by Jill Shalvis
where he kicked the stool out of his way and, holding her with one arm, swiped a hand across the surface, sending the tools, everything, to the floor.
“Sam,” Becca gasped on a laugh, a thrill racing through her entire body as he lifted her to the table. “It’ll hold, right?”
“Yeah.” He stepped back to look at her sprawled out on the table. “Oh, yeah,” he said, voice thick. “It’s perfect.” He yanked his shirt over his head, as always rendering her stupid with the sight of his bare torso. He made quick work of her shirt as well, and then her shorts and her senses with equal aplomb. Between his mouth and his hands, she was quivering from head to toe in two minutes flat.
She knew she was supposed to be keeping track of time, but honestly she couldn’t do anything except melt over what he was doing with his tongue between her legs. In fact, she might have fallen right off the table with all her writhing but Sam had a firm grip on her thighs, preventing her from moving anyplace but closer to his mouth. “Sam—” She stopped when he swirled his tongue over an exceptionally good spot. “Oh, my God. I love that.”
He did it again.
And then again.
And then he added a well-placed stroke with the pad of his callused thumb, and she just about screamed his name. “And that,” she gasped. “I love that, too.”
“How about this?” He slid a long finger into her, timed with another swirl of his tongue.
“Yes! God, Sam—I love that so much—”
“And this. . .?” Another finger, and another pass of his tongue, all of which melted her into a puddle of desperation. “Tell me, Becca,” he commanded.
“Yes,” she whispered, shuddering. “I love it when you do that—” She’d been trying to last, straining to hold on, but she couldn’t. She came, just as he’d intended.
When she could breathe again, she realized he’d set his head in her lap and was pressing a soft, hot, open-mouthed kiss low on her belly.
“In me,” she whispered. “I love it when you’re in me.”
Lifting his head, he looked right into her eyes as he pulled a condom from a pocket and protected them both before sliding into her. “This?” he asked, voice thick with his own need.
Half-delirious with desire, on the edge of yet another orgasm, her mouth disconnected from her brain. “Yes,” she gasped. “That. I love that. And you, Sam. God, I love you.”
Chapter 26
Becca heard the words escape her but she was too far gone. With one of Sam’s hands fisted in her hair, the other possessively on her ass holding her close, buried deep inside her as he was, she felt it when every inch of him froze.
Felt it, but couldn’t stop the freight train of the orgasm hitting her full blast. She rocked into him, clutched him hard, and let go.
From some deep recess of her mind she was aware that she took him with her, felt him shudder in her arms. She let herself get lulled by that into a puddle of sated bliss.
But then Sam didn’t lift his head and flash his sexy smile, as he usually did. He didn’t press his mouth to her temple, or drag it along her throat. Or cuddle her in close.
He didn’t do any of things he normally did postcoital. In fact, he slid out of her, pulled his jeans back up, and vanished down the hall, presumably into the bathroom since she heard the click of the door shutting.
Letting out a breath, Becca hopped down off the worktable. It took her a moment on shaky legs to straighten and fix herself, not to mention gather her wits. Scratch that, she couldn’t gather her wits, not even a little bit.
She opened her eyes and startled. Sam was there, right there in front of her, big and silent. Too silent. “I didn’t hear you come back,” she said inanely.
He held out her keys, which she’d clearly dropped.
Taking them, she stared up into his face, which was utterly cool and composed.
“You’ve got to get to the rec center,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer. Or move.
“Sam,” she said, heart in her throat. “I said I love you, and you . . . well, I don’t know what exactly, but one minute you were right here with me, and now you’re gone.”
He slowly shook his head. “You shouldn’t say things that you can’t possibly mean.”
She stared at him. “And how do you know I don’t mean it?”
“Look, I get it,” he said. “You were in the heat of the moment. But you need to be more careful.”
There were so many things wrong with those two sentences, she wasn’t sure where to start. “And you weren’t in the heat of the moment?”
“I was,” he said. “You know I was.”
She moved onto the more problematic statement. “And . . . careful?” She was as confused as hell, and hurt because he was maintaining his distance with a cool ease she couldn’t begin to match. “I just told you that I love you. Love isn’t careful, Sam.”
