by Emma Scott
I nodded. “Upstairs,” I said, then added in a husky Southern drawl, “Take me to bed or lose me forever.”
Jonah’s brow furrowed. “Body Heat?”
“Top Gun.”
“So close.”
In my bedroom, Jonah’s humor fled and he caught fire. I’d never felt so wanted by a man in my life. His kisses turned bruising, his hands stripped me of my clothing. His eyes were dilated, the deep brown of them almost black. I tore off his shirt, fumbled at the zipper on his jeans.
“Leave these,” he said, as he fingered the thigh-high tights I wore under my boots. “And the necklace.”
A white hot thrill skimmed through me at his rough-voiced need. His breath came hard as he stared at me, naked but for the black nylon along my legs, and the curved, silver horn between my breasts.
“Kacey…”
I let out a little sigh, my legs weakening. We grabbed for each other again and he backed me up against the bedroom wall, his tongue, teeth and lips mauling my mouth. I could feel him between my thighs, hard and ready. I fumbled in the nightstand next to me and blindly fished out a condom.
He gripped my hips, barely holding back while I tore the condom wrapper open and rolled it down over him. Then his hands slipped under me, lifted me, and I wrapped my stocking-clad legs around his waist as he groaned into my mouth. My arms went around his neck, my nails digging into his skin and my teeth biting at the slope of muscle between his neck and shoulder. Already, the sensation of him inside me was so intense, so dizzying and hot, I was delirious.
“I’ve never had it like this. I swear…” I said into his skin, clutching him, clinging to him.
“Me neither,” he said finding my mouth again. “All I want is this. You…”
His body moved against mine fast and hard. He filled me up, the heavy pressure stoking a sweet ache of pleasure into something that roared and consumed. I held him to me as tightly as I could, taking his thrusts deep while the glow of need in my belly burned brighter than molten glass.
My shoulder blades ground against the wall at the force of him. His name whispered out of my mouth, and then screamed from my throat as he drove into me again and again, until I came to the edge and plummeted over. My body shuddered and clenched around him. He let out his own masculine sounds of climax, deep in his chest and god, if that wasn’t the hottest sound I’d ever heard in my life.
Jonah’s grinding hips slowed. He released my legs, letting my feet find the floor, but his body still held mine to the wall, his hands closed around my wrists. Within the hard grip, his mouth turned gentle, soothing the burn of his stubble and the bite of his earlier kisses from my skin. Carnal need and tender care. Desired and cherished.
Loved.
Jonah makes love to me, I thought, kissing him back, my fingers soft on his skin where they’d scratched him. No matter how hard or rough we are, he’s still making love to me.
“You make me feel so good, Jonah,” I whispered. “Better than good. Like I can start all over again.”
“Kacey.” He held my face in his hands, his dark eyes intent on me. “You make me feel alive.”
He kissed me again, slow and soft, while I burned with hope, sure there weren’t thousands of moments left to us, but millions.
Millions.
“Have you ever been to a beach?” I asked Jonah. “Not a lakeshore, but a real ocean?”
We lay around in bed on a Tuesday night—typically our date night but we’d opted to stay in and fool around.
“Sure. Why?”
“I miss it. Growing up, the beach was such a part of my daily life. I used to ditch school in the mornings, and my best friend and I would go to one of the coffee houses along the boardwalk in Pacific Beach, or a breakfast place that had surfboards hanging from the walls. We’d hang out at the beach until after lunch, then go back to school so we wouldn’t miss last attendance. Sometimes it got us out of a trip to the Assistant Principal’s office. Most times it didn’t, but it was always worth it.”
Jonah brushed his hand over my cheek. “You’re pretty fair for a beach lover.”
“Big hats and SPF 1000,” I said. “And I preferred swimming or body-surfing in that big ocean. Big and endless. If you think the stars were spectacular at Great Basin, wait until you see a moonrise over the Pacific.”
He nuzzled my ear. “Sounds like you’re planning a trip.”
“I really want to take you to San Diego. Walk on the beach and hang out at all the cool spots I used to love.”
“And see your parents?”
I shuddered. “No. God, no. It would just be awkward and uncomfortable…”
“I can handle awkward and uncomfortable. If you want to see them, you should.”
“I don’t. I want to be with you, at the places I used to love best.” I lifted my head to look at him. “Can you? Two days. Flights are pretty cheap and I still have some Rapid Confession money—”
“You should save it. Don’t spend it on me.”
“I want to spend it on us. But if you can’t spare the time from the hot shop I understand.”
“I can.”
I caressed his face. “Really?”
“If it’s important to you, I can.”
I let out a little cry of excitement and kissed him. “Let’s go next Monday and Tuesday. So we don’t take time from your parents. Of course, Theo will have a cow…”
Jonah laughed. “He might, but how beautifully happy you look right now is more than worth it.”
Theo’s flight safety demonstration lasted half an hour. From what to do if the cabin pressure in the airplane dropped, to making sure we brought all of Jonah’s meds and stored them properly so they wouldn’t get confiscated by the TSA. And of course, where the nearest hospital was to our hotel. But I never took Theo’s concern for Jonah for granted. I patted his cheek and told him I’d take good care of his brother.
