by Angel Payne
Chapter Seventeen
‡
“Hello.” The edges of his lips curled.
“Hi.” I was pretty sure mine did, too—but at the moment, with the sun turning his eyes into peridots and the wind turning his hair into temptation, I could barely remember my own name.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
His exotic accent, rolling over the trite words, granted me a welcome laugh. “First time you ever tried that one, mister?”
He didn’t return the laugh. “Sounded easier than asking the Creator why He brought a fantasy to life on my beach.”
“Your beach?”
My intention? Wit and charm. Actual result? A pair of quivering sighs, courtesy of the man himself. His fingertips brushed my cheek as he caught errant strands of hair and tucked them into the space between my ball cap and ear.
“Hmmm. On most days, yes.” Just like the night we’d met, his tone hinted at extra meanings—though now, there seemed more sensual intimation. Likelier explanation? I simply knew that all the good stuff came in the lower registers of his voice now.
Oh, God. I was changed. But unlike the shore, this had all happened in less than a week. Or had it? Had the tides of my life been at work long before now, readying my mind and heart for all of this? Preparing me…
For what?
Not for him. He has his own shore to change. An entire country. Rules he must live by in order to break others.
“Well, I certainly didn’t mean to trespass.” Self-high five. I’d actually been composed. Even professional. “I’ll just turn around and—”
His mouth on mine, sudden and warm and demanding, sucked the rest of the words from my head.
So much for composed.
At least I still had professional.
Sort of.
Like he was going for it at all himself. In less than ten seconds, he transitioned from sauntering wolf into grinning puppy, twining our fingers, tugging me toward the cave. “Guest,” he asserted, “not trespasser. Come.”
As I followed, I wondered if it was a good or bad thing that his switch-up didn’t unnerve me. That it actually felt normal, expecting the unexpected whenever he was near.
“So what’s on your mind, Mr. Cimarron?” The formal address felt wrong, but I had to make the effort. Your Majesty was definitely not happening. My substitution felt halfway acceptable.
“How do you know anything’s on my mind?”
Hmm. Valid question. “Gut impression?”
I glanced over in time to see the corners of his lips curve up. “Or maybe you know me that well.”
I should’ve objected. But it felt too good to let the comment simply sink in. The next second, I wondered if I’d regret the decision. He tightened the connection of our fingers before murmuring, “I want to know you just as well.”
Okay, not regret. But definitely…Anxiety, the pilot episode.
Maybe a step into cute would help. “Errrm…you know me pretty damn well.”
“What happened to make you so terrified of horses, Camellia?”
Gah. He wanted to know me that well.
A realization struck, sudden and stunning. I wanted him to know, too. But wanting and doing, especially in this case?
Don’t you want to trust somebody again in your life, Cam?
Bullshit. I trusted lots of people, in lots of different ways. Just not in this way. Not with the one who could be, if I wasn’t careful, my ultimate trust. The cathedral walls for my beach. A shore for my tides. The safe keeper for all my secrets. The person I’d pretty much given up on finding, so had learned to deal and move on. Way on. My corners had stayed dark. The rules were locked in place. My heart, secured and safe.
But he’d been into all those corners. One by one, had snapped all the rules. And my heart? Cartwheeling on a tightrope with no safety net in sight.
Which did nothing to explain why he still felt like the ultimate vault for my secrets.
At the same, explained everything perfectly.
Deep breath. Another. “It’s…not a big deal. Really—”
He stopped me with another kiss. “Nothing about you is a ‘small deal’, Miss Saxon.”
Long sigh. Longer melt. Resigned head shake. “Fine; okay. So, in our junior year at Chapman, Harry got offered his first outside directing gig. A music video for a friend’s band.”
Evrest’s brows hunkered. “An ‘outside gig’?”
“A film project not related to a class or a grade. Totally off campus.”
“An actual job, then.”
