Out of the Dark Read online

  “Dana?”

  Without lifting her head, Dana flung up a hand. Thumbs up. “’M’good!”

  “You don’t look good.”

  “’M’okay!”

  A tall, broad-shouldered gal in a denim skirt and a black Harley-Davidson tank top came out of the other stall to flash a grin at Celia. “She’s okay. She’s been in there for about an hour. Let her get it out of her system, she will eventually.” The woman washed her hands at the sink and gave Celia a look from the mirror’s reflection. “Can’t hold her liquor, huh?”

  “Apparently not,” Celia said, then added like an excuse, “bachelorette party.”

  “Yours?”

  “Oh, hell no. I’ll never do that again.” It came out more vehement than she’d intended, but the woman just nodded knowingly.

  “I hear you, honey. I went through it three times before I learned my lesson.”

  “Once was enough for me.” Celia looked dubiously into the stall. Now Dana was cradling her cheek on her palm, right there on the toilet seat. Eyes closed. A strangely blissful smile on her face. “Um…”

  “She’ll be okay. Get her home, try to get her to drink some water. She’ll be hurting tomorrow though. She’s not the one getting married tomorrow, is she?”

  “No, it’s my cousin Lisa’s party. And the wedding’s not until next week.” Thank God, Celia thought as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Eyes bright, face flushed, hair wild. If the wedding had been a few hours from now, all of them would’ve been hurting.

  “Need me to call you a cab?” The woman turned from the sink and studied Dana.

  “You can get a cab out here?”

  The woman grinned. “Sure. Depends on how far you have to go, but sure.”

  The plan had been for Celia to drive everyone home to Lisa’s house in Palmyra, about thirty minutes away, but as tempting as it was to toss Dana in a cab to let a stranger deal with the possibility of puke in his backseat, she couldn’t do that. “I haven’t been drinking. I’ll drive her home.”

  “Good luck, hon.” The woman winked and left the bathroom.

  Celia leaned in. “Dana, I’ll be right back. I’m going to find Lisa and get out of here, okay?”

  No answer but a soft snore. If Celia had been the sort to snap a picture with her camera phone and upload it to one of those embarrassing photo blogs, this would’ve been the perfect shot. Instead, she sighed and headed back into the bar to round up the other bachelorettes. No easy task, she discovered, when Lisa decided she wasn’t ready to go home until everyone danced with her to the Cha-Cha Slide. Twice.

  Everyone but Celia, who’d only do that sort of dance at the point of a knife, which is what it felt like someone was doing to her toes. Screw it. She didn’t trust her bare feet to the bar floor, but she could grab a pair of her sneakers from her trunk and put them on. It was that time of night, anyway.

  “You’re not leaving are you?” Luke caught up to her at the front door.

  “Soon. I’m going to get something from my car.” She tipped her chin toward the parking lot. “Wanna come with me? I hear the gravel’s really special.”

  “Rock jokes,” Luke said as he followed her. “Nice.”

  They reached the car in moments. This was a different kind of dance. Celia turned, meaning to make another joke, and found herself backed up on chilly metal that felt good on her hot skin. Her ass rested against the hood, Luke already between her thighs as she pulled him closer by the belt buckle and offered him her mouth. It happened as naturally as his hands had earlier fallen to her hips, as skillfully as he’d turned her on the dance floor. His tongue stroked hers and sent shivers of pleasure trickling through her like water through stones.

  The kiss softened. Ended. He rested his forehead on hers, his eyes closed, and Celia noticed one of his hands had cupped the back of her head, the other her hip. She’d hooked her heel over the back of his thigh. All in the space of just over a minute, not quite two.

  “Hey.” Luke looked at her.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re a good kisser.”

  “Oh, I can do much better than that,” Luke said and proceeded to show her.

  It went deeper this time. A little harder, but not too much. It was what Celia’d always thought of as a starburst kiss, one explosion after another. This time she gasped a little when he pulled away, and she had to blink rapidly to unblur her vision.

  “You sure can,” she said. “Wow.”

