Conceal

by Juliana Stone

  Beau grabbed a roll from the bike along with a black bag and she watched in silence as he spread out a blanket beneath an old oak tree near the edge of the water.

  His blond hair was disheveled—a total fit for his unshaven look—and she took a moment to study him while he was busy. He was like some golden god. Had she ever met a man who was the perfect mix of hot alpha male and pretty?

  Christ, most women would kill for his eyelashes, and those lips…they were full, and sensual. On another man they would have appeared pouty, but on Beau they were a small miracle.

  He really was beautiful.

  She zoned in on the tattoo that adorned his forearm. It was exotic, dangerous looking.

  “What does it mean?”

  His head snapped up. “What was that?” Beau tossed the bag onto the blanket and rolled his shoulders.

  “Your tattoo. What does it mean?”

  Beau stuck his arm out and studied his tat in silence. A silence that stretched longer than a few seconds.

  A silence that made Betty uncomfortable, as if she’d just stepped into something that was none of her business.

  “Never mind.” She turned away from him and closed her eyes as the breeze picked up and lifted the loose ends of her hair.

  “It’s Sanskrit.”

  He was close. Inches behind her.

  “It means, warrior, strength, survivor.”

  Betty slowly turned back to him. “Why did you get it? I mean, there’s always a reason, isn’t there?”

  He nodded and Betty’s breath caught in the back of her throat. Something shifted in the air. Something as hot and heavy as the humidity that blanketed the entire lake.

  “These words…the meanings behind them, they keep me grounded. They remind me of my family. They tell me that not everyone lives a charmed life, not even when you’re born into it. Shit happens, bad shit. But it’s what we do…it’s how we react to that bad shit that defines us and I…”

  They both looked down at the markings.

  “This is how I want to live my life, so sometimes when things are out of focus and crazy I just have to look and remember. I think about my brother Teague, who’s in Somalia or Tucker who’s lost a hell of a lot, more than any man should. I think about my mother who battled cancer a few years ago and won. I think of her grace and strength. Those things keep me grounded. They keep me real. My world is filled with parasites and ass-kissers and it’s sometimes hard not to buy into their shit.”

  Betty’s eyes smarted and she shook her head, wiped at them with the back of her hand. “Sometimes the remembering is hard. Sometimes it’s easier to forget.”

  “Yeah,” Beau said softly. “I know. But when you start to forget all the things that make you who you are, that’s when you begin to lose yourself.”

  He paused and she waited.

  “Don’t ever lose yourself, Betty. That would be tragic.”

  Betty cleared her throat, suddenly overwhelmed and more than a little rattled. She did what she always did in a situation like this. She wiped the slate clean and moved on. She didn’t want to engage because she didn’t know what to say to that. She’d been trying to lose herself for so long that she didn’t know how to be any other way.

  “Well aren’t you just a big fat downer.” She moved past Beau and pointed to the bag as she fell onto the blanket. “I hope you have food because I’m starved.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “I GOTTA TELL you Beau, water, chips and granola bars aren’t exactly my idea of a hot date.”

  Beau glanced over to Betty who was on her back, eyes closed, arms flung above her head and those long, sexy legs of hers, crossed at the ankles. She’d tossed her sandals and he noticed how delicate her bright pink toes looked. Her hair fanned out around her head, a dark halo of silk, and her tight, form fitting tank top cupped her breasts in the way any tight, form fitting tank top should.

  With care.

  It was white and it was also obvious she wore a black bra. He smiled. Rebel.

  “So, this is a date?” he said, his voice low.

  Her eyes flew open. “Wait? What?”

  “You just said—”

  “I know what I said but that’s not what I meant.” She struggled to sit and he was pretty sure if he wasn’t there, she would have attempted to cross her legs, but since he was, and her skirt was on the short side, she leaned back, resting her weight on her elbows.

  “Why am I here, Beau? What is it that you want to talk about?”

  Beau was silent at first. He had no idea where her head was at and he decided his best option was to be honest. To lay it all out and hope for the best.

  “Are you going to do the movie?”

  Betty glanced away from him, her gaze out on the water. In the distance, clouds were gathering, bulbous gray marshmallows that told him rain was on the way.

  Her toes moved erratically as if she had a tick that wouldn’t go away and he was starting to think he’d lost—that she was going to shoot him down—when she collapsed once more, arms flung across her eyes and spoke.

  “Yes.”

  It was one word. One simple word.

  But it was enough.

  His gaze rested on the three tears that fell across her skin in black ink and something inside him twisted. It twisted hard.

  “Good,” he said softly. His hand moved toward her—it hung suspended in the air for several long seconds—but then he rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky.

  There were no more words. There was just the sound of the children in the water and of their parents and friends joining in. There was Betty’s deep, even breaths, and eventually a small whimper that told him she was asleep.

  And sleep is where he joined her not long after.

  Beau came awake with a start and it took him a few moments to figure out where he was.

  Overhead the sky was ominous and the wind off the lake had picked up so much that the branches from the oak tree were bent way over. Betty had somehow ended up curled against him, her body soft and pliant—her hand on his heart, her hair spread across his chest.