“Nice idea—but not in the film business. Not for a director still in college, paying his dues. This was strictly a Doritos-for-pay thing.” I ignored his skeptical frown. No use trying to justify that truth now. “Harry needed the work for exposure, especially because the band had some label interest due to internet buzz. In other words, the video had to rock out loud.”
“Rock out loud.” Confusion tripped through his echo. “Is that not what videos do?”
“Go with it for now.” I squeezed his hand, resisting the urge to giggle. His unfamiliarity with my slang turned him into a mix of erotic and adorable at the most inopportune times—like now, when I had to confess to something like this. “To make the shoot happen, we had to…well…”
Evrest stopped. Turned and gathered my other hand into his. “What?”
Just get it out. “We…‘borrowed’ some equipment from school…without them knowing about it. It was a Saturday. We were sure the cameras wouldn’t be missed if we returned them on Sunday. One of the guys in the band knew some people and was able to reserve a ranch north of LA for the day. It had been used in some film and TV shoots, with some of the sets still standing, so we figured we’d get all the shots we needed. We were right. The day went really well, productive and smooth—until around sunset, when Harry decided he needed to take advantage of magic hour.”
He canted a cute smirk. “Do I want to know what ‘magic hour’ is?”
“Not as much fun as it sounds.” I smirked. “Movie folk way of labeling the light between sunset and total nightfall. Doesn’t last a whole hour, either. If you’re lucky, you get twenty to thirty minutes. But Harry concocted this shot, and spiraled from intrigued to obsessed about it inside a minute—”
“Ahhh.” He nodded, a man clearly familiar with Harry in “obsessed” mode.
“He wanted a realistic, jerky shot from a high angle. We probably could’ve done it from a ladder but then Harry saw the stables, and it was all over from there.”
“And he wanted you to do the shot?”
“Ohhh, no. While I know my way around a camera, I’m not a pro. I was only in charge of prepping the horse. Me, the girl who only knew horses from parades and petting zoos, now had to figure out how to put a bridle and saddle on one, then get it out of the stall and into the street—”
“In less than twenty minutes.”
“Oh, yeah. There was that part, too.”
Recounting the story now actually made me laugh at it. Evrest wasn’t so keen on sharing the mirth. To my shock, his features turned thunderous. “Battarde.” No translation necessary. “What was he thinking, demanding you endanger yourself like that?”
I crunched my brows, touched but confused. “You mean what was I thinking, volunteering for the task?” Another dry laugh. “Evrest, we were really young and super stupid. Making the footage sparkle was the only thing that mattered. Moreover, I didn’t know any better. I lumped horses with puppies. Thought I could feed them a treat, talk nice to them, and I’d be the center of their world. For about four steps, the horse let me hang on to that illusion. But after the poor guy saw all the lights and flex reflectors—”
“Hell.” His eyes conveyed how he narrowed down a list of the ways my tale might end, none of them great.
“They say I was thrown about ten feet. Felt more like twenty. A bunch of the lights and a camera were destroyed, too. We got in a shitload of trouble for it. Chapman talked about suspendi
ng us, which would’ve messed up my scholarships, but instead let us work off the debt by scrubbing bathrooms on campus for the rest of the year. I felt awful about it.”
Damn, I still did—though that remorse took a back seat to fresh nerves as darker emotion descended over Evrest’s face.
“Dammit.” It was a steel pestle drilled into the mortar of the air. “Cameras and lights are replaceable. You are not.”
“And I’m still here.” I yearned to lift a hand to his face in assurance but his hold had become damn near a death grip. The tips of his fingers trembled against my palms. “Look. See? Still all here. Still ready to get the shots. Just a little skittish about my horse karma now…”
It felt like a good excuse for another little laugh.
Or maybe just another log on Evrest’s pyre of tension.
