“But you don’t have your safety blanket with you now.”
“She wasn’t my safety blanket.”
He looked skeptical. “You never did anything without her.”
“Because we’re friends.” But Becca didn’t like his comment—because it was true. That was what she was here to change.
“The terrible twosome,” he added. “Making every guy’s life hell.”
“Not true.”
It was because of Tess that Becca had said no to Levi. “Mates before Dates” was the rule she’d obeyed. Part of her had always wondered what she’d missed and now old images flooded her mind—the way he’d stood so close to her that night. Just as he was now.
Close enough to kiss.
Suddenly the summer sun was stifling.
Unnerved, overheated, she pulled a vial of the soda from her belt. She didn’t much like the stuff, but this was an emergency. She felt in danger of suffering heatstroke. She popped the lid and knocked back the full thirty mls in one mouthful, her eyes on him the whole time.
“Well, seeing you’re offering—” he murmured.
Before she could blink he grasped her chin and bent his head. His lips touched hers ever so lightly. She froze as electricity arced from him to her. So gently, so seductively with the one stroke, he licked the last drops from her lips.
There was no way Becca couldn’t let him in and with a soft gasp her lips parted and she lifted her chin higher. She felt the slide of his tongue against hers. This wasn’t a frantic, rushed kiss. He was unhurried, thorough, devastating. She closed her eyes against the harsh blue sky and dazzling sun. Swamped in sensation—heat and salt. It was the stickiness of the soda making her lips cling so hungrily to his, right?
No. It was the kiss she’d fantasized about for so long, that in reality was so much better than she’d dreamed. She rose onto tiptoe as she sensed him pulling back. Stayed there, seeking more as he leaned closer to deepening the kiss again. Her fingers tightened on the bottle, passion ignited. She wanted more than this. She always had.
Slowly, he drew back and subjected her to one of his way too intense, smoldering looks. “So, Easy, are you just starting or about to finish up?”
George: Hv u bagged yourself a Greek shipping magnate yet?
Man Ban. She was on a freaking Man Ban. She wasn’t supposed to want like this. But how could she not react to that? Now she understood why he was so outrageously confident. He knew how to kiss.
Well, duh. Of course he did. Hadn’t she seen him often enough—kissing his girlfriend of the week? He’d dated the most beautiful, most desirable girls of their town just North of Sydney. All his own age, many older, ringing through the changes as frequently as pro footballers swapped their shirts. But after Becca had said no, he’d never looked in her corner again. And he’d never looked at Tess who sat beside her and who’d been pining for him for so long. She’d been the one dragging Becca back to the café day after day.
Becca had never explained to Tess what had happened that one time she’d gone to the café alone. She didn’t want to hurt her BFF, that was the whole point. But now Tess was happy. And now Becca was supposed to be doing her own thing.
Doing what she wanted.
Becca stepped up to him, because what she’d said to that other guy was true—for once, she wanted to be pleased. The lust Levi fired in her? She didn’t know which was the greater risk—to act on it, or ignore it. But she needed to know what he had in mind.
“You got plans for me, Flash?”
“Unfinished business.” Levi nodded. “Seems to me we ought to catch up and talk old times.”
“Talk?”
“It’s a well-known phenomenon that people from the same place bond together when travelling on foreign soil.”
“Bond?”
He smiled at her. And that was all it took.
“I have half a tank to go,” she said. “It should only take a few minutes.”
“May I watch?”
The way he infused that question with the naughty was quite some skill. She tossed her head, taking up the challenge in his expression. She’d been such a shy nerd—such a quiet sheep following her louder, confident friends.
“Alright.” She sized him up. “You can be my groupie. Five paces behind.”
“Groupie?” His nostrils flared. “Not a bodyguard?”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“So you fend off unwanted feel-ups with your pistols all by your pretty self?”
“Soda in the eye stings worse than onion juice.”
He chuckled. “I bet.”
“I haven’t actually had to do it.”
He leaned in close. “You didn’t shoot me in the eye.”
He hadn’t given her a chance. “Why would I give up the opportunity to experience something with someone so skilled?” she cooed.
“Ah, so that’s what you really think of me.” He slapped his hand on his heart like she’d mortally wounded him. “But you know, this beach is teaming with guys who’ve slept with way more women than I have.”
She glared at him as he winked. He knew she’d just been making up a tart put-down.
“Don’t look so fierce, you’ll scare off your customers,” he teased.
“Actually, I’ve learned they like a woman with spirit.” She pushed past him and smiled at his sudden frown. “Don’t you look so fierce, you’re the one scaring them off.”
“Maybe you’re the one who should be scared. They could easily turn on you and you couldn’t get away. Now how would you handle that in your sexy warrior heroine outfit?”
George: Don’t make the mistake of thinking an accent makes him a sex god.
Her customers turn on her? Becca rolled her eyes. Levi sounded worse than one of her over-protective cousins. The Wolfe men might be all high-action risk takers themselves, but they were fiercely concerned about the safety of others, especially females—and her the most, warning her to take care in most situations. She might have been quiet, but she wasn’t incapable. But though she’d grown up on the other side of the world from them, they’d been heavily influential without realizing it—flying in and inspiring her with their travel tales and confidence.
Eventually she’d gotten fed up with her parent’s cosseting and her own inaction. If her cousins could spend a year travelling the world on their own, earning their own way and choosing their own path, then so could she. She was taking her own risks. Calculated ones. And she wasn’t going to let Levi start in on the same old lecture she’d suffered through for months before she’d finally scraped together the cash to come away.
“There are plenty of women around,” she gestured towards the bathers on the beach. “I’m never far from the bar. So I suggest you stand back if you don’t want to get wet.”
Levi watched her stalk forward