Summer with a Star (Second Chances Book 1)

by Farmer, Merry

  She nearly gasped as reality hit her. What if Spence wasn’t restless because of the photographer? What if he was hot for her and she was just too dumb to see and put him out of his misery? Was that why he’d opted to hang around her instead of finding something movie star-ish to do on his own?

  They reached the cabinet and she opened the doors as prickles of possibility raced up and down her arms. She twisted to check on him. He smiled at her—friendly, but ripe with tension. What if?

  No, she couldn’t keep letting her thoughts skip down the path of insanity like that. They’d met just over a week ago. They didn’t really know each other. He was a star and she was Miss Pike, wrangler of eight-year-olds. He was built like an action hero, and she had the body of a thirty-year-old woman with a token gym membership whose card was gathering dust somewhere. There was only so much dreaming a girl could get away with before she turned into a little Monica.

  “Two hundred and fifty pieces, five hundred, or a thousand?” she asked as they perused the puzzles on the middle shelf. It was probably a good idea that the puzzle boxes weren’t in bending-over range after all.

  “Let’s go for broke and do the thousand piece,” Spence said. At least a little enthusiasm was back in his voice.

  “Lighthouse or spring meadow?” she asked, reaching for the two largest boxes.

  “Lighthouse seems more appropriate, don’t you think?”

  “Lighthouse it is.”

  They set up the puzzle on the formal dining room table. Rain continued to beat against the windows along with the roar of the waves. The world outside was gray and forbidding, but inside the house, Tasha’s dream house, life was about as cozy as could be. That in itself was unbelievable. No, surreal was a better word.

  “Do you look at the box when you do puzzles or do you try to do it without looking?” he asked, holding the puzzle box once the pieces had all been dumped on the table.

  “Hmm.” Doing it without looking. Images of Spence blindfolded and tied to her delicate Victorian headboard upstairs rushed to Tasha’s mind. Not exactly helpful when she was trying to decrease the amount of restless energy in the house instead of raise the tension through the roof. “We’d better keep the picture where we can see it.”

  Spence nodded and set the box up on the formal sideboard, then came back to the table to help her sort through the pieces with a tense frown.

  She decided to face his problem head-on. It was better than trying to deal with her errant thoughts. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

  He let a pause slip by before saying, “It’s a thousand pieces.”

  “Not the puzzle,” she said.

  The brief, twitching grin he sent her across the table was as good as an admission that he knew she was talking about the paparazzi, the script crisis, and life in general. He continued turning over puzzle pieces and spreading them across the tabletop. She alternated between focusing on the table and peeking up at him. At least his restlessness was gone. Some of it. He glanced up and met her eyes, and suddenly the room seemed too hot.

  “I assume you put the border together first,” he said. It might have been her imagination, but his voice was suddenly lower, smoother. Flirty. All wrong.

  “Isn’t that what most normal people do?” she replied, a little too shaky for her liking.

  His unexpected burst of laughter startled her, as if she had done something wrong.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You didn’t just call me normal, did you?” His eyes shone like one of her students when she gave them a sticker.

  She straightened and rested her weight on one hip. “Do you put the border together first?”

  He mimicked her stance and answered, “Yes, I do.”

  “Then you’re normal. Congratulations.”

  Like magic, his shoulders relaxed and his smile widened as they went back to work flipping and sorting the pieces. Without words, they both put all of the edge pieces into the middle. Not only that, they also naturally sorted all of the lighter pieces to one end of the table, the ocean pieces to another area, and the land pieces to a third area. Why that sent Tasha’s heart skipping through her chest like pebbles in a pond was anyone’s guess, but it had her worked up to borderline embarrassing heights before they had all of the pieces flipped.

  “I can’t remember the last time anyone called me normal,” he said after a few solid minutes of silent work.

  She wanted to make a joke, say something cool and flirty, but he was serious. “Not much call for normal in your line of work?”

  “No,” he answered, then huffed a laugh. “It sounds lame when I say that out loud, but it’s true.”

