Some Kind of Wonderful

by Sarah Morgan

  “No need. I’ll call Pete.” Pete drove one of the island cabs and Brittany had known him since she was a child.

  “The ferry just docked. Pete will be busy. I can get you home faster.”

  There was no logical reason why a woman who was supposedly indifferent to him would refuse.

  Ten minutes, she told herself. Ten minutes, and she wouldn’t invite him in.

  “Thanks. I’ll wait by the car while you do whatever it is you need to do.”

  She waited, bathed in sunshine and her own sinful thoughts.

  When he finally joined her, she noticed that he’d slid on sunglasses.

  She did the same.

  She didn’t look at him.

  He didn’t look at her.

  Neither of them spoke during the short journey to Shell Bay, but the silence created more tension than words would have done.

  By the time Zach pulled up outside her cottage, Brittany was contemplating plunging fully clothed into the Atlantic to cool off.

  “Goodbye, Zach. Thank you.” She was out of the car the moment it stopped, running for the sanctuary of Castaway Cottage.

  ZACH GRIPPED THE WHEEL. Ahead of him waves crashed onto the rocks that guarded the soft curve of Shell Bay, and to his right lay the cottage.

  And Brittany.

  She’d closed the door in his face, and that was after she’d done just about everything to try to avoid being in the car with him.

  Ignoring the part of his brain that said this was a bad idea, he walked up to the door of the cottage. He didn’t bother knocking because he knew she wouldn’t answer. Instead he took a chance that she hadn’t locked the door.

  She hadn’t, and he stepped into the hall just as she emerged from the kitchen to investigate the noise.

  Her eyes widened. “More breaking and entering?”

  “You can’t break through something that isn’t locked.” In the back of his mind he knew he needed to address her lax approach to security, but right now he had other things on his mind.

  “What do you want, Zach?”

  “I want you to say whatever it is that’s on your mind instead of behaving as if you’re auditioning for cheerleader of the year.”

  The faint flicker in her eyes told him he’d scored a direct hit. “I don’t have anything on my mind. What could I possibly have to say to you after all this time?”

  “Plenty, I would have thought, given the note I left on your pillow.” He still remembered lying awake in a blind panic and then scrabbling in her bag to find a pen, something to write with. He couldn’t remember exactly which words he’d used, but he knew they weren’t Shakespeare.

  “The message in the note was clear enough.”

  “And you don’t have anything you want to say about it?”

  “I had plenty I could have said to you at the time, but that was ten years ago. I don’t have feelings about something that happened so long ago.”

  “I don’t believe you. I’d say you have plenty of feelings. In fact I’d say you have so many feelings you don’t know what to do with them.” He saw the brief flash of her eyes, shards of anger that dazzled before she masked it.

  “You should go now, Zach.”

  Zach decided that he hated polite conversation almost as much as he hated cocktails and social media.

  “I’m not leaving until we’ve dealt with this.” He moved closer to her and Brittany backed away until her shoulders made contact with the wall.

  “It’s ironic that when I wanted you to stay, you couldn’t wait to leave, and now when I can’t wait for you to leave, it’s impossible to get rid of you.”

  For some bizarre reason it made him feel better to hear her finally speaking the truth. “I know I deserve that.”

  “Oh, you deserve a hell of a lot more than that, Zach. You want me to tell you how I really feel? Right now I hate you.” Her eyes blazed and her chest rose and fell. “I hate you and I want you to get the hell out of my house.”

  He was standing so close he could almost feel the heat coming from her.

  Their relationship had always been intensely physical. Long stretches of simmering promise interspersed with wild moments of sexual oblivion.

  “You don’t hate me. I think you want to hate me, but you don’t and that’s driving you crazy.” He cupped her jaw, lifting her face to his. “You hate the fact you still feel something.” He could feel the softness of her skin and the rapid pounding of her pulse beneath his fingers.

  “What I feel is regret that I ever got involved with you in the first place. Goodbye, Zach.”

  If he’d been paying attention to the words he would have left, but there were other forces at work. Deeper, darker forces that sparked something on an elemental level.

  “You don’t feel anything?” He caged her, planting an arm on either side of her to prevent her escape.

  “That’s right. Sorry if that bruises your ego, and now you need to—”

  He flattened her to the wall and brought his mouth down on hers. The feel of her lips brought a groan to the back of his throat. She tasted soft and sweet, like strawberries dipped in sugar. And then the sweetness turned darker, more wicked and the explosion of heat consumed him. He’d expected to prove a point, but ended up slaking a hunger, filling a need.

  Sex was a skill of his. He’d learned all the moves, knew how to touch, how to give maximum pleasure to his partner. He treated sex like an athletic workout, a sequence of calculated physical moves culminating in mutual satisfaction. For Zach, there was never an emotional element. He was well aware that there were women who had wanted him to fall in love with them. Women who had hoped to be the one to cure him of whatever defect stopped him from truly engaging with another human being. They’d never succeeded.

  As a young child he’d learned to switch off feelings and then as an adult had discovered he had no idea how to switch them on again.

