Ellie released a deep breath. “Yes, but you can’t make a sound.”
“Okay, but remember the kiss has to last for at least a whole minute.”
Ellie frowned. “You don’t have to remind me.”
Uriel glanced to the side when he heard the sound of footsteps crunching on fallen leaves.
Ellie Weston.
Good grief! She was only sixteen, but last week when he had arrived to join his parents at the lake, he hadn’t been able to believe how much she changed since two summers ago. She was no longer a tall, lanky girl, but now she had curves in places that he couldn’t help notice.
She had been wearing a pair of shorts and a blouse and she looked quite stunning. The fitted top she wore outlined breasts that were full and perfectly formed. She had the tiniest waist he’d ever seen, and her hips flared out rather nicely, to join a pair of gorgeous long legs.
He swallowed, trying not to notice how she was dressed now. She was wearing another pair of shorts and they were way too skimpy for his comfort. And the way her blouse fit exposed a sliver of her bare stomach.
He frowned, trying to deny the attraction. He was five years older than her, and shouldn’t be thinking about her this way. Damn, but he could remember when she was a kid in braces climbing trees. Now he could imagine them hooking up as a couple. He shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts.
“Hey, Uri. What are you doing?” she asked, coming closer.
He shifted his gaze from her legs to glance out over the lake. “Fishing. Where’s your friend?” He nearly let his fishing rod fall in the water when she came and sat on the pier beside him.
“Oh, Darcy’s taking a nap. We were both up late last night.”
He forced his gaze to stay straight ahead. “Why aren’t you taking a nap, too?”
“Umm, not sleepy. I was taking a walk, and then I saw you and thought I’d come keep you company.”
He was about to tell her not to do him any favors, but decided against it. She had no way of knowing he was seeing her in a whole new light. Her aunt, Ms. Mable, would probably kill him if she knew what kind of light that was.
“So, how is college?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “It’s okay. What about you? Are you looking forward to the end of the summer to head back to school?”
She giggled. It wasn’t a kid’s giggle, either. It had a sensuous twang to it. At least he thought so. “Heck no. I don’t like school. I can’t wait to get out,” she said.
He heard her words and recalled feeling that way when he’d been her age. “Don’t you have plans to go to college?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“No. I want to get married.”
Now that got his attention and he couldn’t help but glance over at her. Then he wished he hadn’t. She had brought her face close to his. Too close. He could actually see the dark irises staring back at him. That cute little mole on the side of her nose was even more visible. And the shape of her lips … When had they gotten so full? So well defined?
He swallowed, tried forcing his gaze back to the lake, but his eyes refused to budge. “Why do you want to get married?”
She smiled and his gut pulled so tight he could barely breathe. “I want to get married because …”
Her voice had lowered and he could barely hear her words. And was he imagining things, but had she just inched her face a little closer to his? Or was he the one leaning in closer?
“Because of what?” He somehow found his voice to ask her, and couldn’t stop his gaze from dropping from her eyes to her lips.
“Because I want to know how it is to sleep with the man I love. To feel his body beside me in bed. To become acquainted with his lips on mine.”
He felt himself leaning in closer to her. “Aren’t you too young to be thinking of such things?” he managed to ask in a voice so deep he barely recognized it as his own.
“No.” And then in a move that was totally unexpected, she leaned over and plastered her lips to his.
The first thought that came to his mind was to push her away, but her lips felt so soft and sweet that he found himself entranced. His body shuddered as he sank his hand into her hair, deepening the kiss.
“That’s it, El. Hang on in there! You’ve made the one-minute mark, so now you can go for the gusto!”
Uriel jerked up, and in the process nearly tumbled them both into the water. He had to catch his breath before he could say anything, and then he looked from Ellie Weston and her thoroughly kissed lips, to her friend, the one that should have been napping.
He narrowed his gaze, first at the other girl and then at Ellie. “What’s going on, El?” he asked in a rough voice.
Before Ellie could reply, Darcy spoke up, grinning proudly, “You kissed her for one minute and twelve seconds, so she won the dare.”
Those words hit him hard in the chest. That kiss had been part of a dare. He had been the butt of these girls’ joke? That very idea made his blood boil and intense anger rushed through him. He glanced over at Ellie. “Is that true, El?”
Her face had tinted in embarrassment, and she looked everywhere but at him, mostly glaring over at her friend. “I asked you a question, El,” he said, when she didn’t say anything.
She drew in a deep breath and then glanced back over at him and said. “I can explain, Uri.”
He shook his head. “No explanations. Just answer the question. Was that kiss about a dare between you and your friend here?”
“Yes, but—”
Not giving her a chance to say anything else, he snatched up his fishing rod and angrily began walking off the pier. He got halfway, turned back around and said directly to Ellie, “The next time I come to Cavanaugh Lake, I’m going to make sure that you aren’t here.”
And then he turned around and kept walking, while wishing that he could forget the sweet taste of her lips.
Chapter 1
Ten years later
“To Flame, with all my love. D.”
Ellie Weston studied the elegant sprawling handwriting across the bottom of a framed picture on the wall in her aunt’s bedroom.
She lifted a brow. Aunt Mable had probably purchased the painting at one of those garage sales she’d enjoyed getting up on Saturday mornings to drive forty miles into Knoxville to attend. In fact, Ellie had noticed several new paintings in all of the bedrooms, as well as the living room. However, this particular one caught Ellie’s eye because it wasn’t one she would have expected her unmarried seventy-year-old aunt to be attracted to.
Ellie studied the painting some more. It was a colorful piece of art that showed a faceless but very naked couple in a risqué embrace. So much in fact, that upon closer study it appeared they were having sex.
She felt a heated blush stain her face as she stepped back and glanced around. It seemed that rather recently her aunt had gotten a new bedroom suite—a king-size Queen Anne four-poster bed in beautiful cherry mahogany. The bedroom suite had a romantic flair that Ellie liked. And there was a matching desk in one section of the room with, of all things, a computer. When had her aunt entered the computer age? Ellie hadn’t been aware she’d owned one. If she’d known, they could have been staying in contact by e-mail.
To Ellie, her aunt’s two-story house had always seemed too large for one person. It had a spacious layout that included a huge living room, a bathroom, dining room and