“Baby. Nikki. Do you know how to come?”
“What?” Her eyes opened to the merest slits. “Yes. Of course.”
Liar.
“Do what I say.” He lifted her hand to her mouth. “Wet your fingers.”
She hesitated.
He touched them to her lips. “Wet your fingers.”
Her pink tongue emerged and his body reacted, pushing forward with a shallow thrust as the twin sacks between his legs tightened. He swallowed his groan. “Wetter. Stick out your tongue and get them really wet.”
Watching her do as instructed was punishment for any prior bad acts, he swore to God. He panted through it, and when two of Nikki’s fingers gleamed with moisture, he drew back, then pushed himself into her body at the same time that he brought her hand down to her clitoris.
She gasped. Her body arched. He thrust again as he directed her fingers. A circle. A short stroke. Another circle.
Another thrust.
Oh, God. It was incredible. Unbelievable. The memory of every damn sexcapade in his past faded against this—of feeling Nikki, of tutoring Nikki, of watching her face as the pleasure moved beyond good to better, to soooo damn close.
That’s what she was saying with those little sounds from the back of her throat. So close. And he lapped up every passionate noise and every amazing change to her face, free to watch her like a freakin’ voyeur because he could, because she had her eyes squeezed shut again.
It was oddly freeing to realize he didn’t need to worry about keeping his cool, even as the top of his head was getting ready to blow from watching this woman learn how to get herself off with his help.
He pulled out of her, all the way to the tip, mesmerized by the wet gloss of her arousal on his shaft. Then he moved in again, watching her body swallow him as his dark, big hand made her smaller one play again with that upstanding bud at the top of her cleft. His spine tingled as his balls drew tight.
“Jay?”
Oh, Christ. She wanted to talk? He didn’t have any words left, not when it was all he could do to keep himself from exploding right this instant. Yet he found his voice. “Cookie.”
Okay, just the one word.
“Jay?”
And then he smiled, because he realized what she wanted. “Go ahead, cookie. Go ahead and come.”
And he pulled out again and then moved deep, his gaze trained on her face. She quivered, lifting into his thrust, and as he watched her body start to tremble, her eyes flew open.
His cock erupted. His heart shook like an earthquake. The hand that wasn’t on hers grasped the back of the sofa to ride out the rocking and rolling world and all the while he was conscious of not only the incredible, screaming pleasure, but that blue and that green pair of bruja eyes.
I don’t know whether I’m going to sink or fly.
When it was over—minutes? months? later—as his heart continued to thunder, he pulled away and turned her on her side, making room for both of them on the couch. She wiggled against him and he slid his fingers, still damp from her, against the warmth of her thigh. She sighed.
Contented?
God, he hoped so. God, he hoped he’d given her what she needed.
Safe place. Safe partner.
But now that it was done, now that his blood was still running like a drug through his veins, he had to wonder whether Nikki was safe at all.
For him.
Thirteen
I cried on my eighteenth birthday. I thought seventeen was such a nice age. You’re young enough to get away with things, but you’re old enough, too.
—LIV TYLER, ACTRESS
Fern tossed the steaming brownie from hand to hand, cooling it before biting it in two. It melted on her tongue and bathed her back molars in grainy chocolate before she swallowed it down. Even as she popped the other half in her mouth, she was already reaching for a second straight out of the pan.
Beside her on the bed, Marie was closing her eyes in dreamy appreciation of the undercooked dessert they’d pulled out of the oven ten minutes too soon. “The gooiest ones in the middle are my favorite,” she said. “Better than sex.”
“Really?” Too late, Fern realized she’d spoken the question out loud.
Marie’s eyes widened and her hand paused, a brownie halfway to her mouth. “You and Jenner?”
The Veronica Mars marathon they were watching on TV switched away to commercials and Fern pretended to care about the latest hair remover. After all, she wore short shorts.
