She brought her knees to her chest and hugged them in tight. “And the thing is—I was mad at her. I was mad because she took me away from Hawaii when I’d been looking forward to the trip. And I was really mad that she denied me a chance at having another father. For a long time I really resented her for it. It took me several years before I understood that she’d actually made a sacrifice for me. She’d given up a guy that she’d maybe really loved, because she loved me more.”
“Well. Are you okay?” The thought of a guy even looking at Elizabeth the wrong way made my primal male brain react. I wanted to cut someone’s throat. Wanted to string the guy up by his nuts.
“Like I said, he didn’t touch me. I didn’t even really notice. After the fact, it did seem a little creepy how he’d looked at me, but it wasn’t traumatic. Which is why it took so long to realize what my mother had done for me. When I did finally understand? You know, that that’s the way a parent should be. Not like my dad who made promise after promise, laying out dreams and visions of the world that he never really intended to give me. A good parent sacrificed. A good parent took away those dreams and promises because it was what was in my best interest. I spend a lot of time talking about how shitty my dad is. But I don’t spend enough time saying how awesome my mom is.” She smiled, a shaky smile. “That’s why I wanted to go to Kauai. Because I was only here for a day. And I wanted a do-over.”
I reached out my hand to her and pulled her down the rock until she was standing in front of me, then wrapped my arms around her. “I’m really glad I’m the one who gets to finally have this adventure with you,” I said, and I just held her.
After a few minutes, I said, “You do have a really good mom.” It made me think about how I wanted to be like that. How I wanted to be a good dad.
A rustling down the path stole our attention.
“Don’t stop now. You’re almost there!” an older man said, coming toward us returning from our destination. He was about my father’s age, and the woman next to him seemed to be about my mother’s age. “If you listen, you can hear the falls.”
Elizabeth picked her head up. “I can hear them. Race you!” She was gathering her pack and bounding down the trail before I could stop her.
“Thanks for the encouragement,” I said to the couple, then headed after the woman I was pretending wasn’t my wife.
It was only a hundred feet or so later before we came upon the falls. They were majestic and gorgeous, the kind of thing you imagined in paradise but never actually saw for yourself. There were people swimming in the lagoon of water at the base of the falls, and Elizabeth was already stripping her clothes before I even had time to get my backpack off my shoulders. She dove in, fearless, shrieking as she hit the water.
I watched her splashing around, taking my time as I untied my shoes. How did she do that? How did she live so open and free, her feelings so exposed to all the world?
I envied her.
And I loved her.
And maybe it was selfish and self-centered to wish that we could live in this tiny paradise forever, just me and her, but right now that’s what I wanted more than anything else. Even if it meant sacrificing everything waiting for me at home. In this moment, I loved her that much.
Not able to stand being apart from her a second longer, I finished undressing and jumped in the water. She swam up to me immediately, throwing her arms around my neck and wrapping her legs around my waist. We bobbed around in the water like this, holding onto each other and kissing. It didn’t even matter that there were other people nearby. We kissed like we were alone, and soon my cock was hard, pushing against the seam of her pussy, outlined clearly through her thin bikini.
“I could be fucking you right now, and no one would know,” I said quietly at her ear. It was hot thinking about it, about being inside her with all of these people nearby. And I needed it all of a sudden, needed it desperately. Needed to mold myself to her, prove how well we fit together.
“We can’t,” she said, her breath hitching. She met my eyes and hers were dark and dilated.
“We could. It would be so easy to slip inside you.”
She rubbed her pussy against my cock, which was thickening at the thought of being nestled warm in her tight channel.
I let go of her so I could push my swim trunks down far enough to pull out my cock, all of it underneath the water where no one could see. I nudged along the outline of her pussy lips with my crown, showing her how easy it would be. “Let me,” I said huskily.
She nodded, slightly, just the tiniest jerk of her head, but it was all the permission I needed. I pulled aside the crotch panel to her bikini bottoms and lined my tip at her entrance. “You’re going to have to be quiet. You can’t give us away.”
She bit her lip and nodded again, more vigorously as though begging for it. I pushed into her, slow and evenly, exhaling at the sudden cloak of heat around my cock. I grabbed her hips and pressed her tighter against me, so that I was as deep as I could go, stretching into the most sacred parts of her.
I stayed like that, without moving, just locked inside her, feeling the flutter of her pussy around me, watching the shallowness of her breath as we tread water. Elizabeth peered at the people around us, showering under the falls and playing in the lagoon.
“No one knows,” she whispered, wrapping her arms tighter around my neck. “That’s so hot that no one knows.”
My cock twitched inside her, that’s how hot it was.
“This is probably against a million health recommendations,” I said, hoping that if I expressed concern it would erase the sin of having absolutely no guilt.
“I’ll take an antibiotic when we’re back in the mainland—don’t you dare pull out.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I was content to stay just like that, fastened together and nothing else, but she pivoted her hips, pulling off of me, then tilted them in sinking back on my shaft with a whimper.
