“You two can go for a walk,” Muddy said nonchalantly. “I’ll watch them.”
Hank had her out the door before she could blink. He pulled her with him until they both were running down the beach in the moonlight. She laughed, and so did he. She shouted his name, and he called out hers to tease her as they ran in uneven speeds over the sand, each pulling at the other. But they both slowed down and stopped when they were near the water. Her breath was short and sharp, and she grabbed her side because she was still laughing.
He watched her smile. He almost laughed to himself, knowing what that smile of hers did to him. Part of him was glad she didn’t understand the power she had with that one smile.
But after a moment, Hank’s gaze caught hers. There was a long tense pause while they stared at each other. Her smile faded.
He knew. She knew.
Nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that the lagoon shone a lustery black in the night. It didn’t matter that a breath of night wind made the palm fronds whisper. Nothing mattered then but what they felt for each other—something there was no word for. Emotion so strong it had no name.
They turned and walked in silence along the sand where the moonlight turned their steps silver. The waves were breaking with a bolder sound, a boom, a rush, and foamy whoosh. And as those waves broke, thousands of red sea creatures glimmered in the subtle light, glowed as if there were fire in the waves.
Hank just held her soft hand as they walked, with nothing around them but the wind and the sea and a wealth of emotion and awareness of the other.
His senses were keen. With each breath of the trades, her scent came alive. It was suddenly all around him, that female smell that made him damn glad he was a man.
He could sense it above the brine of the sea, above the earthy smell of the sand and the shore. He was aware only of her. Just Smitty.
Her touch. Her profile. Her walk. The way the ball gown rustled against the side of his leg.
He stopped and smiled down at her, then pulled her to him. He threaded his fingers through hers and held their hands up as he slid his other arm around her lower back.
And they danced in the moonlight. On silver sand and cool sighs of wind. The music was all around them—the rumbling reef, the wash of the waves, the rustle of palm fronds in the nearby coconut trees, the rapid and syncopated beat of their hearts.
They sensed when to stop, and both did at the same moment. Whether it was in their eyes or in their minds, they knew. Almost as if at that moment in time they were one.
Hank looked over her head and stared out at the sea for a moment that he thought he needed. It was a little confusing, all this... stuff in his gut that he’d never experienced. It wasn’t an easy thing for him to accept, either.
He looked at her, and his doubts washed away.
He touched her cheek, then let his hand drift to her neck. Her pulse pounded like the surf. He leaned down and kissed her gently in a way he’d never kissed a woman before. He wasn’t taking anything. Just touching his mouth to hers. He pulled back and watched her.
Her breathing was husky and abrupt, like his. In her eyes he saw the same raw emotion that was eating at him. A need that was more than something physical.
It was hard to tell who made the first move. He reached out for her and she for him. He lowered his head. She stood on tiptoe. Then she was in his arms, her body, that soft, female body was against his.
He kissed her again. Kissed her as he’d never kissed a woman. Kissed her as if she mattered. Because she did.
* * *
He never gaveMargareta chance to say anything. She didn’t have to ask him for what she wanted. And she hadn’t known the words to ask anyway. But he did the most romantic thing he could have—he picked her up in his arms and carried her down the beach.
She felt his arms tighten around her, and he stepped over the rock to that isolated spot of beach where he’d lost himself in bottles of liquor. A small plot of beach where rocks and sea made it private.
He dropped her legs so he held her along his tall body with one hand cupping her head and the other hand on her bottom. Then his mouth covered hers so swiftly he stole her breath.
She slid her arms up over his shoulders and hung on for all it was worth.
And it was worth everything.
His tongue brushed her lips, then he was in her mouth, a hard and seeking kiss that demanded that she give in return. Her hands moved up his neck and onto his head. Her fingers dug through his black hair and clenched it in tight fistfuls.
He moaned her name over and over. She opened her mouth wider, sucked on his tongue and his lips the way he’d sucked on hers. She kissed him in ways she’d never been kissed, had never known existed. With him her motions were instinctive.
His hand kneaded her bottom, first one side, then the other. He pressed her hard against him and groaned when she dropped a hand to the small of his back and slid her fingers into the waistband of his pants. His hips began to move in a slow rhythm that she soon picked up. She moved with him. Circling slowly in a new dance.
Their motions grew hot and hungry, unguarded and free. He tore at the buttons on her dress and drew his tongue and mouth along her neck, over to her throat, and lower as he pulled the fabric down under one breast. His head nudged her back over his arm, exposing her, and his mouth closed over her breast, sucking as much of it into his mouth as he could.
