I almost flip him off, but Ana actually looks tempted.
"We're not done," I tell her. "Come on."
"What are you going to do to me next?" she says, one eyebrow raised.
"I can think of a few things."
She giggles.
I want to etch this into my brain. When she smiles, she's so pretty. She has this lopsided kind of smile, always pulling to the right a little. A little snaggletooth makes her grin just a bit imperfect, and it makes it all the more real, all the more beautiful. Unable to help myself, I reach up and snatch her glasses away. I want to see those eyes of her. Mismatched and beautiful.
Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her. She melts against me, and I feel her smile as our lips meet.
"Haunted house," I tell her.
She actually gasps.
"It's just a ride. Come on."
I lead her over, and we breeze through the line and get in one of the cars. They're spaced far enough apart that the couples riding them can't see each other in the dark. Ana clings to me as we roll into the ride itself, where it's pitch-black.
She looks around at the fake blood on the walls and her fingers dig into my arm.
I hold her to my side and sit back. I know what's going to happen. I've been here before. Ana doesn’t, though, so every time something jumps out at us, she screams and hugs me tighter.
"I am not scared," she protests before yelping in terror at a rubber spider.
"Sure," I tell her. "Sure, honey."
She's laughing again by the time we exit the ride.
"I want something sedate now, like that." She points at the merry-go-round.
"How about the teacups?" I suggest, pointing at the now-still ride.
"That looks calming," she says.
I hide my predatory grin as I walk behind her and hand over the tickets. The attendant doesn't seem to care. Ana picks a big pink teacup and sits down. I sit opposite her.
"We really want it balanced out," I suggest.
"Sit with me."
"If you insist." I smirk.
"Why? What are you up to, Jason?"
I scoot closer to her and grab hold of the handle in the middle of the cup, and it begins to move with the others as the ride starts. Ana eyes me.
"See, thing is," I tell her, "these things spin. The more off-balance they are, the faster you spin. The harder you pull this handle, the faster you spin. Like this."
I yank on it is hard as I can.
As the ride reaches full speed, a screaming Ana holds on to me hard, and I pull the handle with all my might, all my strength.
The teacup spins so fast, the color seems to drain from her face. Ana grabs the handle and pulls too, laughing madly as the teacup spins wildly, throwing her against me with every turn. I lean into her and savor the expression of pure joy on her face.
When the ride ends, she's all wobbly on her feet. I'm dizzy as hell, but I wear it well and hold her up as we walk down the ramp.
"No more crazy ones, please."
"One more crazy one, then we'll go ride the merry-go-round."
She sighs. "One more. Which one?"
I point at the Viking ship.
The big boat is on a giant triangular mount, basically a huge swing. It swings back and forth so far that it's a little shy of vertical at either end. As it swings, the riders scream.
"No," she says.
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes.
I kiss her cheek.
"Fine. Yes."
I grab her hand and rush toward it and pull her into the line. I always loved this one. When the riders from the last turn dismount, I rush with her to get the best seats, at the very back. The attendant clips us in, and Ana holds on to me hard, her fingers pressed into the muscle of my bicep.
"Is this safe?" she asks.
"Of course it is. It's starting."
The boat's swings build up, each one more intense than the last. Ana trembles as it starts to go vertical and the swings really kick in. I don't know when she looks more alarmed, when we go all the way forward, or all the way back, or when she looks straight down at the ground forty feet below and cries out.
It feels like the ride goes on forever. I study every movement of her face, drink in her shock and surprise and laughing joy, burn it into my head so it will never leave me. I'm sitting on a Viking longship that's lifting me up in the air and sending my stomach bouncing from my throat to my knees, and I barely notice.
I can only see her.
When it's finally over, I fulfill my promise. Ana chooses a princessy-looking unicorn on the merry-go-round, and I grab the horse next to her, appropriately a black stallion. As the ride starts and she bobs up and down, I pull out my phone and video her riding. She turns back and grins at me.
She notices, looks over, and smiles. God, she's beautiful. I could just watch her forever. When the ride finally ends, I feel a lingering sense of something lost, seeing a beautiful moment that comes only once, to be lost in time and held only in memory.
A poet would say something about the melancholy of first love, I'm sure.
After the ride, I grab her hand.
"Frog Pond time."
Ana watches the game first. The players take rubber frogs and set them on catapults, then whack the back end with a big rubber mallet. The idea is to get the frog on a little moving lily pad and win prizes.
I buy Ana three frogs and step back, again recording it on video. She looks at me nervously, brings the mallet up, and smashes it down. The frog goes flying high and she yelps, surprised by how far up it went. She jumps back with a louder cry when it lands and splashes her.
"You have to finesse it a little, honey."
She scowls at me but manages to land a frog on a pad on the second try. Unfortunately, one out of three doesn't get her a prize.
Dejected, she walks over to me and shrugs.
"We have all day, hon, and there's more games. Come on."
I grab her hand and lead her to the next game. She loves the ring toss and loves the shooting gallery even more. By the end she's hitting all the targets with the little compressed-air rifle and looks so proud.
"What about that one?"
"The cups?"