  “Well,” she began, but couldn’t think of anything to follow it with. She’d seen the way complete strangers acted around him in public. Heck, she’d seen how she and Jenny treated him when they first met.

  Remembered embarrassment struck her. She’d been a jerk then, but he’d reacted with calm and kindness. Like someone who was used to being singled out. Like she wasn’t the first person to jump to conclusions about how he should be treated without bothering to get to know him first. What did that make her?

  She reached for one of the corner pieces. Spence bumped her hand as he reached for the same one.

  “Whoops, sorry,” she said. Sorry for several things, too many things.

  She abandoned the piece and searched for one of the other corners. When she spotted one and reached for it, Spence knocked into her hand again. She glanced up at him, head still tilted down. He was trying to keep a straight face. Trying. She cleared her throat and moved her hand to another random piece. He followed, snatching that piece out of the way before she could grasp it.

  “What are you going?” she chuckled.

  “Putting together a puzzle,” he answered with false innocence.

  “Ha!”

  She waited until he tried to fit the piece in his hand to the corner piece he’d blocked her from touching, then darted to pick up the other corner piece that they’d abandoned. He jerked as if he would block her, but it was too late. She set the corner piece on the table in front of her, then sought out a border piece that might connect to it. Spence followed her hand as it hovered over the table. When she reached for a piece, he nudged her out of the way.

  She laughed outright. “Seriously, what are you doing?”

  “Seriously, putting together a puzzle,” he answered. “Like normal people do.”

  “Normal people don’t treat puzzles as a competitive sport,” she said, straightening and putting her fists on her hips.

  Spence shrugged and inched his way around the table, moving closer to her. “I’m sure that someone somewhere in the world engages in competitive puzzle building.”

  His movements were slow, but deliberate. He was coming for her, the same way he had when they were playing in the ocean. It was a ridiculous thought, all things considered, but there it was. A few more steps, and he was standing side-by-side with her, bending over the table to search through the puzzle pieces for matches. She could feel the heat of his body close to her. She must have been dreaming.

  “What do you think, sky or water?” he asked, holding a plain blue piece out to her.

  The motion begged her to take the piece from his hand. If she took it, their hands would brush. They would touch. He was offering that as much as the puzzle piece. A rush of nerves filled her from head to toe.

  She bit her lip as if trying to decide between sky and water. The decision was between flirting with a movie star or keeping her feet on the ground where they belonged.

  “Hmm.” She bought herself time. Sky or water? Risk looking like a fool or take a chance?

  “I think it’s water,” she said, taking the piece from him. Sure enough, their fingers brushed as he handed the piece over.

  “What about this one?” He searched for another piece, then leaned across her, his arm brushing hers as he stretched. “Sky or rocks?”

  It was clearly rocks.
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br />   “Let me see,” she said, taking the piece from him. She let her fingers linger good and long near his. “I think it must be rock.”

  “What about this?”

  He reached with the arm farthest from her all the way across the table in front of her. The result was that he turned to face her, his arm stretching around her. When he straightened, the solid wall of his chest knocked her just enough off-balance that she grabbed him around the waist to steady herself.

  He smiled, puzzle pieces forgotten, and closed his arm around her.

  “Don’t tell me this was all some ploy to get cozy with me,” Tasha said, far less steady than she wanted to be.

  “Normal people don’t resort to ploys to get a girl in their arms,” he answered.

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  He shook his head. “If it was a ploy, I would have done something more like this.” He tilted sideways and knocked a puzzle piece off the table. “Excuse me.”

  Tasha held her breath as he squatted to pick up the piece. As he stood, he ran his hands up along her legs—his face, eyes, and lips brushing within an inch of her body. A giddy thrill shot through her as he raked up over her hips, the closeness of his mouth to that part of her latent with promise. He continued up, his hands settling at her waist, puzzle piece discarded. As his lips reached the bottom of the vee in her t-shirt, he planted a light kiss on her breastbone, then another on her collarbone, another on her neck.

