Beach House No. 9

by Christie Ridgway

  As if he was his sister’s OM chewing gum. Jesus! This wasn’t turning out how he’d expected. Which should be exactly as he expected when it came to Jane. Still, he couldn’t move.

  “First, I want to make clear this has nothing to do with our working relationship. Instead, let’s think of it like this,” she said. “Right now, we’re in a place out of time.”

  “Out of time,” he echoed.

  “This isn’t the real world.” She gestured with one arcing arm.

  He followed the movement and found himself looking out the window at the lights of Los Angeles. He was a native. Jane was also a Los Angeleno. This was their real world.

  “We’ve escaped, just for the night. A single night.”

  Escaped Crescent Cove. Beach House No. 9. The place that had been his escape.

  That is, until Jane arrived, with her talk, her hair, her pretty eyes and even prettier mouth. Her crazy-making stubbornness.

  “So what happens here—”

  “—stays here,” he finished for her, surrendering to the inevitable. And then he pounced.

  With an arm at her back, he dragged her onto her tiptoes, melding their bodies together as he took her mouth. This time, he fell back into the aggressor role, and Jane fell into that only-when-he-was-kissing-her pliancy. Her head dropped back, and he caught it in one hand, his fingers twisting in her glorious, sun-brightened hair as his tongue went to work.

  A tremor wiggled up her spine, snaking from the small of her back, and he felt it against the forearm he had pressed against the bare skin of her shoulder blades.

  Which reminded him… He tugged on one end of that maddening bow at the back of her neck. The bodice of her dress fell to her waist.

  Her arm came up to cover her bared body, but he grabbed both wrists and held them at her sides as he stepped back. Breath soughed in and out of his lungs as if he’d been sprinting as he stared at her naked torso.

  His eyes closed for a moment as he imprinted the sight on his memory. Small, high breasts. Pale pink nipples. The thin skin at her throat thrumming with the same rapid beat he felt beneath his fingers.

  He needed more nakedness.

  Transferring both wrists to one of his hands, he reached around to the small of her back and sought the tab of a zipper. Jane made a helpless little noise as his fingers met her flesh, and then she went still as the metallic teeth parted with a hiss of sound.

  The dress dropped from her hips and pooled at her bare feet.

  Need surged to his groin, and he staggered back, still holding on to her arms. His cock went fully hard as his gaze took in the scrap of sheer undergarment wrapped low at her hips. “Good God,” he murmured. Two halves of delicate violet fabric covered her there, laced together at the center with a narrow satin ribbon of a darker amethyst shade that was fashioned into a bow three inches below her shallow belly button.

  Swallowing hard, he stepped forward again and deliberately placed her left wrist at her left side, then he did the same with the other wrist. “Don’t move,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Don’t move a single inch.”

  Her breasts were trembling. He could see the sweet little nipples tightening as he focused on them. The panties were going to have to wait a minute until he could get his spiking lust under control. With one hand on her shoulder, he flattened his other palm against her ribs, then slid it up to cradle the underside of her breast.

  She made to break, he sensed it, and he shot his gaze to hers. “Not a single inch, Jane.”

  His head bent. He rubbed his cheek against the tip of her nipple, knowing his evening stubble would lightly abrade the sensitive point. Her heartbeat sounded loud in his ear. Her hand touched his hair, and he stepped back again. “Not an inch, Jane,” he reminded her.

  She’d tortured him for days. Now it was his turn.

  Her hand dropped, and he rewarded her with a tiny kiss to her nipple. She made another of those yearning noises, and he obliged her by pressing another one on the other bud. When the yearning turned into a low growl of sound, he grinned against her soft flesh and then relented, drawing the jutting nub into the heat of his mouth.

  She bowed into the sensation, and he saw her fingers curl into fists. It was so damn gratifying to have her at his mercy. Her body, he quickly amended. He had her body, which was all that he wanted of her.

  Her nipple hardened against his tongue. Lust tightened his muscles, and his cock twitched against the constraints of his clothes. He sucked on her, a sweet little tug, and then he thought of those decadent panties and his mouth tightened, his tongue pushing that bud against the roof of his mouth.

