to go down the rabbit hole again.”
“He sounds like a good brother, a good man.”
“He is. All of my brothers are, but it was selfish of me, wasn’t it? To allow myself to become so out of it? Obviously that’s why they’re all so protective of me now, but it caused them to lie to me, and I hate knowing that.”
Confusion riddled his brow. “How?”
She’d never told anyone outside of her closest circle of friends about her father’s drinking. And now, somehow, Sawyer had stepped inside that circle and she wanted to share it with him, too.
“My father began drinking after my mother died. For two years he was a functioning alcoholic. He was able to run his hardware store, but at night he drowned his sorrows in alcohol, and I never knew. I was living in New York at the time, and my brothers kept it from me. When I came home to visit, they made sure that I was away from him every evening. Meanwhile, Pete was taking care of him, getting him into bed at night, making sure he didn’t choke on his own puke.” She turned away, embarrassed.
“Hey.” He turned her face gently toward his again. “That’s not your fault. That has nothing to do with you falling apart.”
“But it does. They didn’t think I could handle it, and maybe they were right. That makes me a loser and a burden. Pete didn’t need to come after me when he was caring for our father. He already had so much on his plate. Grayson was worried sick because I was weak, and…If my mom was looking down on me, she would have been mortified.”
Sawyer gathered her in his arms and held her close. “You know what I think?”
“That you wish you’d never come into my shop for a tattoo?”
“No.” He kissed her forehead again. “That we are made from the same cloth after all. You lead with your heart, Sky. I lead with mine.”
“But my brothers—”
“They love you, Sky. I saw it in the way they teased you and watched my every move. Blue, too. They’re all proud and protective of you.”
“Because I’m weak,” she said in a deflated voice.
“Because you’re strong enough to be weak when you need to. That’s a blessing. Most people are so hardened to their feelings that they mask them. I see it every day in the ring. Heck, Sky, I do it every day of my life.”
“What do you mean? You seem to be in touch with your feelings. At least around me.”
He smiled. “I can’t escape my feelings for you, can I?”
She felt her cheeks flush, and when he lowered his lips to hers and took her in his arms, everything felt right, and good, and safe.
“Do you hide your feelings from everyone else?” she asked.
“I’m a fighter, Sky. I can’t bring sadness or worry, fear, or even happiness into the ring with me. Fighting takes total focus and dedication. Everything else gets buried down deep. I think everyone does that on some level just to get through each day. It’s why I write songs, because the passion, the anger, the love, it’s all too much sometimes. I have to get it out.”
“Like your tattoos.”
His lips curved into an easy smile. “Yeah, like my tattoos. Only those are things I want to keep hold of, too. Those are feelings that will always be a part of me. They represent times in my life that I don’t ever want to lose. Good and bad.”
She gazed into his eyes as he leaned over her, and she wondered what stars had to align to bring them together—and what greater force saw past his fighting and past her dislike of the sport to something bigger than both of them?
He brushed her hair from her cheek. His eyes roved over her face, lingering on her eyes, and she swore she could see his emotions radiating from them.
“I see so much when I look at you,” she said softly.
“Tell me what you see.” His voice was silky smooth, like water flowing over her.
Sky had always seen emotions in colors, as she was now. The sensations had always fascinated her, but she was sure it was exactly what the universe wanted her to see. “I see shades of the color blue, and I feel…” She hesitated. The things she felt were so personal, so intense, that she was afraid to say them aloud.
He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Tell me, sweetheart. What do you see?”
“I see devotion. Deep-seated. And honesty.” As she said the words they bloomed bigger, fuller, more meaningful and real. She reached up and ran her finger along his jaw. “And a lot of passion, which feels red to me. I get the sense of stability beneath it, but it’s not really stable. Like you’re standing in the middle of a plain and just beneath the surface the earth is shaking. And…” She traced the ridge of his cheekbone. “Lots and lots of orange and yellow.” She smiled, and curiosity filled his dark eyes.
“What do those colors mean?”
“That you’re powerful, creative, and emotional. Very emotional.” She pressed both hands to his cheeks. She’d been dying to really touch his face. To feel his energy. “I see other stuff, but it’s not colorful. Inner peace that’s tethered by something dark. Truth. And love, Sawyer. I feel like your entire being is so full of love, which makes sense since you’re fighting for your father. And when I close my eyes”—she closed her eyes and breathed deeply—“I see you searching for balance, like you’re walking on a tightrope.”