  “Geologists really know how to rock.”

  “Oh, bad. Bad, bad joke.” She groaned, letting her head fall back against his hand. Above her, the night sky was deep and dark and alight with stars. Luke shifted between her thighs and his belt buckle pressed against her, far too delicious and tempting to ignore. “Where are you staying?”

  “Motel down the road.” He leaned in as though to kiss her but kept his mouth a scant breath from hers.

  “Damn it. I have to take my cousin and her friends home. I have to go,” Celia said with true regret but also a little relief. She had an excuse for not giving in to the horny devil on her shoulder.

  “Don’t go just yet.” He kissed her again, slower this time.

  The hand on her hip squeezed gently, slid a little higher. He rocked her against him, just enough to make her want to wiggle and press herself against his belt buckle just a little harder, and she kept herself from doing just that by the barest grasp on her self-control. Luke was a great dancer and a great kisser, and Celia hadn’t had anything this sweet between her legs in a long, long time. What better way to water her dry spell than with a handsome, sexy stranger who would be gone in the morning?

  “Luke. I have to go.” Her voice rasped, rough and raw with the rush of desire she hadn’t felt in months. How long had it been since she’d even let a man turn her head? Too long. Her hands slid up the front of his chest to toy with those too-damned-sexy snaps.

  His mouth breezed along her jaw to her chin. His teeth nipped softly, just the right amount of pressure. His breath, hot in her ear, sent more shivers trembling through her, peaked her nipples, pulsed her clit. Her thighs opened wider, the soft fabric of her dress shifting against her bare legs as he pressed harder against her. The hand on her hip slid down, beneath her ass, to lift her the few inches onto her hood. She clung to him with another gasp at how easily he lifted her even that short distance, at how their tongues tangled and teeth clashed.

  Breathing hard, she broke the kiss. “How long will you be in town?”

  He licked his lower lip. “Not long enough. We go in tomorrow, take some samples. In and out fast, so we can get them back to the lab and see what’s there before anyone else does.”

  “Where do you live?” It was against hope that he’d say Harrisburg, a forty- minute drive from her house. Or Philadelphia, just over an hour.

  “Pittsburgh,” he said.

  “Shit,” Celia muttered. Four hours away. A little long to drive for a coffee date.

  The front doors banged open, spilling light into the parking lot, then a gaggle of bachelorettes followed. Dana was with them too, at least there was that. Lisa cupped a hand to her mouth.

  “Wooooo hoooo! Celia! Cuz! Where you at?”

  “I guess you have to go.” Luke kissed her again before pulling back to help her get off the hood.

  Celia shook the folds of her dress around her thighs and used her pinky to wipe the corners of her mouth. Her thumb pressed the pad of her lower lip, kiss-swollen and wet. She could still taste him.

  “Maybe…you’ll be back?” she asked hopefully, but before Luke could answer Lisa had spotted them and was stumbling across the gravel toward them.

  “Cuz! Celia! What are you doing?” Behind her, Melody and Brit were helping a staggering Dana, who tripped and dragged them down with her. The three of them went to their knees in the gravel.

  “Ouch,” Luke observed. “That will sting. Let me help you get them in the car, anyway.”

  Her stomach muscles had gone tight
with anticipation while they were kissing, but now everything in her sagged, disappointed at being denied such a sweet treat. “Thanks.”

  When she dug in her bag for her keys to use her remote to unlock the doors, Celia noticed how much lower the front of her car had settled compared to the back. She took a step back, then another, barely registering that she’d pushed against Luke. The right front tire was completely flat.

  “Shit!”

  “What? It’s time to go, Celia. Seely, seely, seal. Ceila. Oh, hi, it’s a cowboy.” Lisa blinked up at Luke, who put out a hand to steady her. “My Denny is not a cowboy. He’s an accountant!”

  “He’s not a cowboy either.” With a scowl, Celia kicked the tire. “He’s a geologist.”

  Luke threw up rock horns with both hands. “Rock on.”

  Lisa didn’t get it, of course, but Celia bit back laughter. “I’m flat.”

