Her phone buzzed with a reply almost instantly. Thank goodness Maya was always up and always online! That sucks, babe. But if you’re hiding in a corner over it, then stop it! You’re going to rock this.
Summer smiled. Maya knew her too well. Easy for you to say, she replied.
And easy for you to do. You’ve worked hard for this. Don’t let a piece of polystyrene steal it from you. We can just get one of your new sponsors to give you a new board
Summer chuckled. But her phone buzzed again.
Suck it up, girl.
A pause. Then her phone buzzed again, in rapid fire.
That was Brooke. Obviously.
Only because you weren’t telling her what she needs to hear. You’re going to do awesome at this. T.J. is shitting his too-tight pants.
Summer laughed out loud at that one, picturing Maya and Brooke fighting over the phone.
Thanks, babes. You’re right. Of course. Putting on big-girl bikini now.
That’s the way. See you soon. Love you.
Love you, too. Both of you. Summer put the phone back in her bag and fished for her bikini.
#
Might as well get wet.
She paddled out on her second-best board, but the ocean was full of ripples rather than waves. Making herself catch a couple, anyway, Summer messed around and managed to get the feel for the different board. She remembered that it had been her favorite up until about six months ago. And she remembered how well it worked in big seas. Looking out the back she wished there were some decent waves to check her memories against. But the ocean remained stubbornly flat. Like Ashton.
She should have been in the water all day, not bouncing about in bed with him. Or against a tree. And with no protection. Summer blushed again at the memory of how quickly her lust had overcome her. Was that all this was? The over-spangled emotions of lust?
Spotting Ashton on the beach, his camera slung, as always, over his shoulder, Summer checked the water and decided it was time to call it quits, anyway. She paddled in and walked up beside him.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice was softer, back to its even, dark timbre with none of the fury that had laced through it earlier.
“Hey, yourself.” She waited, dripping, for him to say something else. Something to let her know that they were good. That this was good.
“Sorry about before. I know you were trying to help.”
“And did I help?”
He nodded.
“Good.”
“Better hit the hay. Big day tomorrow with everyone else arriving.”
Everyone else. Suddenly, Summer’s body seized. The competition. T.J. The whole world watching.
“You remembered they were all arriving tomorrow, right?”
“Of course,” she said. “I just didn’t realize it had come up so quick.” They walked back to their accommodation in silence. Awkward.
Standing in the middle of their suite, Summer turned to go to her room—the room she hadn’t slept in yet. “Well, then. ’Night.”
“You’re sleeping in a different bed?”
Finally. “You didn’t look like you much fancied company.”
He crossed the gap between them in three long strides. “I’m an idiot, I thought you knew that about me already.”
That made her smile. “Guess so. The old you sure was. This new you, I don’t know yet.”
“Huh, well, that makes one of you,” he said and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. Again.”
She put a hand on his and gave it a squeeze. “About being an idiot or about not cutting yourself some slack.”
His eyes brightened. “Both. Come to bed.” He slid his hand down her shoulder and took her hand, leading her into the bedroom they’d shared.
Faced with everything the big, white expanse of fluffy pillows and snuggly duvet meant, Summer was suddenly nervous. “I need to be in the water tomorrow. Get back on my game. Work through some stuff with a couple of different boards. I can’t spend the day in bed again.”
“I was going to say the same thing.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to spend the time with you…”
He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t even say it. I would have pushed you out the door if you’d tried it. And anyway, I don’t think you give yourself enough credit. You know what you want, and you know how to get it. You just have to start telling people to get out the way.”
He was right. Summer’s heart relaxed. “So you’re not angry at me for pushing you too far today?”
“I know you were just trying to help.” They stood, watching, waiting, till Summer thought he might have changed his mind about them sleeping together.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you into bed. No shenanigans. You need some decent sleep if you’re going to nail the competition in a couple days’ time.”
It should have been awkward, lying next to each other, not touching, but somehow it was more exciting. “Are you asleep?” she whispered ten minutes after Ashton had flicked the lights out.
“Nope.”
She smiled, hearing the grin in his voice, and turned towards him just as he rolled towards her.
“Maybe I could distract you to sleep?” Ashton whispered in her ear.
“That’s what they call it these days?”
He chuckled, low and deep in his throat, and a hand stole over her stomach in the darkness. Blinking hard, she could see the outline of Ashton and the contours of his face on the white pillow beside her. “Kiss me, then,” she whispered.
His lips touched hers, but unlike their previous trysts, this time they were soft. A caress.
She ran her fingers over the side of his face, letting her touch see him better than her eyes could. The sensory deprivation heightened everything, made the stubble on his chin sharp on her fingertips, the strong line of his jaw even more chiseled.
Careful.
She did need to be careful. A girl could fall hard for this version of Ashton Evans.
Tugging at his chin, she drew him towards her and kissed him back, opening her mouth to let his tongue inside and taste and tease him. For a moment she languished in the kiss, till the rough callouses of his hand trailed down her bare shoulder and slid over the front of her breast. It was barely a touch, but it sent a yearning through her that was almost as powerful as the pull of the ocean. Nipples hard, every muscle in her body tensed, waiting, wanting more.
