by Sami Lee
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said.
“Why would I be upset because you think I can’t control myself?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Ty swung the car into a beachside car park across the road from their destination. Then he swiveled in his seat and pinned Summer’s gaze with his. “I have certain plans for this evening, and you’re not going to derail them with another one of these attempts of yours to get the sex part of them over with. I am going to have you, babe, but when and how I want. And no matter how long it takes, you are going to come in my arms and scream my name when you do it. You got that?”
Her mouth fell open, her tongue looking pink and wet and inviting. Self-restraint, Butler. He wasn’t going to kiss her, because if he started now he wouldn’t stop and he’d end up acting like the impulse-driven animal she thought he was.
When she didn’t respond, Ty yanked open his door and said, “Right now, I’m starved. Let’s eat.”
As flabbergasted as she was by Ty’s little announcement in the car, it took Summer several minutes to put two and two together. She’d ordered a grilled chicken burger and taken a seat at the last available table that overlooked Shelley Beach before the reality of where they were fully penetrated.
Ty came to sit opposite her. “They’ve freshened this place up a lot.”
“They have.” Summer glanced around at the black countertops and gleaming red accessories that gave the cafe a modern ambience completely different from the aged blue-and-white tile that used to decorate the interior. “I remember when it was a greasy fish-and-chip shop called JJ’s, and all the surfers used to hang out here.”
Will you meet me at JJ’s tomorrow?
Ty caught and held her gaze. Summer knew his request of long ago was playing in his mind as well as hers. At length, Summer voiced the truth that hung between them like the proverbial elephant. “I didn’t show up.”
“I noticed.”
There was no hint of bitterness in the words, but it was the very flatness of his tone that told Summer she had upset him back then. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
Summer shook her head and gazed out at the spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean gilded by the orange glow of sunset. “You don’t understand what it was like for me.”
“You don’t know what it was like to stand around here for hours like a loser, waiting for a girl who never came.”
Summer sighed. “Jasmine was so upset. I thought it was because she was still hung up on you. I’d already betrayed her by falling for you, I couldn’t compound the sins by going behind her back to see you again. I just couldn’t do it to her. She’s my sister.”
“There was no message, Summer. You didn’t call or anything.”
“You didn’t call me.”
“After what happened with your sister and your dad, the two of them catching us like that…I figured the ball was in your court, and your failure to show was you saying no, that you didn’t want to be with me. That it wasn’t worth the hassle.”
“I thought if I saw you or heard your voice, I wouldn’t have the strength to say no. I had such crazy feelings for you.” She smiled ruefully, wondering how many of those crazy feelings remained. The bulk of them, if her rapidly beating heart and trembling fingers were anything to go by. “I couldn’t trust myself.”
“What about now? You seem to have gotten over your inability to say no to me.”
Summer almost laughed at the slightly peeved tone of his voice. She supposed that in Ty’s world, waiting a week for a woman to agree to sex was an eon. “I’m here, Ty. If I could resist you I wouldn’t be.”
His smile was slow to spread but all the more dangerous for it. The corresponding warmth that infused Summer was like an unstoppable force that gradually took over her body, starting in her lower abdomen and radiating outward to all her erogenous zones. By the time the server came to deliver their burgers, her breasts tingled and her thighs were clamped tight beneath the table.
All that from a mere smile. She was in so much trouble.
The teenage boy who delivered their meals seemed almost as entranced by Ty’s presence as Summer. He fussed over whether they wanted sauce for their hot chips or additional drinks, all the while proclaiming it to be “fully sick” that Ty Butler had come into his place of employ. Ty was patient with the waiter, asking him what kind of board he owned and what were his favorite maneuvers. Barrels and hacks and snaps were mentioned. Summer smiled to herself. The language of surfers was a unique one.
When the boy had finally moved on, Summer rested her chin on her hand and regarded Ty thoughtfully. “Does that happen often?”
“Not that much. It’s not like being a movie star or anything.”
Maybe not, but he was on some roadside billboards and banners in surf-clothing stores, and he was a world champion in his sport. It could have all gone to his head but it hadn’t. Despite his occasionally outlandish cockiness, Ty was at heart a modest, generous person who gave others his time and attention without a thought. “You’re very good with people.”
Ty shrugged off her compliment. “Save for a few notable exceptions, I like people.”
“Notable exceptions, huh? Like who?”
“Like guys who drop in or cut me off in traffic—which amounts to pretty much the same thing. Anyone who kicks a puppy or steals from old people.” Ty pinned her with his gaze. “Any guy who’s ever slept with you, especially if he failed to make you feel good about it.”
Summer’s heart fluttered at the note of possessiveness inherent in the remark. “Neither of us are virgins anymore, Ty. Ground we covered fairly comprehensively within earshot of Mrs. McIntosh yesterday.”
“Maybe part of me still remembers you that way, as the girl who’d only ever let one guy touch her—me. I must have hung on to that notion because I liked it.” Ty grinned and stuck a fry into his mouth. “Call me a jerk for it if you want.”
“Oh, I think that’s implied.”
