by Olivia Dade
“Isn’t that how all functional adults deal with their issues?”
At her dry response, he huffed out a short laugh. “Let’s pretend that’s true.” He sobered. “My point is, we screwed up. Both of us. We hurt each other, because we’re only human.”
“Your ego is superhuman. At least when it comes to your penis.”
He ignored her snark. “Then we got over it. You and Belle will get over this hiccup too.”
She bit her lip. “I hope so.”
“I’m sure Belle doesn’t expect you to be perfect. I certainly don’t. You shouldn’t expect it of yourself either.” His dimples reappeared. “God knows you shouldn’t expect me to be perfect, despite my current boyfriend ranking.”
She raised a single eyebrow, purely for his entertainment. “Trust me. I don’t.”
“So try not to worry about your friendship with Belle, okay?” His face compressed into a sudden scowl. “And forget what Jeremy told you.”
Again, he’d spat out her ex’s name, for reasons she couldn’t completely parse. Maybe his anger was on her behalf. Maybe it was born from jealousy, or in frustration at how her past complicated their present. Maybe all of the above.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a practical person, and there’s nothing wrong with how you handle emotions.” His statement did not invite argument. “You’ve already—”
He broke off, and it was her turn to wait. To stroke his bristled cheek and ease him through whatever he needed to say.
“The things I’ve talked about with you, I don’t…” His jaw worked as he found the words. “I don’t talk to anyone else like that. It’s helped me. More than you know. You’ve helped me.”
“If so, I’m glad.” Lightly, she kissed the furrows on his forehead.
“Not if so, you stubborn woman—”
Then they were mock-wrestling on the bed, his every movement careful of her joints despite his growls and declarations of imminent mayhem. He tickled her until she wheezed with laughter, and then he kissed her, and then they were flinging clothes to the floor, grateful to trade hard words for easy pleasure.
Afterward, she felt better. Lighter and looser, and not just because of the orgasms.
But as they lay clasped together on the rumpled sheets of her hotel bed, she wondered whether he’d defend her quite so vigorously, quite so sincerely, if he knew her better. If he knew her longer. If he knew her in her daily life, rather than on vacation.
Maybe he’d—they’d—want to take whatever lay between them and extend it past the next week. Maybe they wouldn’t.
But if he did, if they did—
What then?
What would he think of her then?
Twenty-Three
“Belle was finally willing to talk about it this morning.” Tess absently gathered a handful of sand and let it sift through her fist in the water, her other hand resting on Lucas’s raised knee. “She said I could tell you what happened too, since you weren’t likely to spread the story to anyone important. Also, she said you’d be worried because I was worried.”
True. Undeniably true.
He was impressed, frankly. Despite his limited interactions with her, Belle evidently understood how he felt about Tess better than Tess herself seemed to. He was working on that, of course, but time was slipping away just as fast and just as inevitably as the sand between Tess’s fingers.
Four days. In four days, she was taking the ferry to the mainland, and he had no idea when she’d return, if ever.
He wouldn’t think about that now, though. Not when she was sitting beside him on their secluded sandbar, no one else in sight, water rushing around her torso and deliciously round arms in gentle surges. The sun was nearing the horizon, and the sky had unfurled banners of pink and gold, bathing her profile in warmth.
“So what’s the story, then?” With his forefinger, he traced shapes on her thigh underwater. A heart. A star. A crescent moon. A second heart, one with his invisible initials inside. A sun, its unseen rays as warm as the sweet curve of her cheek. “Why did she leave?”
He turned slightly toward Tess, admiring her one-piece swimsuit for the thousandth time in the past half-hour. The swoop of its neckline dipped low, exposing the deep shadow of her cleavage. The green of the suit, bright as the grass at Wimbledon, flattered her pale skin, turning it creamier than ever. And with the water’s eddies, the little skirt on the suit was floating up and away from her thighs.
