by Susan Fox
“You’re welcome.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. The wind plastered his tank top against his body and ruffled his hair, reminding him he was overdue for a cut. This was rare for him, taking time out to stroll a beach. He felt vaguely guilty at not doing anything productive. On the other hand, what was wrong with simply enjoying the sun, the breeze, the sparkly beach, and, not least, the pretty woman beside him?
“You never said what happened to, uh, Alicia,” she said quietly.
“She died when I was nine.”
“I’m sorry.” Jenna squeezed his forearm gently.
Another simple touch, yet again his body stirred. She was so appealing. Toned and tanned, her pale gold curls drifting in the breeze, the butterflies on her upper arm looking as if they were ready to lift off in flight. Tonight, he wasn’t likely to get any sleep in his sleeping bag under the stars, knowing she was curled up in the bed in the camper. Unless, of course—
“How did she die?” Her question interrupted his lustful thoughts.
“She and a couple of others got their hands on some bad drugs.” A stupid end to a life that had been pretty much meaningless. Maybe the saddest thing was that he hadn’t known his biological mother well enough to truly love her and grieve for her.
“And you were nine with no father. Damn, Mark, that’s rough.” She linked her arm through his and squeezed it. “What happened then?”
Rational thought deserted him. There was something so potent about Jenna’s effect on him. She did these totally innocent things, and lust surged through him. No other woman had ever got to him this way.
It had to be biological. What did attraction studies say? People were drawn to mates based on DNA, in particular the difference in their major histocompatibility complex codes.
“Mark? What happened then?”
“Then …” he echoed. What had they been talking about? Oh, yeah. “The leader was one of the people who died. Without a leader, Freedom Valley fell apart. The deaths brought them to the attention of the state, too. Suddenly, officials were interfering, like trying to get kids vaccinated and sent to school.”
“You’d been home-schooled?”
He snorted. “You mean, taught how to plant vegetables, harvest marijuana, and read Tarot cards? There wasn’t much education happening. Look, I know there were some great communes, but Freedom Valley wasn’t one of them.” A bunch of drifters, losers, people with no focus in life.
A golden retriever came bounding out of the water in front of them and shook madly, spraying them both. The chilly shower felt good, reminding him of how he and the other kids had run through sprinklers, naked, at the commune.
Jenna laughed, a sound as unrestrained as the dog’s gyrations, and droplets of water sparkled on her cheeks. When a woman with a leash came to clip it to the dog’s collar and apologize, Jenna said, “No problem. He’s a sweetie.”
Then, as she and Mark walked on, she said, “So the commune was dissolving and you didn’t have any parents?”
It had been a long time since he’d talked about, even thought about, those days. “Kids had been cared for by all the adults. Shared around, you know?” Yeah, there’d been fun like darting through sprinklers, yet he’d longed for a conventional home and a mom who tucked him in every night. “Biological parenthood wasn’t important. But when things dissolved, kids and parents got matched up. Two of us were left over.”
“You went to Alicia’s parents? Did you already know them?”
He shook his head. “She was completely estranged from them. They hated the life she’d chosen. But they took me in.”
“Oh Mark, how hard that must have been.” She squeezed his arm closer, so it brushed her unconfined breast under her thin top.
His arm tingled and his cock pulsed, distracting him. “Yeah, in the beginning. For all of us.”
“Tell me about it.”
He stopped walking and she did too, gazing up at him as he said, “Uh, why do you want to know all this stuff?”
A curl blew into her eyes and she flicked it back. They’d left their sunglasses in the camper and the colors and sparkle of her Caribbean eyes put the glass pebbles on the beach to shame. “Because I’m interested in you. I want to get to know you.”
To get to know him as a person, not a scientist. This was the social kind of chat he usually avoided except sometimes with his old friend Adrienne. Yet there was something about Jenna, this day, this beach that made him want to open up.
