“That the best you can do?” she rasped, even though—hello—Jell-O legs.
“You have to earn my best,” he said. “For now, you’ll just get me.” He released her breast and skimmed that big hand down her stomach to slip between her legs and cup her through the thin cotton of her pants. “All of me.” Another nudge of his erection against her. “If you can take it.”
A bit late to have second thoughts about whether or not she could take it, take all of him. Her body was all but hysterical with the need to have him inside her. Vee squirmed against his fingers, trying to direct them to the part of her that craved his touch the most. But he laughed and shifted his hand away, setting it on her hip bone.
“Do you want this?” The sudden seriousness of his voice had her craning her neck and twisting her body to meet his gaze. “Do you want me?”
Me and no one else were the words he didn’t say aloud, but the words she read in his eyes that were hooded with passion.
“Yes.” She’d meant the word to come out with vehemence but instead it emerged on a needy moan, as a plea dragged out against her better judgment.
Sam dug into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, quickly extracting a small foil packet. Of course the man carried an emergency condom, and right now she was grateful for it. This was, after all, a goddamn emergency.
While he tore open the packet, she fumbled one-handed with the button of her pants. Thanks to fat fingers refusing to cooperate—note to self: a skirt was impractical on a motorbike but essential when about to have crazy-hot sex in a garage—she was fighting a losing battle to get her lower half naked.
Sam came to the rescue.
His hand covered hers and replaced it on the surfboard. “Allow me.”
He unbuttoned and unzipped her pants in record time. Bless his heart. He worked the pants over her hips and bottom and let them slip down her legs to bunch at her knees, then ran his fingers up the backs of her thighs. She shivered as he reached either side of her hips, hooking her panties and dragging them down. Leaving her exposed. All of her exposed. To him.
And she was aroused beyond measure, feeling the cool air reach the slickness between her legs. She was also starting to tremble with the anticipation of his touch and the creeping doubt that maybe he didn’t like what he saw. Maybe he’d changed his mind, because dammit, why hadn’t he touched her?
“Sam?” She didn’t quite dare to turn and look at him. Instead her gaze dropped, skimming down her pale not-so-perfectly-flat stomach to the dark smattering of curls and the tan line on her upper thighs from shorts worn most of the summer.
He answered with a rough, inarticulate sound moments before his hands settled on her bare ass and kneaded her flesh with a strong grip.
“Give me a sec,” he said. “Christ. You’re so fucking beautiful I could come just looking at you.”
Her womb gave a long, delicious shudder. The thought of Sam buried deep inside her had her primed and closer to the edge than she’d ever been before a man had barely touched her. She shifted her legs apart as far as her remaining clothing would allow, opening herself to him. Begging, really.
Yeah, she was begging. “Please.”
She heard his sharp inhale. One hand left her ass cheek and slid between her legs, two fingers gliding through her wetness to find her swollen bud, stroking it with slightly callused fingertips that had her breath whooshing out in a rush.
“Soon,” he murmured, rending all her arguments null and void as he continued to circle and rub his fingertips around her most sensitive spot.
“Sam!” She pushed herself onto his questing fingers as they dipped inside her, whimpering with the sheer pleasure of being stretched open to receive them. But it wasn’t nearly enough. “I’m close. Please. Now.”
He pulled his fingers from her and she felt him nudge against her. Internal muscles taut with anticipation, she squirmed, trying to position him right where she wanted him. She lowered herself over the surfboard, bracing on one forearm while she reached between her thighs with her other hand to guide him home.
Once more, he caught her wrist and returned her arm to the surfboard. His big body cradled hers, the skin-on-skin contact setting nerve endings from nape to the base of her spine ablaze. He kissed her shoulder, nuzzled his way up to the side of her throat, all the time his erection was pressing hard between the lips of her sex. She wriggled again and his chuckle puffed against her neck.
“Sweetheart, you’re going to need to hold on.”
