“Did you want to listen to music?” she asked.
“No. I like the sound of the wind whistling through the car.”
“I thought about buying the convertible model, but it didn’t come in the color I wanted.” She grinned at him. “I can’t believe you rented us a Mustang.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t freak out when I suggested we eat in the car. Aren’t car nuts like you vigilant about keeping the interior pristine?”
“Yeah. But this is not my car.”
“So if we were in your Mustang right now?”
“We definitely wouldn’t have chowed down on ribs soaked in barbecue sauce, corn bread muffins and sweet potato fries in here.”
He laughed. Seemed he did that a lot around her.
They didn’t talk much, but given the people and noise they were usually subjected to, he preferred comfortable silence. Those were his favorite times with her. The two of them tangled in bed, watching TV or playing a video game. Maybe it sounded boring to others, but the normalcy was exciting to him because he’d never really had it.
The scent of the air changed, and she turned to him and grinned. “I can smell the ocean.”
“Not far now.”
Once they’d crossed onto the island, they hit stop-and-go traffic. Devin expected Liberty would be an aggressive driver, cursing and muttering about idiots, but she remained relaxed. About a block away from the main boardwalk, she said, “Which way? Left or right?”
“Left.”
Devin didn’t tell her to pull over until they reached a section of the road where there weren’t many streetlights and access to the beach was a little more difficult. Since it was summer and tourist season, theirs wasn’t the only vehicle, but he knew they’d have more privacy than if they’d come during the day.
“Should we put the top up on the car?” she asked.
“Nah. Nothin’ to steal. And it doesn’t look like rain.” He shouldered his backpack and pointed.
They followed the path to the water single file. Liberty said, “I’m glad you suggested flip-flops.”
“I don’t like wearing sandals, but I hate havin’ sand in my shoes even more.”
As soon as they could walk side by side, Liberty reached for his hand.
He loved even the smallest gesture of affection she offered without thinking.
“There it is.” She tugged on his hand, urging him to move faster.
Devin laughed. “Baby, slow down. The Gulf ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“I know. I’m just excited.”
He stood beside her about ten feet from the water, watching the waves break on the beach and then flowing back into the water. They remained like that, looking out across the dark expanse. Hearing the steady whoosh and crash that came only from the ocean.
Liberty kicked off her flip-flops and released his hand, shuffling closer to the water’s edge.
Devin stayed behind her, watching the slight breeze tousle her hair. She jammed her hands into her pockets and dug her toes deeper into the sand. Tilting her head back, she inhaled an exaggerated breath, letting it out on a long “Aah.”
He toed off his sandals and moved in behind her, wrapping his arms around her and setting his chin on her shoulder.
“Devin, this is so awesome. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Sometimes it was weird to think he had enough money to take her to any beach in the world. He could buy her—not just rent—any car she wanted. But he knew that wouldn’t appeal to her. Because this was more real.
“The first time I saw the ocean was when I went overseas on my first deployment,” she said. “I remember being on the troop transport plane, and I snuck over to stare out the window because I’d never seen so much water. I mean, you watch TV shows and stuff and know it’s there. But flying over it for hours and hours with no land in sight fucked with my head. Standing on a beach like this seems more manageable.”
“Same thing happened to me, that feeling of almost panic when there’s nothin’ below you but miles and miles of water. I’d never been on a plane before, so it seemed like it took forever to get there. Although the flight wasn’t nearly as long as the one you took to Iraq.”
“Where did you go?”
Devin felt that same jab in his heart whenever he spoke of it. “Hawaii.”
“Sounds fun. I’ve never been there.”
“We did have fun, but at the same time, it seemed forced.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Liberty spun into his arms and looked at him. “You went with your family?”
“Yeah. It was a vacation of sorts, but it wasn’t for us. It was for Michelle. It was her Make-A-Wish trip. The organization is wonderful; everything from our hotel to the sightseeing stuff was top-notch, and they treated Michelle like a rockstar. But for my folks and my sister Renee and me, there was a layer of sadness there the whole time. We all knew it’d be her first and last trip.”
She framed his face in her hands. “Devin.”
Something about her made him keep talking, allowed him to share a piece of his past he’d never told anyone. He closed his eyes, letting the memory wash over him, almost as sharp and painful as when he’d lived it. “The last night we were there, my mom, dad and sister were packing. Michelle wanted to walk on the beach, so she and I took off. We did all the things kids do when their parents aren’t around; we picked up shells, jumped over the waves just as they broke on the beach, splashed each other, kicked sand at each other. She talked nonstop about how much fun she’d had swimming with dolphins earlier that day. As soon as she’d gotten out of the water, before they’d even wrapped her skinny body in a towel, she’d informed everyone that one day she was gonna be a dolphin trainer.
