by Lexy Timms
Finally, Mark drew back, pressing a kiss to the valley between her breasts and then moving down along her sternum to her belly, where he paused to tease her navel with little nips and the tip of his tongue.
“You’re a fucking tease,” she growled above him. “You know that?”
Mark didn’t answer, just kissed her again, so low on her stomach that his lips almost brushed the top of her mound.
“Come on,” she said, this time throaty and pleading. “Don’t tease me.”
He couldn’t quite stop himself from smiling against her skin, but this time he moved down, gently pressing her legs open so that he could take more space between them, and laying them over his shoulders. His hands slid under her backside, tipping her hips up so that he could lean in and drag his tongue slowly up the length of her. She shuddered under him, hips jerking as she whimpered.
Shifting his grip a little, Mark spread her open with his thumbs, and this time his tongue traced her inner folds, lingering over her clit while she gasped and undulated, her toes curling against his back. Another long, slow lick, and another, and she was falling slowly apart under his mouth. Mark traced circles around her clit with his tongue, drew it into his mouth. Above him, she was swearing, words mixed with his name and ‘please’ and ‘don’t stop.’
He loved how sensitive she was.
This time, when his tongue stroked over her clit, Mark slid two fingers inside her, stroking over the places he knew would make pleasure ignite under her skin. If the sounds she made were anything to go by, he was definitely succeeding.
Mark could feel, under his hands, that her muscles were drawing tighter, her whole body moving toward orgasm again. His fingers moved a little faster, his tongue worked a little harder, and he felt her quiver, so close to the edge. She sighed his name, and he stopped. Stopped licking, stopped the motion of his fingers. He felt the mattress jolt as her hand slammed against it, and hid a smile.
“Mark,” she growled.
He flicked the tip of his tongue over her clit, just once.
“Fuck!” She gasped. “Mark, so help me, if you do not touch me—”
She didn’t even have time to finish the sentence before he had leaned down and licked fast and hard at her clit, his fingers suddenly moving again. Erica came with a shocked little scream, her body gone taut and quivering before she sank back to the mattress, breathing hard.
Mark straightened up, licking the taste of her from his lips.
Her eyelids dropped heavily as she watched him.
“What you wanted?” he asked innocently.
Erica didn’t bother speaking, just flipped him off.
He laughed. “I think,” he said, curling a hand around his cock, hard again after making her come for him, “someone’s going to have to take care of this.”
She lifted her head just enough to look down the length of her body at him.
“You made it,” she said, dropping her head back to the mattress. “You take care of it.”
“After everything I’ve done for you,” Mark said, mock-sadly. “That’s so rude, Erica.”
It was her turn to laugh. “What do you want, Mark?”
He looked her over, from flushed cheeks to open thighs, his attention lingering on her nipples, still tight and reddened from his mouth. Damn, he loved knowing that she would have no choice but to think about him, that by the time night rolled around she would be desperate to fall into bed together.
Mark settled himself over her, reaching up and cupping her breasts in his hands, stroking his thumbs over her nipples to make her squirm. Her hands slipped under his, and then replaced them, pressing her breasts together so that he could slide his cock between them. Mark groaned, and rocked his hips, his own hands teasing at her nipples again. He looked down at her face, her parted lips and half-lidded eyes, and listened to the little moans and sighs of almost-too-much. When he closed his fingers just a little harder around her nipples, she bucked under him, panting, and that was it.
Pleasure shocked through him, and he spilled over her skin, her name on his tongue.
Chapter 5
ONE WEEK LATER
“What do you say we take the peanuts out today?” Alex suggested over breakfast, wiping a stray crumb from Lilli’s face. “We could go somewhere fun.”
Jamie took a sip of the coffee she hadn’t quite finished, and looked over the rim of the cup at her husband. She loved watching him with the twins, seeing how much he cared about his children. He really was the best man she could have found. Gorgeous, devoted, and an amazing father. What else could she possibly want?
A little less of a workaholic, part of her suggested, but Jamie pushed the thought away. Alex had been late last night but he’d more than made it up to her, and now he was home all day, with the promise to ignore work. They’d given Briana the weekend off.
It was exactly what Jamie wanted.
“Where are you thinking?” she asked, setting the coffee cup down and moving across the kitchen to wrap her arms around his shoulders.
He leaned back against her with a content sigh. “I don’t know. What’s a good place to take kids in New York?”
Jamie laughed. “You know, I haven’t really given that much thought. I think most of the city attractions will be a bit too grown up for them.”
“What about the beach?”
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
Alex tipped his head back to look at her. “We’re not going to let them run around on their own, baby. But they could play in the sand. Get a little sun. It’ll be fun. We’ll pack some leftovers and have a picnic.”
It did sound tempting. Jamie hadn’t been to the beach since, well, her wedding/honeymoon. This wouldn’t be quite the same thing, but some sun and surf might be just the ticket for a lazy Saturday.
She did a quick Google search for local beaches while Alex prepared lunch, and then they packed the kids and the cooler in the car and headed down to the beach. It had, Jamie decided as they got out of the car, been a good idea after all. The beach wasn’t as crowded as she expected it to be, and the breeze off the bay was cool in the late summer sun. Alex helped her get the twins out of the car and into sun hats, and then they carried them down to a spot on the shore where they could watch the waves roll in.