The man had the equipment needed to justify a warning label. She felt the head of him nudge her opening again and the blissful pressure of him pushing inch after delicious inch into her until he was seated as far as he could go. Locked together, her body stretched to capacity and the sweet fullness of him demanding surrender, Vee white-knuckled the surfboard’s opposite edge. He withdrew slowly and sank into her again. She whimpered at how amazing it felt, her breasts grazing the smooth wooden surface beneath her. The next thrust came faster and bumped her stomach into the wood because she wasn’t ready for the force of it. Hell, she wasn’t ready for the next either, which was harder and with him angling her hips upward, deeper than she’d expected. She cried out, meeting him halfway as he thrust again and again. Their skin slapped together, an erotic accompaniment to the sound of their harsh pants.
Oxygen in short supply, Vee struggled to catch her breath as he drove into her. Dove into her was a better description because he held nothing back. She gripped the surfboard and squeezed her eyes shut. Exquisite ripples shuddered through her womb, growing in intensity with each stroke. He reached around her, his hand briefly cupping her breast then skimming down to where they were joined. The confident sweep of his fingertips had her belly flip-flopping, like the shocking jolt as a rogue wave knocked you off your feet. Then she was falling. Or soaring. Or somehow both at the same time as she came apart in his arms.
She screamed, so strong and all-consuming was her pleasure that she bucked beneath him, forcing him to grip both her hips. But Sam showed no mercy, slamming into her until she surrendered completely, and in her surrender he found his release.
After long, blissful moments, she uncurled her fingers from the surfboard and let her arms hang limply over the edge. Thank God Sam was big on quality tools and equipment as they both would’ve ended up flat on the floor otherwise. She wheezed in a breath and he propped himself up on one forearm so he wasn’t quite flattening her. With both of them panting like marathon runners, it was little wonder neither of them could speak.
“Would I seem less manly if I confess my legs are still shaking?” He stroked a palm down her side and gave her right ass cheek a cheerful squeeze.
He still had some strength left? Yay for him. Most of her muscles had disintegrated into goop and those that hadn’t pinged and jittered like a newbie overtaxing themselves at the gym. Less manly? She snorted.
“Something funny?” he asked and did a fancy little move with his hips that demonstrated that a certain part of his anatomy still had a lot of strength left.
“Just thinking that if you were any manlier, I’d be picking splinters out of my boobs for the next week.”
Sam laughed, a great belly laugh filled to the brim with…affection?
He continued to chuckle as he dropped a lingering kiss on her shoulder. She clenched around him, turning his chuckle into a husky moan.
“Give me a sec, babe,” he said.
This time she laughed. That was better. Sex made it simple. It was emotions—like the ones stirring in her heart that she was desperately trying to shove down—that complicated everything.
Chapter 12
Sam had somehow got through the rest of the day without injuring himself with sharp objects. It was a close thing, though. After he’d dropped Vee back in town, he’d headed back to Kauri Whare to work until quitting time. Hah. He’d suffered through an Isaac lecture about responsibilities—which meant he’d zoned out and nodded in the appropriate places, and conferred
with Uncle Manu about how to handle some tension between two staff members, and finally escaped to his workshop where he’d spent the next two hours stopping and starting, picking up his gouge and catching himself staring into space with it poised in his hand. He was as useless as tits on a bull, as his dad would say.
He blamed his complete distraction to a task that required his utmost focus entirely on Vee. And damn, if he could only think of anything else other than a blow-by-blow action replay of making love to her in his garage.
Making love.
He shook his head, returning his unused tools to their correct spots. He didn’t make love to women. He fucked them, he screwed them, he had sex with them, and sometimes he even lost himself in them for a few moments and felt tenderness toward them afterward which was kinda, sorta like love. Wasn’t it?
