Hearts in Darkness Collection (Hearts in Darkness Duet) Read online

  He smiled. “Okay, I’ll take the trail mix.”

  “Done. Um, here?”

  The package crinkled against the carpet as Makenna slid it in his direction. He reached his hand out in search of it. When they finally met somewhere in the darkened middle, Caden dragged his hand over hers. It was small and soft. He surprised himself by thinking he wanted to keep holding her hand more than he wanted the food. She didn’t pull away. They both laughed nervously.

  “We’ll have to share the water, though. I only have one bottle.”

  “How much stuff do you have in there?”

  “Hey, don’t be knocking my bags. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing this gourmet meal right now.”

  “Agreed. Sorry,” he said as he threw back the first handful of nuts and raisins.

  They ate in silence and the salt from the trail mix made him thirsty. He felt awkward asking, but the idea of the water tortured him. “Can I have a drink now?”

  “Of course. Let me make sure the cap’s on tight so it doesn’t spill.” They executed the mid-elevator hand-off. Caden smiled as they once again paused with their fingers touching before pulling away.

  He unscrewed the lid and tilted the bottle to his lips. “Oh, God. That’s good.”

  “I know. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until I took a sip.”

  “Thanks for sharing your stuff with me.”

  “Of course. What was I going to do? Sit here and eat in front of you? Come on, you know me better than that. Then again, maybe not.”

  Caden thought he did know her…or at least he was starting to. Every story she’d shared with him revealed some part of her character—and everything he’d learned told of a person who was friendly and compassionate and giving. “No, you were right the first time,” he finally said. “I do.”

  The trail mix was gone too soon, but at least it took the edge off. They passed the water back and forth until it was almost gone, then Caden insisted Makenna take the last drink.

  They sat in the heat of the dark elevator for several minutes before Caden finally gazed in her direction and said, “Don’t think your little ploy with the snacks distracted me from the current question on the table.”

  “Not at all. But you said you’d go first.”

  Chapter Three

  Makenna shifted onto her back and stared at the invisible ceiling. She had a big goofy grin on her face because Caden was about to tell her about his first time, while she had absolutely no intention of sharing hers.

  “Okay. I’ll start then. I am, after all, a man of my word. My first time was with Mandy Marsden—”

  “Mandy?” Makenna wrinkled her nose and smirked.

  “Hey, telling a story over here. Keep the editorial comments to a minimum.”

  “Oh, right, sorry. Please continue.” Her smile grew wider.

  “As I was saying…my first time was with Mandy Marsden, on her parents’ living room couch while they were asleep upstairs. I was sixteen and had no idea what the hell I was doing. I remember it as being nice, but I imagine Mandy might have been…underwhelmed.”

  Makenna found the chuckle in his voice at the end there so endearing. She liked a guy who could laugh at himself. He must be pretty confident in bed now to share a story like that—the thought made her even hotter than she already was. “Sounds very romantic,” she managed.

  “Who knows from romance when you’re sixteen?”

  “Well, that’s true, I suppose. Did you at least buy her dinner beforehand?”

  “Does pizza count?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. Caden was adorable. “For a sixteen-year-old, sure. I’ll give you a pass.”

  “How big of you. Okay, then, your turn, Red.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Red?”

  “Next question.”

  She heard him roll over. His voice sounded closer. “No way. We had a deal.”

  “Could the court reporter please read back the transcript to ascertain Miss James never agreed to tell this story?”

  He scoffed. “Okay, I realize we’ve been in here for a while, but please tell me you’re not losing your mind already.”

  “Not at all, just getting the facts straight.”

  “Come on. What’s the big deal?”

  She was almost glad she couldn’t see him—if his eyes were anywhere near as persuasive as his voice, she’d be a goner. “Just…no,” she said through a laugh at his pleading.

  “It couldn’t be any worse than mine.”

  “Nope.”

  “Red.”

  “No.”