He cleared his throat and they started to walk again, still arm in arm. “It was hard on my grandparents. Alicia was an only child and they didn’t want me to turn out like her. They said she’d ruined her life, so they must have done something wrong. They’re disciplined, well-educated people and they cracked down on me right from the start. Order, structure, rules—man, they had all of it. They said they mustn’t have been strict enough with Alicia.”
“Wow, that must have been hard on you. Going from a commune to an environment like that.”
“At first. But after a few struggles, I saw the benefit. For the first time in my life, I knew what I was supposed to do, and what I wasn’t, and that there’d be consequences. My actions brought about consequences, good or bad. It was a powerful lesson.” His grandparents weren’t demonstrative people, but their words—We’re disappointed in you or We’re proud of you—had meant everything.
She gave a throaty laugh. “We’re such opposites. I’ve always hated structure and discipline.”
“You might’ve liked them better if you’d experienced life on the commune.” He’d gone from chaos to security, from being one of a pack of kids to being the center of attention and having people actually care about what he did. Care about him.
“I never thought of it that way. I just resented the hell out of how organized my whole family was. Mom and Dad with important jobs, my oldest sister Tree—”
“Tree?” he broke in, figuring he’d heard wrong.
“Theresa. She’s two years older. When I was little, I couldn’t pronounce her name properly. Anyhow, she’s a total brainiac—” She broke off, squeezing his arm again. “You two’d get along, though her field’s sociology. Anyhow, her whole shtick was school. Then Kat, who I call Kitty-Kat, was Ms. Sociability, all wrapped up in friends and activities. They all had their roles, their things.”
“What was your thing?”
“Same as now. Everything. Fun, exploring the world, meeting interesting people. Whatever lies around the corner.”
That sounded pretty aimless to him. A person needed a goal, a purpose, something to give their life meaning and make it count.
“How did it feel,” she asked, “having two parent-type figures and being the only kid?”
“Nice. Like I was … me. Mark. Not just one in a group. Does that make sense?”
“For sure. Individuality is important. Me and my older sisters are the three-pack, but we always had distinct personalities.” A mischievous grin lit her face. “We made sure of that.”
“You label them. The brainiac and Ms. Sociability. How do they label you?”
She tossed her head, curls flying, and touched a finger to the top butterfly on her arm. “When they’re being polite, the free spirit. That’s what my butterflies symbolize.”
He winced. Alicia had used that term to describe herself. Her parents had called her willful, wanton, and irresponsible. “And when they’re not being polite?” he asked tentatively.
She wrinkled her nose. “A flake. Mom says I’m a hippie who was born in the wrong decade.”
A hippie. Like Alicia. He glanced away from her toward the rocky point they were approaching and reviewed his observations of Jenna. Her appearance: the untamed hair, lack of bra, floaty skirt, butterfly tattoos. Her behavior: picking up a stranger, not having money to get her car fixed, talking about hitchhiking home. Her opinions: envying him growing up on a commune, thinking monogamy was outdated, volunteering for the falcon survey on whim.
> When he’d first met her, her beauty and openness, her sheer unexpectedness, had distracted him. She’d mentioned the falcon survey and he’d assumed she was a serious, committed person like him. Most people he met were, because his life revolved around his work.
He’d been wrong. And he didn’t like flakes and hippies, people who were frivolous and had no purpose.
He heard Adrienne’s voice in his head: Don’t be so judgmental. What right do you have to judge others? Yet his grandparents had raised him with a strong social conscience and an aversion for frivolity.
“A falcon!” Jenna cried.
He turned to follow her pointing finger and his bare upper arm brushed her breast, the only thing separating flesh from flesh one thin layer of cotton. He forgot everything he’d been thinking and for a long, perfect moment watched the falcon soar regally across the blue summer sky.
When he glanced again at Jenna, her face wore a look of wonder, a joyous smile. Whatever their differences, the falcon touched both their hearts.
