Tiger Lily Page 9

  The two of us made small talk as we drifted deeper into town. He’d always been so easy to talk to.

  When the two of us reached the restaurant, our waitress asked him if she could get him anything in a certain tone, then glanced at me as if she’d like to get me a cab out of town.

  Then as we were looking at our menus, a lady with a headful of blond highlights and a bright smile came up and lingered at the edge of our table. I stared at my menu, ignoring her, until Dylan looked up. “I was thinking about the—oh, hi, Nora.”

  “You haven’t come into the hair salon in a while,” she said innocently, running her fingers through his hair. I pursed my lips in a silent whistle; that was a bold move. She was already going on: “Are you cheating on me?”

  He laughed and ducked back, pulling out of her touch. She rested her hand on the table instead, shifting as close to him as she could get without climbing into the booth. She had long, polished fingernails painted burgundy, and I tucked my hands under the table—my cuticles looked ragged, and I hadn’t cared until just now.

  “This is my date, Lily,” he told her. “Lily, this is Nora.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” she said, but she didn’t look away from him. “Your hair looks really great, Dylan. What are you doing with it?”

  “Just shampoo,” he said, running his own fingers through it and giving her a perplexed, self conscious, utterly adorable smile.

  I propped my chin on my hand and stared at the two of them blankly, until Dylan said, “I’m actually on a date right now…”

  “With her?” she asked, widening her eyes innocently. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I thought she must be a cousin or something…”

  Dylan set the menu down on the table. He looked at me. He mouthed, “Do you want to get out of here?”

  I nodded. He stood and tossed a twenty on the table, even though we’d only had water.

  “See you later, Nora,” he said as he slipped past her, still smiling at her, because of course he was. Dylan was always sweet and smiling.

  But he grabbed my hand and towed me through the tables to the door.

  “You are apparently the world’s nicest, sexiest guy,” I exploded as soon as we were out of the restaurant, “and I don’t know if I can handle it, Dylan!”

  He blinked at me. “I’m…sorry?”

  “I don’t want to deal with women hitting on you all the time, and always having to feel jealous and—” I cut myself off abruptly.

  “All the time?” he said slowly, and smiled. “You get…jealous?”

  I shrugged. “I think you must be half siren or something that makes people fall in love with them.”

  “I’m pretty sure sirens are always girls,” he said.

  “That seems unfair,” I said. “There should be equal employment opportunities.”

  I was starting to feel a little embarrassed about how I’d reacted as soon as we left the restaurant. But then I realized maybe I didn’t need to. He’d seemed as if he appreciated my reaction.

  Maybe I didn’t need to second guess myself around these guys.

  “Let’s pick up sandwiches and go to the springs,” he suggested. “It should be quiet there.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe mermaids will pop out of the water, singing your name.”

  “Well,” he said. “That would make for an interesting evening.”

  We picked up sandwiches—I desperately wanted tuna, my favorite, but decided to pass on that on a date—and went out to the springs. It was a long walk, but that didn’t matter; I was just happy being with him as the sun sank over the trees and night fell. The dark felt comfortable and homey when I was with him.

  He laid his jacket on a grassy hill overlooking the water, and I smiled at how casually chivalrous he was. I slipped off my shoes and curled my feet beneath me. The night felt peaceful, and there wasn’t any restaurant that could compare with our picnic’s view.

  We sat there talking about everything and nothing.

  “So tell me about Brad,” he said finally, as he handed me the pickle from his sandwich, because he must have remembered I liked them.

  “I’m not going to talk about my ex on a date,” I said, before popping it onto my tongue.

  “If you don’t want to talk about him, that’s fine. But if you do… I’m not afraid to hear about him. I’m not scared of him.”

  Dylan leaned forward and brushed his thumb over the corner of my lip, as if he were knocking off a crumb. “He’s not the one who’s here with you now.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “If it’s sweet, why did you use that tone?” His own tone was even, his eyes curious.

  I bit my lip as I glanced away, looking over the shimmering water of the springs. “Do you remember when you were dating Elle Hampton?”

  “I do,” he frowned. “We dated for almost a year. Why?”

  “I’d forgotten how long it went on. You guys were pretty serious.”

  He shrugged, picking up a rock. He weighed it in his hand, then sent it skipping over the water. “We were sixteen.”

  For some reason, I’d been thinking about how he broke up with her. She’d been one of those sleek-haired, shiningly popular girls. Girls like her didn’t bully people—it would be beneath them to pay us that much attention. But something about me had bothered Elle, and she’d spent our sophomore year making my life hell as quietly as she could.

  I hadn’t told Dylan. It was his girlfriend, after all.

  But when she took a photo of me in the locker room and spread it around, Lupe had dried my tears, told me not to bother kicking her ass, and marched off to tell Dylan.

  I’d confronted her in the hall anyway, but nothing I said mattered. When Dylan stormed down the hall, though, her face had changed. He’d slung his arm over my shoulders and told her, “We’re through.”

  It was the one-and-only time Dylan and I had walked through school like we were boyfriend and girlfriend, his athletic arm around my shoulders, and I hadn’t wanted to cry just then.