Since her period had ended—hers were blessedly short, only three days—he’d kissed every soft, dimpled inch of those thighs, then licked his way between them and lingered there as long as she’d let him, first with his tongue and then with his cock. Each time got better and better.
Even when they fucked, they made love. He hoped she understood that as well as he did.
Her spectacular chest rose and fell on a sigh. “Remember how she hooked up with some guy named Brian while she was here?”
Shit. Another dude letting down the home team. “What did he do?”
“They slept together a few times.” Her shoulder hitched upward. “Apparently that went fine.”
Lucas couldn’t help a brief wince.
When she saw it, she laughed weakly. “Yeah, fine isn’t how I’d want my performance in bed described either. It’s the adjective she chose, though. She rated him a seven for technical merit, but only a three for artistry. Apparently, he also tended to skip several required elements.”
Required elements? He didn’t want to know what those were.
Well, he kind of did, but he wouldn’t ask. “She’s a fan of old-school figure skating?”
“Newer-school too. If it were up to her, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir would have nixed all the jumps and just frenched each other during their entire performances.” Her eyes grew distant for a moment. “To be fair, that one lift where it looked like he was going down on her? Hot as fuck.”
Apparently he’d missed key advances in professional figure skating. “How is that even poss—”
“And I can’t count how many times we’ve watched The Cutting Edge together. Almost as many times as she’s made me watch that Gods of the Gates Aeneas-Lavinia fan supercut on YouTube. I think she considers the guy who plays Aeneas a literal demigod.” Her nose wrinkled. “I keep forgetting his name. It’s Marcus…something-something.”
He snorted. “Very specific.”
“Remind me to look it up later.” She patted his leg. “Belle would kill me if she knew I’d forgotten again.”
Her eyes weren’t quite meeting his, and if the sheer force of her grip could turn that fistful of sand into glass, she’d already have cut herself on it.
Enough.
Leaning over, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Älskling, it’s fine if you don’t want to tell me what happened with Belle. Really.”
“I do.” At his skeptical glance, she raised that supercilious brow. “Don’t contradict me, Karlsson. It’s the truth.”
“Then why are you talking about everything but that?”
She let out a slow breath and watched him trace a clover right above her knee. “After their last fine night together, Brian got a call.” Her lips thinned. “From his girlfriend.”
Oh, shit. No wonder Belle hadn’t wanted to talk about it.
“Tess, I mean it. You don’t have to tell—”
“Once Belle understood what was happening, she told him she never wanted to hear from him again.” Tess’s eyes had narrowed into slits, her rage visible in the stony set of her jaw. “He said girls like her couldn’t be picky, and she was lucky he’d been willing to fuck her in the first place.”
Girls like her. Lucas could only assume that was a reference to Belle’s size.
His chin dropped to his chest, and he stopped drawing on Tess’s leg. Instead, he spread his fingers and squeezed gently, a mute acknowledgment of Belle’s pain. Tess’s too.
“She got dressed, told him to go fuck himself with his Shake Weight, and left.
” A flicker of a bitter smile tipped her lips. “He’s lucky he escaped with his testicles intact. Belle doesn’t put up with shit like that anymore.”
Even that hint of amusement faded. “She cried so hard, she threw up once she got back to our room.” The trident between her brows carved deeper than he’d ever seen it. “So she was hurt, and she was angry, and she wanted a few solitary days to get over what happened. She said she wanted to think about her future too. She moved to Boston for her boyfriend two years ago, but they broke up last month. Now she doesn’t know if she wants to stay there.”
Tess fell silent.
“That’s why she changed her plane reservations,” Lucas finally said. “That’s why she left.”
Tess nodded. “That’s why.”
With his free hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Shit. Shit, Tess. I’m so sorry that happened to her. What a dick.”
“I know. I feel terrible for her.” Tess’s voice was raw. “I feel lucky, too. No one’s ever said anything like that to me. And however our relationship plays out, I know you would never hurt me that way. You’re a better man than Brian could ever hope to be, Lucas. Thank you for that.”
