by West, Harper
It was midday, and there we were, but it was so fucking enjoyable. It had been so long since I'd gotten to cut loose at all, and doing it now, even though I had the sneaking suspicion that I was going to regret it, felt freeing in a way.
I wanted to suck his dick, so there I was, sucking his dick.
"Fuck. Oh shit," Kevin groaned, and I knew he was close. I could feel his cock pulsing with his need, and I worked him faster, hand jerking him, head bobbing.
I took him as deep into my throat as I could, swallowing around him before pulling up and off and then doing it over again.
His hips bucked in the chair, and I could tell it was taking some effort for him to not just thrust down my throat and choke me, which I appreciated. Maybe we could play around with that later. Assuming there was a later.
For the moment, I was focused on the then and there, and I wanted him to come. I wanted him to lose it for me and to know I was the cause of it.
It only took a few more seconds, and when he came I was leaning back a bit so it wouldn't all jet down my throat at once.
He filled my mouth with his salty release, and some of it dribbled past my lips to run down my chin, marking me as I swallowed.
When I glanced up at Kevin he looked dazed, eyes unfocused, his body slumped in the chair like someone had sucked the soul right out of him.
I gave myself a mental pat on the back.
Of course Kevin, competitive as he was, couldn't let that stand. So after a few minutes of coming down and getting himself together, he was smirking at me. He got up from the chair and then managed to pick me up, throwing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carting me off to the living room where he laid me down on the couch and ate me out like he was savoring a fine meal.
I ended up with my fingers twisted in his hair, hips bucking up, grinding against his face with the kind of abandon that only came from really being lost to sensation.
His mouth was just as clever as always, and after I'd come twice and he left me a panting, dripping mess on the couch, he offered to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch like it wasn't a big deal at all.
I was having such a hard time not enjoying myself. It was like being on vacation, especially once I'd done basically all I could do for my job.
The media had calmed down in Hawaii, and back in New York, people had moved on to some scandal involving an heiress to a multimillion-dollar fortune and some racist thing she'd said or done.
But that was someone else's problem, thankfully. I could consider my job almost wrapped up, which meant it was almost time to go back home.
Surprisingly, I didn't want to go. I'd been dreading coming out to spend a week on an island with Kevin Porter, but now that it was coming to an end in a couple of days, I didn't really want to leave.
I'd been counting the hours until we could go our separate ways, but I was going to miss him.
Maybe.
Chapter 16
Caro
The fifth night found us much like the other nights had. Eating together, drinking, and then fucking.
That time Kevin had me on the kitchen counter, bent over with my legs spread wide, practically on my tip toes as he thrust into me hard and fast.
There was a window over the sink, just a few inches to my right, but I didn't care if my voice carried while I moaned and arched and begged for him to keep going.
He slapped my ass hard enough to leave handprints behind and made me come so hard I went weak in the knees and nearly ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor.
Of course, he was much too proud of himself, so I woke him up in the middle of the night by straddling him and riding him hard and fast with my hands pinning his to the bed.
Of course, he was much stronger than I was and could have broken away at any time, but I appreciated him humoring me and letting me have the upper hand.
The next morning when I went to shower, he joined me, and we ended up wasting a lot of water while he held me up, my legs around his waist as he fucked me right there against the slick, warm shower wall tiles.
We had sex in basically every room in the sprawling beach house, and it never seemed to get old. Each time he touched me, it sparked desire, and he got me off so many times that thinking about going back to my old life, where if I wanted orgasms I had to give them to myself, was depressing as hell.
So I just didn't think about it.
Kevin kept being so kind and sincere, too. He complimented me all the time, cooked for me, talked about the things he wanted to do with me when we got back to the city.
It was so easy to picture this carrying over, but at the same time, there was a pit in my stomach at the thought of it. He'd left me behind once already, and we still hadn't talked about what was actually happening between us. It was just so much easier to focus on the sex and the food and the parts of it that were fun and not terrifying and vulnerable.
On the last night we would both be there, Kevin said he wanted to go out.
"It's funny that we're here in this island paradise, and we've been spending so much time inside." He grinned, making it clear that he knew exactly why that was the case.
"I can't believe I've been wasting all the time I could have been exploring the island messing around with you," I teased, rolling my eyes. "I'm an idiot."
"Well, tonight we're going to go out. Have some delicious food. Maybe walk along the beach?"
It sounded dangerously close to a date, but it also sounded really nice, so I didn't complain. Instead I just nodded, agreeing to do that with him.
I dressed up as much as I could with what I had brought with me, which was basically just a classed up version of my usual business casual. I threw on some makeup and actually took the time to curl and style my hair, and when I came down the stairs to meet Kevin, the look on his face made the extra effort worth it.
He looked like someone had taken the wind out of him, and he held out a hand for me to take, as I came down to join him.
I surprised myself by taking it.
