Unsung Hero

by Barbara Ankrum

Being here with Nio reminded her what that had felt like. When he touched her, reached for her, all she wanted to do was go to him. Which was foolish, granted. Despite the fact they were half-naked together in the ocean, he was leaving at the end of this weekend. And all this? This rehashing of ancient history would be simply another memory on Monday.

  But as he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her legs around his waist, she kissed him, right there under the full August moon. His mouth slanted against hers, tasting briny with salt water, and cool. Slick with the ocean, they floated against one another there in the dark, remembering what it felt like to want another person against all common sense.

  Under the waves, he held her loosely in his arms. Every well-muscled inch of him brushed against her skin, made her feel safe and warm in a place that hadn’t felt safe for the longest time. It was a magical feeling, there in the dark.

  Finally, they left the water and walked together back to his father’s deck. “Mmm. Thank you,” she said, as they stood on the deck and looked out at the black water. He pulled her toward him—her back against his bare chest—unwilling to let her go. “I can’t believe I just did that,” she said. “But I confess—it felt good.”

  “The kiss?” he asked, smiling as he slid his mouth down her neck from behind.

  “The swim and the kiss. But really…we should…go now. It’s late and—” she tilted her head back to give him better access “—I need to get home.”

  “I’ll take you home, if you want,” he said, holding her against him as if the two of them were a tide that could not resist the pull of the moon. “Or we could stay here.” He pointed to the chaises perched on the new deck. “Watch the morning come.”

  She exhaled a nervous laugh and rolled her eyes. “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, if I stayed,” she said, “this…thing that you’re doing with your mouth right now? It could get…complicated. And that would be—”

  He turned her in his arms and kissed her until her toes curled. Until she forgot where she was and all of her objections. She opened her mouth to him and he took full advantage, slanting his kiss first one way then the other in a breathless crush of need. A sound—more like a mewl of hunger—escaped her as he picked her up, walked a handful of steps only to set her down on the chaise and stretch out half atop her without breaking his kiss.

  She inhaled the heady scent of him, ran her hands across his strong, muscled arms and sighed as he tightened them around her. They fit together still, like they always had, as if they’d been designed to do just that. And oh, he felt so good. So very, very good.

  And when his hand trailed down past her waist, toward the apex of her legs, an unbidden warning bell sounded in her head. Some small voice, way-y-y way back in her mind, warned her that this was a mistake, reminded her that she had sworn off men forever.

  But this was Nio, the boy who had loved her when she’d felt all wrong, laughed with her when she needed laughter and taught her how to gently plant a tree so as not to crush its roots. Nio, the one she’d dreamed about for so many years, right here in her arms. And finally, there was no money standing between them, no parents telling them no, no social stigmas forbidding them from doing what they were doing right now. She was a grown-ass woman and he was a grown-ass man. If she chose to spend the entire summer night beneath him there on that chaise, then who was to stop her? She had precautions in place. Around her womb and around her heart.

  Taking a deep breath, he broke the kiss and tipped his forehead against hers. She could feel him vibrate with need and barely leashed control.

  “I’m sorry. This wasn’t how I imagined this going,” he breathed.

  Nor had she. “I kissed you first.”

  “Thank God.”

  “How did you imagine this going?”

  “Slower.”

  “You want slower?”

  “Not really.” He cast a sideways look out at the ocean. “But you’re shivering. Come inside. I’ll make a fire.”

  “But this is your father’s house—”

  “When did we ever let that stop us before? Besides, this place is still mine until Sunday.”

  He was right about that. Nothing had stopped them when they were younger and still believed in such things as luck and the future.

  Inside, he flipped a switch in the stone fireplace and fire leapt to life there. Then he tugged her into the bathroom, handed her some soft towels from a nearby linen closet and turned on the shower for her. “Wash off the ocean. I’ll get your things.”

  She caught his hand before he could go. “No,” she said, impulsively. “Stay.”

