by Grey, R. S.
Sailing has clearly kept him in great shape over the years.
God bless sailboats, I think with a tiny smile.
Then he reaches down to grab his sunglasses off his chair and turns suddenly, catching me staring. It’s comical. There’s no way for me to avert my eyes quickly enough or convincingly enough, so I just laugh instead. It’s an awkward, please-don’t-hate-me-for-checking-you-out laugh, but what he says in return has my cheeks burning bright red.
“Now you can’t blame me for doing the same,” he says, walking over to take the sunscreen right out of my hand so he can squeeze some out onto his palm.
My mouth is a fly trap as he gives the bottle back to me and walks away toward the water so he can dip his toes in while he rubs sunscreen onto his face and shoulders.
“What the hell was that about?” Tori asks.
I have no answer for her.
22
Nicholas
Maren in a sky blue bikini might send me to an early grave. Lush curves, tan skin, long wet brown hair. If I manage to look away from her at all, it’s only for a moment and only because her body is still burned in my mind even when my attention is on something else.
Rhett’s been talking to me about a yacht race he wants us to enter in a few months, and who the fuck cares, man? Can you please stop talking? My brain can only handle so much at one time, and watching Maren walk out of the water is priority number one right now.
“Why don’t you just ask her out already?” Rhett prods, having successfully followed my gaze.
I jerk my attention back to him. “Because last I checked she and I weren’t on great terms. Why would she say yes?”
“Because you’re the second best guy I know—after myself, of course.”
I laugh and brush him off. “You’re an idiot.”
“Well, if you’re not going to do something about it, Barrett will.”
“He already has.”
“It was only one date, and it didn’t sound all that serious.”
“No, but they went out with Tori on Friday and Barrett asked Maren to be his date to the ballet gala next weekend. She said yes.”
“No shit? Sorry man.”
“It’s fine. Even if we were better friends, I don’t think it’s appropriate. I don’t want her thinking I’m trying to take advantage of her position at Rosethorn, like she has to say yes to a date with me or something.”
“What a damn saint. If I were you, none of that shit would matter.”
With his motivating words in mind, I push off my chair and head toward her.
She’s at the ocean’s edge, by herself, burying her toes in the sand.
I keep a healthy distance as I come to stand beside her. She stills for a moment, then continues stirring up the sand. “Having a good time?” I ask.
She peers up at me from beneath her wet lashes. “Yes, actually. Are you?”
“It’s a little awkward…after Friday night.”
She nods and nibbles on her bottom lip before tossing me a shy smile.
“Yeah. Obviously, I’m sorry for the way I acted. It wasn’t one of my finer moments.”
“There’s no reason to apologize. I’m not sorry you said what you did. In fact, I’m happy we cleared the air.”
She laughs and shakes her head.
“What?” I prod.
“Oh, nothing. It just…doesn’t really feel like the air is clear. Does it?”
Our gazes stay locked together, and I’m not sure what we’re talking about—Friday night or everything that came before it? Our feelings about our fight or our feelings, period?
“Are you into Barrett?” I ask suddenly, consequences and awkwardness be damned.
She smiles and then teasingly replies, “Are you jealous?”
“I’ve never been the type.”
She shrugs. “Then you have nothing to worry about.”
I don’t like her evasiveness. I step closer and catch hold of her green eyes, which are brilliantly bright in the sunlight. “I don’t see you two together.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize you were psychic. Tell me, who should I be with if not Barrett?”
“Someone more mature, for starters.”
“Hmm, mature…does that mean someone older?”
I continue on, ignoring her question. “Someone intelligent. Witty.”
“Wow.” She grins. “You don’t think much of Barrett, do you?”
“I just want the best for you.”
“And what about you? Are you on the table?”
I take a beat, thinking over her surprising words, and it’s just enough time for her to regret them. She shakes her head and turns to walk away. I reach out and catch her arm, keeping her near me.
“Hey, do you like me?” I ask, brows furrowed.
“Like you? How could I possibly like you when I’m so busy hating you?” she teases.
“Don’t do that.”
I hate the games. I want honesty.
“Maren! Nicky!” Tori shouts, cutting off our intimate moment. “You guys want to play volleyball?”
I keep Maren in my sights, trying desperately to drag us back to where we just were. Screw volleyball. Screw everyone else. Let’s keep talking.
But Maren blinks and turns away, agreeing to play before dashing off away from me.
* * *
Around five, everyone starts to pack it in. We’re all a little tanner than we were at the start of the day, and a little sandier too.
I watch Maren tug on a short white dress over her bikini, and I think I can finally release the breath I’ve been holding in all day.
“Maren, you ready to go?” Barrett asks, nodding toward the exit.
“She’s with me,” I say, like a goddamn brute.
Barrett laughs. “This again? What do you have against me driving her home?”
“Nothing, but I’m headed there already, so there’s no need for you to take her.”
“She can always come with me if she wants,” Tori adds, not helping the situation.
