style="font-size:15px;"> “Did she quit working in the casinos?”
“Nah. She didn’t know anything else. She started helping with costumes and makeup—that kind of thing.”
“What about your dad?”
“Gone before I was born.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He didn’t regret not having a dad. He’d learned all he needed to know from Ricky the Rat when he was kid and then when he’d gotten older, he’d learned from Mac and others like him.
“You’ve always lived in Vegas?”
“Yes, I have.” Honestly, he didn’t think he could live anywhere else. It was in his blood. The twenty-four-hour world. New York and Los Angeles were okay to visit but too crowded for his tastes. The strip was busy, certainly, but it had a different sort of energy. The people in Vegas rejuvenated him.
Her eyes had lost that wounded look and for once he felt pretty good about himself. All this talking had helped her. “Where are you from?”
“Everywhere—my dad was career military. Growing up, we never lived in one place longer than three years.”
“And now?”
“Since my divorce I’ve stayed put. I bought a little bungalow in Glendale, California, and planted a garden. I don’t think I’ll ever move.”
“What if you get married?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t really date, so marriage doesn’t seem much of an option.”
The night breeze blew across the desert. Despite its warmth, she shivered a little, and he shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She smiled her thanks, but her eyes were still guarded.
He didn’t understand women and their need to label everything they felt, their need to analyze it to death, or at least that was what his mom did.
But he needed Kylie to trust him. Otherwise she’d never agree to be his wife. The moonlight painted shadows across the land.
He packed up the plates and cutlery and poured the last of the wine into Kylie’s glass. She didn’t take a sip, just toyed with the stem, rolling it between her fingers.
Her fingers were long and slender. He easily imagined her caressing him the same way she touched the wineglass. She licked her lips and scooted a little closer to him on the blanket.
“I have two questions,” she said.
“Ask away,” he said.
“Can I touch you?”
“Anywhere,” he said. And meant it. His pulse had doubled as soon as the words left her mouth. And though he didn’t plan for the first time he had sex with his respectable soon-to-be wife to be in the middle of the desert, he couldn’t resist the notion of her hands on him.
Her fingers were cold when she touched his face. She cupped his jaw and rubbed the prickle of his five-o’clock shadow. He’d meant to take the time to shave again before they’d come out this evening, but time was always a premium in his business.
Kylie didn’t seem to mind that he hadn’t shaved. She lifted her other hand, completely framing his face. Her fingers moved with minute strokes against his skin, and shivers of awareness slithered down his spine and pooled in his groin.
He lifted his own hands, catching the back of her head and bringing her closer to him. He needed to taste her. Explore the feminine secrets that kept getting more mysterious the more time he spent with her.
He leaned forward, felt the brush of her breath against his skin. Her hands on his face were light and teasing. She watched him with wide eyes as she touched his skin and discovered the differences between them. He waited patiently until she thrust her hands into his hair, linked her fingers at the back of his head and urged him closer.
He needed no urging. He stopped thinking and simply reacted. She was woman to his man. And he’d already decided she should be his mate. There was nothing left to do but claim her.
He lowered his head the last few inches. A savagery ruled him and he tried to tame it, but couldn’t. She was the embodiment of everything he’d been searching for in a woman, and here she was in his arms.
He took her mouth completely. Thrust his tongue past the barrier of her teeth and tasted the heart of her. He pulled her across his lap so that he could have better access to her mouth. He slid one arm under her neck and shoulders and deepened the kiss even more.
With his free hand, he cupped her jaw and held her still for his complete domination. Her hands moved on him, stroking his jaw with a calming touch that talked to the beast inside him. The beast that had decided to claim her. The repeated strokes of her hands brought him back to himself and to her. He lifted his head. Her lips were swollen.
He needed to taste her again, but sanity raised its head, and he knew if kissed her again, he wouldn’t stop until he was buried to the hilt in her luscious body. He tilted his head back, searching for control in the endless starlit sky and finding it only after he’d taken several deep breaths.
“You had another question,” he said. He should set her aside, but not yet. He liked the feel of her soft curves against him, her rounded buttocks against his rock-hard thighs.
“What?” she asked. Knowing she was as dazed as he confirmed that he’d found the right woman to be his bride.
“You said two questions,” he reminded her. He tucked her head under his chin and wrapped both arms around her.
“Why did you ask me out?”
“I’m attracted to you,” he said bluntly.
“Is that all?” she asked.
He didn’t know what she wanted from him. He knew that telling her he planned to marry her probably wasn’t it. “Should there be more?”
“I’m a planner.”
“I don’t follow you, Kylie.”
“I just want to know where this will lead,” she said. She scooted away from him, and his arms felt empty without her. “I’m not really the vacation-fling kind of woman.”
“I know,” he said quietly. That was part of her attraction.
Silence grew between them. Deacon didn’t have words to reassure her. Didn’t know what she was trying to ask with her veiled questions. But he did know that if he pulled her back into his arms, he could reassure her in the most fundamental way a man could.
“You make me forget that,” she said at last.
Her words were like a velvet glove on his groin. Hardening his arousal and strengthening his resolve to make her his. “Angel, sometimes your honesty is lethal.”
“I can’t be any other way,” she said, twisting her hands together.
“Come
