Chasing Perfect (Someday#4)

by Melanie Shawn

  I put my hands on her hips as she pumped me, but not from any desire to control her rhythm or speed. She was handling both of those just fine on her own. No, I only grasped her because I was overwhelmed with the desperate need to touch her. Of course, I was already touching her—I was inside her, for fuck’s sake. But this was different. I needed to have my hands on her.

  Her tits bounced as she rode me, and after a moment of watching them, they were too tempting not to touch. I slid my hands up her slick belly and gripped her breasts firmly, flicking her nipples the best I could as they jiggled in my hands.

  “Oh, yeah, baby. That feels amazing.” She lifted her hands from my chest and moved them to the backs of my hands, encouraging me to keep playing with her nipples while she pumped her hips over the length of my cock. “Damn it’s… So good.”

  I captured her nipples between my thumbs and forefingers, rolling the hardened peaks as she bucked and shuddered. Seemingly out of the blue, her inner walls began to convulse around my shaft, and every muscle in her body trembled violently.

  “Holy shit… I’m coming…coming again…”

  It was the “coming again” part that sent me over the edge. Between the visual, physical, and now audible stimulation, I was a goner. It was too much. My dick exploded in an orgasm that shook me to the core.

  After both of our releases rocked through us, Sandy collapsed on my chest. I stroked her bare back as she lay plastered against me. And I knew I was fucking screwed.

  The first time with Sandy was better than I’d ever imagined it could be. Now, the second time was even better than that.

  Best-case scenario: if it kept going in that pattern—the third time being even better, the fourth time still better than that, and so on—I didn’t know how I would still be breathing by the end of the tenth time. It would be too intense to survive.

  And worst-case scenario: there would be no third, fourth, or tenth time…no way in helI would I survive that.

  Chapter 23

  Sandy

  The sound of chirping intruded on my dream-state consciousness, and I could feel myself being pulled from the lovely, deep sleep I’d fallen into the night before. I resisted it with everything inside me. I was floating on a cloud of warmth and contentment, and I didn’t want to leave it.

  “Come on. That’s my alarm. We have to get up.”

  Hunter’s voice joined the chirping sound in an attempt to drag me from my blissful slumber. His hand rubbed my back as he spoke, and I slowly became aware of the fact that my head was resting comfortably on his warm, strong chest. My arms were draped over him, and my legs were entangled with his.

  In my drowsy state, the only reaction I had to those facts registering in my consciousness was a sensation of happiness washing over me, combined with the urge to snuggle in even further, which I did. Hunter felt heavenly and warm. Strong. Safe. Sexy and…familiar. He was home to me. I nestled my forehead closer to his neck and let out a long sigh of contentment.

  He groaned. “Sandcastle, as amazing as this feels—and, believe me, it does—we really have to get up now if we’re going to be on time to meet Avery and Acacia and go out on their boat.”

  I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying. I was still drifting lazily along in my half-awake state, enjoying the warmth of his skin and letting the rich timbre of his voice wash over me.

  “That is…if you still want to go. You know. After…last night.”

  Last night. The phrase jogged loose the memory in my consciousness, and suddenly, I jerked upright, fully awake.

  Holy shit.

  I tried to play it off as if I’d just woken up naturally, not been jolted out of sleep by the bomb of my memory of the night before, exploding suddenly in my brain. “Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I’m up,” I said, my voice jittery.

  I sprang out of bed, but my attempts to play the situation off as if everything were normal, were failing miserably.

  Hunter sat up in bed, scooting backwards so he could lean against the headboard. The movement caught my eye and made me look at him without consciously thinking about it.

  Big. Mistake.

  He looked so ridiculously sexy with his sleep-mussed hair and the sheet casually draped over his legs and lower torso, his muscular chest bare above it.

  The sight of his body made my head spin. He was the absolute poster boy for the concept of “morning-time sexiness.” Seriously. If they were putting together a dictionary of all the different types of sexiness and searching out photographs of the perfect specimens to epitomize each different kind, they would’ve chosen him in a hot second. No contest. Hands down.

  I spun on my weak knees and walked over to my suitcase. Leaning down, I pulled out clothes I thought would be appropriate for the day and rushed towards the bathroom. I needed to be by myself for a few minutes, to give myself space away from his sexy-ass chest so I could think clearly for a moment. Obviously, thinking clearly in the presence of half-naked Hunter was never going to happen.

  “Are you okay?”

  His raspy, deep voice stopped me in my tracks though.

  Crap. That sincere concern in his voice almost undid me. He really cared about me, about how I was doing. Hunter always did. He always took care of me. The temptation to give in to my feelings, to let him take care of me forever, was so strong. So goddamn strong.

  I straightened up. I had to be stronger than the temptation. Giving in to what I felt for Hunter meant two things would happen that were very much not on the table—staying in Arcata, and putting my heart at risk with somebody that might just take off on me. Neither one of those was something I was willing to do, and I had to keep reminding myself of that.

  As hard as it was.

  With him acting all, you know, wonderful and perfect and everything.

  And being half naked. With an amazing chest. And sleep-mussed hair.

