Last Chance Book Club(35)
Author: Hope Ramsay

“The door was open.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “The door was open to the theater. The contractor must not have locked up.”

“Great. I told you—”

“Don’t. I don’t want to talk about the theater right now. I want to talk about you and me and that motel.”

“We’re not going there.”

She cocked her head. “No?”

Heat flowed through him. It was his addiction singing to him like a siren from the shore.

That was probably why he sat there like some fat, dumb, and happy idiot when she slid across the bench and pulled his hands away from the steering wheel.

He didn’t fight too hard when she placed his hands on her rib cage and then moved in, slanting her mouth over his. She invaded him like the union   marching on Atlanta.

She tasted like barbecued heaven, all warm and soft and smoky. The breath caught in her throat right before the round, soft contours of her br**sts pressed up against his chest. She threw herself into that kiss like she’d thrown herself into everything she’d done in the two months she’d been in Last Chance.

Fingers roamed up over his scalp, sending hot tingles down his spine; her tongue teased his and then danced away right before she thrust it back. Blood pounded in his ears and other places.

Damn, she was as hot as T-bone’s chili special.

A man with his weaknesses could never stand up against something like this. Savannah was all over him, and he wasn’t about to sit there like a lump.

Or push her away.

Not when she unleashed this torrent of longing and lust that he’d been battling for so long.

But she needed a bath. Which of course sent his mind racing in all sorts of directions that involved her nak*d in lots of water. With soap.

For low-down dirty sex, his fantasy was surprisingly clean.

“Okay,” he murmured against her sooty cheek. “Okay, let’s go.”

She backed away. “Let’s go? To a no-tell motel for discreet, but hot and dirty sex?” There was an impish grin on her face, and those dark eyes of hers were lit up with starlight. She wanted her bad-boy fix. And he wanted his Savannah fix.

“Aren’t you even sorry about the fire?” he asked, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.

Her face fell. And he hated himself for bringing up the topic. Although maybe, he’d just managed to get himself out of a really dangerous situation.

“I am.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “I’m heartbroken. And I’m also kind of pissed off, to tell you the truth.”

“Pissed off?”

“Yeah, at myself.” She pulled back and looked right up in his eyes. He couldn’t look away. “I should have taken your advice. I should have listened to you. But I had to do everything myself. And I don’t know squat about anything, except maybe cooking strudel.”

Her lip quivered. Why the hell had he brought up the fire anyway?

“Uh, there are other things you’re good at.”

“There are?”

“Yeah. You’re a great dancer. And you sure can kiss, princess. And you’re a pretty terrific screamer when it comes to snakes.”

“Right. That’s not very impressive.”

“I’m not finished. You can cook more than strudel, you’re kind to Aunt Mim, everyone in town loves you. And you used to make your grandfather’s eyes light up. I used to be so jealous of that.”

She blinked up at him. “I loved him. You loved him. But you know something? Bringing The Kismet back to life isn’t ever going to bring him back.” She rested her forehead on his chest.

And his heart swelled up and lodged in his throat. “Shit.”

“What?” Her breath heated his chest through the fabric of his shirt.

“I want you.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that. Can we do something about it or are we just going to sit here arguing with one another about who loved Granddaddy more?”

“You think he would approve of this?”

She raised her head and stared at him, the connection between them stronger than ever.

“I know he wanted us to be friends.”

“This is a lot more than that. This is dangerous, princess. You don’t even know how dangerous it is.”

She wasn’t listening to him, as usual, because she leaned forward and kissed him again. This kiss was demanding and wicked and not at all the kind of kiss a princess would unleash on anyone. Good Lord, that woman had a talent for dirty, sexy kissing. And then she dropped her sweet little hand to his thigh and started walking her fingers up to his crotch.

Well, of course he had to retaliate. So he cupped her breast. It was just the right size, and her n**ples were straining against her T-shirt. He ran his thumb over one of them, and she growled. A flush of lust came at him like a big, fat, floating curveball right over the plate.

A man like him had no defense for something like that. None. Whatsoever. He had to take a swing at it. Didn’t he?

The Orangeburg Motor Lodge looked like any motel you might find by the side of an interstate. In this case, the two-story stucco building stood right at the intersection of I-26 and Route 301, about twenty-five miles northeast of Last Chance and smack-dab in the middle of the route between Columbia and Charleston. Yessir, this jumping-off place in the middle of nowhere couldn’t have been more anonymous if it tried.

Maybe that’s why the proprietors had erected a giant sign for passing motorists that proclaimed a room rate of only fifty dollars a night. And for that you got a small swimming pool, cable television, and a continental breakfast in the bargain.

Dash procured the room key, no doubt paying cash for it, and he drove his Cadillac around to the back of the building, away from the access road.

