“Court, meet ball,” she said.
He laughed, releasing the tension between them as if he’d snipped a cable in two. “You are something else, Zoe Bellini. There’s no one else quite like you. And I know, because I’ve been everywhere.”
With that, he closed the remaining distance between them and crushed her against him.
The hardness of his chest and thighs took her by surprise. Had she been fooled by his kind eyes and general restraint? She shouldn’t have been. He was a fisherman’s son, and he’d worked his body hard his whole life. And no matter how sweet-hearted he was, no one got to be a beloved mega-star without being tough.
He was showing off that toughness now. She sensed it in the way his hands ran all over her body, in the way he claimed her mouth in a deep, passionate kiss. Experience. Yeah, he had his share, she knew it the second he cupped her ass as if he knew exactly what to do with all her curves.
She sighed against his mouth and melted against him. He plundered her mouth with smooth sweeps of his tongue that left her panting and wild. With strong hands, he shaped the upper slope of her hips and the indentation of her waist, then slid up her torso and spread his hands across her back. With his thumbs, he flicked the straps of her backpack off. For a moment, her arms were pinned behind her by the pack, and he dropped his gaze to her chest.
Under two layers of clothing—a thermal hiking shirt and a light fleece jacket, her nipples hardened into tight peaks. Every rapid breath made her chest heave and her breasts push against her clothing. They seemed to get harder every micro-second he spent staring at them—until they wanted to burst free.
Then he lifted one hand and brushed his thumb against her right nipple.
A sharp bolt of sensation reached all the way through her, all the way down to her sex. She made a sound, something weird and probably embarrassing, but he didn’t seem to mind. He unzipped her fleece jacket and reached inside to touch her through her thermal top. It had a built-in bra, with an extra layer of support fabric, but even so she felt his touch like an earthquake.
“Mind if we…” he asked in a rough voice.
Even though he didn’t finish the sentence, she shook her head. She didn’t mind anything he did at this point. He trundled her backwards a few steps so she leaned against a boulder. It still held heat from the day’s sun, and its firmness relaxed her. He gently got rid of her backpack and set it aside. Her arms were free now, but she still felt as if he’d taken the reins. She let them dangle as she gave herself up to him.
He lifted her shirt up to expose her breasts. They spilled out into the cool air. It was wildly erotic to feel so exposed, even though the only one here was Padric. With a reverent appreciation, he thumbed her nipples again, flesh on flesh this time. Strong, warm, skilled, those hands worked magic on the tight peaks. She tilted her head back and arched to give him all the access he needed.
He filled his hands with her aroused flesh, and then bent to work her into an even wilder frenzy with his tongue. He sucked hard on one nipple, creating a deep throb direct to her lower belly. She cried out and clutched at his strong back, feeling his muscles clench and flex.
“I’m going to make you scream, Zoe Bellini.” He left her nipple and nuzzled her neck. He bit the tendon there—gently but with just enough force to make every nerve in her body respond.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please.” She wasn’t pleading for anything specific—just more touching, more stroking, more of this command he had over her body.
“I’m going to put my hand down your pants now,” he warned, panting slightly. “And I’m going to see how wet you are. How much you want me. Then I’m going to stroke you until you come so hard, you’ll never be the same.”
Oh, she was wet, all right. She knew what he was going to find when he touched her. His fingers were going to get drenched with the evidence of how freaking aroused she was right now. Her entire body throbbed and hummed with wild excitement with every move he made. Her fingers trembled against his back. She wanted to bite his neck. She wanted to scream into that perfect nook between his collarbone and his throat. She wanted to burst into flames and soar through the treetops.
And that was before he slid his hand under her leggings and right to the heart of her aching desire.
As soon as she felt his fingers touch her clit, her body clenched against the pleasure shooting through her. She was about to go off like a rocket, but she didn’t want to. She wanted this to go on and on, she wanted to lose herself in it, glory in the sensations.
“God, you’re beautiful, Zoe,” he whispered roughly in her ear. “You’re like honey. I wish I could put my mouth on you and feast until dawn. I wish we could stay here all night, me touching you, fingering your sweet pussy. Will you come for me, honey? I want to see you come apart against my hand. I want to feel this hot, plump little clit go wild for me. Can you do that?”
She gasped something incoherent—it was meant to be along the lines of “can I stop myself”—and then she couldn’t stop herself. She came hard, the pleasure waves seizing her body with ruthless, relentless force. The orgasm felt obliterating as if it wiped her clean, blew away everything meaningless, and left behind only the core of her. Only what really mattered.
Her and Padric, and the forest of Lost Souls.
She sagged against him, panting and weak as a kitten. He delicately withdrew his hand from between her legs. The scent of sex wafted into the forest atmosphere. A brush of cool air made the skin of her abdomen quiver.
He saw the goose bumps and gently put her top back into place.
Okay then. Had she really just experienced the hardest orgasm of her life up against a boulder on the Larkspur Trail?
She opened her eyes to see Padric watching her with calm eyes and a tiny smile at the corner of his mouth. “That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever been part of,” he said softly. “I’m not even exaggerating.”
An embarrassed flush spread across her cheeks. “What, because I came the second you touched me?”