“Wow. I’ve never had so many people offer to drive me somewhere.” Maren laughs. “How’d I get so lucky? Barrett, Tori, thanks for the offer, but I agree with Nicholas. It’s just easiest.”
Tori winks like she doesn’t quite believe Maren’s reasoning. Barrett shrugs and walks over to give her a kiss on the cheek. I’m pretty sure he whispers something about how excited he is that he’ll be her date next weekend, but I can’t be certain. I’m too busy trying to convince myself not to pull them apart. What was I saying earlier about not being the jealous type? Turns out I was wrong.
I nod to Max and Rhett. Rhett gives me a sarcastic salute.
“Let’s go,” I say, grabbing Maren’s picnic basket for her and starting to head for the parking lot.
“So grumpy. What did I do to you?” she asks, running through the sand to catch up to me.
“I’m tired and I’ve still got to get back to the city tonight.”
“Well, if you’re that tired, I can just go home with someone else.”
“No.”
She laughs. “All right, then let me drive.”
“Do you have a license?”
“No. Never got around to it. In fact, I’ve only been behind the wheel of a car twice.”
“And you expect me to hand over my keys?”
“No.” She laughs. “I know you’d never let me. I just wanted to test the theory.”
I toss my keys so she has to think fast to catch them. “Let’s try it out.”
She stops dead in her tracks. “Are you crazy? I could never afford to fix your car if I wrecked it!”
“You won’t wreck it. I’ll be in the car too. Let’s go.”
She has to pick up her pace to keep up with me. “Are you going to lay a towel down or something on the front seat for me? I’m still wet and I don’t want to mess up the leather.”
“I’m not too precious about my car. Just get in.”
“I could take my bikini off.�
��
Jesus, the thought nearly kills me.
I don’t think I even utter a verbal response, just an animalistic grunt and a shake of my head.
Leave. Your. Clothes. On. Please.
In the parking lot, I pop my trunk and toss our stuff inside, then I round the car and open the driver’s side door so I can adjust the seat for her. She’s shorter than me, so she’ll need to be closer to the pedals.
“Try it out,” I say, pointing down to the seat.
She does as she’s told, gripping the steering wheel and adjusting her posture. “I think it’s good.”
“And the rearview mirror?”
She tilts it a smidge lower. “Perfect.”
“Then let’s go.”
I take my seat opposite her and buckle my seatbelt. When I glance over, she’s drumming her thumbs on the wheel and wearing a shit-eating grin.
“You look mighty confident for someone who’s only driven a car twice.”
“It’s nerves.”
“Uh-huh. Start ’er up. Let’s go.”
The thing about my car is that it’s an older, restored model. It’s not as responsive as new Porsches on the road today, both with steering and with braking, and Ocean Drive has a lot of curves. We’re only two minutes into our drive and already I’m rethinking my decision to let her drive.
“Brake. Brake, brake, brake!” I tell her as we go around a bend in the road, careening toward a stop sign at the bottom of a hill.
The brakes squeal as Maren slams her foot down harder. I’m prepping for impact just as the car comes to a sudden, jolting stop in the nick of time.
“Oh my god,” she says with a wild laugh. “I thought I was braking!”
“Not hard enough.”
“Clearly.”
I glance behind us and am glad to see there’s no one else on the road. We have a second to catch our breath.
“You can let go of my thigh now,” she says, drawing attention to the fact that my hand is gripping her leg.
I look down to find my fingers are digging into her, and I don’t move them right away. I register the feel of her smooth skin beneath my palm, the fact that her white dress has slid up to just below the edge of her bikini. She’s a dream, sitting there in my car, barely clothed, and I have to fight the urge to slide my hand up higher before I take it away completely.
“It’s not too late, y’know. You can drive the rest of the way if you want,” she teases.
“Just keep going. You’re doing fine.”
Fine is a relative term, however, and after another near-death experience, I tell her to pull over.
“Right up there. See that private driveway where there’s a clearing in those trees?”
She turns off the road slowly and puts the car in park, letting her forehead fall against the steering wheel. If she’s anything like me, her heart’s beating a mile a minute right now.
I glance up at the old gate in front of us, blocking the rest of the gravel path that leads to parts unknown. Overgrown ivy does its best to conceal the KEEP OUT sign dangling from the gate, which is redundant anyway; it’s clear no one’s tried to come here in a long time.
“That was…exhilarating,” she whispers.
I laugh and glance over at her.
Her head is tipped toward me, and she’s smiling like I’ve never seen her smile. A big wild grin spreads from ear to ear, dimpling her cheeks and creasing the skin near her eyes. My chest tightens as I take her in, green-eyed and glowing. She’s otherworldly. A nymph. A siren. I’m there on my seat one second, and the next I’m leaning over the gear shift, wrapping my hand around her neck, and drawing her toward me so I can kiss her.
It’s the least smooth I’ve ever been. There’s no proper lead-in, no preamble. It’s not my fault though. I didn’t initiate this. It just…happened.
