“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” My voice grew bitter as I remembered the horrible whirlwind of emotions I’d been through. “I was an only child, but Rick was like the son they’d never had. No way my father was going to give that up. He loves Rick. Sometimes I still wonder if they care more about him than they do about me.
“Anyway, the whole cheating thing happened about four months before the wedding. After that, things just kept getting worse and worse. Rick and I fought all the time, and my parents always took his side. It was like they all ganged up on me.
“The last month before the wedding, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep… I was miserable. And then one day I finally realized something: I didn’t want to marry him. I didn’t trust him. I’d been in love with him once, but I wasn’t anymore. And I realized that the last four months were basically a preview of what being married to him would be like: the cheating, the lying, the fighting…
“I know that sounds stupid, that I suddenly ‘realized’ I didn’t want to marry him… but when you’ve been thinking for years about marrying somebody, and then you get engaged and you’re planning a wedding… it took a while to figure out, ‘Oh, I don’t actually have to do this.’”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” he said kindly. “It sounds human.”
“Yeah, well… even though I knew I didn’t want to marry him, I was terrified of calling off the wedding. I couldn’t tell my parents – they’d just try to talk me back into it. Everything was already paid for. They were going to have a reception for 600 people, most of whom I didn’t even know. All my mom’s society friends, and my dad’s partners and lawyer friends… I felt like the wedding was more for them than for me.” I sighed. “And… even though Rick had cheated on me and lied to me… I didn’t want to destroy him. I might not have loved him anymore or wanted to marry him, but I didn’t want to humiliate him in front of all of our friends and a whole bunch of strangers.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I wanted to be brave… I did, I wanted to so bad. Every day I got up with knots in my stomach and tried to work up the courage to call it off, but I couldn’t. I just… I was too scared. So I worried about it and obsessed about it and made myself sick for three weeks before I finally panicked and decided it was now or never.
“My grandmother died back when I was in college and left me some money. A week before the wedding, I bought a ticket online to come here to California. I wrote two letters – one to my parents and one to Rick – and then I snuck out the next morning and took an Uber to the airport. As soon as I got to LA, I booked a room in a cheap hotel and cried for days.”
“Why?”
I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Why were you crying over this guy?”
“Because it’s one thing to say you don’t want to marry somebody, but it’s another thing entirely to call it off a week before the wedding. And even worse than that, I ran away. I was a total coward.”
“No you weren’t.”
“Well, everybody told me I was. They said I’d broken Rick’s heart, and that I was being selfish, and vindictive, and I was a total bitch. My parents basically told me I was a bad daughter.” I started shaking as I tried to control my sobs. “Everyone hated me. Well, except for a few friends. But my parents did… Rick did…”
Ian took my hand in his. “Well, I think you’re brave. And I think you’re a good person who did the best she could in a bad situation.”
I looked at him with tears blurring my vision. “…yeah?”
“Yeah. And I’m glad you left. Really glad.”
“Me too. Although I still feel awful about what I did to him. And to my parents. I hurt a lot of people by waiting so long and then running away. Rick might have cheated on me, but… I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I’d ended it a lot sooner.” I laughed bitterly. “I wish I’d never said I’d marry him in the first place.”
“But at least you ended it. I don’t care what you say, that took a lot of guts.”
I smiled sadly. “Maybe… you know, I think a lot about why I said yes to getting married even when I wasn’t sure I wanted to, and why I stuffed down all my feelings, and why I stayed with somebody I didn’t trust. I think it was because I’d been saying ‘yes’ all my life, when I never even knew I could say ‘no.’ People just expected me to do what they wanted. My parents, teachers, pastors, Rick… everybody. And I just said ‘yes’ because that’s all I knew how to do. Even when I was dying inside. Leaving him… that was the first time I ever said ‘no.’”
“Better late than never,” he said as he soothingly stroked my hair.
“Yeah.” I leaned my head against his chest, breathed in the scent of his skin, and sighed with relief. Telling someone else felt like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. “Better late than never.”
After a moment, I sat back up and looked at him. “What about you? You got any dark secrets to spill?” I joked.
He looked into my eyes for a long moment, then smiled a little. “Not really, no. But we do have something in common.”
“What’s that?”
“Assholes pressuring us to do something we don’t want to do.”
I smiled. “Is that what Vic is? An asshole pressuring you to do something you don’t want to do?”
Ian made a face. “Ehhh, he’s not really an asshole.”
I stared at him. “What?! That’s not what you said earlier!”
“I know, but… at heart, he’s a good guy. He’s basically an overgrown kid, running around and playing with his expensive toys and being totally inappropriate and immature because nobody’s ever told him ‘no’ before.”
“I don’t think ‘inappropriate’ and ‘immature’ even begin to cover it.”
He grinned. “Maybe not.”
“But he’s still one of the people pressuring you into doing something you don’t want to do, right?”
“Yeah,” Ian conceded.
“What about your father? Is he pressuring you, too?”
Ian’s eyes darkened the tiniest bit, but he didn’t turn cold like he normally did.