He'd called a car to get us to the restaurant, and it was a beautiful place. Open to the warm air that wafted around us, even this late in the year.
They had a bevy of fresh fish and poke and all manner of other dishes, and just staring at the menu was making my stomach growl.
To my surprise, I wasn't consumed with thinking about the last time we'd tried to have dinner out together. There were a lot of successful meals between that one and this one, and I felt much more comfortable and much less on edge than I had then.
I felt like I had six years ago, when I'd been sure everything was going to work out, but I didn't want to poke at that too much.
I wanted to eat fresh caught tuna with a pineapple salsa and split a plate of short ribs with Kevin. I wanted to listen to him talk about his teammates and his friends and tell him juicy details about some of the clients I'd had.
It was so easy, and so nice, and by the time we'd finished eating, I was warm and comfortable and smiling easier than I had in years, probably.
Kevin just had that way about him. When he wasn't irritating me to no end, he was making me feel like the only person in the room. Those bright eyes focused only on me when I talked, like what I was saying was more important than anything else.
No one else had ever made me feel that way before, and I remembered that being one of the main reasons why I wanted to be with him before everything had gone to hell. He just...understood me. He never made me feel like I was strange or stupid for the things I enjoyed and the things I wanted to do.
And he was still like that. His questionable hobbies and indiscretions aside, he was a good person, and I could feel myself slipping back into the mode of always wanting to be with him.
I needed to stop it. Or get a handle on it. Or something.
Sliding back to six years ago was a terrible idea. But I had no idea what I was doing, and when Kevin suggested walking back to the beach house together, I took his arm and agreed while my head sc
reamed at me that this wasn't going to help.
"You know," he said as we walked. "I think I needed this."
"The fish or the walk?" I asked.
He snorted. "The vacation, Caro. The time away from it all, you know. Christine's bullshit stressed me out more than I wanted to admit, and it's just nice to be away from everything."
"It is," I agreed in a soft voice. "I think this is the longest I've ever been away from work since I started."
He laughed. "You worked most of the time you were here, Caro."
I shrugged a shoulder because the point still stood. I didn't do vacations or too much time off. Most of the time I was sitting in front of my work laptop when I was at home on the weekends, and there had been more than one occasion when I'd just gone into the office on a Saturday or Sunday because it was easier to concentrate there.
I was married to my job, to the feelings of success and accomplishment it gave me, and it didn't help that there wasn't really anything else in my life that made me feel that way.
But I wasn't getting into that again. I didn't want to spend this last night with Kevin feeling like I was just whining.
I wanted to just...spend the time with him. It was amazing how clear things could be when you were walking on the beach, arm threaded with a handsome man's.
The moon was high in the sky, sparkling over the water, and the warm breeze picked up again, blowing my hair around my face. I looked out at all of it and made a mental note to come back one day. When I could really enjoy it the way it was supposed to be enjoyed.
A calloused hand came up and brushed errant locks of hair out of my face, and I turned my eyes up to Kevin while he tucked my hair behind my ear.
"So much hair," he teased in a soft voice.
"You like it," I murmured back.
He nodded. "I really do. I like everything about you. And I wish..." Kevin trailed off with a soft sigh.
I had some idea of what he wanted to finish that sentence with. He wished I was less difficult. He wished I could talk about my feelings. He wished we had more time together.
I didn't know how to make any of those things happen, really. So instead I just leaned up and kissed up, pressing my mouth to his softly.
He made a soft noise of approval and threaded his fingers into my hair once more, pulling me close. One arm went around me, and he almost cradled me while we kissed there on the beach, like we were the only two people in the world.
When he pulled back, we were both breathing a bit harder, and his eyes were dark. He looked down at me and then away, licking his lips.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Can you...will you do something for me?"
I lifted an eyebrow. "Depends on what it is."
"I don't want to lose you again," he said. "And I know before you say it. It was my fault in the first place that things got messed up. I broke up with you, and I wasn't willing to give it a chance. That was on me. So maybe it's on me to fix it. I just...even if it's just as friends, I don't want you to walk away from this and never talk to me again."
And so there it was, all the things he'd probably wanted to say all week, laid out in front of me. I sighed, dragging fingers through my hair as I put some distance between us. "Kevin," I said. "I don't know. I'm not really sure how being 'just friends' with you would even work, considering how this week has gone."
"Would that be such a bad thing? If there were benefits to the friendship?" He was grinning, but it didn't reach his eyes. The things he was saying...he was serious about them, I could tell that much.
"I've told you before. I'm not going to be one of those girls you're used to. I'm not going to be in pictures with you, and having people speculate what we're up to. I'm not going to be one of your scandals."
His exhale was rough, and his nostrils flared. "None of that is even..." He broke off, sounding frustrated. "Okay, some of it was true, but a lot of it was just...opportunistic photographers."
"Like this latest thing?"
It was a bad sign when he wouldn't look at me. "No. That was different."
"How was it different?" I wanted to know.
