by Megan Hart
He pumped himself slowly as he passed the water again over her clit, then down. She wanted him inside her, but the water had brought her so close she couldn’t speak, not even to ask for what she wanted. She couldn’t stop her hips from rocking against the spray. Her orgasm swelled inside her, refusing to be denied or put off, not even in the pursuit of what she knew would be equally as pleasurable.
Bess gave a low, guttural cry as her entire body contracted and her wet skin skidded on the tiles. She cried out again as he directed the water onto her pussy, just below her clit and over it to just above. Nick jiggled the showerhead and Bess came, arching her back.
He was on his feet before the final spasms had finished surging through her. He turned and bent her, her hands going to the bench where her foot had been a moment before. Nick parted her folds with his cock and pushed inside slowly, then began thrusting almost at once.
It felt so good she cried out again, pushing back against him and tilting her body to open deeper for him. Her feet slipped a little on the shower floor but her grip on the bench kept her steady. Nick fucked into her, hard, as the pulsing water beat against her back. A moment later it was replaced with the swipe of his hand down her spine as Nick angled the showerhead below her. The water spurted up, coating her breasts and belly, but also hitting between her legs. Bess let go of the bench with one hand just long enough to push the showerhead lower against her clit.
Nick gasped out something incoherent, probably when the water hit his balls, and thrust faster. Bess rocked against his cock and the water, biting her lip and finally giving in to the desire to moan and cry out his name, over and over.
He answered, murmuring and then gasping a mingled stream of curses and endearments that tipped her over the edge into orgasm again. He followed with a shout and dropped the showerhead, which writhed at the end of its hose, whacking her in the ankles.
Bess gasped for breath in the steamy air, and Nick withdrew slowly. He helped her up, the took the water and dialed the massage function to the gentlest spray so he could wash her all over, taking his time until at last he reached her still-tender places. Bess jumped when the water sprayed her there, but Nick didn’t let it linger long enough to hurt.
“Guess I can cross that off my list,” he said when it was time again to speak.
Bess laughed and reached around him to turn off the water, which was growing chilly. “I might have a list of my own, did you think of that?”
“Bring it on.”
He handed her a towel and took one for himself, rubbing at his hair until it stood on end. Their eyes met in the mirror.
“I’ll never get tired of you,” he said suddenly, and with such sincerity Bess blushed.
“I hope not.”
“No.” He shook his head, reaching for her. “I mean it, Bess.”
“Okay.” She kissed him, hugged him, held him tight against her with nothing but the towel between them. “I believe you.”
CHAPTER 22
Then
“So, when am I coming down?” Andy’s voice sounded tinny with distance.
Or maybe just wishful thinking.
Bess didn’t have a calendar in front of her, as if that would have mattered. “When do you want to come, Andy?”
In the past three summers she’d worked in Bethany Beach, the same three summers she’d been dating Andy, he’d only visited her twice. He said it was because, though he had the weekends off, she usually didn’t, and he didn’t want to hang out by himself. He didn’t want to sleep on the couch, or worse, the floor, and since Bess’s family was always occupying the rest of the house, sharing her bedroom was out of the question. Bess, who thought a free stay at the beach would have easily trumped any of those insignificant inconveniences, had stopped pushing him to visit.
Now, of course, when she no longer wanted him to, he’d decided it was time.
“I work every weekend,” she added before he could answer. “And the house is booked for the rest of the summer, too. You can have the cot on the screened porch, I guess.”
“Very funny.”
She hadn’t been joking. “It just seems sort of silly, Andy, to drive all the way down here for two days when I won’t even have the time off.”
“Can’t you get the time off?”
“I’m a manager,” she explained for probably the fourth time. “And I really need the money.”
“Yeah, right. The money.” Andy hadn’t ever suffered for money in his life. “I guess I thought since I haven’t seen you since May, you might want me to visit.”
“We were supposed to see each other for the Fast Fashion concert,” she reminded him. A week ago she wouldn’t have dared bring it up. Now everything he said made her want to fight him. “How was that, by the way?”
“Is that what this is about?” Andy’s laugh curled her toes—and not in a good way. “Are you still mad about that?”
“About the fact you gave another girl my ticket to see my favorite band? Why should I be mad about that, Andy?”
“Don’t be such a bitch.”
“Why is it that whenever I call you out on something you’ve done, you call me a bitch?” Bess looked into the living room, where a new set of relatives were happily making themselves at home.
This week it was her cousin Danielle and her husband, Steve, with their three adorable but exhausting kids. Bess had already promised to babysit one evening, an offer that was less generous when you considered Danielle and Steve were offering to pay her almost as much as she made at Sugarland.
“Do you want me to come or not?”
“I wanted you to take me to that concert,” Bess said in a low voice.
“Jesus, can’t you let it rest?”
“No,” she said. “I guess I can’t.”
Andy gave a heavy, long-suffering sigh. “If I’d known you were going to be such a pain in the ass about it, Bess—”
“I think you might have guessed, Andy,” Bess interrupted. “It’s not like I didn’t tell you how I felt. It’s not like I said it was okay with me if you went without me. You knew, and you did it anyway.”