She freezes up at first, no doubt in shock, but her lips are so warm and soft and she shivers when my hand snakes up into her hair. I goad her into kissing me gently. I do the exact thing I told Rhett I wouldn’t do earlier—I take advantage of a girl I want more than my next breath.
Eventually, she softens in my arms, and those gentle kisses turn hungrier. My hands are in her hair, around her neck, cradling her chin so I can tilt her just the way I want her.
She reaches down, and there’s the telltale sound of a seatbelt releasing then an awkward scramble of limbs as I tug her off her seat. There’s barely any space for us to move, but I get her on me, her knees on either side of my thighs.
We’re wedged on the seat together, and if there’s pain, I don’t feel it. I feel her on me, moving, grinding, sweeping her hips in time with our mouths. I grab ahold of her waist and it must be painful how tightly I grip her, how relentlessly I hold her down onto me…how much I want to keep her.
My mouth seeks hers again, harder this time, and she moans.
The sound sends blood south and I know she can feel me there rocking against her. Hard. Wanting.
We’re careful to keep reality at bay. We don’t break apart. We don’t talk. We consume each other until my car feels like a furnace, like she and I might combust.
I take it further and wait for her to stop me, to give some signal that I’ve crossed an invisible line. My hands find the hem of her flimsy dress and then they slide underneath, up against her smooth thighs, her taut stomach, quivering with nerves. I slide my hands up higher until I feel her bikini-clad breasts fill my hands.
Every curse word known to man flutters through my mind. Holy-fucking-hallelujah. I tease her and I grip her and then that smooth material is tugged up and out of my way so I can feel her bare skin in my hands, the real thing.
There are things in life that feel so good you know they must be bad.
Touching Maren feels like that, like I’m defiling an angel, kissing my way straight to hell.
We should stop, I think fleetingly, right before she moans again. My palms brush back and forth over her breasts, and she must be sensitive there because I feel her tiny flinches of pleasure and the way her legs tighten around mine instinctively. I rock up against her, trying to alleviate my aching need.
More, more, more, we seem to say with our mouths as we continue. Why should this moment ever end? Why shouldn’t I die just like this? With her sensual body on top of me, reminding me what it feels like to be alive?
Her mouth kisses a path along my chin, to the spot just below my right ear. I lean back and let her have better access to me, and it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever felt—her taking control, grinding on me and swirling her hips. I thrust up against her like a teenager, close to coming just from this.
“Maren.”
Her name rushes out of me on a whispered moan, and suddenly, she stops moving.
She’s perfectly frozen against me, her breath hitting my neck before she pulls her mouth away from my skin.
I don’t move. I wait to follow her lead.
Her chest shakes and she releases a heavy exhalation. My heart splinters and I reach down to grip her face so I can pull her back and ask why she’s crying, but when I see her smile and her eyes squeezed shut, I realize she’s laughing.
“Oh my god. Did we seriously just do that?!” she asks, adorably blinking one of her eyes open to inspect me. I have a feeling she was hoping I would have disappeared before she looked again.
I don’t answer. Words fail me at the moment.
Then she glances down at herself—at where I can’t help but continue to look too—and sees her heavy breasts straining against her nearly see-through dress, and she laughs even more.
Fucking hell.
“Oh my god!” she repeats as she reaches up to fix her bikini top so it covers her again. I have half a mind to argue with her, but I don’t think it would go over well.
“Are you upset?” I venture.
“Upset? No!” She looks baffled by the idea. “Are you?”
“Of course not.”
Jesus, I’m still hard. Upset isn’t even in my vocabular
y at the moment.
It’s like I’ve telegrammed my thoughts to her because her cheeks turn into two bright cherries as she fidgets on my lap.
“Oh. Oh, right. Here, let me get off of you.”
I catch her hand and open her palm so I can drop a kiss to the center of it. “Or you could stay?”
Her eyes flutter for a moment and then she shakes away the feeling.
“Here? Like this? I think I’ve already lost circulation in my left leg—it’s really shoved up against the door. You can’t be comfortable either.”
She must not know the meaning of comfort. Her body is a comfort to me, one I’m sad to lose when she reaches for the door handle and pops it open. She nearly tumbles out of the car, laughing as she catches her weight and stands to wipe her hands down over her dress.
If she’s trying to make it look like we didn’t just fool around in my car, it’s futile. The beach had already turned her hair into a curly mess, and my hands only made it worse. Or better, depending on who you ask. I’m biased.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she groans, burying her face in her hands.
“Like what?”
“Like we just…did that. C’mon, hop to it. You need to drive me home.”
I slide out of the seat and adjust myself in my swim trunks. I wince and she looks away, her blush deepening.
Her reaction has me curious. “Maren, have you had sex before?”
Her eyes widen into saucers as she whips back around to face me. “Of course! Just not with anyone like you.”
“Am I so different?”
“You’re a man and it’s obvious in every way.”
I give her a cocky smile. “I’ll take the compliment.”
“You should,” she says, walking toward me so she can prop her hands on my shoulders and push me along to my side of the car. “That was some very nice kissing.”
