BOUND TO HAPPEN

by Alison Kent

  She listened to the sound of her own breathing and counted the beats of her heart. She heard subtle noises, the creaking of the deck and the thwup of the wind catching the umbrellas' canvas. But the one thing she was listening for, the one thing she wanted to hear, the sound of Ray's footsteps on the staircase, she never heard. And so she waited.

  Sydney awoke slowly, realizing as she did so she was no longer alone. Without lifting her head from her hands, she knew it was Ray who had found her. She smiled to herself as anticipation swept through her, heightening her desire for him. Her belly clutched, her heart raced. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't wanted Ray Coffey. And so she raised her head.

  He stood above her, beautifully naked, his shoulders broad, his hips narrow, the scar on his chest a scimitar slice reminding her of the type of man he was. Brave and loyal. Selflessly honorable. Incredibly sexy, virile. Unabashedly steadfast in his values. A man she counted herself proud to call a friend, thrilled to call a lover.

  His arousal thrust boldly toward her and Sydney got to her knees, compelled beyond belief to take him deeply into her mouth. She wrapped one hand around his swollen shaft, awed by the way her fingers almost failed to meet, and then her lips slid smoothly over the taut skin. He was warm and salty and he shuddered when she sucked.

  She worked him with her tongue. Long strokes along the underside. Playful laps over the broad flat of his plum-red head. Nibbles and kisses and open-mouth exploration. Bare flicks of the tip where a salty droplet trickled from the tiny stitted opening.

  Her own body opened, her core swelling and throbbing and seeping. Her response became a painful wanting ache. Wanting him to fill her, to make her come. Wanting him because she wanted him.

  This born protector who'd rescued her so long ago when he'd been barely more than a boy.

  This fantasy lover who'd occupied every one of the impossibly never-ending years since.

  This flesh-and-blood man she'd grown to admire, understand and love.

  Tears stung her eyes and she had to struggle for her own control and patience and concentration on the loving task at hand. A near-impossible feat she accomplished by cloaking herself in pure physical sensation. The beauty of Ray's body and her own body's response.

  She wanted more than anything to lie back on the makeshift bed and take Ray with her. To open her legs and feel him drive deeply into her. She caught the salty scent of her own arousal, even while breathing her fill of Ray's musky essence, even while sampling his most intimate parts and savoring his taste, so unique, so unequivocally Ray.

  This was one intimacy they hadn't yet shared, and she wanted to take as long as he would let her take. They were together. They had perfect memories to create. That would be enough, she swore, swirling her tongue around the warmly ridged head.

  With a long, low hiss, Ray pulled free of her mouth. Hands at his hips and eyes closed, he struggled to back away from the edge where Sydney knew he hovered.

  She knew because she'd felt him surge against her palm while her hand had explored the sensitive flesh between his legs.

  She knew because she'd felt him pulse into the cupped flat of her tongue when she'd lapped the underside of his shaft.

  She knew because his face was a strained mask as he tapped into deep reserves of strength to stop his release. And even as she looked on, fluid slowly seeped from the tiny slit, a creamy precursor to the burst of pleasure yet to come.

  With a final shudder, he shook off the last of the restraint on which he'd been drawing and looked down. Still on her knees, Sydney sat back on her heels, maintaining the eye contact that raised the temperature of the blood racing through her veins. His eyes were beautiful, a fertile living green that gave rise to tender thoughts of how loving a man Ray was.

  But this was not about love. This was about sex. Again, she forced the reminder front and center. And so when he dropped to the cushion before her and placed his hands on her thighs, Sydney pulled her legs in front of her, keeping her knees close to her chest, her feet tacked up to her bottom.

  Ray was impatient. He wasn't going to waste time in an unnecessary seduction. Instead, he simply parted her legs.

  Sydney leaned back on her elbows, tacking her chin to her chest, casting her gaze the length of her body and watching as Ray lowered his head. He opened his mouth over her feminine center, breathing a stream of warm breath over her.

