“Fifth grade. That was the year they got divorced, right? Your dad moved away.”
“No,” Amanda corrected him. “Well, yes, but there was more to it than that. Dad came home one day a little after spring break and just announced he’d accepted a transfer that came with a promotion, and it was time to pack up and head to Montana! He was excited about it. Which made him all the more startled when my mom, who never even raised her voice, stood up from the table and slapped him right across the face.”
“Oh, shit! I had no idea you grew up with that type of thing.” His horror—and frustration at his own helplessness about it—was evident.
“No, no, that wasn’t a regular thing. It was the only time, as far as I know.” It was the truth, but even if it hadn’t been, that wasn’t the story she needed to tell at the moment. “And obviously he’d known she’d be upset, or he wouldn’t have put off telling her so long, I didn’t figure that out until later. Anyway, Mom barely spoke for the next few days while we packed. He’d told us on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and he had to start work in Montana the next Monday, so the plan was to pack up both cars and a U-Haul, and convoy to Missoula over the weekend. Mom was fantastic at packing, since she’d had a lot of practice. Me, not so much. And I couldn’t even go to school to say goodbye to everyone, there was no time and I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. I’d finally been somewhere long enough to have real friends, to have a best friend, and now it was all just ending. I cried and cried. Packed and cried. We got in the cars Friday morning, and I was still crying. For some reason I was fixated on the fact that we had to leave most of the furniture behind. It was the first time I realized we’d always rented furnished places. I’d never been old enough before. I guess I thought the furniture just magically changed between houses, I don’t know.”
She was grateful for the liquor’s blessing of numbness. Even that wasn’t a complete antidote to the pain, though. It hurt as much to tell as she’d feared it might. If she’d tried to share this with anyone as a little girl, she might have broken down completely in the effort.
He started to reach for her, to embrace her, but when she didn’t meet him halfway he defaulted to patting her legs again. It was awkward and comforting at the same time. A hug would have been too much. She’d have started crying again if she’d let that happen.
“You were just a little kid, honey. Kids don’t know how all that stuff works.”
“True. Breaking the leases, too.” It must have cost a fortune. And it happened so frequently. “I think there also may have been some gambling addiction involved. A few times I remember Dad rolling in around breakfast, looking like he’d been in the wars. Split lip, black eye, once a broken nose. My parents would always say he’d had a fall or been in some kind of accident, but now I’m pretty sure he sometimes ran afoul of...gambling people, bookies, whatever. He was probably lucky it was just a broken nose and not a broken leg or worse. It all went over my head back then, but now I think that was maybe why we always seemed to get poor again whenever we moved. He obliterated the savings quite a few times.”
“But not that time.”
“No. Mom told him she would notify the landlord, but the letter never went out. She had it with her when we got to the house my dad had rented in Montana. And she ripped it up and threw it away the next day, before she and I drove back to California with the U-Haul. A few days later we got back to the house, unpacked everything, and the next Monday I was back at school.”
“Why make the drive at all? Was she—sorry, never mind. None of my business.”
It was obvious he was appalled by the story, that it was worse than whatever version he’d conjured in his mind. Amanda tried to imagine what it must feel like to learn the girl you’d assumed was pretty much like you had instead grown up in that kind of environment. That her childhood had been, in many fundamental ways, not okay.
And her mother’s decision to drive to Montana and back...she’d spent years wondering about that herself, but never got up the courage to ask. “I think she was trying to salvage the marriage. Then when she saw the new place, she couldn’t go through with it. I don’t know for sure, that’s just my take.”
“Your dad and the replacement wife haven’t moved, though, have they?”
Her dad had moved back to California for good a few years later, and Jeremy had met him a few times. Now he seemed to be rethinking his assessment of the man, from amiable but ineffectual underachiever to selfish, flighty douchebag.
“Nope. Same house since they got together. Over ten years now, which is a definite record for him. I don’t think he gambles anymore, so nobody’s coming after him for debts. And she has a job and money of her own, and real estate, so she’s in a stronger position to say no if he just gets the idea to move. Mom never had that back then.”
She did now. Amanda’s newly single mom had parlayed her degree into an accounting job, earned a CPA and now ran a boutique financial-planning company. She made almost seven figures a year. Her home had a footprint larger than four or five of those crappy rent houses combined. And she still never raised her voice.
“This—the whole moving-around thing—is also why I was so surprised she encouraged you to come on this mission,” Amanda admitted.
“Yeah, so am I, now. But she’s got a big heart, your mom. So I may need to take a trip to your neck of the woods really soon for the sole purpose of kicking your dad’s sorry ass. I thought you should know.”
She gave him a watery smile. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“I’m absolutely serious.” He pulled her closer, glaring sternly. “The guy deserves a beat-down.”
“He’s a fifty-nine-year-old with rheumatoid arthritis who’s had two heart attacks in the past five years. I think Mother Nature and various bad guys have already beaten him down sufficiently.”