I’d booked us into a place with the most San Diego name ever: the Surfer Beach Hotel on Pacific Drive. Its proximity to the beach made it a little pricey for my budget, but I wanted us to be able to walk along the ocean at night, in the morning, or any time the urge struck us. The price was worth it.
At the airport rent-a-car, Jonah led me to a black Ford Mustang convertible.
“You didn’t think this entire trip was on you, did you?” he asked, holding the door open. “I’ve got savings. Between the two of us, we can make these two days pretty damn awesome.”
We put the top down, cranked the music up, and Jonah gunned the engine with a whoop of laughter. Singing loud, we cruised along a post-morning commute stretch of freeway and arrived at the hotel around ten. We had the entire day ahead of us.
“What do you want to do first?” I asked, tying on the top of my black bikini.
“What do you want to do second?” he replied, throwing me down on the bed.
“Yes,” I whispered, as he trailed kisses down my neck, his hands working the knot on the back of my bathing suit. “This first.”
It was after eleven when we made it out to the beach.
We set up near the shore, and I kicked off my flip flops to bury my feet in the hot, soft sand.
“You smell that?” I asked, inhaling deeply.
“Seaweed?” Jonah asked, eyeing a clump that had washed ashore and was buzzing with sandflies.
“The ocean,” I said.
His arms slid around me from behind. “I want to smell it in your hair after we swim,” he murmured. “And on the bedsheets later…”
I turned and kissed him, my hands sliding over his chest and arms. His skin was hot, slippery with sunscreen. I tugged him to the water.
The cold of the ocean bit down hard, taking my breath before it relaxed into a soft coolness. I dove under the foam of a wave, just as I used to do when I was a kid. The cold water on my face and the pull of the ocean were just as I’d remembered, and the nostalgia was so strong, I had to get my bearings for a minute. But there was Jonah. My here and now, and the moment fel
t as big as the ocean.
Jonah flopped backward into a cresting wave and disappeared beneath the surface. He came up out of the water, the sun glistening in the beads of water along his chest. Water arced off his head as he whipped the hair out of his eyes. I bit my lip as a shiver went up my thighs.
Jonah swam up and kissed me. God, he tasted so good. Like himself—clean and warm—but with the tang of saltwater mixing in. He groaned into my mouth, then broke away with a gasp.
“Holy shit,” he said. I could feel his erection straining against his swim shorts. “You taste like salted caramel.” He kissed me again, and pressed my hips to his. “We’re going to have to live here.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, ringing my arms around his neck.
“Literally right here in the water. I’ll be arrested if I come out.”
I laughed and walked backward, deeper into the ocean, shielding the front of his body with mine. I fell back, taking him with me, and we kissed above the surface and below it, before coming to rest in the water, neither of us speaking.
Jonah held me as I floated on my back, my head in the curve of his shoulder, and I had the fleeting wish that we could live here. Not in San Diego but in this day, these moments, over and over again, forever.
We had dinner at the Chart House, a beachfront restaurant that was a splurge, but life was short and money was for spending today. Afterward, we walked along the surf, hand-in-hand, carrying our shoes. The full moon hovered over the horizon. Its light spilled over the black ocean in a cone of molten silver.
“This was a good idea,” Jonah said. He stopped walking and cast his gaze out over the waves. “Every decision I’ve made since I met you has been good. Taking you home that first night, eating at that diner, letting you stay for a few days, asking you to come back when you left.”
“I was a little persistent on some counts,” I said.
“Thank God you were.” He turned to look at me and his moon-filled eyes were fierce. “My family and friends ask me what I want. What I want to do or see besides make glass. And I’ve only told them what I don’t want. I don’t want to travel to some far-flung place, just so I can say I went. I don’t want to climb a mountain or jump out of an airplane. A little bit of exhilaration and then back on the ground again—those manufactured moments aren’t what I want.”
He brushed his hand over my hair, pulling me close.
“This is what I want. You and me, in a place like this. Outside of time. Going for a walk along the beach, eating or swimming or making love when we feel like it.” I heard his breath catch and his next words were gruff. “This is living, Kace. This is exactly what I wanted but I didn’t know who to ask.”
I felt tears sting my eyes, and I let out a breathy little laugh. “It was me.”
“It was you.” He held my face in his hands, brushed his lips over mine. “Always and only you.”
We packed a lot into the next day, starting with an early–morning stroll on the beach and breakfast at the Pannikin coffee shop.
“This is where me and my best friend, Laura, used to come when we ditched class,” I said. “This building was once a train station.”
Jonah plucked the corner of his napkin, shredding it into careful strips. “Your parents’ house must be close by then.”
“A mile and half east,” I said. “But we’re not here for that. The things I like about San Diego are far away from my house.”
Jonah smiled gently. “Show me all of them.”
I took him to my favorite fish taco stand for lunch, followed by a doughnut from the best doughnut shop in the world. We strolled the Pacific Beach boardwalk, crowded with pedestrians, and skateboarders.
“Do you want to see the place where I had my first kiss?”
“Not especially.”
