Summer Sky (6 page)

Hours later, a pen lands on the book I'm reading, thrown by Dylan who's holding his writing pad under his arm.

"Fish and chips?" he asks.

So engrossed in the peace of the world around and the hot sex occurring in my book, I hadn't noticed Dylan reappear. He's back in distressed jeans, and a black T-shirt stretching across the ridges of his chest. I point at the band name and symbol printed on the front.

"Is that your band?"

"White Stripes? No. I wish. We opened for them on a tour though, a few years ago."

I give him a blank look. He's speaking a different language. He smirks and shakes his head. Reading about red-hot sex in my book while Dylan is in the house is not a great way of controlling my um... urges.

"Are you okay? Your face is flushed."

"Fine," I tuck the book under a cushion.

"Ah! What's this? Fifty Shades?"

"No!"

He roots under the cushion then pulls the book out. Momentarily, he appraises the semi-naked kissing couple on the front, and then flips over to the blurb on the back.
Ground open up and take me now.

Dylan's eyebrows shoot up. "Sounds...interesting. Any good?"

I pull a face. "Guilty pleasure."

A snaking grin almost reaches his ears. "We all have guilty pleasures."

Oh, holy crap. Is he going to switch up the seductive looks now he's caught a glimpse of the Sky who wouldn't exactly say no if he offered? Were the beach and the dip in the sea another test?

I clear my throat. "Fish and chips?"

"My guilty pleasure? Nope, way off the mark, Sky."

"Ha ha. Shut up. I mean, you said you wanted fish and chips."

"Oh, so I did. Sorry, got a little distracted." He puts the book on the coffee table. "How does fish and chips on the beach sound? I don't want pizza again; it sends you to sleep."

"Maybe I’m still pissed off with you," I say.

"I don’t think you are. I think you secretly liked it earlier."

"Oh, yes? Which bit?"

Dylan smirks. "All of it. Get changed; otherwise, we’ll miss the sunset."

"The sky’s too cloudy."

"She is today."

Unable to find a good retort, I stalk upstairs.

As I change into jeans and a fitted blue T-shirt, I peer at myself in the mirror. Flushed cheeks and brighter blue eyes - a couple of days without tears, living in my fantasy world and the layer of sad is peeling off my face. I touch my lips, visions of Dylan's lips dancing into my mind's eye. When his stubble touched my legs before, it scratched lightly and sent a not very chaste tingle through my body. Will he kiss me if I ask him? I snort at myself. He said he liked me because I didn't want to…ah...screw him. But he did say something about changing my mind.

Deciding all this is having a bad effect on my heart rate, I head downstairs vowing to think only pure thoughts for the rest of the evening. And not admit to anyone (including myself) that every word of the hot sex in the book downstairs involved a man who looked uncannily like Dylan.

Chapter Six

Warm English summers often lead to cool, cloudless evenings, and I shiver as we walk along the beach towards the town, wishing I’d brought my jacket. When we reach the stone steps, Dylan waits on a low wall at the bottom, and I make the five-minute trip to the fish and chip shop. We don't discuss why he decided to wait, but we both know why. Dylan wears a navy hoodie, and sits with the hood over his face, hands burrowed into the pockets.

What would it be like to live his life? The fact he may be more famous than he's making out pushes on the edges of the bubble. I like my bubble; I won't be the one to burst it by pushing to find out if he is.

I wrap my bare arms around the welcome warmth of the paper fish and chip packages as I carefully climb back down the steps. Eating straight from the greasy paper used to be a tradition of our holidays. Is this Dylan's too? I stand in front of him, hugging the meal.

"Where did you used to go to eat your fish and chips as a kid?" I ask.

"Normally, we'd sit here on this wall. You?"

"We used to sit on the beach and watch the sunset."

"Sounds like a plan." Dylan holds his hands out for the food but I keep hold, passing him the cans of orange Fanta.

