She frowned up at him with mock severity. “Jake, I am not sure that’s an appropriate question from a guy I just met, whose parents might come walking down here any minute.”
“Then maybe we should skip talking and get right to it,” he said, still palming her breasts. “I’m just a kid, so, you know, I’m not sure how long I’m going to last.” He tilted his hips forward, and Anna grinned, feeling suddenly lighthearted. This wasn’t a big life-changing moment. It was just her on a beach in the moonlight, in the arms of a gorgeous man—a gorgeous man who wanted nothing more than to have sex with her. What could be simpler or more basic than that?
“Mmmm,” Anna said. She leaned away from him and slid her hand down his smooth chest, his flat, muscled stomach. Just tracing the angles and curves there could keep her occupied for a week, but she didn’t have a week. Based on the need pounding through her bloodstream, she had maybe a minute and a half before she was on her knees and begging him to take her. Which was ridiculous. She’d had sex before. But that had been six long months ago, and it’d been with Todd. Who couldn’t even begin to compare with Jake, by any measure you chose to use.
“Christ,” Jake moaned as she drew her hand hard down the length of his erection, still trapped by his jeans, and Anna smiled at the tension in his voice.
“You look like you’re a little uncomfortable, Jake,” she whispered, moving her other hand to unhook his jeans and draw down the zipper. His shaft shuddered urgently as she freed it from the soft boxers. “Let’s just get you out of these things.”
“Eyes up here,” Jake said, and he held her gaze as he shoved off his pants. When he brought his hands back up, he held a foil-wrapped condom. “This is your call, Anna,” he said. “You just want to play around out here, we can. You want more, then I have this.”
Anna glanced down. “I think you’re going to need to keep that close,” she said, her hands straying to his thickened shaft. “In fact—”
“No you don’t,” Jake said. “It’s my turn.” Jake kept her from responding for a moment by bending down and kissing her full on the lips, his hands moving from her breasts down, down, to skim her waist and curve over her butt, slipping beneath the stretchy band of her skirt. She’d thrown on her bikini bottoms, a suit that she would only wear if she had her trusty cover-up, and Jake’s low growl of appreciation thrilled her as he traced the line of it over her thigh. “I cannot wait to see you in this in the daytime, by the way.”
She latched on to those words, finally responding. “Well, you’re not going to.” She smiled. “That’s why God made cover-ups.”
“Mmmm.” Jake grabbed the edges of her bikini and gave a hard yank, and he lifted Anna up against him while he shimmied it down her thighs. The material sighed and slipped off, and then his hands were back, squeezing her backside, pulling her against his body. All that was between them now was the thin cotton of her cover-up, and even that suddenly felt like too much.
“Jake,” Anna half-moaned. “Since we just met thirty seconds ago, you need to know I’m not normally this type of girl.”
“I like whatever type of girl you want to be, as long as it means we get to keep doing this.”
He pulled her in close and bent his knees, somehow bringing them both down to the sand, him beneath her. As Anna struggled to get her balance, their bodies naturally met at the most critical point, her straddling his erection as it pressed against the sensitive flesh at the vee of her thighs. They both froze, staring at each other, not doing much more than breathing. “You’re awfully hard,” Anna murmured, shocking herself with what she really wanted to do. She moved up a little, and the movement felt excruciatingly right, her damp heat surrounding him. She was already wet, and Jake had to notice that, had to notice her body’s reaction and—
“Christ, Anna, you’re going to need to be very careful right now.”
“Mm … maybe I don’t want to be careful quite yet,” she breathed, and she shifted up almost to the very tip of his shaft, then down again, feeling the heat of him, the thickness, pressing up into her. “You don’t mind if I play a little bit?”
“I—ahh,” was all Jake could manage as she slid up and down another long stroke, feeling herself go simultaneously loose and tight, the urgency to have him inside her almost drowning out the cautions blasting through her brain. Forget the fact that she’d only started talking to this guy a week ago. Forget the fact that she’d never done anything this crazy in her life. Anna just wanted him inside her, stretching her, filling her, like that was the most natural thing for a man and a woman to do, especially this man and this woman. She moved again, slightly higher this time, and Jake’s words finally cut through her haze.
