Bad Business

by JC Harroway

  Because I didn’t know myself. I’d never allowed myself to be that honest. But now...?

  I want to know what that feels like for him. I want to taste him and drive him back to that place he inhabited before I interrupted, just with my mouth. I want to be the kind of woman I imagine when he looks at me with sin and hunger in his eyes.

  My feet move in his direction, while my brain screams and my pulse races so high, I’m scared of passing out before I reach the shower.

  He drops his hand to his side and turns to face me, his angular face taut with arousal and his blue eyes blazing with challenge or need or something else.

  Or maybe I’m hallucinating. But I’m past holding back, my body molten with the release.

  Rather than dousing me in sense, the first shock of water cascading down my back inflames me higher. Ryan lifts his eyebrows, part impressed, part surprised, his expression shredding my usual caution.

  He smells great, arousing—delicious shower gel, hints of sunscreen and seawater and maleness. As if magnetised, my body sways closer until I’m almost touching him, this stranger. This naked, turned-on man.

  A head spin reminds me how I haven’t felt this heady, euphoric and frankly terrifying rush for a very long time. But I want to live out wild erotic fantasies with this beautiful man, here where I can re-invent myself.

  I want to be honest and brave.

  ‘Kiss me,’ I whisper, so profound is my desire now I’ve surrendered to the idea.

  He reaches for my face, his palms big and directive on my heated cheeks, and then I rise up on my tiptoes, my fingers dragging at his wet hair until our mouths connect.

  The first foreign, and oh-so-thrilling taste releases an involuntary moan. I collapse against the wall of muscle that is his chest, my knees soft and my body flooding with wild, wonderful and freeing endorphins.

  He angles my head to the slide of his mouth, his lips soft but demanding, exploratory, his eyes fiercely connected to mine, and the spray of warm water a welcome antidote to the inferno burning me alive.

  He pulls away to gruffly say my name, a groan, and then we’re kissing again. This is crazy, exotic like this island. I’m sucked under by the waves of desire pounding my body. I’ve never kissed or been kissed this way, with such feral abandon.

  My hands find his hips and I tug him out from under the worst of the deluge until my back hits the tiles and he’s a wall of naked maleness and hard muscle trapping me there.

  Triumph sings through every cell. Would cautious, serious Grace kiss a naked, aroused stranger she’d interrupted masturbating in the shower? Would she hell. But I’m done with her.

  I pant, my grasping hands jerky on his wet, slippery skin as I try to drag him impossibly closer. Here I am, surging against his kisses, bucking against his hips and the firm prod of his erection and practically climbing him, so desperate is my need to be consumed by whatever spell has taken hold.

  When he leans back, pinning me with those piercing blue eyes of his, I almost cry aloud. I don’t want this to stop.

  ‘Condom.’ His breath gusts over my lips. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  Condom...?

  My brain clamours for a solution to the problem, which feels as wispy as the steam rising from our bodies. But those few seconds are enough time for sense to return like an unwanted party-crasher.

  I push at his hips, shoving him a few inches away. No, no, no. I don’t want to be sucked into reality.

  ‘I shouldn’t have interrupted,’ I say, lips buzzing from the delicious scrape of his stubble. But I don’t want to go back to safety and caution. My fingers curl, digging into the flesh of his flanks and lower back, the only part of me bold enough to be completely honest.

  Ryan braces one hand on the tiles above my head and pushes back the wet hair clinging to my forehead with his other hand, his body held inches away from mine so the only contact between us is my hands, still gripping his waist. ‘Do you always do what you should, Grace?’

  Yes! I do...

  I’m trapped between my bold and honest leap into the unknown and mortification that he sees my failings so clearly.

  ‘Don’t you?’ My voice is breathy, tinged with the ferocity of my desire. I already know the answer. I see it in his carefree body language and the rakish ease with which he’s embraced the chemistry that led us here.

  ‘Never.’ His stare pierces me. ‘I do what I want, when I want. That’s why I invited you for a drink.’ His finger traces a line down my cheek, leaving a trail of fire. ‘Why I didn’t stop when I turned around and saw you watching. Why I suggested you join me.’ He drops his hand to his side and steps back as if releasing me to my decision.

