The Bronze Garza

by S. Ann Cole

  Customers in the restaurant cast strange looks our way, and I feign a groan of embarrassment and a cringe. But embarrassed is far from what I feel right now.

  What I feel is warmth and happiness, because I get to spend an entire day with one of my favorite humans in the world. Out in the open without fear or care.

  For the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m living.

  ~

  THERE’S A HOST of shopping bags on my bed when I get back. Swathed in bewilderment, I upend the bags one by one, perusing the items. Bathing suits, undergarments, dresses, sleepwear... All top quality brands.

  In need of some explanation, I head downstairs to find Torin. He’s not in his office or his workshop. Both his jeep and his pickup truck are in the garage, so he must be here.

  After searching the entire house and finding no sight of him, I figure he’s probably gone next door for his usual check-ins with his “neighborhood watch” buddies.

  The urge for a nap claws at me, so I plod back to my room, curl up in the window seat, close my eyes, and give in to the lazy desire.

  EVEN WHILE asleep, I feel him.

  Not his touch. Just him.

  His presence has weight. The good, reassuring kind. Along with a simmering yet comforting heat that swirls around me and threatens to sweep me off the ground.

  When I open my eyes, I’m staring straight into his, because he’s crouched to his haunches in front of me, a light frown between his brows.

  “You cut your hair.”

  Absently, I reach up and touch my new waves. “Yeah. It was too long.”

  There’s something akin to disappointment in the creases of his frown.

  “You don’t like it?” I ask, sitting up.

  “I do. But...” His eyes narrow, as though he’s contemplating if he should voice his thoughts.

  “Tell me. I won’t be offended.”

  “Well, I had plans,” he says. “Plans of wrapping it twice around my fist while I fuck you like I hate you from behind.”

  My breath hitches and something darkly sweet dips in my belly. “I-I can put in hair extensions,” I blurt on a breath.

  He chuckles and straightens to his feet. Then cups my chin and dips down to kiss me. Sweet and aggravatingly swift. “Do you want to be hot or beautiful today?”

  “Beautiful,” I whisper.

  “Then you’re beautiful,” he tells me. “So fucking beautiful it makes me angry.”

  Searing heat spreads from where he’s touching me throughout, spurring me. But just as I make to pull him back down to me and kiss him with all my might, he lets go of me and begins retreating. Almost as if he knew my intentions.

  “I’ll go get you a duffel so you can pack.”

  That has me frowning. Then panicking. Is Dad back and didn’t tell me? I’m not ready to leave yet. We just got started, dammit!

  “Pack? Why?”

  “We’re spending the weekend in Laguna Beach.”

  Oh. Phew. “You have a place in Laguna Beach?”

  “I have access to one.”

  Glancing to the bags on the bed, I ask, “Is that what those are about?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s no way he picked all those out himself. He had help. From a woman. Jealousy snaps at me.

  “Who helped you?” I ask, then wince because the words came out harsher than I intended.

  His eyes glint with something indiscernible. “Jules.”

  “Reuben’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh,” he echoes me as he disappears through the door.

  With a mortified groan, I bury my face in my hands.

  I should’ve just said thanks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “What do you want?”

  Lyra

  THE HOUSE IS PERCHED ON A rock on the ocean front. A glassy, triple-balcony, contemporary beauty.

  Night has fallen, but the house glows all on its own.

  As Torin takes our bags upstairs, I wander around, admiring the white-gold and powder-blue decor. There’s even an infinity pool.

  Dad owns a beach house in Long Beach, but it’s not nearly this grand and isn’t quite on the ocean front.

  When Torin returns downstairs, I ask him, “Do you have a job here or something?”

  He gives me an ‘huh?’’ expression. “I’m on vacation.”

  I resist the urge to roll my eyes. People on vacation don’t have morning meetings and spend hours in their home office on business calls.

  “If you aren’t here for a job, then...” I do a three-sixty spin with my hands out. “Why are we here?”