  Even as she shivered, she watched. His hands were so big, the spread of his palms so wide where they held open her thighs. If she closed her eyes, she could feel the imprint of each finger. Instead, she looked on, loving the way his fall of dark hair looked against her skin.

  His tongue boldly swept from the moist opening, where he thrust inside, mimicking the motions of making love, to the tight knot of her clitoris, where he hghtly sucked the aroused bud of nerves before tendering butterfly kisses and the gentle press of the flat of his tongue along the sensitive female erection.

  Sydney watched it all clinically, analyzing the physical action and her own response like a strangely detached observer. She was doing her damnedest to keep emotion out of the equation. But then Ray looked up. With his tongue lapping with kittenlike strokes, he looked up. And Sydney knew she was the biggest kind of fool.

  Because her gaze met and snagged on Ray's, and his eyes told her that he was having none of this composure business. He was here to make her sweat. She watched his tongue. With her gaze still caught by his, she watched his tongue.

  Watched the wide flat surface slide through her folds. Watched the tip curl and cup and wrap around her clit. Watched the blue-veined underside, so similar to the thickly veined length of his penis, as he licked her juices from his lips. And then she began to sweat. To squirm. To sizzle and steam from the inside out.

  Oh, how had she ever thought she could make this encounter be all about sex when it was utterly, completely about Ray?

  Her head fell back and her pelvis thrust upward. She wanted more. She wanted everything. She wanted him to stretch her wide open and fill her up. "Please, Ray. I need … more. I need you inside me."

  It was a finger she felt slip into her. A thick finger that slowly hit bottom and just as slowly withdrew. Again she thrust upward. And this time two fingers slid deep inside, crooking up to caress the pillow of her G-spot while he continued to work on her clit with his tongue.

  Sydney cried out. She hadn't known anything, any man, Ray … she hadn't known Ray could make her ache with a need that reached beyond physical into her soul.

  His hand played her like an instrument he'd practiced on for years. He knew where to touch, to tease, to tickle. When he pulled away, she whimpered. When he returned to test her with three of his fingers, she thrust her pelvis into his hand.

  He wasn't giving her what she wanted and her patience was growing thin. She looked back at him, saw the fire in his eyes as he moved his hand away, and knew he had to feel the heat simmering in her gaze, in her skin, in that moist place where he waited.

  Leaning on one elbow, she slipped the fingers of her other hand down between her legs, showing him how best to finger her. She dipped inside, where Ray had been, and made him watch while she gave herself pleasure, to her folds, her clit.

  The look in his eyes told her how close he was to taking her apart. Exactly the way she wanted to be taken. She pulled her hand away slowly, separating her folds and showing him how ready she was to take him. And then she braced herself back on both elbows and spread her legs wider, issuing her invitation with her tongue caught between her teeth.

  Ray didn't need a second prompting. He got to his knees and, his fist flush against his nest of dark hair, held the base of his cock so that it looked seconds from bursting. He moved up between her legs. She shifted onto her tailbone, giving him better access.

  He spread her moisture with his plum-ripe head, stroking up and down through her folds. When he pushed forward, she watched. His penis stretched her opening, and her engorged lips swallowed his thick length, and all
the while she watched.

  She couldn't take her eyes away from their joining. Ray still held his shaft at the base, and the shared moisture glistened on his skin. Sydney had to touch him, and so she shifted her weight once again, leaning on one elbow while her free hand explored.

  When she pinched her clit, Ray growled, a low, rolling sound she felt in her core. When she slid the V of her spread fingers over his shaft and kept her hand there, catching the ridge of his head as he pulled free, he groaned. When she licked her lips, telling him wordlessly how much she wanted to take his ripe fruit into her mouth and suck until he burst open, he couldn't stand it anymore and drove home.

  She fell back against the cushions, wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and let him ride her hard. She welcomed his thrusts, and met every one with a thrust of her own, digging her heels into his backside for leverage. He didn't love her gently, but took her with a rough desperation, saying her name, along with four-letter words she didn't think she'd ever heard him use.