Gee. Discomfort was so fun when a girl had a whole beach to jab her toes into. “Maybe…I should just go.” When his grip only tightened, I blurted, “Hey, I didn’t mean to bunch your boxers.” Which could or couldn’t be accurate. I had no idea if he rolled boxers, briefs, or …nothing. And isn’t that the unneeded thought of the day? “It’s probably just best if I—”
“No.” He unlocked one of my hands but kept his shackle grip on the other. “Come.”
He headed for the cave again. I followed, but in a different mindset than before. Much different. A darker place, defined by a new heat in my blood, a definite tightness between my thighs—both made more unnerving by knowing exactly what had caused them.
The image of him going commando? Incredible—but fightable.
But the moment he’d given me total commands instead of charming requests?
Hell.
I was probably stepping into trouble.
Ten steps into the cave, that speculation became fact.
It wasn’t a cave at all. It was a tunnel, leading first to a little grotto, where a small natural waterfall tumbled into a subterranean creek. Shafts of the lingering sunlight filtered in, dancing on the water and texturing the striated rock with golden swirls. Suspended from a hook overhead, a large basket chair faced the pool, padded with a thick pillow that all but begged a visitor to sit for an hour—or three—of reflection.
“Whoa,” I blurted.
The strain eased—a little—because Evrest’s did. With one side of his mouth kicked up, he asked softly, “Good whoa or bad whoa?”
“What do you think?”
A full grin took over his face. It made him appear a celestial half-breed as the sunlight gleamed over the top half of his head, haloing his hair, irradiating his eyes. “I actually come here when I need to do just that. Think. The water quiets my mind. Centers my soul.”
“So I guess you come here a lot.”
“Not lately.” He prodded a finger beneath my chin. “Not even this calms me more than watching you sleep in my arms.”
I was going to castigate him for that—as soon as I pried my throat open enough to do so. He beat me to the punch, turning and walking again, leading me deeper into the tunnel. The sunlight faded and the floor dipped though I could still hear running water. I thought of telling him a little boat and some candelabra might do some good for sprucing the place up, but considering how well that worked out for the Phantom of the Opera…maybe not.
We kept walking.
It got darker.
I wound my other hand around his forearm and dug in, unable to control the trembling beneath my fingers.
He stopped. Pressed his other hand around mine, emitting a rough huff when confirming my shivers.
“Camellia?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. He clearly knew every bend and curve of the passage. I just couldn’t deny the allegory of it all any longer. We’d sworn off the dark together. His. Mine. Ours. Now here we were, literally immersed in it again.
And I never wanted to leave.
“Sevette? What is it?”
“Could I address that once we reach some light?” Where I wouldn’t have a damn issue anymore. Where the temptation of his scent, his nearness, and these shadows wouldn’t be such a perfect concoction, luring every naughty part of me—
To do exactly what he did.
One second we were just walking. The next, a stone wall bit into my back while every muscled inch of him molded to my front—and his mouth smashed over mine. He tore off my hat then dug demanding hands into my hair, angling my face up, forcing me to take more of his raw passion. It was only the beginning. In seconds, his hands were dipping, scraping, and ravaging lower…
lower…
Yessss…
He was beneath my clothes, locating all the parts of me that ached and pulsed and needed—Oh God, yes, I need—partnering with the blackness to take over me, overwhelm me, surround me…
And oh, how I let him.
Without the light, the world was another place. Everything, heightened. The scent of him, sweaty and spicy. The taste of him, masculine and rich. The feel of him, slick and huge—hard and demanding. Pushing into every curve of my body with the blunt edges of his own, not stopping until I acquiesced, parting my legs to let him take over that space with his steely heat.
He lunged his mouth in again, sieging in full, demanding access to depths I didn’t know I could give. But that was based on the assumption that I was still me. This creature inhabiting my muscles, my body, my will…I wasn’t certain who she was. What she was.
When the dark made everything safe, what would I dare to be? To do?
What would he do with me?
“Fuck.” He snarled it the second our mouths broke apart. “So good. You feel so fucking good, Camellia.”