  He lifted his dark eyes to meet hers and his gaze held a longing she could practically hold.

  “Stay,” she repeated, pulling him up against her.

  “You sure?” he murmured, so close their mouths nearly touched.

  “We should break the place in properly.” She ran her hands along the sides of his waist, and up his rib cage. “I don’t want to regret tonight ten more years from now. I want to put the past to rest, right here and now. All the questions, all the background noise.”

  “I want that, too.” He sent her, still half-dressed, into the steamy shower and held up a finger. “Hold that thought.”

  He was back almost before she could wonder about his disappearance, but the small foil packet in his hand answered that question. Such a Boy Scout. She was on the pill, but extra protection was not unwelcome. She smiled up at him. “I won’t ask why that was so handy.”

  “I’m not an impulsive sort,” he said, stepping in beside her, under the hot water. “And tonight I don’t want anything going wrong.”

  “Oh, this has already gone wrong,” she assured him, sliding the palm of her hand downward. “So, so wrong.” Memories flooded back, of doing this very thing with him so long ago. Touching him, being touched in return. It felt like…coming home.

  He sucked in a breath, then pressed her back against the tile wall, until he was flush against her. “What about this? Does this feel wrong?” He slid his hand up her chest to cover one breast and his thumb circled her nipple beneath the fabric of her bra.

  The pressure, the heat, his touch made her feel wanton. “Definitely,” she breathed. “But please…don’t stop.”

  Steam rose from their skin as the water sluiced over them. The chill from the ocean left her almost instantly with his arms around her. Then he was kissing her again, sliding the straps of her bra down her shoulders to access the curve of her breasts. His hands cupped her there, lifting the weight of her breast and brushing a thumb across her nipple until a shiver traced down her. His mouth replaced his thumb a moment later and he braced her up against the marble wall tile, where she spread her arms wide for balance. Her knees quaked.

  She wanted to taste him, touch him the way he was touching her, but his thumb hooked the edge of her black lacy panties and slid them down her hips. She wriggled out of them as he moved in and slid his knee between her legs, putting an exquisite pressure on that intimate spot, all the while sucking her aching nipple into his mouth and rolling over the hard bud with his tongue until she wanted to cry out. The sound she made was more like a moan.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured, shifting his focus to her mouth again as his fingers trailed down her belly. “I want to taste you everywhere.”

  Yes, please, she thought, tugging his boxer briefs down in turn, hungry to feel him naked and hard against her. How did this happen? she wondered breathlessly.

  While his mouth trailed over her, exploring every inch, she remembered his skillful hands as he touched her, making her gasp with pleasure. And she touched him in return, curving her fingers around the hard length of him. He was beautiful, as he’d always been, with that thick, dark hair and smooth, tanned skin, and she looked pale next to him. They were yin and yang. Fire and water.

  How long since she’d felt her heart beat this way? Felt her breath catch with a single lo
ok? She nuzzled Nio’s ear, rewarded when he shuddered with pleasure.

  His eyes locked with hers and he did things to her with his free hand, lower down, that made every nerve ending jump to attention under the hot water.

  She leaned forward and pressed her mouth against his, sliding her fingers into his hair as he trailed a line of nips down past her breasts until he was at her belly, his fingers inside her, stroking her until she thought she’d fall. She wanted him closer and closer still, until he replaced his fingers with his mouth, licking and sucking her there until she found herself on the brink of coming.

  A frantic, unbearable heat curled through her.

  And as if he’d deciphered the urgent sounds coming from her, he straightened and lifted her in his strong arms, lowering her onto his hard length with exquisite agony. Just the tip of him at first—in and out—so slowly—then more, pushing her toward the knife’s edge they balanced on. But even as her hips jerked in response, he plunged to the very core of her. With a cry, she wrapped herself around him as he began to move inside her, slowly at first, then faster, the ancient rhythm a friction that was nearly unbearable as he tucked his face against her shoulder and drove harder into her. Her breasts bounced against the hard muscles of his chest, the hardened nubs brushing against the dark hair on his chest under the torrent of hot, hot water.