He felt a tug in his body and an urge to pull her into his arms and spin her around. An urge that was so uncharacteristic, he turned away and began to walk, tugging her along with him.
Hmm. Research on major histocompatibility complex codes indicated that you were attracted to people whose codes were very different than your parents’. It was a biological mechanism to avoid inbreeding. So, Jenna’s MHC profile must be radically different than Alicia’s, even though she had some similar personality characteristics, attributes that normally wouldn’t attract him in the least. It was puzzling.
Yet if it weren’t for Jenna, he wouldn’t be here on this beach, feeling warm pebbles under his feet, the sun on his face, the resilient curve of her breast against his arm. He wouldn’t have tasted strawberry pie or been given a refreshing shower by an exuberant dog.
For the next couple of days, maybe he should lighten up. He had a pleasant trip ahead of him, much of it alongside the ocean, and a pretty woman beside him. The paper he was scheduled to present in Vancouver, at the international symposium on global change in marine social-ecological systems, was written. For once, there wasn’t much he could do except enjoy life.
Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t approve.
“My grandparents,” he said slowly, “Heather and Ken Chambers, they’re great people.” Was this actually him, volunteering personal information without being prodded? But Jenna made it easy to talk. She made him want to talk.
“Of course they are. They took you in.”
He liked the warmth and certainty in her voice, even if she’d misunderstood. “I mean, they’re probably a bit like your parents. They’re making a difference in the world. He’s a subatomic physicist and she’s a neurosurgeon, though only in a consulting capacity now.”
“Yikes. More brainiacs.”
“Definitely. They’re in their eighties, but they haven’t retired. They’d hoped Alicia would be like them, but she was the opposite.”
“It happens.” She shrugged casually, but there was a touch of bitterness in her voice. “My parents wanted a boy brainiac, and instead they got me. Tough luck for them.”
Had her parents made her feel unwanted? “Uh, I’m sure your parents, uh—”
With a quick laugh, she rescued him. “Oh sure, we all love each other. But we’re not an easy match. And neither, I gather, were Alicia and her parents.”
“No.” From what his grandparents said, she’d been rebellious from the moment she was born, never giving them a moment’s peace.
“Poor kid,” Jenna said. “It must have felt like prison for her. No wonder she ran away.”
Hmm. He’d always taken his grandparents’ side. He, too, knew how much pain could result from Alicia’s pursuit of hedonism. Yet now, for a moment, he wondered what it had been like for a vivacious, high spirited girl—one like Jenna—growing up with parents who were determined to impose rules and structure. To squash her spirit. Was it possible she felt that they’d driven her away?
“Mark?” Jenna tugged on his arm and he saw they’d reached the end of the beach. The rocks sheltered intriguing tide pools, but exploring them would mean putting their sandals back on. Besides, they needed to get back on the road. In silent agreement, they swung around, arms still linked, and began retracing their steps.
“It sounds as if you and your grandparents were a good match,” she said.
He nodded. “Very much so.” They’d given him structure, security, attention, approval, affection. The only thing they hadn’t given, because it wasn’t in their nature, was softness. Hugs at night. Laughter. Feeling disloyal, he brushed that thought away.
“Sounds like y’all got a brain or two to rub together,” she drawled teasingly.
“I soaked up learning. From my parents, teachers, tutors. By my next birthday, I’d caught up the grades I missed.”
“How old were you when you graduated high school?”
“Fifteen. Why?”
“Hah. Tree beat you. She was fourteen.” She grinned. “Gee, I’d take you home to meet my sis, except it seems she’s just hooked up with a guy. A thriller writer. It’s so unlike her.” She reached over with her free hand and ran her fingers lightly down his bare arm, from shoulder to elbow, then down his forearm. “Besides, maybe I’d rather keep you for myself.”
“Uh …” He gaped at her. She was clearly the opposite of his grandparents: overly demonstrative, hugging everyone in sight, telling strangers she loved them. But this … This didn’t seem like a casual touch. And what did she mean about keeping him for herself?