I sighed. Moaned. Attempted to squeak a protest. But every time he dunked my senses beneath another caress, another touch, another suckle, I drowned deeper in his perfection. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t remember what I’d been doing five minutes ago, or why it wasn’t supposed to be this.
Thinking. Wasn’t I supposed to be thinking? Alone? Getting my head on straight again? About him? About the fact that—
“Th-this isn’t supposed to be happening.”
His hands, huge and sure, shoved beneath my jeans then my panties. Cupped my backside…to angle my crotch more perfectly against his. “Have you been able to think of anything else happening, sevette?”
“That’s n-not the p-point. Evrest,”—oh, how he opened me, woke me anew, right there—“we swore we wouldn’t—”
“Just a taste.” He pushed my clothes down, baring everything to his questing fingers. But in the dark, did it qualify as “baring”? Where was the line between covered and naked? Between fantasy and reality?
Between a vow and a sin?
“Let me sip you just one more time, Camellia.” He spread me from behind and rocked me along the heavy ridge in his jeans, spreading arousal through my core, making me moan from the tight, hot ache of it. “Fuck. How the Creator tortures me with this want. With feeling you…smelling you…so tangy…so perfect…” He pressed in, making my sex quiver against his pulsing shaft. “Your beautiful cunt is begging me for a taste, little lightning.”
His whispers tumbled me farther into the dark…and strange conflict. His embrace was so safe, but his touch so wicked. I whimpered, yearning for both, doubling the desire by racing my hands beneath his shirt. Ohhhh, God. The stiff buds of his nipples. The defined ridges of his abdomen. The thick ends of his hair, so perfect for my clutching fists as he trailed lips down my neck, over my ribcage, then even farther down…
down…
down…
His mouth struck me like electricity.
His tongue slid over me, liquid light.
His teeth scraped me, delving deeper.
His lips treasured me, sucking my very center.
“Ohhhh!”
My frantic breaths. His relishing moan. My high gasps. His countering growl. And darkness, more darkness, not just around me anymore but inside me, swirling like smoke, building like thund
er, climbing higher with every tantalizing, demanding curl of his tongue.
My head kicked back. My hips arched up. I bowed toward him, mindless and primeval, needing…needing…
“You are so sweet.” He kissed his way along one side of my aching cleft. “So succulent.”
“Evrest. Ahhh. Ahhhh.”
His hands clawed at my ass, anchoring me in place. The black ops torture masters had nothing on this man. His mouth dealt my illicit waterboarding, making me tremble and sob as he selectively flicked and nipped. With every teasing tap of his tongue, I edged toward the brink of explosion before falling again into the darkness.
When I’d turned the texture of paste, he slipped one hand away from me—only to delve those fingers between my back cheeks. With steady rhythm, he taunted the quivering rim of my back hole.
“Oh…my…God.”
“Does it still ache a little, my sevette? Here, where you begged me to fuck you last night?” He pushed in with extra determination. “An answer, Camellia.” And just as demanding a snarl. “Now.”
Holy shit. Can’t I take a pass, professor?
“Yes,” I squeaked. “Oh damn, yes…it still aches.”
“And you have thought about it, yes? At times, during the day, in little moments when you thought nobody would catch you staring…as your mind filled with what it was like to have me inside you, fucking your breathtaking body?”
Hard swallow. Careening senses. “Y-yes. I—I’ve remembered you—fucking me—oh, Evrest—please—”
He clearly remembered, too. His strained growl came with the grind of his descending zipper then a discernible rasp of skin on skin—his free hand sliding along his freed erection. Oh, damn. Damn. Just the memories of what that cock looked like, felt like…
I was instantly wetter. Hotter. Achier. Ass tightening. Thighs trembling. Everything else…needing.
He pushed a second finger into me, plunging harder from the back as he stabbed his tongue into my channel, fucking me from the front. I clenched and shook, squeezing out more cream for him. He devoured every hot drop, groaning with harsh satisfaction.