Another spike of pleasure ripped through her as Ashton rammed himself once more against her sensitive center.
She could feel his breath against her back, ragged and racing, and even while she was folded over the couch, her body seemed to expand, taking on a glow that no other time with a man had given her.
They stayed like that, locked together, his hand cupping her and his form crushing her to the couch for a long moment before he withdrew. She gave a little whimper as his girth and warmth left her.
“Tell me about it. I’d like nothing better than to tie you down in that position and leave you there forever. But your world surfing domination awaits.” And he slapped her, not all that softly, on the ass.
“Ouch.”
He spun her towards him and wrapped her in his arms. “I’d say sorry, but it would be a lie. Thinking about my hand mark sneaking pink and hot out the edge of your bikini while you’re out there flashing it to all those horny surfers makes me feel a tiny bit better about the world.” He picked her up and carried her to bed.
She clung to him, and when he kissed her, it was like she had always been kissing him. Like they’d been together for years.
“You’re a real tiger, aren’t you? Nothing as sexy as having a woman tell you what she wants. And when she demands it like that—” He shook his head and tweaked her nose. “I would not have expected anything like that to come out of your mouth when I first met you,” he said as he pulled back from the kiss and gazed into her eyes.
She blinked slowly, trying to work out what to say. “You seem to bring… something out of me.”
Ashton threw back his head and laughed. “Something? You brought that out of yourself. At least the first time.”
The smile felt great across her face. But Summer wasn’t ready to leave it at that. “No, seriously, you make me…” She checked herself. “Wilder. Ready to take risks, to push myself. Maybe you’re just what I needed. A thrill. A big slap on the butt.”
Ashton was quiet a moment.
Oh no. Summer bit her lip. Was that the wrong thing to say? Unsexy somehow?
As if sensing her dismay, Ashton reached out and took her hand. “I’m glad I’m empowering you, or whatever this is. But I’m not exactly the best person to take advice from when it comes to taking risks. If I seem nervous about you telling caution to go drown itself, it’s because I am. Look where it got me.”
Of course. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest—”
He squeezed her hand. “You didn’t do anything. It’s me who has bad luck running through my veins. The last thing I want is for it to ooze out on you.”
She sat up, pulling him up with her. “Is that what you think? That you have bad luck following you round like one of those cartoon clouds? Seriously, Evans, that is bullshit.”
His eyes widened. “I wouldn’t exactly say that it was like a cartoon cloud. People have died, remember. Real people. Not cartoons.”
Her heart squeezed at the expression on his face. Gone was the triumph of earlier, when he’d taken her to such incredible heights of sensation. That’s what she wanted to see back in his eyes; elation, pure joy. He’d given her a lot already, she wasn’t kidding about him being good for her. She put a hand to his face and lowered her voice. “I know. And that sucks. Big time. But you need to stop beating yourself around the head with it like a dead fish. Come on.” She slithered off the bed.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Somewhere the locals told me about when we were out in the back this morning.”
A small smile stole back onto his face, and Summer grabbed her bikini.
“We have to fit in a shoot as well. And you need to get back in the water.”
“Already ahead of you. Get your gear.”
Chapter Eleven
“Here? Seriously? Were you not listening to anything I said?” The keen fingers of guilt and horror curled around Ashton’s heart and gave it a less than gentle squeeze. But Summer had already got out of the rental car she’d arranged. He looked out the windscreen a moment longer, clenching and unclenching his hands. Standing at the side of the dirt road, under a broad stand of bamboo, she beckoned him to join her.
The bamboo swayed against an empty, falling-down house that was the only structure for miles. It should have been beautiful—picturesque with all that space, and only bamboo, trees, and rice fields spreading out all around them. But it was the falling down house. The one with a curling blue wave painted on its door. The house that meant they were only a mile from one of the best secret surf breaks this side of the island. The house with an unexpected ditch in front of it that would catch the front tire of a motorbike if you weren’t paying attention. The ditch that had thrown him and Bevan into the dirt and wiped his old life away.
“Take your time,” Summer called.
Take your time? Ashton forced himself to put a hand to the door handle. You’re fine. She thinks she’s helping. Making one foot then the other step out of the car and walk towards her, Ashton only half registered the tranquil setting and the way the distant ocean’s echo slipped through the bamboo. The world closed in around him as if he’d shut his eyes and darkness descended. It was evening again. His buddy lay prone in the ditch, blood already pooling under his head. Rain came down. Their motorbike was up the road a couple of yards, a tangled mess of twisted metal. Its headlight was the only illumination around.
Ashton bent to clutch at the leg he knew would be badly broken.
“I’m right here,” Summer said gently through the dark veneer that his memories had put in front of him.
“And so am I. That’s the problem.”
“It’s just a house. A dirt road. The marker to the best break this side of the island.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “It doesn’t have to hold you hostage anymore.”
He blinked and saw Summer standing beside him. Beautiful Summer. Someone he had never expected to be able to get to him in quite the way she had. Her words shook him back into the present.
