A Prince of a Guy Read online

  They could still hardly see each other in the thick blanket of night, but Sean was so attuned to her he found he didn’t need to see her. Not that he wouldn’t have loved taking her in the bright daylight, watching every nuance, every flicker of emotion that crossed her face as he kissed and licked and teased her to a screaming orgasm.

  His body hardened at the thought.

  Yep, definitely, he planned to do that.

  But this had been incredible, too.

  As he grabbed her hand, he felt her little shiver. She thrilled to his touch even now. It was a little unnerving, this connection.

  Thunder cracked, startling them. Carly moved closer. Sean pulled her tight and kissed her. Which led to another kiss. And another.

  Hearing the second, louder drum of thunder, she broke away from him with a nervous laugh. The single low cloud that had covered the moon had thickened during the time they’d spent on the beach. Time they’d spent lost in sexual pleasure.

  Sean couldn’t contain his very male, very satisfied grin.

  “We’d better run for it,” Carly said as a drop of rain hit her on the nose.

  He licked it off, and while that turned to another hot, long, wet kiss, something was different in the heat and hunger streaking through his belly. It was deeper, more powerful. Heart-wrenching.

  Which bothered him. This was not to have been deep or powerful. Definitely not to have been heart-wrenching. He didn’t want her in his system. But he was beginning to understand that getting her out would be impossible. She was in his heart, and quite possibly there to stay.

  He’d think of this later, much later. Right now he wanted to bask in the afterglow.

  And maybe get some more. “Let’s make a run for it.”

  By the time they climbed the bluff, the clouds were coming together with ferocious cracks of thunder, lit by razor-sharp strikes of lightning. The rain fell in earnest, big, fat drops.

  Given the desolation and emptiness of the street in front of Sam’s house, his party had broken up long ago. Drenched yet still exhilarated, Sean and Carly came to Sean’s car. He searched his pockets.

  “You found your condoms a lot faster than this,” Carly teased as he fumbled for the key.

  “I was in a much bigger hurry then.” There was a streetlight illuminating them, and for the first time in hours he could see her face. Her makeup was smeared, her glasses askance. And her hair…it had long ago exploded out of its restraints and out of control. Her clothes looked heavy and cumbersome, especially now that they were getting wetter and wetter.

  But her eyes were glowing, her smile was soft and special, and he knew she’d never looked more beautiful to him. “You look unbelievable,” he whispered.

  “Destroyed, more like,” she murmured, brushing a hand over her hair, dropping her gaze from his.

  “Ravaged,” he agreed with a smile, letting her into the car. Bending, slipping his arms around her, he sucked a drop of rain off her bottom lip. “I like it.”

  She went still, staring deeply into his eyes, looking so solemn all of a sudden, so full of sorrow, his heart caught. “What’s the matter?”

  In a move that stirred his heart, she stroked his jaw and sent him a slow smile. “I’m just remembering this moment. I don’t want to forget a thing. Not the way you touch me, the sound of my name on your lips, how you look at me, nothing.”

  She spoke vehemently, as if what was between them was all over. “In my opinion,” he said slowly, “this is just beginning.”

  She touched his mouth with her fingers, then kissed his jaw, still looking sad.

  They got about a quarter of a mile down the isolated, narrow two-lane road before there was a loud pop.

  Sean knew the sound and with a grim sigh pulled to the side of the road. “Flat,” he said, and got out in the driving rain to fix it.

  He’d removed everything he needed from the trunk and had bent to his task when he realized Carly was standing on the road alongside him.

  “Here,” she said, nudging the jack toward him.

  Her hair was plastered to her face, and she had her arms wrapped around what he now knew to be a slender yet curvy frame.

  “You’re frozen,” he protested. “Wait in the car.”

  But she squatted beside him. “Did you mean it?” she asked in a low, direct voice. “About this being just the beginning?”

  Her eyes were huge behind the wet glasses, her body taut with…nerves?

  “I meant it,” he said with an ease that no longer startled him. “This isn’t over just because my sister is coming back.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Now go stay warm in the car.”

  Instead, she went to her knees in the dirt beside him, reaching to stroke a strand of wet hair from his eyes. “You look very sexy all wet, Sean O’Mara.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She wet her lower lip with her tongue.

  He promptly dropped the jack and wondered if it was possible to do it in the back seat of a car filled with blueprints.

  “If I help with the tire,” she whispered in his ear, “we’ll get done faster, which in my estimation—” she glanced at her watch “—would leave us with at least two hours of darkness left to do…well, whatever we pleased.”

  Sean broke the world record changing his tire with Carly’s soft laughter egging him on.

  “My, my.” She handed him the wrench. “A man who can use his tools. I like that.”

  He was laughing when he kissed her. Laughing. He couldn’t remember ever being turned on and full of amusement at the same time.

  The thunder and lightning had stopped, but the rain hadn’t. The side of the road where they’d parked had become a sea of mud.

  If anyone had said he’d be changing a tire in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, in a damn suit, and laughing while doing it, he would have called them crazy.

  But here he was.

  He wasn’t thinking about work—not the getting of said work, or the doing of it, or the finding of it. In fact, around Carly, he almost always felt this way.

  He liked that. Hell, he ran his own business, and he’d worked long, hard years for his success. If he wanted to cut back a little, if he wanted the weekends and evenings to himself, he was entitled.

  And now he had someone to spend that time with.

  They got back on the road, but hadn’t gone far when they came to a small café with a Breakfast All the Time sign. Sean pulled in and turned to Carly.

  She had a streak of dirt down one cheek, mingling with her running makeup, which made him grin. “I’m famished,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Pancakes sound like heaven,” she admitted.

  The rain hadn’t let up, so they made a run for it, holding hands and laughing like a pair of kids.

  Sitting at a booth toward the back, Sean pushed away the newspaper that had been left on the table, the one that had Princess Carlyne Fortier’s face plastered across the front page.

  They both blinked like owls in the garish, obnoxiously bright café, which was decorated in equally eye-squinting red vinyl and checked floors. But the scents coming from the kitchen had Sean’s mouth watering.

  Until he caught a good close look at Carly for the first time since they’d left Sam’s party.

  “I’m going to have bacon, too,” she said, scanning the menu, oblivious to his sudden stillness. “Tons of it. Crispy,” she added with a grin that slowly faded when she realized he was staring at her. “What?”

  His heart had stopped, but now it started up again with a funny rhythm that hurt with each beat, so he was mildly surprised to find he sounded so normal. “Where are your glasses?”

  Her hand went immediately to her face, which turned ashen beneath the dirt and makeup. “I don’t know.”

  He stared at her because it wasn’t just the glasses, it was…

  “I…must have lost them when we were changing the tire,” she said, her words picking up speed as she we