"That was my fault. That was on me."
"As opposed to the other times?"
"Yes," he insisted. "The other times were photographers and bored idiots with too much time on their hands speculating about what a top tier athlete might be doing at a club or a hotel or a beach or whatever. This time was...I set it up."
I frowned, trying to make his words make sense in my head. "You what?"
"I called them. I set it up. None of those girls were...they were just fans. It was just staged."
"What?" I said again. "You engineered your own scandal, in the middle of me trying to fix the one you were already involved in? What the fuck, Kevin?"
"You don't understand."
"Then make me understand! Because from what I'm hearing you just thought I didn't have enough work to do and wanted me to bust my ass harder. You could have undone everything I'd spent days working on just because what? You were bored? You wanted a reason to have an extended vacation? There wasn't enough trouble to get into in New York?"
He shook his head, eyes pained. "No. Caro, it's not like that."
"That's sure as hell what it sounds like!" I exploded.
My heart was pounding, and I couldn't believe for a second I had been considering...I'd been thinking that something might work between us.
Kevin was still Kevin. He was going to do whatever he wanted to do, and fuck whoever got caught in the crossfire.
My head was spinning, and all I knew was that I needed to get out of there. I needed to get away. I needed to go back home and back to my life and pretend none of this had ever happened.
Chapter 17
Kevin
I’d fucked up.
I knew I’d fucked up as I watched Caro put more distance between us, eyes furious, hands balled into fists. She looked furious, and she wasn’t giving me the chance to explain, but I knew I couldn’t let her walk away before she knew why I’d done it.
There was a serious chance it wouldn’t change how upset she was, but I had to tell her.
"Wait," I said, holding out a hand to stop her. "Just...wait. There's something you don't know, okay? There's..." I sighed, slumping a bit where I stood. It wasn't supposed to be this hard to tell her how I felt. The whole point of the past week was to see if she felt the same and try and get her on the same page with me.
And somehow I still wasn't clear on where I stood. She was angry with me right then and there, but it wasn't the cold kind of anger where she bottled it up and just stopped talking. It was the kind that made her yell and stomp and look like she wanted to wring my neck.
The passion in her face was beautiful, but I gave myself a mental slap because it really wasn't the time to fixate on that.
"What?" Caro demanded, arms folded. "What could you possibly have to say that would make this better?"
"I don't know if it's going to make it better," I admitted because in all likelihood, it was just going to make her more upset with me. But at least the truth would be out, and she could do with it what she wanted to.
"I staged the pictures, yes," I said. "But it was because I...I wanted to get you to come out here, and I didn't think there was another way to do it. I knew if I invited you, you wouldn't come, and I knew there was no way I could make this work if we were back in New York. There was too much going on."
"Make what work?" she snapped, brow furrowed in a deep frown.
"This. You and me. I want...Caro, you have to know how much I want you by now. I just spent the last seven nights trying to make sure there was no doubt about that. You're everything to me."
"Stop it," she said. "Stop it, Kevin. You don't know me. You don't...you can't say that. You already had a chance, and you didn't want me--"
"I did! Caro, I did want you. I thought you were going to do the same thing. I thought we were at a point where we had to follow some dreams and leave others
behind. I didn't know you wanted to stay together, and if I had..."
She shook her head, and her folded arms seemed more like she was trying to hold herself together. "You didn't even ask. You just...ended it. Just like that. And now you expect me to believe you did all this just to get me back? You could have destroyed your career."
"I know. But I trusted you to fix it. I knew you could. I believed in you from the second I realized you were the one who was going to be handling this. Because you've never let anything get in your way. You're the most determined person I've ever met, and that's saying something because I'm pretty determined myself." I sighed and stepped closer to her, holding her gaze with my own. "I want to be with you, Caro. I want to cook for you when I'm home and I want to call you and tell you to stop working so late. And I want to be there when you ignore me and come home at eleven at night, to rub your shoulders and run you a bath and bring you ice cream. Whatever you need. And I want you to be there when I have bad games and when my coach is riding my ass and driving me nuts."
I poured it all out to her, all of my feelings, laying it at her feet. It was harder than I expected it to be, knowing there was a very real chance she would reject me and walk away anyway.
People always thought I was the kind of person who could get whatever he wanted, but there were some things that might have been outside of my reach. Like Caro, if she decided that this was too big for her to deal with.
I hadn't considered that when I came up with the plan, I could admit. It was the kind of thing where I'd just come up with the plan and hoped it would work, blind to the negatives because the positives seemed so tempting.
But as time passed and she just stood there, not saying anything, all those negatives were pretty damned hard to ignore.
"Please say something," I said finally, trying to prompt her.
She sighed, shaking her head. "I don't know what to say, Kevin. You're an idiot. You're so stupid. You could have ruined everything just because you...you wanted me. And that's just so..." She shook her head again. "I don't even know. I don't know what to do with that."