by Julie Kenner
He rested his forehead against hers. The interior of the vehicle was dark, but the air around them fairly crackled with awareness and sexual tension.
“We’d better get a move on. You wouldn’t want my father to come back out and…”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Zack started the engine and drove back to his house. When he parked, his mouth took hers again in a lazy, mindless, tongue-tangling kiss that seemed to go on for long, slow minutes. By the time he let her up for air again, her skin felt flushed, and she was breathing much too fast.
Somehow, she managed to hold on to a rational thought. “I really should make you take me to the bungalow so I get a good night’s sleep.”
“I’ll make it good.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He took her hand and JC couldn’t break away. Didn’t want to break away. At this point she wanted to spend every second she could with Zack.
“How about a dip in the hot tub?” he asked.
“Sounds good. I do feel a bit sore from practice, but I don’t have my suit.”
“You don’t need your suit.”
“That’s completely decadent.”
He led her through the house to the back where he flipped some switches. Lights came on in the pool area and in the pool, illuminating the water to a gorgeous teal-green. He flipped more switches and the lights near the hot tub came on and JC heard the soft hum, then thrashing water.
Zack stepped onto the patio and started shucking his clothing, leaving a trail all the way to the hot tub. Her appreciative gaze traveled over his well-defined back and his cute backside before he sank into the water.
She slipped off her sandals and stood on the patio, the concrete warm beneath her feet. The breeze off the ocean was brisk. It lifted her dark hair, sending a cool, caressing breeze across the back of her neck. It felt good.
When she reached the tub, she slid her skirt down her legs and stepped out of it. Pulling off her T-shirt and dropping it onto the concrete along with her skirt, she unsnapped her bra and slipped off her panties.
Zack watched her every move. She tiptoed to the deck and lowered herself down into the tub. “I didn’t realize how hot the water would be.”
“Let’s cool you off,” he said as he picked up a spray bottle that he used to cool himself on hot days. He spritzed her just as the wind came up again. She shivered as the first fine droplets of water beaded on her hot, naked skin, both refreshing and arousing her to a higher level of need. At her reaction, he misted his way down her body. An exhilarating draft of air kissed her bared, moist flesh.
Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes, saturating her mind with the highly electrifying sensations.
“Damn, you make me rock-hard.” His voice was low, thick; he sounded devastatingly aroused.
His hands captured her breasts, encircling them, possessive fingers caressed her rigid nipples before he continued on with his lazy journey…skimming his palms across her quivering belly and down to her thighs.
JC moaned at the delightful feel of Zack’s hot, questing hands sliding over her slick flesh.
Their eyes met in the shadowed darkness, and there was no mistaking the hard, solid length of his erection jutting against her mound. He rolled his hips, and JC felt his desire for her.
“I like rock-hard,” she murmured.
Widening her stance, she arched toward him, silently seeking more. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, “I really like rock-hard.”
Lowering his head, he kissed her, voracious and hungry, and she answered, grinding her body sensually against his in a rhythm that matched the thrust of his tongue.
One of his hands grasped her gyrating hip, traveling over her bottom to hook his long fingers behind her knee. He lifted her leg up to his waist, wedged his thigh tightly between hers, and pressed his groin to her sex, urging her to feel him, all of him.
Every single hard inch.
She wanted him inside her while the water bubbled around them and the wind blew across their hot, aroused bodies.
His hands encircled her waist and she found herself back on the deck. Her confusion only lasted a moment as he knelt at the tip of the tub, the water churning around his hips. Gliding one finger across her pubic bone made JC gasp. Still kneeling at the edge of the tub, he pushed her legs apart. She moaned and jutted her hips eagerly toward him.
Her sex felt swollen, slick with her own desire. He fondled her pulsing clit, and his tongue circled it with wet flicks, accelerating her heart rate. Then his lips closed over her, and he took her eagerly, hotly, greedily, triggering her strongest orgasm yet.
He pulled her back into the water and pressed her against the side of the tub. The sound that slid from her was raw and guttural as he pushed fully into her. She was ready for him, and pushed back against him, but there was nothing hurried this time. His strokes were slow, controlled and oh so deep, but the connection she felt with him as their gazes held with each thrust was as primeval as it got. She braced her hands on the deck of the tub as he leaned over her, taking her tingling lips, while his hands slid up her torso. He teased her nipples, twisting groan after groan from her, finally drawing a low cry of ecstasy when he slid one hand between her thighs.
She peaked quickly, almost ferociously, and he remained there, his fingers deft and skillful, kept her shaking and gyrating, until he was shuddering with the effort to fend off his own orgasm. She pushed against him again, needing more of him somehow and yet feeling so completely full of him that tears pricked the back of her eyes.
His hands found her hips, his fingers digging in tightly as he began pumping vigorously. She met him thrust for thrust, her hands slipping on the ledge. The connection she felt to him was profound. His climax, when he finally gave in to it, was frantic as he drove into her. Body slapping against body, their cries of pleasure filled the air.
He collapsed over her, and they both sank into the water. He held her tightly to him, his body still shuddering in the aftermath.
