At that moment, a trio of stand-up paddleboarders skimmed past a few feet away, shouting to each other across the water. She twisted in his grasp, and he let her go, then watched as she kicked off and swam for shore. Shit. Why had he even said that?
He set off after her. When she reached the shallows, she stood up, and the water sluiced off her, running down her body, over those delicious curves, and down her legs. The droplets left behind caught and reflected the sunlight, each one a jewel on her golden skin. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face, and the dark strands fell around her shoulders. As she stopped on the sand and bent to pick up her things, he specifically did not look. Did not sneak a glance at a certain part of her anatomy.
Well, only for the briefest moment.
They walked silently up the beach to where they’d left their things. Danielle was there, her face aglow. She passed Jacinda her towel. “Guess what? I got the job!”
Jacinda clapped her hands. “That’s awesome, congratulations!”
“I’m so happy.” She shimmied on the sand. “Seriously, I can’t believe it.”
“Congratulations,” Liam said, blotting himself dry with his own towel.
“When do you start?” Jacinda asked. “Soon?”
“The week after next,” Danielle replied. “Which is when Sam starts school. It’s perfect.”
Listening to them talk, something suddenly occurred to him. If Danielle had a job, and Sam was starting school, they wouldn’t need Jacinda’s help anymore. And they would both be there to look after the kittens until Nana Mac came back.
Which would mean she had no reason to stay.
No reason at all.
“It is perfect,” she said to Danielle. “I’m so happy for you.”
He glanced at her. She was looking thoughtful. Probably planning her exit already. Well, good. Easier for all of them. He could carry on with his life—wherever he ended up—and she could get back to enjoying the career Ethan never had. It was all good. All good.
He scrubbed his hair dry with violent force. Maybe that would shake the stupidity out of his head.
As he lowered the towel again, he couldn’t help noticing that both women had their eyes on his body. They both averted their gaze quickly, but it was too late. With a certain sense of satisfaction, he took his time pulling his top back on. His board shorts would drip dry in no time.
As Jacinda dried herself and put her cover-up back on, he looked around for Sam, and saw him farther down the beach talking to a couple of kids. A woman stood with them.
“Did Sam find some friends?” he asked Danielle.
She laughed. “They recognized him from last night at the markets, and came to talk to him. Such a celebrity. They’re going to have a play date, and I’ll have coffee with their mum.” She slipped her feet back into her flip-flops. “Catch you guys later.”
She went to join Sam and his new friends, and they all started down the beach.
“Looks like he ditched me,” Liam commented, watching them go.
Jacinda put her sunglasses back on. “Yup. You’ll have to play with the grown-ups again.”
Automatically, he replied, “That’s overrated.”
“Really?” she said, and started walking away.
And just like that, all the playing they’d done was suddenly front and center in his mind again. That kind of playing was definitely not overrated. He followed after her, catching up within a few strides.
As they headed for the alley, she was silent. What was she thinking? Should he say something about that moment in the ocean? What did he think about it, come to that? Lately he’d been blurting out things without thinking…before he even knew he thought them at all.
The silence was doing his head in, so he grabbed onto a safe topic.
“Great about Danielle’s job,” he said.
She nodded. “Really good.”
He glanced sideways, but her eyes were hidden by her sunglasses, and her expression was giving nothing away.
“I guess you’ll be going, then?” he asked, not sure what he wanted her answer to be. But…was that a slight trip, a break in her stride as she heard his question?
“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “They won’t need me anymore, so…”
Okay. Maybe it was just the uneven sand. Not a stumble at the thought of leaving. It was only him who’d tripped up on the idea.
They went down the alley and came to his gate, but she kept walking right past. And all he wanted to do was reach out and stop her. He scrambled for something to say.
“Would you…uh...like a drink?”
She paused, then turned back around. As she looked at him, inscrutable behind her sunglasses, he felt his fist tighten around his towel, and his breath stop in his chest. Why would she want to come in for a drink? They were finished, she’d said in the water, and he knew what she meant. If there’d been a flicker of confusion in her eyes as she looked at him, it was only because he wouldn’t let her go, like a total prick.
He was excelling at that lately.
But then she shrugged. “Okay.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t expecting that. “Okay, great.”
They went through the gate and up onto the deck. He had no clue what he was doing, only that he wanted her around. He wasn’t going to ask himself why. Make conversation, he told himself. Be pleasant. He unlocked the side door and stood back to let her in. “That was really nice what you did for Sam last night.”
“Yeah.” She kicked off her sandy flip-flops, then stepped inside. As they went into the kitchen, she put her sunglasses on her head and added, “On the other hand, you were a dick.”
He flinched. “Well…it turned out okay.”
“No thanks to you.”