Jeremy pouted, clearly disappointed. Amanda was still smiling, but she could see the underlying sentiment was genuine. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders flexed as if awaiting the command to punch. Maybe all the extra testosterone from working out had given him a new aggressive side.
It was kind of sexy.
The tears had been cathartic, the disclosure liberating. Amanda felt lighter now, cleaner. Scoured, but shiny. Nothing had been decided, but at least all the cards were on the table now. The door was finally open for good-faith negotiation. She was only slightly chagrined to realize the lack of that before had been as much her fault as Jeremy’s. The important thing was they had another chance.
“This is turning out to be an okay vacation.”
Jeremy snickered, shifting under her before pulling her into a more compromising position. “Just okay? I guess I need to work harder. What’s it gonna take? We’ve already done the moonlight stroll, the turtle-watching thing, fancy beach cocktails, crazy hookup sex. You didn’t want flowers. What’s left? Couples’ massage, maybe? Horseback riding? Maybe a dolphin encounter, do they have those here?”
“Hmm. I’m not that charmed by dolphins, they seem like the obnoxious dude-bros of the sea.”
“True, true. Hey, could you scoot a little closer? Just...yeah. Thanks.”
He was hard again, his erection straining against the stretchy gray fabric of his underwear. Amanda obligingly leaned into him, rolling her hips and gasping at the unexpected flush of heat when her ploy to tease him ended up striking her in just the right place, as well. A quick pulse picked up behind her clit, not quite a throb but close.
“Weren’t we going to move this inside?”
Jeremy shook his head. “I have a better idea. The best vacation idea. We should move this farther outside and have literal sex on the beach. There is so much beach, it seems like it would be a crime not to take advantage of it.”
Boys. “Jeremy, it’s clear to me you’ve never actually had sex on a beach before, or you would never suggest that.”
“Why? It’s hot. The sand, the ocean, all that nature.”
She brushed a kiss over his lips, fond and indulgent. “I’ll take ‘Things I’d rather not have in my vagina’ for four hundred, Alex.”
“Are you saying you have had sex on a beach?” He didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect. It was more a lazy curiosity, something to discuss while his hands were busy elsewhere. Very busy.
She squirmed in his lap, trying to ease the growing ache between her legs. “It was college. I was stupid. And let’s just say that sand and delicate sex flesh should never meet. It’s pretty much like doing an emery board. Took me like a week to recover.”
“Ouch!”
“Yup.” She tried to stand up, but he held her in place. “Come on. Bed. You, inside me. Now. Please?”
Jeremy sighed. “No beach?”
“No beach. Bed.”
“How about a compromise?”
“Maybe?”
“Awesome! Wait right here.” He stood up, carrying her with him just long enough to swing clear of the chair then lower her back into it. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“’Kay.”
He was already gone, vanished into the room.
What the hell did I just agree to? Did I agree? Wasn’t that just a maybe?
Jeremy leaned back outside just long enough to stage-whisper, “Take off your underwear,” before disappearing again.
“All righty.”
Amanda glanced around automatically, although it was pretty clear they were the only ones up in the vicinity. All the other cottages’ lights were out, their occupants either sleeping or engaged in other lights-out activities. It was probably completely safe, but she still felt the thrill of the forbidden as she reached under her dress and slid her panties down. She balled them in one hand and tossed them over the threshold into the room, and heard Jeremy’s wicked chuckle just before he stepped outside. He wore a towel around his hips, and he gestured at her to get out of the chair, then took her place there.
“Okay, where were we?”
“Shh.” She looked around again before sinking back down to the chair, straddling Jeremy’s lap. Her bare pussy grazed over the rough towel, and Jeremy groaned when Amanda arched into the erection she could feel through the terry cloth. He slipped his hands under her dress, skimming his way up her thighs and flexing his fingers around her hips. She braced her hands on his shoulders as arousal rushed back into the foreground of her attention. He’d brought her to orgasm more than once like this, just fooling around on the couch.
“Do you remember that night we first met?” he whispered, possibly out of deference to her request for quiet, or maybe just because the mood called for it. It was a sultry version of his voice.
She did remember, and it was still a trifle embarrassing. “The part where we got into a half-hour argument about what the snake picture in The Little Prince really looked like?”
“Heh. No, I meant the part where we made out half the night and you were riding me just like this, and got so worked up you came. Then tried to pretend nothing had happened, as if maybe I hadn’t noticed the beautiful girl orgasming in my lap.”
“It was an accident. God, that whole thing was such a flashback to college.”
“It was amazing,” he contradicted. “Hottest thing I’ve ever seen. My dick was so hard I think it sustained a sprain attempting to jump out of my jeans to get to you. I still jerk off to the memory of that sometimes.”
Sneaky man. Amanda felt a cool breeze on her butt again, and realized he’d distracted her with dialogue while tugging her dress up. No underwear this time, just straight-up indecent exposure.
Yeah, okay, that’s actually pretty hot. She circled her hips, bearing down harder. “Are you planning to jerk off to this memory, too, later?”