  “Because I’d really like for you to stop sitting on my kitchen island,” he replies, advancing toward me. “And as long as I’m home, Red Cage will continue to disregard my commands to get shit done without me and leave me the fuck alone. And...” He stops in front of me. “…you deserve my undivided attention if I’m gonna fuck you seven times. To completion.”

  My pulse quickens. My nipples tighten. I swallow. “I—uh—Oh.”

  “Oh,” he mocks me again.

  “When do we—”

  My words fall short when he dips two fingers in the front of my strapless maxi dress and tugs downward. Deliberate and forceful. The lightweight material falls right off me, pooling at my feet. Leaving me in nothing but lace, French cut panties.

  Cool air licks my skin, but the searing heat emanating from him quickly swallows it up. My breasts feel heavy on my chest, nipples aching for just a lick, a suck, a touch.

  “Since you like sitting on top of things, go over there,” he orders me. “Sit on the table. Spread for me.”

  Oh god, yes. Sexual excitement strums my veins.

  I’ve wanted this. For him to order me around, tell me what to do. I’ve longed to obey that voice without a breath of hesitation.

  So, that’s what I do.

  I walk over to the white, six-seater table, scoot away one of the chairs, then hoist myself up on the cool, flat surface. Pressing my palms down behind me, I spread my legs.

  Even from across the room, I can see the dark shadows of lust overcasting the green in his eyes.

  “How wet are you, Lyra?” He removes his leather jacket, tossing it aside. “Slip your fingers inside those purple panties and tell me.”

  As he pulls off his black tee next, I bite my lip to quell its quivering and slip my hand down inside my panties. The insane level of wetness I find does not surprise me. My engorged clit is so desperate for attention that it submits to my touch, not wanting to wait for his. “Wet,” I gasp out. “So…wet.”

  Through lidded slits, I watch him stalk over to me while undoing his belt. The closer he gets, the more I circle my fingers around my nub, soft sighs escaping me as anticipation of his touch quickens my pulse.

  When he’s in front of me, his hot hands settling on my thighs, I press down on my clit and moan. What is it about him that makes me so sexually crazed and uninhibited?

  “You aren’t very good at compliance, are you?” he rasps, ripping my hand away. “Tell you to do one thing and you either ignore it or do whatever else you want.”

  And here I thought I was being obedient.

  He lifts my hand to his mouth and sucks my arousal off my fingers. His tongue sends waves of heady sensations through me, evoking a throaty groan.

  Reaching down, he grips my panties with both fists, and with little effort, rips them in two. I don’t mourn the loss. He bought them, so he can do whatever he wants.

  When he dips his head and suckles my nipple at the same time he glides his fingers through my slick folds, I mewl in appreciation. God. His touch is like magic. Like it knows some hidden secret to me. How to unlock me and drive me insane.

  With ease and expertise, he works me over, playing me like a fiddle, until I’m begging for him with a voice that doesn’t even sound like my own. “Please...inside me...please.”

  Drowning in lust and impatience, I grab a
t his jeans, but he smacks my hand away. Overcome with more sensations that I can bear, I close my eyes and fall back on the table, writhing like I’m on fire, burning, arms above my head. “Torin, please.”

  “Jesus…” he hisses, almost in reverence. “…look at you.”

  At the tantalizing sound of his zipper being undone, my heartbeat races, anticipation swirling in my belly.

  When I feel his fingers dig into my thigh, I lick my lips and roll my hips, readying myself.

  And then…he’s inside me. One thrust and I erupt, my walls clenching around him as I come so much harder than I did last night.

  I’m maddened. Driven off a cliff and I just keep falling and falling and falling and falling.

  “Fuck—wait—dammit,” Torin curses and grips me firmly as if to keep me from bucking myself off the table. “Ly…”

  My orgasm goes on for what feels like forever, tossing me this way and that, before it finally floats away from me like a spirit leaving a body. Leaving me lax and near lifeless.

  “You good?” There’s amusement in his voice, but I’m too high on him to care.

