Ahead in the Heat

by Lorelie Brown

  “I liked the back porch better,” she offered.

  “Yeah?” He veered left, through the open archway, toward sand and ocean. “It does have a nice view.”

  “I’m totally sticking my tongue out at you,” she said. “You just can’t see it.”

  “I don’t believe you. From the angle you’re at, you’d get a mouthful of my shirt if you stuck your tongue out.”

  “You suck.”

  “I know.” He hitched her back over his shoulder, though, locking his arms around her and letting her do a slow slide down his front. Her hips, her waist, her breasts. “It’s nice out here.”

  Her lips parted on a quiet gasp. “I know.”

  The whole place was a matter of understated elegance. Occasional touches of tribal design accented pale wood, but mostly it was simple. Underdecorated. A long, wide bench upholstered in pale cream fabric marked the far edge of the porch. Beyond that, a couple tiki torches sketched the line between porch and sand.

  He put her down on the bench, so that she was standing on it. Her ribs were parallel with his mouth, and he pushed her shirt up in order to open his mouth across that flesh. She was made of strength and delicacy all at once. He palmed her hips.

  Her hands rested across the back of his head. When he looked up at her, her face was turned toward the sky. She didn’t know what she did to him.

  It had been a sock to the stomach to see her waiting at the bure. She fit in his life. He squeezed her tight. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that bullshit.”

  She shrugged, her nails tracing patterns that made him want to do dirty things. But even that was half of what he liked so much about her. That it was no big deal to her, and she didn’t expect any giant parade of accolades. This was just what she did for people in her life. Steadiness and snarky humor when they needed to come down from tension. “You’ll owe me later. I think there should be champagne involved when you get rid of Ackerman.”

  “I’ll buy you a hundred bottles.” He’d buy her anything, anytime. No amount was too good for her. He’d asked her along on this trip on impulse, but he was rapidly coming to think it was one of the best things he’d ever done. He slipped his fingers under the band of her shorts. The flesh where she curved was delicious. He wanted to bite. “Thanks for coming.”

  She grinned, a smile that kept getting wider and wider as she looked at him and tipped her head. “Did you . . . ? That was an accidental pun, right?”

  He choked on a sudden burst of laughter. “Okay, yeah. Completely accidental. But . . .”

  He drew the cord of her shorts free. The loose linen fell to her hips and stopped at the swell of her ass. She had on a tiny thong made of lace and prayers. He kissed the soft skin beneath her navel.

  Her hands spread across the back of his head, dipping into the shallow at the base of his skull. She twitched as she gave a quiet gasp. His tongue darted out, tracing the top band of her panties. “By all means,” she breathed. “If this is the way you give thank-yous, I think I can cope with that.”

  “You’re talking too much,” he said against her belly. He pushed her shorts all the way down. She vibrated under his touch, and he fucking loved it. He loved knowing what he could do to her. Anticipation was the best drug in the world.

  It was a big portion of why he put so much work into surfing. He knew guys who threw a board out, and flopped on it and got what they got and were happy for it. Not Sean. He liked tasting the anticipation and knowing before he even went out on the water that he was going to kill it. He liked the planning.

  He was beginning to plan how to keep Annie around in his life. If he kept Ackerman’s investigation buried, Sean could keep Annie from figuring out what a bad bargain he was. For a long, long time.

  Chapter 28

  Occasional moments struck where Annie couldn’t believe the good fortune of her life. Times when she had to step back and look around and thank God for having been given what she had. This should have been one of those moments. But if she stood back, she might have had to sacrifice a moment where she didn’t feel Sean’s touch with every molecule of her being. She might have not been able to pay attention to the way his hands held her close. The way his mouth was open over the arch of her hip, and his tongue did wicked things. The way she wished that he would, holy crap, just take down her panties already.

  She spread her feet wider, trying to brace against the weakness shaking down her knees. She wobbled forward an inch, but he had her there too. His grip curled around her hip, propping her up from underneath. His fingertips slipped into the delicate flesh between her thigh and the crease of her body.

  She wanted him so bad it hurt. Physically and literally. Her body throbbed. The warmth that built in her stomach and swept up through her chest was so powerful that she hadn’t felt anything like it before. She would go crazy if he left her too long. This was exactly what she’d wanted . . . and what she feared at the same time.

  He drew her thong down one bare inch at a time. His fingertips dragged over her skin, adding in a layer of sensation that made promises he had better freaking keep.

  She wanted him. But she wanted to be sure of him too. He was something she didn’t know how to handle.

  She bent, curving down enough that she could take his mouth with her own. She wanted to kiss him more than she wanted to breathe, and that was frightening. There was no other word for it. “You’ll make me feel good, right?”

  “Of course,” he breathed, a low grumble of voice and promise—the promise of those manly things that she didn’t know how to touch. Didn’t know how to accept.

  She’d never had a man like him in her life. When Sean had stomped out of the SUV and up the porch steps, he’d looked . . . intense. More than that.

  His white shirt had been wrinkled and casual. His gray trousers were still smooth, but he’d had a line to his back and shoulders that was canted forward with intent. His cheeks had been deathly hollow. His blue eyes were nearly black with their dark intensity.

