“—You’re a dirty girl who should hit the shower—” he pressed her hips back against his body, shifting so his erection wedged intimately between her Lyrca-covered cheeks “—with me.”
West untangled her fingers from the doorknob and lacing them with his own, drew them behind her body to rest on his thigh. His lips closed over an earlobe, teeth gently grazing the small fleshy edge. A protest turned into a moan when his fingers moved from her belly to gently roll a nipple through the fabric of her top. Her hips jerked back in reflex and this time it was him who moaned, his breath a harsh pant in her ear. His body shifted to one side and he wrapped her palm around a part of his anatomy, which grew larger in her hand as her grip tightened.
“God.” He slid his fingers out from hers, but she couldn’t seem to let go.
She should peel her hand from his slick, satiny skin and not continue to stroke her thumb up and down. Take her hand off his body and get the hell out of this situation. Yet her weak limbs refused to fight as his breathing, ragged and harsh, puffed against her nape.
“Piper…I need you.”
Those four words transfixed her because in this moment, when things hurtled out of control for them both, he needed her to be his anchor.
And she needed him.
“Shower. Now.” She gasped when his hand slid under her tee shirt.
West scooped her off her feet and transplanted her there before she could change her mind.
The pink tee shirt splattered on the floor outside the shower, closely followed by her Lycra shorts, and black sports bra, leaving her in only a tiny black thong. West backed her into the shower corner and kneeled before her, drawing the scrap of fabric down her legs and stopping to kiss a pair of freckles just below her pubic bone. His gaze when it returned to hers was hot and intimate, but this couldn’t be anything other than the two of them taking the physical release they needed.
“You played rugby in a thong?” The stubble on his chin rasped along her inner thigh, his breath teasing the sensitive flesh hidden by soft curls. Her knees went gelatinous, and leaning against the glass cubicle she prayed they’d hold her weight.
“No panty line.”
“Mmm. I noticed.” His forefinger and thumb ran down the “v” of her sex, gently spreading the folds apart.
Her hands clutched at West’s shoulders and she swore it was the lack of oxygen in such a small space that gave her voice a sex-kitten breathiness. “You’re such a pervert.”
“Baby, you’ve no idea.” He rubbed a knuckle against her inner lips, carefully avoiding the swollen bundle of nerves, which cried out for his attention.
Hips thrusting forward, a moan escaped from deep inside. “Please.”
He stroked the very tip of his tongue to her core and at the same instant slid two fingers inside her. Little stars flashed behind her closed lids. If he got her any hotter she’d melt into a pool of goo and be lost down the drain.
“Feels good, huh?” He pulled back slightly to support her butt with one hand as she sagged against the shower wall.
“Feels okay.” She transferred her grip from his shoulder to his dripping hair. “But maybe I should clean up. I’m still covered in mud.” And because if he didn’t remove those slowly thrusting fingers, she would come in the next two minutes.
West’s low rumble of amusement sent flickers of molten heat into her womb. He leaned in to nip her thigh.
“Trust me, Pipe, this bit isn’t.” And he buried his face between her legs, making a liar out of her in less than half her estimated time.
***
Piper tasted of musk and the sweetest, earthiest honey. Her juices on West’s lips addled his brain and throbbed all the way down to his straining cock, which begged for the opportunity to swap places with his tongue. Her little mews of pleasure vied for dominance over the hiss of falling water. He’d waited half a lifetime to taste her and even though her hand fisted in his hair hard enough to leave a bald patch, nothing would pull his mouth away.
She convulsed around his fingers, moaning his name over and over. West stood, pinning her to the wall to keep her from a boneless slide to the shower floor. Kissing her again, the knowledge she would taste herself on his tongue almost undid his resolve not to come like a horny teenager on his first sexual encounter. Need roared through him at her dazed look when he gently rolled the pebbled bud of her nipple before sliding his palm over her soft flesh.
God, she was so damn beautiful.