  My body clamours for the return of his touch and his incendiary kisses, even as I list what-ifs so deeply ingrained, they’re part of my DNA.

  ‘You should try it,’ he says, ‘now.’ A shrug. ‘Leave or stay, just do what you want, not what you think you should.’

  This is it—my call to make.

  My brain scrambles with static. What do I want? And can I be honest enough to verbalise my desires? I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to move, because if we go inside, I’ll have time to second-guess and revisit well-worn paths of overthinking.

  I sag back against the tiles; I can have what I want. I just have to say the words.

  ‘I want to watch you finish what you started.’ The words rush from the darkest corner of my mind, bringing with them a lick of shame but a flood of exhilaration. Until I spoke them I didn’t know what I’d say. But they’re three-dimensional, so raw and true they make me burn.

  His eyes blaze. He grips his erection once more and slides his hand up and down his length with agonising slowness. I’m envious. I want to touch his beautiful cock.

  ‘Like this?’ His voice drops an octave as arousal takes him.

  I nod, my breathing too thin to generate speech. Shaking off invisible shackles and acting on my desires is so foreign, it feels part of this landscape. A mirage. A fantasy that will cease to exist when I board the plane home. But I’m here in this moment. A moment I created. One I can orchestrate.

  ‘Yes. Kiss me while you touch yourself.’ I tug his hips closer and curl my hand around his neck. The minute our tongues touch, tangle, I surrender on a protracted sigh, further doubts or cold feet forgotten. I can barely stand I’m so aroused by what I’ve seen and what I’ve said and what I’m doing, caution thrown to the warm tropical breeze.

  But even with a wall of determination at my back, tendrils of the old me persist. ‘This is crazy... What are we doing?’ I say in between the hot and frantic kisses I’ve demanded and which make me feel reborn.

  Without breaking his pumping rhythm, Ryan rests his forehead against mine and grins. ‘Well, if you don’t know, Doc, I think you need to go back to med school.’

  I can’t help a smile. How can he make such a momentous and sexy moment light-hearted? Does it matter what we’re doing? There’s no one else to consider. We’re just two strangers caught up in a perfectly honest moment of mutual lust.

  ‘Do whatever you want. Ask for whatever you want,’ he says, his breath warm on my lips.

  I allow my stare to touch every magnificent inch of his aroused, naked body. I drag in a shuddering breath and cover his pumping hand with mine, learning the contours of his tight knuckles and how much pressure he likes in his grip. I want to know what this feels like for him. What makes his buttocks clench and his steely thighs judder against mine. While our pants of breath mingle, the heat from his body a thick cloud between us, I stroke my thumb over the crown, trace the slit at the top of the silky head, an exploratory move that drags a sexy warning growl from deep in his throat.

  As if he’s reached a limit, his mouth mashes to mine, blocking my delicious view. My tongue rushes to meet the bold, thrilling thrust of his, every thought unrelated to Ryan and his
mounting pleasure banished from my mind. I’m tempted to slide my other hand inside my bikini bottoms and join him on the race to climax, I’m that heated and slick down there, but instead I slide my free hand between his legs and gently cup his balls. For reasons I can’t explain beyond the fact that it makes every inch of me feel alive and free, I want to see and feel his moment of release. To see him complete what I interrupted, knowing he’s thinking about me while he pleasures himself, and I’m part of this snatched moment.

  At the last minute he tears his mouth away from mine to roar my name as he comes, hot jets spilling over the back of our combined hands. His head lolls back in glorious release as he wrings the last spasms from his orgasm in a sight so male, so primitive, my clit throbs with shocking violence before he collapses forward, his head buried in the crook of my neck, breath gusting.

  I’m breathing just as hard with euphoria, the rush almost as good as if I’d come with him. And I never want this moment to end. This feeling. This freedom.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, woman. That was the best hand job ever,’ he mumbles against my skin as shower after shower of elation rains down on me.