  Her orgasm hit her when she wasn't even looking. The base of Ray's cock rubbed over her clit, the head scraped her G-spot with every deep thrust. She let herself go, grabbing his backside and pulling him as deep as he could possibly drive himself into her body.

  Her head thrashed and her fingers clawed and then Ray came with a shudder that rocked her to her toes. She felt the warmth of him coating her inside and rejoiced in the intimacy she'd never shared with another man. An intimacy she never would share with another man. This bond was too rare, this closeness one she'd never thought to find.

  He was silent; even as he finished, he didn't speak. If not for the warm fluid seeping between her legs, the tremors she'd felt rack his body, she'd have no other evidence that he'd come. "Why are you so quiet? You come without making any noise. Why is that?"

  He turned his head so that his lips tickled her ear. "I don't want to wake you up. In case you've fallen asleep."

  She smacked his backside. "That's not funny."

  "Hey, it has been known to happen."

  "Not with me, it hasn't." She didn't like thinking of other women he'd been with.

  Ray raised himself on his elbows and looked down into her face. "Oh, right. It's you. I forgot there for a minute."

  Okay. He was teasing her. He was letting her know that what they'd just done together was nothing more than the fulfillment of the promise they'd been working toward since their first night on the island.

  This was exactly what she'd asked for, she realized, even as Ray lowered his head and tenderly brushed her lips with his, kissing her gently, lovingly, filling her soul with the emotion she'd worked so hard to push away. How could he kiss her like this and let her go?

  And how could she kiss him in return, holding him close and intimately, his body still a part of hers, and ever walk away?

  * * *

  10

  « ^ »

  The hour following dinner later that same day found Sydney in the first-floor office her father kept at the villa, a room into which she'd rarely ventured, and never in Nolan's absence.

  His elegantly carved teak desk faced a floor-to-ceiling window that took up an entire wall. A wall, in fact, that was the sole section of the first floor unobstructed by the wraparound veranda.

  The view beyond was more beautiful than she had the ability to describe. The palms, the sand, the gentle waves of the Caribbean with caps of starlit white. Wearing a pair of tribal-print lounge pants and a matching halter top, Sydney sighed and wrapped her arms around her body, wishing she could express what the beauty made her feel.

  But the eloquent poem she longed to write failed to materialize. The ocean's music that sang in her heart remained trapped there, never to escape. The glorious moon rising into a sky left dark by the setting sun begged to be painted, but was caught, instead, on the canvas of her mind.

  As much as she wanted to do all those things, the harsh truth was, she couldn't do a single one. Not with the justice they deserved. And for one very simple reason. Sydney Ford didn't have a creative bone in her body.

  Instead, she had Macy Webb to write copy and Lauren Hollister in charge of layout and design. She had Kinsey Gray's uncanny ability to predict fashion trends, Chloe Zuniga's discerning awareness of color and style, and Melanie Craine's technological wizardry.

  Sydney considered herself lucky. She'd surrounded herself with women who possessed the skills and the traits and the talents she lacked. All she had to do was reach down into the creative gIRL-gEAR well for any expertise she needed, though none of it was truly her own.

  Not that she came to the table empty-handed. She contributed the fundamentals required for business, a linear grasp of the concepts involved, a logical understanding of the required theories an executive officer needed to steer a company toward success. She had Nolan to thank for passing along the genes. And her mother to thank, too.

  Had Vegas Ford not pointed out Sydney's creative shortcomings over and over again, she might've continued to set unattainable goals, to strive to prove herself worthy as the offspring of a world-famous artist, when she'd been so much more her father's daughter.

  And standing here now, in this room, surrounded by inanimate objects that uncannily seemed to pulse with Nolan's spirit, she had never felt the connection more. Neither had she ever felt so alone.