Piper’s eyes fluttered half shut and she hooked a leg around his hip. Her hand snaked between their slippery flesh, found him and stroked, her thumb circling the pearl of moisture that wasn’t from the spray. She tugged him closer, angling her pelvis so he nudged intimately against her.
“Wait—condom.” With a groan West eased her back, dropping his head to suckle on the nipple he’d toyed with. “Don’t move. I’m not finished with you yet.”
“I hope not.”
Pure male satisfaction zipped through him at Piper’s shaky voice.
He stepped out of the shower, dripping rivers of water across the floor into his bedroom. Sliding open the drawer in his nightstand, he spied the small, rectangular, and unopened box. Bingo.
While his impatient fingers scrabbled over the cellophane wrapping, other sounds penetrated the lust-fog in his brain. A car engine turning into his driveway. Donny’s joyful greeting bark. A car door slamming and Ben’s voice shouting, “See ya, Ford.”
Shit, shit, shit!
West dived back into the bathroom, caught a glimpse of Piper stroking soap over the swell of her ass and groaned. “Ben’s here.”
She looked over her shoulder with huge eyes. “What? Here here?”
“Downstairs, here. Ford just dropped him off.”
“Oh, crap. He’ll likely come up to check on you—”
“Exactly. I’ll divert his attention while you swap bathrooms.”
Piper twisted the shower mixer and the water cut off.
“But what about you? What about your…?” she waved in the direction of his cock, left splendidly and uselessly waving in the breeze.
“I think your brother’s arrival will take care of that.” He cast one last longing look at the bubbles sliding over her bare breasts, snatched a towel from the rail and exited the room.
Fuckity, fuckity, fuck. He wanted her so much he thought his head would explode.
Drying his body in four swipes of the towel he hauled on a pair of shorts, just as Ben rattled around in the downstairs hallway.
“You better not have hogged all that hot water, West. I know how you are in the shower.”
Blown away was how he’d been in the shower. Blown away and about to have the hottest sex of his life.
So the last thing he’d do before he died of sexual frustration was to kill his best friend.
***
Horniness and desperation destroyed any sensitivity and understanding as West contemplated sorting his parents out.
He strode down the hill toward Due South, Donny trotting at his heels with a dumb, gleeful expression on his ugly mug. Good for Donny. Donny wasn’t sexually frustrated because Piper disappeared into his office and wouldn’t come out, and her big lug of a brother had settled in for the afternoon at the kitchen table doing accounts.
At least the rain had eased off, the sun deigning to make an appearance. His steps slowed as he approached the beachfront. Toddlers paddled in the gentle surf. Girls sprawled on beach towels, and guys played with a Frisbee, or tossed rugby balls back and forth.
A woman in oversized sunglasses and a red bikini gave him a once over, her lips curling in silent invitation. He could take her up on it, find his release at her B&B or hotel room. Scraps of spandex hugged her full breasts and even from this distance, the outlines of her nipples jutted through the thin fabric.
He thought of the perfect handful of Piper’s breasts and turned away. He didn’t want a nameless woman to perform a perfunctory twenty-minute sex act with. He wanted the conne
ction he’d had with Piper. A bone-deep, all-consuming, block-out-the-world connection that transformed what they’d done in the shower from sex act to something else. Making love.
They walked to Bill’s place, Donny making a half-assed attempt to chase a seagull before brushing up against West’s leg with an inquiring stare.
“Yeah, listen to me.” West scratched the dog’s head. “What would I know about making love? It’s just sex. Sex with someone you know is better than with a stranger, right?”
And why ask his dog for an opinion? Jesus, he was totally losing it. Time to pack those thoughts into a mental locker and bolt it shut.
He tapped on Bill’s open front door and without waiting for a reply, walked inside. “Yo, anyone home?”
Once, the front hallway had been scented with lemon furniture polish and the mysterious bowls of dried leaves his mother religiously changed every few months. Nowadays the hallway leading to the kitchen at the back of the house stunk of damp wool and sweaty shoes.
