by Maggie Marr
“There are two bedrooms and two and a half baths. Miss Bliss, we’ve put you in the white room, which is at the end of the hall, and Mr. Legend, you’re in the blue room, which is on the left. The kitchen is stocked; however, if you need something else, use the landline and dial seven and the kitchen can get you anything. I’ll be back at six-fifty to take to you to the main house. If you want anything please don’t hesitate to call. I am direct dial 1 on the landline.”
“Thank you, Jonathan,” I said.
He waved and quietly shut the front door.
The beach house was filled with overstuffed couches and chairs that begged to be lounged upon. My gaze landed on the far corner of the main room, where an easel and several blank canvases plus paints and brushes waited.
My heart pounded in my chest. What a lovely invitation to simply be free with my work. How thoughtful. Elizabeth even had the right paints.
“She’s amazing,” Sterling said.
He opened the giant back door and the breeze from the ocean drifted gently through the cottage. His eyes remained fixed on the horizon.
“Did you mean what you said about staying in Los Angeles?” A tiny tremble vibrated through his voice.
“Yes.”
He turned to me and looked directly into my eyes.
“Why?” His gaze, his voice, his very being pulled at the inner coils of heat forming within my body.
“Because of you, Sterling.” I’d gone and said it. I’d told him how much he meant to me by choosing to stay in Los Angeles.
His whole face changed. The mask that he’d tried so desperately to maintain to protect himself from the love he felt dropped away. There, before me, was the Sterling I remembered with the fast smile and charm and sparkle in his eyes. He was the Sterling I wanted, the Sterling I had always wanted. He moved to me and wrapped his arms around me and his lips pressed to mine.
His kiss held want and desire, but it was also a kiss of thanks and happiness. He pulled his lips from mine.
“I love you, Rhiannon Bliss. I have loved you since I was seventeen. I never stopped loving you. I don’t think that I can.”
The heat in my chest broke past my fear of the past and my fears for the future. The love in my heart convinced me to forget the possibility that we would end badly, that too much lay between Sterling and me and our families. The heat and the love and this cottage, this beautiful cottage, with the light and the ocean beyond convinced me that this place wasn’t magical, this time wasn’t magical but we, Sterling and I, were magical together. We were a couple meant for eternity.
“I love you too, Sterling.” The words didn’t halt, the heat didn’t change, nothing bad happened.
Instead Sterling clasped my hand and he gently led me across the room and down the hall to my room, or what I knew now would be our room for this trip.
Bathed in bright light, the eyelet comforter on the bed was already turned down. Sterling turned to me. His lips pressed to mine and I opened my lips to his. Heat flashed through my body and my sex clutched as the kiss turned hotter and more demanding. His hand pressed to my bare shoulder and he lifted the straps of my top and pulled it off my shoulder. His lips left mine and the heat of his kiss slid onto my neck, my shoulder and then to my breast. The heat devoured me. This was what I wanted. I wanted Sterling. I needed Sterling. He tugged my skirt over my hips and it dropped to the floor. My body was nearly bare aside from a tiny pair of panties. He took a step back and looked at me. His eyes traveled over my body. He stopped and stepped forward and pulled the lace edges of my panties down and slipped them past my knees. I stepped from them.
“There,” he said. “Now that is beautiful.”
My nipples pebbled with want. God I wanted him. I wanted to feel him inside me, to know that I was Sterling’s and he was mine. To finally be with the man whose face haunted me when I kissed another.
I stepped to him. My hands ran down the front of his shirt and caressed the hard planes of his chest. I pulled the fabric from his skin and up over his head. His lips were on mine and his fingertips stroked my breasts. He pulled his lips from my mouth and leaned forward and pulled my nipple into his mouth. A moan cascaded from me. His lips moved to my other nipple and my body pressed into his maleness. I grasped the top button, slid the zipper down, and pulled his jeans down over his hips. His hard cock pressed against my belly. Our flesh pressed together.