That was what bothered her more than the fact he took some other girl. The fact she’d told him how she felt, and he’d disregarded it. Now she couldn’t stop remembering all the other times he hadn’t paid attention to her, or what she wanted. What she said.
Andy was quiet. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“It’s not okay!” she cried, her voice high and thin.
“What do you want me to do about it now? It’s over! I went, okay? There’s nothing I can do about it now!”
“No. You’re right. There’s not.”
“I said I was sorry, Bess.”
It would’ve been easier to forgive him. Put it aside. Make it all right again. But Bess said nothing, and the silence between them grew and grew while she couldn’t guess what Andy was thinking, and couldn’t stop imagining Nick’s face.
“I love you,” Andy said.
“Do you? Really?”
He hung up on her. She stared at the phone for a few seconds before hanging up herself. Bastard. Her stomach churned and her hands felt shaky, but she didn’t cry.
Leaving the cacophony above, Bess retreated to her room. It was clean because she couldn’t afford to let it get messy. She had barely enough space as it was. At the wooden desk, she pulled out a box of stationery. Embossed with her initial, E for Elisabeth, it had been a Christmas gift from a maiden aunt a long time ago. Bess never used it because she didn’t equate herself as an “E” and writing on the stationery had always felt like putting on a costume. Now, she pulled out a piece along with a pen and the matching envelope.
Dear Andy,
I don’t love you anymore.
Andy. I’d hate you but I can’t even care enough about you to do that.
Andy,
I fucked someone and he made me come so hard I went momentarily blind, and I think I’m falling in love with him. So you can keep your little twat from
work and all the concerts you want.
Dear Andy, I’m not sure how to tell you this, except to tell you the truth. I don’t think I love you anymore. And I’m pretty sure you don’t love me, either, because if you did you’d have taken me to see Fast Fashion instead of some girl you just met. And I know you think being mad about a concert is stupid, and maybe you’re right, but it’s not the concert. It’s the choice you made, choosing someone else over me.
Bess scratched out line after line. She chewed the end of her pen. And at last, she put all the scribbled-on pages back into the stationery box and slid it into the drawer again, without addressing the envelope.
CHAPTER 23
Now
“Ready?” Bess had tugged on a light sundress and a matching cardigan. Lacy bra, filmy panties. She carried her sandals rather than wore them for the walk to town along the beach. Nick and she had finally gotten around to heading there.
He was staring out the windows toward the ocean again. “Yeah.”
The shops would barely be open by the time they got to town, but the sun had risen higher than she’d expected while they dallied in the shower. She’d lost count of how many times they’d made love.
Bess locked the door behind them and tucked her keys in her bag, then followed Nick along the narrow, sandy path between the dunes to the beach proper. The sand was already hot on her toes, but it felt good. She lifted her face to the breeze, fresh against her cheeks. It fluttered her hair.
“I think I’m going to buy a sun hat.”
Nick, hands in the pockets of his jeans, glanced at her. “Then you won’t get freckles.”
“Or skin cancer, hopefully.”
He turned to walk backward, watching her. “I liked your freckles.”
She laughed. “Oh, sure, because freckles are so sexy.”
“Sure they are. Right across your nose.”
Bess laughed again. “If you say so.”
They veered closer to the see to walk on the wet coolness and to avoid the scattered blankets and umbrellas from the few souls hardy enough to brave the water, which was still chilly this time of year. Nick bent to pick up a black, fan-shaped shell, perfect without chips or cracks. It fit neatly into his palm, and he passed a thumb over it before handing it to her.
The beach house had jars stuffed with shells of all shapes and colors, but Bess tucked this one into the pocket of her cardigan anyway. It was the first thing Nick had ever given her that she could hold or keep.
She was still smiling when he dropped to his knees.
“Nick?”
He hunched, shoulders heaving. One hand dug into the sand, while the other clutched his stomach. A wave rushed up and swirled around his fingers, leaving behind a curl of seaweed and a lacy froth of bubbles that popped and broke.
Bess knelt beside him and put her palm on his shoulder. “Nick, what’s wrong?”
Nick shook his head. His dark hair fell forward, hiding his face. He groaned. Another, bigger wave came and wet the legs of his jeans and splashed Bess’s dress. She put her arm around his rigid shoulders.
Nick pushed against the sand and crawled backward a few inches. He stopped, shaking, then pushed again. The trail he left looked like the scuttle marks of a crab. His first attempt had pulled her arm away from his shoulders, and Bess followed. Her dress dragged in the wet sand and slapped at her bare legs, scratching them, but she ignored the sting.
“Nick,” she murmured. “Tell me what’s happening?”
He looked up at her, his face pale. “It hurts.” He let go of his stomach and straightened, still on his knees.
Bess helped him get to his feet. They stood facing each other, his hands in hers and their heads bent, as if they were studying something they’d found in the sand. Bess watched his fingers curl over hers.
Sand had grimed the creases of his knuckles. A small white scar bisected the base of his right thumb. Dark blue veins made a map of the back of his hand. These hands were real, and solid.
She looked at his face. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t go on. It was like being gutted.”
