The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel

by Jessica Pine

  I arch up into his hand, the movement spreading my legs wider so that he's almost inside. He's only the second man I've ever had and I'm so pathetically grateful to discover that another man can make me feel the way I thought only Justin could. "You want to go again?"

  He sighs.

  "I do, but don't you think you should call your dad?"

  I blink up at him.

  "Way to kill the mood," I say, half annoyed, half relieved. I feel bad enough that I spent most of last night comparing him to Justin, especially when they're nothing alike. Jaime is a far, far better man. No question.

  He flops down next to me.

  "Come on. Please. Just let him know you're okay. You can't be mad at him about Vegas forever."

  "Who said I was mad about Vegas?"

  "It's obvious. You said yourself that those annulment papers broke your heart. I figure your Dad was the one who shoved them under his nose, right?"

  I scowl at him for a moment. If I weren't so chilled out from a night of really good sex then I expect I'd be pissed at this kind of deduction. As it is I just grab the covers in mock outrage and pull them up to my chest.

  "I don't like you."

  "You don't have to like me," he says, looking way too pleased with himself. "Just let me give you orgasms and we're good. Now text him already."

  He's not going to let this go, and worse, he's right. I compose a quick text - I'm safe. With Jaime. Don't worry. xoxo Amber. "There," I say, shoving the screen in his face.

  "No 'I love you'?"

  "No. He's British, you dingbat. If I told him I loved him he'd think something was really wrong."

  Jaime sighs.

  "Okay, fine. Thank you."

  "What for?"

  "For doing what I asked. I like your old man, for what it's worth. I don't like the thought of him worrying."

  I hit send and kiss him quickly, before he can spot the tears I'm trying to blink back. I know sooner or later he's going to raise the subject of going back to L.A., but at least now I have some means of distracting him. I don't ever want to go back. I just want to stay here with him and never put our clothes back on and do filthy things to one another whenever and however the mood takes us.

  For our shopping expedition I get dressed up in the standard off-duty movie-star get up - yoga pants, sweatshirt, baseball cap and giant sunglasses.

  "You couldn't look more L.A. if you tried," he says.

  I dig him in the ribs as we enter the supermarket.

  "Shh. Be gentle with me - it's my first time."

  "In Big Sur?"

  "No. Grocery shopping with a man."

  He looks at me like I just told him I was abducted by aliens.

  “What, never?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you got married. You never bought groceries together?”

  I reach out and grab a bag of lemons, remembering the pleasure I’d used to feel before Justin, back when I’d drift around the exclusive little groceries up on Laurel, where every new ingredient presented new possibilities and menus.

  “We didn’t have that kind of relationship,” I explain. “Justin always said we were soul mates. We weren’t meant to be bogged down in the mundane details that kill people’s passion.”

  Jaime gives me a look – part amusement, part pity – and confirms my deepest, darkest most secret thought; that Justin was really just a silly, pretentious kid with an attitude problem. Maybe he deserves more than that, but I’m evil and I can’t stop.

  “One time he said pie was bourgeois,” I say, eager to make Jaime laugh. “It was ridiculous really – I probably could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we saw each other eat.”

  “In how long?”

  “Eighteen months, give or take. Is that weird?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Bizarre.”

  “I thought so. And I used to like grocery shopping.”

  “I hate it," he says. "The AC is always too high and everything costs so damn much." Then he catches himself bellyaching and gives me a brilliant smile that makes my heart twist. "And that was me channeling my Pops, by the way. Now you know how I'll sound when I'm seventy-five."

  I laugh as we scoot down the aisle.

  "Your mother's dad or your dad's?"

  "My Dad's," he says, the smile fading from his lips. "He kind of fell apart when Dad died - you're not supposed to bury your children, are you?"

  "No. I'm sorry. Was it a long time ago?"

  Jaime shakes his head and grabs a carton of eggs, holding it up for inspection.

  "Three years," he says. "They always say the younger you have the first heart attack the worse it is. Papi was only forty nine."

  "Jesus. I'm so sorry."

  He shrugs.

  "What can you do? It was weird the way my sister got pregnant right away after he died. We always say it was like his soul was trying to make its way back to us, like he knew he'd left us too soon and never got to say goodbye."