“No, just…everything. You take my breath away.”
She slid her hand across the front of his pants and noted the very clear bulge, which she’d felt pressed against her as she came. His eyes half-closed as she caressed him. The hard outline of his erection gave her another jolt of arousal.
“Look, Zoe.” His voice came out rough. “I have a pretty nice bed waiting for me on the other side of the ocean. How about we pick this up again there?”
“But it’s so far. We have to row out to the boat, we have to cross the strait, enter the harbor at a torturously slow pace, tie up the boat, get off the boat, drive to the Eagle’s Nest, take the elevator up to your room…”
With each phrase, she escalated her stroking, until his erection was about as hard as the boulder at her back.
He groaned loudly. “You’re torturing me, aren’t you? You’re still mad about the Scandal and you’re getting revenge.”
She gave a husky laugh. “I think you just made up for all of that. I just feel so good right now, I want you to feel it, too.”
“I feel it,” he promised her. “I was right there with you.” He curled his arms around her. “I can still feel it, the way you shook and moaned. It was everything I wanted.”
“Not everything.”
“All in good time. I’m a spoiled rock star. I like my thousand-count bed sheets,” he teased.
“Oh, so a random boulder in the forest is good enough for me, but not for you?”
“It’s not a random boulder. Don’t you see where we are?”
She leaned back in the circle of his arms and gave their surroundings a closer look. “Oh my God. This is the same spot—”
“Where you hurt your ankle. Over there is where we kissed.” He gestured down the trail a few steps.
“If my fifteen-year-old self could see me now…” She laughed and stepped aside to comb her fingers through her hair. “Well, she’d be pretty freaking shocked. She was such an innocent
.”
“I remember,” said Padric softly. “That was your first kiss, wasn’t it?”
“Of course. Wasn’t it yours?”
She picked up her backpack and slid her arms through the straps. Those thousand-count bed sheets were starting to sound pretty good to her. She was so sure of Padric’s answer that when it came—“No”—she spun around, shocked.
“Who, then?”
He fastened the hip strap of his pack as he laughed down at her. “Mindy O’Reilly. Remember the one who kept sending me notes?”
“You kissed her?”
They headed down the trail.
“I did. At the movies. It was a group, and I was sitting next to her, and as soon as the lights went down, she turned to me and said, ‘Do you want to kiss?’ She smelled really nice and her hair was soft, and so I said, ‘sure.’ That was that. It was so unspectacular that I decided kissing wasn’t really all that. I didn’t try it again until we kissed here.” He waved at the trees towering on either side of them. They seemed to be leaning in, almost as if they were listening to his story. “When we kissed that first time, it blew my mind. I finally got it, why people kiss. It was a completely different experience.”
“I can’t believe you never told me! I thought we were best friends!” She was torn between laughter and indignation. “All this time I thought we were mutual firsts.”
“You’re telling me you’d never kissed anyone else, even as a kid just checking out how things work?”
“I didn’t. The boys were kind of scared of me, I think. I was always about a foot taller than everyone and kind of…” She made a gesture meaning curvaceous. “I was too much woman for those elementary school boys who happened to be my age.”
“It took a while for them to catch up with you, huh?”
She shot him a sidelong glance. “They’re mostly still trying.”
He tilted his head back and let out a long laugh that resonated in the still forest. “I get the message. I’ll keep working on it.”
She smiled along with him, without telling him the truth: that of all the men she’d known, he was the only who didn’t need to work on it. Actually, she might be the one with some catching up to do.
Chapter Sixteen
Padric could barely keep his hands off Zoe’s shapely body during the trip across the strait to the harbor. The taste of her, the feel of her, worked like a drug on his system, and all he wanted to do was get her naked. In a private place. With sheets. He’d always be grateful for Lost Souls Wilderness for providing such an inspiring location to take things further with Zoe, but he wanted the next part to happen indoors.
He wasn’t exactly sure when getting closer to her had become so important to him. Maybe once she’d relaxed and stopped resenting him? Maybe when he’d tasted her baklava? Or maybe when he’d first spotted her on the float when he cruised into Lost Harbor.
It didn’t really matter. Now that he’d felt her shatter in his arms, he had one goal in life. To make it happen again, but this time while he was deep inside her body.
He kept up a constant flow of conversation as they zipped across the darkening bay. He was afraid that if he stopped talking, she’d think better of his invitation. She’d remember that he was a rock star and therefore untrustworthy, or she’d get mad about the sixth-grade kiss he’d never told her about.
Once again, they were in weirdly perfect sync.
“So why didn’t you tell me about kissing Mindy?” she asked, just when the topic surfaced in his own thoughts.
“I was afraid you’d disapprove,” he admitted to her. “You knew I didn’t really like her. It seemed like such a typical boy thing, and you always thought I was better than that. Apparently I wasn’t.”
“Did I think that?” She lifted an expressive black eyebrow at him. “Are you so sure?”
“You didn’t?”
She tilted her head, considering. “I knew other girls liked you. Lots of them. More than you knew about, by the way. But my older brothers thought you were gay.”
“What?” That was news. News that almost threw him off course.