  She’d been shaking, yeah.

  But she’d also been turned on.

  It was one thing to jump into a summer fling sort of setup. To try Sean out in terms of reclaiming her sexual side. But these feelings were more than she’d expected.

  He looked at her in ways she didn’t know how to quantify or understand. He said thank you with the power of benediction.

  She was a shitty person to recoil under the force of that attention and still let him bury his face at her stomach. But he opened his lips over the divot above her hip bone and she gasped. The wet heat of his tongue made her clench deep inside. “You’re a tease.”

  “Nope.” He spoke against her skin, creating a little vibration that made the larger vibrations in her chest rock into overdrive. “This isn’t teasing. This is anticipation.”

  “Anticipation sucks, then.”

  “No, I love it.” He licked the skin at the crease of her legs.

  She shook. Her knees dropped out from underneath her, because, holy shit, was she an idiot. She’d been holding her breath and didn’t realize it. Her lungs burned as she sucked in a giant gasp and panted. “Please,” she breathed.

  “Please, what?” He looked up at her with a wicked glint in his eyes.

  “Lick me. Please. Make me feel good. I want to come on your mouth. I want you to taste me like I tasted you. It’ll be so good. I want it.” She slapped her hand across her mouth, eyes going wide. Biggest. Idiot. Ever.

  Except he didn’t seem to mind. His tiny smile deepened enough that she could see the sharp line of his teeth. She even wanted to feel those on her. “You beg very nicely. I think I want to hear more of that.”

  “Please. Please, Sean.” The words slipped from her like more promises she couldn’t keep.

  He kept them for her.

  His first lick was across the seam of her pussy, where she was wet and a
chy. She jolted so hard that even his grip on her ass couldn’t keep her up. But that didn’t even seem to faze him. He lowered her to the bench. The cushions were thin, but they were enough. He arranged her limb by limb, as if she were a doll. Stripping her tank top off over her head, he laid her back. He spread her thighs, his hands big and strong on the insides of her knees, so that she was open across the bench.

  He sat at her feet, sideways so that he leaned down on one elbow. His breath was humid over her flesh, even in the thick heat of the tropics. She turned her head briefly, only to see the perfectly curling line of a beautiful wave.

  He cupped her breast in one hand, circling her nipple again and again with first the tips of his fingers, and then his nails. Her body curled up into his every touch, almost as if she had little control over herself. She lifted her hands above her head and dragged them into fists under her neck.

  “You don’t regret coming here, do you?” He pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and dipped his mouth to tongue that bit of flesh. Flares of tingles washed through her. She was electric and magic all in one. Because of him. “Long flight, bullshit questions?”

  “And then this.” She managed to squeak the words out. “This makes it all better.”

  “Does it?” He spanned her stomach with one hand, his elegant fingers stretching from her ribs to her pelvic bone. “Then I’ll have to make this worth it.”

  He lowered his head slowly, keeping her gaze until the last moment. His eyes were a wicked blue, one that almost matched the ocean to her left.

  But nothing matched the power of his mouth. He left fire in his wake. A single laving path up from her core to the tight furl of her clit. He was bold in the way that he touched her, the way that he held her open under his attentions.

  She craned her gaze to the sky and it was no escape. She was overwhelmed. He was breath and action all wrapped up together. There was nothing to her beyond the attention that he paid to her pussy. This was . . . bliss.

  She could sink away on it forever. Her hips lifted toward the swirling of his tongue. She was barely in control of herself, and she sure as hell wasn’t in control of the little noises pouring out of her mouth. She made them in the back of her throat, gasping mewls that made her feel both dirty and wicked at the same time. He made it so good.

  He probably made it so good for anyone he was with, but she couldn’t think about it. He’d always have the attention of women like Gloria. Even though she was perma-girlfriend to that guy Nate, Gloria had looked at Sean in the particular way women always did. The way Annie felt from the inside out.

  He was a compulsion. He was something she didn’t know how to absorb.

  Maybe it shouldn’t be about absorption. Instead, she should let it all go. She’d gotten into this because she wanted to have a piece of herself back. Complaining because she’d gotten the wrong piece was just crazy pants and absurd.

  Sean was like a roller coaster. She should just go along for the ride.

  He found a spot that made her shudder with pleasure, so naturally he attacked it with gusto. His tongue circled her clit again and again, patient as a wave rolling into shore. The sand only moved in increments, being washed away by the tide, and Sean was willing to follow the same pattern. He kept at her as steadily as the ocean.

  She wanted him. She cupped her own breast. Balance and counterpoint. She scraped her skin, because she wanted more and wanted harder, and she moaned when he rubbed around and beside her opening. He gently pinched her lower lips together, then squeezed. His mouth found her clit again.

  But it was the teeth that did her in. He locked his lips around her flesh and sucked her between the sharp edge of his teeth to work her softly against the pressure.

