by Sky Winters
“I’ve noticed. I’ll be having to switch to maternity clothes by the end of summer. Right now, my loose pants and summer dresses are still comfortable, but I’ve noticed they are tighter these days.”
“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful. Watching the baby grow inside you is going to be so wonderful. I’ve second guessed myself a time or two about doing things this way, but not now. I couldn’t have found a more perfect woman to have my child.”
Lorna smiled at him. She loved that he was so excited about the baby, but she couldn’t help think there was something missing. The sex between them was not enough to make up for that portion he kept to himself. She knew it wasn’t about her, but that only made it worse. It mean it was out of her control. All she could do was hope that he came around soon. If not, there was a good chance he never would.
As the summer came to an end, it was time to retrieve C.J. from her grandparents. Though Lorna was excited to see her again, she didn’t accompany him to Los Angeles this time. It had just been too awkward last time for her. Plus, he was planning to have lunch with them while he was there, so even less reason for her to go, in her book. She was more than happy to stay here and greet them when they arrived.
She called Sharon while she waited, careful not to reveal her situation. If all of this worked out, then she could maybe tell her everything, but it was part of the agreement not to for now. Instead, she told her that she was enjoying her sabbatical. Most of what she revealed was the truth, that she was at a lake, there was a pool and she was getting some work done on an unexpected project. Soon after she ended the call, she heard the front door open and a loud squeal from the foyer.
“Lornaaaaaaa!” C.J. called out loudly as she ran up the stairs.
Lorna met her on the landing and hauled her up into her arms. C.J. was jabbering away about everything she had done over the summer and where all she had gone. It was amazing how much the small child could cram into a single breath.
“C.J.” her father said as he made his way up the steps. “Give Lorna a break. You just got here and you don’t have to tell her everything at once. You can tell her a little bit at a time.”
“But I’ve missed her. I didn’t get to tell her any good stuff while I was gone.”
“Come on. It’s been a long, hot trip. Don’t you want to get your bathing suit on and take a swim to cool off? That’s all I heard on the way home and now, you can’t be pried off of Lorna,” he told her.
“Can Lorna come too then?”
“If Lorna wants to come, but she might have something else to do.”
“Lorna?” C.J. asked.
“Sure. I’ll go swim with you. Just let me change.”
C.J. took off running to her room to change, while Buck stayed behind to talk to Lorna.
“I think they fed her pure sugar before I got there,” he laughed.
“Seems that way,” she replied.
He kissed her softly, running a single finger down her neck. It sent a chill down her spine and caused the hair to stand on end along her arm.
“We better change so we can get her into the pool. It’ll help wind her back down for a nap.”
“Good idea,” she replied, pulling away from him and going to her room to change.
When she came out, she didn’t see either of them, so she assumed they were both down at the pool. She walked down the stairs and out to the pool, still seeing neither of them. They must still be upstairs. Instead, she sat down in a nearby lounge chair and lay back. It was only then that she spotted C.J.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed, jumping up from the chair and diving into the pool. She pulled a limp, unconscious C.J. from the deep end and lay her on the side of the pool, immediately starting CPR in an effort to revive her. At first, nothing was happening, but finally, she began to sputter and cough, purging the massive amount of water she had swallowed.
“Jesus Christ! What happened?” Buck shouted as he came running toward them, scooping C.J. up as she continued to cough and cry in his arms.
“I . . . I don’t know. I came down because I thought the two of you had already come out and when I got down here, I found her floating in the water. She must have changed and come down without us.”
“C.J., are you okay?” he said, pulling her away and looking at her.
She nodded and smiled weakly at him. Lorna’s heart was still hammering inside her chest
“I’m going to get Melanie,” she said, running toward the house to find the nurse.
Lorna made a beeline for Melanie’s quarters and beat on the door, quickly telling her what had happened. Melanie barreled past her and went running downstairs to the pool. After a quick assessment, she deemed C.J. to be okay, just shaken up.
“Are you sure? We should take her to the hospital to get checked out,” Lorna protested.
“No. C.J. can’t be taken to a normal hospital. She may look normal to you on the outside, but she isn’t on the inside. We have some differences in organ structure, bone structure, that sort of thing. She’ll end up in an experimental lab. Melanie knows what she is doing, and we do have doctors if anything is deemed more serious.”
Lorna looked at him and down at C.J. She was still terrified, as she sat there shivering in the towel Melanie had wrapped her in.
“Let’s get her inside and warm her up,” Melanie replied.
Buck carried her inside and upstairs to her room, putting her in some warm clothes and slipping her between the covers while Lorna and Melanie looked on. Melanie gave her another once over and asked her a few questions before declaring she was definitely fine.
“Another few minutes and it might have been a different story. I’m going back to my quarters, but I’ll stop in and check on her again in a bit. Call me if you need me in the meantime.”
“Thanks, Melanie.”
Buck and Lorna sat with her until she fell asleep and then stepped out of the room. It took Lorna a moment to realize that Buck was almost in tears, burying his face in his hands.