  He let that settle—that feeling of rightness—his throat a little tight as he gazed down at her. He could just make out the tip of her nose and her lips from beneath her hair. He cradled her and it felt as if he’d somehow managed to tame something wild and unpredictable.

  He supposed in a way, he had, even if it was only for a little while.

  Beau laid there with Betty underneath the oak, with a storm threatening, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so content. As if he could stay in this spot for hours—days even—with nothing changing.

  He wasn’t thinking about sex or the movie or anything other then how warm she was. How sweet and relaxed she appeared to be. The thought that he was somehow responsible for that, well, it made him feel like goddamn king.

  Just then thunder rumbled across the sky at the same time lightning streaked over the lake. As much as he’d love to stay right where he was, he knew that they needed to find shelter or they were screwed. It wasn’t fun riding a bike in a storm. In fact it was downright dangerous.

  “Hey,” he said gently, “Bets, we need to go.”

  She stirred, murmuring something he couldn’t quite understand as she stretched against him.

  “Betty?”

  “Matt,” she said softly. “I had the nicest dream.”

  Shit. Disappointment coursed through him and Beau’s jaw tightened. Matt-Fucking-Hawkins.

  Her body was pressed so close to him that he was damn sure she could feel his erection as she pushed the hair from her face and slowly opened her eyes.

  She licked her lips.

  Thunder rolled.

  “Oh,” she said slowly. “It’s you.”

  Irritated, he nodded. “Disappointed?”

  “No.” She didn’t hesitate with her answer. “Not at all.”

  She moved again and he hissed, his eyes widening at the smile that curved her lips. Seems
as if the little minx wanted to play. He was willing to play. Willing to do whatever it took to make her forget Matt Hawkins.

  His eyes fell to the fast moving pulse at the base of her neck and he bent forward, his mouth open hungrily, because all he could think about was tasting her. Savoring her.

  Her breath hitched.

  Beau groaned.

  And then the heavens opened up, spewing out buckets of rain that had the two of them drenched before they could react.

  With a curse he let Betty go and they scrambled to their feet, half laughing, half cursing as they ran to his bike. He scooped up his bag but left the blanket and after she clambered on board behind him, Beau gunned the motorcycle and headed back down the road they’d come in on.

  The rain was too heavy to attempt a ride home—New Waterford was a few hours away—but he remembered a motel on the outskirts of the closest town and that’s where he headed.

  The rain was coming down in torrents by the time they reached the Hillside Motel, and after parking the motorcycle beneath an adjoining carport, the two of them ran inside.

  An older gentleman with thinning hair manned the desk and he didn’t bother to look up as Beau approached him.

  “Some storm out there.”

  “Yep.” The man peered over small round wire-framed glasses. His skin was ruddy, his cheeks as round and full as his stomach.

  Beau slicked back his wet hair and cleared water from his eyes. “Do you think it will let up anytime soon?”

  “Doubt it. It’s been building for days.” The man’s eyes moved from Beau and settled on Betty who stood just behind him. Beau turned around and had to swallow the groan that sat in the back of his throat at the sight of her.

  Her white tank top was soaked, the black bra she wore underneath not hiding much because the tops of her breasts spilled over. He could see her hard, rose colored nipples, her bellybutton and those long, sexy rain-slicked legs that no woman had a right to own.

  The desk clerk cleared his throat and Beau turned back to him.

  “We’ll need a room to wait out the storm.”

  “Yep.”

  The desk clerk’s eyes kept moving from the paperwork Beau filled out to Betty, who now stood shivering beside Beau, arms crossed over her chest and teeth chattering. Beau reached into his pocket, pulled out his wet wallet, fingered his credit card, and then grabbed cash instead. He’d used an alias as a sign in and didn’t want to ding any bells with his personal credit card

  The clerk made a ‘hmph’ sort of sound as he counted out the damp bills. And damn if Beau didn’t feel like his seventeen-year-old self, back when he and Jenny Blake would spend illicit evenings at an out of the way motel.

  Once he’d paid up for the night, grabbed the keys from the desk clerk, he turned around and spied Betty a few feet away on her cell.

  “Everything alright?” he asked when she was done.

  Betty nodded. “I just wanted to let Bobbi know I wasn’t coming home. You know, someone should be there with Gramps and Dad.”

  They ran back outside, though they kept close to the building under the overhang, which provided a bit of shelter from the rain.

  Their room was the last one on the left. It was dated but clean, with the bare necessities. Bathroom. Bed.

  A big bed.

  The air conditioner was running full blast and the room was cool. With his wet clothes, wet hair and skin, he should have been shivering. He should have been fucking freezing.

  But he wasn’t.

  Betty watched him, her eyes large, glittering strangely. It did something to him. That look in her eyes. It was a look filled with promise. A look filled with heat.

  “Hopefully the television works,” he said.

  Really? That’s all he had?

  “You don’t want to watch television.”

  No. Hell-the-fuck-no. He didn’t want to watch television.

  He shrugged, tried to play it cool. Hoped she couldn’t see how much he was affected by her. By the events of the past few days. By the fire in her eyes.