  “Do you ever talk to Elle?” I asked him.

  He scoffed at that and picked up another rock. “No. Maybe it’s not very mature of me, but I never said another word to her after we broke up.”

  “What?” I was skeptical. “What was the last thing you ever said to her? Do you remember?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled his arm back and let the rock fly. It skimmed over the water, and he frowned, watching it go, as if he were very invested in how many times it skipped. “I told her, we’re through. That was the last thing.”

  I stared at him, but he didn’t meet my eyes. He propped his elbows on his knees, staring out at the lake. It felt as if he’d just told me more than he meant to, with that confession.

  “Why doesn’t Blake approve of you going out with me?”

  Dylan chewed his lower lip, studying me with those gorgeous eyes under heavy lashes. They were eyelashes some girls would pay to have.

  “He thinks that you need to work at Hot Wheels,” he said finally. “And that if you start dating us, you might feel weird about it.”

  “Dating us?”

  “Yes. Dating all of us.” He blinked at me tranquilly. “We all like you. And you like all of us, don’t you, Lily?”

  I glanced away, across the water. My heart was pounding at the thought. “Why does he think I need to work at Hot Wheels? He thinks I can’t get a job anywhere else?”

  “No,” he said. “You’re a natural. Quick learner.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Yes ma’am, he did.” His voice was mild. Dylan would never lie to me; I felt that in my bones, and a deep glow started in my chest.

  Maybe I really did have a natural knack for something.

  “He’s worried that I’ll run away from Hot Wheels? If things get weird between us all?” I asked, knowing that I’d run away before.

  “He’s worried you’ll run away from Silver Springs,” he corrected. “That we’ll lose you for another fi
ve years.”

  I pulled a face. He skipped yet another stone along the water, and it bounced perfectly along, rippling the reflective water. He held one smooth stone out to me, cocking an eyebrow up as if to challenge me.

  But stone-skipping wasn’t the challenge that intrigued me at the moment.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me again,” I said.

  They were bold words. Aggressively vocal, even. I regretted them almost as soon as they were out of my mouth.

  But then he leaned toward me, and I didn’t regret those words at all. My heart galloped as I realized he really was going to kiss me again.

  His hand cupped my cheek lightly, his thumb resting on my cheekbone. He leaned close to me, those green eyes bright in the moonlight.

  He claimed my lips with his. That kiss was confident, branding, and my lips parted, wanting even more of him. I rested my hand on his knee, swaying in toward him. His hand slid down my neck, his thumb tracing over my throat, and I almost moaned in desire as his tongue slipped against mine.

  He pulled away, his eyes smoldering.

  “When we were teenagers,” I said, and my voice came out breathless; I didn’t sound quite like myself, “I always heard the other girls talking about how you took them out here to the springs.”

  I didn’t mean that in a bad way, but he glanced out at the water, a rueful expression flashing across his face. “I love it out here. I don’t want you to think that I’m just…”

  “I don’t,” I said, squeezing his leg. “I don’t mind, Dylan, or I would’ve told you no.”

  His lips arched up. “Yeah, you would have,” he admitted. “That’s one thing that makes it easy to relax around you. I know you’ll just tell me how it is if you don’t like something.”

  “Not everyone considers that a pro.”

  “I do.”

  He meant it, and butterflies fluttered in my chest. There was no feeling like being seen, being known, and having people adore you for it, flaws and all.

  “I’ve always loved this place because it reminds me of life before I came to the orphanage,” he mused out loud. “My parents lived on the water—they took tourists out on fishing trips. I was swimming before I could walk.”

  I took his hand in mine. He glanced over at me, a faint smile playing over his lips and replacing the somber edge in his voice.

  I didn’t say sorry. We both knew each other’s stories, and we knew the pain the other carried.

  His parents had died in a storm, their boat capsized. He’d been the lone survivor—a puppy clinging to a life preserver, against all odds, when the storm ended. He still wondered why he’d shifted, if it had helped him survive or if it had just hurt too much to be human.

  Meanwhile, I was the daughter of some wandering tom cat shifter who never stayed in any one town long, and a human girl who had some serious concerns the first time her baby shifted in her arms. She’d almost thrown me across the nursery.

  She’d been an amazing mom, someone who didn’t plan to have a baby, and definitely didn’t plan to have a baby with a tail, but she adjusted anyway. My early memories were a haze of love, of lullabies in her sweet voice as she rubbed my back while I drifted off to sleep.

  I thought maybe my singing voice sounded like hers, and the thought made my eyes fill with tears. At least I could still have part of her, even though cancer took her away from me when I was just a kid.

  As orphans, it was nice just to have someone who let you talk without acting like you’d killed the vibe. I lay my head on his shoulder, feeling comfortable with him.

  “I heard before that you took girls out here to go skinny dipping.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent at the time. It’s technically against the law to swim naked in the spring.”

  “Who said we had to be naked?”

  His grin took on a devilish cast. “I did.”

  18

  “Turn around,” I told Dylan. I had to bite back a girlish, nervous giggle—and I didn’t think I’d ever giggled like that before in my life. I wrenched down on my lower lip with my teeth, determined to play it at least a little bit cool for once.