Except today it didn’t.
Today no balled-up old socks lay scattered in corners, no shoes piled around an empty plastic crate, and no dirty mugs remained on the kitchen table as he entered the room. The drapes were flung wide open and sunshine poured inside—highlighting the absence of dust that usually coated the cabinetry. Chugging, spinning noises came from the tiny laundry off the kitchen.
His mother, stationed at the kitchen sink, held up a mug with one pink rubber-gloved hand, looking for stains to banish, no doubt.
“Ah, there you are, Ryan,” she said, like she’d just returned from a quick trip to Oban’s grocery store down the road, instead of thirteen years spent in L.A. “I wondered when you’d show up. Feel better after a shower?”
An image of Piper riding the crest of her orgasm flickered into his mind, but he caught it and stuffed it back into the same mental locker. “Sure.”
Claire placed the mug on the drying rack and peeled off the rubber gloves. She must’ve caught him staring, as she said, “Bill’s never liked housework even though he keeps his workplace spotless, so I came prepared.”
“I can see that.”
She came around the edge of the counter and before he could move out of the way her warm fingers gently probed his temple.
“Ow—hey.” He jerked away from her touch.
She tutted, but didn’t reach for his face again. “You’ve a cut there. I’ll just get my first aid—”
“Claire.” His tone halted her in mid-turn.
She glanced back at him over her shoulder. Deep grooves bracketed her mouth as her lips pinched together. Hell, when had his mother gotten old? He prepared to gentle his voice and explain that he didn’t need her to fuss, when she cut in first.
“I forget you’re all grown up. You don’t need Band-Aids and a bit of candy to make it better now.”
They studied each other for a moment before Claire sighed and waved a hand to the door leading off the kitchen. “You’re dad’s just having a rest. I’ll make tea.”
West sat staring out the window to the tiny yard, then back to the empty spot at the dining table opposite where Del had fired green peas at his head in a silent but violent war. Dad or Ma often caught them at it and half the time joined in the battle.
That hadn’t happened much in the last few years before his mother and brother left. Dinners were terse blocks of time where his parents instructed him or Del to, “Ask your mother to pass the butter,” or “Tell your father about your weekend plans.” And if the two of them weren’t in a snubbing phase, there were shouting matches followed by his mother’s tears and his father’s stoicism.
Claire placed a steaming mug on the table and then a plate of chocolate chip biscuits.
He looked up, incredulous. “You baked biscuits. Already ”
She shrugged. “I’m American, and a mom. We bake and clean house in times of stress.”
West snagged one, dunked it in his mug and bit off half. “Bill probably shouldn’t be eating these.”
“No. That’s why I’ve boxed up the rest for you to take home.” While he worked through his second biscuit, she added, “I could never understand why you’d ruin a good cookie by sticking it in hot tea.”
“It’s a Kiwi thing, like gumboots, and the All Blacks. And we call them biscuits, not cookies.”
“Well, blow me down, ay? Good onya mate, I’d best remember that while I’m here,” she said in a terrible attempt at a Kiwi accent.
West swiped the last biscuit off the plate. “Talk like that at the pub and someone’ll stick you on the next ferry.”
Humor drained from her gaze as she studied him across the table. “Like you, Ryan?”
He tipped his chair back on two legs, part of him waiting to see whether she’d swat him on the kneecaps like she once used to. Dragging both hands down his stubble-roughened jaw, he tried to assemble his thoughts into coherency after a blast of mixed emotions cartwheeled through him by sitting there eating her damn cookies.
“Why are you here, Ma?”
Instead of answering, she rested her arms on the table. “What has Bill told you about his health?”
“That the specialist’s said his kidneys aren’t working too well.”
“It’s worse than that.” Her voice was gentle. “Bill needs dialysis treatment—once a week to start with—and we need to look into the possibility of a finding a donor in the future.”