Benton and Lilli tried to dump as much sand as possible onto whoever was nearest. Despite the fact that she was sure she was going to be finding it in very uncomfortable places later, Jamie found herself laughing.
“I’m glad we decided to do this,” she said, looking up at Alex. “I’ve missed you.”
He reached across the blanket and took her hand. “I’ve missed you, too. I promise, Jamie, I’m going to try to be home more. I know that things have been rough lately, but we’ll get out ahead of Nicholas soon. And once all this is behind us we can just relax.”
She hoped it was true. Except something always seemed to come up. Their entire relationship, she sometimes felt, had been one ridiculous thing after another. Every time it settled down there was a new problem to overcome, and sometimes she wondered if their lives would have been easier without so much money involved.
“You know what we should do?” Alex said, breaking into thoughts that were turning a direction Jamie didn’t want them to go.
Jamie looked up. “What?”
He grinned at her, and Jamie felt a little stirring of want in her core. He was so hot. “We should build a sandcastle.”
It was such a surprise that Jamie laughed. She looked down at the twins. “What do you think?” she asked them. “Want to build a sandcastle with Daddy?”
Lilli smiled a big, gap-toothed smile, and Benton waved both hands in the air.
Jamie took that as an enthusiastic yes. “We should have brought buckets,” she said as they moved themselves and the twins down closer to the waterline, where the sand was damp and easy to shape. “Then we’d really be in business.”
“Next time,” Alex said, holding Benton’s tiny hands in his own
and guiding him to pat sand down over the little mound of it they’d formed.
It didn’t look much like a castle, but Jamie was pretty sure that the twins weren’t going to be complaining about that. She took Lilli’s hands in her own, following Alex’s example, and they added their efforts to the guys’, building another little hill of sand and patting it into vague tower shape.
The whole venture lasted about five minutes, which was as long as it took for Lilli to decide it was way more fun to knock towers down than to build them. Alex shook his head as he watched her squealing in delight, turning their lopsided castle into a sad little pile of sand. Benton, always happy to join his sister in wanton messiness, added his pudgy fists to the effort. The indulgent smile on Alex’s face was one that Jamie was pretty sure she was going to be seeing a lot more around the twins — and especially Lilli — than she was going to be happy with. But she couldn’t really begrudge him that when she was probably going to spoil both of them just as thoroughly as their father was obviously planning to.
Alex’s phone rang in his pocket, and he pulled it out to glance down at the screen.
“Do you have to answer that?”
He looked up at her even as he swiped his thumb across the screen to answer. “It’s Zander. I told him not to call unless it was important. I’ll keep the call quick.”
“We’ll be here when you’re done,” Jamie said, offering a smile that she hoped was supportive.
There was no answer. Alex had already lifted the phone to his ear and was moving away from them, nodding along to something Zander was saying.
“Looks like Daddy’s going to be busy for a little bit,” Jamie said, moving so that she sat between the twins and the ocean just in case one of them decided to make a break for it. They didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the fact that Alex had just walked away, which Jamie supposed was a plus. Hopefully by the time they were old enough to notice sudden departures, those would be few and far between.
Shaking her head, she built up another makeshift tower, and watched as the twins rapidly reduced it to scattered sand. Despite her frustration with business calling Alex away yet again, she smiled. It was hard to watch the amount of delight they took in smashing the sandcastle to bits and stay annoyed.
Minutes passed, and Alex still hadn’t come back. Jamie looked up from the towers she was constructing for Lilli and Benton and scanned the beach for him, but she couldn’t make out his familiar form anywhere in her line of sight, and wondered where he’d gone. What was the conversation that was so important?
When she looked down again, Lilli wasn’t there.
Jamie felt her heart stop. She had just looked away for a second. How could it be long enough for her daughter to be gone? Frantically, her eyes scanned the beach, her heart racing.
There. Lilli was five feet from her, toddling toward the water. Jamie scooped up Benton so quickly that she must have startled him, jogging across the sand to take Lilli’s little hand in her own and catch her back. She realized as her fingers closed around her daughter’s that she was shaking, and she sank to her knees, legs too weak to hold her up.
“No,” she said it firmly, turning Lilli to face her. “We don’t do that, Lilliana! Do you understand me? We do not run away from Mommy.”
Lilli looked wide-eyed at Jamie, then back at the ocean, and Jamie pulled her around again with just enough force to get her attention.
“Lilli! You don’t run away from me. No.”
She wasn’t sure if it had any effect or not. She knew Lilli could understand the word no, but she didn’t know if her daughter would understand why it was being said or what she’d done wrong. Benton was struggling to get out of her hold, undoubtedly so that he could make a dash for the water himself, and Jamie let him down but took a firm hold of his hand. Both of them were tugging at her then, trying to get her to take them down to the edge of the water. They pointed, babbling in their baby language that wasn’t quite words yet.
Where the hell was Alex?
As though summoned by the thought, there were footsteps in the sand behind her, and Jamie craned her neck around to find Alex looking down at her, an amused smile on his face.
