“You’re moving to Washington?” I could barely get the question out, the words like broken glass in my throat.
“No, I’m not.” She paused for a second, then bit her lip, lifted a single shoulder, and blew out a heavy sigh. “Or, I don’t know if I’m not. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know what I should do or where I should live. Or if Starlight Cove is right for me.”
“I thought you loved it here.” I thought she loved it with me.
“I do. I just… I don’t know if it loves me back. I’ve been here for two years, and I still don’t feel like I belong.”
Hearing her say that, hearing the pain laced in her words, cracked my heart in two. But I didn’t know what I could say to make her believe shedidbelong. That she was as much a part of Starlight Cove as me or any of my siblings, as much a part of it as Mabel with her Facebook Lives, or Esther running bingo on Mondays. That was easy formeto see—I’d seen it every day for the past two years, how people gravitated toward her—but I had no idea how to make her see it, too.
“Maybe moving home would be for the best,” she said, her words barely a whisper, and my entire world seized up.
This washer home—Iwas her home—and it killed me that she felt like she didn’t fit here. Like she’d be better somewhere else. The thought of her gone…of her moving to the other side of the country after she was finally mine was a huge, gaping wound in my chest, and I had no idea how to fix it. No idea how to make someone stay if they didn’t want to.
No idea how I’d let myself fall for someone, open up completely, when this was the inevitable outcome.
“It was just a bad day,” I said, as much for her as for myself. “Give it some time. Things will work out.”
They had to. Because I didn’t know what I’d do if they didn’t.
She shot me a small smile. “Isn’t that my line?”
“Yeah, which means shit’s gotten real weird.” And I knew one thing that would take both our minds off everything. “How about you tell me all the reasons you love Starlight Cove while I eat your pussy?”
She blew out another laugh—this one sounding much more real—and shook her head. “Someone’s got a one-track mind tonight.”
“That’s not a no.”
She looked at me, her lip caught between her teeth, and slowly shook her head. “No, it’s not.”
I slid my hands up the outsides of her thighs until I gripped the sides of her panties, one brow raised. She shifted in her seat, lifting her ass up from the chair, and allowed me to pull them down her legs and off her completely. I tossed them behind me—hopefully avoiding Chuck—and pushed my T-shirt up and over her tits, exposing her to me completely.
I cupped one of her breasts in my palm and leaned forward, circling her nipple with my tongue before pulling back and blowing a gust of air against it.
“Beck,” she whispered, her eyes full of heat as she watched me.
“I’ve got you, sunshine.” I gripped her hips, tugged her to the edge of the seat, and hooked her legs over the arms of the chair, spreading her wide open for my hungry gaze. Jesus Christ, she was gorgeous, all soft and pink. I ran my nose up the inside of her thigh, inhaling deeply—her scent a mix of us both, my soap and her Everlyness, that made my mouth water, demanding a taste.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” I said, ghosting my breath over her pussy. “You’re going to tell me all the things you love about Starlight Cove, and I’m going to lick your pussy. You don’t talk, I don’t lick.”
“That’s mean.”
I shrugged. “Those are the rules. Take ’em or leave ’em.”
She sighed, pulling my hat off and tossing it to the side before running her fingers through my hair. “Guess I’ll take them.”
I raised a brow. “Then you better start talking.”
“Okay… Um…well, I love that it’s on the ocean.”
Humming, I pressed an openmouthed kiss to the crease of her leg and raised a brow.
She exhaled a deep breath and relaxed back into the chair. “You said you’d lick, not tease.”
I licked a path up the inside of her thigh. “Never said it’d be your pussy.”
Her mouth dropped open as she huffed out a gasp. “That’s not fair.”
“The more reasons you give, the more licking I do. Better start thinking.”
