He breathed carefully, since every deep inhale hurt his ribs. But the pain wasn’t what shot fire through him. It was the memory of Frankie under him, the hunger in her kiss, the smell and taste and rawness of their connection, which was so real.
She might think he was a fake, but this attraction was genuine. He glanced down at his growing erection. Didn’t that prove it?
He leaned against the plastic wall, slightly out of the stream of water, automatically fisting himself and thinking about the way her breast had felt in his hand. The first stroke just made his stomach drop, so he let go, blinking water out of his eyes to find some soap.
Not seeing any, he took a steadying breath and put his face under the water, unable to resist the burning need to touch himself again. To imagine her slender, feminine hands stroking him just...like...that.
“You need soap?”
His eyes popped open at the sound of Frankie’s voice on the other side of a flimsy white shower curtain.
“Yeah.” His response came out gruff as he flattened his hands on the wall to keep them off his dick as the water picked up temperature. “Bet you have plenty of that, huh?”
“And none of it has a name yet.” Her hand reached in, holding one of her brown and yellow bars of goat’s milk soap. “I call this one...Morning Shower.”
Reaching for the soap, he captured her hand, too, giving it a slight tug. “Man, do you lack imagination.”
She laughed and slipped out of his grip. “That’s why I need you.”
He took the soap and sniffed. “Spicy,” he said.
“Yes! There’s sage in there.” She was so close, just one thin piece of plastic away. All he had to do was slide that curtain and...
Instead, he rolled the soap in his hand, foaming up. “Nice lather.”
“That’s not a very good name.”
Laughing, he gently soaped his ribs. “Shit, that hurts.”
“I’m afraid ‘shit that hurts’ won’t sell, either.” The curtain moved slightly, and he waited, not breathing, but she didn’t draw it back. “I was thinking about something a little more, you know...sexy. Got anything?”
Right here, sweetheart. He stroked himself, once, quickly, closing his eyes as the suds intensified the pleasure against his insanely sensitive skin. “I might be able to come...up with something.”
He heard her throat catch with a laugh. “You know what I mean. Does that scent make you think of anything...evocative?”
Like her mouth when she opened it to his or the sweet curve of her ass when she bent over to pick up a milk bucket? That was evocative as hell.
With his palms covered with lather, he tried to wash his body, but his hands just went right back to the place where he wanted her fingers to be. Sliding up and down, fondling his tingling balls, rounding the tip with her—
“Got anything?” she asked.
Other than a raging boner? “Um...let’s see. I’m thinking about...” Sliding. Into. “You.”
She chuckled. “Very sweet, but ‘you’ isn’t going to sell soap. How about some words like...”
Like that. He squeezed himself, unable to fight the battle now.
He could have sworn she laughed. “Like...I don’t know. I’m not very good at this. Luscious? Can you work with that?”
Her lips were luscious. If they would just close over him right...there... “Yeah, that’s good, but...”
“I know, I know,” she agreed. “Not good enough.”
Not nearly, but he couldn’t stop now. He pumped a little harder, fighting to hold back any sounds of his self-pleasuring, silently rocking his hips and wishing like hell he was rocking into her.
“Succulent?” she suggested.
Yes. Please suck it.
“Sweet?”
That would be so damn sweet.
“Oooh, how about tantalizing?” She dragged out the word, low and sexy and just enough to put him right over the edge. “Sultry? Sensual? Steamy and...Elliott? Elliott, don’t you have any words for that fragrance?”
Yeah. Not anything that would go on a soap label. “Nothing terribly...soapy.”
“Try harder.”
“If you insist.” Giving in completely, he leaned against the wall, biting his lip to keep from grunting, pumping furiously now. “It just isn’t”—good enough—“real.”
She laughed again. “Is anything that has your hands all over it?”
He looked up at the curtain, certain she was watching, but it held firm to the wall. Fire danced up his back and down his thighs, his whole body hot and hard and...finished. Biting his lip until he could taste blood, he shot an achy, unsatisfying, completely inauthentic load against the wall, momentarily satisfied, but hollow as hell.
