He laughed and raised his beer to her in another toast. “Alone, thank God. And it’s staying that way. And you, Peyton Lane? What are you doing here all by your lonesome?”
“Meeting you,” she said saucily.
He chuckled at that, taking another long swig, all the while watching her with those sparkling slate-blue eyes that made her pussy cream.
It was quite interesting, how both of them had been talking for hours and yet neither was even really saying anything. But those stares of his spoke volumes—she couldn’t miss the heated male interest in those eyes.
Or how it warmed her to her very bones.
An image of them entangled in bed made her palms sweat and her inner muscles grip.
Tonight they might have hot, reckless, wild sex and if they did, Peyton would conveniently forget about him as soon as she boarded the plane back home on Sunday.
Her insides heated at the thought of being intimate with him, and by the time they headed for their rooms at well past midnight, her stomach felt like a butterfly war zone.
Instead of taking the gravel path, they walked along the beach, and Peyton removed her sandals and allowed her little feet to sink into the sand. The night sky was clear, dotted with flickering stars and a faint white quarter-moon.
The breeze played with her hair. It tickled her jaw and her neck as it flapped in the wind. Luke curled his fingers tightly around the neck of his beer bottle as he downed yet another gulp.
When they ran out of subjects to talk or laugh about—or more accurately, when the only thing that occupied their minds might be the things they could not laugh or talk about—they fell into a tense silence and Luke began to fidget.
He inspected the nearly empty beer bottle, then stared up at the sky, suddenly engrossed in it.
Peyton noticed he was restless, as if he’d never done this before either. The back of their hands brushed, and although it was a fleeting, accidental touch, he stiffened as though he’d just been struck by lightning. Peyton felt it rush up her arm like an electric bolt.
Quivering deep inside, she glanced down at her sand-speckled toes and wondered if he would even make a move.
All evening had felt like foreplay and she was already anticipating—having dropped little hints all through the night that she was interested, single, and available—that he might do something about it.
Would he make a move, or would she need to?
Oh, God.
He was just so sexy…
What if he didn’t?
What if he did?
So.
Luke was trying to get things straight.
Was he actually supposed to stay away from this woman?
He stole a glance at Peyton as they walked along the beach and once again was bowled over by her beauty. God, the crackhead who shot him should’ve just killed him. It couldn’t be good for a healthy thirty-four-year-old male to suppress the urge to make love to this woman—and it was definitely not good for Luke Preston.
Holy Mother of God, he just didn’t see himself going back alone to his five-bedroom presidential casita tonight. His friends should all go rot in hell for even suggesting such a thing as Luke staying off sex for a while. Clearly they hadn’t seen Peyton Lane, holy hot mamacita!
Long, straight, sable hair down to her tiny waist, big brown eyes surrounded by thick, sooty lashes, creamy porcelain skin, and thick coral lips that were meant to rim around a man’s member and make him forget even the fact that some asshole out there wanted him dead.
Luke was thinking so clearly now, after all those Coronas, that he could literally laugh at the thought of him—Luke Pistol Penis Preston, who’d been fucking girls since he could get a boner—wearing an invisible chastity belt. It was a pretty fucked-up idea, hell, he must have been pretty fucked up to even consider it. But now that he’d been drinking some, he felt like himself again.
Clearly Peyton Lane was God’s gift to him, for having been such a good boy since he’d been out of the hospital. Peyton was hotter than an entire bottle of spicy red Tabasco, and just as smoothly curved.
Luke had found himself instantly responding to that sultry, dark-onyx gaze of hers ever since he’d almost trampled her hours ago. The fit of his linen drawstring pants had altered dramatically this evening when she approached his table in that halter and skirt, all female and softness, sexier than anything he’d ever set eyes on before.
He could already tell she was not easy. Hell, he could tell she was the closest thing to a virgin he’d ever have, a little shy even when she was all-out brazen. She went a little skittish when he smiled his sex-god smile at her, and it made his balls constrict, he liked it so much. Now all he wanted was to slowly crack this lady’s hard-shell exterior and let the sultry goddess come out to play.