He smirked and freed up one hand to untie her dress straps, coaxing the elasticized top down to her waist. She shivered, not from cold but as a by-product of his scrutiny, the electric charge his gaze seemed to carry as he scanned her mostly naked form. “Yeah, I’d imagine this will be a keeper.”
He brought his mouth to one nipple, sucking hard and flicking his tongue over the responding flesh. Amanda’s brain shut down, forced out of commission by more insistent parts of her body. Nerve endings, skin, hormones. She even forgot about the semipublic setting, as Jeremy worked her higher with his mouth and hands. Kisses began with frantic energy and quickly escalated, a mutually assured destruction of near-brutal teeth, lips and tongues. When he worked a hand between them and slipped two fingers inside her, Amanda whimpered in frustration. It felt so good but wasn’t nearly enough.
Fortunately, the towel had gone—somewhere. She didn’t care where, only that when she reached down to torment Jeremy as he was tormenting her, she encountered only his latex-clad erection. With lube. A nice touch. Good thing they weren’t on the beach, or that would have just attracted even more sand.
She twisted away from his hand and angled his cock, attempting to sink down onto it. Jeremy grabbed her waist and kept her from completing the maneuver. Only his tip penetrated her, enough to tease but not to satisfy. It was worse than nothing, in its way.
“Wait.”
“No...”
“Shh. Don’t move yet. Trust me.”
Did she trust him? She must have, because she stopped squirming and held still while he lowered one hand to her clit, pressing his thumb over the center of her need in a slow, deliberate circle.
Tingles of anticipation careened through her, chasing each other between her hips and down the backs of her trembling thighs. The urge to move her hips was almost too much, but if she moved she’d dislodge him, and she wasn’t willing to give up the contact or the knowledge that if she changed her mind she could encompass him in one easy stroke. Easy, because she was so wet around him that the breeze was chilling her, a delicious contrast to the heat of his cock and thumb. She was at that magical tipping point, still able to forestall the climax in theory, but only a few strokes away from coming if she wanted to. Equipoise.
But she wanted to, so badly she could hardly breathe.
“Please.”
“Soon. You’re almost there, aren’t you?” His thumb never stopped its measured, inexorable pace.
“Oh God...”
She was there, right there, and Jeremy’s hand shifted on her waist, suddenly coaxing her down instead of up. Everything happened at once, not enough tumbling over into yes, yes, yes as she slid onto his cock. The sensation of him entering her was almost too much to comprehend, too good, too much. Not only because she was so ready to be filled, but because he had known what the wait would do to her. Take her breath and her reservations away, leaving nothing but the pleasure.
The orgasm itself was quick and merciless, ripping through her and laying waste. She was a rag doll afterward, all boneless compliance as Jeremy bucked up into her, his arms wrapped around her to keep her from flying apart. He must have been riding the same fine line Amanda had been on when they started, because in what seemed like a very short time he groaned and shuddered, his whole body tensing as he came.
They melted into the lounge chair for long, silent minutes. Amanda’s head was nestled on Jeremy’s shoulder, and once she had motor control again she flicked her tongue over the closest spot on his neck. Moving her head any farther was out of the question, so that was the closest she could manage to a kiss. He tasted ocean-salty with a clean finish like hotel soap.
“You’re gonna need another shower.”
“Meh. We should totally count this as sex on a beach. I mean, the sand is right over there. When the wind is right, there’s even a little ocean spray happening.”
“It’s a beachfront cottage,” she added. “Were you planning to check it off a list or something? Sex on a beach, check. Sex on a boat, check.
Sex in a bed, check. Sex with a goat, I sincerely hope not?”
“A life list. Like bird-watching, only it’s sex.”
“I think that’s just a purity test. Julie and Alan are rocking an actual bird-watching list, by the way. They started it in the limo.”
“Together? Oh, that’s foreplay.”
She lifted her head at that, beaming at him. “Exactly.”
The motion of lifting herself that small amount, peeling her chest off his, reminded her they were more or less naked, and also quite damp on a cool, breezy night.
“Now can we go to bed?”
He shrugged, rousing enough to nibble the top of her shoulder. “If our legs work enough to walk that far.”
They had to take it in stages, and the trip was not without its painful moments. But eventually, they got there.
Chapter Thirteen
Jeremy woke to the now-familiar tiger-stripe sunbeams fanning over the bed. Resisting the urge to clutch the space next to him to make sure it was occupied, he looked instead to the space next to the closet where Amanda’s rolling suitcase still stood. If he could see her makeup bag from his current angle, that would be absolute confirmation, but he’d have to go with what he had.
She was here. He could roll over, reach for her, and she would be warm in his arms. Real, solid, not the ephemeral dream version of Amanda that had haunted so many of his mornings this past year.
Finally, unable to forbear any longer, he turned his head. Then his shoulders, his body, eventually lining himself up behind her in “their” favorite position. He could take the mental quotes away now, maybe. Tentatively. Put it on the table, at least.
Sex on the Beach (Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin) Page 9