Easy, yeah, but not good enough.
“Elliott? Are you okay?”
No, he wasn’t okay. He was a shell of a man who wanted more than fake sex. Damn it! He wanted her, and he wanted it to be real. No matter how difficult it would be for a man who liked things easy.
“I said...” He cleared his throat and turned his hands under the stream, rinsing them. Finally, he inched the curtain back, but she wasn’t there. “Frankie?”
“Right here.”
He jerked around to see her at the other side of the shower, looking in. She raked him with a gaze that made him want to scream out in a wholly different kind of pain.
She gave him a hungry look, her gaze lingering on his partial erection. “Maybe we should call that one Party of One.”
He snapped the curtain closed and swore under his breath. “That name sucks.” And so did a self-inflicted handjob when he wanted the real thing.
He heard her laughing as she left the bathroom.
Chapter Nine
“Becker, is that woman biting you?” Nate slipped his sunglasses down his nose, just to get a better look at Elliott, but not far enough that anyone at the outdoor pavilion restaurant would recognize him.
Elliott brushed the mark on his arm, faded in the few days since Dominic had inflicted it. “Had a run-in with a buck.”
On the other side of the table, Zeke leaned in. “A buck? Like a bronco?”
“A buck is what you call a male goat, Einstein.”
Zeke and Nate shared a look, cracking up.
Elliott looked up at the deep blue sky and blew out an exasperated breath. He knew this lunch wouldn’t be easy. They weren’t going to like what he had to say, they weren’t going to let him off the hook, and he hadn’t really wanted to come to lunch at all. The days on the farm had slipped into a nice routine, next to Frankie from dawn to dusk, sneaking a few kisses whenever he could, laughing a lot, getting to know her. And, hell, he’d finally gotten promoted to the sofa at night.
Surely a move into the bedroom couldn’t be far away. It was inevitable, except...he couldn’t do it until he got out from under the only dark cloud in his otherwise blissful week. And that’s what he’d come to tell these guys, whether they liked it or not.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded, taking a sip of a spicy Bloody Mary.
“It’s just...” Zeke tried to keep a straight face but failed.
“It’s you,” Nate supplied. “Knowing about goats. If you don’t think that’s fucking hilarious, then you’re dead inside.”
But he wasn’t dead inside. And that was the problem. For the first time in recent memory—and that went back years—Elliott felt completely alive. He wanted a woman in a way he’d never imagined possible. And he couldn’t have her until his ill-conceived plan to screw her out of her land got killed.
“Goats happen to be very cool,” he said. “And there’s good money in goat’s milk and the products. They’re among the fastest-growing domestic animals in the world.”
Zeke had to bite his lip, nodding, mirth dampening his eyes. “I’m sorry, Becker, but...goats?”
Ire and defensiveness zipped up his spine as he thought of all Frankie had been teaching him about goats this week. “They aren’t just cute little weird ani
mals, you know. People like to visit them. Kids love to pet them, and women buy the goat’s milk products. And goat’s milk—”
Zeke held up two hands in surrender. “Sorry, you’re right.” He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face, though. “Really, that’s good. You’re right.”
“Damn right I’m right,” he said, reaching for his drink but choosing cold water instead. His throat was parched with the pressing need to say what he had to say, hear them piss and moan about the change in plans, and get back to Frankie.
Nate seemed less amused by the goats, though it was hard to tell with his shades firmly in place in his never-ending effort to hide in a crowd. He rarely appeared in public without sunglasses, knowing every iPhone in the joint would be taking pictures and videos, and the line for autographs would form at the right. Maybe not in a classy place like Junonia, the outdoor restaurant near the pool at Casa Blanca, but for the most part, fame and the Ivory family fortune haunted Nate.
“You know what I think?” Nate said, leaning down just enough so his hazel eyes peered over the rims of his Ray-Bans. “I think something doesn’t smell right, and it’s not just the goats.”
