Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [15]
She sat down on the mattress. She should go downstairs and confront him, demand that he return her purse. He’d deny taking it, of course. She was going to have a hell of a hard time getting out of here without her license and credit cards. No one would rent her a car, much less a room, without ID and credit. If he didn’t give it back to her she was stuck.
She stretched out on the thin mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling. He didn’t want her here. Why the hell would he do something that would keep her trapped here? Why, when he’d never liked her? If he even remembered that night so long ago, all he’d remember was what an idiot she’d been. What an embarrassing, pathetic idiot.
Twelve years ago
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said, and the soft breeze of early summer riffled through his too-long hair. “Come here.”
Jamie sat frozen in the front seat of the old Cadillac, practically wedged between the seat and the door. The beer bottle in her hands was empty, and in the gathering dusk Dillon Gaynor looked like every good girl’s worst nightmare. And secret, shameful dream.
She’d had her share of them. They all had, all the good girls of Marshfield, Rhode Island. He was wicked, he was sexy, he was as pretty as sin. Just the sort to daydream about. Just the sort to keep away from. And she was sitting in the front seat of an old Cadillac convertible with him, alone in the woods, and she’d been fool enough to bring up the subject of kissing.
She didn’t move. “I was just kidding,” she said, unable to keep the thread of nerves out of her voice.
“I wasn’t.” He took the empty beer bottle out of her hands and threw it into the woods. And then he reached for her, pulling her across the broad front seat. The old leather was so soft and smooth she slid easily, until she was touching him, thigh to thigh, and he was looking down into her breathless face. “So where do we start?”
“You drive me home, then come back and get Nate and his girlfriend?” she suggested in a nervous voice.
“I don’t think so.” He picked up her hand and looked at it for a long, contemplative moment. “Baby-pink nail polish. Did that match your prom dress?”
She’d chosen the shade just for that purpose, but she wasn’t about to admit it. He wasn’t expecting her to. He just held her delicate hand in his large, callused one, rubbing his thumb over her palm, slowly, sinuously. “Such an innocent hand,” he said. “What naughty things have you done with it?”
“Nothing.”
“I can believe it,” he murmured, pulling her hand to his mouth. He put his mouth against her palm, and she felt a shiver run through her body. And then he licked it, and the feel of his tongue against her skin shocked her. “Time you learned,” he said. And he put her hand against his chest.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been wearing the usual ratty T-shirt. But tonight he wore a faded Hawaiian-style shirt, and it was partly open, and her damp palm was pressed against his warm flesh without the safety of thin cotton between them.
He was hot. His skin burned beneath her cold hand, and she could feel the slow, steady pulse of his heart, beating against her palm, moving down her arm and into her body, so that her heart was beating with his, but faster, much faster, and she was cold where he was hot, and she stared up at him, paralyzed.
He kept her hand captured in his, pressed against his heart, as he leaned forward and flicked on the car radio. U2 was playing—Bono was singing about sex and love, just what she didn’t want to hear. He leaned back in the seat again, his fingers touching hers, caressing them, one by one, as he slowly unbuttoned the rest of his shirt with his other hand.
She felt like a small white rat facing a hungry python. Mesmerized, she sat in the front seat of the old convertible and waited for him to make the next move.
This was Dillon Gaynor, the object of her teenage fantasies since the first time he’d walked into her parents’ house, whether she’d wanted to admit it or not. It was his skin beneath her hand, and he was moving his head closer,