Her eyes came open, and pain was etched in merciless lines across his forehead, underscoring the longing in his eyes.
“How can you see all of that in me?” His voice was full of wonder, as his body shifted closer.
She raised her shoulders in response. She didn’t have the answers. She’d never seen or felt so much radiating from a person before, and her heart was racing with the magnificence, and intensity, of it.
“What do you see when you look at me?” she asked.
“A future.”
He lowered his mouth to hers, and Sky didn’t try to rein in her desires or to figure out if she was ready as his hands moved over her skin. His lips were soft and warm, his body safe and strong. As his mouth trailed along her shoulder in a sweep of slow, shivery kisses, heat spread from the tip of her head to the ends of her toes.
They kissed for what felt like hours, with the stars shining down on them, and the bay ebbing and flowing just beyond the dunes. She wasn’t nervous. She wasn’t caught up in need and out of her mind with desire. She was blissfully, happily swept up in them.
Being with Sawyer felt too right to be wrong.
“You’re beautiful, Sky. Inside here.” He pressed a kiss above her heart. “And in here.” He kissed her forehead.
His hands slid up her arms, light as a feather, leaving a trail of goose bumps. He brought her fingertips to his lips and kissed each one.
“I want to cherish you.” He dragged his tongue along her wrist, spreading a rush of heat through her.
He lifted her arm above her head and kissed the sensitive crease of her elbow, working his way up to her neck, then along the curve of her shoulder again. He dragged his tongue along the ridge, and then followed the line with his finger, and when he stopped, she knew he’d noticed her tattoo.
“May I see?”
She rolled onto her stomach, and he gathered her hair to one side and lifted her shirt, then traced the lines of her tattoo with his finger.
“Roots,” he said. “They run deep.”
“Family,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes as he traced the roots across her shoulder blade, then down the center of her spine. His finger trailed up the trunk of the tree. Then he pressed his lips to the center of her back.
“Lay your head on my shoulder. Your heart next to mine,” he whispered. “I’ll take it all. Hear it through.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’ll wrestle your demons, to remain beside you.”
She wondered at his words, but as his hands moved down, and he traced the word Blessed that was tattooed at the base of her spine, she felt more at peace, happier, than ever.
“After I lost my mom, when I got back on my feet, I had that done. Her name was Bea, which means blessed.”
He pressed his lips to each of her vertebrae. “Why are there only two limbs on the tree?”
She rolled onto her back. His eyes were so dark, so serious, that she felt herself falling into them again—falling into him. “When I designed it, I didn’t know what my future would look like, so I left it blank. After my father got out of rehab, I added two limbs to symbolize his growth and mine.”
“Same cloth, Sky. You weathered your mother’s death and your father’s alcoholism. I’ve endured the slow loss of my own father. Every word on my back symbolizes a piece of me or a piece of him. A piece of my family being chipped away. The twisted, awful pain, and the incredibly wonderful memories. You and I wear the scars of our lives in words and symbols.”
She didn’t wait for him to lower his lips to hers. She arched up to press her mouth to his, opening up to him in ways she never had to anyone else. The way he spoke, as if every word came directly from his soul, drew her further into him and made her want to know more about him, to feel the emotions inside him.
His arms circled her. She’d already become accustomed to the way he held her so close, like he couldn’t get close enough, and she felt it, too. Her emotions swelled when they were together, and her desires spiraled through her, vying for more—more of him, more of his time, more of his truths.
Their kiss spoke of their intense connection, without pretenses, without fear or a frantic pace. He deepened the kiss, and she didn’t want to hold back anymore. She didn’t care that this was only their second date, or that she’d once said she’d wait to have sex if she felt herself falling for a man. She didn’t want to wait until she fell head over heels in love—she wanted to feel their bodies join together, to feel herself tumbling down that magical slope.
Her fingers moved over the hard planes of his chest, to the grooves between his abs. He covered her hand with his.
“Sky.”
He searched her eyes again, and she wanted to thank him for being so patient and for caring enough to ask again just to be sure. But she got lost in the emotions gazing back at her.
“You’re sure?”
“Very,” was all she could manage before wrapping her arm around his neck and pulling him into another kiss.