Nate might have been bad to the bone, spoiled rotten, and competitive to the point of death, but he was also surprisingly intuitive.
“What makes you say that?” Elliott asked, although he knew the answer, and he was grateful for the door his friend had opened for him.
“I think you’re getting a little too cozy with the goat girl, and you’re dreading the moment she finds out you screwed her in more ways than one.”
“Just one,” Elliott admitted. “I’ve only screwed her on paper.” So far.
Nate and Zeke shared a look that said they didn’t buy it. Well, too bad. It was the truth. He hadn’t slept with her, but...he wasn’t going to be able to hold off much longer. She’d made enough overtures and responded to enough kisses to know the feeling was more than mutual. The only thing stopping them now was the look on her face when she found out he’d slipped Ol’ Comb-Over a deal on the side and stolen her property.
A white hot splash of self-loathing rolled through his gut.
But these weren’t men who responded well to letting emotions get in the way of profit. Especially Nate. There had to be another way, an easy solution. Elliott always found the easy way...no matter how hard it was to spot.
He blew out a slow breath and turned to look at the beach and horizon on his right. “When you did the first site reviews, Zeke, did you talk to the owner of the land exactly to the east of the top end of her farm?”
Zeke shook his head. “It’s scrub, utterly useless land.”
“But who owns it?”
“I never bothered to look it up because the land didn’t pass the most fundamental feasibility study. You’re in the real estate business. You know useless land when you see it. You’re the expert.”
Someone had once told him a particular piece of land in Massachusetts was worthless because it was too hard to dig a foundation, and so far, that land had made him a very rich man. Feasibility studies could be proved wrong.
“I want to talk to the owner,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” Zeke said. “The cost to clear that kind of land and make it usable for our needs would be astronomical.”
Good. If a problem could be solved with money, it wasn’t a problem. “But if we used that plot, she could keep her farm.”
“No, she couldn’t.” Nate was pissed enough to take his glasses off to make the point. “I was just in Miami with Flynn and saw a preliminary site drawing of the whole stadium complex. There is no physical way to follow any configuration that Flynn has had drawn up without putting parking somewhere on her land. And that’s where it’s going unless you’re too whipped by a goat leash to put it there.”
“Look, couldn’t the parking somehow include her goat farm?” He’d been thinking about this, but hadn’t yet put it into words. “It could attract tourists.”
Nate hooted softly. “Yeah, ’cause people always want to stop at a goat farm when they go to a baseball game. Geez, Becker, I know we give you shit about being a moron, but in this case, it might be true.”
“But I—”
“He likes her,” Zeke said, all the amusement gone from his eyes now, replaced by understanding and rationality. Thank God. “And he’s trying to make her happy and give her what she wants.”
Nate must have agreed, because he fell back in his chair and threw his hands up in resignation. “Well, there you go. Another one bites the dust.”
“What dust?” Except Elliott knew exactly what dust he meant.
“Might as well start recruiting new team members for the Niners right now. Oh, hell, why don’t we just change the name of the team to the Bucks? In honor of our goat-lover and former third baseman.”
Elliott knew what Nate’s comment meant. No one played on their softball team at home who wasn’t rich and single. A walk down the aisle meant a walk off the team.
He shook his head. “I just met her,” he said, and even that level of denial felt wrong. “I mean, she’s special, but...”
“Trust me,” Zeke said. “When it happens, it happens fast.”
“Are you and Mandy, uh...” Elliott tapped his left ring finger, unable to even say the word.
Zeke finally smiled. “Shopping for the rock this afternoon, buddy.”
Nate let his forehead thud onto upturned palms. “What the hell is wrong with you two?”
“What’s wrong with finding someone to spend your life with?” Zeke demanded.
“What’s right with it?” Nate fired back, then he turned his disgust on Elliott. “She’s a goatherd, for God’s sake.”
