When she came back downstairs, Brendan smiled, all charm again. “Very nice.”
She slipped her sandals on, flats since they were going to be walking in the sand, but he said, “You don’t need those. No shoes required in this restaurant.” She looked down, noticing he hadn’t donned any. Even his feet were kind of sexy.
He showed her out the side door, locking it behind them and slipping the keys in his pocket. She hadn’t had time to thoroughly inspect anything but her own room, but there’d be time for that later.
The sun, an orangey ball, was low in the sky now, but the air was almost as warm as it’d been at midday. Brendan took her hand as they walked, but was silent for a while, so that the sound of the waves was all she heard. She could be very lulled by this. She was in fact. If not, she’d be doing what she was supposed to be doing, peppering him with flattery and subtle questions to try to find out what she needed to know. Arthur had encouraged her to introduce subjects along the lines of “interesting things recently acquired” or “what a rich man really values.” Something like that.
Instead, she said, out of the blue, “Where did you learn to speak Spanish?”
He glanced at her. “How do you know I can?”
Uh oh. What the hell was wrong with her? Even her basic lessons seemed to be deserting her. Never admit to knowing something unless you can credibly explain how you knew it. “I heard someone say it at the wedding. One of your sisters, I think.”
He nodded. “Oh, okay. Well, I don’t really speak it that well.”
Which she happened to know wasn’t true.
“You took it in school?”
“No, every prep school I ever went to pushed Latin. Dead languages are so useful,” he added with a wry smile. “I learned some Spanish from a guy I knew at one of them.”
“Another student?”
He hesitated. “No, he worked there.”
“Oh, a teacher.”
Brendan laughed. “Kind of. Juan taught me a lot. He was the janitor.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d mix much with the help.”
He cocked his head and she couldn’t tell whether he took that as a joke. Actually, she wasn’t sure whether she even meant it as one. But then he went on, without commenting on it one way or the other. “I boarded at this one academy for a while when I was younger. I don’t know. Eight or nine years old. Until my parents took pity on me and pulled me out to attend a day prep school so I could live at home.” He glanced sideways at her, the warm sand sifting through their toes as they walked. “Go on, say it. How cold of my parents to let a poor little boy live all alone at school.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Well, it was what was done in my father’s family, with the boys, that is. Unfortunately, I didn’t take to it and my mother finally put her foot down. But I was there for one whole school year.”
“And that’s when you met this Juan?”
“Yeah.”
They were far enough down the beach to encounter the occasional other walker who nodded at them as they passed.
“Juan cleaned the rooms while we went off to class. Most of the time, nobody saw him, but one day—and I’m sure this’ll surprise you—I was hiding in my room playing hooky and he came in. He was…nice to me.”
Brendan hadn’t thought about that day for years, but walking with this beautiful girl, he suddenly did. He thought of the loneliness and confusion he had felt at being sent off to school. And he thought of meeting Juan.
Juan had come upon him one day while he was trying to hide a puppy in his room. Brendan had found the puppy in a box in the bushes on his way to the dining hall and named him Boxer. Boxer was so tiny and weak, Brendan had almost not heard the sound of his cry when he walked by. And then when he did, he was surprised to see it was a puppy, not a cat, because his pitiful cry had sounded so much like a meow. But no, it was a dog. And he’d always wanted a dog. Of course Boxer was no bigger than a mouse at that point—well, maybe a little bigger—but when he got strong enough, Brendan had planned to take him outside to play and throw a ball to him and have him fetch.
He just had to somehow manage to hide him in his dorm room until then.
But the very first day he tried, Juan found him out. From his gruff initial reaction, Brendan had supposed at first that the janitor would turn him in. But after talking to Brendan, Juan instead gave Boxer a warm berth in the engine room and helped Brendan to take care of him. He helped Brendan to take care of a lot of things that year.
By the time Brendan left school at the end of the year, Boxer was bigger than he was and Juan, a gentle man with a good heart, was a trusted friend. Familiar with the ways privileged boys could abuse that privilege, Juan had helped one lonely little boy avoid that path, with a wise word here and there. Oh, and by feeding his dog.
Brendan brought Boxer home with him to Bransport when the year was done, but both boy and dog were sorry to have to say goodbye to Juan. He remembered now how much he had missed him at the time, though he hadn’t even thought of him for years.
“Juan was a good guy. He’s the one who taught me Spanish. I don’t get to use it much, though. How about you?”
“How about me what?” The feel of Brendan’s hand in hers was very nice. He had big hands, with long fingers, and he didn’t hold hers too tightly.
She didn’t know how far they had walked, but the beach walkers were getting more numerous and the buildings dotting the landscape more frequent.
“What’s your story, Miss Sophia? You’re very mysterious. I can’t have a last name yet, but throw me a bone. Where are you from? What do you do? Something.”
Mysterious was not necessarily a good thing for someone in her line of work. She was supposed to be engendering trust. And one always did that with a pretty tight cover story. She and Arthur had worked one out for this time. Sure they had. Singer on a cruise ship. Parents passed away, blah, blah, blah.