  By the time he reached her lips, Tasha was dizzy from holding her breath. Her body was on fire. His hands slipped around to her back, tugging her against his firm torso, doing nothing to quench the flames. Instead, she burst into a blaze as he kissed her. It wasn’t soft and gentle, like the kiss they’d shared on the porch a few nights ago. This one was powerful, passionate. His lips parted hers, his teeth raking her bottom lip. He explored her, tracing the line of her tongue and drawing her in. Tasha closed her eyes, thought impossible, and met him heat for heat. She closed her arms around him, aching for more.

  He leaned back enough to take a deep, ragged breath. “Now that was a ploy.”

  The only thing she could say in response was, “Wow.”

  The low laugh that curled deep in his chest like a purr sent spirals of lust through her. He leaned in for another kiss, this one hot and teasing. He nibbled on her lips, sliding his tongue along hers. It was enough to turn her to liquid, like the rain drumming against the windows, sparkling with possibility. He stroked a hand around her hip, slipping under the light cotton of her t-shirt, then brushing up across the bare skin of her side. The ache in her core was enough to drive her crazy as he closed his hand around her breast over her bra. She whimpered at how good it felt.

  “Is this okay?” he asked, his breath warm against her cheek. He pressed a kiss into her hot skin.

  That simple kiss to her cheek combined with the genuine concern in his voice made it difficult to stand up. “Mmm hmm,” she nodded, seeking out his lips with her own. It was better than all right, and if he let go of her right then, she wouldn’t be able to stand.

  “Think you’d like to continue this ploy upstairs?” His question was hoarse with desire, trembling with uncertainty.

  Tasha froze. Spencer Ellis wanted to go to bed with her. His lips were hot against her skin. His hand squeezed her breast, fingers flirting with the edge of her bra. His erection was hard against her belly. Never mind that she hadn’t had sex in months and only ever with Brad. She was not the kind of girl who got nasty with a man she’d only known for a week, who was so far above her in looks and job and money that even Jenny would laugh if she knew what she was thinking. But no, Jenny had told her to go for it. Her body was telling her to go for it. Heck, even the rain seemed to be telling her to go for it.

  Screw it. She was on vacation.

  “Yeah,” she nodded, grinding her hips against his.

  His reaction was just what she had hoped for. He sucked in a breath at the friction of her hips against his erection. He kissed her again, quick and deep, then scooped her into his arms. Scooped her into his arms and dashed toward the stairs, just like something in a movie.

  He took the stairs two at a time, turning down the hall to the large, blue room he’d claimed for himself. Tasha was already reaching for the hem of her t-shirt when he lay her down across the faded blue quilt covering his bed. She got as far as tugging the t-shirt over her head and getting her arms tangled in it before he spread himself over top of her. He kissed her hard, lips bruising hers in the best way possible as he teased a passionate moan from her. It didn’t help that with her arms trapped in her t-shirt above her head, she felt that much more erotic.

  He left her lips to kiss his way over her jaw, down her neck, and to the plain above her breasts. She worked to free her arms so that she could take off her bra and let him do what he wanted with her breasts, but he moved on before she could. He rained kissed across her stomach, around her navel, and along the giddy, tingling plain of her abdomen. He didn’t stop there. Fingers working fast, he unbuttoned her shorts, tugged the zipper down, then pushed them and her panties down over her legs, letting them drop to the floor.

  The sudden rush of cool air against her core and the shock of being naked in front of him mingled with the hard rush of lust that had already consumed her, filling her with a potent desperation. She trembled as he spread her legs, stroking his large, warm hands up along the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. And her damn hands were still tangled in the t-shirt that she suddenly didn’t have enough brain cells to figure out how to wriggle out of.

  She gasped and wriggled for entirely different reasons when his fingers reached the juncture of her thighs, testing and invading her.

  “Wet,” he whispered the single word, as if it contained everything in the world.