  I did that. Took a leap. A risk. Made a decision based purely on instinct and impulse. But try as I may to cling to the high, my skin grows cool, goose bumps rising.

  What now? Do we wash the evidence from our hands and shake on a job well done? Do we go for that drink and learn superficial things about each other? Do we say goodbye and avoid each other for the rest of the holiday?

  I swallow down my questions on casual-sex etiquette, my heart galloping anew.

  When Ryan looks up, vulnerability replacing the harsh arousal in his face, my instincts polarise, half of me desperate to kiss him with tenderness the way I would if I knew him beyond his first name, and the other half wishing I’d gone inside with him in the first place so that I wouldn’t have to stand here horny and awkward and covered in goose bumps.

  It’s one thing to touch someone else, to kiss someone else, but to have a stranger touch me...? To be that intimate with a man I don’t know having only ever been intimate with one person? Not that he’s offering any longer, of course.

  I peel my cooling body away from the heat of his. ‘I should go,’ I say to fill the silence.

  Something like disappointment flashes in his eyes for a split second. ‘Should...?’

  His question slashes like a whip across my back, unleashing white-hot stings of regret. So I’m still me, then? Still hesitant and cautious. Still overthinking. So much for the new improved version...

  When I look up again, Ryan’s face is blank.

  Almost of its own accord, my head bobs in confirmation. I need to get away. To regroup and analyse where I went wrong. To probe my instincts, which it seems can’t yet be trusted for all my brave talk of sexual adventure.

  Ryan appears oblivious to the cyclone of heat and chills and pressure inside me, which replaces the heady abandon and arousal of seconds ago. ‘Sure.’ He slides his hands from my hips and presses a brief, almost polite kiss to my mouth. ‘Always do what you want, Grace.’

  He steps back under the shower spray, water bouncing off his back and shoulders and cascading down his abs to his still-hard cock, his stare free of judgment, but also devoid of the addictive heat as he shakes the water from his face and slicks back his hair.

  I waver back and forth a thousand times in those few tense seconds, my triumph decimated by the return of doubts. Now I’ve said I’m leaving, I have to follow through and he’s making no move to stop me. Perhaps this is the hook-up code.

  Thanks for the orgasm. Have a great evening.

  With heavy limbs, I walk away from his bold nakedness and his bland expression, my mind the only fucked thing about me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Grace

  THE BEACH IS quiet at this time of the morning save for the gentle lap of the sea. Propped on his elbows as he looks out to the reef in the distance, Ryan lies stretched out on the sand next to two paddleboards.

  He showed up—my pulse trips over itself, the niggle of doubt that he’d stand me up evaporating. Ryan turns, his grin lit with triumph and a hint of relief similar to that now robbing every thought, every question I’ve had since I opened my eyes at dawn. Should I keep the lesson, or assume he’d call it off? Should I pretend last night didn’t happen, or beg for a repeat? Should I stick to what I know, or take leap after leap of faith, until shaking off my reservations and being honest about what I want becomes second nature?

  Ryan rises to his feet, uncurling his long limbs with natural grace, his eyes touching my bikini-clad body with heat to rival last night’s too-brief touch of his hands.

  ‘I thought you’d chicken out,’ I say, something hot and drugging passing between us so I’m acutely attuned to every grain of sand on my feet and every brush of the breeze on the tiny hairs covering my skin. An awareness. An intimacy shared by two people, strangers, who’ve touched each other, kissed each other. Still strangers, but weirdly more because of what we did last night in the shower while the sun set.

  ‘You thought I’d chicken out?’ He raises his eyebrows, laughter in his eyes. ‘I’m right where I want to be, Grace. Same as last night. Same as always.’

  ‘Fair point,’ I say with a breathy laugh. The release feels like a sneeze or, better, a mini orgasm, the tension I’ve been holding recoiling from my body and leaving behind a storm of fierce lust pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

  We fall into silence.

  He’s wearing nothing but board shorts and his tan, his arms relaxed by his sides. I’m reminded how those big hands of his held my face, my waist, my back while his sensual mouth delivered kiss after kiss, his bold tongue duelling with mine, pushing me to higher, more reckless heights until I witnessed the moment of his glorious climax like a woman starved. My breath catches in the back of my throat—nerves replaced by drugging arousal.