“Hey, Mandy was a maid,” Zeke said, clearly coming over to Elliott’s side in the conversation. “Look, why don’t we look into other options before the deal that Becker set up goes through? Maybe we can do something with that other land.”
He could tell Nate wanted to explode as he shook his head and no words came out. “Wait, wait,” he sputtered. “Did you tell him about Will Palmer?”
“Who’s that?” Elliott asked.
“He’s a local,” Zeke answered. “He’s really involved with this resort, and his wife runs the spa. They’re friends of Mandy’s.”
“What about him?” Elliott asked.
“Will Palmer.” Nate dragged out the name like Elliott was an idiot for not recognizing it. “Former minor-league player, well connected, coaches, recruits, and absolutely loves the idea of baseball on Mimosa Key. He’s already got some major names lined up to come to the announcement when we go public. He’s going to bring in players from Miami and Tampa for an exhibition game right here at this resort, against the Niners, maybe in the next few weeks.”
The announcement? An exhibition game with pros? In the next few weeks?
He could practically feel Frankie slipping through his fingertips.
“Whoa, whoa.” He made a slow-down gesture with both hands. “Nate, we don’t have that land deal yet. We can’t announce anything.”
Nate thunked his elbows on the table and stared at Elliott. “You want me in on the announcement?”
“Of course.” They all knew that Nate added the glitz factor and that his family’s name meant huge coverage for them.
“Well, my time is limited.”
Elliott almost choked. His time? Time was all this trust-fund billionaire bad boy had. “Might have to reschedule a trip on your party barge to Greece this spring?” Elliott shot back.
Nate’s jaw tensed as he gritted his teeth. “You’re a riot, Elliott. We sent you down here to do a job. Do it or we can find someone else to take your place.”
For a long, crazy minute, he thought about the offer. Really thought about Frankie and her farm and the goats and—
Zeke reached in to referee the argument. “We don’t want to do this without Becker,” he said to Nate. Then he turned to Elliott. “But I also don’t want you to hurt someone you care ab
out.”
Elliott looked from one to the other. “She doesn’t want to sell,” he finally said. “The land has sentimental value to her.”
“Sentimental value?” Nate’s voice rose in shock. “Surely you offered enough money to crush any sentiment.”
“It’s family land, Nate. You understand family.”
“I understand that I’d like to shoot mine.” He curled his lip. “Did I say that?”
“Yeah.” Elliott tilted his head toward the next table and lowered his voice. “And you better shut up or that’ll be online in about three minutes.”
“Listen to me.” Nate pointed at Zeke, his voice low and soft. “You’re thinking with your heart. And you”—he shifted the finger to Elliott—“are thinking with your dick. I guess that leaves me to use a brain.”
“I am not,” Elliott denied. If he had been thinking with his dick, he’d have had her in bed already instead of waiting to clean up this mess that he made first.
“Your tongue is hanging out to the floor,” Zeke agreed.
Nate just shook his head, disgusted, as an older woman slowly approached their table, tentatively holding out a pen and paper. “Excuse me, but are you Nathaniel Ivory?”
He pushed his sunglasses back on, as if that could hide the truth.
“Could you...” She offered the pen to him.
Nate scratched his signature, but gruffly refused a picture. When she walked away, he threw back the rest of his champagne and pushed up. “Now it’ll be all over Twitter that I’m an asshole who won’t let my picture be taken. I’m out of here. If you need me, I’ll be on my forty-million-dollar yacht. Or, as some call it”—he gave a lazy grin, softening his famous Ivory family jawline—“the party barge.”
He walked away, sunglasses in place, body language set to bother me and you die.
“What’s the bug up his ass?” Elliott asked Zeke when they were alone.
Zeke shrugged. “He’s been acting strange. Lying even lower than usual. Maybe another Ivory family scandal on the horizon?”
“What day isn’t there an Ivory family scandal on the horizon?”
Seduction on the Sand (The Billionaires of Barefoot Bay #2) Page 9