“They’re looking pretty serious about making it to that water.”
“Lilli,” Jamie said, suddenly on the verge of tears, “almost did. Without me. Because I looked away for one second and then she was gone.”
Alex’s smile dropped and he leaned down to pick Lilli up despite her protests, holding her close in his arms.
Jamie gathered Benton up and stood. “Which wouldn’t have happened,” she said, “if you had stayed with us.”
He reached out a hand to her, and Jamie hesitated for just an instant before she stepped into the offered embrace, burying her face against her husband’s shoulder and taking a long, shuddering breath.
“She could have made it to the water,” she said, voice catching in her throat. “If I’d been just a second slower, she could have.”
His arm tightened around her. “It’s okay, baby. You got here. She’s here. She’s safe. They both are.”
They were both safe. Jamie nodded against Alex’s shoulder, still shaky, but able to breathe again. Nothing bad had happened. It was okay.
“I’m sorry that I walked away,” Alex said gently.
Jamie looked up. She shook her head as she stepped out of Alex’s arms, boosting Benton into a better position on her hip while he squirmed and protested being held. She sighed. “It’s okay,” she said. “It was important or you wouldn’t have taken it.”
“It was important,” Alex said, “but it’s dealt with now. And you’re what’s important.” He looked down at the twins, and then back up at Jamie, the smile on his face again. “What do you say we take them down and introduce them to the ocean?”
Jamie laughed, the last of the tension finally seeping out of her muscles. “Yeah,” she said, “okay. Let’s do that.”
Despite their earlier enthusiastic attempts to run open-armed into it, the twins were not very impressed with the ocean water, which this far north wasn’t all that warm even at the end of summer. Lilli slapped at it with one hand, then looked down at her fingers and shook them, trying to get rid of the feeling of the water.
Alex laughed. “I guess it isn’t as exciting as she thought it was going to be.”
“I guess not,” Jamie agreed, grinning at him over the twins’ heads.
Benton chose that moment to stick the hand he’d dunked in the water into his mouth, and promptly made a noise of disgust that set Jamie laughing and Alex off again.
“Okay,” she said when their mirth had faded. “We should probably take them back up the beach and get them some food.”
This time, the twins didn’t reach back for the ocean when Jamie and Alex started carrying them away. They would probably enjoy it a bit more in a few years when they were really allowed to play in it, but for now Jamie was glad they didn’t seem that excited about it anymore. If it meant no more attempts to run in unattended, she would breathe a little easier.
They pulled food out of the cooler they’d brought with them and set it up on the blanket, feeding themselves between bites for the twins. The breeze off the ocean was just cool enough to offset the warmth of the sun, and around them there were other families laughing and playing. Under the noise of their activity, the rhythmic hush of the waves provided a serene backdrop. It was exactly what Jamie had wanted.
Their family needed times like these. Time to just relax, to be together and bond and share the sunlight and the sound of the ocean. She knew Alex knew that, and wanted to be part of it, but he seemed to struggle with implementing the concept. With everything that had been happening at Reid Enterprises, finding time to get away was difficult. If he would just give more of the control to Zander, he could let go a little. Spend some time with them without having to worry about his phone ringing.
When the twins were born, Jamie had thought that would get him to do it, let go of som
e of the reins of the company and spend more time at home. And he had, to an extent. There were no more fifteen-hour days. No more falling into bed at midnight just back from the office. But she wanted them to have more. More days like this, sitting together on a blanket and watching the waves roll in.
Somehow, Jamie was going to make it happen.
Chapter 6
Mark woke a week after the news interview to the sun spilling in through the window, the light of it visible even through his closed eyelids, Erica curled against his chest and wrapped close in his arms. It wasn't a bad way to be woken up, really. In fact, it was a pretty nice way to wake up, and Mark smiled as the woman in his embrace stirred, not yet fully awake, and snuggled closer. His arms tightened around her.
“Mmmm… mornin’,” Erica said without opening her eyes.
“Morning,” Mark replied, his voice sounding low and husky. There was also a smile in his voice to match the one on his face. “We should get up.”
Erica sighed and Mark laughed, reaching a hand up to run it through her hair. “Come on. Up you get. I’ve got things I’ve got to do this morning, unfortunately.”
She opened one eye, and gave him a looked that conveyed her definite lack of interest in getting up, but after a moment she opened them both, and Mark let his arms fall away so she could stretch and yawn, levering herself upright. While he sat up, she crawled out of the bed, bending to go through the drawers that they’d designated hers for something to wear.
“Well,” Mark said, knowing she wouldn’t mind hearing it, “that's a lovely view.”
Erica gave her hips a deliberate little wiggle that made Mark groan low in his throat and wish that he didn’t have things to do after all, because there were far better things they could be doing in here. Alone. Preferably before Erica put clothes on. She glanced back over her shoulder at him, fully aware of what she had just done, and gave him a smile that was entirely too sweet to be believable.
“If we had more time,” she said, “I'd let you get a closer look. But, as you so firmly pointed out, we’ve got places to be. And things to do. You’re running a hell of a popular hangout for the rich and famous these days.”
