Sunlight over Crystal Sands: A gorgeous uplifting romantic comedy perfect to escape with this summer

by Holly Martin

  He found himself smiling. ‘Life is too short to live with regret.’

  ‘That is true. We never know what’s around the next corner and I don’t want to look back at this moment and think why didn’t I grab it.’

  He took her coffee out of her hand and put both mugs down on the floor. ‘Life should be grabbed by the horns sometimes.’

  ‘I agree.’

  She smiled as she leaned forward and kissed him.

  Looking back on this moment, he liked to think that perhaps he’d paused, that there’d been some consideration that he shouldn’t do this. But in reality there was no such hesitation as he kissed her back with as much need as she was kissing him.

  His heart thundered with a sudden desire, the taste of her was incredible.

  Lyra pulled back suddenly. ‘Sorry. I, er…’

  He cupped her face and kissed her again, feeling her melt against him. Her fingers caressed the back of his neck and a noise escaped his mouth that sounded like a growl. Christ, he’d be scaring her away. But instead of pulling back, she giggled against his lips. God, he really bloody liked this woman. She ran her hands down his arms and he slid his hands down to her waist, hauling her closer so she was almost lying on top of him as the kiss continued. He wanted her closer, he wanted to feel her skin against his.

  Nix pulled back slightly to look at her, his breath heavy against her lips. He stroked her hair from her face. ‘I think it’s time we went to bed.’

  She bit her lip and then nodded.

  She was nervous and that was probably a good thing. Her vulnerability and his need to take care of her would ensure he would slow this thing down and not get carried away. It would just be a kiss between them. Nothing more.

  She stood up and stepped up into the van, slipping off the wellies.

  He stood up and stared at the sky and the moon casting silvery ribbons over the sea for a moment, trying to cool his thoughts. He blew the candle out, then whistled for Dexter. Once his dog was safely inside, he stepped up inside the van and closed the door behind him.

  Lyra was slipping out of her shorts and climbing into bed, scooting over to the far side. He kicked his boots off and swallowed. It was just going to be a kiss.

  He pulled off his t-shirt and climbed into bed next to her, taking her in his arms and kissing her again. She slid her hands down his back, her touch against his skin igniting a fire inside of him. He ran his hand up her bare thigh and she moaned against his lips. He needed more. He toyed with the hem of her t-shirt for a second and then slowly pulled it over her head. And she let him, lifting her arms above her head to make it easier. He swore softly at the sight of her almost naked in his bed. His need for her erupted through him so strong and so hard, it wiped all sense and reason from his mind. He kissed her again, thanking his lucky stars that his brother Lucas had borrowed the van a few weeks before and there were condoms in the little cupboard above the headboard.

  Another soft moan from her brought clarity back to his mind for a moment. No, it wasn’t going to be more than a kiss between them… he didn’t want to do anything she would regret.

  Nix pulled back to look at her.

  ‘Lyra, I have a confession. I have a tent, a pop-up one, and a spare sleeping bag. We don’t need to share this bed tonight.’

  She stared at him and then smiled. ‘I have a confession too. My sister lives on the island. I could have slept on her sofa.’

  He couldn’t help smiling as he kissed her again.

  Her hands slipped down his spine and then into the back of his shorts, squeezing his bum. He made a noise that sounded like an animal about to devour his prey and rolled on top of her.

  ‘We should stop,’ Nix said, against her lips, kissing her, stroking her.

  ‘Yes, we probably should,’ Lyra said, in between kisses, running her hands over his shoulder blades. ‘Why are we stopping?’

  He had no idea. ‘We should get to know each other first.’

  As he continued to kiss her, it sounded feeble to his own ears.

  ‘Yes, good idea,’ she muttered, kissing him again. ‘What would you like to know?’

  He wanted to know everything there was to know about Lyra Thomas but now suddenly didn’t seem the right time.

  He needed to stop kissing her, put some distance between them, talk to her instead of mauling her, but he couldn’t let her go. He searched for a question, something normal and boring, something to cool the passion racing through his veins.

  ‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’ Nix said, kissing her throat.

  She giggled against his lips. ‘Five.’

  The vibrations of that laugh went straight through his body, making his gut clench with desire.

  ‘Michelle, Max, Kitty, Frankie and Ethan,’ Lyra said, tracing the indent of his spine with the lightest of touches.

  ‘How old are you?’ Nix asked, desperately clinging onto the last fragments of control. But the way she was kissing him, touching him, the feel of her body against his, he was going out of his mind with need for her.

  ‘Thirty, how old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-one.’

  ‘If this is how you talk dirty, you might need a bit of practice,’ Lyra said, kissing his shoulder. ‘Any other questions?’

  ‘Give me a moment and I’m sure I could think of something.’

  He kissed her again, running a hand up her ribs, stroking his thumb over her breast.

  She gasped against his lips. ‘I promise, I will answer every single question you have for me. But after.’

  He kissed her again and the feel of her skin against his was divine. As she wrapped her legs around him, all restraint went straight out the window.

  He half rolled off her, sliding down her knickers, as she pushed his shorts off his hips. He wriggled out of them so they were both naked.