The sun was shining. The ditch was empty. They were completely alone, and his leg was mended. He straightened to standing again.
“I haven’t been back here before.”
“Yes. So I see.”
“Then why?” he asked. “Why would you bring me?”
“I didn’t know you hadn’t been back. I brought you here because when I asked the locals where we should go to shoot they said this place, without hesitation. But now I see you here, maybe I brought you here because you haven’t been back.” She stepped closer. “Don’t you think it’s time to check on those demons and see if they’re real?”
Ashton grabbed her hand and pulled her hard against him. Her body against his grounded him. Her warmth stopped the chill that was threatening to bring his skin out in goose bumps despite the Indonesian sun beating down on his head. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do. But this isn’t just about demons. It’s not like I can chase them away on the next wave. This place is real. Bevan’s death is real. And it’s all on me.”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “You say demons, I say stuff you need to work out.”
He bristled and dropped her hand. “It’s not a joke.”
“I wasn’t joking. I’m sorry. I would never joke about something this big.”
Mollified, he made himself look around. Was she right? Was it a good thing she’d brought him back?
“What did you say to me before my event back in Brazil? That I needed to be living my own life rather than being stuck in the shadow of anyone else’s expectations? Especially my dad’s. Do you think that you might be the same? Even a little bit?” she said softly.
“This is not the same. No one you know killed anyone.”
“No, it’s not the same. I’m not trying to minimize your accident. But in his mind my dad did kill something. He killed the chance we had of being a proper family. That’s what he always said. That he should have been able to be more of a father to me. Let go of the waves n
ow and then and stay home.”
“I’m sure he did the best he could.”
She drew her hand out of his grasp and wound her arms around his neck. “Yep. Just like you. Your buddy Bevan was his own person. You are, too.”
Ashton’s whole body stiffened, and he had to work hard not to pull away from Summer’s touch. She’s just trying to help.
“Demons, even memories, only have as much hold over you as you let them,” she said and retreated as if she sensed he had gone from relishing the body contact to finding it too hard to handle.
“Sorry again if I got it wrong,” she said softly. “If you’re not ready to be here, I get it. We can go.” Summer scuffed at the dirt road and dust plumed up, catching the sunshine. It sparkled and danced, making the world magic for just a moment. “Wow. Look at the light.”
Ashton shrugged. “Yes. Bali is a bit like that, sort of a photographer’s candy box. There are so many beautiful places, sometimes it’s a little overwhelming and you end up with a mess of pretty things, rather than anything spectacular.”
“Sure. But, Ashton, look.”
She pointed over at a stand of bamboo. The light was just starting to turn, and the bamboo was golden. Rich yet clean. Inviting yet isolated. Even with the threat of darkness still twitching behind his eyes, he could see what she meant. The place was perfect.
He shook his head. “That’s not how this works. If models picked the locations for all the shoots, we’d have a world full of swimming pools and cabana boys.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad to me,” she gave him a cheeky grin. “Although I don’t need a cabana boy; I’m fine with what I have right here.”
The smile was unbidden, and Ashton fought it a moment, but her face was so impish, so lacking in guile, he couldn’t stay angry at her. “Here I was thinking you were purer than the driven…sand, and you’re actually an evil mastermind.”
“Perhaps.” She stepped back. “So, trust me.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“—just that you don’t trust yourself. I get it. But I’ve seen you behind your camera. That’s what I wanted to show you. You get this amazing focus. Nothing else matters except what’s in front of you. It’s incredible. Like the world narrows into a little funnel and you channel all your energy through it.” She cocked her head to the side. “I’m not saying it right.” She bit her lip and tried again. “It makes it easier to be in front of you. I hate having my photo taken, and then with you, you made it easy. I’m this thing of beauty you’re trying to capture. That’s what it feels like. You’re not trying to get what I think is me, you’re searching for the essence of me. It’s super empowering.”
Ashton took a step back. “You can see that?”
“Anyone could.”
He shook his head. She’d nailed it. Of course.
“Look.” She gestured around.
Ashton shuddered. Bevan was still dead. The guy who had been in every surf contest with him since they’d both joined the circuit. The only guy who had called him on his bullshit and had been right. The only guy who he would have trusted with his life. And then I took his away. “I see the scene of a fatal crash. I see the mess I made of everything. There’s no beauty here.” His voice was flat even to his ears.
“There’s beauty everywhere. Didn’t you say that to me one time?”
“Sounds like something you’d read in a self-help book,” he said darkly.
She pouted. “Let’s try.” Stepping back from him she pulled her T-shirt over her head and shucked her shorts.
“It’s not funny.”
“I know. Five minutes. If it still feels wrong, we leave.” Turning away from him, she walked towards the bamboo just as the light started to pick gold out of its leaves. Striking a pose, she waited, clearly not going to move until he did something.
He sighed and went to grab his camera and reflector from the car. But as soon as he focused his lens, his breath shortened. He lowered his camera and checked her. Summer hadn’t moved.
He peeled off a few shots and checked the digital display. Yep. Beautiful. Pretty much spot on for the casual sunshine-girl look the client was after. “How did you know?”