Ouch. That was rugged. He took two tall glasses from the cupboard and set them on the counter, then turned to her.
“I had my reasons.”
She made a skeptical sound. “What? To disappoint a little boy?”
“No.” He leaned against the counter, noting the hard edge in her eyes. “If you really want to know—and maybe you don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway—it’s because I didn’t want to be up there in front of everyone. This is the first time I’ve been back since…” The words wouldn’t come, but judging by the look on her face, she knew what he meant. “Since then. And I didn’t want to go up and stand in front of everyone, like a goddamn sideshow. It was bad enough fending off their loaded questions and their sympathy one by one.”
He paused. Her brows were knit, and she was worrying the edge of her lip. Maybe he was getting his point across. “I think you know about wanting privacy, right?” he added.
“Oh.” She looked down. “Right.”
“Yeah.”
They stood just a few feet apart. The only sound in the room was the slight hum of the fridge.
Then she crinkled her nose. “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said again. But this time, it came out softer. She looked up at him, the hardness gone from her face. Her hair was drying all wavy, and there was a smudge of sand on her cheek. The front of her translucent cover-up was slightly damp in the two spots over the triangles of her bikini top. She was tousled, salty, and, God help him, completely stunning.
Forcing himself to focus, he picked up the glasses and walked around her to fill them from the water dispenser in the fridge door. Even after being in the ocean, her fragrance lingered around her. The ice clattered into the glasses, jarring in the quiet. Then he filled them with water, and handed one to her. As she took it, their fingers briefly touched, and she avoided his eye.
“Sam did look like he was having the time of his life,” he said, as she took a sip.
A smile crossed her face. “He did.”
“Born for the stage,” he said, putting his glass down. “Like someone else I know.”
Satisfaction hit him as he watched her cheeks flush pink.
“Pfft, whatever,” she said.
He laughed. “Yeah, whatever. Because that’s what grown-ups say.”
She shoved his arm. “Shut up.”
“You shut up.” He reached out with one hand and squeezed her waist, making her squeak and lurch away, giggling, and water sloshed from her glass and slopped onto the floor.
“Oops,” she said, looking down.
Without warning or thought, he gathered her up and pulled her close. Her laughter stopped on one sharp intake of breath, and she leaned the top part of her body away. The bottom half, though, remained pressed firmly against him. He took the glass from her hand and put it on the countertop, his eyes never leaving hers.
Suddenly, their pre-teen antics had morphed into something decidedly adult.
Leaning back, she had exposed the soft skin of her décolletage and throat, and it was too much to resist. He lowered his head to her neck and let his lips fall there once, twice, over and over again, describing a random, teasing pattern. When his tongue brushed her throat, there was a salt-tang on her skin, and a tiny hum of pleasure escaped her. He felt the tension melt from her body, her hips arch toward him just a little more. He knew she must be able to feel him hardening against her.
He looked up, checking her reaction.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her eyes heavy with something that could only be desire. She didn’t move.
“Why are you?” he countered, still holding her.
“I don’t know. Because you are.” She laughed, a short, disbelieving sound, as though she knew her answer made no sense. Then she shook her head. “We were finished with all this.”
At that moment, he was sure she’d pull away, probably get mad again, and maybe storm out of his house. Then again, she didn’t seem to be the storming type. Her style was more the decisive, quiet exit.
But instead of delivering a rapid rebuke, she deliberately ran one hand up each side of his body, under the cotton of his sleeveless t-shirt, letting her fingers trail slowly across his skin. He held his breath, telling himself not to hurry anything, but when she pressed closer, draping her arms over his shoulders, he felt the familiar tide of lust rush in.
“Bloody hell,” he said, touching his forehead against the top of her head. “This is trouble.”
She laughed. “You sound kinda fancy when you say bloody hell in that accent.”
“That’s one thing I’m definitely not,” he said, abruptly lifting her up and setting her on the counter. She sat there for a moment, then put her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his hips. He took a step back, holding her tightly against him as he stood between the counter and the kitchen table. And then her lips were on his, and her hair was falling around them both, and he staggered slightly, the swell of desire making him unsteady. He stepped forward quickly to balance himself—clearly, dropping her on the floor would be a mood-killer. But just when he was about to breathe in relief, she exclaimed in surprise and arched forward, as ice suddenly burst from the dispenser in the fridge behind her, rattling into the tray and scattering on the floor.
“Oh, my God,” she said, laughing. “That gave me a hell of a fright.”
“Shit, sorry,” he said. He stepped away from the fridge, but immediately stood on an ice cube, and his foot went out from under him. She gasped, clinging onto him, and adrenaline hit as he tried to keep his footing while holding her at the same time. After a moment of complete panic, he managed to regain his balance. Heart pounding, he turned and set her on the table.