  Lyra let out a soft moan. His hands were everywhere, touching, stroking, caressing. Nix made her feel alive. He pulled his mouth from hers and started kissing across her shoulders, her chest, her stomach, his hot mouth driving her wild. He kissed across her breast and when he ran his tongue across her nipple she arched off the bed, thrusting her fingers through his hair. Nix slid his hand up her inner thigh and every nerve, every fibre, sparked with need inside her as he touched her. That feeling crashed through her so quickly and so hard she cried out and he leaned up and caught her moans on his lips.

  ‘Nix,’ she whispered, trembling in his arms.

  He pulled back to look at her, his eyes clouding with concern. ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m more than OK.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘We don’t have to carry on if you want to stop.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? You can’t tease me with the starters and then not deliver on the main course.’

  He grinned. ‘Well, I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high for the main course, it’s been a while.’

  She wondered what he meant by a while. A few weeks or months maybe? Someone like Nix probably had a long queue of women waiting for him.

  ‘Me too,’ Lyra said, quietly, knowing the last time she’d been with a man would probably be a hell of a lot longer than the last time Nix had slept with someone. ‘I don’t usually do this kind of thing. In fact, I’ve never done this kind of thing.’

  She normally guarded her heart so fiercely and she always associated sex with intimacy in a relationship. Something she’d typically only ever do in a serious relationship. But her connection with Nix felt unlike anything she’d experienced before. He was completely different to any man she’d been with before. This felt like it was something rare and wonderful.

  ‘We’ll take it slow,’ he said, softly before kissing her again.

  She smiled against his lips, loving how he wanted to take care of her. He carried on kissing her for the longest time, apparently in no rush, whereas her body was humming with need. Finally he reached over her head and grabbed a condom from a cupboard. His eyes scanned hers and she nodded, stroking
his face.

  He ripped it open with his teeth and a few moments later he was leaning back over her, gathering her hands in his as he pinned them above her head. She wrapped her legs around his hips and he slid carefully inside her in one exquisite movement.

  She gasped at the feel of him and his eyes locked with hers as he moved slowly against her. She felt something shift between them, an undefinable, amazing sensation, something she had never experienced before. She knew she was silly to get caught up in the moment like this, she should just enjoy it for what it was, one wonderful night, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that this was the start of something incredible. And the way that Nix was staring at her, it was almost as if he felt it too.

  He released her hands and gathered her close as she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight.

  ‘Lyra.’

  Her name was no more than a whisper on his lips as he bent his head and kissed her.

  This man was going to ruin her. Need for him grew in the pit of her stomach, igniting like little fireworks exploding through her body. She stroked down his back, caressing the dent of his spine, stroking the muscles in his shoulders, and he groaned against her lips. He started moving faster and she clung to him as that feeling spiralled inside her, taking her higher and higher until she was falling over the edge and bringing him with her.

  Chapter Four

  Lyra woke with the stars sparkling above them, the moon casting a silvery glow over the waves beneath them. She was wrapped tightly in Nix’s arms, her head on his warm chest.

  She kissed his bare skin, relishing the scent of him, and she felt his lips touch the top of her head in response.

  She looked up at him and he smiled at her, stroking her face.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful night.’

  His eyes stayed locked on her face. ‘It really is. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful before.’

  She smiled. ‘For future reference, that’s the kind of thing you should say before sex, not, how many brothers and sisters do you have.’

  He laughed. ‘I was trying to be respectful. It didn’t feel right pinning you to the bed and making love to you without at least trying to get to know you first.’

  ‘And I appreciate that. Normally it takes me a lot longer to be comfortable enough to go to bed with someone.’

  ‘Trust issues?’ Nix said.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Ah, come on, you promised to answer my questions.’

  ‘OK, you get one now. I’ll answer some more for you tomorrow. So you better make it a good one.’

  ‘Right, let’s see. There’s so much I want to know.’

  She liked that he wanted to get to know her. If this was a one-night stand, he wouldn’t care. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to open up to him, to share all her darkest secrets. She bit her lip nervously. He’d got enough out of her already about the kind of person she was and about her mum for him to want to follow that up. Did she really want to hand over all her baggage?

  ‘So I get mixed signals from you,’ Nix said. ‘You said you’re not a pantster, you like a plan, you rejected your first name because a life of chance and spontaneity was not you any more. But that doesn’t ring true with the woman who got a tattoo just to prove to her siblings that she was fun and daring. You spoke about packing up your belongings and going on an adventure, wanting to be the next Indiana Jones, but it feels like you’re too scared to follow those dreams. I get the feeling something happened to make you keep those walls around you, but the wild and free Lyra is still in there, wanting to get out.’

  Lyra focussed her attention on Nix’s chest, running an absent finger over his heart. That was a very insightful summary of her life.

  ‘So what’s the question?’ she said.

  ‘Why do you hold yourself back, what happened to make you so afraid of letting go?’

  Lyra watched a plane flying far up above them, going off somewhere exotic no doubt. For a while, she didn’t speak. She didn’t want Nix to think badly of her.

  He tilted her chin up to face him.

