Summer's Desire (32 page)
Authors: Olivia Lynde
After we close the house door behind us,
Seth starts to move faster, making me almost run to keep up. Just before we
reach our car, he turns to me with glittering eyes and pulls me toward him.
Instinctively, I jump up and he catches me, raising me higher, and my arms go
around his neck and my legs around his waist. Our lips come together in an
explosion of relief and passion, and we're kissing deeply, mouths wet and open,
tongues tangling and caressing.
Heavens, he's an insanely good kisser!
Even without having anyone with whom to compare him, I am sure of this, just by
how he always completely scrambles my brain within less than two seconds after he
touches me. His earlier, shallower kisses were already mind-blowingly
fantastic, but now that he's also French-kissing me, he practically lifts me to
a different plane of existence every time.
After our lips separate, we keep our
faces very close to each other, look into each other's eyes, and grin at each
other full of joy.
"I love you, Sunny," he whispers
tenderly.
"I love you, Seth."
Then he's moving, with me still attached
to him, to open the passenger door, and he settles me gently in my seat. He
closes my door and starts around the car front.
I reach to fasten my seatbelt... and it
is at that moment that I look outside through my window and see Jessica framed
in the doorway of her house. She's staring in our direction, her expression scarily
blank. I wonder how long she's been watching us, how much she's seen and heard.
Barely a minute ago, Seth and I were kissing the living daylights out of each
other and professing our love.
I would hate for that devil's spawn to
have witnessed our intimate moment.
The driver's side opens. "You okay,
Sunny?" Seth asks me, settling in his seat.
Darn Jessica, I won't let her ruin this
for me!
I arrange my face in a happy expression
and turn to my boy. "Actually, Seth, I am very much beyond merely
okay."
He gives me a loving smile. "Let's
go then."
The next instant, we're driving together
through the night, heading home.
But that insidious sense of dread I felt
when I saw Jessica in her doorway... it doesn't go away.
We're stretched out on the bed in his
apartment, both of us lying on our sides, facing each other, and Seth's right
arm encircles my waist.
I have Seth's giant green T-shirt on, which
I also wore the two previous nights (and which I cajoled Seth into letting me
keep even though I now have a bunch of new clothes), but I've forgone the
drawstring pants in favor of a cute pair of shorts. As a (momentary, I suppose)
concession to my shyness, Seth has upgraded his usual sleepwear (boxer shorts
only) with a pair of blue sweatpants. His beautiful sculpted chest, however,
has been left bared to my greedy stare.
We're looking deep into each others' eyes,
and God, how I relish the connection! His dark blue gaze is completely open to
me, no part of him held back.
We're talking about the big event of
tonight.
"I still can't believe that Greg
actually agreed to let me leave his house and move in with you," I murmur
contemplatively. "I sort of had this vision that, when he heard your request,
he would blow a fuse, try to throw you out of his house, and send me to a
nunnery or something."
Seth raises a sardonic eyebrow. "Oh
ye of little faith." But then his forehead clouds and his gaze shutters
abruptly in that way I hate so much. "You regret that you said yes to moving
in with me? Maybe you thought that Greg would be your failsafe so you wouldn't
have to go through with it after all?"
Dear heavens, why does he torment
himself with such ridiculous thoughts?! Doesn't he know how absolutely, head-over-heels
in love I am with him?
I scowl at him. "What you're saying
is unfair and untrue! I wouldn't have said that I wanted to live with you if I
hadn't meant it with all my heart. Surely you know me better than that,
Seth!" Then, very softly: "Surely you must know how much I want to be
with you."
I gnaw at my lower lip in distress, and
his eyes go from unreadable to devouring in less than blink. Thank goodness!
He leans in for a fierce, deep kiss.
"Sorry for making it sound like I
doubted you," he says against my parted lips. "It's just, I want you
so damn much I'm crazy with it! And it's hard to trust that, after all these
years of thinking I'd lost you, you're now back in my life. And you're
mine—
my
greatest dream come true."
Radiant joy suffuses my soul, then
spills over into every single cell of my body. "I'm your greatest
dream?"
"Sunny, you're everything! And I
swear I won't ever give you a reason to regret that you're mine. I swear I'll
take good care of you. I'll do everything so I can give you all you want."
His eyes are bright with possessiveness and something else too—something I
could almost believe is... reverence.
God, how I love this boy! Still, that
caveman mentality of his is in sore need of a bit of an overhaul. I give him an
impish grin. "I'll never regret loving you, Seth. But I don't want you to
take care of me; I want us to take care of each other. As for giving me what I
want—you already have, Seth. You've given me you."
And you are my one
desire.
I barely finish my sentence before his
lips are on mine again, taking me over, submerging me in a sea of searing
passion. I finally have to tear my mouth away from his just to get some oxygen
into my air-starved lungs, but my heart still feels caught in an earthquake,
bouncing wildly inside my chest.
"See," I croak, "proof
positive of my happiness at being here with you. I'm really grateful for Greg's
agreement. Surprised, but very grateful."
Seth's lust-filled gaze sharpens with
astuteness. "Don't be surprised. Given the escalation of the problems with
Jessica, Anderson's only option, in the end, would've been to send you back to social
services. But that would've really harmed you given the timing, and he was
decent enough to admit that. So when we gave him another option to get you out
of his house, he jumped at it."
"So you're saying..."
"I'm saying that you're not his
flesh and blood, Sunny. That if you'd been his own sixteen-year-old daughter—and
not just some foster girl he'd taken in—he would've never allowed you to move
in with your older boyfriend."