Sex in the hot tub was such a fantasy, but this wasn’t a fantasy. It had felt like more, a lot more. They had made a connection; she’d seen it in his eyes. Or had she? Was she playing herself for a fool? Most likely. Then she felt him press a kiss to her hair, and her heart swelled. So stupid, so silly, she scolded herself. Mistaking sex for love. For anything other than what it was. Pleasure. Profound in this case, life-altering even, but mere physical gratification nonetheless.
Yet it was much too late for her to pull back and ignore these feelings, and no amount of kicking herself for being a fool was going to change that. It was then she realized how much she’d risked, letting him touch her at all. It wasn’t the competition, or anything material that she’d jeopardized. What it was, was irreplaceable. It was her heart. How had she been so naive as to think it was something she could give away and not suffer for her folly in the end?
Independence mocked her and she clenched her hands into fists against Zack’s back to keep herself from holding on. She wanted to end their embrace and enjoy the warm, soothing water, tease him about the out-of-control, fabulous sex they experienced every time they got naked, as casual lovers would, as if their lovemaking meant nothing.
He caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Subtly, she turned her head, not wanting him to see what might be in her eyes at that moment. She felt unprepared to face him and vulnerable in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with her nakedness, and everything to do with her emotions. He’d comforted her, and he had an uncanny way of knowing how she felt. Perhaps it was the shared sport and their circumstances, but JC was sure that even if he was unprepared for what he might find, she doubted he’d miss what her eyes revealed.
She didn’t want this to end right now. She knew it was selfish, but if she was going to risk being with him, she wanted to enjoy it.
But then, she already knew there wasn’t going to be any getting enough where Zack was concerned. More now was only going to hurt more later. Yet she couldn’t
seem to care.
“Show me those pretty eyes because there’s a whole lot going on with you,” he said, his voice hardly more than a gravelly rasp.
She had no choice, that soft-toned voice, his compassion, tugged on her heartstrings until she turned her head and looked at him. Stunned, she could only stare into his eyes. Eyes that weren’t filled with desire or satisfied pleasure. In those blue, blue depths, she saw an easy, honest affection, so direct, so open, so…naked. Exposed. As exposed as she felt. He peered so far into her, with such blatant need, she didn’t know it was possible to be touched so deeply.
Was it wishful thinking? She made herself consider the possibility. But she concluded that it would require a lot of imagination to come up with such a profound, raw intensity.
“I—”
“JC,” he said at the same time.
“What?”
“You go,” he prompted. His arms banded more tightly around her. When she didn’t speak, he said, “Please say something.”
Her heart thudded in her chest. She had no expectations of what she would tell him. Certainly not some mushy proof of love. No matter what his eyes said, she could hear trepidation in his voice. Zack’s fear would keep them apart even though he wanted something more. She would not try to persuade him. He was the one who had lost so much and although he denied it, he hadn’t gotten over it. No amount of fantasy would change what they were even though there was so much potential for what they might want to be.
“I don’t know what to say.” She started to pull away.
He wouldn’t let her go. Instead, he sighed heavily, then pressed his head to hers. “I feel so close to you and I don’t want to let you go,” he said, the words hardly more than a rasp.
She slipped her fingers into his thick hair, kneading his scalp, her heart responding to his words. She never wanted to let him go, either. “Yeah,” she whispered, “I know the feeling.”
“It’s not the sex,” he said. The only sound in the night was the splash and bubble of the water. “But I have to confess I’m hard again just thinking about you.”
She started to lift her head, ready to diffuse the tension with a teasing smile and a smart and clever remark. She was prepared to ignore completely the confusion she heard in his voice that so clearly mirrored her own.
But he tightened his arms around her, their gazes, for once, not on each other. Maybe that was the only way he could say what he needed to say, she thought.
She told herself that the fact that he was wrestling with his own emotions was something special. It would have to do. He told her with his touch and his body that she hadn’t given her heart in vain. That would have to be enough.
He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything at all, his phone rang. The cell was in his shorts near the patio door. He got out of the water and grabbed the phone. Turning away from her, he started to talk.
It would have to be enough, she thought again sadly. He was still running from the pain and disappointment of life. He might deny it, but she’d seen it before in her own eyes as she looked back at herself in the mirror. Getting out of the tub, she snagged a towel off the deck and wrapped it around her.
She passed him and felt the soft caress of his hand on her arm as she moved by him. She didn’t look back.
6
DRIVEN by the storm, the waves of the Pipe roared shoreward. Wisps of red and purple smudged the distant sky, tingeing the rolling water a rich magenta. Crashing onto the sloping beach, the cresting waves warred with the twilight. JC let a handful of powdery white sand sift from her fingers as she stared into the teeth of the storm. Only the toss of spray marred the deepening reddish-purple hue.
She embraced the sense of weightlessness she felt as a child when her father had taught her to float in these waters. The same feeling she achieved each time she mounted a surfboard. She had won the first heat of the Girls Go Banzai competition, and the second, but the approaching storm had caused the waves to become treacherous, so the third heat would have to wait until tomorrow.