  ‘You can trust me, remember.’

  And for some reason, she did.

  She sighed. ‘My mum was always a little bit slapdash and carefree. We used to go out for the day with no real idea where we were going. We’d toss a coin or roll a dice to decide what we would do. Mum always said it was much more fun that way. I grew up thinking she was amazing. I loved that spontaneity and life of chance, of going out for the day with no plan, of just seeing where we ended up.

  ‘Dad was always a lot stricter: we had to do our homework straight from school, we had curfews and we had to stick to them. Until he left, I never realised how Dad was almost single-handedly running the household. Mum fell to pieces, hit the bottle, and I… was too busy going out with my mates with no curfew to even notice. She was angry all the time so I avoided going home, we all did. My brothers and sisters had their own friends they hung out with. I was sixteen and clearly completely self-absorbed. I never noticed that my brothers and sisters went to school for weeks without any lunch or money to buy food and they often went in dirty clothes. I never noticed the bills or the final demand bills piling up. I never noticed that the house wasn’t clean, I was barely at home with my sudden new-found freedom. Mum didn’t care that I wasn’t there so I made the most of it. I never realised my brothers and sisters, especially Max, had started to struggle at school or that he was being bullied. Mum had brought us up to be carefree, to not have any responsibilities, and I was well and truly embracing that lifestyle.’

  Lyra pulled the duvet up round her shoulders, suddenly feeling cold despite the warmth of the night.

  ‘It was Max’s thirteenth birthday that changed everything. I’d bought him a present but no one else had. With Mum drowning her sorrows in the bottle and Dad completely off the scene, no one had reminded the others or taken them shopping to buy something for him from them. I didn’t even see him that morning as I’d been out late the night before with friends and overslept. By the time I’d got up he’d already left for school. No one had cooked him a special birthday breakfast, or even acknowledged his existence at all. No presents, no cards.’ She swallowed the lump of emotion in her throat. ‘He never made it to school. He… threw himself off a bridge.’

  ‘Shit, Lyra.’ Nix immediately cupped the back of her head, rolling towards her so they were lying on their sides facing each other.

  ‘He’s OK,’ Lyra said, brushing away the tears, because even now it hurt her to think her brother had sunk so low that he’d thought death was the only way out. And that she had played some part in that. ‘He broke his leg and two ribs, smashed up his face pretty good. He was in a wheelchair and then crutches for weeks, but he was OK. Physically at least. He’s fine now, happily married, lives in Australia. But it was a huge wake-up call for me. I should have been there for him, for all of them. I was the oldest, I should have—’

  ‘You were sixteen Lyra; you were still a child yourself. You can’t take the blame for that. Your dad walked out on you and your mum more or less abandoned you herself when she left you all to your own devices. Regardless what was going on between your parents, they had a responsibility to you and the other children and they dropped the ball, not you.’

  Lyra shook her head; she should have done more. She could never let go of that guilt. Her brother had nearly died because of her.

  ‘Did your mum step up after that?’ Nix asked.

  Lyra shook her head. ‘Obviously Mum was distraught that he’d done it but it wasn’t enough to bring her out of herself. If anything, it made her worse. She was always moaning that she was a terrible mum but she never did anything about it. From that moment on I pretty much raised my brothers and sisters single-handedly. Got up early to make them packed lunches and give them breakfast, made sure their clothes were always washed and ironed. Passed my driving test as soon as I could and bought a
n old banger so I could drive them around their after-school clubs. There were so many of them that I ended up making a timetable that I stuck to the fridge so I knew where I had to be at any given time to collect them or drop them off. I made sure their homework was done and that I was always there to help them with it. I quit college and got a job to help with the bills. Dad sent some money every month – that was his contribution to his children’s upbringing, but I did everything else. There were six of us so it took a lot of organisation and planning to make sure none of them missed out. It was exhausting but that was my life for the next eight or nine years, at least until they’d all moved out or went off to university.’

  ‘And your parents never helped out?’ Nix was incredulous.

  ‘Dad moved to America pretty soon after he left. He lives over there now. I’ve only seen him twice since; he has nothing to come back here for. He sent money, quite a lot of it actually – maybe it was guilt money, but we never went hungry. And when I was twenty-one, Mum went backpacking around the world. She lives in Thailand now, where she has fully embraced the carefree life. I rarely speak to either of them. Ethan was only fourteen when she left. I mean, she hadn’t exactly been mum of the year since Dad left but at least she’d been there in some capacity. For her to walk out on Ethan when he was still so young, I hated her a little bit for that.

  ‘Eventually, my brothers and sisters all moved out, had their own lives, but I’ve never really been able to let go of that need to organise and plan. I guess I’m scared that if I let go, I might turn out like my mum who only ever cared about herself. Spontaneity and a life with no responsibilities sounds wonderful but quite often there are repercussions for those actions, and I don’t want anyone to ever get hurt from something I’ve done. I want my brothers and sisters to know they can rely on me, no matter what.’

  Nix was staring at her as if he didn’t know what to do with all this baggage she’d suddenly dumped at his feet. He probably hadn’t been expecting this.