“I’m so fucking proud of you.” His voice was low and gruff, thick with lust and pride, and it tickled all her sensitive nerve endings, turning her to jelly in his arms.
“Thanks.” She leaned forward to kiss him back, her victory all but forgotten in the heat of his kiss, the scorching stroke of his tongue against hers, the delicious feel of his hands skimming down her sides to grip her butt, drawing her closer against him.
She shifted so that her knees dropped down on either side of his thighs, straddling him. He was hard, so hard, and the bulge in his jeans pressed into her right where she burned for him. She rocked her hips against his. The friction of his jeans through the thin cotton of her yoga pants was enough to make her lose her mind.
Ryan pressed her more firmly against his erection. “Watching you climb that rock is the biggest fucking turn-on.”
Really?She must have looked ridiculous, flailing around as she scrambled for the top. “It would be reallybadif you took me right here.” She emphasized the word as fantasies of them having wild sex up here on top of the world exploded through her brain.
He groaned. “Bad in all the wrong ways. Bad in the ‘bruises and scrapes where the sun don’t shine’ and potentially fall to your death in the throes of passion kind of way.”
Well, when he put it that way…
He shifted her to a more ladylike position in his lap, then kissed her again. “But I couldn’t go another moment without kissing you.”
Something about the way he said it sent a warm tingle up her spine. He sounded possessive. Of her.
“Did you get a good look at the view?” he asked.
“I like the view.” She smiled, staring straight into his eyes. She’d spent the better part of her life fantasizing about him looking at her the way he was right now, and yet the reality was still better than she’d imagined.
He dipped his head and kissed her again. “I mean the view around us. It’s always better when you’ve scaled the rock to get here.”
She turned her head, seeing the forest around her for the first time from her new vantage point, and yeah, it was pretty awesome. She slid out of his lap and crawled to the edge. Lying on her stomach, she looked down at where she’d started. “Wow. It looks even higher from up here.”
“Not bad, huh?” He came to lay beside her. “I climb up here when I need to clear my head.”
“I can see how this would do it.” She lay there for several minutes, just staring out at the vista in front of her. “Thanks for pushing me to try again.”
“Any time.”
She listened to the birds chattering in the trees, then rolled to her back to watch the sunlight filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead. “I could stay here all day.”
“Fine by me,” Ryan said. “Hey, how’s the memorial coming?”
And just like that, her peaceful mood was ruined. “I met with the Town Planning Committee this morning, actually. They rejected my design.”
“What? Why?”
“They thought it was too trendy.” Emma stared up at the trees overhead, avoiding Ryan’s concerned gaze. Lucas and Mary had warned her this might happen, but it still hadn’t prepared her for the enormous sting of the Planning Committee’s rejection.
“I’m sorry, Em. That’s lousy.” He lay beside her, taking her hand in his. “But it’s just a bump in the road. You’ll come up with something else, something even better.”
“I sure hope so.” She turned her head to look at him. “What’s next, Ryan?”
His brown eyes were alive with the dappled light of the forest around them. “I assume you don’t mean right here, right now.”
“No, apart from the fact that we’re lying here on this rock we just climbed…what comes next with all the kissing and stuff?”
“Not quite sure myself.” His lips curved in a wicked smile. “But if you have any wild fantasies in mind, I thought our trip to Charlotte this weekend might be a good time to fulfill them.”
She gulped audibly, her throat gone dry as sandpaper. “Oh.” Yes. Their trip to Charlotte to get her tattoo.
“So let me hear it, baby. What naughty fantasy do you want to indulge first?” His voice was delightfully rough, his eyes having taken on a slightly wicked gleam.
“Um.”Gah.He’d rendered her speechless. “Surprise me.”
“Oh, baby, that is a definite ‘can do.’”