So why was she hesitating to use it? That was dangerous. She said, “I’m from a lot of different places and no place, I guess.”
“And what do you do? For a living, I mean?”
“That’s a funny question for you to ask,” she teased.
“What? I have a job. I work for my family’s company.”
“So why aren’t you there now since your boss is on her honeymoon? Shouldn’t you be watching the store?”
“Well, I was planning to, but I met this gorgeous girl at my sister’s wedding and I couldn’t resist trying to get to know her better. She’s a tough nut to crack, though.”
“Are you calling me a nut?”
He smiled and pulled her closer as they walked. “Okay, forget about biographical facts. How about just what do you like? To read? To eat? To watch? Anything.”
She should’ve said she liked to read poetry or philosophy. That would make him think they had similar interests and might lead to something interesting. Instead, she answered honestly, “I don’t get much time to read. I like to, though. I like romances.”
“No kidding? And you admit to it?”
She punched him in the arm. “Watch it!”
“I’m just teasing. Almost every woman I know, except maybe my sister Virginia, likes to read romance. I think it’s cute.”
“You’re not helping yourself out here.”
“Okay, the truth is I think it’s no different than sports or something for most guys. It’s a stress reliever.”
A little more indulgent than Arthur. Whenever she had one of her bodice-rippers out, as Arthur liked to call them, he warned her that she should never be seen reading one by anybody else. Spoiled the image, he said. As if somebody like her couldn’t be seen as longing for romance since she was the “it” girl who presumably had all the real life romance she could handle. But it wasn’t about that. It wasn’t a substitute for anything. It was about happy endings. Or maybe being really wanted. Whatever.
Maybe she was just a low IQ pervert.
Or, as Art
hur implied, a sucker.
By now they had passed a number of hotels that had restaurants on the terrace, but that wasn’t where they were heading apparently. Only when they came to a chicken shack nestled on the beach next to a closed scuba diving equipment counter and a boogie board rental place did Brendan stop.
“Freddie’s Chicken Heaven?” Sophia read the sign with amazement. “We’re dining here?”
“Best chicken fingers you’ve ever tasted in your life. I promise.”
Two paper plates later, she agreed, ignoring the grease left on the plate of course. They sat on the sand as they ate, sipping the wine that Freddie probably didn’t have a liquor license for since he handed it to them in a paper bag for a hefty price. Not quite like the vintage she knew the Becketts had in their Bransport wine cellar, but it was a nice white anyway. They sipped from paper cups and when they were done, a trash can was conveniently near.
“See? No dishes,” Brendan said, wiping his hands on his shorts. He sat back down next to her, seeming in no hurry to move on. It was twilight now, and the waves were a study in dark blues and purples.
“This is beautiful,” she offered, knowing it wasn’t quite eloquent enough, but it was heartfelt nonetheless.
“I love this place. It’s so mellow. It lets you think, you know?”
Maybe the wine was getting to her, but right now, with his golden hair falling on his forehead, his long, strong legs stretched out in front of him, Brendan Beckett struck her as about the most beautiful man in the world. Of course, she had thought that well before this, so probably it wasn’t the wine. It was just the wine that was helping push her to do something about it.
Arthur had taught Sophia to hold her liquor, cluing her in early to the fact that loose lips sink ships. But Sophia didn’t want to think about Arthur’s life lessons now. She wanted to be loose, free with this man. She made a deal with herself.
One night. Just this one night to be herself, to feel what she wanted to feel, and then she would get down to the task at hand.
She leaned over and kissed him softly. Holding her chin in his fingers, he tilted her face a little and took a little more. She felt deliciously titillated. He pulled away. “Let’s go back to the house.”
She nodded, holding his gaze.
They said little on the walk back, as it got darker and darker and the sounds of other walkers on the beach drifted away.
The house was lit up when they got back.
“A timer.” He answered her unasked question as he unlocked the door and gestured for her to precede him. “We’re all alone here.”
Once they were inside, she almost wished all the lights were off. It might have made it easier. Even the mellow glow of the one light in the front room illuminated his expression. Full from the dinner, he was hungry for something else his face said. Standing in front of the door wall, he opened it a little to let the sound of the ocean in.
“I’m not,” she said haltingly, “as experienced as you might expect.”
One corner of his mouth tilted up. “I’m not expecting anything, Sophia. We’ll go as slow as you want. Remember?”
“That’s the problem.” Her voice sounded breathy, as it often did in this kind of situation. Only she wasn’t putting it on. It wasn’t an act. “I don’t want to go slow.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. He took her hand. “That’s good too. Let’s go upstairs.”
She had been so preoccupied, she hadn’t even checked his room out yet, which was probably the place he would hide something if he were hiding it here.
She didn’t care right now as he led her into it. The room was bigger than the one he’d given her and had a balcony with a door wall he opened.
“Shouldn’t you lock the one downstairs?” she asked, surprising herself.
“Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t turn on the light and the faint moonlight streamed in, enough for them to see what they were doing. He came back to her and reached behind her head to unsnap the huge clip keeping her hair up. The mass of it fell in damp curls all around her as he sifted his fingers through the strands, causing her scalp to tingle. Then he cupped her face with both hands. Tall as she was, even in her bare feet, he only had to lean down a little to kiss her. And when he did, it was still so soft, so restrained that she wondered where the jaded playboy really was.
She’d kissed guys, lots of guys, before. Not as sweet and sexy as this, but still. She’d let them kiss her breasts before, or as she liked to call it, paw her, before. A lot. What she hadn’t done, ever done, was feel what he was pressing against her hip right now, really feel it. Inside her. And she wanted to now. She wanted to feel what she had witnessed, for herself. With him.
He reached up to the tie on her halter top, playing with it as he kissed her, running his finger along her neck underneath the tie, and along her shoulder bones, before he took one end of the tie and started to pull slowly. “Is this okay?” he whispered and she nodded. The top fell to her waist.
“Take your shirt off,” she urged and he grinned, complying quickly, flinging the tee to the floor.
“Happy to.” He pushed her back a little until she felt the bed behind her knees. He stopped. “Okay?”
She nodded.
“Good.” Pushing her down gently until she was lying back on the big bed, he followed her down, his legs on either side of hers, climbing over her. The cover was some kind of cottony bedspread that felt smooth and cool against her bare back as she scooted back against the pillows. He kept his eyes carefully trained on her face, not her chest, and somehow that excited her. Kissing her again, his palms flat on the bed beside her face, he brought his hard, muscular chest down by degrees until it was pressed flush against her breasts. Sucking in her breath, she moaned against his lips at the feel of it, so nice, so exciting. His cock was rubbing against the vee of her legs, covered by the dress still and underneath it her panties. She opened her legs wider to let him farther in and felt a stab of desire.
He lifted his head from the kiss, chuckling. “It’s going to be impossible for me to try to bowl you over with my finesse if you go doing stuff like that.”
“Like what?”
He leaned up a little to slip one hand underneath her skirt, coolly and firmly travelling along her thigh until he reached the cotton barrier of her underwear. “Inviting me in between these beautiful legs,” he whispered.
She held her breath.
“Is that what you’re doing, Sophia?” He kissed her neck. “Inviting me between your legs?”
“Yes,” she whimpered and it didn’t even sound like her own voice to her.
With her permission, Brendan felt underneath the crotch of her panties for her slit, wet already of course, which caused him to hum approvingly, dipping his middle finger in and then rubbing her wetness along her clit.
“Oh, God.” Talk about loose lips. She had no idea what she might say right about now. She was lucky he didn’t ask her if she was leading him on to try to steal something from him. She just might answer him.
He continued to kiss her neck, and then her collarbone, the tip of her shoulder, as his fingers rubbed below and then abruptly thrust inside.
She gasped at the slight pain and he seemed to startle, pulling back as if he was going to ask her something. But she tugged his head down to kiss her and the moment passed.
He worked two fingers in carefully and, leaning over her, his lips reached her breasts. He kissed the side of one, and his cock jumped against her hip, his fingers below getting a little rougher, plunging a little deeper, but it all felt so wonderfully right.
His mouth traveled further and closed over her nipple as she took a deep breath at the sensation, so right, when other men’s mouths had just felt hurtful or greedy. He tongued her, opening his mouth wider to take in one globe, or as much as he could, sucking.
She cried out at that and he pulled back quickly. His hands came away from her below and he said, low, “Okay?”
“Okay what?
” She really was confused.
“Okay with this?” His voice sounded strained.
She was used to egging men on. Frustrating them and she heard something in his voice. She supposed it was excitement, frustration, but it was so restrained. And hell, she wasn’t used to hearing it when she was frustrated herself.
“Yes,” she said readily. “Whatever you want to do.”
He laughed, still not moving any further, except to rub his now moist fingers against her nipple. “No question about what I want to do,” he muttered as he caressed her, abruptly dropping all attempts at subtlety. “I want to fuck you. Right now. Are you okay with that?”
What did he need? A written agreement? “Yes, yes,” she said testily, annoyed that contrary to that bringing him to her, he abruptly climbed to the side of the bed and got up. “Where are you going?”
He shoved his shorts off, allowing that incredible, hard cock to spring out, for which she almost forgave him his sudden distance. Then he rummaged in a drawer by the side of the bed, not bothering to explain.
“Oh, yeah,” she said as he extracted a condom, climbing on top of her again, pulling her dress and underwear down and off in the process.
Naked limbs to naked limbs, she sighed. “Oh, this is so nice.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him down for a kiss, which he indulged her in for a moment before pulling back.
“Wait, let me get this on and then we can kiss all you want.”
She should have watched him carefully, every experience a lesson, for how to put the condom on, but she didn’t, some weird kind of shyness overtaking her. He was too quick about it anyway. Then he was on top of her again, kissing her wildly, shoving her legs open with his own, his hands on the outside of her thighs, pulling her legs around him, sinking deeper into the cradle of her legs.
SeductiveIntent Page 8