He looked at her for a long beat. “You called Lucky Harbor a pit stop. You don’t fall in love with a pit stop.”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “When did I say that? When I first came here? I wouldn’t have recognized love then if it’d hit me in the face. But you know as well as anyone that things change. Feelings change. And you said you weren’t a commitment-phobe.”
“I’m not.”
“Just as long as the L-word doesn’t come into play?”
Turning his back to her, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked out the window. “I’ll ruin this,” he said softly.
“This?”
He shrugged. “I’ve ruined a lot of relationships. Just about every one of my father’s while growing up. And then my own.”
She stared at his tense shoulders. “You can’t possibly believe that.” But clearly, he did. Shocked, she shook her head. “Sam, any woman your father was seeing while you were growing up, whatever happened was on them. You were just a kid; you don’t get to be blamed for adult relationships going bad.”
“My own then,” he said. “I’m not good at long-term relationships. They don’t work out.”
He was grasping at straws now, and she knew it. “It only takes one,” she said. “The right one.”
Unable, or unwilling, to believe her, he shook his head, and then walked out.
Sam woke up and stared at the ceiling of his bedroom. I’m not good at long-term relationships, he’d said, and here he was alone.
A self-fulfilled prophecy.
He rolled out of bed and went for a long, hard run with Ben. The problem with running, especially predawn, was that it allowed a lot of thoughts to tumble through his brain.
So he cranked his iPod higher and did his best to drown those thoughts out.
They leaked in anyway, and at the forefront was the memory of the sweet, open look on Becca’s face when she’d said it. I love you. He knew she’d expected to hear it back, but he hadn’t been able to say it.
Christ.
Why she’d had to say it at all was beyond him. Love wasn’t in the damn words. Love was in the showing. And if he’d gone there with Becca—which, he could admit, he maybe had—then she should know it without him saying it.
And actually, her using those words, especially when she had, was selfish. Thoughtless.
Because now it was over.
He and Ben normally didn’t say much on their runs but after running to the pier and back, Ben stopped and looked at him.
“What?” Sam asked.
“You tell me what. You’re talking to yourself.”
“The fuck I am.”
“You said you don’t need this shit.”
“I don’t,” Sam said.
Ben nodded, and looked a little bit amused. “What shit are we talking about exactly?”
“Nothing.”
“This have anything to do with the pretty new music teacher?”
When Sam narrowed his eyes, Ben shrugged. “Hey, man, you know Lucky Harbor. There’s no need to bolt your door at night, but y
ou’ve gotta keep your secrets under lock and key. And anyway, you being into the pretty music teacher isn’t much of a secret.”
Sam shook his head. “Don’t you have your own problems to worry about? Seems to me it wasn’t all that long ago that you made news when a certain blonde stood outside your house yelling all of your secrets for the world to hear.”
“Yeah.” Ben smiled. “I was pretty sure I didn’t need that shit, either. I was wrong. You’re wrong, too.” And with that asinine, ridiculous statement, he turned and walked away.
“I don’t,” Sam said to the morning. “I don’t need that shit.”
The morning didn’t answer.
He walked into his house to shower, and found his dad at his kitchen table on the laptop.
And Becca at his stovetop cooking breakfast.
Sam stopped short. Hell, his heart stopped short, despite the possible hostility in her gaze. He started to smile at her, so fucking happy to see her that it had to be all over his face, but she gave him a blank face and turned away from him.
Yeah. Definite hostility.
“I felt sick,” his dad said. “Weak. I called you, but you didn’t answer.”
Sam pulled his cell phone from his pocket. No missed calls.
“So anyway,” his dad said, not meeting his eyes. “My blood sugar was low or something.”
Sam gave him a long look.
“Real low,” Mark added.
“So you call Cole,” Sam said. “Or Tanner.”
“Uh . . . they didn’t answer, either.”
Becca brought a plate over to Mark, nudging Sam out of the way to do so. Actually, it was more like a shove. “Leave him alone,” she said to Sam. “He has low blood sugar.”