“Oh, it feels good.” Her eyes teared and her lips quivered.
I kissed her, kissed her and rocked with her, memorizing the taste of her mouth and the grip of her pussy and the feel of her arms and her legs wrapped around me like a pretzel. It wasn’t even about climaxing or release—it was about holding on. It was about being as close to a person as possible and not letting go. It was about hoping she didn’t notice that I still had walls up, and praying to God that the ones I’d knocked down were enough. It was about loving her with everything I was, without the baggage that came with me.
And I would tell her about Sebastian—of course I would. I had promised myself I would tell her everything before we left this island. But I was leaving that story for last, in case she wanted me to be the man her father wasn’t. The kind of parent her mother was. The kind of person I kept telling myself I could be.
Truth was, I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to be the guy a woman like her deserved.
9
Elizabeth
Weston emerged from the ocean, an Adonis shining in the sun. He traipsed across the sand, seemingly unaware of the women nearby ogling him. It was impossible not to. He’d bronzed during our nine days in the tropics, and wearing only his swim trunks, his finest assets were displayed. His washboard abs. His perfectly sculpted biceps. His sun-bleached hair. That wicked grin. Not to mention that dimple that practically caused ovulation just by looking at it.
And it was mine.
His body, anyway. He told me in every way he could. With words, with actions. He’d given himself to me physically, and more and more he’d revealed parts of the man inside the perfect casing.
But there was still so much more inside him that I hadn’t yet seen. Who did that belong to?
I watched him from my safe spot in the shade on the hammock swing behind our bungalow as he rubbed the towel up and down his arms, walking toward me the whole time. When he reached me, he dropped the towel on the sand, and bent down to kiss me, his wet hair dripping onto me and making me shiver.
“You look so serious,” he said, plopping down on the deck chair next to me. “What are you thinking about?”
I twisted my lip and caught it between my teeth. We’d continued playing the stranger game since the first night we’d arrived, and the baggage-free personas we’d brought to our island paradise had enjoyed getting to know each other. I’d learned everything about Weston’s love of graphic novels and his secret adoration of the art of magic while horseback riding on the beach and kayaking together. I discovered his secret love for grunge music while driving up a canyon. I’d learned he was just the slightest bit afraid of heights when we took a helicopter tour of the island. I discovered his amazing massage technique at our couples spa treatment, when after our massage therapists had given us each a rubdown, they’d left us alone in the room with an edible sugar scrub.
Who knew sugar could be so erotic?
But now I felt that game was played out. That we were stuck and not moving forward. As much as I’d learned about this wonderful, amazing man—as much as I fell harder for him every day—I was nowhere nearer to resolution for the future. We’d shared our pasts, but nothing of our present.
It was time for some honesty.
I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and angled myself so I could face him. “I was thinking that in five days we go home. And I’m not really sure where home is.”
His jaw tensed ever so slightly, and I worried I’d jumped too fast without warning, but he surprised me with his response. “Does that mean you’re considering that your home could be somewhere other than France?”
The hesitant note of hope in his voice gutted me. “Of course I am. Just like I hope you are considering that France could be yours.”
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and repeated himself. “Yeah, I really am.”
I wanted to grab onto his arm and pull it, pull him like a taut fishing line until he sprang up from the deep and displayed the treasure he was hiding under the surface. But when I’d agreed to the trip, he’d promised to show me all of his insides by the time we left. I wanted to trust that. So I wouldn’t push him.
Yet.
I covered his hand with mine instead. “Okay.”
That night we ate dinner at the five-star seafood restaurant at the resort. The meal was amazing. I’d never had fish that tasted so fresh and divine, melting in my mouth with such succulent briny sweetness.
But without the stranger game between us, there was a new tension that hummed quietly around Weston and me, butting in and spiking up whenever the conversation turned anywhere serious. We were polite—too polite—and gone were the simple discoveries and easy stories that had flowed between us over the previous week.
Still, there wasn’t anywhere I’d rather be. Wasn’t anyone I would rather be with.
A piece of bread hitting my shoulder alerted me to the table next to us, a young mother already apologizing for her toddler even as I turned around. Undeterred, the child threw another piece. I laughed out loud at the mischievous look on her little face.
“Do you like kids?” Weston asked, a tentative edge in his voice.
I glanced at him, surprised.
“I like some kids,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of experience around them, but from what I have gleaned, they are pretty much just like tiny people. Some are amazingly wonderful to know. Some are assholes.”
He laughed, full and hearty. “I guess what I’m asking is…do you want kids?”
I peered over at him, studied the strange edge in his features. Maybe it was just the candlelight playing tricks on me. But it was strange we hadn’t had this conversation, looking at our situation on paper, anyway. How could two people get married and not know the other’s stance on procreation?
Of course, our marriage had been under false pretenses. And so we were only just getting to this now.
