Just Fooling Around(29)

He lifted his brows. “Why on earth would you say that?”

“You kept a secret. A huge one that was important to Cam. That’s what heroes do, right? Protect their friends.”

His laugh shook through him. “Darcy, sweetheart, you’re amazing.”

She dragged her teeth over her lower lip and cast a playful glance at the crooked mattress. “Want to show me once again just how amazing you can be?”

“You only have to ask,” he said, then drew her close, his body firing again, ready to take her and claim her once and for all, the primal need to make her his almost overwhelming him as much as the heady certainty that she already was.

This time they moved more slowly, though, savoring each other, exploring and teasing, tasting and tempting. He reached blindly up with one hand and groped for a pillow that had tumbled onto the floor along with them. He put it under her head, then kissed her hard. Then he reached for another pillow and put it under her hips, lifting her to exactly where he wanted her.

“Evan.” Her voice was soft, dreamy, and he heard it despite the rustle of skin against his ears, the soft skin of her inner thigh to be exact, which pressed against him as her body arched up, her moans and cries and soft passionate noises making him even harder than the taste of her already had.

He licked her slickness, then added his finger to the mix, stretching her wide, wanting nothing more than to be inside her, and when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he eased up, kissed her with her own taste still lingering on his lips, and drove himself home.

Heaven, he thought, and she repeated the thought in words after the storm passed and she lay clinging to him. “It feels like heaven.”

“We can stay here all day,” he said. “Your brother would be happy. After all, I’m keeping you safe.”

A few hours later, he’d made her that much safer, and they both lay exhausted on the carpet. This time, her skin glowed rosy from the setting sun.

“You’d be catching dinner now with Bella,” he said.

“I like this better,” she said, speaking the absolute truth. This had been the most perfect day of her life, which pretty much disproved that whole curse thing as far as she was concerned. “Right now, the only thing I’m hungry for is you. Somehow, I just can’t get enough.”

“But you did miss the play,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. Why don’t we try to get tickets for next weekend?”

She laughed. “I’ll be right here next weekend, but we won’t be going to the theater.” She pressed a kiss to his bare chest.

The high-pitched tones of her cell phone startled them both, and she grabbed it up, then answered, listening at Bella’s rapid-fire words. “Thanks,” she said with a grin to Evan. “Feel better soon.”

“Bella?”

“She said she hopes we’re having fun, and if we’re not too worn out from our busy day, that we might want to go to the theater tonight.”

“Sorry. Not following you.”

“She remembered that she never even had the tickets,” Darcy explained. “They’re waiting for me right now at the will call window.”

She leaned forward and settled purposefully beside his naked body. “See?” she said, leaning in and brushing her lips over his. “Nothing but good luck today.” She nipped his lower lip. “But frankly, I don’t think I’m in the mood for a show after all.”





DEVON’S DILEMMA


Kathleen O’Reilly





1




April 1, two years earlier

THE EAR-SPLITTING NOISE of the alarm clock was sadistic and cruel, and most hellishly of all—four freaking hours too early. Devon Franklin rolled over again and threw the covers over her head.

Three o’clock in the morning.

For a moment, there was blessed ignorance. The idea that she had accidentally missed the alarm, or that she had suffered a temporary brain spasm. Unfortunately, none of those things were even remotely close to being true.

The digital watch was within easy reach on her bedside table, but she knew the date. The other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year she woke up with a sigh of relief, because it wasn’t…

April 1.

Bone-tired and furious, she succumbed to a fit of juvenile rage, and slammed her hand over the off button, silencing the beep and hopefully killing the clock in the process.

April Fools’. Ha. If she were an average twenty-eight-year-old female, with a life expectancy of 78.1 years, nonsmoker, healthy diet, within ten pounds of her ideal weight, she could blame the crack-of-dawn buzzer on a no-good-sibling prank, or a moronic friend getting carried away with a holiday that was nobody’s idea of fun.