She couldn’t pretend to understand what that felt like, but nodded anyway. “Are you…sick?”
His mouth twisted and she felt instantly stupid. “No.”
She squeezed his hands. “Then what?”
Nick shook his head. Around their feet the waves advanced and retreated. She’d dropped her sandals, but didn’t turn to check if they were being sucked out to sea.
Nick’s mouth thinned. His back straightened further. “Come on.”
He turned, now holding only one of her hands, and stalked back across the sand. If any of the other beachgoers had noticed anything wrong, they didn’t seem to be paying much attention. Nick strode through the waves thinned by their reach up the sand, and pulled Bess with him. She looked back at her sandals, safe higher up on the beach, and saw the water erasing their footprints as though they’d never walked there at all.
They passed her house and the square of beach in front of it that would’ve been a yard in a traditional house, and went beyond.
“Count.” Nick dropped her hand.
“What?”
He stepped forward. “Count them.”
Ten paces from the boundary beach in front of her house, he doubled over with a grunt, both hands on his gut. Eleven, and he staggered. At twelve he let out a low growl that raised the hair on the back of her neck.
“Nick, don’t, for God’s sake!”
At thirteen steps, Bess realized she could see through him. She hadn’t been walking with him, but now she flew across the sand to grab at him. She reached for the back of his shirt to yank him back, the way she’d once yanked Connor from the path of an oncoming car he’d stepped in front of. Her heart had hammered then, too, her vision narrowed to nothing but her hand, grabbing and finding. She’d pulled her son to safety that day, but now her fingers slipped and scrabbled on the fabric of Nick’s T-shirt. Her fingers clutched and grabbed…and slid through.
“Nick!”
The wind whipped his name from her lips. He staggered back. Her hand filled with solid, soft fabric, and she pulled. His shirt tore with a purr. He fell onto the sand with her standing over him, and he rolled to his side, groaning and twitching, but he was there. He was solid. He was still real.
He did that scrabbling crawl again, then curled into a ball in the soft, dry sand as Bess knelt beside him and cradled his head in her lap. A shadow fell over her, and she cringed.
“Is he okay?” A girl with blond pigtails and a blue bikini offered a Thermos jug. “Does he need some water?”
Nick rolled to his feet, crouching, then got up. Bess followed. Though coated with sand, he nevertheless gave the girl a grin of such stunning beauty Bess could see the blonde fall instantly in love.
“I’m okay. Pulled a muscle at work.” Nick grimaced, stretching his leg out and twisting a little at the waist. “It’s a killer.”
The girl looked faintly dubious, but another grin from Nick flustered her enough that she stepped back. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure.”
She looked at Bess with none of the interest she’d shown Nick. Bess understood. She smiled and nodded at the girl, who took another step back, then another, and finally walked off with a few backward glances. She sat down on her blanket, settled the Thermos in the sand and picked up her book, but kept looking over at Nick.
His grin faded and he turned toward Bess’s house. Without speaking to her, or even waiting for her to follow, he stalked again across the beach. His footprints dug shallow graves in the dry sand, with nothing to make them disappear but time.
After a minute, Bess followed. “Nick. Wait.”
He didn’t stop until he’d ducked under the stilts of the carport and leaned against the wall by the door. His shoulders heaved again, but he got himself under control faster than he had before, and he didn’t go pale. He pounded the wall.
Bess, silent, watched him. Nick punched the w
all hard enough to split the skin of his knuckles, but when he pulled his arm back, the only sign of injury was his grimace of pain. He shook his hand, muttering. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Nick. Look at me. Talk to me.”
“I can’t sleep, but I feel pain.” His smile looked more like a rictus than an expression of humor. “How’s that for fucking hilarious?”
Bess reached for him, but he shrank from her grasp and yanked at the door. It wouldn’t open, of course—it was locked—and he moved aside for her to open it. Again without waiting he pushed inside and stomped down the short hall into the small bedroom next to the laundry room. He knocked over the desk chair and went to the window. This one didn’t look out over the ocean, but rather directly into the board fence separating the house from the one next door.
The room was only large enough for the desk and chair, the lamp in the corner and the daybed that, opened to its full size, left no space to walk in. The tiny closet had no door because the desk had been pushed right up against it.
Bess, shaken, stood silent in the doorway. Nick pounded the window frame hard enough to rattle the glass, then again more softly. He turned to her.
“I can’t leave.”
“I don’t understand.” She didn’t want to understand. She picked up the chair and settled it back against the battered desk.
“The night I went swimming. I told you I couldn’t leave. Today, I couldn’t get more than twelve steps away from your beach.”
“It’s not my beach—”
“This house!” Nick threw out a hand. “The beach that goes with this house! And I goddamn guarantee that if I tried to go out to the road I wouldn’t get any farther that way before it’s like something’s tearing my guts out through my throat! Before I—”
“Stop it!” Bess clapped her hands over her ears, then her mouth. She drew in a shaky breath. “Nick. Stop.”
They stared at each other like circling wolves until Nick sagged and sat on the bed. He put his head in his hands. Bess sat next to him to drape her arm around his shoulders. He didn’t pull away.