There's a game where you toss a ball into these plastic goblets, except it's freaking impossible. I sigh and walk her over, knowing she'll be disappointed. Ana hands over a five dollar bill for six balls, steps back, and starts tossing them.
They bounce around and always land in the yellow cups. They have to hit blue, gold, or red to actually win something. There's only one red cup for the biggest prize.
Anna tries only for the red cup. Her face is a mask of concentration; she doesn't even notice I'm filming her. She tosses ball after ball.
One, finally, bounces by accident almost into the red cup.
"Jason, you try," she insists, pointing to the last ball.
I walk over and hand her my phone so she can film my humiliation. I don't go for the red cup. I aim at one of the blue ones just so I can win her something.
The ball hits the blue cup but refuses to stay. It bounces loose and hits the "corner" where the cups meet, bounces again, and rolls across, traveling along the rim of the cups.
It trembles on the edge of the red cup, then falls in.
The attendant looks absolutely astonished. He stands up and stares at the cup, as if he's not sure what to do.
He looks up at the row of stuffed sharks hanging from the ceiling, each about three feet long.
"Uh, what color?"
I turn to Ana. "Princess?"
Ana walks over and looks at them, cocking her head to one side.
"I want the pink one."
The attendant takes it down and hands it over the counter to me. It's so big, Ana can't even carry it. I have to, over my shoulder.
"It's after noon," she sighs. "What should we do now?"
"Now we should get you a Nic-o-Boli."
"What is that?"
"You'l
l see. Come on."
On the way we stop at the Thrasher's for a bucket of beach fries. Ana carries them in her hand, feeding me between nibbling on them herself. I'm too busy carrying her prize. We get some strange looks as we pass the few people on the street.
"Is the Fun Land open all the time?"
"Only from early spring until today," I sigh. "It closes over the winter."
"That's sad," she says.
I nod. It is, in a way.
Nicola Pizza sits around a corner off the main drag, nestled next to a wing place and a smoke shop. The girl at the hostess station doesn't bat an eye at the shark, nor does the waitress who comes to our table and sees it occupying the booth beside Ana.
I get a Coke, Ana orders a Sprite. She really seems to like those, for some reason.
"Oh, they have anchovies!" she says, her face lighting up.
"Oh God," I say, feigning choking.
She sticks her tongue out at me.
After I explain the virtues of the Nic-o-Boli, Ana defiles it by ordering one with ground beef, extra ricotta, and anchovies. I get mine with beef and cheese, the way I always liked them.
"You have eaten here before?" she asks while we wait.
"Yeah, this was part of the ritual, I guess."
She seems a little confused.
"Figuratively, Princess. When I came down here with my family, we always did this. Funland, eat here, the fries, the works."
She nods like she's thinking about something.
"You're treating me like family," she says.
I'm a little taken aback, but she's right.
It's not a long wait for the food. When it comes out she digs in with her plastic forks, eating hungrily. I make a superhuman effort not to look at the whole fish cut up in her meal.
"It's good," she says with a full mouth, then gulps it down. "I'm sorry."
"Oh my God," I say.
"What?"
"You used a contraction. You said 'I'm.'"
She grins. "Yes, I am… I'm learning."
As I eat, I feel something brush my leg.
Wait, that's not something. That's her foot, and it's caressing along my thigh.
Not to be outdone, I slip my foot out of my shoe and run it up her calf. She giggles and puts her foot right in my crotch, rubbing my dick through my shorts with her toes. It starts to harden.
"You're making me want to run out on the check."
"Never. I'm still hungry," she says with a smirk. "You can just sit there and watch me eat until I have had my fill."
Ana pulls out her card and pays for the meal before I can. When we leave, I tuck the shark under my arm and walk with her, hand in hand.
"I don't wish to go back yet."
"I know. We're not," I tell her. "We need to go to the beach."
"I thought we were at the beach."
"No, the real beach. I'll show you."
It's midafternoon by the time we get back to the car. I put the shark in the back seat and put Ana in the front, and drive her to the beach.
It takes half an hour to get to Cape Henlopen Park. When Ana sees the big spotting towers, she says, "What are those?"
I point at the big brown concrete roundhouses. "Back in World War II, they used those to look out for German submarines."
Honestly, I have no idea if that's true or not. It's what my dad told me.
The park is open for free this time of year. There are no cars in the lot; it's too cold to go swimming.
I brought a blanket anyway, a big one. Actually two. I grab them and carry them over my shoulders and walk out onto the sand with Ana.
She strides out onto the beach and stands there, and she looks like a goddess when the wind picks up and blows her hair every which way, half of it loosened from her braid.
Anastasia just gives up and sets her hair free, and it blows out wild and untamed in a silver-gold stream that shimmers in the late afternoon sun like snow on a mountain.
"We're alone," she notes.
"Yeah. I was thinking we could just hang out here for a while and—"
She starts taking her clothes off.
"Ana," I warn her. "The water is freezing."
"I checked the temperature. It's fifty-six degrees. I will only be in for a minute."
"I really don't think—"
My words die in my mouth as she casually tosses her hoodie on the blanket I've laid out, and then her jeans, and then her underwear. She takes it off as if she's alone, her movements so natural and comfortable that they somehow make my cock even harder at the sight of her naked body.