“Stop right there, Anna. I’m not giving you anything to regret tonight.”
His words made her falter just enough for him to move beneath her, and the tearing sound of the foil condom package along with Jake’s tight curses had her drawing back, hesitating, until strong hands clamped down on either side of her arms.
“Please tell me you haven’t changed your mind.”
“Not a chance.” Anna’s whispered words did more than send a surge of relief through Jake. They kicked up the intensity of his arousal another notch, and he didn’t know there was another notch for it to go to. Feeling the wet, smooth slide of her naked body against his cock had almost been more than he could bear, and if she’d kept it up another second, or if she’d succeeded in getting her pussy positioned where she seemed bound and determined for it to go, where all he had to do was push up and into her, his entire brain would have exploded and there probably wouldn’t be much of either of them left.
But now she seemed to hesitate, and he forced himself to ratchet himself back, to take it easy …
Her next words undid all of that resolve. “Jake, I want you to be inside of me right now,” Anna said, and she moved forward again, her knees anchored around his hips, her hands on his shoulders. “I just … it’s been a little while, and I—”
“Sweetheart, I think you’re ready.” Jake almost groaned the words, as even through the restriction of the condom he felt the sweet slide of her as she moved down against him, tentatively now, her body opening to take just the tip of him inside. “You control it, though, it’s all you, baby. Go as slow as you want, as—Christ.”
Anna moved further over his cock, and her tight, wet heat surrounded him, the pressure nearly making his eyes roll back in his head. Instantly, she withdrew. “Was that okay?” she asked worriedly. “Was that too fast? Did I hurt you?”
“Not possible,” Jake said. “You just take your time. Come here.” He pulled her head down toward him, reaching up to capture her lips while her body shivered and hesitated still, half over him, driving him insane. She kissed him, pressing his mouth deeply against hers, then leaned a little forward, and suddenly her hips drove all the way down, sheathing him entirely with one quick movement.
“Oh!” she gasped, murmuring against his lips. “That’s nice. That’s really nice.”
Jake was glad she was able to say anything. He could barely string thoughts together. And then Anna sat up, his cock deep inside her, and rolled her hips in a slow circle. Her thin colorful cotton thing spread out around her, and she looked like some sort of goddess, her hair around her shoulders, her eyes bright, her hands on his shoulders as she ground into him in a rhythm that made him wonder if she’d somehow crawled inside his brain and watched his most intimate fantasies play out in frame-by-frame detail. “My God, Anna,” he groaned, and her smile was full and right. Whatever she saw on his face must have pleased her, because she arched her back up, the movement somehow, impossibly, driving him more deeply into her. She lifted her hands and cupped her own breasts, teasing the already-hard nipples until they were jutting points, all while circling her ass with perfect, grinding intensity.
“Yeah?” Anna asked, and her voice, so full of lust and heat and power, ticked him closer to his own release. “You like that?” She leaned forward then, her heavy breasts agai
nst his chest, and the new angle tilted her up. As if by their own accord his hands came up and he held on to the rounded curve of her ass as she kissed him, hard. He was buried deep inside her, and when she began moving again in a slow, rocking motion, he felt his control begin to fall away. He was going to die, that’s all there was to it. And it would be a hell of a way to go. “You like this better?” she asked, and then she sat up again, her breasts full and glorious in the moonlight, his cock straining back. “Or this?” She put her hands to her waist, curved them up and over her breasts. “You like me to put on a show?”
“I like all of it,” he admitted, honestly. “There is no end to the things I like about you.”
“Mmm.” She reached around her back, and suddenly he felt a new pressure at the base of his balls. His body bucked beneath the stroke of her fingers. To reach him she had to jut her upper body forward, and she looked like some kind of fucking porn star, all confidence and beauty and—
“Christ, Anna, you’re going to need to stop that. I won’t be able to hold on much longer.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to hold on longer,” she said, and she combined a long, twisting push over his cock with the fluttering pressure against his balls. “Maybe I like the idea of you losing control.”
