by Karen Kelley
He shrugged. “Half the time Brian and I ran around in cutoffs and that’s about it. It was almost like being naked, and when we went swimming we were usually in the buff. I guess I enjoyed the freedom. I never really thought about it. It just seemed to be a part of growing up.”
“It sounds like fun.”
He couldn’t take it anymore. Naked sounded real good to him right now. He reached behind her, unclasped her bra, and slipped it off. She had the most perfect breasts and they just fit in the palms of his hands. He lightly squeezed them, scraped his thumbs across the nipples. They tightened.
“That feels good,” she said as she moved to her knees. She raised her arms above her head and stretched, arching her body toward him as she begged for more.
He moved to his knees. “You like that?”
She nodded. “You’re very good at making a woman feel great about herself.”
When she brought her arms down, she wrapped them around his neck and drew his head down to hers. Their lips touched. Her tongue scraped along his before delving inside his mouth stroking, caressing him.
She slid her hands down his arms and cupped his ass. He drew in a sharp breath. She pressed closer, her breasts rubbing against his chest.
He pulled her even closer, running his hands down her back, bringing her in tighter against his erection. She wiggled her body. There was only a scrap of silk between her and his jeans. It was a hell of a turn-on knowing what she must be feeling right now.
He began to lightly massage her ass, kneading and squeezing. “What about this? Do you like what I’m doing? Do you like the way it feels to rub your tender clit against my rough jeans? But that’s right, you said you liked it rough.”
“Yes, but I want more.”
She surprised him by scooting back and unbuttoning his jeans and tugging the zipper down. He didn’t mind a bit letting her have her way with him. She shoved his jeans and briefs over his hips, freeing him. Cool air caressed his dick.
“This is what I want,” she said, and brushed her fingers over the tip of his penis. She placed small kisses on his chest, working her way up his neck. “I want you. I want to lick you and suck you inside my mouth,” she said, her words raspy with need.
His mouth went dry. He knew exactly where she wanted to put her mouth.
She didn’t wait for him to answer but leaned down and took him inside her mouth, her tongue swirling across the tip of his dick before she sucked him deep inside.
A rush of fire swept through him, settling in his stomach. He arched toward her as his fingers curled in her hair. “Oh, damn, yes. That feels fucking fantastic.”
He didn’t think it could get any better, until she began to lightly knead his balls. He couldn’t focus as the strength was drained from his body. He sat back on his heels. She continued to suck and lick his dick, sliding his foreskin down, then back up.
“I can’t hold back,” he said.
“Then don’t.” She squeezed up close to him, sliding her thong to the side until her sex fit tight against him. “Did you like when I sucked your cock?” she asked as she began to rub her sex against him.
“You know I did,” he barely got out as he tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t.
“I liked it, too. The hard length, the soft tip, running my tongue over it.” Her movements increased.
He moved to a sitting position, pulled her in closer, making the connection tighter. She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes.
“Oh, damn, this feels good,” she said. “Oh, oh, I think I’m almost there.”
Her words seemed to come from a tunnel as his world exploded all around him. He sat straighter, grabbing her ass and holding her against him. She cried out as her orgasm swept over her.
Their breathing was ragged in the quiet of the late afternoon. Had he ever had such incredible sex as he’d just experienced?
He didn’t think so.
She laughed. He frowned.
“Is that another good laugh or a bad laugh?” he asked.
Nikki leaned away from him and stared into his eyes. “Definitely good.” Her smile was wide and mischievous. “But very, very messy. I think I need a trip to the river.”
“Good idea.” She frowned. “I’m starved, too.”
“It hasn’t been that long since we ate.”
She shrugged as she stood. “Sex always makes me hungry. What can I say?”
“Okay, but leave your panties here.”
“Why? So you won’t be the only naked one? Are you embarrassed?”
He shook his head as he let his gaze roam over her. God, she had a magnificent body. “No, this is Camp Braxton and you’re not allowed to wear clothes.”
Her smile was slow. “I think I like this camp.” She removed her thong and tossed it to the side.
It didn’t take them long to wash up since the water was ice cold. When they returned to camp, Cal dug out a bag of marshmallows and found branches. He took his knife and trimmed the ends of the branches until he had a sharp point on each.
“Oh, we’re going to roast marshmallows. Cool. I’ve always wanted to know what they taste like.”
He looked at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve never roasted marshmallows?” He added more branches and had flames in no time.
She shook her head. “No, but I always wondered what it would be like to go to camp and do all the things that other girls were doing.”
He studied her.
“Not a nudist camp. Well, not until I got older.” She grinned. “No, I always wanted to go to a summer camp. My parents thought it would be a bad influence.”
“Well, I’m here to round out your education, but fair warning, I am a bad influence.”
“Oh, I’d say you’re certainly that.”