We find a sheltered spot and sit against the tall rocks at the edge of the dunes, looking over the beach. If I'd planned this better, I'd have brought a blanket. I unwrap the parcels, and peel the greasy paper back. The smell is heaven. Heart attack inducing, celestial goodness. I close my eyes and inhale, making a satisfied noise.

Dylan chuckles. "Funny, Sky."

I open an eye. "What?"

"Nothing, at least you're not obsessed about what you eat." With deft fingers, he unwraps his bundle too. "Forks?"

"Umm. I forgot."

He rolls his eyes. "Fingers it is then."

As much as I love fish and chips, the sensation of Dylan's hard thigh pressed against mine interferes with my appetite. We're touching, his soft cotton hoodie warm against my goose-bumped arm, the material rubbing me as he eats. Whatever his presence fills my stomach with; it won't be chips. Damn. I pick at the food, attempting to quell the shaky excitement of being close to this man.

"We can go back to the house and get forks if you don't want to use your fingers?" he suggests through a mouthful of chips.

I wrinkle my nose. "It's fine, I'm not as hungry as I thought."

Dylan shrugs and returns to his food. As the sun drops behind the horizon, the temperature drops to match. I gaze at the red and orange clouds streaking across the sky and touching the grey sea, and focus very hard on not getting aroused by Dylan.

"Wow, it's a long time since I've had decent fish and chips. Not quite LA style," he grins, rubbing his belly.

"I suspect if you had too many fish and chips, you wouldn't have the body you do..." I trail off.
Nice one, Sky, lay yourself open
.

He lets me off. "True. Being on stage burns a lot off though. If I stay in Broadbeach and eat junk food for a month, I'll be sporting a party pack instead of a six-pack."

I giggle and fight my overwhelming urge to check out his six-pack, in case he needs any advice on the intactness.

"So why did you really come here?" I ask him, twisting around as I sip from the can of Fanta.

Gaze fixed on the sea, he doesn't reply for a few seconds. "I want to remember what life was like before all the crazy shit. Coming back here, I can block out the rest of the world without using alcohol and drugs."

"You had an alcohol problem?"

"Yeah. For years, it was great until alcohol became the way I coped with my weird reality. I stopped drinking and drugging and had nothing else to fill the hole with.” He pauses, then continues quietly, “The hole gets bigger every day."

Was I filling my emptiness in the same way and craving affection from Grant, a man who only gave me love conditionally? Is that what's happening here - my need for affection rebounding me into Dylan like a huge jump on a trampoline?

"So you came back here?" I ask.

"A couple of days ago, I got up and thought 'fuck this'. So I cut my hair and left."

Forgetting myself, I reach a hand and touch the short hair above his ear. "You had long hair?"

My hand slides across Dylan's face as he turns to look at me, his cheek smooth above his stubbled jaw. "For the last eight years, yeah. I'll show you a picture sometime. You might recognise me then."

"That's a long time. It must be weird looking in the mirror and not recognising yourself."

"I didn't recognise myself for a long time even before I cut my hair." He picks at his food and looks back to the sea.

Despite avoiding talking about each other’s lives, things slip in. Like this explanation for the tightly wound Dylan I met a few days ago.

"Maybe I should cut mine, I can recreate myself too. This is the longest my hair's been for a few years."

Dylan strokes my fringe from my face, fingers trailing across my forehead. The touch ignites nerve-endings across my face. "I'm sure you'll look great whatever you decide to do with your hair."

"Grant said girls with short hair don't look right."

"Who's Grant?"

I clamp a hand over my mouth. Real life things. Secrets. "Just some dickhead who used to be my boyfriend."

"I wouldn't think you were the kind of girl to date dickheads."

I huff. "Yeah, some of them slip through the net and I don't realise until it's too late."

"How can it be too late? You weren't married, were you?"

I splutter Fanta over my cooling chips. "Hell, no."

"Then what?"

"Once you fall in love, it's harder to let go; even with dickheads."