  Sydney leaned her forehead on the window and breathed a circle of condensation, looking into her own eyes reflected back in the glass. She rarely allowed herself to get sulky over family issues. She was an adult, after all. Her problems with her mother had, for the most part, been settled.

  Yes, Vegas was a flake. She spoke without thinking. She hurt people's feelings on a regular basis, never even realizing what it was she'd said wrong. Her heart was in the right place, which made the injured party feel guilty for hesitating to forgive her transgressions.

  It had taken Sydney a long time to come to that realization and to get beyond the things her mother had said to her the night of Boom Daily's party. At twenty-six, she was no less vulnerable. But she did have more objectivity.

  Or so she'd thought. Until Nolan, her father, the one person to whom she'd always been able to turn for advice, for solace, for security when she'd felt as if she was floundering, hadn't been there when she'd counted on his help. Not only had he failed her by going back on his promise of funding for Izzy, but he'd then turned to Vegas.

  The same Vegas who had, eight years before, breezily announced she was giving him a divorce. She used the same tone of voice she would have used to announce buying tickets to the latest Broadway musical.

  It made Sydney sick, knowing Nolan was wasting his money, building the Parisian gallery an "artist of Vegas Ford's stature deserved," when Isabel Leighton was using her degree in nutritional anthropology to improve humanitarian efforts in famine-stricken countries.

  Abstract oils versus starvation. Yeah, Sydney could see exactly why Nolan had made the choice he had. Her forehead still resting on the windowpane, her reflected eyes still glistening, she gave a huff of disgust.

  The man she'd put on a pedestal, who'd been her lifeline from freshman orientation to graduation four years later, who'd been there when gIRL-gEAR was the size of a mustard seed and had walked her step by step through the concept development, had hit a crisis in his life, one that made no sense to Sydney.

  He was taking yoga, climbing mountains, hitting the streets in his classic Corvette convertible and leaving his cell phone behind. She didn't know her father anymore.

  And that, above everything else, was what was making her so miserable.

  Almost as miserable as the realization that she'd fallen in love with Ray Coffey. And that she'd been half in love with him for eight years.

  How could she have been so stupid as not to recognize what she was feeling long before now? Or, at least, to explore the possibility that her fantasies had a more realistic foundation than simple infatuation?

  Not that anything about her infa
tuation with Ray was simple. But Sydney Ford did not do groundless, ethereal fantasizing. She should've admitted to herself months ago that what she was feeling was not simply going to go away on any prescribed timetable.

  Feelings were not as easily organized and classified as spreadsheets and demographic surveys. And unfortunately she was well aware of her tendency to avoid dealing with emotional confrontations. Look what she'd done after the fight with her mother the night of Boom Daily's party.

  Sydney laughed to herself, at herself. Eight years ago she'd known exactly what she was up against dealing with Ray Coffey. She knew him by reputation, and she'd willingly gone with him that night. She only wished she knew what she was up against in dealing with him now.

  He scared her to death, the things he made her feel. The passion. The uninhibited desire. The freedom from the rational thinking that drove every aspect of her life. How was she supposed to run a business when she wanted to run away, run wildly through fields and meadows, run her hands all over his body, run until she had nothing left from which to run?

  What she was going to do was run gIRL-gEAR into the ground if she didn't call this dalliance to a quick halt. Look at her father, his focus all over the map, his priorities shifted, his attitude too carefree to be believed. If building an art gallery in Paris wasn't enough, for God's sake, he'd been dating Lauren Hollister!

  Sydney banged her head lightly against the window, then took a step back from the tempting view beyond. If she lost gIRL-gEAR, she would have nothing worth fighting for left in her life. She'd be back to being nothing but the rich-bitch Ice Queen she'd been for too long—until the night she'd gone to bed with Ray Coffey.

  During that one night, everything had changed. Especially what she'd felt about herself. During the long hours of making love, he'd held her close and let her cry over her mother's selfish dissolution of their family. And she'd realized the next morning that Raymond Alexander Coffey was a force to be reckoned with.