Heat rolled through my belly. My sex clenched. My hand clasped his hard sex and I stroked the velvet skin. I ran my thumb over the top of him. Air hissed out over Sterling’s lips and his stomach muscles tightened.
“My God, Rhiannon.”
Again, he pressed his lips to mine and lifted me up. I wrapped my legs around his muscled waist. He carried me to the bed and lay me back onto the soft sheets. His lips traveled from my mouth over my neck.
Heat surged through me. My hips pressed upward, my sex wanting him to fill me. His lips moved down my belly. Arriving at my core, he gently slid my thighs open. His mouth trailed along the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
“You’re beautiful.”
With sunlight streaming through the windows and Sterling between my legs I felt beautiful.
He ran his finger around the edge of my sex, but stopped just short of satisfying the nerves that throbbed with the desire to be touched. He gazed up at me over my mound and then with his eyes still locked with mine, his mouth was upon me. My hips bucked upward. His hands grasped my hips to still me and he pulled me into his mouth. His tongue made firm circles along my clit, dragging waves of pleasure through my body. His finger slipped into me and a moan cried from my throat.
“Baby, you’re so tight and you’re so wet.”
My hips bucked upward. His finger pulsed into me and his tongue again found my engorged clit. His kiss and the pulsing of his fingers grew more insistent. I neared an edge. My hands clasped his well-muscled back as the waves of pleasure started in my sex and rolled upward through my body, consuming my flesh, pulling me under. His tongue on my clit created pleasure that drove through me. I clutched Sterling, bucked upward and fell over the edge, his mouth pulling me into that sweet abyss of pleasure.
I trembled and shivered as Sterling kissed his way up my leg. His mouth was on mine and I tasted me on his lips.
“Rhiannon, I want you. I want to fuck you.”
My sex clenched with his words. I’d wanted Sterling for seven years. It was his face I always saw when I closed my eyes in the throes of pleasure. “Please, Sterling, yes.”
I reached out and grasped him. My thumb stroked the head of his cock. A slick drop of liquid escaped. His finger stroked over my still-sensitive clit. Then he pressed his body up over me. He knelt before me and widened my legs.
“Baby, tell me, please baby tell me. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Please Sterling, I’ve wanted this for so long.”
The head of his cock nudged at my entrance and I tightened around him. He braced one hand beside my head and his finger continued to press my clit. Still so near the edge of another orgasm, my body throbbed for him. I wanted him to fill me, to take me, to be inside me. My hips pressed up to take more of him.
“Rhiannon,” he said through gritted teeth. I knew that he held back for me. He wanted to press into me slowly. Restraint etched across his face. The restraint of not pressing into me fast and furious. Slowly he pressed his hard cock into me. With each bit of pressure, my body stretched around him.
“Baby, are you okay?” His voice was rough and raspy.
“Yes.” I pressed my hands to his chest and my hips tilted up to him.
Fire lit through me as Sterling moved into me and stretched me. Filling me with him. One final press and he was in me. So full. So complete. My body pressed toward him. I wanted him to stay there, inside me, our bodies entangled forever.
Our gazes were locked. There were no words needed. His hips pressed forward and then slowly he pulled back from me. Again and my hips rolled toward him and abso
rbed the pleasure of him in me, filling me, pressing into my body.
“Oh Rhiannon, my God Rhiannon, it’s never been like this, I’ve never, I’ve never been with a woman like this.”
His cock slid in and then back out of me with his words. I reached between us and clasped the base of his cock. I wanted to touch him, to feel the spot where we connected and our two separate bodies became one. I looked down and saw where he entered me and with that visual my sex clenched with a tight fierceness. He pressed back into me. I was so tight and so full with him.
“Fuck,” Sterling said. His face tightened, his entire body hard as stone.
“Faster, Sterling, please,” I begged. “Fuck me faster and harder.”
“Baby. Are you sure?
“God, yes, Sterling, yes.” I wanted him to break free. To feel him in and out and in and out with a hard force that claimed me.
A low growl passed his lips and with it Sterling surrendered his restraint. His thick cock pulsed into me harder and faster with a searing heat that traveled through every fiber of my body. Again, I neared the edge.