“No.” He turned to her with a jerk, scowling. “Don’t do that. Don’t thank me for not being an asshole. I don’t deserve credit for meeting the lowest possible standards of human decency.”
She inhaled sharply. “Okay. I won’t.”
“Good.”
After another moment, she leaned in close and murmured in his ear. “So tell me, then. What should I give you credit for?”
Her hand on his knee edged higher, then higher still. Her palm ghosted over his rapidly hardening cock, and he bit off a groan.
“Should I give you credit for how wet I get every time you make that noise?” Her teeth closed on his earlobe with careful pressure, eliciting a helpless shudder. “How you backed me against the wall of your apartment and made me come riding your leg?”
The blood drained from his brain so fast, he had to fight against a full-on swoon. He held his breath as her hand hovered over his eager dick again.
Then she drew back.
“Shit.” Her shoulders slumped. “I can’t do this here, Lucas. I’m sorry. I thought I could, but it’s too exposed. Someone could come along at any second.”
He fought the urge to say: I was about to come along at any second too.
“That’s okay.” He could only speak in a pained rasp, but he meant it. “Just…give me a minute.”
She scooted away from him, and he turned to stare at her, befuddled by her withdrawal.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, her face drawn. “I shouldn’t have started something I couldn’t finish.”
The distress in her voice, in her expression, was disproportionate to the situation, and he didn’t understand.
“Tess, I don’t expect an orgasm every time I get an erection.” After taking a deep breath, he managed to wink at her. “Given how I respond to you, that would mean servicing me hourly. Maybe twice-hourly.”
“Mr. Perky.” She shook her head, the lines bracketing her mouth fading a bit. “Indefatigable and ever-optimistic.”
“I understand why you don’t feel comfortable doing anything so…intimate outdoors.” Circling his arm around her back, he maneuvered them both until they were pressed hip to hip once again. “Would I have enjoyed a handjob from you here? Of course. Do I want to make love to you on the sand? Obv—”
“Just to be clear,” she interrupted. “Even if we owned our own personal island and you could guarantee our absolute privacy, I wouldn’t have sex directly on the sand. I’d require a blanket, at the very least. Vaginal microdermabrasion isn’t my idea of a good time.”
He envisioned that. Cringed. “Understood.”
“That said, go on.” With a wave of her hand, she urged him to continue. “I’m listening.”
Interlacing their fingers, he lifted her knuckles to his lips. “Someday, älskling, I want to see that pale skin in the sun, in the ocean, all of it uncovered and mine to explore. But this isn’t the time or place, for reasons you explained very clearly, and I get that. Please don’t worry. As long as I have you naked somewhere, I’m not disappointed. How could I be?”
She stared at him, hazel eyes distant in thought, for a long moment.
Then she gave a little nod. “I can make sure you’re satisfied. At least in that way.” It was a vow, firm and determined. “I promise.”
He frowned, confused by her vehemence. “Okay?”
She nodded, leaned over, and kissed him on the mouth, hard. Once. Twice.
“Okay,” she said.
As usual, Tess waited for Lucas outside the courts, watching from a wooden bench as he finished his last lesson of the day. In theory, he had another one scheduled that evening, but his client wouldn’t mind skipping it.
Tess Dunn, Room 1249, much preferred orgasms over advice about her service motion.
No, they didn’t bother playing tennis anymore, despite his inflated hourly rate and no-refunds policy. Not with so little time left. Her prepaid lessons had simply become more minutes they could spend together—in his apartment, in a restaurant, in the water—before her looming departure.
They woke in the same bed. They worked identical hours, him on the tennis court, her either on a beach or in bed with her trusty tablet. They took simultaneous breaks for lunch in his apartment. They spent every evening entwined, up until the inevitable moment she shoved him aside to get some non-sweaty sleep.