“Yeah, I do. I definitely want kids.”
His shoulders seemed to ease, the shadows disappearing from his expression, and I felt that I had answered correctly.
“You?” I asked to be sure.
“I hadn’t really thought about it until…recently. But I do.”
Good. This was good. With that, I felt the last remaining tension flow out of my body. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to be on the same page with him on this.
“I mean,” I qualified, “not right now. Not for another ten years.”
“Ten years?”
“Right. I am only twenty-five now, so I have time. Thirty-five is not too late.”
“And you’re set on that?” The hardness from before was creeping back into his tone.
“Well, yeah. I really am. I want to focus on my business right now. Dyson Media is an important legacy and I’m determined to make something of it. You know that. My father spent so much of his life dedicated to the business, and I learned from him that it was a job too big to have with children. He didn’t have enough time to give to me and his work. Which wasn’t fair to me. I don’t want to make that same mistake with my kids. So I want ten years devoted to my business, then I’ll be able to step away. Probably won’t ever be a stay-at-home type, but I will definitely be an involved mother. It was one of the reasons I wanted to get my hands on my company now, and not wait. Because I recognize my biological clock is ticking, and I really need these things to be separate.”
“Just because your father couldn’t manage both doesn’t mean that people can’t manage both. Maybe your father was just…not a good parent.”
I considered. “Maybe. But part of being a good parent is making good choices about how you build your life. And before I have kids, I want to build my life so that I have time to devote to them.” It wasn’t something I would back down on. It was more important to me even than living in France.
Weston didn’t seem to like my answer though. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “But what if you got pregnant sooner? What if you had a baby right now?”
“Right now? If I had a baby right now, it would be yours. And I would want it so much.” I stared into his eyes, willing him to see exactly how much I meant what I was saying. “I’d welcome it into my life with completely open arms. And I would change my priorities where Dyson Media was concerned. I’d probably let Darrell stay where he is. I wouldn’t be so involved, I don’t know. It’s not how I want things to be, so I am making every effort to not have to be in that situation. Because I want the best circumstances when I have a baby—when I have your baby.” It made me feel vulnerable to say that last part, to admit that I wanted kids with him, but it also felt freeing and right.
“So you’re saying that you would have a kid now, if you had to, but it’s not what you want, which means one day you might even grow to resent it. Or me. Because it kept you from doing and being the thing that you really wanted to be first.” His words were sharp, his body language almost hostile.
“Are you mad at me?” I couldn’t understand why he was so upset over a hypothetical situation. He himself had said he only recently decided he wanted kids. He couldn’t have some dying need to have a baby now, could he?
“No. I’m not mad.” He turned back to picking at the remainders of his food, definitely seeming like he was mad.
I could feel him slipping away from me. “Can you tell me what it is I need to say then? Because I feel like I’ve said the wrong thing, but I can’t say the right thing if you won’t tell me what it is.”
He shook his head, his eyes now watching the young couple with the toddler as they packed up their table, getting ready to leave. “Never mind. It was a stupid conversation.”
I placed a hand on his forearm, felt it tense beneath my fingers. He was close enough to touch, but somehow it felt like he had a wall around him, some barrier I couldn’t reach through. “It’s not stupid. It’s important, and I wanted to talk about it.”
He shot me a glance. “We talked about it. There’s not much else to say.”
I set my jaw, actively conscious of the string of wron
g things I could say that were rolling through my mind, wishing I could find the one right thing to say.
Finally, with tears threatening at the corner of my eyes, I swallowed back the ball lodged in my throat, and tried one more time. “I want to be inside you, Weston. In all the ways you’re inside me. But I feel like I’m up against a door that I can’t open unless you give me the key.” I paused to steady my voice. “Give me the key.”
His eyes closed briefly, my words settling over him, before he turned again to face me. “You’re so far inside me, Elizabeth, that I don’t know where you end and I begin anymore.”
He opened up his arms, and I was instantly in them, moving from my chair to his lap, kissing up his jaw, licking at his salty skin until his mouth found mine. He held me close and tight, his lips locked with mine, unmoving, clutching onto me with a fierceness I’d never seen in him before. Like he was keeping me in place. Like he was afraid I’d leave, or let go first, or not love him enough.
I let him grip onto me like that, wishing his words and his embrace were enough to make me feel sure of our future together.
But they weren’t.
I was just as desperate and scared as his kiss told me he was. Because if I was truly inside him, like he said I was, he wouldn’t be holding on like he was about to lose me.
10
Weston
I quietly slid the back door to the bungalow shut, making sure not to wake Elizabeth, and stepped out into the muggy night air. A couple of footsteps and I was in the sand, cool against the bottom of my feet. I stood in the silent night, gazing off into the dark distance, my thoughts rolling and loud as the waves against the shore. The time on my phone read two thirty-eight. I hadn’t slept a wink.
Dirty Sexy Games Page 9