When Cal returned her smile, warmth washed over her. Not the sexual kind she usually experienced when he looked at her. This was different. It made her feel good on the inside, but it worried her, too.
Cal handed her a stick with a marshmallow on the end. She dutifully stuck it in the fire, like he was doing with his. When it burst into flame, she quickly blew it out.
“It’s burnt,” she said.
“That’s the best part.” He pinched off the burnt part on his and stuck it in his mouth.
It didn’t look very appetizing but she’d try just about anything once. The burnt part slid right off. She blew on it before sticking the gooey mess into her mouth.
“So?”
“Okay, it’s good, but now my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.” She laughed.
“The hazards of eating roasted marshmallows.” He grinned, then brought another one out of the fire. “Have you ever been serious about anyone?”
“Why?” Where was he going with this conversation?
“You want to know more about my past affairs, it’s only fair you tell me about yours.”
“But you haven’t told me anything about yours except your fiancée broke up with you.”
“You tell me and then I’ll tell you.”
She was finally getting somewhere. Nikki thought back to the last guy she’d fallen for. Her forehead wrinkled.
“Have you ever been serious about anyone?” he asked.
“Of course I have.” Had it been that long ago? There hadn’t been anyone she would say that she’d been serious about in college. There had been a guy in high school, though. “His name was Phillip. We were seniors in high school. I went to the prom with him.”
“High school?”
“I’m picky about who I get serious with.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged. “We went to different colleges.”
“So distance didn’t make the heart grow fonder.” Cal blew on his flaming marshmallow, then popped it into his mouth.
“He wasn’t that good in the backseat of a car. We couldn’t afford a motel room.” She remembered back. “I think we had more of a connection talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. He wanted to be a ro
cket scientist.”
“Pretty lofty aspirations. What did he become?”
She stabbed two marshmallows onto the end of her stick. “A rocket scientist.” She stuck her stick into the fire, then looked at Cal. “He works for NASA.”
“You’re serious?”
She nodded. “We’ve kept in touch over the years. He married and had a couple of kids.”
“And you haven’t been serious about anyone since high school?”
The way Cal put it, it did seem like an awfully long time. She’d been busy with her career and hadn’t had time to date anyone seriously.
“No one has made your heart beat faster?”
Only Cal. As soon as the thought hit her, her heart began to thump so loudly she thought he would probably hear it. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat.
“Pathetic, aren’t I?” Nikki tried for a smile but didn’t think she pulled it off, so she concentrated instead on burning the marshmallows on her stick.
She wasn’t falling in love with Cal. She barely knew the man. There was a lot she liked about him, sure, but there was a wide gap between like and love. Besides, he’d kill her if he knew the real reason she was at the ranch.
The thought that he would find out made her stomach churn. He would eventually when he saw the story she’d write, and she would write it. She’d never given up on a story yet. That’s why they called her The Barracuda. Her job defined who she was. She had to do the article. Her shoulders slumped. But it didn’t mean she had to like it.
“I wouldn’t say pathetic.” He laid his stick to the side. His gaze drifted over her. “Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right places for love.”
“What if I don’t want to find it,” she said. “I have too much happening right now with my career. I don’t want to settle down.”
“Your librarian career?”
She drew in a deep breath. “And my writing.” It wasn’t really a lie, she told herself. Yeah, right, then why did she feel bad?
“You don’t have a ring on your finger, either,” she said, changing the topic back to him. She would get the blasted story and be done with it.
He leaned back on his elbow. The fire cast him in shadows and light and it was all she could do not to stare. He was magnificent in all his naked glory. His tanned muscles were as firm as they looked.
“I plan on getting married someday, having a few kids, but I’m not in any hurry,” he said.
“But you never did say why your fiancée broke off the engagement,” she prodded. “Why was there no happily ever after?”
He raised his gaze to hers. “I wasn’t always the good guy, Nikki.”
She felt the color drain from her face. What? Did he beat women? Take steroids? Illegal sports betting?
Did she want to know? And if she did, would she be able to write about it?
She had a feeling her life was about to get a lot more complicated, and not in a good way.
Chapter 23
Brian watched Celeste as she stood in front of the stall. Her back had stiffened. He almost wished he hadn’t asked about her parents.
“I had foster parents,” she finally said.
She glanced over her shoulder, then looked away, but there was something in her eyes—so much pain.
He had a bad feeling in his gut. “Did they abuse you?” He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting Celeste. Just the thought made him furious.
“No, they were very good to me.”
He relaxed a little. At least they hadn’t hurt her.
“I never really felt as if I belonged, you know,” she went on. “I always felt as though I was on the outside looking in. They were nice, but it wasn’t the same as being part of a family. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew if I did something wrong or if circumstances changed, I could be shipped off to another family.”
“What about your parents?” he asked softly.