  “What? No, no, no.” Lisa shook her head. The other women were on their feet again. Barely. “You’re not flat, baby, you’re like Dolly Partons! Get it? Partons, because she has two—“

  “Do you have Triple-A?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah.” Celia sighed. “But that doesn’t do me any good getting these lushes home.”

  “Call Denny!” Lisa waved her cell phone at Celia. “He’ll come get us! He will! Because he loooooooves me!”

  Denny, as it turned out, was more than happy to come get his drunk-off-her-ass fiancée and her friends, because he was just that kind of guy. Celia had always liked Denny, even if she’d found him a little too…accommodating…for her tastes. Not that she was the one marrying him, and besides, look what falling for a bad boy had done for her in the past. Nothing but a set of divorce papers and a brand-new mortgage. Now though, she adored Denny for no other reason than he showed up in twenty minutes with a van big enough to cart everyone home—including her, if she needed a ride.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Luke said quietly. He’d shaken Denny’s hand but said little beyond that while they herded Lisa and her friends into the van. Now he looked at Celia with some of that earlier heat. “If you want.”

  “Sure. That would be great.” She kept her voice light and steady without the tremble of desire to give her away.

  Denny looked doubtful. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’m fine. I’ll get my mom to run me out here tomorrow. No problem.” She fixed him with a bright grin that seemed to satisfy him.

  Then she let Luke drive her home.

  And she invited him in.

  Two steps inside the front door, she had her mouth on his, pushing him against the wall so hard the pictures rattled in their frames. His hand again cupped the back of her head. The other went between her legs. Celia moaned into his mouth, her nerves on fire from that touch. From everything, all of it. The months of nothing, the years before that of her failing marriage.

  But most of all, the past few hours she’d spent with Luke.

  His hand twisted, palm pressing her as his thumb settled unerringly against the front of her cotton panties. His tongue slipped slowly into her mouth as his thumb pressed her clit and the hand that had been cupping her head moved down to grab her ass. Celia broke the kiss so she could get a breath.

  “Luke—“ That was all she could manage. She wasn’t even sure what she’d meant to say, whether that simple, single syllable had been meant as plea or command or prayer.

  His gaze didn’t waver from hers. His thumb pressed, released. Pressed again. Her knees were going weak with the pleasure seeping from that tiny motion into every nerve.

  “I want you,” Celia said.

  “Good.” He took his hand from between her legs to lift and turn her at the same time.

  This time, he pinned her to the wall. She hooked her ankles behind him, his belt buckle taking the place of his thumb, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He kissed her again, her mouth already open for him. Something jabbed at the base of her spine—the light switch, she thought when the overhead hall light went out, then on again. Celia wriggled against him, the kiss going on and on even as he pushed back from the wall still holding her so tight she didn’t worry about falling.

  “Where?” Luke bit out between kisses.

  “Living room,” Celia managed to say against his mouth. “Straight back this hall.”

  He got them both there in a matter of moments. She thought he might tumble them onto the sectional sofa, which was surely wide enough to fuck on, though she’d never even had a guy over to sit on it. Instead, he moved past it, through the archway to the dining room, where he settled her on the dining room table. It creaked under her weight, and Celia laughed into his mouth.

  He kissed her again, softer this time. When she put her hand on his chest, the thump of his heart pounded hard on her palm. This physical evidence of how she was affecting him bumped up the beat of her own heart. Then she wondered if these kisses had made him hard for her already, and another bolt of arousal teased between her legs.

  Luke was pushing her back onto the table, and Celia let herself be pushed. She let him slide her dress up over her thighs. Higher, to reveal the plain panties she wished were sexier. Then higher still to show a sliver of her belly. He kissed her there, and her body arched again, involuntarily. Her low, muttered gasp was louder than the table’s creak. When he hooked her panties at the hips and pulled them slowly off, a thousand thoughts whirled, most of them incoherent and only one or two making any sense.

  Oh, God. Oh, yes. I should make him stop, tell him to get a condom…shit, do I have any condoms?