  In answer, I roll my hips.

  Seemingly fine with my method of response, he hooks my thighs in the crook of his elbows, and then, he fucks me. Not with the slow, gentle sexiness of the night before, but in the way that fits who he is—exactly how I’d initially imagined he’d be. Confident, assured, daring, unapologetic, without caution.

  And. I. Love. it.

  Every thrust, every stroke, every pause, every switch. And when he reaches the pinnacle, he slams into me with reckless abandon and growls my name to the ceiling like it’s a curse, throat bared.

  Unable to help it, I fall right over the edge with him, gripping onto nothing but air as I shudder around him.

  Minutes pass, and nothing but our heavy breaths fill the salty air.

  Once I’m able to breathe normally again, I right myself up to a sitting position and lock my arms around his neck. I lick the sweat from is skin, then press myself tightly against him, wishing I could melt into him as I pant out, “One.”

  He laughs.

  ~

  “CAN YOU FLY?”

  Splayed on my back in a two-piece bikini, the sun warming my skin, I peer up at a shirtless Torin through my sunglasses. He twists the cap off a bottle of beer and leans against the railing of the luxury yacht he sailed us out on.

  I don’t know who’s yacht this is or who’s beach house we’re staying in, but I’m not sure I care so I haven’t asked. Not when the last two days have been nothing but sheer freaking bliss. I’ve been all over him like a rash and he’s not complaining; he enables me, feeding my insatiable desires.

  And the sex—oh wow—each time is better than the last. Number six was this morning, bent over the counter in the kitchen when I was trying to make a fruit salad. But now I’m dreading number seven, because I don’t want it to be over.

  When he told me we’d be going sailing for the day, I squealed. Not that I haven’t been sailing plenty of times, but everything with him feels brand new. Like I’m experiencing it all for the first time.

  “You asking if I have wings?” he replies.

  I don’t roll my eyes like I want to. Instead, I let them roam over his hard, cut abs and broad, hairless chest. His bronze skin damn near glistens under the sun. On his inner left arm, close to his armpit, is an ace of diamonds tattoo that I only recently discovered. It’s the only ink on him though, and it’s small and hidden, so it must mean something. “I meant planes.”

  From what I’m gathering, there doesn’t seem to be much that he can’t do. His nautical skills surprised me, so now I’m wondering if he has aviation skills as well.

  Like a caressing touch, his gaze drags leisurely along my body as he takes a swig of beer. “You’ll get tan lines. Ditch those pieces of fabric.”

  “Perv,” I mutter with a grin. “Why did you bother to buy me clothes if you knew you wanted me naked the entire time?”

  “So I can rip them off.”

  And he has been. Half the things he bought me are now in shreds. “You can fly, can you?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m just trying to find a flaw in you, is all.”

  “There are many.”

  “Like?”

  “You’ll find them if you look hard enough.”

  He straightens from the railing and comes to where I am. He lays on his side next to me, head propped up in one hand.

  With his other hand, he pours some of his beer in my belly button. Under the heat of the sun, its coldness is very much welcome.

  “I’m not delusional enough to think you’ll keep me around long enough to find those flaws.”

  Apathy cloaks his voice when he replies, “True. We’re one fuck away from ‘completion’.”

  Don’t remind me. “Can I ask you something?”

  He spills a trickle of beer between my breasts, the cold liquid splitting into multiple rivulets down my body. “Go ahead.”

  “Where do I fall on the scale?”

  “Scale?”

  “The sex scale,” I clarify. “Remember you said it’s anywhere between ‘bad, meh, good, great, and mind-blowing’?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Am I...” Heat rushes to my cheeks, but I push past the blush and finish the question. “...mind-blowing?”

  “No.”

  The unhesitant, thoughtless, and solid delivery of the word feels like a punch to the gut. It’s deserved. I know better than to ask questions I don’t really want the answers to.