Bill Westlake, tough as a dried out pot roast, the one constant in his life, the man who’d never given up on him throughout his revolting teenage years, who made him manager when he was twenty-five so he’d be his own boss—his dad was sick enough to need a kidney transplant?
His chair banged down on all four feet and he swore viciously.
“So. To answer your question, that’s why I’m here.”
“To donate a frickin’ kidney?”
“I’ll get tested to see if I’m a match, but since I’m not a blood relative, the odds are slim. I’m here to look after him—and to help out at the hotel if I can.”
“You didn’t have to travel thousands of miles. I’ll see to Bill. You have a life back in LA.”
Claire’s face crumpled and she dropped her gaze. “Not much of a life since Lionel died.”
Ah, hell. What was he supposed to say? Sorry for the loss of the man you dumped me and Dad for? He’d never met Lionel or Lionel’s daughter, Carly, his unknown stepsister. On his one trip to LA in his early twenties, he’d battled to re-establish some kind of relationship with Del, but he refused to make contact with his mother and her new family.
West braced for the histrionics. “Yeah, that must’ve been hard.”
But his mother remained dry-eyed and sipped her tea. “Yes, it was. I looked after Lionel until the end and when Glenna phoned me to tell me how sick Bill was…I had to come. I needed a break from all the memories in LA and I couldn’t lose another husband.”
“He’s your ex-husband.”
“And a good man and right now he needs me.”
“He needed you then.” West nailed her with a jab of his finger as his gut took him back to the day he awkwardly hugged his mother and Del goodbye at Oban’s tiny airport. “But you shed your husband and eldest kid like a fucking pair of out of fashion shoes thirteen years ago. We don’t need your bleeding-heart pity now.”
“Enough, West,” Bill said from the kitchen doorway. He plopped onto the seat next to Claire with a gusty sigh. “Don’t talk your mother like that. We settled our differences years ago and her being here is none of your business.”
“Your health makes it my business. You’re head chef and Shaye’s not ready to step into your shoes.”
Bill thumped a fist on the table and glowered. “She won’t have to, boy, because I can still work part-time on the days I’m not travelling to the hospital. And stop talking about me like you’re about to shop for a bleeding casket—I’m not dead yet.”
Both of his parents mirrored each other’s folded arms a
nd scowls. Since when did Bill side with the woman who’d walked out on him? On them?
West stood. “Well, if you’re staying, I’ll take your bags up to my place. You can have my room and I’ll take the sofa until we can figure something out.”
Bill and his mother shared a glance.
“Your mother’s in the hotel at the moment, but once I get some of the lads in to clear some of the piles of junk from the spare room, she’ll sleep there.” Bill said.
“What? You’re letting her move back in?”
“It’ll be easier for me to keep an eye on him,” Claire said.
West was about to accuse his father of not just losing his kidney function but his goddamned mind, when Bill raised a bushy white eyebrow and said, “So, what’s going on with you and the Harland girl, ay?”
West folded his arms and looked down his nose, giving his brain a chance to catch up and his tongue to unfreeze. “What has Piper got to do with anything?”
“She’s living with you, isn’t she?” Claire shifted in her seat to lean closer to Bill. He nudged her with an elbow.
“Piper’s temporarily staying in my office—and we’re just friends.”
Bill snorted, rolling his head toward Claire with a wink. “Friends. Is that what folks call it now?”
West hooked a finger in the neck of his tee shirt and pulled the strangling thing away from his throat. “Don’t wink at her—there’s no ‘it’ to be calling—and even if there were an ‘it’ between me and Piper, we were talking about the completely different situation with you and Ma.”
Babbling like a woman.
Yeah, what an effective tool to convince his parents he wasn’t making a complete fool of himself over Piper. Jeez.
He ran a hand over the warm skin of his face, cringed, and gathered up the container of cookies sitting on the counter.
“Ryan,” his mother said to his back. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you blush.”
Blushing? He wasn’t blushing. It was summer and this kitchen had no air-conditioning. “I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got work.”
In Too Deep Page 16