  She groaned in response as he circled two fingers around her clit, and tensed, core muscles squeezing at the sensation. Dead God, how could anything feel so good? Brad had never come close to doing what Spence had started out with. She wasn’t even sure she’d pleasured herself as good as—

  Thought stopped and strange, primal sounds escaped from her as Spence brought his mouth down where his fingers played. He sucked lightly, then rubbed his tongue against her clit. She wasn’t sure where her legs were, she couldn’t remember when he’d gone to his knees by the side of the bed so he could taste her, but he knew what he was doing. Powerful, delirious tension built in her core so fast it took her breath away. He continued to lick and suck at her clit, his rhythm maddening. All Tasha could think was how badly she wanted him, hot and hard and thick, pounding inside of her. She ached for him to fill her.

  He shifted his angle so that he could thrust a finger, then two fingers inside of her. She gasped and moaned at the sensation, shaking with the force of what was about to explode in her, but it still wasn’t enough.

  “I want to feel you come,” he growled between licks.

  She wasn’t in a position to deny him. No, she was in a position with her hands trapped above her head, her legs splayed wide, and Spencer Ellis going down on her like a pro. His thrusting fingers found exactly the right spot inside of her, and with a soul-deep groan, she came hard. The sparkling bliss of her orgasm radiated from where his fingers and mouth played all the way through her. Her muscles squeezed around his fingers.

  Spence growled in response riding out her tremors until they slowed. The force of her orgasm left her limp and sweating as he stood. She wasn’t sure when he’d lost his t-shirt, but there he stood between her limp, spread legs, bare chest a perfect display of hard muscles, tan skin, and a dusting of dark hair. He undid his shorts as fast as he’d unbuttoned hers and pushed them down over his slender hips.

  Her passion flared hot at the sight of him naked. It was almost unreal how sculpted and gorgeous he was. His cock stood up straight and hard and, yes, large. Larger than Brad’s, at least. She wriggled her arms out of her t-shirt and took off her bra, impatient to touch him. Although she could just loo
k at him, thick and beautiful, for another couple of hours. Especially when he grasped himself for a few strokes.

  “Damn,” she breathed, tossing her t-shirt and bra and aside. “Do you have any idea how hot it is to watch you do that?”

  He tilted his head to the side as if the answer was ‘yes,’ but didn’t come out and say it. Even hotter.

  She sat up shakily. “Do you want me to….” She nodded to his crotch. Giving head wasn’t her favorite thing in the world, but after what he’d just done for her, she was willing to give it a go. More than willing.

  He shook his head. “No time.”

  “No time?”

  Instead of jumping her like she expected, like she wanted, he made a detour to the dresser in the corner. Lucky for her, that gave her an ample view of his tight backside. It was a backside that a girl could really dig her fingers into as it did its work between her legs. Spence found his wallet and took out a condom.

  “Smart,” she said, thinking that at least it made one of them.

  He opened the condom and quickly rolled it on before coming back to the bed. Stalking back to the bed would be a better way to put it. And there she was with her legs still spread open like a ditz, like a—

  He climbed on top of her, nudging her to her back, bringing his hips into close contact with hers. He kissed her, long and lingering. In between kisses that left her dizzy again, he said, “I want you,” like he meant it. His hand sought out her breast, thumb teasing her nipple to a hard point.

  He was aggressive and masculine, but she felt just enough restraint from him not to be intimidated. His body was hard in all the right places, and he knew what to do with it. He lifted her hips and guided himself to her entrance. No frills, no games, just need. She expected him to slam into her, taking what he wanted, but instead he pushed in slowly, slow enough for her to feel every inch of him as he stretched and filled her.

  She cried out and grasped handfuls of the bedspread. He was so good inside of her that she strained against him. He rumbled with pleasure, deep in his chest, drew out, then surged into her again. Then again, faster, harder. Then again. Tasha was sweating and mewling with each thrust in no time. He picked up his pace, the tension in his body unbearably good. She abandoned her grip on the bedspread to close her arms around him, to feel his power more as he lost himself in thrusts. Lost himself in fucking her. There, she would say it. Because this was what sex was all about, hot, hard, and heady. God, she loved it.