  This one I could’ve guessed on my own, but I was hopeful. I’m nothing special. Have zero sexual skills or experience beyond fighting depraved devils off me. And during sex, he does most of the work to be honest, blowing my mind, so I really shouldn’t feel slighted.

  It might take a while to get me to a point where I can blow his mind for a change. Maybe it’s time to go back to reading steamy romance novels, pick up a few tricks.

  I don’t follow up on the question. If it’s not mind-blowing, then I don’t want to know.

  “Saw your vision board,” he says.

  “What?”

  “At your house. In your room. When I was searching for clues that would indicate if you disappeared on your own and didn’t want to be found before I agreed to the job,” he explains. “I saw your vision board. You had dreams. Have you stopped dreaming?”

  “I have.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I realized that, in the grand scheme of things, none of it matters. None of what we spend our lives chasing, working hard toward, or holding out for, matters. We’re all just players in a cruel game. And some of us are lucky, fortunate. Some...not so much.”

  After a long moment, he asks, “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” I mumble, hating this avenue we’re on. Wanting to go back to the one where we enjoy each other’s bodies. Sex-crazed and obsessive. “Whatever life thinks I deserve I’ll take it. No complaints.”

  He mutters something in another language. Italian, maybe. But I don’t ask what it means. If he wanted me to know, he’d have said it in English.

  “Are you going to tell my father?” I ask the sky. “About this?”

  “Yes.”

  Not expecting that answer, I turn my face from the sky to him, and find him ogling my breasts. “You’re serious?”

  “I don’t omit,” he says simply, still preoccupied with my tits. “It’s a rule I live by with my clients.”

  “B-But aren’t you worried he’ll be pissed?”

  “He should be.” Using the mouth of the beer bottle, he shifts the triangle of my bikini top so my nipple pops out. “He hired me to keep you safe, not fuck you out on the sea.”

  “You haven’t fucked me out on the sea.”

  He pours a splash of beer on my nipple. “Yet.”

  “Won’t it be bad for business if this gets out?”

  “Every action has a consequence.”
Lifting the bottle of beer above my torso, he pours the entire thing on me this time, then throws the empty bottle overboard. “I prepare for every possible consequence before I act.”

  Shivers shoot up my spine when he lowers his head and begins licking the beer off me. Just like that, I’m a goner. Delicious desire unfurling in my belly, I close my eyes and arch into him.

  “Oh god,” I gasp as he swirls his tongue around my exposed nipple. “We can’t...we can’t do this out here.”

  His hand shifts down between my thighs and cups me. “Shy?”

  On a spike of pleasure, my eyes snap open and I jerk up onto my elbows, glancing around. We’re well out on the ocean, but we aren’t the only ones. And sure, the other boats are nowhere near us, but drones are a thing. I’m not this level of uninhibited yet, so I answer, “A little, yes.”

  With a rare smile, he gets to his feet and pulls me up. Tugs me to him by the waistband of my bikini bottom, grips my chin and kisses me hard, deep, and dominant. By the time he tears his mouth from mine, I’m breathless, all the oxygen siphoned from my lungs.

  There’s no time to recoup, because in the next second he’s dragging me below deck. How did I ever think I could keep up with him? He’s gentle one minute and a beast the next. Not that I’m complaining. Both sexual sides of him are delicious.

  Turns out we saved the best for last; number seven is like watching fireworks on New Year’s Eve while on ecstasy plus a shot of morphine.

  When we collapse together, fighting for each other’s air, he breathes out, “Earth-shattering.”

  Chest heaving, I sluggishly turn my head to him. “What?”

  “The earth moves when I’m inside you,” he tells me, voice gruff, deep, possessive. “Think that’s what’s called ‘earth-shattering.’“ He hauls me on top of him, pressing his face into my sweaty skin like a man crazed. “Fifty notches above mind-blowing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Will you take care of it?”

  Lyra

  FIFTY NOTCHES ABOVE MIND-BLOWING.

  The words bounce around in my head as we dock at the marina, dizzying me with glee.