Sam locked up his workshop and headed for his truck. It wasn’t that different with Vee, or so he told himself. It’d been the hottest, most ball-emptying sex he’d experienced in a long, long time. But it wasn’t making love. He didn’t make love to a woman; they made love to him. And once they did—once he saw anything resembling an emotional neediness on their faces during the act—then it was over. Walls slammed down, the drawbridge came up, and archers prepared their arrows of ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’
Sam started the truck and left some rubber on the road in his impatience to get going. The Wrights were having dinner at Kai Moana with Isaac and Natalie tonight and he hadn’t discussed dinner plans with Vee. Nope, he’d been too busy banging her brains out over his surfboard to talk about whether she wanted chicken or beef on the menu tonight. At the last moment, he signaled and pulled into the grocery store parking lot. He raced around gathering the ingredients he needed and picking up fresh strawberries and blueberries because he knew Vee liked them.
Back at home, Turbo waited for him slumped in the center of the front deck, nose on paws, giving him the guilt-trip eyeball. Sam hoisted the grocery bags in his arms and unlocked the front door. Turbo, who apparently had a nose equal to that of a bloodhound, trotted down the hall after him, sniffing. Sam set the bags on the kitchen counter and dug into one until he found the plastic-wrapped tray of soup bones. Turbo’s tail wagged at light speed, the most energy the dog had ever shown.
“Sit.”
Turbo just looked at him with big pleading eyes, his tail wagging even faster.
“You want it? Sit your butt down.”
The dog’s eyebrows waggled but he plopped his ass on the kitchen floor and whined. Hah. The animal knew who was boss. Sam removed a bone from the tray and the dog promptly stood up again. Whatever. It wasn’t his job to be a dog whisperer so he handed over the bone and Turbo disappeared down the hallway.
Sam puttered around the kitchen, chopping vegetables and making a green salad. After a moment’s debate of the manliness of making raspberry Jell-O, he made it anyway, tossing in some of the chopped up strawberries and juicy blueberries. Ruby would eat anything if it was suspended in Jell-O.
As he chopped, peeled, and sliced, he found himself humming to fill up the kitchen’s silence. That silence had never bothered him before, and it didn’t really bother him now. It just felt as if something wasn’t quite right. As if something was lightly sandpapering his nerves. Then he caught himself singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You.”
Bloody hell. She had him singing disco now?
Sam tossed the vegetable knife into the sink and stalked to his bedroom. So he was looking forward to Vee and Ruby arriving home. Was that so bad? All it proved was that his extroverted nature preferred company. He often came home from work, changed, and went straight out the door again. Sometimes he went to his parents’ place because his mum would never let one of her baby chicks starve, or if he didn’t feel like having his life choices analyzed, he’d stop by and annoy Isaac, who, although he was likely to feed him some health crap, could be relied on for company without the inquisition.
He pulled off his T-shirt, did a quick armpit check, and decided to be on the safe side and grab a quick shower. Third one today. He grinned at his reflection as he opened the shower door and stepped under spray. Shower number two with a wet, bubble-covered Vee had been the second highlight of his day.
Vee and Ruby arrived home as he was setting the table like the good domestic goddess he’d never been. But one look at the fine lines of strain around her mouth as she carried Ruby inside and set her down made his stomach clench. She looked exhausted. Ruby clung to her legs, grizzling. Her gaze met his, wary at first, and he liked to think it quickly warmed, but it was more likely the smell of roast chicken had reached her nose.
“You made dinner?” she asked, sniffing.
“Picked up a preroasted chicken at the supermarket and made a salad. Thought you might be hungry.”
“You weren’t waiting for me to come home and cook, then?”
“What is this? The nineteen fifties? I’m offended you think I don’t know how to throw a meal together. My ma would have something to say about that, don’t you think?”
An easy smile creased her lips, driving away the tightness. “Remember when Tui and I walked into an after-school cooking instruction with you and Isaac and your ma? She was trying to teach you boys how to roast a chicken.” Her eyes danced with amusement. “She had her back turned to you while she lectured Isaac about oven temperatures, and you spotted us snickering in the doorway. You sat the raw chicken up in the roasting pan and made it wave its drumsticks at us.”
“You laughed and gave me away.”