  He’d married Brittany because it had felt like the right thing to do, and he had swiftly discovered that it wasn’t.

  Like everyone else, she’d wanted something he wasn’t capable of giving. Disappointing people, letting them down, had been a feature of his life. Up until the point where he had married Brittany, it had never bothered him. He figured that people’s expectations were their own and if they chose to pin them on him, then it wasn’t his fault if their worst predictions came true. With Brittany, it had been different. Her naive and unquestioning belief in him had almost suffocated him.

  He’d known from the start that he was going to let her down.

  That part had been inevitable.

  This, he thought, as he focused all his expertise on her mouth, this was all he’d ever been capable of giving.

  He waited for her to slap his face, or at least push him away, do any of the things he’d been waiting for her to do since the day he’d flown her back to the island. Part of him would even have welcomed it. He’d take real honest emotion any day over this bland coating of indifference she’d painted over her feelings. He wanted her anger as if fury might be a salve for his own guilt.

  What he got was her desire, as raw and real as his own. Her mouth opened under his, and he felt the moist tip of her tongue touch his in erotic invitation.

  The kiss rocketed out of control so fast it almost unbalanced him. It should have been all about technique, a less-than-subtle way of proving a point, but somehow Brittany had shifted the balance of power. Her arms came up and locked around his neck, her head angled to one side as she pressed against him.

  Never in a million years would he have described himself as sensitive or gentle, but he usually made an attempt to keep things one step up from animal, if only because reading his partner’s physical needs was one of his skills.

  Not this time.

  This time his response was primal and overwhelming. He devoured her mouth, flattened her back against the wall and cupped her breast in his hand. He felt her nipple peak under the deliberate brush of his fingers, felt the race of her hea
rt against his palm and the movement of her chest as she pressed against him.

  She moaned against his mouth and he clamped his hand behind her head and held her there, trapped, captive, locking her against him in an exchange of sparks, fire and raw lust.

  He felt her good hand go to the front of his shirt and drag him closer still, until every part of them was touching and the only thing separating them was a thin layer of clothing.

  Still it wasn’t enough.

  He planted his hand against the wall to steady himself, using the other to haul her close so that her lean body was welded against the hardness of his. Her response was to hook her leg around his waist and drive the soft parts of herself against the thickened length of him. Only the fabric of his jeans and hers stopped him being inside her.

  “Holy shit.” He felt the restless grind of her hips and anchored them with his hands. He was hard and throbbing, his breaths coming in ragged pants as he felt her fingers go to the snap of his jeans.

  That blatant move cut through any doubts he might have had.

  She fumbled, moaned in frustration and he slid his hand from her breast to her jeans, stripping them off with a speed that would have raised eyebrows in some circles. Removing clothes had never given him problems. He might not have a college degree, but he knew a thousand ways to get a woman naked.

  He pushed her jeans down her thighs and lifted her. Without detaching her mouth from his, she kicked off the trousers and wrapped her legs around his waist, supple as a gymnast.

  Supporting her with one arm, freeing himself was more of a problem but he managed it, dealt with the ribbon of cotton that masqueraded as her underwear and provided the final barrier between them, and felt the delicious heat of delicate flesh.

  Her mouth was hot on his, her legs wrapped so tightly around him that for the first time in his life he almost forgot the condom he always carried. He was seconds away from breaking a lifetime rule when some deeply ingrained sense of self-preservation made him dig it out of his pocket.

  He paused long enough to ensure there would be at least one consequence he wouldn’t have to face and then lowered his forehead to hers. Their gazes locked. Her breath came in rapid pants and her eyes, those rich, tiger-gold eyes that challenged him at every turn, were bright with need.

  “Yes.” She murmured the word against his mouth. “God, yes.”

  He felt her angle her body to his and then he thrust and there was nothing but the heat.

  He felt her stretch, her body welcoming the invasion of his. She tensed slightly, slick and tight against the solid fullness of his erection, and he closed his hands around her thighs, holding himself still, giving her time to adjust. Held like this, she was helpless. His. He’d discovered sex earlier than most and for years it had been the only place where he had control. He had an armory of moves at his disposal, and he’d learned to use them.

  As a result, bed was the one place in the world where he managed to please a woman.

  Her gasp turned to a sob and he swallowed it, licking into her mouth as he drove deeper, surging into her until they were joined so deeply, he could feel every tiny ripple and movement of her body. Desire consumed him, hot waves of pleasure swamping thought and reason. Neither of them paused to question whether it was a good idea. Neither of them hesitated or tried to pull back. It was a raw, primitive and utterly basic slaking of sexual need.

  He felt her hand slide into his hair while the other, the one restricted by the cast, lay useless against his shoulder. He felt the urgency of her mouth on his as he surged into her with slow, relentless rhythm designed to drive them both insane.

  He clamped the smooth curve of her bottom, and felt her hand slide to the hard muscle of his shoulder. If she’d had long nails he would have been lacerated, and still they kissed, crazily, frantically, as if it were the only way of sustaining life. They kissed right the way through to the screaming peak of pleasure that slammed into them with the force of an express train. Feeling her tighten around him like a silken vice, Zach groaned deep in his throat and gave himself up to the wild pulsating force of his own release.