“That this place was beautiful? I didn’t. But the locals in the surf this morning told me it was gorgeous. And they gave me directions. There were photos of this place online when you had the accident. Don’t you remember? And a full description. Part of the heartbreak piece that someone wrote about the whole thing.”
“I never saw that.”
“No. I guess you probably wouldn’t have. Still, it seemed it was likely the place wasn’t going to be a carpark.”
Ashton looked around properly. She was right. The location was beautiful. The tumbling down house had a rich textural quality that looked great on film. The bamboo was just the right thickness, with enough light through it to look like the gateway to another world. And the rice paddies around them… Had he been so blinkered by his guilt that he’d missed a whole world of beauty?
“Hey,” she called at him. “Come over here.”
He stumbled towards her, almost drunk on the self-discovery.
“Now you get a kiss.” She pulled his head down and kissed him gently on the end of his chin.
“You better have more than that in your backpack.”
She gave him a saucy grin. “You bet. But first. Get the shot, Evans.”
He fired off frame after frame with her standing in front of, then in amongst the bamboo. Then in front of the house, leaning in its doorway, gazing out the open maw of its broken windows. Like a tropical princess, she managed to tip her head just so, her golden hair falling over her shoulders and the suggestion of a smile, then excitement, then infatuation playing out across her features. “You’re really good at this. Honestly,” he said.
A hint of pink rose in her cheeks, and he clicked the shutter again. Blushing beauty, check. Ashton looked around him, really looked, and realized that with sunlight streaming, the place wasn’t the obvious death trap he’d always thought he’d led his friend into. It had been his idea to take this back road as night fast approached, his fault that they’d ended up in a ditch. But really it was just an ordinary Indonesian dirt road. No real difference between it and all the others he and Bevan had driven down.
“Over there, in the middle of the field, under that tree,” he demanded and started walking, carrying his reflector stand. It took a good ten minutes to get there, but it was worth every step. For the next twenty minutes, he used the light that had been diffracted somehow by the humid air and seemed golden even though it wasn’t anywhere close to sunset.
Summer was framed by emptiness. For once it felt like the bustling noise of Indonesia had truly retreated. He couldn’t see another soul, only the miles of bright green rice paddies promising to feed anyone willing to bend, caress, and pick their budding stalks. The tree gave them shelter from passersby, and this far away from the road, they couldn’t see the falling down house anymore.
Leaning against the solitary tree, Summer was completely relaxed, the curves of her body in perfect harmony with the trunk of the tree, and he took another round of amazing photographs.
“Got it,” he said eventually, and was rewarded with a bright smile.
Walking over to her, Ashton still couldn’t believe she’d managed to both read his focus behind the camera and then use it to help him start to unpeel what had happened with Bevan. “Thank you,” he said and bent to kiss her. Her lips welcomed him like they’d been waiting all day. Full and sweet, they promised a world of forgetting and of moving forward. Despite that they were in an open space, Ashton felt the rush of blood to his groin.
She ran her hands down his chest, and it made his muscles fairly sing. “You going to stop beating yourself up about being bad luck now?”
He shrugged. “I get it. I do. But Bevan isn’t the only thing I’ve got on my conscience. He’s just the only fatality.” He bent to kiss her again, but she put a fi
nger to his lips.
“Enough talk like that. You admitted that it was an accident. Hold on to that. Okay?”
He shrugged. “It was an accident. Yes. I’ll give you that. You’re the first person I’ve admitted it to. But that’s all I’ll give you.”
She wrapped both arms around his neck. “I guess that will have to do. For now.” Standing on tip toes she reached up to bite him gently on the throat. “But are you sure that’s all you’ll give me?”
The rush of blood became a deluge, and Ashton’s cock nudged at the fly of his board shorts. “For a sunshine girl, you sure are pushy.”
She simply smiled and ran her fingertips over his jaw. It was the lightest touch, barely a touch at all, but it seared his skin as if she had taken hold of his cock and squeezed. Her fingertips made their way down. Down his throat, across his collarbone, all the way down over his bicep to circle the inside of his elbow. “I always think this is a nice part of the body. Call me crazy. But it’s so soft. So sensitive.” She bent and pressed her lips to it, and yes, he was sure his arm faintly hissed as the sensation sizzled across his skin.
Both hands moved to his chest now, and everything tightened. Every muscle and sinew—even his bones seemed to bind themselves together stiffly.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
“Thanks for asking me to. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.” As the words left his mouth Ashton did a double take. He did trust her, he realized. More than he’d perhaps trusted anyone since the accident. Maybe she was right. Maybe he could get over this, believe that everything and everyone he touched wouldn’t turn to shit anymore. The flash of doubt that still hesitated at the back of his mind was just that, only a flash, and he managed to push it aside. Especially when she smoothed her fingertips further down his chest and over his abs.
“If you’re trying to get a reaction, you’re doing everything right,” he growled, looking down at where his board shorts were tented over his growing erection.
Another Shot with Summer Page 12