Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance) by Cameron D. Garriepy Page B

forearms.
    “Silas.”
    His response was low and hoarse. “Yeah.”
    She scooped up her shoes and walked down to the water’s edge. When Silas’s expression asked her an unspoken why, she laughed. “I can walk faster on the wet sand.”
    Mischief. She saw it in his eyes, and then he rushed her, reaching down for his sandals and the bear as he did. He slung her over one shoulder and ran down the tide line. She shrieked, giddy laughter bubbling up along with the salt spray from his feet in the waves. After a hundred feet, he set her down, panting and grinning.
    Sofia pushed a few stray strands of hair off her face. “That’s one way to get home faster.”
    Silas regained his breath. “Not fast enough.” He kissed her purposefully.
    Behind him, a campfire flickered in its copper fire pit. Sofia knew the spot from her evening walks on the beach. A group was lighting and releasing the Chinese lanterns behind one of the rental cottages on Haverhill. This time, she took his hand. “What’s your wish?”
    Silas looked meaningfully at Buck’s Landing’s sign beckoning from down the beach, and ran with her toward them. “We’re almost there.”
    They tumbled through her door, blood hot and pulses racing. Her bag and the panda fell forgotten just inside the apartment. Sofia pushed his faded Princeton tee up, baring his chest. She ran her nails through the soft hair there. Their arms tangled in their hasty efforts to get to skin. His teeth scraped her jaw, nipped at her neck and shoulders.
    Sofia shivered when he pulled her tank top over her head, heat like mercury pooled between her thighs and she tugged at the button of his khaki shorts. Silas stepped out of them even as he was pushing denim down over her hips. Breathless, they paused; he in his cotton boxers, she in a few scraps of lace.
    Slowly, so slowly, he reached up and behind her neck. He tugged the elastic from her braid, twisting it between his fingers briefly before tossing it on the nearby coffee table. When he reached for her again, she stilled his hands. Without a word, she threaded her fingers into the braid and shook it free, her curls tumbling down over her shoulders with a little toss of her head.
    He came into her arms and she pressed them both down into the faded leather sofa. Straddling his lap, she reached back to undo her bra. He filled his hands with her breasts, thumbs grazing the soft well of flesh. From beneath lashes grown heavy with lust, she watched him take one aching nipple into his mouth. With the first touch of wet heat and the scrape of his teeth, she was ready for him. She reached between them, caressing him through his boxers.
    Silas left her breast to lay a trail of damp kisses along her collarbone, to tease her lips, to torture her with sweetness. Her blood sang; her skin was on fire. His hands, which slipped under what satin remained, found her slick and wanting; everything about his onslaught left her breathless.
    He kissed from her lips to her ear, whispering low. “Do you have anything?”
    She sat up on her knees. “This way.”
    Her feet had barely touched the floor when a shrill yowl split the night. Silas sat up. “What the hell?”
    He slipped back into his shorts and out onto her landing; wrapping a blanket around herself, she stepped out behind him. A thrashing bundle of fur and claws was scrapping in the narrow concrete lane between Buck’s Landing and the Atlantis Market.
    “Shit.” Silas stuffed his feet into his sandals. “Houdini!”
    His feet thumping on the stairs broke up the spat between his tiny ball of fury and a skinny marmalade that streaked away down the block. Sofia watched him coax Houdini out of the shadows. Even from her vantage point, she could see the ridge of raised fur along the kitten’s spine.
    Silas looked up at her with a pained expression. “I’ll make it up to you.”
    “Not if I make it up to you first,” she said. She tried for flirtatious, but disappointment pressed against her