“Apparently, you don’t know him very well.” She was immediately sorry she’d said it when she saw the look of devastation on his face. “He…he’s a sensitive man.” Had she sounded defensive? “Anyway, it wasn’t a big secret.” Not all of it. “You probably know I sued my mother for emancipation when I was fifteen.”
“Had no idea.” He sat cross-legged on the lawn, at a little distance from her, thank God. Then he looked uncomfortable and scooted around a little. Must be the erection she could see very prominently in his jeans. She could sympathize with that. “I didn’t even know who you were when I brought you home.”
Really? She didn’t know whether to be relieved or a little incensed that he hadn’t recognized her. She turned back to the telescope.
“So why did you need to sue for emancipation?”
“For starters, she was squandering my trust fund.”
“That’ll do it.”
“Strangely enough, that wasn’t enough of a reason for me. Everybody just thinks I was greedy, but that wasn’t it. She…” Greta purposefully didn’t look back at him. She pretended to look for the comet, but she wasn’t seeing stars. “She didn’t have my best interests at heart. That’s when I realized I needed control over my own destiny.”
“Destiny. I hate that word,” he said, his voice bitter. “So this whole, you-have–a-gene-that-determines-your-mate thing must really suck for you.”
“About as much as it does for you.”
“Which is big-time.”
Why did that hurt? Why wouldn’t he think being tied to her sucked? It occurred to her that no one in her life was tied to her except by contract. Jax came and went, depending on whether she had a man in her life, or saw an opportunity for publicity by hanging with Greta. Bernie? He was her agent. She was probably more important as an income source to him. And let’s not talk about Mother. “Yeah. Thought I’d gotten control of my life. Guess not.”
She glanced back at him. He was looking thoughtful.
“Senior says any control we have is an illusion.” He shrugged. “He used fewer words, but that’s what he meant.”
She swept her gaze over the sky and down to the horizon. You’d think the sea was black until it met the sky. “It’s all chaos,” she said softly.
“That’s why you like the stars,” he proposed. “Because they’re eternal.”
She chuckled. “But they’re not. They move over time. Constellations change and become unrecognizable. Stars explode. We only think they’re static because our time horizon isn’t long enough.”
“Well, that makes a person feel insignificant.” He was looking up at her with a strange expression on his face. Curiosity? Longing? Pretty much, maybe, what she was feeling? Who was this man that her DNA suddenly seemed to Require with a capital R? And it wasn’t just for sex, though that could cloud the issue because it was so urgent. It was…something deeper.
She cleared her throat. “Well, sometimes things happen faster. I…I was just going to try to show you a comet that’s going to be coming in view to the naked eye shortly. It will seem to streak across the sky, well relatively. It will actually take a month or two…” She trailed off. His gaze had gotten predatory. He snapped it away.
“Show me.” He stood and sidled up next to her at the telescope.
“Can’t,” she breathed. His nearness was sending frissons of sexual energy up and down her spine, with detours to several other locations along the way. “Too much water vapor in the air at sea level, and there’s a bit of a wind off the ocean. That makes it difficult.”
“Where could we see it?” His voice was so intimate, hanging over her in the darkness.
She could hardly get any breath now. “Palomar. Mt. Wilson. Maybe Griffith Park Observatory.”
They locked eyes.
He took a huge breath. “Then let’s go.” He grabbed her hand.
Would the shock of touching him ever wear off? A woman could go insane. “Go where?”
“Griffith Park. That’s closer. I want to see this comet.”
“You do not.”
He dropped her hand. “Look, if we don’t get out of here, I’m going to throw you down on the ground and pound my cock into you until you scream with multiple orgasms. I can’t hold out much longer.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted him to hold out.
“And,” he continued, “My family has been crossing those French doors in the kitchen and looking out the TV room window ever since we left.”
She jerked her head around. Yep, a silhouette in the kitchen window hastily disappeared. She glanced at Lan. “Is it okay to leave?”
“In the middle of the night no one will be expecting us to go. And… I have my ways.”
“What if we worry them?” she asked. He pulled her down towards the gazebo covered with bougainvillea.
“They won’t know we’ve gone. They’ll think we’re having wild sex in the gazebo.”
That sounded pretty good to her. He dragged her in under the bougainvillea. The view from the house was screened by the vine.
“How are your shoes?” He peered down at her feet. “Okay. At least they’re flats. Let me know if you want me to carry you.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, alarmed.
“Down the cliff path. As soon as we get to the beach you can take them off.”
“Wouldn’t you rather just have sex in the gazebo?” She couldn’t help sounding plaintive. This was getting pretty elaborate.
He stopped. When he turned he looked so handsome, so vulnerable she caught her breath. “I’d like nothing better, but…wouldn’t that be giving in to this whole thing?”
She moved closer to him, surer of herself than she’d been all day. “Yeah. But maybe we both have to learn to go with the flow a little.”
That was all it took. He stepped into her and took her into his arms. His curling dark hair curtained her face as he kissed her fiercely. She could feel his heart thumping against her breasts. Her own blood was pounding in her ears in time with his. What was that about?
But it felt so right. She wanted more. A lot more. She thought he did, too.
