Her Surprise Protector

by J. P. Comeau

  After giving the woman at the desk a glowing review of our experience at Four Senses, we braced ourselves and exited onto the street. Luckily, the harsh sunlight had faded into the softer hues of early evening.

  “That was amazing,” Elena said as we climbed the few steps to the cabin of my private jet. Then while waiting for the rush of takeoff, she kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you for the surprise dinner, Riker. I loved it!”

  She always did that. Elena always thanked me for taking her places, like I shouldn’t consider it a privilege just to spend time with a woman like her. I replied with “you’re welcome,” like always. But sometimes I wondered if Elena knew how much I needed this time together - how I needed her.

  All too soon, the jet landed, and all that was left was to take Elena home. With a heavy heart, I pulled up in front of her house. By now, the sun had crept to just above sea level, and I didn’t want the evening to end.

  Elena, bless her, read my mind. “Hey, I know it’s almost dark, but do you want to come down to the beach for a bit? I was thinking that it’s been long enough since we ate for an after-dinner swim.”

  “Sounds perfect. I actually have swimming trunks in the backseat, too.” I had been planning to go to the marina and take out the Persistence earlier if I had time, but that hope had vanished when I remembered the conference call. Not that it really mattered, though. A minor detail like having no swimming trunks wouldn’t have been enough to keep me from spending more time with Elena.

  “Let me grab towels and get changed. Come on in,” Elena told me. “Guest bathroom is down the hall.

  I let her go first and watched as she disappeared into her bedroom. Then, I followed behind her, stopping to admire and smile at the various crayon drawings taped on the walls. One of them was mine, and I brushed my fingers over that one before heading into the bathroom.

  Elena had invited me over to spend time with her and Bree last weekend. And I had accepted, thrilled that Elena wanted to share the evening with me along with the most precious person in her world. The day had gone wonderfully. Bree and I had taped our crayon drawings next to each other on the wall with the others in her collection. I absolutely couldn’t draw and had sketched a terrible seahorse, but Bree hadn’t minded the misshapenness of the creature, and Elena hadn’t either.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Elena was waiting for me by the back door, towels in hand. “Ready?”

  My eyes undertook an arduous journey from her scantily-clad ass to her eyes, making a not-so-subtle stop at her tempting valley of cleavage along the way. “Yep, I’m ready,” I affirmed, not bothering to look bashful about being caught staring. I had seen the swimsuits Elena normally wore, and they weren’t this revealing. It would be rude not to stare when she had gone to so much trouble for me.

  “Then, let’s go.” Her bright smile fended off the onslaught of dusk, lighting the way through the door and across the dunes that separated the backyard from the beach.

  I followed, for once totally blind to the beauty of the setting sun over the ocean. Elena didn’t normally move her hips this much when she walked, either. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought that she was trying to tease me.

  Not trying. Succeeding. That swimsuit left so little, yet so much to the imagination. And my imagination had a hold over that part of my body that always seemed to get way too excited around Elena.

  I had brought Elena home several times now, but something felt different about tonight. Or I thought it did. I couldn’t be sure, not yet, not after our dark dinner, because the feeling could be the lasting effects of not seeing Elena for a whole two hours, only hearing her voice…

  We played in the water like little kids, splashing each other and tripping over the knee-high surf in our haste to dodge. For the first time since I had learned of Elena’s ex, I was glad she didn’t have any immediate neighbors to hear the laughter and shouting that echoed over the deserted beach.

  Satisfied with the exercise, we worked together to lay out a blanket Elena had brought down to the beach. “So I brought this too,” she said, popping up a little collapsible lantern and tapping the side to bring it to life. “And this.” She held up a slightly ragged notebook. “It’s some poetry I’ve written. I figured that maybe if I share mine, you’ll share yours with me sometime.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” I told her wryly, lying on my side on the blanket and propping my head up with one palm. “But I’d love to hear some of yours.” How people wrote could say a lot about them, and I couldn’t wait to hear Elena’s style.

  “Okay.” Elena flipped through the book page by page, scanning them in the lantern-light. “This is a good one. Well,” she amended, “I don’t know if it’s good as in good poetry, but it’s one I don’t mind sharing.”

  “Elena. You’re already braver than me for being so open about your poems. Anything you’ve written will be amazing.”

  She began to read with a blush, and it took me only a couple lines to know that I was right, and Elena’s poems were incredible. Many of her works took something normal and mundane like a house or a car and delved deeper to find some emotion that lurked under the surface, tied to the object’s location, situation, owner or appearance. I could feel Elena’s wit and insight in her poetry, and I found that while I enjoyed them greatly, none of them surprised me because they rang true to her personality.

  Despite the interesting insight, this reading was giving me into the way Elena saw things, my foot couldn’t help but do a little restless bouncing. Don’t get me wrong, I loved poetry, and I still couldn’t believe my luck in finding a woman who did too, but…that woman was half-naked right now, sitting with her legs shamelessly crisscrossed, one edge of her swimsuit bottoms creeping in a very dangerous and revealing direction. A man could only take so much and still call himself a man.

