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One of the players landed a bull’s-eye and a deafening roar erupted.
“This late in the season?” Dylan asked once the noise died down. “The only guys you’ll get won’t have much experience, or references. Going out to sea, this time of year, with a green crew, is suicide.”
“Cod season’s over.” She drained her glass, needing the boost. “Some of those guys might be looking for work.” Dylan had a point, not that she’d heed it. Catching fish instead of crab wasn’t the same thing at all. Not even close.
“Why are you doing this? Taking these chances?”
She shrugged. “It’s not chance when you know what you’re doing.” All the confidence she’d gained from her accomplishments filled every syllable, full and weighty. She wasn’t the same woman he’d left nine years ago, not that he seemed to recognize that.
“You shouldn’t have been out in that storm yesterday.”
“Weather reports didn’t predict it’d jog that far west.”
“You gambled.”
“To get ahead, you have to.” Seeing him revert back to the by-the-books, all-work-no-play guy bugged her. “You know, you and I aren’t that different,” she added, when he didn’t speak. There was a brief silence. She looked at him, but was discomfited by the intensity of his gaze.
“What do you mean?” Their fingers brushed each other as they searched for unshelled peanuts in the bowl, the contact making her skin tingle in awareness.
“We both like living on the edge—we just went after that in different ways.”
He stared at her for such a long moment, she wondered if he’d heard her. The crowd around the dart game swelled and a few pressed close to their table, jostling Dylan’s elbow, making his drink slosh onto the surface.
He threw a couple of twenties on the table, stood and extended a hand.
“Let’s go,” he said. It was more a command then an invitation. Maybe his sense of humor had slipped lately, but not that air of authority, that strength that’d always drawn her. Challenged her. Turned her on.
She jammed on her knit cap, slipped a hand in his and let him lead her through the crowd, the group parting, making way for his broad-shouldered march. “Where?”
He paused at the door outside, lifted their hands and rubbed hers lightly against his chest, sending sizzles of excitement shooting through her. His voice deepened.
“Somewhere I can actually talk some sense into you.”
* * *
OUTSIDE, THE CHILL shimmered off the frozen ground but did nothing to tamp down the heat Nolee’s nearness stoked inside Dylan. Dressed in a blue fleece and faded jeans that outlined her delectable curves, and work boots that underscored her tough-girl persona, she drew his eye. Kept him looking as they tramped across the icy parking lot.
A ragged plume of air escaped him. Being this close to her, alone, was playing with fire. He was having a hard time keeping his hands to himself. Yet he needed to make her see reason.
And satisfy the drumming hunger to have her to himself for a few moments, one last time, before he shipped out of Kodiak.
“My truck’s over here.”
Nolee spotted a red pickup that must be his, and she looked at him directly. The wind lifted and tossed long dark strands of her hair across her lips, luring his attention to their fullness, making him remember the soft feel of them against his yesterday. Driving him to want another taste.
“Okay.”
A moment later they were seated on the plush seats, the ignition purring to life. Heat blasted from the vents and an old-school thrash band tune thumped in the dark, intimate space.
“I remember this song,” Nolee mused, shooting him a sidelong glance.
When she rubbed her gloveless fingers together, he raised his hands to hers, touching them, and then, more firmly, enclosing them within his own. He brought them to his mouth and blew on them, unable to resist the impulses pounding through him.
Her liquid eyes rose to his and the challenge in them made his stomach muscles tighten, his whole body respond.
It took every ounce of strength to tamp down his desires and focus on what he’d brought her out here to say. What he needed her to hear.
“There’s a difference between calculated risks and recklessness,” he began. His voice emerged husky, low. She was so close he could feel her breath. Her body was rigid, listening, her fingers now laced in his. Her cool skin was blistering.
“We both like putting everything on the line. Admit it.” Her mischievous smile kicked up his heart rate by several blood-pounding notches. She smelled like an ocean sunrise and he breathed deep.
“Not true.” He lowered their joined hands to her lap. She was wrong. He wasn’t the wild risk-taker his parents saw him as—she really was that way, not him.
“Come on,” she scoffed in that tone that’d always called him on his bullshit. “Remember the time we jumped from Jagged Rock Falls? You took my dare.”
He nodded mutely, recalling that twenty-foot leap into churning waters, her body pressed to his afterward, behind the roaring falls. The material of his jeans tightened around his swelling groin. “I could never say no to you.”
He brushed a thumb along her knuckles and a visible shiver passed over her skin.
“You should have,” she whispered against his cheek, straight into his ear. His whole body hummed with unleashed hunger for her, not heeding the warning reminder in her words when he damn well should have. He forced himself to let go of her hand.
The music shuffled to another one-hit wonder hair band tune and she tensed beside him. “Is this the...”