  My eyes involuntarily shot down. Yep. And morning wood. That, too.

  “I’m good,” I spat out, my nerves undoing me almost completely.

  Hunter smiled disarmingly, and oh, fuck, how disarming it actually was! I melted a little.

  “Sounds convincing,” he joked.

  I smiled, but it was weak. “Yeah. I know. I guess I’m a little unsettled.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “I mean, because, we have to realize that…you know…this didn’t really—”

  His eyes flashed with steel, and his face hardened with anger. I had rarely ever seen him like that.

  “I swear to fucking God, if the words ‘this didn’t really mean anything’ come out of your mouth…” he said flatly.

  “No, no,” I hurried to clarify. “I would never say that.”

  “All evidence to the contrary.” His tone was brittle. I didn’t blame him.

  My voice softened. “I know. I really messed up last time. I just felt so weird about it. It was overwhelming. You know how I feel about strong emotions. They freak me out. With my mom, the key was to keep everything stable. Keep everything on an even keel. So anything that’s too extreme weirds me out. It’s hard for me to handle. So, last time, I just said the first thing that popped into my mind that I thought would put us back to…normal. But it was a stupid, fucked-up that thing to say. And I realized that almost as soon as I said it.”

  He nodded.

  With a little indignation tensing my tone, I continued. “Which is, in fact, the very thing that I was planning to tell you when I came over to your house the next morning. You know, when I was informed by your mom that you’d left without so much as a word? Without so much as a goodbye? And it’s also precisely what I told you in the next seventeen thousand or so e-mails I sent you. And text messages. And voicemails. And Facebook messages. So don’t act all high and mighty. I’m not the only one that fucked things up.”

  He looked up, directly into my face, and said simply, “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I messed up. Bad. And I’m so sorry. You’ll n
ever know how sorry. And I want to make up for it.”

  The simplicity, the directness, and the sincerity with which he made his appeal took my breath away. Hunter was a straightforward guy, a stand-up guy, and I knew that, for the rest of my life, I would be comparing every other man I met to him in that regard.

  Who was I kidding? In every regard.

  “I appreciate that. But it’s not that simple. I spent my life being abandoned by my mom. Not in the sense that she completely took off, but in the million little ways that she made Bran and I feel like we couldn’t trust her to take care of us. And my dad—even though it seems weird to say that he abandoned us because he died, it feels like an abandonment. Especially since he killed himself. He made that choice. I try to tell myself that he was mentally ill. He had to be. Depressed, bipolar, I don’t know. That, to be suicidal, you have to be in so much pain. But I can’t help it. It’s always felt like he abandoned us.

  “So it’s kind of a hot-button topic for me, to say the least. And you…you, Hunter. You were my best friend. Whatever else happened between us on that grad night, that was the main thing to me. You were my friend.”

  Tears shone in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “My very best friend. I trusted you like nobody else, except Brandy. So to have you disappear like that. To have you be so totally removed from me that I couldn’t get ahold of you, even on the phone. Even with text. Even with e-mail, Facebook, any damn way. To have you that totally and completely gone out of my life without warning. It tore my heart out. I can’t let that happen again.”

  Hunter sighed, a defeated look on his face. “Fuck. Sandcastle, I’m so sorry. I never meant to make you feel that way. I never meant to put you through that. I was only thinking about myself. I was being a selfish asshole. I don’t know if hearing that makes it better or worse for you, but it’s the truth.

  “I don’t think it’s any secret to you that I’ve always had feelings for you. I’m not smooth. I’m not good at hiding what I’m feeling. You probably knew all along. So to be with you, to have that incredibly special night with you on grad night, to be that close to you, that connected, to have had all of my dreams come true in one night, just to hear you say, immediately afterwards, that it didn’t mean anything? It was like a knife in my chest. I couldn’t deal with it. Fifteen years of my life, of giving you my heart and soul and only praying that, one day, you would return the feeling, and then to have you look at me with eyes that just seemed as cold as ice and say those words—it didn’t mean anything. To me…it meant everything.”

  He looked down and shrugged before bringing his gaze back up to me. “I’m not proud of it. I’m not saying it makes me strong. But it’s the truth. I couldn’t handle it. I needed time. I couldn’t see your face, hear your voice, I just couldn’t. So I left.”

  Now, it was my turn to look at the floor and take a deep breath before meeting his eyes again. “Well, I’m sorry for that. I never meant to put you through that, either.”

  Hunter nodded. “But it doesn’t change anything,” he said matter-of-factly. It wasn’t a question. He was just stating what he already knew.

  “Exactly,” I said softly. “In fact, that was what I was going to say just then. Not that it didn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t say that for so many reasons, the most important of which is that it just isn’t true. But the truth is, it doesn’t change anything. It just doesn’t.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. After waiting for several long moments of silence, I walked into the bathroom. Over my shoulder, I tried to keep my voice as light as possible as I said, “I’m gonna take a shower and get ready real quick. I think we should still meet Avery and Acacia to go on the boat today. We should just try to be normal.”

  There was a trace of dark humor in Hunter’s voice as he said, “Of course. That wasn’t even a question. After all, this doesn’t change anything. Right?”