  “-do you think?” Elena waited expectantly, peering at me over the top of her notebook.

  “That we should have brought wine down here?” I said promptly to hide the fact that my ears had shut off to let my eyes admire better.

  “No, we shouldn’t have. We had enough with dinner.” Elena started to close the notebook, but my hand shot lightning-fast between the pages.

  “I’m listening, I swear,” I said honestly. “I kind of spaced out listening to the sound of your voice and missed the words you were saying.” Good save, Riker, I congratulated myself when that elicited a little forgiving smile from Elena and a reopening of the notebook. I wanted to listen, I really did, but there was something I wanted more. I just didn’t know if Elena did yet.

  “Okay. Maybe one or two more?” Elena suggested. “Sorry, there are a lot. I’ve had this notebook for a long time, and I just add to it whenever I have an idea.”

  “Read as many as you want,” I urged. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Elena’s clear voice floated over the beach, and she focused on her notebook, unaware of my devious plan. It started with a hand on her shin, an innocent place that warranted the glance and smile as she continued to read. But then that hand began to move, following the sound of her voice toward her body, sliding across her thigh with no more strength than the gentle breeze.

  Now, she gave me a new look, quick and furtive. This look didn’t want to be caught and receive a look back.

  I did catch the look, but I had more important things to do than confront it. Things like caress the thigh under my hand and prop myself up on my elbow so I could place a pattern of feather-light kisses everywhere my hand touched.

  During one of those kisses, I smiled into her skin. Elena had caught onto the game now. She still read her poetry, but now she leaned into my touch, begging for more but refusing to give in. Her body dared me to continue, betting that she could finish her poems under the influence of my touch.

  Betting against me had never done anyone any favors. I redoubled my efforts, wrapping my palms around her still-damp bikini to hold her in place while I put everything I had into
being irresistibly teasing. Elena was obviously into it, so I risked that last check to just make sure this was what she wanted before I went all out – I slipped a hand between her legs.

  Honestly, I thought that would do it. I had been so sure that she would put down the notebook, and I would win the unspoken bet with this move – that, or receive a scolding.

  She did neither. She reacted with a sharp intake of breath and then went right back to reading.

  That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. I hadn’t intended to tease myself so badly, but that was what had happened, and now I wanted Elena more than I had ever known was possible.

  I made the executive decision that Elena no longer needed her bikini. Since removing the bottoms was impossible with her legs crossed, I simply uncrossed them by wrapping my fingers around her ankles and pulling her into me. I doubted the surprised squeak she let out was part of the poem she was still stubbornly trying to read.

  I was just finishing working off her bottoms and planning my next move toward the bathing suit top when Elena broke, nearly breaking me in the process. Pale legs caught the light of the lantern as she kicked off the garment, nearly catching me in the jaw in the process, and it was my turn to be surprised when Elena literally threw herself at me.

  I had just enough wherewithal to slap the switch on the lantern and plunge us into darkness before her lips found mine with the force of desire. Gone was the game and gone was anything else that had been keeping us apart. We had waited for this, spending so long getting to know one another and making sure the fit was right, letting the tension build higher and higher every day.

  That tension had finally come to a breaking point and taken something between us down with it. Elena’s arms locked around my body and her nails gripped my skin, little pointed warnings of what would happen to me if I even tried to break our deep, passionate kiss. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had lost a hand somewhere in red hair wet from the sea, and if I moved the one from between her legs, she would stop making those oh-so-intoxicating sounds.

  I had wanted to do something cute and teasing like use my teeth to take off her top, but no patience remained between us, and I only had to make a move toward the piece of clothing before Elena pushed my hand away and tugged it over her head. She didn’t try to push my hand away when I reached up a second later and found the little sensitive bump on her left breast, already brought to fullness by the water and my teasing.

  The grip that tightened in my hair when I broke the kiss scolded me, but loosened approvingly when I lowered the tongue and lips I had been using to kiss and put them to use where my hand had been. The blanket stretched underneath us as Elena took a fistful of it, breathing quick, heavy breaths as I took in the taste of skin tinged with salt.

  Elena felt like she looked. Her body shivered and moved under my hands, reacting to my touch the way she hung on my words when we talked, but I knew that any second she could do something to flip the tables on me and remind me that she would never, ever let me make all the decisions. I didn’t intimidate her. I didn’t control her, not even now when she wanted me so badly that her hips couldn’t stay still.

  Not that I could stay still either. Everything about her drove me crazy. I wanted to touch every part of her at once and make her feel as good as she made me feel every day I got to see her.

  Normally, I liked to take things slowly. Play around, explore, ramp up the anticipation, do one or two of the tricks I had learned to make a woman plead with me, take my time and learn what I was working with – after all, everyone was different, every woman liked different things.

  Elena and I had already taken things slow, and neither of us wanted to wait any longer. Elena’s hand followed mine down to the waistband of my swimming trunks, tracing my fingers as I deftly untied the string.

  Underneath, Elena found me very ready for what was to come. That didn’t stop her from using a hand curiously, moving up and down to feel what I had. This was far from my first time, but her touch had me wriggling nearly as badly as her.