“Well, you’re going to like me a lot, then,” Jake said through gritted teeth, and she grinned in triumph, bringing her hands around to brace herself against his shoulder, driving harder now, turning him inside out. “There’s so much I want to do to you right now, so much …”
“Just do this, just this,” Anna said, her breasts now swaying in front of his eyes. He snaked an arm around her and leaned up, taking one nipple into his mouth and sucking, hard, thrilling to Anna’s gasp of surprise, the rush of wet heat that burst over his cock as her body reacted to the new stimulation. It was one reaction too many for him, and his control shattered.
“Anna,” he gasped and bucked hard, reveling as she slapped her hands down on his shoulders to hold on, to ride him out, as he pumped into her with three long thrusts and then collapsed backward on the sand, completely spent.
He was going to die, he decided. Die, right there on the beach, and sleep for a week in heaven.
Anna tumbled down beside him, her body going lax and loose, the soft fabric of her beach cover-up trapping her against him. “Well, Jake Flynn,” she said, her words almost a sigh. “I feel like I know you much better now than I did after your three questions from the bartender in Durango. Maybe you should go back and tell him that.”
Jake smiled, leaning over to kiss her forehead. He could see her clearly in the bright moonlight, the moment perfect, her soft, shy smile gorgeous. “Maybe we should make up our own questions, then,” he said. “Ask me whatever you want, and I’ll do the same.”
Her eyes brightened, then just as quickly dimmed, curiosity giving way to fear, uncertainty. “Nuh-uh,” he said. “Seriously. No question off-limits.”
She swallowed and looked away, then her gaze found his again, her eyes resolute. “Why did you fight with your dad?”
That, he wasn’t expecting. “My dad?” he asked, totally confused. “I’ve never gotten in a fight with my dad.”
“But you said you pissed him off and then you left home and—”
“Ahh.” Well, here it was. Quicker than he would have thought, but probably just as well. Anna was sheltered, a good girl, and a hell of a way to spend a weekend. But what he had in his past would scare off a girl made of much sterner stuff than she was. Might as well rip that bandage off now, when he had lots of endorphins surging through his bloodstream to ease the pain.
Still, he let the moment stretch on, just wanting to feel her in his arms a little bit longer, until finally she said, “You know, never mind, it was a dumb question—”
“I got in fights,” Jake said, cutting her off. “Just not at home. And not your garden variety kind of fights, either. I’d beat the shit out of another kid just for looking at me wrong, or looking at one of my friends wrong. Sometimes I convinced myself I was defending a kid who was being bullied or a girl who didn’t like the way some guy was manhandling her. But most of the time, I’d just get pissed off and that was it. My parents tried to work it out of me, so did my teachers. Tried martial arts, hockey. Nothing stuck. I didn’t have any discipline, just a whole lot of … rage, I guess. Something would happen, I’d lose it, and take it out on someone with my fists, good reason or not, and I wouldn’t stop. I was the guy you wanted in any matchup, because I never had the sense to back down.”
“But why?” Anna’s voice floated up to him, but it was like she wasn’t there at all. Like he was talking to the stars, with no one to judge what he said. “Why were you so angry?”
“No reason why. That’s the shit of it. My life was no worse than any other kid’s—a hell of a lot better really. My dad could be an asshole, but looking back, so was I. What twelve-year-old shows up for dinner with two black eyes and a dislocated shoulder?” He shook his head. “I just … I’d see something happen and get this feeling inside me, and it’d be too big for me to handle. I had to get it out, had to find some way to release it. And I did.” He shrugged. “One day, I went too far. We’d all graduated high school a few days earlier. Everyone was partying, cutting loose. We ended up at the lake.”
A part of him knew he was still looking at the ocean, but what he saw in his mind was the lush, green grass, the thick woods. The crystal-blue water in the background, calling him to keep on walking, to forget what he thought he’d just heard. And then the sound came again, louder this time, but still muffled. Pained. So he’d turned left instead of right. Just left instead of right. His entire world whittled down to left instead of right.