Three days, he involuntarily thought. In three days, she gets on that ferry.
When his clients had returned to the clubhouse, he gathered his gear, hustled to Tess’s bench, and bent down to give her a light kiss, cognizant of how drenched his clothing was after another steamy day spent in the summer sun.
“Want to keep me company in the shower before dinner?” He grinned at her. “It may be a clown car, but at least we have enough room to honk each other’s red noses.”
Her own nose, slightly pink, wrinkled. “Are you referring to my clitoris as a red nose? And saying you’ll honk it? Because I think my vagina just went completely dry.”
“Cut me some slack.” Helping her up from the bench, he steered them toward his apartment. “Sexualizing clowns is hard, especially in my non-native language.”
“Wait, Lucas.” She tugged him to a halt on the sidewalk. “You don’t need a shower.”
The breeze plastered a strand of her dark hair across her cheek, and he tucked it gently behind her ear. “Is this about the red nose thing? Because I promise not to honk your clitoris.”
“No, it’s not about your weird clown shit.” She rolled her eyes. “We’re going to the beach. You can rinse off in the water, so you don’t need a shower.” Her head tilted toward the clubhouse. “Just drop off your stuff upstairs. I’ll meet you back out here.”
Normally, they talked through their options and decided their evening plans together, but if she particularly wanted to visit the beach that night, no problem. Obligingly, he left her by the clubhouse and let himself into his apartment, depositing his gear just inside the door before locking it behind him again and returning to her side.
She took his hand and led him past the family beaches, past the adults-only sandbar they both loved, past the gardens and the rocks and the overlook, to the most distant beach of all.
The nude beach.
At the very end of the sidewalk, a discreetly labeled, sandy path led toward shore. Before the beach and water came into view, though, they had to pass single-file through a narrow gap in a veritable wall of shielding shrubs.
Then the vista appeared before them, all azure waves and palms swaying over the white-gold expanse of shore. The pristine arc of sand was entirely guarded by that wall of shrubbery. And in the early evening, just before sunset, the beach was oddly deserted, empty of everything but a few scattered loungers and a bird or two darting across the sand, hunting diligently for dropped food.
Brendan was bent over his phone, texting someone. At their approach, though, he looked up and turned immediately to Tess. “Everything’s set up the way you wanted, Ms. Dunn. I double-checked, and there’s no one in the vicinity. If you need anything else, let me know.”
“Thank you.” Tess shook his hand, and Lucas could see the edges of several bills passing from her palm to Brendan’s. “You’ll put out the sign?”
“What sign?” His brows beetled in feigned confusion. “I wouldn’t hang the Beach Temporarily Closed for Cleanup sign across the path for no reason, much less block the entrance through the shrubs with a wooden construction barrier. A kid playing a prank must have done that.”
With a final salute to Tess and an amiable, congratulatory punch to Lucas’s arm, he ambled back toward the sidewalk and out of sight. His jaunty whistling grew more and more distant, until the rush of the breeze on the water drowned it out entirely.
They waited a few more moments, but no voices drifted through the shrubbery. No shrieks of laughter, shouts to friends, or even distant music interrupted the sounds of a beach at sunset.
Tess turned to him. “I remembered Brendan’s name from that first lesson, so I tracked him down this morning. I wasn’t sure he could arrange things the way I wanted, but he said he could.” With her toe, she traced a line in the sand, then erased it with the sole of her foot. “Apparently he was right.”
“Tess…” He wanted to tug her close, squeeze her breathless, but he was so damn sweaty, and his woman didn’t like mess. “You didn’t have to do this.”
She ignored that, instead gesturing for him to precede her into the tent. His throat thick, he obeyed.
After depositing her sandals inside the entrance, she surveyed the setup by his side. “It’s not fancy. But it’s the best I could do, especially on such short notice.” Her lips curved into a brief, wry smile. “And on such a limited budget.”