They had been there, both Zack and her father, to watch her take the tube as though she’d been born of the waves.
She’d never forget that exhilarating drop or the feeling of just knowing that she was riding a wave that was sending her into the third heat on top. Her sponsor had been ecstatic.
Her father had hugged her after she’d come out of the water, the look on his face saying that he couldn’t have been prouder.
Zack had kissed her hard in front of everyone.
In the meantime, Evan Banks had convinced Zack to have dinner with him tonight and he’d invited her, as well. But after her shower, she’d just had to come back out here and relive her victory.
After a few more minutes, she got up from the sand. Clutched in her hand was the marketing plan she’d written for Zack. She headed for the restaurant.
ZACK WORKED at the rails of the surfboard. His shoulders felt tight and he tried to shrug off the feeling of losing something that he knew he was never going to find again, but the heaviness in his heart wouldn’t lift.
Suddenly his sander stopped and he looked up right into the stormy eyes of JC. She was holding the end of the cord, the plug dangling from her fingers.
“Did you forget about something important tonight?” She accused. She had every right to do so. He was a damned coward and it was time that she knew it.
He set his jaw and looked past her into the dark night. He wanted her. That wasn’t the question. The question was whether or not he was willing to risk it. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready for this.”
She dropped the cord and glared at him. “For this? What does that mean?”
He could see that she knew what it meant and she wasn’t going to give him an out.
“I’m not ready for my business to grow and for…”
“Me,” she said, her voice breaking. “You’re not ready for me.”
He met her eyes, but glanced away when he saw the pain and regret there. It had hurt so much the last time he’d lost something so important in his life. The answers eluded him, lay inside him beneath a dark cloak he hadn’t worked up the courage to look beneath. It was easier not to, simpler to let her walk out of his life. “No. I’m not.”
“That’s garbage.” Her tone snapped with anger and disappointment. “You don’t want to move on. You want to live in the past, not in the present. You never even tried to make your dreams into a new reality.”
“I can’t.”
“You disappoint me. You’re not the Zack Fanning I once thought I knew.”
“You never knew me. That Zack Fanning doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Yes, he does. He’s there. You just have to find him.”
“Go back to your competition, surfer girl. You’re on top now.”
“I’m sure you’re happy about that now that I won the first and second heats, aren’t you? Now, you won’t have to take a risk on me. I’ll be moving on.”
“There’s nothing more to say. We had a good time, you and me. You never had any intention of staying anyway. We both know that. Life has a way of taking over your life.”
“To hell with you. You never even asked me to stay.”
He was nipping this disaster in the bud. She was going to win this competition and she was going to leave. He couldn’t ask her to stay and give up her dreams. She would resent him in the end. He loved her. But this was the best thing he could do for both of them. God, his heart hurt as he watched her walk away.
JC SAT on the sand, waiting for her turn at heat three. The weather had cleared, and it was so clear and beautiful outside, she couldn’t wait to get at the waves.
Her encounter with Zack last night after the embarrassing wait with Mr. Banks at the restaurant was fresh in her mind. If she had any sense at all, she would forget about Zack Fanning, a man much too afraid of grasping the future because he was holding on to the past so tightly. He was forever caught in a terrible limbo. Though he’d taught her so
mething vital, something she might have never learned otherwise. Her dreams didn’t have to be static and old. JC could reinvent them any way she chose. She wished she could have taught Zack that, as well.
JC closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. She let herself picture a life where they could truly start over, where people really did rise above their pasts and lived beyond the shadows. A place where she and Zack could simply have happiness without all the baggage attached.
“JC.”
It took a moment for JC to recognize the voice. Her eyes flew open, and she swung around in the sand to see Zack. He was dressed in a white T-shirt that accentuated his tan and a pair of denim cutoffs that made her throat tighten with the memories. Lines of strain were etched around his impossibly blue eyes. He smiled his enticing smile, but there was too much pain in his expression for him to quite pull it off.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, standing.
He reached out his hand and offered her a sheaf of papers.
“What are these?” She took them and immediately saw it was a contract. He’d gone through with the deal with Evan Banks and a frisson of hope blossomed in her.
“Good for you. I’m happy for you,” she said as she handed the papers back to him. She had to turn away, not quite ready to put her heart on the line again.
“Don’t go.” His voice was barely a whisper above the waves.
JC froze, but then she turned back and took a step toward him. He continued, his voice subdued, his eyes pleading and vulnerable. “I didn’t ask before because…how could I ask you to give up your dream? I lost mine, but I never let it go. I let the rage and resentment close me off to taking any kind of risk. I was afraid of failing again, so it was better not to take the chance at all.”
“What changed your mind?”
“You did. I watched you get out there and battle like a champion. Your courage shamed me, made me finally face my fear. That’s when I contacted Evan Banks and made the deal. That’s why I’m here to tell you…”
“What?”
“I’m in love with you and I don’t want you to leave. I understand you’ll have commitments on the circuit, but let this be your home base.” He sounded so earnest. The wind blew his thick blond hair across his forehead. “Let me be your home base.”