“Sterling, I’m going to come,” I wailed in a voice unknown to me.
“Come for me, baby, come for me, Rhiannon.” His eyes on me, I thrust my head back against the pillow and shot over the edge and then he was with me, the heat of his come shooting through me and into me and there was nothing but me and Sterling and thousands upon thousands of brilliant fragments of pleasure.
Sterling
My heart was gone. It now beat outside my body, possessed by the creature that lay beside me. Rhiannon’s white-blonde hair flowed over her shoulders as she dozed. Her perfect breasts with tiny pink rosebud nipples lay exposed as the sheet slid over her waist. The skin of her cheekbones felt so soft as I traced the lines of her face with my fingertips. She stretched long and feline and her eyes fluttered open. A smile that shredded me. Her eyes shone with happiness.
I hoped that this time she’d be gentle with my heart. That this time she wouldn’t run away.
“We have a half hour until dinner,” I said. I pressed my lips to her neck. The scent of cinnamon and warmth, the scent of Rhiannon, flooded me. My cock responded. She curled toward me.
“We could do a lot in a half hour,” she said.
My fingertips glided over her side, her ribs, to the curve of her waist, her hip, and then my fingertips slid forward and brushed against her curls. Her hips tilted forward as I touched her, my fingers slipping between the lips of her sex. My cock already throbbing and insistent, wanting to enter the spot that would forever be mine.
A low moan came from Rhiannon with my touch. I pressed her clit, my fingertips circling the tight nub. Her body responded, her hips undulating with my touch. The throbbing of my cock grew harder and thicker and more insistent. The sheet fell away from her body. My lips found her nipple, now hard and tight. I suckled, pulling hard and nipping her. A deep sound of pleasure from Rhiannon and her hips thrust against me.
“Please, Sterling, again, please.”
She rolled onto her back and her body was the most welcome of invitations. I threw the sheet back and looked at her, my eyes eating up all of her flesh. Her breasts, her eyes filled with desire, her legs spread open to me, slick and wet.
“You are perfect,” I said.
Her eyes sparkled. Her hips rocked the tiniest bit as though my eyes stroked her. A small smile formed on her lips. I reached out my hand and stroked her, the gentlest of touches on her clit, and her body responded with a near convulsion.
“Please, Sterling, I want you.”
I leaned forward. The desire to take her was thick and hot within me, but there was also this deep feeling in my heart. As though each time I touched Rhiannon, each time I entered her, I did so with the reverence deserving of a sacred act. There had been so little sacred in my life. Her purity, her beauty, touched a piece of me that I believed had long ago died.
I pressed close to her entrance. Her sex tightened before I entered her. I grasped her hips and pulled her to me. This roaring inside me, this deep desire that I could not quench or stop took over and I thrust into her. Her body was hot and wet and silk and softness against my thrust. She clenched around me tight and hot. Her mouth opened and her breath came in tiny bursts.
“Oh, God yes,” she panted. My hand slid between us and my fingers pressed against her clit, massaging her as I pulled back and prepared to thrust into her again. He hips arched up with my touch. She threw her head back. Her pretty breasts in the sunlight, her pink bud nipples hard and pert. I leaned forward and grasped her nipple between my lips.
“Sterling,” she yelled out and her sex tightened around my cock. Any restraint, any possibility of delay was lost. Need pressed hard against me and swelled into an all-consuming force that wanted and needed and took. Forward and back, thrusting my body hard into her tight yielding flesh. My name on her lips, her gaze locked with mine, a hot jet came through me and poured from me. I went over the edge clasped tight to Rhiannon.
Chapter 18
Rhiannon
Sunlight fell through the leaves of the trees and dappled Amanda’s skin. A soft wind whispered over the Malibu hills. “Daddy left,” Amanda said. Her words were soft and painful, as though nearly impossible for her to utter. Forbidden words made true by speaking them.
“Mine too,” I said. We both stared out over the Malibu hills, neither of us adding the why or the when, which seemed to mean nothing right now in comparison to the very fact that our fathers had each left their families.