She let go of him and released a long breath. “I thought we really were in trouble then.”
“Yeah.” His heart was still thundering in his chest. “Not the sort of trouble I was hoping for. Sorry.”
She laughed again. “That was pure slapstick.” Then she paused, and tipped her head. “What kind of trouble were you hoping for?”
The provocative tone in her voice was unmistakable. He suppressed a grin. “The grown-up kind of trouble.”
She pursed her lips, a teasing thoughtfulness coming over her face as she thrummed her fingers on his chest. “Like…being audited?”
“Not quite,” he said.
She grasped his shirt and pulled him closer. “Not paying the gas bill?”
“No.”
She wound her legs around him, her roaming hands setting his skin on fire everywhere they touched.
“Overdue library books?”
He shook his head. “Not even close.” The words came out raspy, and he caught her fleeting, knowing smile. Then she pouted.
“I’ve run out of ideas. You’ll have to give me a hint.”
“Okay.” He reached under the filmy cover-up she was wearing, and pulled on the strings securing one side of her bikini bottoms, letting them fall away undone. She didn’t move, so he repeated the trick on the other side. She sat perfectly still, watching, then looked him in the eye.
“Speeding ticket?”
He would have laughed at her fake cluelessness, but undoing her bikini strings had started to undo him, too. “You’re not getting any warmer,” he managed.
She wriggled deliberately on the table, her voice breathy as she replied, “Actually, I am.”
Looking down, he could see through the fine fabric that the front of her bikini had fallen down between the top of her thighs, where his hands were resting. All at once, electricity seemed to buzz in the tips of his fingers. Without saying a word, she squirmed again, so that his hands shifted higher on her legs, toward the ‘v’ that hid the sweetest place he’d ever been. He could take a hint too. He slipped one hand between her legs, and she parted them for him. In slow, unhurried movements, he gently, deliberately dipped one finger deeper…then another…letting her wetness slick his fingers, feeling his own body respond as he watched her reaction. It was insanely hot seeing her expression shift from teasing to abandoned, her eyelids heavy and her lips parted, her breath gradually coming faster and shallower. He took his time, playing in deliberate, teasing strokes, and when he finally reached the small, concentrated point of her desire she sucked in her breath, a sudden tension in her body. But it was the good sort of tension. The low, hungry sound she made proved that. He smiled, ready to show her exactly what his kind of trouble was made of.
But before he could take her any further, she took a hold of the front of his board shorts, determinedly working them down just enough to let him free. With a groan of anticipation, she slid forward on the table until he was pressing right against her, on the very verge of sliding into her hot, wet sweetness.
Then he realized—he didn’t have any protection nearby. He held her steady, just out of the danger zone. Because with her hard up against him, irresistibly luscious and eager, it definitely was a danger zone.
“We have to stop,” he told her.
When he stepped back an inch or two, she moaned, her frustration echoing his own. For a moment he drank in the sight of her there on the table, her hair wild and her cheeks flushed, her legs apart…and there was only one thing to do.
He ran his hands up her legs again, pushing the cover-up out of the way. She glanced at the window, obviously suddenly remembering where they were, so he reached over and adjusted the wooden blinds. “No one can see now.”
Finally, he could do what he’d hungered for when she stood before him in the living room that night. He dropped his head between her legs, and she leaned back on the table, breathing out a low sigh of surrender as her sunglasses fell from her hair. Almost in disbelief, he took his chance, immersing himself in her heady essence, losing himself in the woman who had been his dream and his downfall, his teenage crush and now his adult obsession.
Within what seemed like barely a minute, he felt her arch abruptly under his tongue, and she exploded into an orgasm. One ‘oh’ after another escaped her as her hips lifted off the table, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and he rode her wave, keeping up his pace, burning with his own acute need. Finally, sated, she took hold of his head and pushed it away. Then she struggled upright and grabbed onto him, pulling him close and burying her face in his neck. He held her tightly in return, his breath coming unevenly. Her chest rose and fell in time with his own as she clutched the back of his shirt.
“Oh my God,” she said into his ear. There was a wobble in her voice.
He stood up straighter and adjusted his board shorts. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just…my God.” She blew out a breath against his neck, and he could feel her shake her head.
“Come on.” He lifted her from the table and lowered her to the floor, then took her hand. “We can do better than this.”
He went to kiss her, but she laughed, her cheeks flushed, and ducked away. He swiped one hand over his lips, still damp from her bliss, and tugged gently on her hand with the other. He had no idea if she’d go with him, or turn and walk out, like she had that night in the living room. To stack the odds in his favor, he brazenly picked up her bikini bottoms and put them in his pocket. Then he turned to go, still amazed that any of it had happened.
And she followed.