She smiled. “I’m not cold. If you haven’t noticed, the way you kiss me always makes me shiver. But I wouldn’t mind sitting on the blanket.”

“Sounds good.” Devin kissed her again and then reached for his backpack. He pulled out a sleeping bag, unzipped it, and walked to drier sand before he spread it out.

Liberty left her flip-flops where they were and plopped on the left side of the sleeping bag.

But Devin wasn’t having it. He sat in the middle and pulled her up until she sat between his legs, with her back against his chest. “Much better.”

“Now there’s sand everywhere on the blanket.”

“Sweetheart, we’re at the beach. There’s gonna be sand everywhere no matter how careful we are.” He nuzzled the back of her head. “Besides, this is a date. Our bodies are supposed to be in contact as much as possible.”

She snorted. “You just wanna cop a feel to see what kind of bra I’m wearing.”

“I already know you’re wearing a normal bra, not a titty squisher. Because when you hugged me, I loved feelin’ all that soft flesh pressed against me.”

“So maybe, just maybe, if you are a perfect gentleman the rest of the date, I’ll let you get to second base.”

Devin bent his head to brush his lips across her ear. “And if I’m not a perfect gentleman?”

She wiggled her ass against his crotch. “Then at the end of the date, I’ll let you bend me over the couch on the bus and f**k me until I scream your name.”

“Tough choice. But I’ll go with option two.” He nipped her earlobe. “That okay with you?”

“Mmm-hmm. Gonna be a long drive back to the bus.”

They gazed at the moonlit sky and the reflection of the moon on the ocean. The foam on the waves was a fluorescent green, from some kind of algae plankton that was prevalent in the summer months. He remembered Tanna explaining it during one of their beach talks.

After a while, his arms tired of holding them up, and he stretched out on his back with Liberty lying beside him.

“Could you live someplace like this year-round?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’d be cool to have a beach house getaway. But I like the change of seasons. I don’t even get as much of that as I’d like living in Nashville. But the last year I’ve been on the road so much, I walk into my house in Nashville and feel like I’m in a hotel. Not the kind of place I thought I’d come home to.”

“Meaning a wife and three point two kids waiting for you in your mansion?”

“It’s not a mansion by any stretch,” he said dryly. “I’d like to have the wife and kids someday. I’m not in any hurry.”

“You don’t have to be. You’re a guy. You can father kids at any age.”

“How about you? Got a burning desire to have munchkins running around?”

“Never thought I’d want that until Harper had Tate and Jake. But unless I meet Mr. Right—not the ones in the Wright Brothers Band, so quit making that growling noise—pretty damn soon, I’ll be shit out of luck. My biological clock is ticking furiously.”

Devin never thought about this stuff, to say nothing of talking about it, because most women would assume when he discussed having kids, that meant he wanted to have them right now with them.

For some reason he had a flash of a cranky Liberty being pregnant with his child. Then he saw her cradling an infant and him holding the hand of a pigtailed little girl and it didn’t scare him senseless. It seemed almost . . . right.

Liberty moved until she hung on all fours above him, pulling his attention away from his strange vision.

“Are you ready to go?”

“No. Close your eyes and keep your hands folded behind your head.”

He complied. She kissed him with that blend of fire and control that made him crazy. By the time her hand traveled from his pecs to his belly, his c**k had gone hard.

She stroked his shaft through the cotton material until he made a low groan. Then she popped the button, eased the zipper down, and tugged on his camo shorts and boxers until they were past his knees.

Then she scooted backward, planting kisses in a straight line down his torso. The tip of his c**k bumped her chin. She didn’t look up, didn’t speak. Liberty just drew him deep into her mouth on the first pass. Warmth and wetness surrounded his shaft—a feeling of bliss in itself, and then she started to suck.

Goddamn, did that feel f**king amazing.

Her hair drifted across the sensitive skin of his lower abdomen with every vigorous bob of her head.

Her br**sts swayed with her body movement, rubbing his thighs until he imagined it was just her hard ni**les teasing his skin with no barrier between them.

Fuck. That mouth of hers. She didn’t need her hands. She was already turning him inside out.

But Devin needed to stroke her cheek or touch her hair. Look into her eyes. Make it intimate and personal and not like every other blow job, where he just sat there and the woman on her knees went to town.

Not this time.

He sat up and curled his hands over her ears, lifting her face to break the connection between her hot mouth and his dick.

Her eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Don’t stop me so you can f**k me, Devin. I want to suck you off.”

“I want that too. But I wanna watch this pretty mouth wrapped around the base of my cock. It’s f**kin’ sexy as hell that you can take me so deep. I want to watch as you drive me out of my mind. I want to watch as you swallow my come. I want you to look at me and see what you do to me.”