He saw them not thirty seconds later, two guys he didn’t know and a girl he did, her clothes ripped half to hell and her legs churning, struggling for purchase on the soft earth. After that, he hadn’t seen much of anything—at least not that he could remember. “There were these two guys trying to get in a girl’s pants. Something broke, inside me … I was so fucking mad. I honest to God didn’t care if I killed them. Might have killed them, too, if I hadn’t been tackled by some other people before I could.” Those other people had been cops, smart enough to be close to the local hangouts of a bunch of kids fresh out of school, and the first to respond when the girl had run out of the woods into the parking lot, screaming and crying. He’d fought the cops, too, at first—couldn’t help himself. There was just … he couldn’t stop. “They locked me up overnight to scare me. Showed me some pictures of the guys I’d hit.” He saw those pictures again now, like a slide show in his mind, and he felt his fingers twitch at the memory. He hadn’t thought he’d done so much damage, hit them so hard. He hadn’t realized there’d been so much blood. It had all happened so fast.
“What happened to the other boys?”
“Hospital for a while, I think. My mom told me the girl pressed charges.” Jake shrugged. “I was gone by then.”
“Gone?” Anna shifted beneath him, trying to peer up at his face. “Your parents kicked you out? For protecting that girl?”
“You don’t understand, Anna. I was underage, two weeks away from my eighteenth birthday. If I’d been an adult and I’d killed those guys—which I damn well could have, the rate I was going—my life would have been over, too. My parents were absolutely freaked, especially my dad. Demanded I join an Outward Bound rehab program or some shit like that. Either that or leave. Get out of town. They didn’t want to see me hurt anyone else, no matter how much he deserved it, all because I couldn’t control myself. They weren’t going to go to some guy’s funeral, or see me rot in jail.”
He shook his head. He’d had a lot of time to think about that summer. A lot of time to rehash it over and over in his mind. “I think my dad knew I wouldn’t take the deal. He figured me getting out of town for good would be the best way for me to get a fresh start.” It sounded almost sensible now, like his family had had a nice discussion over dinne
r one night, then waved him on his way. Only it hadn’t been like that at all. Jake figured he’d be carrying around the memories of that last, awful day for the rest of his life. His dad screaming, his mom’s tears. The sandwich bag filled with money she’d gotten from God knows where.
“But you didn’t end up rotting in jail.” Anna’s voice pulled him out of his dark thoughts, her words ringing with a confidence that made him smile. “You found motorcycles. You work on them. You’re completely different now.”
Not different, he knew. Just smarter. “I didn’t end up in jail,” he agreed. She could think the rest if she wanted. He knew the truth.
Speaking of which … “What about you? You ready to play truth or dare?”
Anna bit her lip, the silence stretching out again, once again way too long. “I think I’ll go with dare,” she finally said, her voice almost teasing, filled with bravado. But Jake knew she was hiding behind her words, and so did she. She’d just wimped out on telling him … something. He had no idea what, but it was something she clearly wasn’t ready to share.
“Okay,” he said, hiding a disappointment he had no right to feel. Anna wasn’t his girlfriend, even if he had just spilled his guts. She was allowed to keep her secrets to herself.
Still, if life gave you lemons …
Jake uncoiled himself from the sand, and unceremoniously pulled Anna up to her feet. “Then I think we’ll be doing that skinny-dipping thing now.”
Chapter 14
The next morning, Jake opened his eyes not knowing where the hell he was, except that there was an armful of blonde wrapped around him, so it had to be someplace good. He blinked, scanning the cheerful sight of blue sky opposite the bed he was lying on. The window, bordered by white curtains, looked out over something he couldn’t quite see. But the distant view he got, even from the bed, was miles wide, and all of it ocean.
Yup, definitely someplace good.
Reality clicked in with the next tick of the clock, and Jake stilled, everything coming back to him. He leaned back to look down at Anna, immediately grateful that she was still sleeping.
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