Redwood Bend (Virgin River #18)(17)

And then he crashed down on her mouth.

Katie was startled somewhere between pain and a pleasure so remarkable, she wasn’t sure how to respond. There was a taste in him that verged on desperate, something that felt so much more welcome than nice-but-dull. Her inner voice said, This will probably be the only kiss you ever get from him. And with that thought, her hands slid slowly up his arms to his shoulders, shoulders so hard and inviting. But it was the mouth that sent her reeling, his soft lips, his tongue, tentative and cautious before becoming demanding. She joined the tongue play, trying to remember when she’d participated in a kiss like this, and failing.

And thank God it wasn’t quick. No, this guy wasn’t a tease, he was the real deal. He threaded his fingers up the back of her neck and into her hair until he palmed her head. He tilted her right, then left, changing their slant and deepening the kiss. And she found her own fingers on the back of his neck, in his long hair, pulling him closer, bringing him harder against her. If his mouth wasn’t intoxicating enough, that long, hard body against hers was certainly brain-numbing. Her senses became so sharp while her thinking was dull and all she wanted was to do this for a long, long time. She was tasting him, hearing his raspy and rapid breathing, inhaling that musk that contained some unidentifiable component she wasn’t familiar with… Was that motor oil? Nature? Pheromones? Lust?

He pulled away from her lips, continuing to hold her close. “Well, that opened your eyes, Katie Malone.”

“It usually does,” she said weakly.

“I thought I heard you complain about being forgotten in the kiss department,” he said. “I felt a little sorry for you. Wanted to be sure that was taken care of.”

“Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to thank you now,” she said.

He just chuckled and released her, jumping off the porch and heading for his bike, which was only two feet away.

“You’re kind of an arrogant ass, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Depends on who you ask,” he said with a devilish grin, mounting the bike and getting the hell out of there. Fast. In fact, he popped a wheelie. Show-off stud.

When he was riding down the drive, she collapsed into the chair. “Well, if you ask me,” she muttered to herself. And then she thought, I just Frenched a movie star.

Dylan rode hard and in some discomfort as he realized, well that was stupid. He’d acted on some lame instinct and now the only thing to do was get the hell out of her range as quickly as possible. He should never have tasted her.

Of course he’d been attracted to women before—many times. But he always calculated his moves and he never messed with young mothers. When Dylan felt a spark of interest in a female, he thought it through very carefully before he approached, touched, tempted, became tempted. One of the first things he considered was the window of opportunity, because he wasn’t interested in the long-term. There had to be an understanding and it had to be consensual. He restricted himself from Payne, Montana, residents, much to the disappointment of some. He hadn’t dated a girl from Payne since the high school prom; small towns could be harsh toward men who played the field with their women. And the closest he’d come to setting foot back in Hollywood was picking up a touring rock band in the BBJ.

He blamed Katie Malone’s boobs, large, luminous eyes and easy laughter. The boobs weren’t extraordinary. In fact they were kind of small, but they certainly spoke to him. Unforgettable, when you got right down to it. What was really strange was, Dylan saw pretty br**sts everywhere, but his hands didn’t usually ache to touch. And how about the laugh—so natural and filled with fun. Then there was the fact that he hadn’t really impressed her that much—that turned him on. Then there was that petite figure with a nice little…

He forced himself to block any further thoughts of her body.

He couldn’t figure out what had turned him around on a back road and sent him hurtling like a rocket back to her front porch to kiss her. He didn’t understand why she responded to the kiss—hadn’t she more or less said she was done with all that? Concentrating on her family? And he was turned on beyond his own comprehension. He’d been turned on a hundred times, but not like this. He felt as if he’d better get a lot of miles between him and Katie Malone or face dire consequences. And he had no one to talk to about this. So he rode hard for the rest of the day, stopping off to visit a couple of small airports as he went.

That was one thing Hollywood would have to recommend it—girls. There were plenty of the kind who would put their careers ahead of any relationship, but they still liked to have a man around from time to time. Brief, impersonal, nonrisky hookups.

The thought left him feeling just as empty inside as ever.

He remembered when Lang found Sue Ann, a Prescott, Arizona, girl. They’d been in college there and Lang, being a good-looking guy, was a great one to go running with; he always attracted women. But then he met this girl, this pretty but not flashy girl who was full of confidence and just wouldn’t be played. And good old Lang took a dive. He glazed over, saw no one but Sue Ann and his days of running with Dylan were over.

And Dylan was grateful that hadn’t happened to him, because he was convinced he wasn’t good for the long haul. Not that he wanted it to be that way. It just was.

Dylan stopped off in a small town near the coast where there was a little fixed base operation. He went inside, introduced himself to the airport manager and asked if they had a charter operation or any aviation instruction. The story seemed to be the same everywhere—people were chartering less often, this particular airport was sending people interested in pilot instruction to other airports. Dylan learned there had once been a couple of instructors there as well as a charter pilot who operated a six-seater and had done a respectable business, until fuel prices soared and he moved on to other work. Now that airport offered storage, maintenance and fueling for a few private plane owners and the occasional inbound flight.