With her French-pedicured big toe, Marie nudged Fern’s ankle. “You can’t leave it like that. I figured…”
Fern shook her head, still watching the long-legged girl on the screen dance under a disco ball. The guy watching her spin looked as if he wanted to lick her bare limbs like a Popsicle. Eww.
Marie wasn’t letting the subject go. “Not with anyone?”
Again, Fern shook her head, then pinched her thigh as punishment. Stupid self. How could she have been so careless as to give that much away?
Except she wasn’t careless. She never had been. That was part of the whole problem. Now that she was feeling just a little bit careless and a whole lot reckless, there wasn’t a single Two Shoe available to discuss it with—at least not one who she could talk to about the subject of sex.
Marie might have to do.
She sent the other teenager a sidelong look as she reached for the pan again. “What about you?”
The girl waved her brownie, scattering chocolate crumbs on the paper napkin she’d spread over her lap. “Sure. I had a boyfriend at the end of last year. He moved in June, though. Las Vegas.”
Fern picked up her own napkin and started pleating it into an origami shape she thought she remembered learning in fourth grade summer day camp. “Jenner wants me to sneak out and meet him tonight.”
An hour ago, Marie had braided her hair into a dozen dark tails and now the rubber-banded ends flew out as she whipped her head toward Fern. “Tonight?”
The brownies no longer seemed so irresistible to Fern. Her stomach twisted, protesting the chocolate rush—or at least that’s what she told herself it was protesting—and she pushed the pan closer to Marie. “I haven’t decided.”
“He’s gorgeous,” the other girl said, digging free another chewy square. “And there’s plenty of other girls willing to give it up to him if you won’t.”
“Marie!” Fern frowned. “Didn’t you outgrow that argument freshman year? We don’t give it up for a guy just because if we don’t, we’ll lose him.”
“It’s true, though.” Marie peeled off a piece of the brownie’s shiny top and then licked it off her thumb. “Guys are like that.”
“Not all guys—”
“Yep. Pretty much all guys. Think about it. You’re a raging male hormone. On the one hand, you have that nice girl with her legs crossed tighter than a pretzel. On the other, you have that nice girl who isn’t holding out for…what are girls holding out for anyway?”
“Nice girls don’t—”
Marie looked up. “Just because a girl has sex doesn’t make her a slut.”
“I know.” Fern thought she wanted sex, and that wasn’t so much different than actually having it, right? They’d read about former President Jimmy Carter in Advanced Placement U.S. History last year. He’d shocked the American public by admitting he lusted in his heart for women other than his wife.
Okay, so Carter was president like a hundred years ago, but people probably still considered that heart lust thing this close to doing the deed itself.
So if what she felt in Jenner’s arms was what she thought—well, there was no sweet-faced former First Lady Rosalynn Carter to keep Fern from taking her lust out of the four-chambered organ in her chest and putting it into real action.
There was no Rosalynn, but there was Emily.
Fern closed her eyes, trying not to think of her best friend. Normally, she’d never take such a step like this without her best buddy’s full and serious consideration, but
nothing about Em was ever going to be normal again.
Fern’s mom said that wasn’t true, but her mom hadn’t seen Em’s lank hair or the weird fortress of books she’d built on the tables on each side of the bed in her room. Fairy tales, Harry Potter, a slew of Nancy Drew mysteries that had once been her mother’s. The rest of Em’s summer, apparently, was going to be spent rereading all her favorite children’s books.
While maybe the rest of Fern’s summer was going to be spent finding out what it was to be a woman.
She looked up at Marie. “Didn’t we become women when we got our periods? Didn’t they tell us that?”
“They should have told us not to buy any more white jeans,” Marie grumbled. She was close to finishing half the pan of brownies. “Hey! Maybe that’s why I have the munchies. I’m expecting a visit from my ‘little friend.’”
They both started laughing. “No one calls it that anymore, do they?” Fern asked.