“I know I said you needed your rest, but I always sleep better when I’ve done everything that’s on my mind. Maybe you’re the same?”
“And what’s on your mind?” Summer managed to say.
“This.” His hand continued its travels down her body but kept up the maddeningly soft pressure, hovering as if he were trying to brush the hairs on her skin rather than the skin itself.
“That is crazy sexy,” she managed.
“Touching and not touching?”
She nodded then, remembering the darkness, said, “I love it and hate it at the same time.”
They did nothing more for a long beat. Just touched. Just learned the outline of each other better. Then, through the darkness, Ashton spoke. “I want to make love to you.”
Love. The four-letter word burst into the night as if shot out of a firecracker. Make love, idiot, not in love.
True. But still, it was quite the change from anything they’d said or done earlier. Heat flared between her legs, and Summer put a hand to his chest, feeling the muscles tense, just as much as hers. She hooked a leg over him so that they were facing each other on their sides, barely touching with their hands.
Not needing to say more, their heads came together for a kiss, and Summer opened up instantly, straining to let him deeper insider her mouth. Finally, unable to take the goose-pimpling sensation of his hands barely touching her anymore, she put a hand over his and crushed it against her breast. Her whole body lit up at the contact, and there might well have been fireworks for the effect it had on the rest of her. Locking her
leg tighter around his back, she moved her center towards his pelvis and rocked. “You know how you said all that about me knowing what I want? You were right. And what I want right now is you, inside me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He reached out to the nightstand on instinct and then paused. “Can we—”
“Yes. Now. I want to feel you.” Summer put a hand down to touch his bare cock and guide him inside of her. “Just…ooooh,” she groaned as he slid all the way to the hilt inside her. They lay joined for a moment before she pulled back, wanting to ride him hard over the edge. This was new. This ability to trust someone. To let him be inside her without protection.
But he put a hand on her lower spine and held her steady. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to make love to you. For a long time. And I want to fall over with you, all the way down.”
She melted. When he growled in her ear like that, it did something to her that liquefied her mind to a pile of goo and made it hard to get a coherent thought to stick in her brain for more than a second.
“Do you trust me?”
She trusted him. She loved him. Not in the infatuated way she had as a teenager, in a strong, deep, burning way, like riding the perfect wave. Summer felt the shock of it rush through her body just like the sensation of having him slide into her had done. But the words were lost as he drew back slowly, slowly, and pulled her face towards his. “Breathe with me. As if you were in the water. Roll with it, with me.”
She did. She let their breath move together, in together, out together as his cock slid back inside her. Their breath and his thrusts moved as one, and soon it was like riding a wave. The surges of his lovemaking completed her like nothing else could, and too soon, she felt the hum of her sex wanting to throw itself into the abyss.
But still he kept up his slow, strong rhythm. He put a hand to her chin and turned her to look him straight in the eyes. In the moonlight she could see his pupils as dark pools of water, reflecting a thin sliver of the silver ocean. Time quietened, and there was only their breath, their movement, their sighs. Bodies, slicked with sweat, they became one, just like the ocean, surging and building and swelling.
“I’m close,” she said, and even to her ears, her voice was a strangled hiss.
“Yes? Right now?” he asked, and she realized how much he’d been holding back to come with her. Hearing him broke something, and she clawed at his back as his lips crushed hers, and their pace lost its languidness, rushing headfirst into darkness.
He rolled on top of her, and his thrusts met with hers in perfect timing, till the hum spread over her whole body and turned to a tautness that filled her, seemed to stretch her to the very edge of the universe.
“Oh yes, Summer, yes!” He cried out her name and the tautness released, finally sending her into an oblivion that seemed to surge on forever as he met her, his muscles quivering and his breath shaking.
As he spilled into her, she imagined him spilling his love, too. A love that they would grow together, that would change her forever.
Chapter Thirteen
Ashton woke with Summer snuggled into the crook of what should have been his arm but felt like a slab of wood. He shifted and…. Tssssit! Pins and Needles!
Don’t move don’t move don’t move. Forcing himself to relax, he turned his head rather than his body and watched Summer’s face, soft against the pillows. A smile touched the edges of her mouth, even in sleep.
As if she’d felt him watching her, she stirred, stretched, and her eyelids fluttered open to let their green ocean depths out into the world. “Hey there, gorgeous.”
Her voice was raspy—already deep, sleep had lowered it even further, making it hit notes that did something seriously dangerous to his blood. His cock got a shot of the call-me-sexy liquid pumping around him and stood up, ready and willing for whatever her voice asked of him.
She put a hand to his chin and pulled him closer, but instead of kissing him, nudged her nose against his. He nudged her nose back. Summer. In his bed, forever.
Her eyes said everything. Yes, please was there, as well as take me, baby, and there was also a good, solid dose of I’m yours, and be mine. Overnight they’d moved on from fun to forever, and her look said that she wanted it all—the chocolate box, Valentine’s Day, real-life romance, just like in the movies.