  Breathing hard, Luke looked up at her before sliding her along the tabletop toward him. He kissed her mouth again. His hand moved between them, fingers dipping inside to find her already slick. Her clit already hard. She jerked a little when he pinched it lightly with his thumb and finger. She made a noise. A fucknoise, no way to disguise it as anything else, and her nails dug into his shoulder.

  “Want to watch you,” Luke murmured into her ear.

  His fingers moved, slowly but just right. Stroke, stroke, tug. His lips sought hers as his hand slipped a little lower, his fingers moving inside her in an echo of his tongue in her mouth. Then out again, wet, to slide along her clit with a perfect pressure, perfect pace that had her moving toward the edge so fast she couldn’t believe it.

  Things like this didn’t happen in real life. Not to her, any way. One-night stands? This would be her third, and you’d think she’d have learned her lesson after the first two. Celia wasn’t hung up on sex, but she was particular, and it always, always took her a few times with a new partner before she came.

  Chalk it up to Luke’s superior technique or her body’s overeager response to what it had gone too long without, but either way, Celia wasn’t going to complain. Her nails dug deeper, not even earning a wince from him as he kept up the slow and steady stroking against her without ever letting his gaze waver.

  She wanted to look away—how intimate this was, too much for a first encounter. Too much, almost, for someone she loved, much less a stranger. Yet something kept her eyes fixed on his as his touch inched her closer and closer to orgasm. Something kept her from tensing, from chasing away the rising pleasure before it could crest…and break.

  Celia cried out, low, as her back arched and at last her eyes closed, impossible to keep open with her climax boiling through her. It struck her like lightning, the aftershocks like thunder a moment later. She shook, suffused with the sort of ecstasy only a truly stellar orgasm brings.

  If Luke had been grinning when she looked at him again, it might’ve made her feel awkward, self-conscious, like she’d put on a show. Instead she found him studying her face, his eyes solemn, no hint of a smile of any sort. Cupping her still throbbing flesh, he leaned forward to kiss her.

  “That was awesome,” he said.

  Celia swallowed a couple times before she found her voice. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Then the grin returned, that twinkle in his dark eyes. “Yes, please.�
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  “So polite,” she said as she hopped off the table, stooping to pick up her panties, and led him by the hand to the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom.

  She thought Luke might rush her to the bed the way they’d rushed each other in the hall downstairs, but he lingered, looking at the framed photos she’d hung in the stairway and the hall. Not staring at them like a creepy stalker or anything, but definitely checking them out with interest. By the time they got to her bedroom door at the far end of the hall, Celia’s knees had stopped feeling so weak. She cracked open the door and peeked inside, relieved she’d made some sort of attempt at cleaning up. Living on her own, she sometimes got a little lazy about making her bed.

  “Hey,” Luke said softly when he crossed the threshold. Like he’d just met her. Like downstairs he hadn’t made her come with his hand while he watched her.

  Celia smiled and pulled him toward the bed. “Hey.”

  Standing in front of her, he looked down when she tugged on his belt buckle. His hand passed over her hair, pausing to tug one of those annoying tendrils. He had big hands. Strong hands. His fingers squeezed her shoulder gently when she unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans. Harder when she freed his cock and stroked it. Though she wanted to get a good, long look at his erection, for now she kept her eyes fixed on his face. Luke tipped his head back, lips parted, when she twisted her hand around the head of his prick, then down to the base.

  She could have made him come into her palm the way he’d done downstairs, but despite the orgasm she’d already had, her body wasn’t done with wanting. Celia scooted back on the comforter, drawing him along with her until they were rolling in the softness of her (thankfully) clean sheets. Again in her experience, clothes didn’t simply melt away the way it happened in books and movies, but somehow they ended up naked without much effort, and she straddled him, her knees pressing his hips.

  Luke had a good body. He had a smattering of dark hair on his chest with more in a line down below his navel. He was in shape but not so buff it made her ashamed of her curves. No rippling six-pack. Not like—Celia shoved all thoughts of her ex away. No place for him here.