“Hey, Prospect, you seen Skylar?” Cole called out from the back steps.
“Nope. I think she left a while ago.”
“Okay. You can go ahead lock up the gate and go home. You look beat.”
“Thanks.”
After Cole went back inside, Shades moved back over to Skylar, boxing her in against the wooden fence again.
“I just lied to a brother over you. Fuck, baby, what you do to me.”
“Shades-”
He cut her off with a kiss, moving in against her until their bodies were touching. His long fingers threaded into her hair holding her immobile as his mouth plundered deep. Eventually, they both had to come up for air. He broke off, his forehead pressing against hers, his breath sawing in and out.
“I saw you up at that shaved-ice place on Route 31 last week. You were standing out front when we all rode by.”
Her voice came out with a breathy quality that told him the kiss had affected her as much as it did him. “I saw you, too. Everyone did. There were a dozen of you, and we could hear those rumbling pipes coming a mile away.”
“I rode past there three times this week. Just hoping to see you there again. Just hoping to catch a glimpse of you,” he confessed, studying her reaction. “You know why I’m telling you this?”
She shook her head.
“Because you need to know where I’m at.”
“And where is that?”
“Right on the edge, sweetheart. You’ve got me starvin’ for it. Do you understand?”
She looked up at him and nodded.
He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone. “There’s something in the way you look at me. In the way you’re lookin’ at me now that tells me you feel it, too. So, you gotta tell me, Sky, are we on the same page here?”
“Yes, Shades. I feel it, too.”
“Little girl, getting messed up with you is the last fucking thing I need to be doing-” he broke off, shaking his head.
Skylar’s hand came up and closed around the wrist of one of the hands that was still cradling her head. “Shades, I think about you all the time, every minute.”
“Fuck, don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Christ, if I had any sense, I’d send you right back through that gate.” He bit his lip, shaking his head again. “But I can’t. I fucking can’t, Sky. So, you need to tell me no. Right now. Right fucking now, Sky.”
She just looked up at him, refusing to do as he asked.
“You’re still standing here.”
“Yes.”
“I’m starting to sense a stubborn streak in you.”
Her chin came up. “Is that so bad?”
“Skylar, you know it’s wrong—the things I’m gonna ask you to do if you stay.”
“Ask me.”