  “M.J.”

  “Hey, that’s Makenna to you, mister. And the answer’s still no.” Even though her initials didn’t bother her in the rest of her life, there was something about the way her name rolled off his tongue she really liked. She didn’t want him to treat her just like everybody else did, just like one of the guys.

  “This must be some story. You realize you’re building expectations here.”

  She groaned. “No, no, no, no.”

  “Tell me and I’ll take you out for pizza. You can even pick the toppings.” They were just joking around, but Caden found himself hoping she’d agree to the pizza, even if it didn’t get the story out of her. He wanted the hell out of this box, but he wasn’t at all looking forward to walking away from Makenna. Or, more likely, her walking away from him.

  Makenna didn’t respond right away. Caden wished he could see the look on her face, the set of her eyes. “What color are your eyes?” he whispered, once again losing the filter between his brain and mouth.

  “Blue,” she whispered back. “And, yes.”

  “Yes, what?” Caden asked, distracted by the desire to reach out and touch her face. The whispering made their conversation feel intense, intimate. And all of a sudden his body roared to life. This time, though, his racing pulse and pounding heart were a result of arousal rather than panic.

  “Yes, I’ll have pizza with you. If you’ll see a movie with me.”

  Caden imagined her words slipping over his body. He wished it was her small, soft hands instead. But he was happy she’d agreed to go out with him, and that she’d turned it into a full-on date. “Yeah. Pizza and a movie, then.” He rubbed his hand over his hair as the dark concealed the smile reshaping his face.

  “My first time was with Shane Cafferty,” Makenna started, still whispering. “I was eighteen. It was two weeks after prom. We sorta dated all summer before we went off to different colleges. But, that night, we took a blanket out and laid it in front of the pitcher’s mound on the high school baseball diamond. Oh, God, this is so embarrassing,” she groaned.

  “It is not, out with it.” He was surprised she’d finally relented, but her opening up made him feel hopeful.

  “He’d been on the high school baseball team. He was good—at baseball, I mean, God—anyway, taking a blanket out there at night was kind of our thing. The first time was sweet. Short”—she laughed—“but sweet. It got better, though.”

  “That’s a good story. Much better than mine. Thanks for sharing. See, that wasn’t hard.”

  She sighed. “No, I guess it wasn’t.” She paused for a few moments and then said, “You know, you have an unfair advantage over me. You saw me when I came into the elevator, but I was too distracted to see you.”

  “Yes.” He smirked at her through the darkness. “I remember. But I didn’t see your face either because your hair was in the way.”

  “What color are your hair and eyes?” She shifted while she spoke and her voice got a little closer.

  Caden itched to reach a hand out and measure just how close she was. His senses told him she was within reach. The thought made his arm ache for the feel of her. “Both brown, although I don’t have much hair to speak of.”

  “Wh…why?”

  Laughter spilled out of him. It broke the quiet between them, but not the intensity. “I keep my head shaved.”

  “Why?”

  �
��I like it that way.” He wasn’t ready to reveal all his oddities to her just yet, because he didn’t want to scare her away. He was half contemplating taking out his facial piercings before she could see them, but decided, somehow, that felt dishonest.

  “Like buzz-cut shaved or like baby’s-bottom-soft bald?”

  “Give me your hand,” Caden offered. “You can feel for yourself.”

  Makenna gulped down her excitement at finally getting to do what she’d been dying to do most of the night. Her sight gone, she longed for another way to make a more tangible connection to Caden. And between the sex talk—G-rated though it might’ve been, and the plans for a date, and the whispering, and the feeling his body was close to hers, Makenna’s body was starting to vibrate with a heady sense of anticipation that made her stomach flutter and her breath come a little faster.

  Still lying flat on her back, Makenna gingerly reached out her hands. “Where are you?”

  “Right here.” Caden caught her right hand in his, and Makenna gasped at the contact. His hand engulfed hers as he pulled it up to his head.