  Jane’s flower scent imbued the air. She was heating up, her skin burning everywhere he touched her. He switched to her other breast, and his fingers toyed with the one already wet. His tongue circled her areola, then lapped at the nipple, teasing her with the lightest of caresses. He sensed the growing rigidity of her muscles, and just when he gave her the smallest bite, she cracked.

  One hand jerked to his head, holding him against her; the other reached for the fastening of his pants. Griffin pulled away, leaving her chest heaving and her eyes flashing silver fire. “No,” she said, sounding gratifyingly desperate.

  Little darling. With a smile, he wagged a finger at her. “Jane,” he said, mock-stern. “I call the shots. I’m doing this just for you, you know.”

  Framed by curling tendrils of hair, her cheeks were flushed. “If you want to do something for me, take off your clothes.”

  Keeping his clothes on was keeping this business somewhat sane. The minute they were naked-to-naked the pace would pick up, and it would be a race to the finish. He wanted to savor the foreplay, enjoy their place out of time. As if she read his imminent refusal on his face, she spoke up again. “Just the shirt. Start with the shirt.”

  Yeah, that desperation was a definitely sweet payback. Taking pity on her, he brought his fingers to his shirt buttons. With her gaze glued to his moving hand, her own touched the center of her body, right between her breasts. As he unfastened his shirt, her thumb drew down her own skin, reflecting his movement. Touching on herself the same inches of skin he bared.

  Jesus. It was the most unconsciously erotic sight in his memory. Her skin reacted to her own caress, goose bumps rising on her flesh in the wake of that trailing thumb. When he reached the last button, her hand had fallen to the band of those scandalous panties, and her fingers toyed with the ribbon.

  “Don’t you dare,” he said, shrugging off his shirt.

  “Dare what?” Her eyes didn’t leave his chest.

  “Those are my panties.”

  Frowning, her gaze lifted. “I’m not giving up a second pair.”

  We’ll see about that. Instead of answering, he crooked a finger at her. Apparently forgetting her underwear alarm, she flew into his arms. The silken skin of her breasts met his chest.

  Oh, hell. His alarms went off. The time for slow was over.

  His mouth fastened on hers, his tongue thrust, his palms slid under fabric to cup the curves of her ass. She tilted her hips, her body rubbing against the urgent rigidity of his cock. He groaned, kneading the flesh in his palms as she pressed harder, clearly pleasuring herself.

  When it was his job to pleasure her. Damn it! Why wouldn’t she wait for him to provide that? Didn’t she trust him to take her all the way?

  But the questions put her in his head again. He couldn’t have that. Bodies were what this was about. Bodies were the matter of the moment.

  She was sucking on his tongue, her hips making tight little circles. He felt the tension in her bones and the burn of her skin. He knew the infuriating woman was close. Too damn close.

  Breaking their kiss, Griffin slid his hands to her waist and lifted her away from his body. As he swung her into his arms, her mouth, swollen and red from his, turned sulky. “No!”

  Ignoring her protest, he strode for the closest bedroom. A lamp was on low, the covers were turned back. He tossed her onto the mattress, then
followed her down, their bare torsos meeting again. Immediately, she tried wiggling underneath him, but he knew her game.

  She was trying, once more, to get herself off.

  He threw one leg over the top of her thighs to keep her still and bent his head to her breasts. Jane moaned as he took her into his mouth. When he sucked at her nipple, she bucked against the weight of the thigh he had over hers but he held firm. “You’ll take what I give you,” he said on the way to her other breast. “You won’t give yourself any more.”

  Her nipples had gone to a dark, fevered pink. He was fascinated by them and used his tongue to bathe them until they glistened in the lamplight. Jane had her hands in his hair, and her touch mimicked his. When his tongue caressed, she caressed. When he bit down, teasing her with the edge of his teeth, her fingernails sank into his scalp.

  Then she made a new, urgent sound, and his head shot up. Her eyes were half-closed, her plush mouth pursed, her body rigid, as if she was poised on a precipice. Sweet God.

  “Are you about to come?” he demanded. With just his play at her breasts?