“We’d walked farther down the beach than I realized and she started to get tired. We’d had so much fun just bein’ a normal big brother and little sister that for an hour or so I’d forgotten how easily she got tired out and how frail she really was. So I swung her up for a piggyback ride. Since she’d gotten so quiet, I talked for a change and didn’t notice that it was a different kind of quiet with her. When we reached the beach house, I turned to let her down and she clung to me. She said, ‘No, wait. I wanna look at the water and pretend.’ I said, ‘Pretend what?’ She said, ‘Pretend that I really will grow up and be a dolphin trainer.’ Then she paused and said softly, ‘But I’m not gonna grow up, am I?’
“I wanted to lie, be the protective big brother and assure her that she’d grow up and annoy me for years to come. But I couldn’t do it. For a year and a half Michelle had been living with people tellin’ her that she’d be fine. Yeah, she was young, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew bein’ in that kind of pain wasn’t normal. Neither was living in the hospital. Or seein’ her family cry after a doctor’s visit. Or getting a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Hawaii. So I didn’t lie. I said, ‘Nope, bug. Probably not.’ She was quiet for so long, I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep. But she finally whispered, ‘Then promise me that you’ll think of me every time you go to the ocean.’ That’s the one promise in my life I’ve been able to keep.”
Liberty’s thumbs swept away the tears he hadn’t tried to stop. When she buried her wet face in his neck, he knew she’d been crying too. She wrapped herself around him, showing him without words she was a woman strong enough to hold him up.
After a while he felt a little ridiculous. He forced a laugh. “Sorry if that put a morbid spin on what was supposed to be a fun date.”
“Don’t apologize. We’re standing on the beach and it was bound to cross your mind. Although it breaks my heart all around”—her voice caught on a sob—“I’m happy you trusted me enough to tell me.”
Tell her she’s the only person you’ve ever told.
But Devin’s lips remained sealed. Until Liberty kissed a path up his neck to his mouth and urged him to open up to her kiss. She teased and tormented, licking his teeth, sucking on his tongue. As
she used her mouth like a weapon on his, he wanted the same treatment on his cock.
In the time they’d been lovers, whenever she dropped to her knees or slithered down his body to take his dick in her mouth, he’d let her get in a couple of good licks and sucks, but he wouldn’t let her finish the job. He wanted more than that with her. Stupid reasoning, but he wanted all the other aspects of sex besides blow jobs that he’d denied himself with the groupies.
When she shivered, he broke the kiss and murmured, “I brought a blanket if you’re cold.”
She smiled. “I’m not cold. If you haven’t noticed, the way you kiss me always makes me shiver. But I wouldn’t mind sitting on the blanket.”
“Sounds good.” Devin kissed her again and then reached for his backpack. He pulled out a sleeping bag, unzipped it, and walked to drier sand before he spread it out.
Liberty left her flip-flops where they were and plopped on the left side of the sleeping bag.
But Devin wasn’t having it. He sat in the middle and pulled her up until she sat between his legs, with her back against his chest. “Much better.”
“Now there’s sand everywhere on the blanket.”
“Sweetheart, we’re at the beach. There’s gonna be sand everywhere no matter how careful we are.” He nuzzled the back of her head. “Besides, this is a date. Our bodies are supposed to be in contact as much as possible.”
She snorted. “You just wanna cop a feel to see what kind of bra I’m wearing.”
“I already know you’re wearing a normal bra, not a titty squisher. Because when you hugged me, I loved feelin’ all that soft flesh pressed against me.”
“So maybe, just maybe, if you are a perfect gentleman the rest of the date, I’ll let you get to second base.”
Devin bent his head to brush his lips across her ear. “And if I’m not a perfect gentleman?”
She wiggled her ass against his crotch. “Then at the end of the date, I’ll let you bend me over the couch on the bus and fuck me until I scream your name.”
“Tough choice. But I’ll go with option two.” He nipped her earlobe. “That okay with you?”
“Mmm-hmm. Gonna be a long drive back to the bus.”
They gazed at the moonlit sky and the reflection of the moon on the ocean. The foam on the waves was a fluorescent green, from some kind of algae plankton that was prevalent in the summer months. He remembered Tanna explaining it during one of their beach talks.
After a while, his arms tired of holding them up, and he stretched out on his back with Liberty lying beside him.
“Could you live someplace like this year-round?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’d be cool to have a beach house getaway. But I like the change of seasons. I don’t even get as much of that as I’d like living in Nashville. But the last year I’ve been on the road so much, I walk into my house in Nashville and feel like I’m in a hotel. Not the kind of place I thought I’d come home to.”
“Meaning a wife and three point two kids waiting for you in your mansion?”
“It’s not a mansion by any stretch,” he said dryly. “I’d like to have the wife and kids someday. I’m not in any hurry.”
“You don’t have to be. You’re a guy. You can father kids at any age.”
“How about you? Got a burning desire to have munchkins running around?”