I look away, unwillingly stung. He's
right, of course. Greg doesn't really care how I live my life. Nobody does. My
parents would have cared, but they're long dead.
Seth's warm hand rises from my waist and
touches my chin, gently turning my face back toward him. His eyes are filled
with tenderness and concern.
"It's okay, Sunny. You don't need
Greg, remember? You have me, baby! You have me."
But for how long?
Awful, ugly question; and awful, ugly
poison that it keeps dripping into my soul. Tainting my happiness with the
awful specter of evanescence.
Driven by sudden instinctive urgency, I move
closer to Seth, press myself into his body. When I raise my face to his, his
lips are already waiting, and our mouths connect in an explosion of untamed feeling.
His hand at my waist rises higher,
fingers splaying on my back and drawing me into him. He shifts me onto my back
and covers me with his warm weight. All I know is his strong body above me, and
his demanding hands on me, and his mouth on mine—drowning me in heat.
His lips move to my neck, forging a
trail of sweet, wicked kisses on my skin; then he bites my neck lightly and a more
powerful quiver of passion surges through me. He runs his nose sensually along
the column on my throat and kisses it again. My hands clench into the warm
flesh at his waist, and I arch into him, moaning. He sucks on my neck, then
licks delicately, caressing my skin with his sinful tongue.
I trail my hands
up his naked back, curl them around his shoulders and curve myself into him.
His lips leave my neck in search of my mouth, and we kiss again: wet, deep,
deeper, moving and shifting and fusing our lips. Time disappears.
We're intertwined,
kissing endlessly. Each frenzied meeting of our lips, each sensual glide of our
bodies drives my need higher until I'm shaking with it. I'm pressing myself
upwards into Seth, rubbing against his arousal—searching for something,
something... I don't know what, only that he can give it to me.
I'm wild for
him, utterly lost to our mutual passion... and it's too much, too soon.
Sensing this, he
stops kissing me and enfolds me in a confining embrace, halting my arching movements
and rolling us so that he's lying on his back and I'm lying on him. Beneath my
ear, his heart thunders like a stampede of feral horses, and his body feels
rigid with his imposed restraint.
Yet he holds me
quietly, gently to him and caresses my hair in a soothing rhythm.
Holy smoke, that
was intense!
I think when I am eventually able to do so once more. I never imagined that I
could feel this way: just ignite, so instantly and completely! It seems as if
at one moment I'm a tiny flicker, then he appears like high-octane gasoline and
pours himself into me with his touch, his kiss; and I immediately go up in
flames, abandon myself to him past all sense of self-preservation.
This boy is not
merely dangerous to my senses—he's lethal.
After the lava
of need burning in my veins has calmed somewhat, I raise myself slightly on his
chest and meet his stormy gaze.
"That was
interesting," I tell him cautiously. Then I beam at him. "I like it.
Let's do it again very soon!"
At this he
bursts into laughter, his chest vibrating under me. "I'm glad you like it
because I definitely do."
I lay my head
back on his chest and his strong arm around me draws me closer to him. I
snuggle contentedly into his heat and feel his other hand burying itself once
again in my hair, playing with the wavy strands.
"Seth..."
"Yes, Sunny?"
I hide my face in his shoulder, my voice
no more than a whisper. "Do you want to make love to me?"
His hand playing with my hair freezes. Then
it resumes its motion.
"There's no rush," he tells me
huskily.
"But you want to?" Again with
my face buried in his shoulder.
He takes his hand from my hair and moves
it to my cheek and lifts my head out of hiding. His eyes are deep blue pools of
raging fire. "I want you more than I ever thought it was possible to want.
You enchant me. Every little thing about you, every little part of you, fascinates
me. I'm crazy from wanting you."
In this moment his gorgeous face,
blazing with fathomless desire, seems to me the very quintessence of carnal
enticement. The hot embers in my belly start their frantic pulsing all over
again.
Giddy, I lower my gaze. "How long
do you thing you can wait for me to... you know...? Go all the way with
you?"
"Look at me," he orders
firmly.
I raise my eyes to his.
"I love you, Sunny. I've been
waiting for you forever. Even if I had to spend my life waiting for you—it'd be
worth it as long as you're mine. You have your answer now?"
I nod.
A pause, and his
eyes darken. "Will you sing for me, Sunny? Like you used to?"
I look away.
"I haven't sung in a long time, Seth. I don't know if my voice is any good
anymore."
His hand stops
moving in my hair once again. "When did you sing last?"
I tell him the
truth. "The last time I sang for you."
His body turns
solid beneath me, but his voice stays tender. "Please sing for me now,
Sunny. I want to hear my birthday song."
I can refuse him
nothing. Looking into his eyes, drawing strength from our connection, I sing
for him
Over the Rainbow
.
When my voice
first emerges as melody, it's almost as if he stops breathing. When I finish, he
pulls my head down and gives me a devastating kiss.
After our lips
separate, he rasps out, "Jesus Christ, Sunny! I already thought you sang
like a nightingale when we were children. But just now, listening to you, it
was like I'd died and gone to heaven because that could only be an angel's
voice I was hearing. Your young voice was already incredible. But your mature
voice... it's out of this world."
I smile brightly
at his praise. "I love singing for you. Except for my parents, you're
still the only one I've ever done it for."
His eyes flare
and he gives me another consuming kiss.
By the time he ends it, my heart is
almost bursting out of my chest with exhilaration.
"Go to sleep, Sunny," he tells
me hoarsely. He attempts a smile. "We have school in the morning."
I lower my head back to his
chest."Good night, Seth. And... I love you too."