  By the way she looked, earlier in his arms, so relaxed and…so right.

  “There’s really not much else to do.” Goddamn, but he was tight. His throat. His skin. Every muscle in his goddamn body.

  And he was hard. Christ, was he hard.

  Her eyes dropped to his crotch and that tongue that was enough to drive a saint to sin, darted out and licked at a mouth made for pleasure. It was a combination that would sink any man like a stone.

  For several heartbeats, the two of them stared at each other and then a wicked smile curved her lips.

  He was going down. Fuck.

  Slowly she peeled off her tank top, her breathing slow and measured, which pissed him off, because everything inside him was going off like rockets on parade day.

  “We shouldn’t do this, Betty.” His voice was rough. Christ, less than an hour ago he was singing a different tune, but now...complicated didn’t even cover it.

  “I know,” she replied as her hands curved around to her back, pushing out her breasts even more, before her bra loosened and fell to the floor.

  He groaned.

  He swore.

  He ran shaking hand through his long, damp, hair.

  When she reached for the waistband of her skirt, he growled like an animal. Her long hair hung in dripping ropes, snaking across her breasts. Breasts that begged for his mouth. For his tongue. For his hands.

  Her waist dipped in like a woman’s should, her hips were rounded, her stomach soft—not hard and flat like most of the workout queens he knew.

  “Betty, this is…” Insane.

  “I want you,” she said with a grin that should have warned him. It should have sent him back to the old bald guy at the front desk. It should have made him demand a separate room for himself because he was screwed.

  Christ was he screwed.

  Beau Simon had never wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Betty Jo Barker. Not even that first time. Back then he’d barely known her. He’d acted on the physical attraction they’d had because he’d wanted to teach her a lesson.

  But now? Now he wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted more than just sex. He wanted some of that other stuff too.

  Emotion. Connection. Commitment?

  What. The. Hell.

  Her hands started tugging on her skirt, pulling it down so that he saw the tops of her panties.

  “Betty, we shouldn’t…this will complicate things and fuck, we don’t need any...”

  The skirt was on the floor beside her wet tank top.

  Complications.

  She stood, inches from him, wearing nothing but a pair of plain cotton panties. She didn’t wear a G-string or those boy panties that left half of a woman’s ass hanging out. She didn’t need those trimmings.

  Nope.

  Betty Jo Barker was rocking a pair of plain, white cotton bikini panties and Beau was dying to rip them off.

  She took a step toward him. “Haven’t you heard? I like things complicated.”

  Her fingers twisted inside her panties, dipping below to the one place he was aching to see. Aching to touch and taste.

  “Besides, it’s just sex between two consenting adults. You can handle that, can’t you?”

  Beau didn’t say a thing mostly because he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t brought her all the way out here because he thought they would end up in some backwater motel.

  He couldn’t say that he was sorry to be here. Couldn’t say he was sorry that she was nearly naked. But could he handle her? Could he handle sex with no strings? He had no idea, and for that reason alone he should have turned his butt around and left her there.

  Instead he said nothing. Instead he watched with bated breath as she tugged on the elastic waistband, and slowly slipped her panties down over her hips.

  And just like that, Beau Simon sank like the Titanic.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  BETTY DIDN’T GIVE a rat’s ass about the li
ttle voice inside her head that was shouting at her to back off. The one that said she was about to make a big mistake.

  The one that said, Beau Simon was more than a complication. So much more. The one that said, remember…remember what he did to you.

  She didn’t want to listen. Not today. Not right now.

  She was done living in someone else’s skin. So fucking done with it.

  When had she lost sight of Betty Jo Barker? The girl who’d dragged herself out of that goddamn shed on that awful night and decided that she would never let anyone use her again.

  Sure, she’d packed a hell of a lot of living into the last seven years, taken a few wrong turns, but she’d made it through the darkness. She hadn’t OD’d in some hotel in LA or wound up in court ordered rehab. She had a handle on those demons. It was the other ones that were hard. The ones just beneath the surface.

  But right now, in this moment, she wanted to forget about all of it and just…feel. She wanted to feel Beau’s body against her. Feel him inside her. She wanted to look in his eyes as he came and know that she was the reason for it. She wanted to feel the excitement, the sexual attraction, and the knowledge that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  She wanted to feel that control.

  She needed to feel that control.

  Because being in control was what kept her sane and for the first time in months, she felt a spark of her old self. And even though that old self was damaged and broken and hurt, she was starting to realize that sometimes, even damaged and broken and hurt was better than nothing at all.

  “It’s not fair, Beau,” she said silkily as she advanced toward him. His nostrils flared and his breath caught in his throat.

  She liked that.

  He didn’t move, though a muscle worked its way across his jaw, and his hands fisted at his sides.

  She liked that too.

  It meant that he was on edge. It meant that he was losing control.

  “Fair?” He managed gruffly, shifting his feet a bit. Betty couldn’t help herself. Her eyes wandered lower and rested on the bulge in his wet jeans. A bulge that made the heat in her stomach curl faster and harder.