“My mom does.” Marie made a face. “But only in front of my dad. And now that you’re horribly cruel enough to make me remember, that is exactly what she said when I had my first magic moment of cramps. She told my dad I was a woman now. Where was that hole in the floor when I needed it?”
“So, was she right? Or is it having sex that makes you a woman?”
And what about Em? At home with her unicorns and witches and Nancy’s mysteries: Was she a woman now?
“I’d rather have sex than my period, that’s for sure.”
“But you’d rather have brownies than sex,” Fern pointed out.
Marie stilled, going silent for a moment. “It’s true. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
Fern laughed at Marie’s aghast expression. “I don’t think so. Maybe there was something wrong with your old boyfriend.”
Maybe he hadn’t awakened Marie, and then continued to keep her from sleeping night after night with thoughts of what could be. Jenner had done that to Fern. One of the four Two Shoes had come to Malibu for the summer, ashamed that she was almost happy to get away from Em, but not expecting any more than lazy days and nights at the beach. At home, she’d dated on occasion. Been kissed more than once and felt that wild rush of blood around her body when a boy hesitantly stroked her breasts.
But nothing before had ever lit her up like Jenner’s touch. Everything about him was rough—his hands, calloused from beach volleyball, scraping along her sunburned shoulders; the metal grommets in his boardshorts poking into her belly when he rolled on top of her on the sand; those biting kisses he hid beneath her hair.
It should have been something she backed away from. Good-girl Fern had been born with warning flags that shot up whenever necessary. But Em was good, too, and she’d possessed those exact same warning flags, and they hadn’t saved her from danger. Maybe this time Fern needed to fling herself toward her fears as a test—a test to make sure she could save herself if it came to that.
But right now, Jenner’s kisses didn’t feel like something she needed to be saved from—that was the most amazing thing to her. All those tepid touches from high school boys who smelled like cheap cologne and clean scent deodorant couldn’t compare to one moment in Jenner’s arms. What happened there was indescribable, when their skin was hot, their swimsuits cold and wet, his mouth burning like a beach bonfire on hers.
He could make her crazy with wanting more: kisses, touches, everything. He could slide a finger up her knee toward her thigh and her legs would turn to rubber. He could press her hand over the hard length of him beneath his pants and she didn’t think it was gross—instead she wanted to know what happened next.
The fact was, he wanted what happened next, and Marie was right, she’d probably lose him and all that he represented if she didn’t soon say “yes.”
She glanced over at her friend, who looked about twelve with her hair in those silly braids and chocolate on her mouth. “Will you cover for me if I go out to meet Jenner?”
“You wouldn’t rather make another pan of brownies?”
He’d been angry when she’d told him she didn’t know if she could sneak out to meet him tonight, and that passionate display only made her heart pound harder. She didn’t know exactly why.
When they were kids, she and her cousins would sit at the table after a family dinner was over and see who could hold their palms the longest over the candle flames. Fern had run to her mother way before the others were finished with the game.
She wasn’t running anymore.
Jay woke, in one instant aware of the sunshine on the other side of his eyelids and the empty spot on the other side of his bed. His hand groped over the barren sheets anyway.
None of Nikki’s body warmth lingered, and at the discovery, some emotion rushed into his chest. It should have been relief—he preferred waking up alone, even after spectacular sex. It couldn’t be alarm—Nikki wouldn’t have gone far…would she?
But then whatever you wanted to label that weird emotion leached away as the blessed aroma of brewing coffee reached him. If she’d run, it was only to his kitchen. He smiled to himself and stretched his toes toward the end of the bed, and let his mind wander.
It didn’t go far either. It stayed right where he was and imagined Nikki returning to the bedroom, carrying a cup of his favorite java and naked as the day she’d come into the world. His hand slid down to his morning erection and he rubbed over his hot skin, envisioning the imminent possibility of A.M. sex.