“They said there was no way a straight boy would be okay with being friends forever.”
“Who said I was fine with being friends forever?” He shook his head, bemused by this new information. Zoe’s brothers were big macho guys several years older than them. Had they really thought he was gay? “I was pretty much always interested in girls. My first big crush was all the girls in Destiny’s Child, for God’s sake.”
“I knew you weren’t gay. But I let them think that you were.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her as he steered past the breakwater that marked the entrance of the harbor. To his right, a red marker blinked. To his left, the shadowy structures of the fuel depot loomed. “Okay. That might explain a few things, looking back. Why did you do that?”
“So I could come over whenever I wanted.” She gave him a cheeky smile from her perch on the padded bench. “Didn’t you ever wonder why my conservative Greek Orthodox parents gave me so much leeway when it came to you? They figured you weren’t a threat to my virginity.”
“True, as it turned out,” he said ruefully. “Due to circumstances out of our control.”
“Circumstances they—” She broke off. “Well, you know. We don’t have to rehash the Scandal.”
“Do you know that my family never mentions it? Ever. They never talk about Lost Harbor. It’s almost like we never lived here. It’s strange, but I’ve learned to just go with it.”
“My mother generally doesn’t talk about it either, but she completely loses her shit if anyone mentions the Jeffers name or anyone in your family.”
“Loses her shit how?”
“Cries. Throws things. Takes to her bed for a day.”
“Jesus.” He wondered if it made things worse that he’d become famous.
“You know my mother. Drama to the max.”
He nodded, remembering some of the scenes he’d witnessed when he’d hung around Zoe as a kid. Sometimes it had been like watching a soap opera, or maybe a real opera. “I’m really sorry about your dad. He was always nice to me.”
Zoe nodded but didn’t answer. Maybe that wound still hurt, so many years later.
He aimed the front-facing light toward the temporary guest slip that he’d been assigned. As he maneuvered the Jaunty into position, he thought about what Zoe had told him about her mother. Mrs. Bellini still couldn’t stand even the sound of his name. That didn’t exactly bode well for any future for him and Zoe.
“So she doesn’t know I’m here?”
“I haven’t told her. The twins haven’t told her. One of her friends might have, but I haven’t witnessed any explosions yet, so they probably haven’t, either. It’s best all around if she never finds out.”
The side of the Jaunty bumped against the float. Zoe hopped off the boat and dragged the line to the nearest cleat while Padric shut down the engine.
No future. That sad truth kept echoing in his mind.
He and Zoe had no future. How could they if Mrs. Bellini couldn’t tolerate even hearing about him—let alone seeing him or welcoming him back into the family?
No future. Until a few days ago, he and Zoe had lost the past, too. Finally, after their trip to Lost Souls, the past had returned to them. It was no longer in timeout, like a misbehaving child. They had the past and they had the present. Was that enough?
Face it—he’d take what he could get.
Zoe leaned over the railing to grab her backpack. Her firm curves were silhouetted against the fluorescent glow from the tall utility poles spaced along the boardwalk. A yellow wedge of light spilled from the pottery studio, where someone was working late. Low laughter floated from the balcony of one of the B&Bs overlooking the harbor.
Zoe was so much a part of this place. And he…wasn’t. Not anymore. His parents had made sure of that.
When they reached the Eagle’s Nest, the late-night desk clerk lifted his head from
his folded forearms and waved him down. “Message for you, Gavin.”
Everyone at the hotel knew who he was by now, but they gamely kept up the fiction. Padric stepped to the desk to pick up an envelope with his name handwritten in block letters.
“Thanks, man. Back to that nap.”
“Good idea. Good night.”
He rejoined Zoe at the elevator, where she was waiting with her back turned to the desk, as if they were doing something shady.
“No one cares,” he whispered. “That desk clerk was half unconscious. For all anyone knows, you’re just hanging out with an old friend.”
“Yes, but I know what we’re really up to, and my face isn’t good at hiding guilt.” They stepped into the elevator and she pressed the button for the top floor.
He cocked his head at her choice of words. “What’s there to feel guilty about? We’re grown adults. Consenting, or at least we’d better be. If not, tell me now.”
“It’s not that. It’s the whole ‘sleeping with the enemy’ thing. The Scandal. All that.” She stretched her arms overhead. “But honestly, right now, mostly I just want a shower.”
“Amen to that. I have a Jacuzzi, did I tell you that?” Barely paying attention, he opened the envelope. It held a folded piece of paper.
He opened it and white powder spilled into his hand.
The piece of paper read, “Die PJ.”
Chapter Seventeen
At first he could only stare at the powder in shock. It looked like baking soda, or maybe cocaine. But was it something worse? News stories flitted through his mind—anthrax, toxins, nerve damage. His heart froze, then started beating double-time.
“What on earth?” Zoe was leaning over his arm to peer at the powder.
“Get back!” he barked at her. She jumped backwards and a puff of the powder wafted into the air.
“We need to go back down. Call 9-1-1. Or Nate. Yeah, call Nate. Tell him someone sent me some suspicious-looking powder. Then call the front desk and tell them not to let anyone on the elevator.”
Yours Since Yesterday Page 13