“Oh, thank God you found her. I don’t know what I would have done if . . .,” his voice trailed off into sobs.
“Okay. Okay. Come on. Let’s get you settled down,” she said, walking him just down the hall to his own room and sitting him down on the edge of his bed.
“She’s never done that before. I don’t know why she would have gone down there alone. I should have had a safeguard in place to prevent that. I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“Okay. There is no sense beating yourself up about it. What’s done is done. Let’s just make sure she is okay from it and you can take measures to secure the pool tomorrow.”
“Yeah, like filling it in.”
“If that’s what helps you feel safer. It’s your pool, but remember, you live on a lake. Are you going to fill it in too? You can’t protect her from everything.”
“Maybe not, but I can keep her from drowning in my own pool.”
“Yes, you can,” Lorna replied.
Slowly, Buck began to collect himself. They checked on C.J. repeatedly, as did Melanie, long after she had gone to sleep for the night. Finally, Buck pulled her toward his room to sleep, curling up with her in a relieved, peaceful sleep.
Chapter 14
The following morning, Buck was up well before her, in the wee hours of the morning to check on C.J., who was still sleeping. She rolled overly sleepily as he climbed back into bed and pulled her toward him, kissing her awake. The moment of fear had passed and all was okay again. They made love quietly before she retreated to her room for a shower and to get ready for the day. She was surprised when Buck met her downstairs and suggested they go into L.A. for a bit.
“What for?”
“I want to meet with a man that’s going to help me with my pool problem.”
“Is C.J. going with us?”
“No. She is going to stay here with Melanie. She’s fine, but a little shaken still.”
“Perhaps it is best if one of us stays here with her?”<
br />
“She’s fine, Lorna. You’re a bigger worry wart than I am.”
“Maybe,” she conceded.
After insisting that she go check on C.J. for herself, Lorna agreed to go with him to the city. She sat quietly while he met with the man about pushing in the pool and building a garden over it, but they made no formal contract to do so.
“You sure that’s the route you want to go?” she asked after the meeting was over.
“I don’t know, but I have to do something. I can’t risk that happening again, with her or with our baby when it gets old enough to venture out. I can’t believe she did that.”
“Did you find out from her how it even happened?”
“Yes. She decided to surprise us by showing us she could dive in, so she climbed up on the diving board and was waiting. She slipped and fell in and panicked. She can swim a little bit, but not well enough to overcome her panic at having fallen in.”
“Perhaps swimming lessons are in order then.”
“Yes, but that will just be in case she gets too close to the lake. I am more worried about the pool right now.”
“You know what I think you need?” she asked.
“What?”
“A drink.”
“I have to drive back, unless you are interested in spending the night here with me.”
“I think that would be marvelous.”
“I’ll phone Melanie.”
After getting assurance that C.J. was perfectly fine, apparently past the whole thing already and playing, they booked a room in nearby Malibu by the water and wandered out to a nearby club for the evening. It was a little different being completely sober in a club, but she sat sipping her soda water with a splash of lime, content about it.
Buck, on the other hand, had several. She said nothing. It wasn’t like him to drink more than a couple of drinks, but it had been a rough day and he most likely needed to wind down from it a bit. Of course, he surprised her by getting more than a little bit amorous as they sat in a rounded booth with a large table in front of them. It was fairly secluded, but not completely and she found herself glancing around at people as his hand slipped between her legs and gripped her thigh. No one else seemed to notice.
“We were supposed to get out to let our hair down a bit, but not quite this much,” she teased.
He moved his hand downward, brushing his knuckles against Lorna’s outer thigh, just below the hem of her skirt. “No, I’m not going to make love to you here.”
Her bemused eyes glinted in the pulsating lights of the club, and he caught the flash of disappointment. She was excited, he knew, despite the way she glanced at other tables to ensure no one was looking their way. “Then what do you plan to do?”
Buck unfurled his fingers to cup her bare leg, her skin warm and satin smooth against his cool palm. His wrist caught the edge of her tailored skirt, lifting it as his fingers crept slowly toward the hot nest between her thighs. This game of seduction with his intended soul mate was giving him the most agonizing rock-hard erection of his life. She tensed her thigh, and he stroked gently until her leg relaxed at his touch.
She wanted adventure. She wanted great sex, but she found that she was waffling between desiring that sort of commitment to fear of it. Still, this, it was hot. She’d never gotten so excited from a mere touch like she did when Buck put his hands on her and she had to wonder, once again, if it was some sort of power he held over her.
“I plan to pleasure you here, Lorna,” he said directly, a distinct twinkle in his eyes.
“Is that so, now?” she said, a little out of breath just thinking about it.
She crossed her arms on the table and leaned closer to him, giving him a view down her blue silk blouse, a peek at the shadowy valley between the soft swells of her breasts. Again, he smiled at the trace of confrontation in her tone—even when she so obviously desired him.
“And how do you plan to pleasure me in public?” she asked.
“Do you want to find out?”
Her brows drew together in an exaggerated frown, drawing a chuckle from deep in his throat. Buck winced at the sound—rusty, unused. How long since he’d last felt the urge to laugh?