She was silent.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it. My parents were killed when I was a baby. I know what it feels like to grow up without a mom and dad, although my grandparents were great, and I had Cal, too.”
She took a deep breath. “My father is in prison. He has been since I was eight.” She faced him and there was such sadness on her face that it tugged at his heart.
“What happened?”
“He murdered my mother.”
Ah, damn. He took a deep breath. “Where were you when it happened?” He clenched his hands. He’d never expected her to tell him that her father had murdered her mom. He couldn’t even imagine how hard that must’ve been.
“At school. When I came home, Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table, the gun beside him, just staring at it. My mother was lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. I rushed over to her. Her eyes were open but I think I already knew she was dead. I ran out of the house crying. The police came and that was the last time I saw my father.”
“You don’t know why he did it?”
She seemed to snap out of the past. “When I was older, I looked up the newspaper articles. We were well off—some said rich—but my father apparently made bad investments, and then he lost his job.” She hugged her middle. “He killed her because he’d lost his job and they were going to lose everything. They say he planned to kill me, then himself. But when I came home, he didn’t make a move toward the gun. He just kept sitting there staring at it.”
Brian walked toward her, then took her into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“My foster parents gave me a letter from him once. I was nine. He’d apparently tracked me down.” She raised her face. “I remember what he was like, what our life was like, and it had been happy. We lived in a big house and I took music lessons. I even had a dog, but when they took me away, I never saw her again.”
For the first time in his life, Brian felt utterly helpless. All he could do was hold her close.
“I threw the letter in the trash without reading it. My mother was a kind and gentle woman. If I listen hard enough, I can hear her laughter and sometimes I see her smile. He ripped her from me. He took everything away.”
“Not everything,” Brian told her. “You’re still alive and you have heart and spirit. No one can take that from you.”
Celeste laid her head on his shoulder. He wanted to make it all better, but he knew she would always live with her pain. Damn, that’s why she’d only had one suitcase and a junky car. She probably didn’t want possessions to rule her life like it had her father’s.
He kissed the top of her head just before she pulled away. Her expression was mortified.
“I can’t believe I opened up like that. I’ve never just spilled my guts before. I didn’t even talk about my father with my foster families. And I barely know you.”
She started to turn away from him again, but he clasped her arm. “It’s okay to talk about what hurts, and we might have just met, but I feel as though I’ve known you forever. I can’t explain it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I want to get to know you a lot better.”
“Even though my father is in prison?”
“But you had nothing to do with the choices he made. He ruined your life, your mother’s, and his. I don’t care about your past. I don’t think that’s who you are.”
“I think I could like you a lot.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t stay in one place very long,” she warned.
“You don’t have to run away from here. You’re safe now.”
“Safe. I’m not sure I know the meaning of the word.”
“I’ll teach it to you.”
When she looked up at him, he couldn’t resist pressing his lips to hers. His kiss was gentle, meant to tell her she didn’t have to be afraid around him, but it was all he could do to keep from crushing her to him. Dammit, he had to think about something else.
He pulled away and drew in a deep breath. “Want to see the colt?”
“Yeah.” Just the wh
isper of a smile touched her lips. She seemed happy that he’d changed the subject.
Brian led her down to the end of the barn. There were six stalls on each side. The barn was open on both ends today, so there was plenty of light inside.
“Does someone take care of all this for you?” she asked.
“My foreman manages the day-to-day operations of the ranch. We cut and bale our own hay—we’re self-sufficient.”
“But what if you had a bad year?”
“We could survive more than one bad year.” He knew why she asked. She was afraid if he went under, he might do what her father had done. “I’m a survivor, Celeste. I would find a way to make it in this world if things took a turn for the worse. Nothing would ever be so bad that I couldn’t find a solution.” He took a deep breath. “And even if I lost all this tomorrow, I could always go to work for someone. Possessions don’t rule me.”
She nodded, then moved closer to the stall. “Oh, look,” she said as she peered over the top rail. She stared at the mother and colt. “It must be wonderful to experience the birth of something so precious.”
He stood next to her. “One of the things I love about the country.”
“I know that you could never do what my father did,” she quietly told him.
He squeezed her arm. Maybe she would stop running away from her past now that she was here. Either that, or he’d look around one day and she’d be gone.
That thought left an emptiness inside him.
They walked back to the ranch in silence.
“Have dinner with me,” he said.
Her hesitation was brief. “Okay.”
“I have some work to take care of first. Is seven okay?”
“That would be fine.”
Once inside, they parted. Celeste went to her room. For a long moment, she stood in the middle of the room. Then she went to her suitcase and pulled out a worn photo album. Her fingers lightly caressed the dark green leather that bound the book.
It had been a long time since she’d looked at the pictures. She sat on the bed, then opened it. Her mother stared up at her from the first picture. She was beautiful and she was smiling.