  Makenna’s pulse raced as she smoothed her hand over Caden’s head. His hair was shaved so close it felt soft and ticklish as she rubbed her fingers over it. Long after it was necessary, Makenna continued to stroke his hair. She didn’t want to stop touching him. And when he scooted his body a little closer so she didn’t have to extend her arm so far, she smiled, thinking he liked it, too.

  “Tell me something else,” Makenna said in a low voice, no longer whispering, but speaking soft enough she didn’t chase away whatever magic was working between them.

  “Like what?”

  “Like…why a dragon?”

  “Hmm.” He leaned his head into her hand. She smiled. When he finally started speaking, his words came in an unbroken stream. “The dragon’s my fear. I put it on my arm to remind myself I’ve tamed it. We, uh, we were driving home from a vacation at the beach. It was a little two-lane country road, and it was late at night because me and Sean had bugged our parents to let us have all day Sunday on the beach.”

  Makenna sucked in a breath at the gravity of what he was sharing with her. Her hand paused against his head as she wondered if she should say something, or if she should just let him talk. She was surprised to feel his big warm palm press her hand against his head, and took that as a sign he wanted her to keep rubbing him. So she did.

  “My father was a stickler for going the speed limit. He never cared if twenty cars lined up behind him, blowing their horns and flashing their lights. You could pass on these back roads on the straightaways. People did it all the time. By the time we were about an hour away from the beach, it was all the way dark. I didn’t see what happened at the time, but I found out later that a tractor trailer passed us, but moved back in his lane too soon. My father swerved to avoid getting hit.”

  Makenna’s eyes welled with tears in anticipation of where the story was headed.

  “The next thing I knew, the car was upside down. Wedged in a big irrigation ditch at the edge of a field. The passenger side took the worst damage when the car rolled, the side Sean and my mom were sitting on. I was the only one still conscious after the accident. But I couldn’t move because a lot of our stuff from the back of the car—it was a station wagon, of all things—had tumbled forward into the back seat and buried me. My shoulder was dislocated, and I couldn’t manage the leverage to dig myself out. I kept calling their names. But none of them would wake up. I passed in and out of consciousness a few times. Every time I woke up, it was dark and I was still trapped. We were there for about four hours before another passing tractor trailer finally spotted the car top-down in the ditch and called for help. By the time they got us out, Mom and Sean were gone.”

  “Oh, my God, Caden.” Makenna willed him to feel the comfort and peace she so badly wanted him to have. From what he’d said earlier, she hadn’t realized he’d lost his mother, too. She truly wished that wasn’t something else they had in common. “I’m so sorry. No wonder…”

  He gently grabbed her hand and slid it around to his cheek. Makenna whimpered when she felt him press his face into her palm. To her, his gesture seemed brave. She admired his ability to ask for what he needed. His cheekbone felt prominent under her fingers and a light stubble pricked against her palm. She rubbed her thumb gently back and forth.

  “When I finally got over the worst of the claustrophobia, I got the dragon. I wanted to be strong for Sean. And I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to live my life in fear, when he couldn’t live his at all.”

  Makenna was swimming in emotion. The grief she felt for him was palpable; it ran down her temples into her hairline and constricted her throat. Her desire to protect him—to make sure nothing hurt him, scared him, took from him, ever again—came out of nowhere, but she felt the kind of kinship with Caden she’d always felt with her brothers. It didn’t matter that she could still count the amount of time she’d known him in minutes.

  And, God, she wanted him. She wanted to pull him down on top of her. She longed to feel his weight settle on her body, his lips on hers, his hands in her hair and gliding over her skin. It had been eleven months since she’d last been with someone, and never had she felt this kind of a connection. Makenna wanted her hands on him, too. Now that she was touching him, she worried she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “Don’t stop talking to me, Makenna. I need your words. Your voice.”

  “I don’t know what to say is all. I want to take away your hurt.”