“…no. No, I’m okay with my dad.”
“That’s good.” I decided not to push it. I felt so close to him right now, I didn’t want to destroy the moment. “I’m glad he’s not overstepping his bounds, like some other parental units I know.”
Ian’s brow furrowed. “Speaking of overstepping limits – how did Rick find you?”
“My dad apparently told some of his political contacts that I was suicidal. They made some calls, and somebody tracked my cell phone somehow. Or something like that.”
Ian stared at me in shock. “That’s illegal.”
“I know!”
“‘Political contacts’? Your dad has that kind of pull?”
“He’s kind of a big deal in Wichita.”
Ian made a wry face. “That’s sort of like saying ‘I’m a big deal in Burkina Faso.’”
I frowned. “Where’s Burkina Faso?”
“Exactly.”
“Jackass!” I said, and swatted him on the arm as I laughed. “Kansas isn’t that small!”
“Well, compared with North Dakota, no…”
“You’re such a jerk!”
“Nope, just tellin’ it like it is.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be surfers from California.”
“More’s the pity.”
“Brah,” I added.
“Brah,” he repeated, and laughed. But his smile gradually faded to a frown. “If they tracked you once, do you think they would track you again?”
“Well, see, they kind of know where I live now,” I said with a voice like DUH. “Or did you miss that part?”
“Now who’s being a jackass?” he said good-naturedly. “I’m serious – do you think they might… I don’t know… be tracking you so they could snatch you?”
“That would be kidnapping.”
“Well, they already br
oke one set of laws – what’s to keep them from claiming they were trying to stop you from committing suicide?”
A knot grew in the pit of my stomach. “Damn… now you’ve got me all paranoid, too…”
“Don’t worry – just leave your cell here. You can spend the next week or so with me, and we’ll get you a new phone in case of an emergency. That way they can’t track you.”
Suddenly the stress lifted. I grew a little misty-eyed. “You… you want me to stay with you?”
“Until this blows over… yeah. So what do you say?”
I leaned in and kissed him passionately. “Yes.”
“Is that you saying ‘yes’ because you don’t know how to say ‘no’?”
I got up out of my chair and straddled his lap, then opened my robe so that my bare breasts pressed against his chest.
He seemed pretty taken aback – but in a good way.
“No,” I whispered in his ear. “That’s me saying ‘yes’ because I want you inside me as often as possible.”
“Jesus,” he murmured, then kissed me.
A few seconds later, I could feel his cock lifting up against the material of his swim trunks, pressing against me between my legs.
We went back to the bedroom shortly thereafter, and I got my sex before surfing after all.
52
Ian
I waited until she was using a hairdryer to make the call.
“John,” I said as soon as my old assistant picked up.
“Mr. McLaren – oh my God, it’s good to hear your voice! How are – ”
“I’m good,” I said, cutting him off. “But I need you to handle something for me.”
“Anything, sir.”
“Do you have that number for the bodyguard company we used when I went to Latin America? The former Navy SEALs?”
It was merely a matter of logistics after that.
53
Katie
Two weeks passed. Two incredibly glorious, fun, sexy weeks – the best of my life, bar none.
Ian and I spent almost every minute together. We slept at his place every night, but we hung out at my house with Aisha, too. She and Ian got along really well. He liked her lighthearted humor, and she enjoyed making him laugh – not to mention the view. She must have asked me five times, “Does he have a brother? Or a cousin? Or a really young uncle?”
For the first couple of days, I held my breath, waiting for Rick to reappear – but he never did.
“Don’t worry about him,” Ian told me. “If he shows up again, I’ll handle it.”
Eventually I decided to trust that he would, and finally I began to relax.
Surfing was incredibly fun. I caught my first wave on the third day of practice. By the fifth, I was catching them all the time. Now, staying up all the way was another matter, but it felt like a gigantic accomplishment all the same – and Ian was patient and encouraging.
And we had lots and LOTS of sex that only got hotter with time. The more we discovered about each other’s bodies, the better it got. For instance, I found out he had this spot below his ribs, just above his hipbone. If I brushed my fingers lightly over it, he’d go absolutely crazy. His whole body would stiffen and he’d screw up his face like he was in pain – but instead it was this intense pleasure that came from me tickling him with soft caresses. I loved doing that.
For his part, he pushed me past my normal limits to try things I wouldn’t have. The first night he tied me to his bed, my wrists and ankles bound to the headboard by strips of cloth, I thought I was going to hate it… but it was the opposite. The feeling of being restrained… of being able to put all my energy into fighting against him… it brought out this wild side in me, and made my orgasms even more intense. He definitely tapped into a kinky part of me that I never knew existed.
Our time together wasn’t all hot sex – although the hot sex was fantastic. But there were plenty of other things that were sweetly romantic.