He gritted his teeth to keep the telling admission from escaping. Then she snapped her fingers beneath his nose and shot him a knowing look. “It’s the playlist I made for you for your nineteenth birthday. Why are you still listening to this?”
“Some things have a way of sticking with you.”
The teasing look in her eyes faded and she blinked a little too swiftly before she dropped her gaze.
They sat in silence for a moment and he stared out the windshield at the point where the black sea met the sky.
“You didn’t object when I dared you to jump in our ice fishing hole, either,” she said after a moment.
“We nearly froze to death.”
“We warmed each other up,” she countered.
The buzz of blood in his veins at that wicked memory seemed to throb along to the thumping beat. “We made good use of that fishing shack.”
He caught the quirk of her lips in the gloom. “Though we didn’t catch a single fish. Not that we cared.”
No. He’d only cared about Nolee back then. Had insisted, over her objections, that he would give up everything, his dreams of joining the Coast Guard, of leaving Kodiak, because she’d been what mattered most.
And she hadn’t felt the same way.
The windshield began to fog and he flipped the heater to defrost. A couple of snowmobiles whined in the distance and a memory resurfaced. “We stole that ski-doo.” He felt himself smile at that crazy day that’d nearly landed them in the ER and jail.
“Borrowed,” she clarified, shifting, her knee bumping his. He was aware of the press of her against his side, hip to hip, leg to leg, arm to arm.
“We didn’t have permission.”
She sighed. “The real crime was Mr. Strout never riding the damn thing. Plus, I didn’t hear you complaining when you did donuts with it. You had us going fifty miles an hour.”
“That was kid stuff. This is real life.”
“Exactly, Dylan. It’s my life. I call the shots in it. Only me.”
“You came way too close to losing it yesterday,” he growled.
She reached a hand to his cheek. Laid her palm flat against it. His breath lodged in his chest and his mind went blank. “But I didn’t.”
No. He was acutely aware of just how alive she was here beside him, short-circuiting his brain. His defenses against her were running low. God knew, he was trying his damnedest to do the right thing and save her from her worst instincts before he left Kodiak.
“What if you hadn’t been rescued in time?”
“Then I would have died doing what I love. Isn’t your motto So Others May Live?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” She angled her head and her dark eyes met his in the dimness.
“I risk my life to save other people’s lives. You’re risking yours for profit.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Then what?” He stroked a hand through her mane of straight, glossy black hair, the strands running through his fingers like a silken waterfall, her eyes closing in pleasure.
“I want to be independent. Free,” she murmured.
He watched her breath quicken and he felt the barrier he’d erected between them start to crumble.
“We’ve both always wanted that,” she added.
Something inside him shifted. Loosened. “Nolee. I don’t want anything happening to you.”
She raised her face, lips parted, as if in a question, and put her hand to the scar above his brow, tracing it with her fingertips. “The worst thing that could happen to me is nothing.”
He groaned at the brush of her mouth against his jaw. In an instant he had her in his arms, his heart pounding against hers. It was only a few seconds, but it was as much as a man on the edge could take. He stripped the hat from her head and tossed it on the dashboard, while his lips descended to hers.
And he kissed her with all the longing that had been plaguing him since he’d laid eyes on her again.
4 (#u4e77c8ca-1a5e-5f53-a738-345f52fe0fa6)
DYLAN KISSED NOLEE with a hunger as fierce and edgy as her own. She’d waited so long for this—this man. This night. She’d dreamed of it. Fantasized. Practically wished upon a freaking star...a star that would lead him back north to her. But how long would he stay?
She shoved aside the troubling thought, wanting to focus only on him, on this moment. His touch woke her dormant body, tingling and aware with a stinging, rushing need. For the first time in ages, she was warm. More than warm. Heat burned through her, chasing away the cold.
He slid from behind the wheel toward her and she threw her knee across his lap and straddled him, the move automatic, her body remembering him instinctively. She felt his familiar, well-muscled legs against her thighs and the long hard length of his erection. Her mind grew foggy from passion and desire, chasing away coherent thought. Right now, all she knew was that she wanted to be close to him, held by him.
Dylan threaded his hands through her hair and met her eyes for one blistering-hot second, his gaze raking over her intently. Her heart pounded at his sexy perusal. It seemed as if his guard had been stripped away and the emotion remaining was something frightening and thrilling at the same time.
“So damn sexy,” he breathed, his voice hoarse. Fervent.
Then his mouth landed on hers again and she forgot to think. His kiss teased her with a hungry quality that robbed her of reason so that she could do nothing but cling to Dylan’s broad shoulders. Covering her lips with his, he tasted her with the confidence of a man who knew her. Knew what turned her on, what drove her crazy. What left her overwhelmed and powerless with lust.
She savored the familiar way their mouths merged and melded, the heat intensifying with each stroke of his tongue as he teased his way inside. Tipping her head back, he exerted more pressure over the kiss, the effect drugging her. Then he cupped her cheeks, angling her face to kiss harder, deeper.