  Her fingers had dropped to the sheets, and now they curled into the fabric. “I’m…working on it.”

  “That’s it,” he muttered, rearing up from the bed. “You wait,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “You just better damn well wait.” Next he stripped off the rest of his clothes and tossed the condom he carried in his wallet on the bedside table.

  Then he dropped back to the mattress and crawled between her legs, pushing them apart as he drew closer to her outrageous undergarment. With an elbow on either side of her hips, he stared down at that pretty ribbon lacing up the two halves of fabric. The panties were a metaphor for Jane herself, he decided. There were two sides to her: the steely governess and the soft woman. Both laced together and tied off with a sturdy yet feminine bow. The whole shielding the vulnerable, unknown heart of her.

  Then Griffin groaned, realizing he was intellectualizing again. Once more he was letting Jane into his head and under his skin when he only wanted her against his skin. When he only wanted inside her body. “Get ready,” he said in a dark voice as he gave a ruthless pull to the ribbon. “I’m going to make you see stars.”

  Her hair was soft here too. When he opened her with his thumbs, he discovered her pretty flesh went from shell- to fever-pink as well. He stared down at her as he traced the petaled contours and then circled the wet opening he’d explore next.

  “Griffin,” she said, sounding strangled.

  “Hush.” He toyed gently with her clit and heard her breathing hitch. “Patience,” he said. “I’m getting there.”

  Still wanting to tease her, his thumb pressed the little button again. Then he placed two fingertips just inside the entrance to her channel. And Jane, stubborn, intractable, infuriating Jane, shoved her body down the sheets and took those fingers deeper. Took him to the palm.

  Like that, took her own orgasm.

  He watched her face as she rode it out, the sweet surrender to bliss that caused her dark lashes to sweep across her cheeks and her tender mouth to tremble. Then her body calmed, and he watched her eyes open. “Hey,” she said.

  His mouth was too dry to speak. With one hand she stroked his shoulder. With the other, she reached for the condom. He swiped it away from her. Then he kissed her, thinking that maybe this was the answer. Maybe he shouldn’t go forward. Maybe it should be good-night now, and he wouldn’t let this go any further.

  But her hands were insistent and her mouth greedy on his. He found himself donning the rubber, then sliding inside her. “Aaah.” God. Soft. Hot. Sweet.

  Her legs clamped over his hips. He let his weight drive him deeper into her, and she tilted her hips again. He knew where this was going. He knew what she was doing.

  But he didn’t object this time. He just swept her up into the rhythm, and when he felt her reaching, when he was hanging on by a single thread, he put his hand between their bodies and found hers already there instead. It was her own touch that nudged her over before he could protest.

  As she contracted around him, he felt the pleasure gather in his belly. Just as he took off, he lifted his head to take in Jane’s flushed cheeks, swollen mouth, silver eyes. Then his squeezed shut as release pulsed, pulsed, pulsed through him.

  When he came back to himself, he was flat on his back. A boneless Jane was lying across his chest. He didn’t shift away, even though he generally didn’t like being tangled with a woman in the aftermath. He always figured it was because of the nine months he’d shared the confined space of a womb with his twin.

  He lifted his head from the pillow to see if Jane was sleeping. She must have felt his movement because she turned her cheek, their gazes meeting. Her eyes were sleepy. “Thank you,” she said, her voice drowsy. “That was nice.”

  Nice? “Oh, yeah?”

  “Mmm.” Her lashes drifted toward her cheeks. “Nobody’s ever tried to put me first.”

  On a soundless groan, he dropped his head to the pillow. Nobody had ever tried to put her first.

  Would he ever get that—her—out of his head?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SIPPING AT ROOM service coffee, Griffin listened to the sound of the shower and calculated how long before he’d be back to real life—his other real life—in Beach House No. 9. If Jane didn’t stop to dry her hair and he put her own caffeine in a to-go cup, they could be in secure environs in approximately seventy minutes, he guessed.

  He couldn’t get out of the hotel suite soon enough.

  His glance caught on the tumbled pair of sandals he’d slipped off Jane the night before. Pooled just a few inches away was the silky fabric of her dress. From there it was just another heartbeat before a memory of those ribbon-and-wishes panties made his palms itch.

