Luke must have thought it was stupid too. “So what? He’ll get it going again.”
“Did you see that guy?” Grace’s panic mounted. “Did you smell him? I bet that was a bottle of Mad Dog he had in his pocket.”
Luke shrugged. “Either that or he was glad to see you.”
“Luke, I’m serious.” Her voice rose thinly. “I’m scared.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Shh. It’s okay.” He put an arm around her, a little awkwardly.
“How do you know? This thing’s fifty years old if it’s a day. It has to die sometime. Maybe this is the night.”
“Nah.” He was totally calm. “This happens all the time. These old motors overheat and just give out temporarily. Sparky down there will keep fidgeting with it, pushing the arm on and off, until it cools off some and starts to run again and he’ll think he fixed it.”
Grace laughed, despite her fear. Down below she could see the ride operator doing just that. It made her feel better. “You’re sure?”
“I guarantee it.”
“Okay.” She breathed. Her shoulders relaxed under his arm but he didn’t move it. He probably just forgot, but she was glad. “In the meantime, we’re trapped together,” she said, testing for his response.
He looked into her eyes, making her shiver. “Yeah.”
A moment passed.
“How long do you think it will be?”
“I don’t know. Ten, maybe twenty, minutes.”
“Ugh.” She glanced back down at the flummoxed ride operator and felt woozy.
“Look up,” Luke said quietly, lifting her chin with his index finger, then pointing to the stars. “You’ll feel better.”
He was right. The sky was a deep satin purple, so starry it seemed flecked like a dark tablecloth with spilled salt. She caught her breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” he agreed, but he was looking at her, not the sky.
A thrill fluttered over her as she pretended not to notice. “It looks like the sky in a children’s picture book.”
“I don’t know where you come up with this stuff,” he said, shaking his head. “Everything’s poetic to you.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” He smiled. “But what are you gonna do when you’re out of school and you need to live in the real world?”
“I do live in the real world.”
He gave a completely cynical shrug. “I wish.” Then he looked at her. “For what it’s worth, though, I like it.”
Did he like her? Before tonight, she wouldn’t have thought so. “Maybe I should write children’s books for a living, huh? Avoid the real world entirely.”
He laughed. “Girls like you don’t need to live in the real world. You’ll marry someone rich and do whatever you want.”
For some reason his saying that gave her a small pang. Not that she wanted to be with him or anything, but there was something disconcerting about him pawning her off on some imagined rich guy in her future. “So what happens to guys like you?”
He looked very serious. “I don’t know.”
She wanted to reach out to him. “What do you want?”
His gaze remained steady. “Doesn’t matter.”
She swallowed hard, trying to will away the desire that was snaking through her chest. Instead, she looked back over the edge of the seat. “So. This doesn’t bother you a bit, huh?” She tried to laugh.
“I think you could say I’m bothered,” Luke said softly, his gaze flickering from her face to her hair and back to her eyes, making her tingle as if he’d touched her.
“By the height?” she asked, looking up again so he wouldn’t see the real question in her eyes.
“No.”
Another moment passed, but something pulsed between them.
She turned to face him. “Then what?”
His mouth quirked up just a tiny bit on one side. “Now what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. She was terrified to say anything else. Terrified that she was wrong, that he wasn’t feeling what she was.
He stared into her eyes for a moment, then shook his head, laughing softly. “You do.”
Electricity worked its way from the pit of her stomach to the center of her being. She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said haughtily, looking back at the sky.
“Don’t you, Grace?”
“No, I don’t.” Her lips felt full with the desire to be kissed. It was crazy—he hadn’t touched her, but she was experiencing every physical response in the book.
He didn’t say a word.
Instead, she felt his hand on her face, turning it toward him, then he captured her mouth with his, in a kiss so deep that it left her gasping.
“Now that makes me nervous,” he said huskily, his hand still cupping her cheek.
For a moment, she stared at him wordlessly, trembling in the warm night air. Then, following an impulse she’d never even dreamed of, she initiated another kiss.
He responded hungrily, opening his mouth under her parted lips and drinking her in so thoroughly that he might have taken some of her soul.
He moved his strong hands down her ribcage, across the thin cotton of her sundress. She felt safe in his grasp. Warm. Excited. He drove her wild yet at the same time made her feel utterly secure.
She raised her hands, twining her fingers in his thick dark hair, and pulled his mouth still closer, if that was possible. She wanted to stop him from stopping. As her mouth moved against his, she pressed herself against him, begging wordlessly for him to continue, to keep kissing her forever.
It felt as though he would. They groped at each other like the teenagers they were, touching, tasting, fumbling. Their teeth knocked together and they smiled, but only for a moment, before the fever of lust took them over again and they took it deeper, tongues touching, exploring, lingering.
“I hope we stay stuck here all night,” Grace breathed.
“It’ll cool off.” He spanned her lower back with his hands, then slowly moved her legs across his lap.
“I hope not,” she managed to say before drowning in sensation.
Luke’s hand moved across her hip, then her thigh, caressing her in broad, languid movements.
She relaxed her legs, parting them slightly.
He edged his hand higher and higher on her thigh, raising her dress with it, then slipped his hand between her legs, pressing gently against her. Only the thinnest fabric lay between his skin and hers.
Grace tried to catch her breath but couldn’t, arching against him, begging silently for more. She felt him smile against her mouth for a moment, then he complied, artfully touching her as if she were naked.
She might as well have been for the dizzying response she had. She reached for the front of his jeans and felt his hardness behind the thick denim and stiff zipper. With shaking hands, she fumbled with his belt buckle, but froze when he slipped a finger around the cotton crotch of her underwear and plunged a finger into her.
She’d