Chuckling, he leaned over the table and popped a fry from his plate into her mouth. “And yet you’re here with me. Maybe you do find me irresistible after all.”
Summer thought that was implied as well, so she didn’t do him the favor of confirming it. Instead she chewed on the fry he’d given her. Then she took one from her plate, dipped it into the tomato sauce and proffered it to Ty.
He took the fried potato between his teeth and swallowed it into his mouth, holding her gaze the entire time. Summer would never have thought chewing could look so sexy. When Ty offered her another one of his fries, Summer laughed. “This could go on all night.”
His wicked grin made her thighs clench tight again. “Not this, no.”
It was all Summer could do not to whimper. “I don’t know what you’re doing to me here.”
“I’m warming you up. Can’t you tell?”
“I guess not.” Flushing, Summer picked up her burger and took a bite, hoping Ty would miss the allusion beneath her statement.
No such luck. He picked up his own burger, but before he took a bite he said, “Not enough of that in the past I gather. Your ex was a do-it-now-eat-lasagne-later type.”
“Not exactly.” Duncan had never been that impatient to get her into bed. He’d turned to her when the urge had come, knowing she would accept him because she always did, her acquiescence born of her guilty conscience. She’d married him without loving him, so at least she wanted to be a good wife in some ways, in the physical ways if not the emotional ones. So Duncan had never had to push or rush, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to take his time either. “We had more of a Wednesday-and-Saturday-night just-before-lights-out kind of arrangement.”
“Twice a week.” Ty ripped into his burger like a T-Rex might rip into a smaller dinosaur. “What a stud.”
“Ty, I don’t think we should be talking about this.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Ty conceded. “Because I’m getting the feeling ol’ D
uncan is one of those few notable exceptions when it comes to people—the kind of class-A prick I wouldn’t like.”
That was highly likely. It would be difficult to find two men more different from each other than her ex-husband and Ty Butler.
They ate their food in silence for a while. Ty finished his burger but Summer got through only half hers before she declared herself full and pushed her plate aside. Ty leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head, studying her. At length, he asked, “Have I screwed this up by having a go at your ex?”
Summer eyed the way his posture pulled the material of his white T-shirt across the muscled wall of his chest, how his biceps bulged against the sleeves. “No, you haven’t.”
He smiled softly. “I keep thinking I’m going to—screw this up I mean. I’m acting like a toey nineteen-year-old without a brain cell to his name. Must be this place bringing back memories. Or maybe it’s you.”
“If you think I’m being my most poised self,” Summer drawled, “you’re very much mistaken.”
“You always seem so bloody self-possessed to me.”
Summer’s sudden laugh was almost a snort. “Around you? God no.”
Beneath the table, Ty nudged at her calf with the toe of his shoe. Even that scant contact gave her gooseflesh. “Aren’t we a couple of crazy kids.”
“Feels like it,” Summer agreed.
Leaning forward in his seat, Ty reached across the table and cupped her chin, running his thumb over her lower lip. He must have collected a grain of salt, because he pulled his thumb back and licked it. An impatient rush of heat shot straight to the place between her thighs that had been pulsing with awareness all night.
“I want you, Sum, in the worst way. In a very adult way.”
Her reply was barely a rasp. “Me too.”
“It’ll be better with us. I’ll make sure.”
“I know.” She knew that whatever happened tonight, orgasm or no orgasm, it would surpass anything she’d experienced with Duncan or the few other men she’d tried to share her body with. She knew because she was going to be with Ty. He was like no one else in the world, and he was hers, at least for tonight.
“So what were your plans that day?” she asked. “Once you got me to JJ’s—what then?”
“I was going to take you down to the beach. I knew a place where no one would bother us.”
“Do you still know how to find it?”
Ty held her gaze for several wild thumps of her heart. Then, by way of response, he stood and held out his hand.
Chapter Seven
Ty laid a blanket on the patch of beach against the break wall he’d always thought of as his spot. The sand was firm yet soft, the rocks around it forming a semicircle that sheltered it from the wind while still allowing a view of the moonlit ocean. The overhang provided shelter and a little privacy from anyone walking farther up the beach.
Years ago he used to come here early mornings to check out the swell as the sun rose over the horizon, or any other time he wanted to be alone. The year he’d turned nineteen he’d come here a lot to think about Summer.
“The beach always looks so different when it’s dark,” Summer observed, staring at how the waves turned phosphorescent as they broke on the sand. “You know when we first moved here when I was a kid, I used to think the waves stopped coming in at night. I was about nine years old before I realized they didn’t.”
Chuckling softly, Ty took Summer’s hand and brought her down onto the blanket with him. “The surf never sleeps. I find it comforting, knowing it’s always here, waiting.”
On her knees now, Summer held his gaze. “I never said I was sorry. For not showing up.”
“Are you though?”
Her expression was sincere in the moonglow. “Yes. I’ve always regretted that my first time wasn’t with you. Even though it would never have lasted between us…it still should have been you.”
Ty wanted to refute her statement that it would never have lasted between them, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment with a pointless argument. It might have lasted, it might not have. He still would have liked the chance to find out, instead of having that opportunity taken away from him.