“What? Think you can’t top fourteen-year-old Ricky Moreno with his braces and bad breath?”
The twist of Jonah’s mouth was smug as he slid a hand around the back of my neck and kissed me. A man’s kiss, demanding and deep, leaving me breathless.
“Ricky who?” I murmured.
He arched his brow in that way I loved. “Damn right.”
We started walking again, arms crossed over one another’s backs.
“The kiss at the MGM Grand really was my first,” I said.
“My jackpot kiss?”
“It was the first time a man kissed me because it was the perfect time and place for a kiss. The right moment. Not because he hoped it would lead to something else.”
“But I did want it to lead to something else,” Jonah said. “This. Us.”
I smiled at the warmth that spread through me for those words. “That’s a first, too.”
The day melted away as we wandered San Diego, then wound up back at the hotel. To make love, to sleep a little. We showered and went for dinner at a little crab shack, and after, we climbed into the rented convertible as twilight deepened to night.
“There’s still time if you want to see your parents,” Jonah said. “Don’t not go on my account, Kace. It isn’t about me.”
I took a breath. “I really don’t want to see or talk to them. But maybe…We could go by the house. I wouldn’t mind that.” It was the truth: I wanted—needed—to know if the house was still my home.
Jonah revved the engine. “Let’s do it.”
“All right. But…put the top up, okay? So they don’t see me.”
He smiled and pushed the button. The car’s top unfolded and dropped down, clicking into place.
I directed Jonah to the Bridgeview neighborhood, where the houses were smaller than the big behemoths of Mission Hills to the west.
“That one,” I said, my heart pounding in my ears. “Stop here.”
Jonah pulled to the curb. Across the street and a bit down was the two-story house in pale blue paint with white trim. My parents’ old Subaru was parked on the street.
“They can’t use the garage,” I said absently. “It’s full of old furniture and antiques my dad inherited when my grandmother died.” My eyes swept the house, lingered on the yellow squares of light from the front windows. “They’re home,” I said softly.
Jonah leaned over the console, his head by my shoulder. He took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Whatever you want to do, Kace.”
The house blurred as tears filled my eyes. “I’m so proud you’re with me, Jonah. It would fucking suck to watch my dad miss everything wonderful about you because he’s ashamed of me.”
“Do you want to go in alone?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Maybe he’s changed,” he said. “He’s cold on the phone but maybe if he saw your face, up close. Saw how beautiful you are, and how much you love him. Because it’s all right there in your eyes, Kace. He might see it and things would be different.”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly.
The front door opened and my parents came out.
I clutched Jonah’s hand in a vise grip as they went down the walk toward their car. In the light of the streetlamps I could see my mother, small and birdlike, wearing a neat blue dress with a black purse. Beside her, my father was tall and lean in a navy suit and yellow tie.
“They’re going out,” I said.
“You can do it,” Jonah said softly.
I mustered my courage, my will, added it to the overwhelming desire to talk to my parents. Seeing them after four years swamped me with nostalgia, even if so little of it with my dad was good.
“Okay,” I said, and reached for the door handle.
But then my father stopped at the passenger door of the Subaru. He turned to my mother.
“Wait,” I whispered, laying a hand on Jonah to still him.
My father was saying something. We were parked too far away to hear, but I could see my mother tilt her head up. Her brittle, plastic smile bloomed into something spontaneous and joyful. She tossed her head—a carefree, almost girlish gesture I’d never seen before. Her laugh floated across the street and m
y father brushed his thumb over her chin—a lover’s caress. Romantic.
“Dad.” My mouth shaped the word without a sound as he opened the passenger door for my mother. When he moved around to the driver’s side, his stride was almost a strut, his angular, stony face soft and amused.
“Kace, they’re going,” Jonah said.
“Let them go,” I whispered.
“Are you sure?”
But the car was moving away from the curb and disappearing down the street. My fingers lifted off the window frame in a small wave.
Jonah’s fingers caressed the back of my neck. “Why?”
“They looked so happy,” I whispered. “I’ve never seen them look like… It was such a moment, you know? If I’d gotten out and surprised them, it would have ruined it.”
His hand played soft in my hair. “I’m sorry.”
“Maybe he’s better,” I said, “now that I’m gone. I’m not trying to be a martyr. I just mean…maybe he’s happier. Which makes them better together. I wouldn’t want to mess that up. God, they looked so in love…” I exhaled, and looked back at Jonah with a weak smile. “Let’s go back to the hotel. We have an early flight in the morning.”
Jonah started up the car, drove ten feet, then jerked it to a stop and threw it into park. He turned to face me, one hand on the steering wheel, the other along the back of my seat.
“When you’re ready, you’ll come back,” he said. “And your father might talk and reconcile, or he might hold on to his stupid anger and turn you away. If he does, then he’s a goddamn idiot. You wanting to be loved by him doesn’t make you broken, Kace. He’s the broken one for letting you go. It’s his loss. I want to hate him for what he’s done to you, but instead I just feel sorry for him.”
He kissed me then, fiercely, as if sealing a pact, his hand tight in my hair.
“Needed to get that off your chest, did you?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said.
“Feel better?”
“Much.” He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb again.