  His cheek lifted into a smile under her hand. “Thank you. But sometimes I think I need it. It reminds me I’m alive. And it makes the good times feel that much better. Like right now, being here, with you.”

  Chapter Four

  Between the lack of any visual reference, her soft hand stroking his hair over and over, and managing to share the story of his mother’s and Sean’s deaths without once coming close to panicking, Caden was almost dizzy with triumph. It was Makenna, it was all Makenna’s doing. And he adored her for it. No one had ever gotten into the heart of him the way she had, and certainly never as fast.

  Makenna’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “You say the sweetest things, Caden Grayson. I swear.”

  Caden smiled against her hand, still holding his cheek, and finally chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He shrugged, then remembered the body language would be lost on her. “Sweet isn’t a word usually applied to me.”

  “Well, then, people don’t know you.”

  He nodded. “Maybe so.” Probably so. He’d be the first to admit he kept people away. He didn’t like the feeling of burdening others with his baggage. Sometimes distance was easier than acting, or explaining.

  “Definitely so,” she replied.

  Caden liked her argumentative nature. She was playful and feisty and had him talking and laughing more in the couple hours he’d known her than probably in the whole last month combined. With her, he’d never given distance a second thought.

  Caden almost moaned when she slid her palm up his face and began stroking from his temple, back over his ear, and down to his neck. His mouth dropped open. His breathing picked up. He couldn’t help but lean into her surprisingly sensual touch.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and just gave in to the feeling of it. He could hear her breathing and didn’t think he was imagining her breaths coming quicker, too. The possibility she might be longing for him the way he was longing for her all at once made him hard. He groaned low in his throat before he could stop himself.

  “Makenna.”

  “Caden.”

  Was her voice filled with longing, or was that just wishful thinking? Surely he was projecting his desire onto her, right? He swallowed thickly and shifted his hips. His button fly was relaxed, but not enough to accommodate his hard-on without discomfort.

  Then, her fingers exerted pressure against the back of his neck. But she continued on with the steady stroking, and he t
hought he must’ve imagined it. He just wasn’t sure. He concentrated all his focus on the movement of her hand and…I didn’t imagine it that time, did I? There it was again—her fingertips pulling him towards her.

  Please let me not be imagining that.

  He licked his lips and moved his head forward just an inch or two. God, he wanted to kiss her. His fingers itched to finally thread their way into all that red hair. His lips fell open in anticipation of claiming her mouth. He wanted to taste her. He wanted to feel her under him.

  “Makenna,” he rasped, a plea, a prayer.

  “Yes, Caden, yes.”

  It was all the confirmation he needed.

  He pushed himself across the carpet until his chest encountered her side. He slowly lowered his head so he didn’t hurt her in his blind impatience. His mouth found a cheek first and he pressed his lips against the soft apple of it. She moaned and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders. His right hand landed in a pile of silky curls, and the satisfaction he felt at finally touching her hair made him swallow hard.

  “So soft,” he murmured, meaning her hair and her skin and the mound of her breast pressing against his chest where he lay atop her.

  Caden let out his own moan when her lips pressed against the skin in front of his ear. She exhaled roughly, and the rush of her breath over his skin brought goose bumps to his neck.

  He trailed soft kisses across her cheek until he found her lips.

  And then he couldn’t go slow anymore.

  And neither could she.

  Caden groaned as his first kiss brought her full bottom lip into his mouth. Both hands found their way to her face, and he cupped his palms around her cheeks so he could guide their movement. Makenna’s high-pitched moan accompanied her hands grasping at the back of his head and neck.

  When her mouth fell open, Caden accepted the invitation like a starving man at a feast. He slipped his tongue into her sweet mouth and relished the tantalizing caresses their tongues traded. Makenna stroked his head and massaged his neck and gripped his shoulders. Caden pulled himself closer to her because, as much as it was, it just wasn’t enough.