It surprised her when he gasped for air and straightened up. He was shaking a little bit. “Not doing it like this,” he said his voice a hoarse groan.
He glanced around. There were short benches with cushions forming a half circle under the screened half of the gazebo, probably for whale watching in the daylight. He flipped up a bench lid and brought out a throw blanket. “We’re going to do this right.”
Flipping the knitted throw to the side, he sat down with his back against the posts of the gazebo, and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Let me do that,” she whispered. She straddled his lap. The cushions pillowed her knees. He stroked her arms tenderly. It took all she had not to just rip the buttons off as her knuckles brushed his flesh. He brought her head down gently to his, cupping the nape of her neck with both hands. His kiss this time was soft. He brushed his lips gently against hers.
“Let’s take this one slow, if we can,” he breathed.
She nodded. “No screaming this time?” She didn’t want the entire Tremaine clan to know what they were doing for a change.
He took her challenge. “No yelling, either.”
She wriggled out of her sweatshirt. He pulled her knit top gently over her head, leaving her in her lacy black bra. Then he reached for the knitted throw and pulled it around her shoulders almost before she’d felt the cool breeze. “Like a cocoon,” she whispered, wrapping it around his shoulders, too. She unbuckled his belt and slipped the button on his jeans. His cock was already hard and lying up against his belly. He lifted his hips, and she slid his jeans down over his butt cheeks. Then she blew on her hands and rubbed them together to warm them before she slid her palms along that silken rod. He groaned and arched, which rubbed against her clit through her jeans. Slow. Slow. That might be hard.
He didn’t move to take her jeans down. Instead, he leaned into h
er, his breath warm and moist against her breasts and suckled her nipples through the lace of her bra. She arched and gave a low, humming moan, thrusting her breasts forward for more attention. He moved from one to another and lapped at the tender skin between them, holding one, his other arm clasped solidly around her to keep her in place. She stroked the head of his cock, and he moaned over her nipple. The buzzing vibration made her want to come right then and there. But she wasn’t going to do that. This time they were going to take it slow. She caressed his cock, his nipples, but she didn’t increase the pressure or speed. This was just a lazy, little fondling session for now.
He was going as slowly as he could, too. He kissed her neck just under her ear, her collarbone, then back to her breasts. How much longer could she hold out?
Longer than he could, apparently. Because suddenly he bounced her up and stood, carrying her against his body. “Have to taste you,” he muttered and switched their positions. She was sitting on the bench. He knelt before her and unfastened her jeans. She lifted her hips, and he slid them down. Then he bent before her, nipping her thighs, licking them where her juices had run down. He was making little yummy noises, and she felt the hum against her flesh. Before he reached her damp folds, he glanced up and pulled the knitted throw more closely around her shoulders. “I’m going to make you come hard,” he threatened. “Remember your promise.”
“No screaming,” she said, breathlessly.
That was a promise she was going to have a hard time keeping. When his tongue parted her folds and licked a long swipe up to her swollen nub, she was startled into a gasp. He opened her thighs wider, his big hands splayed over her tender flesh, and started swirling that talented tongue around her sex like he was playing an instrument. A trumpet or a trombone—one that required the use of a very subtle touch. Oh, God. She sounded like an idiot, even to herself, but that was the condition to which she was being quickly reduced. Sensations cascaded over her. But he kept pausing just when she was about to go over. She’d come back down and he’d start again, slowly. If this was torture, she wasn’t sure she wanted it to end.
He kept it going for a long time. God, could she teeter on the brink forever?
“Lan,” she begged.
He nipped at her clitoris.
She had to bite her lip to keep her promise as she was filled to overflowing. Every tissue, every drop of blood and every bone seemed to explode with electrical impulses. She jerked in his hold, but his mouth never wavered. He kept up his pressure, shaking his head back and forth. The orgasm went on and on…
Just as she was coming down, he jerked his head away. Before she could even feel bereft, he straightened, pulled her forward on the bench and entered her, thrusting hard, but slowly. He drove in and then withdrew with excruciating patience. To her amazement, she was right on the brink of yet another orgasm. He looked into her eyes. There were no words, no explanations, no questions at this moment. They were locked together by the physical lust, but also by a shared future and by something that felt bone deep.
His chest began to heave with the effort to keep it slow. His breathing quickened and she smiled inwardly. He was close, too.
“Are you going to come with me?” she whispered. “Or am I going to come alone again?”
The challenge released him. He pounded into her. Within moments they were consumed by orgasms so powerful both their bodies shook in unison. But neither screamed. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and arched her body, even as he arched his, managing to emit nothing more than small grunts. The very act of withholding the urge to shriek made the pleasure more intense.
He hung above her in the darkness, panting, his head hanging. “I didn’t mean to do this.”
“Looked pretty purposeful to me,” she gasped.
“I mean, I wanted tonight to be about something besides sex.”
“That might be hard.” Her breathing started to slow a little. “The sex is pretty damned amazing.” She lost her nerve. What if this was just everyday, ordinary sex for him? “I mean, uh, it was for me.”