  His stare slides down my body. My core clenches. Last night I fuelled his fantasies. Drove him to touch himself. I want that passion.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘no free show today.’

  It’s only when he speaks that I’m aware I’m ogling him back, my focus paused on his lean hips and the bulge in his shorts.

  I laugh again, my audible sigh laced with a hint of disappointment. As if watching naked strangers jerk off in outdoor showers is one of my regular pastimes.

  ‘Shame.’ I glance again at his crotch. ‘I kind of cock-blocked myself last night.’ I look up from his brightly coloured board shorts, a lump of need lodged in my throat. Who am I around him, here in this place? Certainly not the woman I recognise—too contained to rock the boat, too fearful of disappointing people, too scared to demand more than a relationship grown stale, forced and passionless.

  Last night, strung taut with unfulfilled desire and the hollow certainty that running back to my room was the action of the old Grace, I made a promise to embrace this thing with Ryan. Properly this time. No more holding back from what I want.

  His eyebrows dip in that sexy way he looked at me last night while he rocked into his own fist. ‘Well, today is another day in paradise. Anything is possible.’

  He takes half a step towards me, and I look up, his eyes that intense blue of my fractured erotic dreams. At one stage I’d actually orgasmed in my sleep, waking up disorientated and far from fulfilled.

  ‘I almost chased after you,’ he says, ‘but two brush-offs in a row turns out to be my limit.’ His tone is light, teasing.

  ‘You have limits?’ I want to touch him so bad, to reach up and kiss him again, but I need to respect the teacher-student boundary.

  He shrugs one broad, golden shoulder, humour dancing on his lips. ‘A few. Especially for women who interrupt a good wank, insist on watching and then scarper.’

  Heat boils in my face. ‘Yeah, well, no one is sorrier about leaving than me...’ I sa
y, emboldened to be honest by the way he’s still mentally undressing me as if his orgasm barely took the edge off. ‘I kind of...panicked. I was trying to...embrace the holiday-fling vibe, but I messed up, I guess. We should have gone for that drink, first.’

  He watches with growing fascination, his eyes moving between mine and my mouth, staring as if entranced by my gobbledegook.

  ‘Thanks for not standing me up this morning,’ I whisper.

  His shrug lifts those broad shoulders, reminding me of how it felt to be crushed against his chest.

  ‘It’s a small island, Grace.’ His sinful smile is contagious. ‘We were always going to bump into each other, but I’m glad you didn’t allow a little thing like lust ruin a good paddleboard.’

  I take a shuddering breath and compose myself while my mouth burns to reunite with his kisses until neither of us gives a toss about paddleboarding. I glance back at the deserted equipment hut up the beach wondering if I could persuade him to rekindle where we left off last night.

  Just then, two honeymooners emerge from the palm-tree-lined path that winds behind the hut. Each carries snorkelling gear and flippers in their free hands the other arms wrapped around each other. They stop so often to kiss they can barely walk.

  My lungs grow tight with remorse. Greg and I would never have acted that way if we’d come here together. I look away, the comparison stealing my Ryan-induced high. Perhaps my brain is somehow convinced I’m betraying my ex by being intimate with another man, and that’s why I fled last night.

  Ridiculous. But my eyes burn as I avoid looking at the couple in love. I want more than regret of my past actions and holding back the unknown. If I want Ryan, I’m the only thing standing in my way.

  ‘So...’ Ryan grabs the paddles. ‘You still keen for a lesson?’

  I grasp the lifeline, desperate to be away from the resort and what it represents—my failure—for a short while. ‘Yes. My sister raved about how she always wanted to try, so I’m definitely keen.’

  He eyes me with curiosity so I march to the waiting paddleboards. ‘Shall we get started?’ I ask. The fierce attraction still hums through my veins but, no matter how tempted, I can’t jump a man I met yesterday before nine in the morning, not when I had my chance last night and blew it.