  “Oh, Nio—oh, yes, please!”

  His tongue found her neck then, a spot just below her ear that triggered an avalanche of response and tipped her over some precipice, tumbling into a crashing orgasm she couldn’t begin to contain.

  She heard herself cry out again even as he came with a strangled shout of his own, pressing her hard against the wall so neither of them fell.

  Breathless, he held her that way for a long time, unable or unwilling to let her go. When, at last, he withdrew and lowered her to the shower floor, she smiled up at him, tilting her head back against the wall. “Oh, Nio…”

  He smiled back at her, ducking his head under the water and bracing his arms against the walls. “Let’s stay here tonight. Don’t go home. We can sleep under the stars or by the fire. Whatever you want.”

  Call her crazy—that’s how this felt—but she murmured, “Okay.” She wanted nothing more than to be with him. Hold him as he had held her. She was not fooling herself. It wouldn’t last. But at least she’d have tonight. This memory, instead of the old one. And that, she could live with. “I’d like that, too. Just for tonight.”

  Chapter Six

  Becca slipped away before Nio woke as dawn lit the ocean outside. She considered waiting until he was awake, but she was afraid of what he’d say in the morning light.

  Sleeping with him had been impulsive, and a possible miscalculation, but she didn’t regret it. Not for a moment. Even knowing he’d be gone in a day, maybe two, back to his own life. It had been amazing. Mind-blowingly wonderful.

  They’d stayed up late, talking about nothing, really. Remembering the times they’d had together as kids, sneaking out late to do what they had just done here as adults. There was a comfort in sharing memories with someone who knew your old secrets. But it was more than that. Nio still cared about her, that much was clear. Exactly how much?

  That was trickier.

  And a moot point, she supposed. Her life was here, near her mother, and his was up in Northern California with a whole other reality than her own. It had been a decade, after all. Both of them had pasts now. And they’d carefully navigated around them last night as they’d enjoyed their time together, making love one more time in front of his father’s fire before falling asleep early this morning.

  She’d kissed him, wrote her cell number on a slip of paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket before leaving, hoping he’d call. No harm, no foul. One night. Maybe a friendship after all. If not, so be it.

  She Ubered to her mother’s apartment, stopping first for the coffee and scones she always brought her on Saturday mornings.

  Elaine answered the door, looking perfectly put together as she had every morning of her life, in spite of everything. “Hi, darling. I was just cutting up some fruit for us.”

  “Hi, Mom.” She kissed her mother’s cheek and Milo, wagging his whole body, greeted her with a wet kiss. She bent down and roughed up his sleek black and gray fur. “Was Milo good for you?” she asked. “Thanks for watching him.”

  “He missed you. But we got along just fine.” Elaine eyed her finger-dried hair and slightly wrinkled dress from the night before. “Late night? Is Steven with you?” she asked, sipping from a glass of chilled water.

  “No,” Becca said. “We broke up.”

  Her mother nearly did a spit take. “You what?”

  “Two nights ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was busy hating him.” Becca moved into the apartment and set the coffee and scones on the kitchen counter. “I wasn’t with him last night. Well, I was. Then I wasn’t.”

  “You’re being obtuse, dear.”

  “I know. I was with Nio.” She eyed her mother carefully for a reaction. She wasn’t disappointed.

  “Nio?” Elaine paled and set a bony hand on the counter. “Nio…Reyes?”

  “The same. Remember him?”

  Her mother busied herself with the fruit she’d been slicing. “Of-of course. Yes, I do. Juan Luis’s son. How…how is he?”

  “He’s fine. And you know very well he was more than Juan Luis’s son to me.”

  Elaine swallowed hard, then looked up at her with a practiced smile. “I know, dear.”