“He always has low blood sugar in the morning,” Sam said. “That’s why I’ve got a fridge full of food for him. All he had to do was take a bite of something, and in less than sixty seconds he’d have been fine.”
Becca turned to him, hands on hips, face dialed to Stubborn, Pissed-Off Female. “It’s no bother for me to help him.”
“Of course it’s a bother,” Sam said. “You had to get up even earlier than usual, which you hate. You had to drive here. He’s not your responsibility, Becca.”
“I didn’t mind,” she said.
“Well you should have.”
“Why?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “Just because you don’t feel anything doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Okay, there it was. The two-ton elephant in the room. Finding his own mad, he stared at her, hard. “You don’t want to go there with me right now.”
She lifted her nose to nosebleed heights. “You’re absolutely right.”
“I mean it, Becca.”
Mark started to rise with his plate. “You know what? I’ll just go eat in the other room—”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Becca said, and pointed her wooden spoon at him like she meant business. “Sit,” she commanded. “Eat.”
“Go in the other room, Dad,” Sam said.
Mark gave them a look like You’re both crazy, grabbed his plate, and walked out of the kitchen—but not before bending to drop a kiss on Becca’s cheek.
She sighed, softened, and gave him a quick hug.
And then Sam and Becca were alone. Perfect. Just where he didn’t want to be.
Becca looked at him for a moment, shook her head, muttered something to herself that sounded suspiciously like “jackass idiot,” and then walked out of the kitchen.
He followed after her just in time to catch the double doors as they closed.
In his face.
“Damn it.” He managed to catch her in the living room by the front door—barely. She was ticked off, and she was quick.
But he was quicker.
“Knock it off,” she said, pushing at him. “I’m only here to check on him, not to see you. You’re here now, you can take over, I’m out.”
“You’re out,” he repeated.
“Yep,” she said, popping the p. “Out. As in all the way out.”
He pinned her to the front door. “Not before we discuss this like adults.”
“Seriously?” she asked incredulously, fighting to free herself, nearly catching him in the jaw with her elbow until he leaned in and flattened her to the wood.
Panting, she blew her hair out of her face and glared up at him. “Is discuss like adults what you did yesterday when you flung my own words back in my face? Damn it,” she said, struggling. “Let me go!”
“I didn’t fling your words back in your face.”
“You basically said I didn’t mean them,” she said. “Same thing. I mean honest to God, Sam, you reacted to my I love you like I’d tried to kill you!”
“You don’t tell your summer fling in the town you just happened to ‘pit-stop’ in that you lo—” He fumbled over the word that she seemed to have no trouble with at all.
“My God, you can’t even say the word?” She shoved him again. “And you’re not a pit stop, not for me, and you damn well know it so stop saying it.”
“You’re the one who said it in the first place.”
“I say a lot of things, especially when I’m pissed off,” she snapped. “In fact, I have another thing to say to you—I quit.”
Well, hell. “Becca—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t leave you in the lurch, that’s not how I operate. But I’m giving you notice, Sam. I’ll spend the next two or three weeks finding my replacement and training them before I go, because it turns out you were right, we can’t work together, and do . . . whatever it was that we were doing.”
The past tense killed him. “You’re not quitting.”
“I need to,” she said. “It’s for me. And you’re going to let me go, because you didn’t want me to work for you in the first place.”
Christ. She was killing him.
The soft knock on the other side of the door galvanized them both.
“Sorry,” came Cole’s sheepish voice. “I kept waiting for a good time to interrupt, but it never came. I missed a call from your dad, wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
Becca wriggled out from between Sam and the door, but he caught her hand. “We’re done here,” she said, trying to pull free.
He held on and studied her face, taking in the misery and pain he’d caused her. “I don’t think we are,” he said quietly.
“Think again.” And without looking back, she tore loose and headed back to the kitchen. A minute later, he heard the back door slam as she made her escape.
Sam swore as he hauled open the front door.
Cole was arms-up on the door frame, and gave him a long look. “She said I love you and you flung it in her face?”
Sam started to shut the door on Cole’s nose but Cole was quicker than he looked, and stronger too, and shoved his way in.
Sam turned to ignore him and go after Becca, but Cole got in his way and in his face.