“Maybe,” she insisted. “Tell me.”
No doubt they had rules against this in the club, but since when had he ever played by human rules? He had always been on the outskirts of their society, a loner in a lot of ways, social only out of need rather than want. It was only with Lorna now that he found he was tired of the loneliness and that he felt a desire that clung to no rules of any sort. All he could think about now was bringing the beautiful creature in front of him to a screaming orgasm in an intimate little curved booth in one of the most popular clubs on the beach front.
“I like to start with the neck and yours is the sexiest one in this club, in this world, actually,” he purred.
He lifted Lorna’s thick hair and pressed his lips to her skin. Flicking his tongue along her peach-soft flesh, he tasted traces of salty sweat and wild-flower soap. She was delicious. He drew slow circles on her leg, letting his finger dip down farther over her inner thigh with each one. Her nipples puckered, denting the silk. The draped fabric shivered with her quick, shallow breaths.
“Are you really going to put your hand in my panties here, Buck?”
Her direct question sent a surge of desire through him that only fueled him to take this further. Lorna’s hips rocked, slowly, seductively, and he knew she wanted him to lift his hand higher. Buck took a deep breath, his cock aching to be free to fuck her right here in front of all these people, to show them just how much he desired her and let them know she was his and his alone.
“No one can see,” he promised. “They will think we are just overly affectionate, making out in the corner.”
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said hesitantly.
“Me either, but let’s do it anyway. It’s very naughty, don’t you think?”
He slid his hand around her upper thigh to cradle her ass. As his fingers encountered soft bare skin, his brows lifted in astonishment, and his cock jerked up against the hard zipper of his leather motorcycle pants. “You’re not wearing underwear.”
“I am,” she protested in a whisper. “A thong.” Her warm breath coasted over the rim of his ear.
“So your ass is essentially naked.”
“It is now. There was a skirt over it until you kept pushing it upward.”
He laughed and trailed his fingers back up, over her leg, to the damp, lacy thong nestled between her thighs.
“Have you decided?” their pony-tailed server trilled as he flipped out his pad and parked himself with his hip jutting against the table. He had been by earlier to top up drinks and ask if they wanted anything to eat but had been sent away while they thought about it.
Buck stroked his fingers along Lorna’s hot, wet thong, causing her to gasp audibly.
“I’m not hungry,” she managed.
“We’re fine,” he instructed the waiter, waving him away.
As soon as their server left, he bent and nibbled her neck again. She whimpered, bending her head so her hair spilled over him. He loved hearing her moan with need. Loved the way her hair shivered over her shoulders as she tilted her head. And he adored the throaty melody of her laugh, the honey-sweet sighs of arousal she made at his touch—
“Oh!” she gasped.
The elastic trim of her thong snapped against her skin as Buck worked to slide his index finger underneath. Springy curls brushed his fingertip. He nipped her earlobe gently.
“You are soaked. I wish I could crawl under this table and lick your thighs.”
Her cleft was snug and hot, and he pressed two fingers against her clit. With a moan, she jumped on the seat.
“Relax.” His fingers circled over her, and her eyes opened wide. “Trust me.”
“That feels amazing, Buck.” Her hand dropped to his thigh to brace herself as her head arched back in pleasure.
&nb
sp; “Touch me,” he urged her.
Lorna drew her hand up his leg.
“I’ve never groped a man in public. Can you feel that through the fabric?”
“God, yes.”
His hips bucked as her hand slid along the zipper of his pants, following the line of his swelling cock until she found the engorged head stuffed against his waistband. She cupped him with her palm. His head swam as his blood pooled in his crotch, as his cock grew and grew and grew and pushed urgently with no place to go. Hunger surged with every pulse of his rigid shaft.
“You’ve unleashed a side of me I never knew existed,” she murmured as she glanced down to watch the motion of her hand coasting over the black fabric of his pants—pulled taut over the broad head of his prick. Her firm gliding motion almost took him to the brink.
“I sensed it existed. It’s not as big a surprise to me.”
The lips of her pussy parted for his fingers. Buck crooked them within her, dipping into her wet heat. Stirring her, he inhaled her scent deeply. Musky and primal, it made him ache with want. He withdrew his fingers and tapped the sticky tips against her clit.
Her darkened eyes glazed with desire; she looked as needy as he felt.
“This is so weird.”
Despite her words, she squeezed his cock through his pants. Both lust and hope shot through him, a mix so intense he almost exploded on the spot. “Weird?” he rasped. “Are you disappointed, then?”
“In you?” Her eyes opened wide in surprise. “No. Never.”
He plunged his finger into her pussy. Her flame-hot, creamy walls clamped around his finger as his thumb lightly rubbed the tip of her clit. She jammed her fist into her mouth and moaned around it.
“I love that. It sounds so good to me.”
Expertly, he shifted his hand to fill her tight pussy with two fingers, to stroke her snug ass with his index finger, all the while teasing her clit.
“Oh, God. You’ve got to stop, Buck.” She lifted her hand from his cock. “This is really hot…really sexy, but—”