His eyes crinkled, but his lips were serious. He laid her down gently. She was still cocooned in the knitted throw. “Oh, yeah. I have sex like that all the time. I give tonight a c-plus.”
She couldn’t help her expression of hurt outrage. Her face just seemed to kind of make it of its own accord.
“Stupid,” he whispered and kissed her earlobe, taking the loops of her earring in his mouth, and sending shudders down her spine as he sucked. “Of course it was incredible.” He gave a rueful shrug. “Genetics.”
“Is that what makes it feel so…true? I don’t know…so right?”
“I guess.”
So was he admitting that it felt right for him, too? Damn it! Why didn’t men talk more? “So we’re doomed to just have fantastic sex all the time. Is that it?” Might as well make light of the whole situation. He obviously wasn’t into talking about it.
He sighed. “Maybe we can squeeze in a little bit more normal stuff.”
“Like sneaking out to the Griffith Observatory in the middle of the night to see a comet?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “Like that.”
“That is not normal,” she scolded.
“It’s not normal to be locked in your house with security twenty-four-seven. Hell, it isn’t even normal to have this damn genetic anomaly in the first place.”
“So, if the Clan is looking for you, maybe we should stay here where it’s safe?”
“The Clan won’t know we’re out. And I just need a little distance from my family.”
She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, your family is grade A wonderful. But I get the distance part.”
He went to another bench and lifted the top. Digging around inside, he came up with…a gun? “They never found it,” he marveled. Then he looked at her face. “Don’t worry, it’s just a paint gun. I use it to, uh, disable Kemble’s security cameras on the path down to the beach.”
“Whew. I thought you were a mass murderer.”
“Naah. Haven’t you seen all those cop shows? They always get caught.”
“Not you?” she asked.
“Ghost, baby. Can’t catch a ghost.”
But suddenly, he didn’t seem like a ghost at all. He was very, very real.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‡
Jason saw them out on the lawn behind the house, but lost sight of them as they went into the gazebo. Maybe they were just going to fuck like bunnies under the vines, but he’d had experience watching the Tremaine kid make his escapes from the estate before. The gazebo was a prime exit spot. He swept the binocs out over the far perimeter of the estate. There was a path up from the beach that came out just past there. Better switch to the telescope.
It took the kid a while to make it up the beach path because he had the girl with him, but there they were, moving through the pepper trees at the edge of that church property on the far side of the Tremaine land. Why hadn’t he acted on his hunch and started down there before? Now they had a head start on him. But they had no vehicle. They’d have to hitch a ride.
He turned and moved swiftly to the door of the empty house. Hard to get a ride after dark. Maybe he could catch them. He’d been right about the girl and the kid. They were a couple all right, and with Tremaines, he knew what that meant. Two new powers coming. Maybe now Morgan would finally agree it was time to pick them up. He’d text Morgan later.
The kid had hit the jackpot with the girl. Hardwick said she was a movie star named Gretchen Falk. The tabloids had splashed her face and the Tremaine kid’s all over supermarkets everywhere after he rescued her from some fans. She was a real looker. Nobody realized who the Tremaine kid was, or that the movie star was hanging out at The Breakers.
He turned over the engine in the beige Camry.
He couldn’t give them a ride himself. The kid had seen him when the Clan had attacked the house. But he could follow whoever did stop for them. He got a warm feeling in his gut. Adve
nture tonight at last. Maybe it would end with him getting to off a Tremaine and his lady-love. And maybe he didn’t have to off the girl right away.
*
Lan got the guy who had picked them up on PV Drive West to drop them at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car up on Catalina Avenue in Redondo Beach. He usually didn’t rent a car, since that only made it easier for Kemble to track him, but that was just naïve. Michael could Find them anytime he wanted. And he would, if he knew they were gone. But Lan was betting the family would want to give them privacy. They’d be back before anybody missed them.
Now he and Greta were tooling up the 110 Freeway toward Griffith Park in a non-descript green Prius to check out a comet on the telescope at the Observatory. Greta said the place stayed open ’til eleven. A stupid quest, but at least it got them out.
Was it foolish to take Greta away from the protection of The Breakers tonight? Probably. But the whole atmosphere there was stifling. With love and expectation, but still stifling. He was never going to get to know her—just her and not the whole image thing, or what she wanted to project to his family—if they were cooped up at The Breakers for a week.
He had to admit he felt guilty though. He found rebellion easy. He didn’t care if the Clan was watching. But he was acting for Greta, too, and she had no idea what the danger really was like, even though he’d told her. Maybe it was selfish and immature—boy, that was hard to admit—to make that decision for her.
Still, he’d been coming and going at The Breakers for more than a year and there’d been no sign of the Clan. Maybe the family was just paranoid at this point. Maybe Morgan didn’t care about the Tremaine family anymore. It wasn’t like they were a challenge to her anymore. She had three Talismans. She was no doubt working her plan, whatever it was. Kemble had said they’d been picking up the pieces after natural disasters his brother attributed to the Clan’s weather girl all year. And Kemble had been personally reinforcing security in the systems of the stock exchanges and the electrical grid. Lan really didn’t want to know exactly how he was doing that.
The Magic's in the Music (Magic Series Book 5) Page 20