“Your dad came to check on Mom at the house,” Amanda said.
Something soured in my mouth. Bitter bile in my throat. I hadn’t seen my father in close to two weeks and now Amanda had the express pleasure of having Papa being at her house and actually checking to see how she and Sterling and Joanne were doing. I had no words for that and I had nothing kind to say.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said. She tilted her head and it rested on my shoulder. My heart softened toward my best friend. She too had lost her father and understood what I felt, how alone how afraid, how unsure … and yet … yet I couldn’t say the words. Her face turned to mine and her lips parted the tiniest bit. “There’s something else,” she said. Her gaze fluttered away as though this was something that she’d been told not to say to me, or anyone else. She grasped at a blade of grass. Did she already know what I suspected, that the very reason our families had shattered was because of her mother and my father?
“She has to go to the doctor,” Amanda whispered.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Everyone goes to the doctor.”
Amanda shook her head and her eyes widened. “No, it’s not like that,” Amanda continued. “They think something is wrong.”
I turned my head toward the hills and looked away from my friend. I loved her mother as though she was my own and yet, in this instant, I wished she would die. Be gone, far, far away so that Mama and Papa could once again be a family and we could be together. I wished that upon Amanda and Sterling’s mother. Wished it to be true. A gasp crossed my lips and I clutched a hand to my mouth. I turned back to Amanda. How could I be so horrible, so bad, so awful to wish such a thing? I wrapped my arm around Amanda’s shoulders.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” I said with hope as penance for my horrid thoughts. Thoughts that filtered through my brain floated the idea that if there was no more Joanne perhaps there would be my mother and father, together and happy in our home.
“Yeah,” Amanda said. “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean Daddy will come home. I heard them talking.”
I stiffened. What did she know? I couldn’t tell her, I didn’t want to admit what I knew. I wanted to pretend none of this was happening.
“I think,” Amanda shook her head, “I think maybe Daddy has another”—her gaze drifted away with her words—“I think there might be someone else.”
“Amanda, you saw him with Anita.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. “
Yes, but that’s different. I mean, I think, somehow I think, there’s more. I don’t know for certain.” She plucked at the grass.
According to my mother there was more. Much more. But I’d been tasked with not telling, not saying anything, not being the person who told Amanda and Sterling what my family had long known about her family. There were things we simply didn’t discuss. Whispers, hints on the wind, quick conversations and looks.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I squeezed her shoulders and pulled her toward me. There was no way around this, these moments, this time, and how badly this summer sucked. How we had gone from long lazy days in the pool, and horseback rides, and evenings on the back porch, and cookouts to this … this moment when our lives were shattered beyond repair. In the distance I saw Sterling. His shirt was off and tied around his waist. His body was kissed by the sun and his hair was thick and black. The bruise along his cheek had long since healed. We both stood. A heat swirled through me with his approach.
Amanda looked from me to her brother. “I’m going back to the house,” she said. She reached for Bronco’s reins and walked him from the shade.
“You don’t have to leave,” I said.
“I know.” A smile lit her face. A smile I didn’t see much of anymore. “But I like that you two are in love. It makes me happy even when I’m feeling so sad.” She climbed up onto the back of Bronco. “I’ll take Torrence back, too.” She reached for Torrence’s reins. She walked the horses away and toward Sterling coming up the path. She stopped and leaned toward him. They were too far away for me to hear what was said. He looked toward me and covered his hand over his eyes. Even from a distance the heat of his gaze traveled over me. Tingles fluttered through me. Tingles I’d not known until this summer, until Sterling had first kissed me in this very spot. He nodded to Amanda and she kept on down the hill toward the house and toward the barn.
Sterling stopped by my side.
“Hey,” he said. “I brought a snack.” He lifted the picnic basket he held. I looked up at him. I was speechless. I couldn’t form the words; I could barely talk when I was with him. His fingertips clasped mine. His head tilted and those lips, those beautiful lips were on mine.