He killed the engine and set the brake. He turned his hip into the seat, and for the first time in the last forty-five minutes, he looked her right in the eye. “Honey, are you sure about this?”

Was she sure? No way. Confusion, insecurity, and fear ruled her emotions at this moment. But all of that was nothing compared with the lust, which made her feel alive.

She needed to get back into his arms.

She looked out the passenger’s window at the blue motel door bearing the brass numbers above its peephole. She needed to remember this, but the door couldn’t have been less extraordinary. It looked like every motel door she had ever seen.

She could imagine the room beyond. A single picture window with a view of the parking lot and heavy drapes that hid the air-conditioning unit. A chair, a lamp, a couple of forgettable prints on the wall, a counter bolted to the wall in a dark, walnut Formica. Two double beds with rough sheets and ugly bedspreads, separated by another built-in containing a cubbyhole where you’d find Gideon’s Bible.

She focused on the door number for a moment. Forty-seven. Nothing came to mind to connect this number with anything else in her life.

Maybe that was a good thing.

She pulled the car door handle and got out of the car. She wasn’t going to look at Dash, and she wasn’t going to talk to him either. She didn’t quite trust him right at this moment. He might work himself back to the point of being noble and chucking the whole plan or he might actually talk her out of it.

He got out of the car, too. They walked to the room door in silence and he opened it. A blast of air-conditioning, heavy with that impersonal motel scent, hit them like a slap across the face.

A moment later, they stood in the room with the glare of highway traffic streaming through the large window. Dash drew the heavy curtains closed. Savannah switched on the lamp between the two beds.

He looked at her from across the room. Studied her, in fact, while she studied him, trying hard to memorize the contours of his face—the lines at the corners of his cheeks, the little fold of skin that appeared at the bridge of his nose when he raised his eyebrows, the dent in his chin, his lopsided half grin. There wasn’t anything not to like in his face.

“So now what?” she asked.

He crossed the distance between them and stood there looking down at her, without touching her at all. Time hung suspended, the venture suddenly teetering on a fulcrum. Which way would they fall?

She couldn’t risk that he might change his mind. With a trembling finger, she reached out to touch the dimple in his chin.

He took a deep breath in through his nose and closed his eyes. “You need a shower,” he said.

He hauled her over his shoulder and carried her into the tiny bathroom at the back of the room.

He set her on her feet in front of the mirror.

“Oh, my God,” she said, “I look like a refugee from a coal mine.”

She turned toward him. “And you let me kiss you looking like this?”

He shrugged. “Honey, you taste a little like Earl Williams’s barbecue.”

“I do not.”

His mouth tilted. “Uh, well, there’s a solution to that problem. And I gotta tell you, princess, I’ve been having a lot of shower fantasies recently.”

“Me too.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?”

That must have been some kind of rhetorical question because, in the very next instant, he pushed her back against the bathroom door, his big body invading her space. His mouth closed hot and heavy on hers, and his tongue assaulted her mouth. He undid her ponytail, and her hair tumbled over her shoulders. He ran his fingers through it, cocking her head back so that he had access to her neck. He had her imprisoned between his hard thighs, his massive chest, and his warm lips.

She couldn’t breathe even when he backed off a fraction, letting his tongue travel lightly over her bottom lip, nipping at her, dipping back into her mouth, and then finally traveling over her cheek to the hollow of her neck.

While all this transpired, her hands developed a mind of their own. They crept around his waist and tugged at his shirttail until it came free of its moorings. She finally insinuated her hands under the fabric and came up against the warm skin of his back. The unexpected silkiness of his skin sent another rush right through her.

Her fingers climbed up his back as tension corkscrewed inside her belly. She wanted to climb right inside his skin, but instead of getting closer, he backed away.

“Okay, it’s shower time.” He pulled off his shirt. The T-shirt left his hair all spiked around his head, but she wasn’t paying much attention. God, he had an incredible chest, sculpted by hours in the gym and sprinkled with just a little hair right over his n**ples. He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her a little closer, his hands sliding down to her backside. She resisted his pull because she wanted to study his chest, imprint the look of it in her mind. She ran her hands over him, zeroing in on his hard brown n**ples, brushing them with the backs of her fingers. He tensed beneath her touch, his fingers clamping a little harder onto her butt. Then he chuckled.

“Honey, we’re gonna run out of hot water if we don’t hurry.”

She ignored him and sank her head onto his chest, his unique male scent filling her head. If she couldn’t crawl into his skin then maybe she could just eat him up. Oh, God, he tasted sweet and salty all at once as she let her mouth roam over the expanse of muscle and sinew until she found a particularly delicious spot on his neck. She nibbled at the warm skin there for a few moments until Dash captured her head and tilted it up to look at him.