  Her hips twitched hard enough that she might have come off the bench except for his locking, latching hold on her hip. There was no getting free of him. The sun stroked down on them both, adding in another layer of caress. Sweat sprang up at the hollows of her shoulder first, then the arch of her ribs. He moved his hand from her hip to her waist, slipping through a soft sheen of dampness.

  The patterns his thumb wrung continued echoes of the fantasies he made happen all the time. All around him. This was sex in paradise; it was drinks-on-the-moon level of amazing.

  She exploded. Her hands latched around the back of his head. Even that was another layer of sensation, his prickly hair rubbing against her palms and sending a thrill up her skin. It matched the roaring shards of pleasure that spread out through her. Her toes curled. Her nipples were so tight, it almost felt as if someone were playing with them as well.

  No one was there but Sean, though. Sean and Annie, twined together in the moment. She panted, staring up at the sky. It was safer to look at than Sean, who stared at her with something sharp in his eyes, expressing intent for more than orgasms. “I like the way you come,” he said.

  She gave a helpless laugh. “I like the way I come too. Probably feels better from the inside.”

  “I am inside you,” he purred, curling two fingers against her front wall as a reminder. She gave a cry at the surge of regained pleasure. “And you feel good from here. The way you clench on me . . . I want to feel that on my cock.”

  She nodded, probably a little too frantically for grace or classiness. There was sex involved. She didn’t want to be a classy kind of girl. She wanted to be the kind of girl who got what she wanted. “Yes, sir, sign me up for that one.”

  God, she loved making him laugh. It was probably absurd how much she liked it, but he was so suave most of the time. Except when she got under his skin. There was something there if she cared to look at it. Something about the way they fit together. But she didn’t want to go there. That would mean opening herself up to someone as damaged as he was. There was nothing wrong with that on the surface, except that she was probably equally damaged. The very fact that she overanalyzed orgasms like this was proof. She couldn’t afford to be with him, not for a forever kind of thing.

  Not if she had any sort of sense. That didn’t mean she couldn’t do it now. He probably had no idea she’d lost her mind. There was no point in dragging out feelings when she’d be the only one who’d have them.

  Not when there was another choice: more sex with Sean.

  Chapter 29

  Sean could tell when Annie’s mind went from blissed-out come brain to thought processor in overdrive. It was there in the muscles under his hands, the way her stomach clenched. Fucking hell, his fingers were inside her, twisting gently in the wet heat of her channel.

  He pulled free and touched his tongue to his fingertips. She tasted so good. Slightly salty, but sweet underneath that. She was a woman who took care of herself, and that care was reflected in every inch of her.

  Even the way her skin gleamed porcelain white under the yellow stream of Fiji’s sun was proof. He couldn’t imagine her as a regular surfer. She was too pale and soft. She’d have had to bathe in sunscreen.

  There were freckles across the tops of her shoulders that hadn’t been there the last time she’d been surfing. They were probably the proof of what the sun could do to her. He bent to kiss them, one at a time. It was close and absorbing work, despite the way his cock throbbed and the intensity with which he wanted her.

  She sighed, wrapping her arms around his upper chest. Her hands curled over his shoulders from behind. “Oh, that’s nice. Keep going.”

  He smiled against another freckle. “I didn’t plan to stop.”

  “That’s lovely.” She sighed again. “You know, this is usually the point where I wake up.”

  “You often dream about me going down on you?”

  She laughed softly, her chest bouncing under his. He wound his grip around her wrist, stretching her arm above her head. She let him. That was the mysterious part, the thing that he couldn’t seem to get a handle on.

  It felt as if she would slip away at any
moment. He got good things in his life; that wasn’t the difficult part. The good things were always the hard things, the things that he had to work for. He earned his career, and with it his house and money and the finer things those brought. He had earned respect in the pro surfing world.

  Annie was easy. Easy to be around, but also easy to be himself around. There were few games. She wasn’t invested in the way that he presented himself, or in those fine things that his lifestyle brought. She was appreciative, sure. But she didn’t want to make him jump through hoops.

  He didn’t trust things that came easily. His mother had always taken the easy way out. The one time he’d tried the easy way, the result had been disastrous.

  He didn’t want to make that kind of mistake again.

  Annie wasn’t a mistake, though. That wasn’t what he meant. More like he was still waiting for the strings, the later payment. Good things didn’t come without complications in one way or another.

  That was all down the line, though. It wasn’t now, stretched out in paradise with a beautiful woman. She was naked and he wasn’t. He liked that faint imbalance, but not as much as he liked the feel of her skin. He pushed off the shirt that she’d unbuttoned earlier, and it dropped to the sand on the far edge of the deck. He’d have to reclaim that later. Or not. It might go down as a casualty to really fucking excellent sex.

  Annie pushed to a sitting position, one foot dropping to the deck. She was a siren. A fiery package of gorgeous energy. She petted his arms, his chest, leaning forward to curl against his side. He unbuckled his slacks and pushed them off, and she made a happy cooing sound. He couldn’t help but laugh. “What was that?”

  Her hand was hot as a brand when it wrapped around his cock. “I like your body. Is that a bad thing?”

  “Fuck no,” he said on a groan. She worked him with a twist of her wrist at the top when she got to his swollen head.