  “He’s come for Graham’s wedding.” Quickly, she explained her arrangement with Steven and the lie they were perpetuating for Lilah and Graham’s sake.

  “And you were with Nio after the dinner?”

  “All night, in fact. I slept with him.”

  Elaine whirled on her, shocked. “Rebecca!”

  “Does that horrify you still, Mom? I’m a grown woman. It can’t matter to you now.” It was awful of her to enjoy the dismay on her mother’s face, but she did. For all the machinations her father had employed to sidetrack her from seeing Nio all those years ago, her mother had never once intervened on her behalf, knowing how Becca felt. Never took her side. And for that, she’d always held a bit of resentment.

  Flustered, Elaine set two dishes on the perfectly set table. “I—I don’t… Do you really think that was wise, dear?”

  Becca poured the coffee into the bone china teacups her mother had set out. “I don’t know. Was it wise to let him disappear from my life all those years ago without a fight? I think not.”

  With a poise born of years of practice, Elaine lowered herself into the seat opposite Becca. Her complexion looked dusky now and she stared at the teacup in her hand. Her mother had always been difficult to read, if annoyingly predictable.

  “What else was there to do, after all?” Elaine asked rhetorically, taking a delicate bite of scone.

  A million things she hadn’t done, of course. She’d been her father’s daughter to the bone.

  “Good heavens, Rebecca. That was years ago. Did he…” Elaine began, pouring cream from a little cow-shaped pitcher into her coffee. “D-did he say why he left?”

  “No. Not exactly, no. We didn’t talk about that. Intentionally, I think, on both our parts. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Yes,” Elaine said quickly. “A lot of water under that bridge, I suppose. You don’t still love him?”

  That might have been the very first time Elaine had acknowledged that Becca and Nio had ever been more than a teenaged crush. “I did love him once. But this…is all very sudden. Steven cheated on me, you know.”

  Elaine looked stricken and reached over to put her hand over hers. “Oh, no—”

  “Oh, yes. So right now, I’m a little raw. I don’t know who I can trust or if I should ever trust any man again.”

  “And yet, you slept with him.”

  “That was just physical. Completely separate from love.�
� A half-truth, but then again, maybe not.

  “Was it?” She sighed. “Things were so different in my day.”

  “Men were apparently still untrustworthy in your day, Mom.” Becca took a bite of scone and brushed the crumbs from her hand.

  Her mother’s lips tightened. “Are you trying to pick a fight with me, Rebecca?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “How’s your scone?”

  “Delicious.”

  Silence descended between them. Elaine stared out the window and Becca counted the number of bites it took to finish the scone.

  Finally, her mother said, “Jeanne came over for dinner last night and we watched Jeopardy!. The winner had a streak going. The last question nearly stumped all of them…”

  Elaine chatted on about the Jeopardy! contestants, deliberately steering the conversation away from the uncomfortable topic of Becca’s love life. She tuned her mother out. Her love life was a discussion that Elaine always avoided, even about Steven, and Becca had always assumed such things were just not discussed in her mother’s circles. Now, as her mother landed her gaze everywhere but on Becca, she wondered if, in fact, she only avoided those topics with her.

  *

  At his father’s house, Nio woke to find her gone. The sun was just up and the crew would be back at the house before long. He pulled on his jeans and the sudden emptiness of the house pressed in on him. It had felt almost like their house, last night. As if the distant possibility of them was suddenly…possible. Now, he wasn’t sure what to think. Did she regret what they’d done? Did she hate him for reminding her of how he’d once walked away? Should he have told her the truth?

  “I really can’t bear to hear another bad thing about him. Ever. I just want to remember him as my dad. The man who loved me. You know?”

  He knew. He knew very well why she’d built that wall around her for protection. He had the power to make it worse. But if he did, wouldn’t he simply undo everything that had happened between them last night? He’d come close to telling her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not yet anyway. Would she even believe him if he did?