  Chapter 24

  Sandy

  The sun shone brightly as Hunter and I walked towards the dock. We should’ve felt awkward with each other, considering the intense conversation we’d just had. We’d both ripped our hearts open and laid them bare in front of each other. It should’ve been weird. Things should’ve been stilted between us. We should’ve felt, if not embarrassed, at the very least vulnerable and nervous.

  However, there was none of that. In fact, it was easily the most comfortable I’d felt with him since the moment he had walked back into my room—and life—in Arcata. It was like saying those things to each other had needed to happen. Now that everything was out in the open, we could begin to heal from the rift that had opened between us. Everything was on the table, and we were free to move on.

  Feeling good about our new, relaxed energy, I took the time to appreciate our surroundings. I loved the quaint streets that led up to the marina where Acacia and Avery’s family kept their boat. Even though the place Hunter and I were from was near the ocean, no area in our hometown was as quaint and upscale and touristy as these shops and restaurants were.

  Even though it wasn’t like anything I’d grown up around, I still felt like I fit right in. I was made for this type of area, and I knew it.

  “It’s so cute around here,” I said to Hunter.

  “Yeah. I like how everything is ocean-themed. It’s like a nautical wonderland or something.” Grinning wickedly, he gestured up at the bank on the corner of the intersection we were crossing. It had a seashell logo. “Like that, for instance. I bet that’s the clam credit union. I think we made a deposit in there last night. Don’t you?”

  I looked over at his rakish smile and blushed. I recognized the callback to the joke I’d made during our first night together. However, instead of it making me feel awkward and flustered as it would’ve earlier in the week, it made me laugh. I punched him in the shoulder.

  “Whatever. Dork. Don’t flatter yourself.”

  He grinned wider. “I don’t have to flatter myself. You do it plenty. At least, when we’re both naked, which is really the only time that matters.”

  I shook my head. “Whatever. Look. Just remember: we’re actually here on de facto dates with other people. Probably not an appropriate joking topic for on the boat. Right?”

  He put his hand to his chest as if shocked and wounded. In an exaggerated tone of innocence, he said, “Me? Do something inappropriate? I’m offended!”

  I laughed. “Seriously? Are you about to say ‘I think I resemble that remark’?”

  “Hey, stop stealing my best material before I use it.”

  I shook my head in mock regret. “The saddest part is, all joking aside, that actually is your best material.”

  Just then, we spotted Acacia at the railing of one of the boats in the marina, leaning over and waving wildly. I waved back, letting her know we saw her and were on our way. Then we turned towards the mooring and picked up the pace.

  It felt so fantastic to be back on completely comfortable terms with Hunter again. It was the oddest thing, I thought. It was like hooking up the first time had made us uncomfortable with each other, and hooking up the second time had set the balance right again. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t really the second hookup that had cleared the air between us, so much as the actual clearing the air part. But still.

  The point was that Hunter and Gatherer were back, in full-on Hunter-and-Gatherer mode, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.

  Sure, we were never going to end up together. I realized that. I’d accepted it; it was the way things had to be. And was there some regret there? Of course. But I was doing life different now.

  I was letting my mind do the driving instead of my emotions for a change. Practical Brandy would’ve been proud of me for once. It was the right thing to do. And, since what I valued most about Hunter was his unwavering friendship anyway, I could have the best of both worlds. I could have a romance with Avery, or someone else like him, while still having my best buddy Hunter by my side.

  Right?

  I m
ean, that wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  Hunter and I stepped up onto the deck of the boat, and Acacia gave us warm hugs.

  “I’m so happy you guys are here! We were waiting for you.”

  “We’re so happy to be here, too. It’s so beautiful, Acacia! I can’t believe you and Avery have access to this gorgeous boat whenever you want to take it out.” I said, taking in the scene.

  She nodded. “I know, I know. Sometimes we get so used to what we have that we forget to appreciate it until we see it through fresh eyes. I think that’s one of the reasons it’s been so fun hanging out with you two this week.”

  I gave her another quick hug. “It’s been really fun hanging out with you, too.”

  She squeezed me back and smiled. “Well, as much fun as I’m sure you’re having with me, I do know someone else who’s going to be even more excited to see you.” She winked. “I won’t call him out by name, but let’s just say he’s tall, dark, and handsome, he’s three minutes older than me, and…he has a devastatingly gorgeous sister.”

  Hunter and I laughed, and Acacia pointed down into the cabin.

  “He’s below mixing drinks. You can get there by going down those steps right over there,” she said, as she pointed in the direction of the stairs.

  I gave Hunter and Acacia a small wave as I made my way around to the set of narrow stairs that led down into the cabin portion of the boat. While I wasn’t completely unsteady on my feet, staying upright did take a little bit of concentration as I maneuvered. The small movements the boat made in response to the undulation of the water, were difficult to get used to, and it occurred to me for the first time that I’d never had an occasion before to find out if I was someone who got seasick or not.

  God, I hoped I wasn’t! That would be distinctly not sexy, hanging over the side of the boat all day and heaving while the others tried to have a good time over the sound of my upchucking.