Like building sand castles out on the beach. He would take his bucket along with his surfboard. (Yes, he actually had a bucket for building sand castles, which I teased him about mercilessly – “What are you, five years old?”) He would pack the bucket tight with sand and make an underlying structure of cylindrical shapes, then fill the bucket again with sopping wet sand and dip out a handful at a time. We would drizzle it out of our clenched fists, and the wet sand would form these twisting, clumped structures that built on themselves like soft-serve ice cream. The towers looked like they’d been worn down into odd shapes from centuries of rain and wind. Either that, or some fairytale creature from The Lord of the Rings had built them. We’d even make bridges by putting sticks between towers and covering the twigs with sand, and decorate the towers with seashells.
I might have teased him about being five years old with his sand bucket, but I felt like I was five years old when I built those castles with him. I can’t tell you how much of a welcome escape that was.
He’d make up hilarious stories, too, about the inhabitants of the castle.
“This castle is at the bottom of the peninsula of a land called Can,” he announced.
“Can?”
“Yes. It’s so far at the bottom of the peninsula that they call it the ‘Ass of Can’ – or Can’s Ass for short.”
“Can’s A – KANSAS? Smart-aleck!” I laughed, and threw a handful of wet sand at him.
He just grinned and kept talking. “There was this beautiful princess who lived in Can’s Ass, and one day she decided to go down to the seaside. She met a warrior there who skimmed across the water on an enchanted plank of wood, and she badgered him and bothered him and annoyed the hell out of him until he finally agreed to teach her – ”
“YOU JERK!” I howled and laughed at the same time, and dumped the entire bucket of wet sand onto his back.
He grabbed me by the hands and wrestled me to the ground, giggling and screaming, then leaned over and whispered in my ear, “And she repaid him by taking him to bed, where she made the most delightful cries of ‘Oh – oh – oh – ’ when she reached the height of pleasure.’”
I stopped struggling. The sound of him imitating my orgasms turned me on so much, I instantly got wet.
“The princess needs some lovin’ right now,” I whispered back.
We immediately raced back up to the house, hand in hand, where we went at it for the next hour or two.
Another one of my favorite stories from the sand castles was when he would talk about the children of the royal family. I never, ever asked about whether those children were the princess and the warrior’s – after all, I didn’t want to freak him out. But I did enjoy hearing him go on and on.
“They gave them strange names, previously unknown in Can’s Ass. Bizarre names like Apple… and North… and Blue Ivy…”
“Maybe they should have named them after famous minstrels of the time,” I suggested. “Like Elvis.”
“They already did that in True Romance,” he said, referencing the 90’s movie written by Quentin Tarantino.
“Oh, they have True Romance in Can’s Ass?” I asked.
“In the video stores.”
“I don’t see any TV’s in the castle.”
He took a little mussel shell no bigger than his pinky fingernail and placed it in the window of one of the towers. “There.”
“I don’t see anything on the screen,” I said.
“That’s because only non-annoying people can see it.”
I threw a handful of wet sand at him.
“Okay,” I suggested, “if not Elvis, how about Dylan?”
“No, too many Can’s Ass-ians would confuse that with the show 90210.”
“Shouldn’t it be Can’s-ans?”
“No… Can’s Ass-ians,” he said decisively.
“And you think they would confuse Bob Dylan with a character from an old TV show?”
“They’re not very smart in Can’s Ass,” he said with a sly smile.
He got two handfuls of w
et sand thrown at him for that one.
“As long as we’re dealing with Bobs, how about Marley?” I suggested.
“That was a dog’s name from a movie, wasn’t it?”
“How about a Beatle? John, Paul, or George?”
“Ringo, definitely.”
“No – no self-respecting royal couple would name their kid Ringo.”
“I told you, they’re Can’s Ass-ians. They don’t have very good taste.”
He snickered – right up until I dumped the whole bucket of sand over his head.
“The women of Can’s Ass – they wear these one-piece bathing suits that make them look like grandmas – ” he choked out between laughs, howling with glee.
I jumped on his back and gave him a noogie. He stood up and ran into the ocean with me riding piggyback and screaming in delight. We both fell into the waves, came up spluttering, and after a few minutes of splashing each other ended up kissing. After which we quickly ran back to the house.
It was a good day for Can’s Ass-ians.
54
Ian
I was seriously falling for this girl.
No, scratch that.
I had seriously fallen for this girl.
It wasn’t just how beautiful she was. It wasn’t just her body, which was amazing… it wasn’t how enthusiastic and passionate she was in bed. The sex was fantastic – by far the best I’d ever had – but it went way beyond all that.
I was used to LA and San Francisco women. A lot of them have this sort of world-weary cynicism. A kind of ‘been there, done that’ attitude.
Katie wasn’t like that. She had a childlike glee about life, and every day was a new adventure. An ice cube fight or building sand castles was something she enjoyed as much as – and maybe even more than – a fancy dinner out.
A significant number of Los Angeles women I’d dated were totally into themselves (or other equally shallow things). Their movie business or acting careers, what clubs were hot right now, who they knew and what that could get them, what famous people’s parties they could get into, who’d already had plastic surgery and who was going to get it.
Sex On The Beach: Bad Boys Club Romance #1 Page 13