  “God,” he murmured to himself, then strode over to the discarded articles and snatched them off the floor. The shoes he placed on a small table beside the door leading to the bedroom. The dress didn’t cooperate as well, but he managed to fold it into a slithery bundle that he balanced on top of the sandals. “All tidied up,” he told himself.

  Could it be that easy?

  We’ve escaped, just for the night. A single night, she’d said. Now that it was morning, could they return to their previous relationship? Which was no relationship at all, he hurriedly assured himself.

  There was a knock on the suite’s outer door.

  On the other side, he discovered, stood his agent, Frank De Luca. The man was dressed in a coat and tie and carried a supersize manila envelope that rivaled his belly in the bulging department.

  “Uh, hey,” Griffin said and had a sudden image of Jane walking out of the bedroom clad only in a towel, or maybe even less. With a glance over his shoulder, he stepped to block the gap in the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “I got a text this morning,” Frank replied, his gray brows beetling over his pudgy boxer’s nose. He was half Irish and half Italian, which made him a perfect advocate for his clients. He loved to fight. “From Janie.”

  “Janie? You call her Janie?” Ian Stone had called her Janie.

  The other man waved a hand. “I’ve known her since she was a kid. Her dad was a client of mine at one time. Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  Letting Frank in could complicate matters. And also postpone Griffin’s return to the cove. He glanced at the envelope. “If that’s for her, you can hand it over and be on your way. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  “This is yours,” Frank said. “And I’m here to talk with you too.”

  What could he do but open the door? “I thought you said Jane sent you a text,” he muttered as the other man passed him on his way inside.

  “To say she was sorry she missed me last night. But when I found out you were both still in town, I decided to drop by.”

  “Wonderful. Terrific. Always a pleasure,” Griffin lied. Thank God he’d picked up Jane’s fallen clothes. He wouldn’t have wanted to explain them away, he thou
ght, watching the other man toss the envelope onto the table in front of the couch. “What’s that?”

  “Stuff the magazine was holding for you. They forwarded it to me since you went missing.”

  “If I went missing, how come the book doctor, my sister and my agent all find me so damn easily?”

  “Why are you so damn set on being hard to find?” Frank countered.

  Griffin pasted on a smile. “How are the wife and kids?”

  Frank hitched up his pants at the thighs and then settled into one of the room’s armchairs. “Spending about twenty-three hours of the day in the pool. Raeanne is teaching Tim how to dive. Amy can almost swim one whole length underwater.”

  Pride puffed Frank’s chest so that it nearly matched his belly. Still, since marrying Raeanne, he’d dropped about twenty pounds and his face wasn’t quite so unhealthily florid. “Have you been watching your blood pressure and eating better?” Griffin asked, sitting on the couch across from the older man.

  “Sure. Raeanne insists on all that organic age-free crap.”

  Griffin bit down on his smile. “I believe you mean free-range.”

  “Free-range, age-free, what’s the difference? She made something for dinner last night with tutu.”

  “Tofu.”

  “It wasn’t sirloin, that’s all I know. But it makes her happy, so…” He shrugged. “She’s been good to me. Marriage has been good to me. I highly recommend it.”

  Griffin thought of Tess, who’d run from her husband to the cove. Of David, sleeping in his kids’ sleeping bags on the beach. “Glad to hear it.”

  “You know what I’m not glad to hear?” Frank asked, crossing one ankle over his knee. “Janie says you’re not making much progress.”

  Shit. “There’s an office. Whiteboards. Sharpened pencils.”

  Frank just looked at him.

  Double shit. “I’ve never missed a deadline. You know that.”

  And still Frank looked at him.

  Griffin shifted his gaze. Outside the window, the sky was that flat blue of summer, as if it had been ironed by the heat. This time of year in Afghanistan, the temperature was brutally hot, matching the increasing violence as insurgents climbed over the mountain passes to engage the troops. It was a deadly season that might only be mitigated if the previous year’s lousy crop yield forced the other side’s fighters to focus more on growing poppies and wheat than killing their enemies.