  It took a moment for his head to clear and for him to emerge from the dizzying fog of arousal.

  He lowered her but didn’t release her, and she didn’t release him, either. Her good hand stayed on his shoulder for support while the other lay limp by her side.

  She struggled for breath, her head turned away from him.

  Finally his brain cleared and he realized two things: that he was still fully clothed and that she was naked from the waist down. At some point he’d managed to rip her thong and it lay on the floor, a seductive wisp and an accusation. Destruction of property. Another crime to add to the many.

  He wondered if he could plead insanity.

  Words were never his strong point, and right now he didn’t have a clue which ones to use or which order to use them in.

  “Brittany—”

  “Sex and screwing up,” she said. “The two things you were always good at.” Her eyes lifted to his and he felt a rush of emotion he couldn’t identify.

  He’d wanted the truth and she’d given it to him, but somehow hearing it didn’t bring him the relief he’d anticipated.

  “And flying.” His voice sounded raw. “Don’t forget flying.”

  “Damn you.” She pushed at his chest with her good hand. “Damn you, Zach. I— You have to leave.”

  He wondered how the hell she expected him to leave when he’d managed to create a situation a thousand times more complicated than the one he’d hoped to fix. “No.”

  “I’m begging you.”

  He was about to refuse again when he saw the glisten of moisture in her eyes. It floored him more than a punch from her fist would have done.

  He’d made plenty of women cry in his time. It was another thing he was good at. What he wasn’t good at was fixing it, usually because fixing it required some sort of promise he wasn’t prepared to make. Because he never made promises, he figured he was free to walk away without a stain on his conscience.

  Except that one time of course, when he hadn’t just made a promise, he’d made it in public in a way that was legal and binding.

  His entire body was tense.

  Over the years he’d wondered about her reaction to what he’d done.

  He’d imagined her storming with anger and punching holes in the wall.

  The one thing he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine was her crying.

  It was something he’d never seen. He’d seen her furious, those tiger eyes sending lightning shards of anger towards the source of her annoyance, and he’d seen her doubled over in helpless laughter.

  He’d never seen this.

  He lifted his hand to pull her close but he had no words of comfort for this situation.

  How did you comfort someone when you were the cause of their misery?

  All he could do was remove himself, but his legs refused to take him in any direction, not even towards the exit.

  “Don’t cry.” His teeth were gritted and his entire body ached with the willpower required to not touch her. “Hell, Brittany, hit me. Yell at me. Anything, but don’t cry.”

  “Get out, Zach.” Her voice cracked. “Get the hell out of here.”

  And finally, perhaps because of her tone or maybe because the moisture in her eyes was brimming like a river about to burst its banks, his body unfroze itself and his legs obliged long enough to walk him through her door.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “RYAN WANTED TO change it to granite or soapstone, but I love this butcher’s block.” Emily ran her hand over the counter and Skylar nodded.

  “I love it, too. It’s a little stained in places but that’s because it’s a natural material. And each mark tells a story.”

  “I’m a little worried the story it’s going to tell about me is that I shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen. What do you think, Brittany?”

  Brittany was staring over the garden, watching the last o
f the evening light fade away. Her stomach felt hollow and she felt physically sick.

  “Brittany?”

  “Sorry?” She blinked and realized both her friends were staring at her. “What?”

  “We were talking about the kitchen. What do you think of the counters?”

  “I—” She couldn’t think of anything except Zach, the midnight black of his eyes as he’d held her gaze and surged into her. The heat of his mouth on hers as they’d shared every breath. “I think you should do whatever feels right to you.”

  Or maybe not.

  Sex with Zach had felt utterly right at the time and utterly wrong five minutes later.

  For years he’d been a mistake in her past and now he was right back in her present.

  “Is something wrong? You’re very distracted.” Emily stirred the chowder. “I called you twice yesterday and you didn’t answer. I was about to drive over when you texted.”

  “I was catching up on some things, that’s all. I did some reading, answered some emails—” Sat on the beach, stared at the sea, wondered what the hell it was about Zachary Flynn that drove her to do crazy things. What was she going to say next time she saw him? Their relationship had been complicated before, but nothing compared to now. “I put my phone down somewhere and couldn’t find it.” The thought of what Emily might have found had she driven over made Brittany vow never to let her phone out of her sight again. “Were you calling for a reason?”

  “Ryan was giving Lizzy a sailing lesson and I was going to ask you to the Ocean Club for dinner. I wanted to hear what happened at the hospital.”

  “It was uneventful. I have to keep the cast on a while longer. Which means I’m doomed to be bored and cross for the rest of the summer.”

  Bored, cross and sexually frustrated.

  “You could help Lisa at Summer Scoop. Her business has really picked up over the last couple of weeks. Sky, there’s a fresh loaf from The Beach Bakery in that bag. Can you slice it?” Flustered, Emily checked the chowder again and then turned her attention back to Brittany. “Is that why you’re upset? Because you were hoping the cast would come off?”

  “I’m not upset. I’m just impatient. You know me.”