He froze. This wasn’t supposed to happen. T.J. would break her for being with another man, and when he found out the other man was Ashton, he’d try and break her all over again. And while this fruit juice deal would win him some points with the WSL, if T.J. said he wouldn’t shoot with Ashton, that was it. No surf contract, no WSL.
But the way she responded to him, the way she hooked her legs around him, the way she held on to him while she spasmed around him, as if she might drown if she let go, it wasn’t electric, it was perfect, like being lifted up by water and flying. And now… Now the night was over, and the reality of the WSL universe they were both caught up in was going to come smashing down over them like a badly formed wave. The question wasn’t whether they’d swim out of it together; it was how badly they’d get broken in the undertow if anyone found out.
The movies weren’t real, and chocolate box romance always melted messily at some point. To the world outside their room she was still with T.J. This had to end, and fast, or one of them would make a mistake that could end their careers before they got back on track.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, sitting up and leaning on his dead arm.
“Tsssst! Nope,” he said as the pleasure-pain shot down his arm. “Pins and needles.”
#
“Shit.” Ashton saw T.J. before the surfer saw him, and he tried to steer Summer away in a different direction.
“Summer.”
Too late.
Surrounded by three journalists, T.J. was in his element. His skin bronzed, his body relaxed, he looked every bit the king of the ocean he liked to tell everyone he was. With his expression unreadable behind his sunglasses, Ashton couldn’t tell whether he was in charm or chomp mode.
Looking at Summer, Ashton could tell her nerves were close to the surface; despite her sunglasses, she couldn’t hide her emotions the same way T.J. could, and her hands were clenched by her side, every part of her radiating tension. But she plastered on a smile and went to stand next to T.J. Ashton’s insides clenched as the other surfer draped an arm round her shoulders.
One of the reporters jumped in. “Wild card in Bali. That’s a pretty amazing thing to happen to someone so early in their profession. Are you nervous about taking on the big boys?”
Even though the reporter was clearly addressing Summer, T.J jumped in. “Summer’s hardly just starting out. We’ve been surfing together for years. She just needed a little push to take herself seriously.”
Summer cleared her throat. “I’ve been ready for this for a long time. I’m just lucky the organizers were willing to take a chance on me. I’m not going to waste it.”
“But it’s the first time for you going head-to-head with T.J.,” the reporter pushed.
Summer straightened but managed to still look cheerful. “When you’re on your board, it’s you and the wave, no one else. Surfing is one of the most solitary sports there is, wouldn’t you say?”
The reporter made a note and grinned. “Sure. Must be interesting dinner conversations on at your place at the moment. You’re going to take T.J. on at his own game?”
“Absolutely,” she said, her jaw hard, and Ashton almost clapped. That’s my girl.
T.J. wasn’t finished, though, and managed to draw the reporter’s attention again. “It’s each to their own out there, which is why I’m so glad that Summer has been given this chance. It’s great that she’s finally stepping out for herself, rather than riding along with me. I wish her the best of luck against all the pros, and I hope you guys will cut her some slack. She doesn’t need to be reminded at every turn how new she is to all this, and how deadly these waves can be to someone who hasn�
��t ridden much before.”
No, she doesn’t, you dickwad.
“Are you saying she’s in over her head?” the reporter said, scribbling furiously.
“I never said that,” said T.J. but it was clear by the way he leaned back, crossing his arms and grinning, that that was exactly what he was hoping the reporter was going to write down. “I was just saying that I wish her well. Just like I’d wish anyone luck when they’re about to get pounded.” He caught himself. “I mean, we’re all going to get pounded today. Look at it.” He waved towards the surf break, which was, indeed, smashing in, wave after wave surging and breaking in quick succession.
“Guess I have the advantage, then, given I’ve been here for the past few days in surf bigger than this,” she said.
The reporter scribbled again, and T.J.’s face dropped, just long enough that Ashton noticed and wished he could give Summer the high-five she deserved for that great comeback.
“Well, that’s something. New sponsorship, I heard, too. Way to go. See you out there,” the journalist said, and the group of reporters walked off.
“Don’t do that again.” Summer shrugged T.J.’s arm off her shoulders.
“Hey, careful,” T.J. said, but Summer waved him off.
“Don’t talk me down in the media, or so help me, I’ll come back at you.”
T.J. gave her a hard look. “It’ll come out worse for you.”
“Maybe. Just play fair. I’m here. Deal with it.” Then she spun on her heel and stalked off.
T.J. gave Ashton a look and shrugged. “Women,” he said.
Ashton had to bite his lip, hard, to stop himself saying anything he’d regret. Pushing the guy would only end up bad for Summer.
T.J. wasn’t done, though. “You guys seem pretty cozy. Watch yourself there, Evans.”
Ashton froze but made himself relax almost immediately. “We’ve been shooting a campaign. You know what that’s like.”
“Sure. Beautiful girl in a bikini, all her attention on you. Like I said, watch yourself. Everyone knows she’s my girl.”
Another Shot with Summer (Hot Tide Book 1) Page 14