"But you let go? Is that why you're here?"

This isn't fair. He's poking at what I came to escape from - letting things into our bubble world. I set the meal onto the sand next to me. "I don't want to talk about this."

Dylan’s scrutiny traces a pattern over my face, leaving a trail of heat. How does he do that?

"Such a shame I'm a dickhead," he says in a low voice.

"I'm sure you can't help it. Part of the Y chromosome disability, unfortunately," I say lightly.

Reaching out a finger, he brushes salt from my lips. An embarrassing sound escapes my throat as he rubs the rough fingertip along my lips.

"Remember what I said about your sarcastic mouth?"

Of course, I remember, how am I going to forget? But all I can do is stare back like some wide-eyed idiot and nod.

He removes his finger and licks the salt off the tip; the move is impossibly sexy and fires arousal through me.

"I know kissing you is the wrong thing to do to you, but I'm starting to get obsessed."

My brain struggles to keep up. "Wrong?" I ask.

"When you look at me the way you do, I love and hate it at the same time. When you
don't
look at me the way I want you to, that's even worse. Every funny thing you say, every time you blush, even just being in the same room fills me with an unexpected urge to kiss you. I don't understand, because this isn’t what I want."

"That makes no sense."

"It doesn't, does it? But nothing in my life makes sense to me.” He moves the fish and chips from his lap onto the sand.

Excruciatingly slowly, Dylan leans towards me. My heart somersaults and cheerleads in my chest as his mouth approaches mine.

"So about kissing your sarcastic mouth...?"

The words are spoken millimetres from my lips and as his mouth moves, his lips touch mine. He's good at this.

"Yes."

"Yes, you remember, or yes, you've changed your mind and want me to kiss you?" Dylan rubs his cool nose along my cheek towards my ear.

"Both. All. Whatever." I'm losing the ability to process words.

Cupping my chin with his rough fingers, he rubs my cheek with his thumb. My breath comes in such short bursts. I’m convinced I sound like I've run a marathon.

Dylan replaces his fingers with his mouth, a hesitancy in his kiss I didn't expect. Because he's not sure I want to or he's not sure he wants to? I push my lips against his, tasting the salt and Fanta. Dylan winds a hand into my hair and gently holds my face to his. His lips are firm and warm, softer than I imagined. When he runs his tongue along my bottom lip, the tingle spreads across my face and I'm gone.

I want Dylan to kiss, touch, whatever he wants. Because with one kiss, he's shot my brain into orbit and left my disintegrating body falling into his arms. I grab Dylan around the neck, steadying myself, and unashamedly kiss him back. Hard.

Dylan drops his hand from my hair and runs his fingers along my bare arm, adding to the goose bumps from the cold night. A small part of my brain asks why the hell this god of a man wants to kiss average me but who cares? He does. He delves his tongue into my mouth, snatching my breath. With Grant's kisses, I couldn't breathe because he suffocated me with bad positioning, but Dylan takes my breath away with the sheer expertise. I have never been kissed like this. Ever.

I slide my tongue to meet his and as the intensity of our kiss grows, I relish the burn of his stubbled jaw on my sensitive skin. He makes a low sound in his throat, and the fact I caused this arouses parts of me I've tried desperately to ignore around him.

Dylan pulls his mouth away, a tiny space that feels like a gulf opens between us, and his breath comes in warm bursts against my face. Shifting his attention to my neck, Dylan plants a row of tiny kisses before he flicks his tongue into a sensitive spot I never knew I had. I curl my fingers into his short hair press myself into him, not wanting this over any time soon.

With the sound of the sea in the background, and the cool sand beneath my legs, I'm pulled back to my first teenage summer kiss on the beach. Everything is new and forbidden - the excitement and illicitness of what might happen next adding to my arousal. Fourteen-year-old Sky takes control of my thoughts. Will he touch me? Or just kiss me? Where will he touch me? Should I touch him?