I trail after her, planning to dive in and rescue her, but she's true to her word.
She walks out until she's perhaps waist-deep in the water and ducks down, and then rises up with her hair soaked. She bobs in the waves just long enough that I'm about to go in after her before she walks back out, leaving tracks in the wet sand
Water shimmers on her naked body, and her waist-length hair sticks to her skin like snow on a mountain slope. With her mismatched eyes and the sea and sky behind her, she looks like some ocean goddess rising from the waves. I drink in the sight of every inch of her, from her delicate toes to the thick, honey-colored hair between her legs to her hard nipples to her soft lips and the way the bold look on her face contrasts with the blush on her skin.
She stands before me wet and naked and just now shivering and says, "Are we going to make love now?"
I start peeling off my clothes.
Chapter Fourteen
Anastasia
When Jason starts to disrobe, I go to help him. I lift his shirt up first, and tremble when the backs of my fingers brush his skin. I gasp when I see him.
My heart pounds in my chest, for his beautiful body and for the threat someone will come walking over the hill and see us. We walked far down the beach, well away from anything, really. We are totally alone, the only sounds the waves and the cry of gulls and my own blood rushing in my ears as I undo his belt and let his shorts fall down around his ankles.
His boxers go down last. He's already hard.
Jason slips his arms around me. I love how vulnerable I feel, and how safe it makes me feel to be wrapped in his arms. I lean against him and savor our nudity, his soft skin against mine, his powerful chest expanding and contracting as he breathes.
Very gently, he tips my chin up with his fingers and kisses me. It's overwhelming when he leans over me, towering over me, and puts his hands on my ass, squeezing as I taste him. I squeeze him in return, and quiver at the feeling of his hard cock, throbbing against my stomach.
He kisses my neck and shoulders, sinks down, and takes my nipples in my mouth. When I try to go down onto the blanket with him, meaning to fall on my back and take him inside me, he stops me, holding me firmly around the waist.
Jason sinks to his knees in front of me. He keeps my legs together with his hands on my thighs and makes me stand. I look around, suddenly feeling intensely exposed, aware of all the open air around my nude body. Being naked changes in his presence, becomes exciting.
He nuzzles his chin between my legs and drags his tongue over my mound, tasting me. I gasp and shudder, stroking his head with both hands. When his tongue touches the most intimate places of my body, my nakedness becomes almost unbearable. I can feel the whole world through my skin.
I don't know how he expects me to stand up like this. My legs start to buckle as his tonguing of my clit grows more intense. My toes curl and my balance wavers, but he holds me up with rock-like strength, his arms unmovable.
He leans back and licks his lips.
"You're so fucking wet."
"I want you inside me."
He smiles a distant, almost vacant smile and sits on the blanket, then grabs my wrists and pulls me down. He catches me and eases me into his waist, and uses his hand to guide his cock between us, pressed against my stomach as I straddle him in his lap.
Jason leans back, and slowly lowers himself to lie on the blanket. I fall forward wi
th my palms on his chest and stroke his skin. He gasps when I shift my weight a little and my lower lips slide along his shaft, and I groan at the feeling of the heat and thickness longing to enter me. When I sit up and look down at its girth, I can't stop thinking, he wants to put that in me.
I want it so much. My entire body aches for him. I feel hollow inside, ready to be filled, like there's an ache and only he can mend it by filling the gap inside me.
It's been long enough. I can't wait. I rise up on my knees and take hold of him, and stroke his shaft as I rub the head of his cock with my lips, wetting it. I'm so aroused it takes almost nothing to slick his shaft before I take him.
The nerves come back, and my legs lock up. I try to lower myself, but I can feel how big he's going to be, how he's going to open me like nothing ever has before. He holds my hips and steadies me, holding me in place as my legs start to tremble.
I relax just a little and close my eyes, and suck in a sharp breath. It hurts, just a little bit, a sweet sting. It's almost uncomfortable as his thickness spreads me open, but it feels so fucking good to have him in me. My legs shake harder and still he holds me, slowing my descent. I try to take him faster and he makes me go slower, makes me savor it.
From the look on his face, he's savoring it too.
My weight settles in his lap, and I sit up, my breath quickening. God, he's huge. I had no idea how full I would feel. I shake all over, just from sitting on him and having him in me.
His hands roam my body, and I find I like it when I move, so I start to ride him with my hips moving forward and back, his thickness shifting inside me. He slides his hands slide up my body and cup my breasts. He doesn't squeeze hard enough, so I grab his wrists and push into him, twisting his hands to tease my nipples.
Oh. My. God.
"You like it?"
"Yes," I pant.
"There's no one here. Moan. Moan for me, baby. Fucking scream. Let it go."
Jason
I am going to lose control. There is no sight more beautiful. Her snow-pale skin glows in the moonlight, still dappled with ocean water. Every time she moves, little, cold, stinging flicks of water land on my thighs. How is she not freezing? Maybe she is. She's trembling, and her nipples are hard enough to cut glass. I lift my hands from her hips to touch them, feel their soft stiffness under my fingers.
Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance) Page 21