  I started to wiggle out of my tight black dress, but I paused with it halfway off because he was unbuttoning his shirt. I was distracted by his powerful shoulders and lats working as he pulled the shirt off.

  Then he unbuckled his belt and stepped out of the pants. He had a perfect ass encased in a pair of the most ridiculous boxers I’d ever seen. They were navy blue boxers decorated with little green frogs. Kiss the frog and see if it turns into a prince…

  I inhaled suddenly, surprising myself, as if I’d forgotten to breathe there for a few long seconds.

  “Ready?” he asked

  Focus, Lily.

  “One second,” I said, shedding the dress.

  “I’ll meet you in the water,” he said.

  He waded into Silver Springs, the water rippling around his body. The moonlight shone on the water, and as beautiful as it was, it was his body that drew my gaze.

  I threw the dress over a tree branch to protect it from the evening dew and followed him to the water’s edge.

  I hated the water. That was no surprise, I guessed.

  But for him—and for the teenage girl who secretly adored him and always longed to be the one he brought skinny-dipping—I waded in.

  The water was cold at first and I hissed in surprise, which just made him laugh at me.

  So I had to splash him. It had to be done.

  He splashed me back, and it turned into a full-on war until I finally begged for mercy. His eyes danced with mischief as he pushed his wet hair back from his face with both hands, his muscles ripping with the motion.

  I realized I’d forgotten to feel shy. I lay back, the water feeling warm and pleasant now, and let it buoy me up. He floated beside me, his fingertips accidentally brushing mine from time to time.

  “You look so beautiful with your hair spread in the water.” His voice was muted because my ears were floating underwater, but he still sounded sexy, and as warmth glowed in my chest, a smile curled across my lips.

  “I guess that’s one way to tame my curls.”

  “I love your curls.”

  “Maybe I do too,” I said. It really depended on the day, but I turned my head to one side and caught him watching me. The way he was looking at me right now, I could stand to really appreciate them.

  But the moment was too intensely sweet, so I splashed him.

  He went under water, then suddenly sprang up, tackling me.

  I playfully screamed—apparently I was really channeling my inner teenage girl—as he wrapped his big arms around me. He surfaced, laughing, using his hand to push his wet hair back from his face.

  “You needed to get all wet.”

  “I was already all wet!”

  He was grinning as I tackled him, but somehow that tackle turned into my body pressed against his, into slow kisses.

  Then I was bobbing in the water, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. He buried his face in my shoulder, kissing me intently.

  The water might still be cool this early in summer, but with the heat between our bodies, I was hot with him pressed against me. He went on kissing me, but I wanted more and more.

  “Dylan…” I murmured.

  “Mm?”

  “When you were skinny dipping with all those girls, did you ever…”

  He looked at me, and I felt myself blush. I smacked his shoulder. “You know what I’m asking you!”

  “But it’s more fun if I make you say it,” he said, before kissing my mouth so I couldn’t say it anyway.

  I got very distracted from our original conversation. I hadn’t seen him yet, but I could feel the hard press of his cock as we bobbed in the water. I wrapped my legs around him, wanting to be even closer, as the two of us traded kisses.

  He finally broke away and asked me innocently, “What did you want to know? Did I ever do what here? C
atch one of those psychedelic frogs to lick? You know the guys on the football team used to Do the Frog.”

  “Dylan…”

  “Mm?” The mischievous smile on his lips told me he knew exactly what he was doing. Then he told me, “No, Lily. I never had sex with a girl in the water.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s logistically improbable,” he teased. “Do you know how hard it is to maintain a hard-on in the water?”

  “That’s one thing. What’s the other?”

  He put his lips close to my ear. “There were some things I wanted to do with someone special.”

  “I see.” I didn’t dare hope that I was someone special.

  He licked his lips as he studied me, as if that confession had left him nervous.

  “Do you have something to say?” I asked him, my voice mock innocent, after what he’d done.

  His hands skimmed my waist in the water, holding me close to his body. His fingers traced down my skin, down to the waistband of my panties, and he shook his head. “You don’t know how to skinny dip, Lily.”

  “I realize that now,” I said, my voice coming out husky, because I really didn’t want those panties anymore.

  He leaned close to me, his breath against my ear making me feel a ripple of desire down my spine.

  “I want you, Lily Maguire,” he whispered to me.

  “What a coincidence,” I murmured back, right before I raised my face to his, and his lips seared to mine. The two of us bobbed in the water as we slowly explored each other’s mouths, our hands wandering each other’s bodies. I almost groaned when his fingertips traced over my thighs.

  He managed to take my panties off one-handed, and I shook my head.

  “What?” he demanded, giving me a crooked smile.

  “You’re just very good at taking girls’ panties off,” I told him.

  “I don’t,” he seemed to stumble, “I don’t care about taking anyone’s panties off but yours, Lily.”

  My heart rose in a dangerous way. That was what I didn’t quite dare hope for—being special to him.

  His lips tilted at the corner ruefully. “If you hadn’t ignored me like you were getting paid for every snub, I would’ve tried to get you out here when we were teens.”