He remembered that day, too. He remembered how a shaft of afternoon sunshine had caused Vee’s dark hair to shine like the slick feathers of the tui bird his sister was named after. He remembered the soft swell of her budding breasts pushing against the cotton of her school uniform blouse, her long slender legs beneath the pleated skirt. How one ankle sock was higher than the other, the glint of gold stud earrings in her ears, the spots of color high on her cheekbones. And the way her small white teeth tagged at her full bottom lip as she watched him with her big blue eyes.
She was the prettiest of all the Sullivan sisters. Hell, Sam thought she was the prettiest girl at Bounty Bay High School. And he’d wanted to impress her—just a little. He couldn’t do it with his sporting prowess, because Isaac would always have him beat there. He wasn’t a brainbox like Tui, who, as much as it pissed her off to hear, was like a Māori Hermione Granger. So Sam had resorted to his usual role of class clown. He made Vee laugh. Totally worth the swat on the back of the head from his mother.
Ruby had stopped grizzling and held out her arms to Sam.
“Dinner?” she asked.
“Soon, heihei.” He handed her one of the carrot sticks he’d set aside on the chopping board. “We’ll watch Peppa Pig while Mummy relaxes for a bit before dinner, eh?”
While Ruby nibbled thoughtfully on a carrot stick, he glanced at Vee. “I ran you a bath. The water should still be hot. Take your time. I picked up a new DVD on the way home. It’ll keep us busy for a while.”
Her pretty blue eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. Ah. Should’ve figured she’d take it that way. So that’s the way he’d play it and leave her to her own conclusions. He applied his most charming you know you want me grin.
“You can pay me in S-E-X later.”
Her mouth pinched in and her hands fisted on her hips.
“Or you can just accept it’s a thirty-minute reprieve and enjoy it,” he continued.
“The only reason men run women a bath is to soften them up,” she said.
He couldn’t prevent another smile from creeping onto his face. “If I recall, you’re pretty soft already. Some parts of you more than others. And nothing like a nice soak to get rid of the day’s tension.” He pretended to think for a moment and offered Ruby another carrot stick. “But if you’re still tense after your bath I’m sure we can figure out some other way to relax you.”
She huffed out a laugh. “An uninterrupted thirty minutes to my
self in a tub of hot water is a treat I’m not going to say no to. Enjoy Peppa.”
Sam turned away and carried Ruby to the living room, setting her on the couch while he put in the new DVD. He sat beside her as the cartoon pig filled up his TV screen. After a moment, she crawled onto his lap, plugged her thumb into her mouth, and nestled into him.
Dammit, but he was feeling all the feels. A little pissed, a little sad, a little anxious. Hadn’t any male in Vee’s life treated her right? Hell, it wasn’t even treating a woman right to make a meal and run her a bath. Why wouldn’t you make sure the person you cared about didn’t have to cook after working all day and putting a toddler’s needs before your own? That she automatically thought his motivation for showing her a little bit of care was sex based was understandable, but it stung. Because he guessed that’s what her expectation of him was.
Sex.
Now that they’d cross the line from pretend intimacy to an actual sexual connection, of course she’d assume that sex was the only reason he’d want to do something nice for her.
He absently stroked Ruby’s curls and leaned his head against the back of the couch to rest his eyelids. Peppa Pig continued to chatter away and he let his mind float, like driftwood on an outgoing tide.
A hand touched his shoulder and he jerked awake, the smell of orange blossom—according to the label on the bubble bath he picked up at the grocery store—filling his nose. He opened his eyes to Vee leaning over him, a look on her face he couldn’t quite identify but it made his heart leap from a sleepy beat to a runaway gallop. If only she’d been looking at him with an aw, that’s so cute he’s fallen asleep watching TV with my daughter look, things would be so much simpler.
But there was more.
Wonderment, and a fearful kind of hope. There was a connection and it wasn’t because they’d screwed like bunny rabbits. The look on her face scared him worse than the times as a surfer he’d caught sight of a fin beneath the waves.
Break Your Heart_A Small Town Romance Page 16