  With her hand wasn’t how Elena really wanted to feel me. She was ready, I was ready, and if I didn’t listen to our combined need soon, I would lose any sense of reason I had and operate off pure instinct. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to disappear fully into the pleasure, because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to make sure Elena was enjoying this just as much as me.

  With Elena underneath me, her fingers gripping at my sides, I gave in to us both and slipped inside her. Warmth tightened around me, and Elena’s moan spurred me to skip a few gears and give in to a faster pace, one that lessened the aching need. The blanket rubbed against the sand with a rhythm, helping me keep time as the sounds we made together drowned out the waves. I bit my lip when Elena’s fingers dug into my shoulder blades then scraped down to my hips, leaving burning lines of sensation. Her hands followed my back and forth motion, urging it to be harder, faster. Holding back wasn’t an option for either of us.

  I could feel it coming, but I held off, determined to hold onto the archaic value of ladies first. I managed it, but only just. Elena’s long, high-pitched oh marked the sudden change in her body as she tensed…and that tension tightened her around me, pulling me over the edge with her.

  Our shared, sustained burst of energy finally spent, Elena and I lay on the blanket together, trying to reclaim lost breath. A wild night faded away, returning to a peaceful one, and the waves slowed from crashing breakers to gentle swells.

  “Do you-” I coughed, my throat dry for some reason.

  “We should get back in the water,” Elena agreed. “And then shower. And then sleep.”

  “Definitely.”

  Neither of us moved.

  “You, uh- you still want to swim, right?” Elena asked after a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  “You get up first?” Her limp hand twitched a single finger against my side.

  “Um…ladies first.”

  Chapter Ten

  Elena

  As gently as I could, I closed the door behind me, listening for any signs of wakefulness inside. Nothing. After a long day of play, Bree was fast asleep.

  Breathing a sigh, I walked softly back to the kitchen. It might have been Bree’s bedtime now, but mine would have to wait until I got a few things around the house done. Dishes crowded the sink, and toys littered the living room floor, the usual. I hadn’t had time for cleaning over the past few days. We had been working overtime at the office on a new case.

  Since our unforgettable evening on the beach a few weeks ago, my time with Riker had been limited. I didn’t know how he managed to run his company and still message me back when I could hardly manage to work as a legal aide and…oh. Being a single mother also subtracted heavily from my free time. I often had to keep an eye on Bree, not my phone.

  Thinking about Bree and Riker reminded me of the two of them together, and a fond little smile tugged at my lips. Nothing could possibly be more adorable than muscular, intense Riker holding Bree to his side, effortlessly carrying the little girl around the house and never seeming to tire of it. Bree never tired of it either. She loved when he picked her up and gave her a taller view of the world. It made my job easy and gave my own arms a much-needed break.

  I placed the last dish in the drying rack, avoiding starting the dishwasher. I certainly didn’t want to wake Bree. A crying toddler in the middle of the night was not what I needed before a busy day at work.

  Next was the living room. I walked around, stooping once, twice, three times to pick up toys, depositing them in the toy box. Straightening cracked my back, and I took a moment to stretch out my shoulders as well. Speaking of straightening, the pillows on the couch had somehow ended up all over the room. So, I fixed those too.

  I checked the front and back door locks then flipped off the light switch in the kitchen before heading to my room. I had expected pitch darkness and was prepared to find my way with the flashlight on my phone, but there was no need. Silvery moo
nlight poured in through the open curtains of the window next to the front door, illuminating the house.

  I stopped with a hand on the wall of the hallway, staring down that patch of moonlight. I should go pull the curtains closed…but I was so sleepy all of a sudden. “Fine,” I muttered to no one in particular, starting toward the window.

  A shadow blocked out the moon, flickering across the front windows and vanishing as fast as it had appeared. My feet stopped dead, both out of worry I would trip over something during the brief second of darkness and fear of whatever had made that shadow. For a few moments, I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the window and wait for the shadow to come back.

  Nothing happened after minutes of standing just at the edge of the moonlit squares on the floor, and finally, I gathered the courage to circumvent the traitorous light and close the curtains. While leaning my cheek against the wall beside the window frame, my heart was pounding as I peered into the moonlit night. Only my car and the waving grasses of the dunes presented themselves.

  Maybe it was nothing, I decided after a moment. A bat. Or clouds over the moon, or something. Each explanation I offered myself was encouraging. I managed to tear away from the window and traversed the darkened hallway to my bedroom. A brief pause to crack open Bree’s door told me she was still sleeping soundly and her curtains were tightly closed.

  Suddenly, I wanted to laugh at myself. Of course, that private security detail from Riker’s company was still monitoring my house, meaning that if the shadow had been anything important, the “man in the van” would have seen it and taken action. If security wasn’t worried and hadn’t come to check on things, I didn’t need to be worried either.

  Even though I knew friendly eyes were watching out for me, it took a while to fall asleep. In the morning, I awoke groggy and very aware that I had gotten less sleep than normal. But I dragged myself out of bed without hitting snooze, so I had plenty of time to get Bree up and ready.