Rather than bring all that up, he focused on the other thing she said. It should have been you. It made him think her first time had to have been as bad as all the subsequent ones, and Ty wanted to punch something. Preferably her ex-husband’s face.
The jealousy was unwarranted. Like he’d admitted to Summer yesterday, he hadn’t been a monk the past decade. It wouldn’t have been normal if Summer hadn’t had a sex life of some sort. Yet the irrational possessiveness wouldn’t dissipate, and he had to rein in the violent emotions. He made his touch gentle as he stroked a finger over Summer’s lips. They were smooth and lush, and they parted against his fingertip. A surge of something else violent rushed straight to his cock. He’d been hard on and off all day, thinking about this moment, about finally having Summer where he’d always wanted her—beneath him, her legs wrapped around his waist as he fucked her.
Now that he was here he was nervous again, and it made him hesitate. Not something he was known for doing, in the surf or out. It had never felt so important to make it good for anyone the way it was right now. He didn’t merely want Summer to have an orgasm, he wanted to blow her away. He wanted to be the best she’d ever had, or ever would have. Numero Uno, the world champ of fucking.
Jesus. He was on an ego trip. He didn’t deserve to have Summer, who dedicated her life to making others feel better. Even knowing that, Ty wasn’t going to walk away unless she told him to.
“Tell me this is what you want,” he said gruffly. “If you have any doubts, tell me now.”
“I want to be with you, Ty. But…”
“You can’t possibly disappoint me,” he filled in, guessing the train of her thoughts. Didn’t she know he was the one concerned about disappointing her?
“Even though the girls you’ve been with are sexy and fun and all the things I’m not?”
With a growl of annoyance, Ty flipped her onto her back on the blanket. Slipping one leg between hers, he framed her face with his hands, keeping it still so she was forced to look at him. “You are sexy.”
To prove his point, he flexed his hips so she’d feel the bulge of his erection pressing into her thigh. When she gasped, Ty covered her open mouth with his. He traced the line of her lower lip, nibbled around the edges of her mouth, doing everything he could to hold back from plunging his tongue inside. That would only remind him how much he wanted to sink his cock into her as deep as it would go, and he had to not think about that right now or he was going to lose his mind and do it.
This night had to be all about Summer.
She responded to his kiss with fervor, tilting her face up and opening her lips, offering herself. Heart pounding, cock throbbing, Ty traced her delicate jawline with his mouth. Summer arched her back, pressing her sweet, taut breasts into his chest. Ty’s dick twitched impatiently. He wrenched his mouth from her intoxicating skin and angled his body away from hers.
Summer was breathing as hard as he. “Don’t stop.”
As if. “I’m not. Just catching my breath.”
He slid his hand down, trailing his fingers over her throat, then the neckline of her dress. There were tiny white buttons on it, forming a straight line from the valley between her breasts to her waist. Ty had been thinking about releasing those fastenings since the moment he’d seen her in it. He tried to ignore the way his hand trembled when he reached to undo the first button. The second and third slipped easily through the holes, and he made quick work of the fourth and fifth. Clenching his jaw, Ty forced himself to stop there.
Even in the meager light provided by the half moon and the starry sky above, she was too beautiful for Ty’s control. The pale fabric seemed luminescent against her darker skin, the exposed curve of her breast presenting an irresistible temptation. Ty slipped his hand inside the open bodice, cupping th
e small mound. His callused fingers felt too rough against her smoothness, but Summer didn’t flinch or shrink away. She arched her back, pressing herself into his hand. With a groan Ty found her nipple and toyed with it, keeping his explorations gentle, gauging what she liked.
She writhed beneath his ministrations. Her eyes were black pools reflecting the moonlight as they stared up at him, so open, so trusting. He took her stiff nipple between thumb and forefinger and gave it an experimental tug.
She gasped in shock, wincing a little, and Ty stopped immediately. She grabbed his wrist, holding his hand to her. “It’s all right, you surprised me, that’s all.”
Christ. Ty couldn’t picture what pathetic level of foreplay she’d experienced if that small touch was a shock to her system. He reminded himself he was going to have to be gentle, slow even, when that hadn’t exactly been his MO lately. “You’re not going to like everything I do, Summer.”
She smiled and pressed his hand over her breast again. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it. And I need you to tell me when you don’t like something. Promise me.”
“Okay. I don’t like that you still have your shirt on.”
Ty chuckled, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders. Grabbing his T-shirt he dragged it off and tossed it behind him on the blanket. Summer’s hands immediately began coasting over his muscles, and he tensed up all over again.
He groaned. “Summer.”
“You’re magnificent in the moonlight.”
Her awed words shot more heat to his groin, and for the moment he let his own needs take over. Ty released the last few buttons on Summer’s dress, tugging the spaghetti straps down her shoulders until her dark-tipped breasts were exposed to his gaze. A cool breeze came off the ocean and washed over her skin. Her nipples pulled tight in response, and she shivered a little, giggling. “It’s a bit cold.”