Jenna’s fingers drifted up again in a caressing touch that quickened his breath and made his cock pulse. “What kind of women do you go for, Mark?”
Right now, he sure as hell went for her. But that was an aberration. He stuffed his free hand casually in his pocket, fisting it to disguise his growing erection. She’d asked a question. He’d answer it seriously, because he didn’t know any other way to respond. “Women who are like me. People I meet on projects I work on.”
“You don’t believe in attraction of opposites?”
He considered the question. “In terms of MHC profiles, yes. But not in terms of personalities.”
“MHC profiles?”
Rather than launch into another scientific lecture, he kept it simple. “Kind of like pheromones.”
She nodded. “Gotcha.”
A woman who was like him would never have accepted such a simple explanation. All the same, he was definitely physically attracted to Jenna. It was biology, pure and simple.
Was he crazy to think she was attracted to him, too? He wished Adrienne was around to ask.
But even if Jenna was attracted, were they going to do anything about it?
On the one hand, he was a scientist. Who was he to argue with biology? Yet, that was too pat an answer. Sex wasn’t just about biology, at least not with the human species. Often there were expectations, emotions, complications—especially on the part of the female.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want emotion—love, to be specific. Long-term, he did want a life partner and kids. But so far, with his lovers, no matter how intellectually and sexually compatible they’d been, his emotions had never gone beyond strong affection. Besides, he didn’t have a clue how he could have a family yet still travel the world doing the work that meant everything to him.
Strolling the shoreline, he gazed out at the ocean, the constant that gave his life direction and meaning.
When he was managing an environmental project, he knew exactly how to get from point A to point Z. But in his personal life—what personal life?—he didn’t have a clue.
One thing he did know was that a woman like Jenna had no place on that straight line from A to Z. So, it would be pointless to take a detour. Wouldn’t it?
Chapter 3
Why did people make things so complicated? To me, life was simple. If you wanted something, or someone, you went for it. You didn’t freaking analyze it to death.<
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I was drawn to Mark, and I knew I turned him on—even if he was acting strange about it. And who cared if we were attracted because we smelled good, or because we both had tanned, taut bodies that I figured could give each other fabulous orgasms, or because we were opposites in terms of personality?
Time to go for it.
I stopped abruptly, firming the arm that was linked through his so he jerked to a stop too. “You know what I feel like?” I turned to face him and rested both hands on his shoulders, overlapping the fabric of his tank top and spreading my fingers onto hard, sun-warmed flesh. Oh jeez, did he feel good.
His eyes crinkled at the corners and he shook his head, looking baffled. “Jenna, I have no idea.”
“This.”
I pushed up on the balls of my feet, feeling all those amazing multicolored bits of glass, shell, and pebbles digging gently into my skin. As I tilted my head up to his in a clear invitation, his eyes, as blue as the sky above us, widened in surprise.
Come on, Mark. You’re too tall, and I can’t kiss you unless you cooperate. Get with the program, dude!
His gaze sharpened with awareness, with purpose. The blue of his eyes deepened, then he tossed our sandals on the beach and caught me firmly by the waist. He lowered his head and kissed me.
My eyes closed against the dazzle of sun as his lips met mine. Tentative, for the briefest moment, then hard, fierce, demanding. Oh yes, that was more like it. I kissed him back just as hungrily.
One kiss, and somehow my whole body, my whole being, got sucked up in it the way objects get whirled up into a tornado.
Thought wasn’t possible. Only heat, passion, the exploration of tongues and lips. Strawberries, coffee, the tang of ocean, the blaze of sunshine. A repetitive roaring that was either waves crashing on the beach or the pulsing of my blood.
The sun had climbed inside me, melting me into something malleable, liquid, and yearning. My body softened, slid against his, clothing brushing, the rigid thrust of his erection against my belly making me whimper.
He swallowed the sound, then tore his mouth from mine, panting for breath. “Jesus,” he gasped.