Healing A Hero (The Camerons of Tide’s Way #4) by Skye Taylor Page B

and the way he made her feel.
    It was as if the last three weeks had been a carefully choreographed dance leading to this moment of physical awareness. To this moment of wanting each other with such fierce passion that their mutual desire could no longer be ignored. She wanted Philip more than she had ever wanted anything. He evoked an almost desperate need to make love. To feel him plunge into her and lose himself.
    Philip broke off the kiss and pressed his forehead against hers. His breath hissed sharply between his teeth as he eased his body away from hers.
    “Whoa, Elena! This has to stop before I forget where we are. Or who you are.”
    “What do you mean, who I am?” She jerked her head away to look him in the eyes. Eyes turned dark with a passion that mirrored her own.
    “You’re Andy’s—”
    “Don’t say it.” She put her finger over his lips. “Just because my big brother is your best friend, that has nothing to do with us. Or what we want.”
    “You have no idea what I want.”
    She snorted. “What? You think I’m a virgin? I’ve been with a man before.”
    His brow furrowed.
    “I know exactly what you want, and I want it, too.”
    She tugged his face back toward hers and pressed her mouth to his, lingering just long enough to make her point. “I want you to make love to me.”
    For a very long moment, their eyes locked. So much said without words. Perhaps this would be the moment to tell him she loved him. Or perhaps not. She didn’t want him to feel trapped or run for the nearest exit. But if they didn’t end up in bed before this day was over, the desire scorching her insides was going to drive her crazy.
    He gathered her back into his arms, but without the urgent passion of a few moments before. “Maybe it’s a good thing my folks are out of town then.”

Chapter 11
    February 2015
    Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
    PHILIP WOKE gasping and hard. The dream seemed so real. The sting of a sunburn on his back felt real. Even her heels digging into his calves as she pressed herself against the throbbing erection he couldn’t hide felt real.
    He looked down at his briefs. The erection had been real. Elena and everything else had been in his dream. He sat up in the darkened room and waited for his breathing to return to normal and his boner to go away.
    But he couldn’t banish the wispy fragments of his dream or the memory of Elena and the way she’d behaved that wild, abandoned summer when he’d lost his heart to her. He’d tried so hard in spite of his growing feelings for her to keep their time together chaste. She’d been so young. Too young to tie herself down to a Marine who was away more than he was home. Too young to know who she was or what she wanted out of life, and he’d learned the hard way how easily time and distance can change everything.
    He’d admired and enjoyed her bold, uninhibited enthusiasm for life. Her bold announcement that she wasn’t a virgin had surprised the hell out of him. That she hadn’t been shy about telling him she wanted to sleep with him had surprised him even more.
    All his good intentions had been tossed to the wind then. If his parents hadn’t been away, leaving him in sole possession of the house and all that privacy and opportunity, maybe he’d have been able to resist the temptation despite her open invitation. But likely not. He’d been young and healthy and horny as hell. It had been a long time since he’d been with any woman. And he’d been in love.
    He still was.
    The realization left him breathless and a little panicky.
    He’d fallen just as fast this time as he had then. All the anger and resentment he’d ginned up, reminding himself that she’d broken his heart the last time, had not made any difference. Half the time he’d spent with her, she’d been inflicting pain on him. But even that hadn’t stopped the fall.
    Thoughts of her followed him into work every day and home every night. Far too often, he’d found his finger poised