“Never thought I’d want that until Harper had Tate and Jake. But unless I meet Mr. Right—not the ones in the Wright Brothers Band, so quit making that growling noise—pretty damn soon, I’ll be shit out of luck. My biological clock is ticking furiously.”
Devin never thought about this stuff, to say nothing of talking about it, because most women would assume when he discussed having kids, that meant he wanted to have them right now with them.
For some reason he had a flash of a cranky Liberty being pregnant with his child. Then he saw her cradling an infant and him holding the hand of a pigtailed little girl and it didn’t scare him senseless. It seemed almost . . . right.
Liberty moved until she hung on all fours above him, pulling his attention away from his strange vision.
“Are you ready to go?”
“No. Close your eyes and keep your hands folded behind your head.”
He complied. She kissed him with that blend of fire and control that made him crazy. By the time her hand traveled from his pecs to his belly, his cock had gone hard.
She stroked his shaft through the cotton material until he made a low groan. Then she popped the button, eased the zipper down, and tugged on his camo shorts and boxers until they were past his knees.
Then she scooted backward, planting kisses in a straight line down his torso. The tip of his cock bumped her chin. She didn’t look up, didn’t speak. Liberty just drew him deep into her mouth on the first pass. Warmth and wetness surrounded his shaft—a feeling of bliss in itself, and then she started to suck.
Goddamn, did that feel fucking amazing.
Her hair drifted across the sensitive skin of his lower abdomen with every vigorous bob of her head.
Her breasts swayed with her body movement, rubbing his thighs until he imagined it was just her hard nipples teasing his skin with no barrier between them.
Fuck. That mouth of hers. She didn’t need her hands. She was already turning him inside out.
But Devin needed to stroke her cheek or touch her hair. Look into her eyes. Make it intimate and personal and not like every other blow job, where he just sat there and the woman on her knees went to town.
Not this time.
He sat up and curled his hands over her ears, lifting her face to break the connection between her hot mouth and his dick.
Her eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Don’t stop me so you can fuck me, Devin. I want to suck you off.”
“I want that too. But I wanna watch this pretty mouth wrapped around the base of my cock. It’s fuckin’ sexy as hell that you can take me so deep. I want to watch as you drive me out of my mind. I want to watch as you swallow my come. I want you to look at me and see what you do to me.”
“Okay, then. But I don’t want you to hold back. I wanna feel you spill in my mouth.”
He stroked her cheek. “That’ll happen sooner than you might think.”
“Good. And I want to hear you say my name, Devin. Mine. Shout it, groan it or whisper it, but in that moment when you let go, I want you to remember who got you there.”
There was a glimpse of her sexual ego he hadn’t seen before. “Anything you want.”
Devin thought she might tease, drag this out longer, but she kept her eyes on his as she parted her lips and engulfed his cock in one greedy gulp.
“Fuck.”
He kept his hands on her head, not to direct her but to hold her hair back so he could watch her face.
That wet mouth worked him. And worked him. Shallow. Deep. He had one warning shot between his brain and his balls and then zing. He started to come. His pulse was thundering through his body louder than the waves crashing on the beach.
She looked up as the first spurt hit the back of her tongue.
He choked out, “Liberty,” and she clamped down on his cock, sucking in time to every pulse, until she’d milked him dry.
As he fought to remember how to breathe, she tilted her head, locking their gazes as she slowly released him. She placed a soft kiss on the tip of his cock and grinned when that action caused it to jerk closer to her mouth. She sat back on her haunches. “So that didn’t suck?”
Devin shook his head. Maybe his brain wasn’t running on all cylinders, but that was an odd response from her. “Not at all. I’m still feeling the aftereffects.”
“That’s the first time you’ve let me at your dick for more than thirty seconds. I thought I might’ve done something you didn’t like.”
“God, no.” He reached for her hand. “I never meant to give you that impression.”
Of course Liberty noticed that wasn’t really an explanation. He’d tell her why
he’d held back on that—just not now. “So how about you hop up here and sit on my face?”
“Tempting, but I’ll take a rain check.”
Then he hauled her on top of him and rolled them both down to the ground, his lips sliding over hers until she opened her mouth to accept his kiss. He wanted to taste himself on her tongue. He loved the way she could match his mood, knowing exactly what response he needed from her. The kiss calmed him.
“Are you getting cold with your pants down around your ankles?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think I’ve got sand in my ass crack too.”
She pushed up. “Poor baby. There wasn’t any sand on your cock. I licked it completely clean.”
“Trust me, I know.” Devin stood to pull up his shorts. “You wanna walk on the beach before we leave?”
“Nah. I’m good. This was great.” She stepped into his arms and hugged him. “Really great. And just what I needed. Thank you.”
“It was what I needed too.” He pressed his lips against the top of her head, breathing in the salty air and the vanilla scent of her shampoo. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so hopeful. Liberty had to know that the connection between them wouldn’t be this strong if it was only temporary. He believed fate had sent her his way for a reason besides protecting his ass.
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