A light-headed sensation spun the world around Nolee and she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on tight. Her fingers combed through the short curls at the base of his scalp. Soft, she thought hazily. Thick.
Her breath stuck in her throat and she sat utterly still when Dylan released her hair to run his hands down her sides. In one swift move, he freed her jeans’ front closure. Then he cupped her bottom, fitting her to his groin. Sweet, hot, delicious friction. She nearly groaned aloud, desire building, air now hissing between her teeth. He edged her low-riding denim down her hips slightly, the warm air teasing her skin, making her ultra-aware of the tiny patch of flesh he’d just bared.
The purring vent was no match for the fogged windows that insulated them, making this intense moment private. Intimate. The hard, thumping rock song that poured from the sound system pounded along with her erratic pulse.
Her fingers grasped ineffectually at his jacket zipper, her hands incapable of making progress when his kisses consumed her. His hands stroked a hot path up her rib cage to palm her breasts through her coat, then spanned her ribs with his fingers. She arched against him and whimpered, a keening sound that didn’t begin to express the desperation now clawing inside. When her fleece provided a soft, thick barrier to his touch, he slid it off her body with hands now clumsy, shaking with the same hunger that gripped her. An electric current within sizzled double-time. It ignited a fire low in her belly.
He delved deeper into her mouth as his kisses turned more deliciously aggressive. The wicked intent she sensed behind the wet mating of mouths thrilled her on a primal level, stripping away the need for anything other than raw, scorching sex that would leave them both gasping for breath.
She tugged down his jacket zipper at last, needing to feel his body against hers, his hot, naked muscles against her hypersensitive skin. With fumbling touches, nerves buzzing, she eased it open and he shrugged out of it, his magnificent chest rising and falling against the thin thermal fabric of his shirt, their ragged breaths mingling. Fast. Urgent.
She wanted every erotic act she knew he had to offer, and she wanted it now. She wiggled her hips against him to be sure he knew how much. His primal growl rolled right through her, strengthening her determination to simply enjoy the searing chemistry between them for as long as it lasted.
Hoots and hollers erupted in the distance as customers exited the pub. An engine fired to life and then headlights whisked across the space before disappearing, tires spinning through icy snow.
Alone again, she melted into his arms, collapsing against him, her hips grinding with more urgency. The warmth between her legs made her damp with want. He swept her hair to one side and his lips traced the side of her neck, then the hollow of her throat. Their breaths came shorter and then shorter still. Beneath his rapidly rising and falling chest, his heart thundered along with hers.
Thick, steamy air settled on her bare midriff as he slid up the hem of her shirt. Never one to bother with a bra unless strictly necessary, Nolee delighted in Dylan’s string of appreciative oaths as he discovered that fact with his hands.
“You’re mine,” he breathed, just as he cupped her breasts fully, taking the weight of her aching flesh in his hands. Her breath seized in her chest at his possessive declaration. Oh how that was true.
Every atom of her being fired to his touch as if he held the key to turning her on, to winding her up this way. With slow deliberation he dragged his thumbs over both taut peaks. She practically convulsed with the sharp contraction of her feminine muscles when he tweaked them between his thumb and forefinger, at the same time nipping her lower lip between his teeth.
His rock-hard thighs beneath her only added to the spiraling heat. The equally solid length of his arousal gave her no quarter in that direction, either. Not that she wanted any. His body provided an erotic cradle for her hips, along with the growing knowledge things were only going to get hotter.
Nolee broke the kiss so she could simply look at the man in front of her. She touched his face, tracing a fingertip over his lips, up one cheekbone and then down. She smoothed the scar above his eyebrow and part of her relaxed. This was Dylan. He wasn’t a stranger but a familiar lover. A man her heart recognized, craved, dreamed of more often than not.
Looking at him now, it was as if she was seeing him for the first time all over again—the stinging rush of attraction, the need to glimpse his smile, the desire to hear his laughter and, even more, to be responsible for it.
Above all, though, was the yearning to touch him. So she did. She traced her fingers over the indents that defined each ab, each contracting, rock-solid plate, and he caught her fingers before they settled on his bulging groin.
Her lashes lifted and she peered up at him, the fog of desire unraveling slightly at the edges. His sculpted features swam into focus. They looked sharp enough to cut someone. A muscle jumped in his clenched jaw.
He ran a shaking hand over his short brown curls. When he spoke, each word emerged heavily. “I hope I’m not stepping on Craig’s toes here.”
She stopped breathing for one suspended minute. “Craig?” Her strangled voice shoved past her heart, which had leaped into the base of her throat and lodged there.
He stared at her gravely with unblinking eyes. “Craig.”
“You—you think I would kiss you like that if I was with another guy?”