Then he laughed out loud. When had Nikki ever fallen in with his plans? He’d bet a hundred bucks she’d gotten up and made coffee as his chef, not his lover, and would expect him to get his lazy ass out of bed to sample it.
Still, she had to be looking forward to that moment as much as he was. She’d taste like coffee and toothpaste—his, and he oddly liked the idea of that—when he kissed her. Would she melt against him or try to keep her cool? He couldn’t guess, and that made him grin wider.
Unpredictable, prickly, sexy as hell. That was Nikki. Last night he’d half-carried her to his bed and she’d fallen back to sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. He’d walk over leftover barbecue coals before he’d admit it out loud, but even as horny as he’d been again, he’d let her stay in dream-land, merely putting his nose against her shoulder to breathe in the scent of her skin.
Christ, even to himself that sounded dangerously sappy.
And only made him want to breathe in her scent once again.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to rush out to the kitchen though, he decided, opening his eyes and casting a look at his bedside clock. He’d lie in bed at least another fifteen minutes, follow that up with a leisurely shower, and then he’d venture outside the bedroom to take a gander at Nikki’s morning-after attitude.
In seven minutes he was in jeans and a T-shirt. He didn’t waste time locating shoes before he bare-footed it out of the bedroom and started down the hallway. The coffee smelled just that enticing.
Yeah. The coffee.
Okay, fine. He was curious about Nikki’s reaction to their intimacy of the night before. Concerned even, now that his brain was becoming more alert. That was only natural, right? Every time he went to bed with a woman there was that possibility he’d made a big mistake—no matter how hot the mambo had been.
Look at Shanna.
Nikki was nothing like Shanna.
The drunken debacle that was his single stupid interlude with Shanna was nothing like what he’d had with Nikki last night.
Shit! He halted, sudden airlessness forcing him to lean against the wall. That unfamiliar, unnameable feeling was filling his chest again, making it hard for his lungs to move. Alarm?
It felt more like freakin’ panic.
With a wet-dog shake of his head, he got his feet moving again. Coffee and a clue about how Nikki was reacting would surely get his equilibrium back.
Voices from the kitchen had him pausing once more. Nikki. Nikki and Cassandra. He moved again, and then hesitated at the far end of the living roo
m, close enough to see and hear the women, but far enough away that he escaped their notice.
Nikki was at the cutting board, giving him a side view. She must keep an extra set of clothes somewhere in his house or maybe her car, he thought. He took in her cropped jeans and the plain white T-shirt that clung tightly enough for him to appreciate that sweet little sway in her back that he’d—damn it all—left untouched the night before. He could only see the profile of her face, but she seemed cheerful enough.
That whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it loosened its vicious grip on his breathing as he continued to study her. Her wavy hair was contained in a cotton bandanna she’d tied beneath the sun-and-brown mass at the base of her neck. The ocean-green color contrasted with the warm pink of her cheek. It would match, he knew, the unforgettable color of her left eye.
“So you grew up knowing you were the product of artificial insemination?” Nikki asked, her attention still on the mango—his favorite—she was slicing.
Jay watched her lips move with each word and he remembered the soft feel of them under his, the heat hidden inside her mouth, the sweet touch of her tongue against his. At the memory, an echo of that euphoric high he’d felt last night seemed to thin the blood in his veins. His head took an odd spin, and he put his hand on the back of the couch to steady himself.
Cassandra was talking now. She had knitting needles in her hands, but for the moment they were still. Jay told himself he wouldn’t have eavesdropped if it wasn’t something she’d already revealed to him before—and if he wasn’t so damn dizzy. “…never thought of keeping it a secret any more than she thought the two of us required a man. To her, it was more a matter of feminism than family. She wanted to prove we two women didn’t need a man.”
A smile flashed over Nikki’s face. “Makes you wonder what she would have done if you were born a boy.”
The knitting needles started clicking. Cassandra bent her head and Jay studied her profile, blinking. There was something…
Take Me Tender Page 16