  I cover his hand with mine on the rail of the shopping cart. He pushes a lock of hair out of his eyes and sighs.

  "These things happen. I can't imagine how it must have been for you – losing your mother."

  I shake my head.

  "I was too young to really understand it. I know that sounds cold, but that's how it was."

  He doesn't say anything and I'm glad - I don't think I could handle anyone telling me I wasn't cold right now. Once I used to worry that I was empty and felt nothing. I got heavily into nihilism and sloped around in black eyeliner, convinced I was somehow broken inside. And maybe I still am.

  It creeps up on me as we go around the store. I was as surprised as anyone to find that I wasn't panicking the second I set foot outside the door. I thought maybe I'd burned out all my panic cells with that big-ass attack yesterday. A couple of times Jaime tells me I'm doing well, but my heart keeps racing and I keep feeling it once more - the huge, devouring emptiness that I once thought had scooped me hollow.

  "Are you okay?" Jaime asks, as we load up the Escalade.

  "I'm fine," I say, but when we get in I'm antsy and I recognize the symptoms - the frantic desire to feel something, anything. The same stupid desire that led me to pick fights with Justin, just so we could scream at each other and make it up. It settles in my gut and between my legs, tugging at my frayed nerves, so that by the time we get back to the cabin I'm the same twitchy idiot who allowed that creep to manipulate her, the dumbass girl who didn't care how ridiculous the fight was, just so long as she got her fix of drama and a dick in her at the end of it.

  I tell myself I won't subject Jaime to this, but his hand lingers on my ass while we're unpacking the groceries. His lips graze the edge of mine and it's all the encouragement I need to grab him, fist his shirt in both hands and stick my tongue down his throat.

  "Whoa," he says, softly. "You missed it that much already?"

  "Yeah." Luckily I didn't put the condoms at the bottom of the bag.

  "You want to go to bed?"

  "I don't much care," I say, pulling off my pants and leading him by the hand into the living area. I feel twice as naked, stripped from the waist down like this, and I can tell he likes it too. He helps me unbutton him and springs up in my hand, warm and eager. And from there it's easy - I roll on the condom and straddle his lap. This is how he likes it. Dirty and hot, with me all but crawling the walls until he fills the void inside me with his solid flesh.

  I moan like a porn star as he slides inside. The way he likes it - lots of moaning and tossing of hair. Only his hands are sliding up under my shirt and they're not the hands I remember; the fingertips are softer and their touch is so reverent I think I'm going to cry.

  "Shh," he whispers. "Easy. Slow. It's not a race." And I'm back where I should be, in the present.

  I tug the sweatshirt up over my head and push my breasts in his face. When his mouth closes over my nipple I cry out, no longer like a porn star but like myself, a weird, shattered little s
ound from deep down in the broken heart of me. Where once I would have rode a man hard, I barely stir, my hips held between his hands and him held tenderly between my hips.

  "That's it," he says, looking up from my breasts. "Gentle. That's it."

  Slowly I begin to move around him, twisting my hips in slow circles.

  "Good," he whispers, his eyes bright and dark and beautiful. "Good girl. Deep and slow. You got it. Fuck me, Amber. Fuck me just like that."

  Oh God. I twist and shiver around him. When I lean forward he catches my tits in his mouth again and holds me tight around the waist, just like I need. I can feel the ache and swell of it rising inside me and rock my hips into his, slow and soothing. I have never felt like this before - not like I'm clawing and fighting to feel but like I'm slowly, deliciously unraveling.

  "You like that?" he breathes. "Is it good?"

  I nod. I feel my muscles ripple around him and he moans. I'm sitting upright astride him and any moment I'm going to have to move, just to scratch that deep down itch inside. I cup my breasts and gaze down at him; he's rapt and rosy cheeked between my thighs. I pinch the tips of my nipples, offering them to him, but my own touch sends me over the edge, one of those slow, inexorable shuddery orgasms that I've only ever had on my own before. It steals my breath and I make no sound as I grind my hips deep into his lap.

  Jaime cries out; he calls me beautiful and calls me by name. I droop over him, my inner muscles still shivering, my clit so sensitive that I can barely press my pubic bone into him.

  "Holy shit," he whispers, like I was good, like I was special.

  When we kiss our lips are as dry as if they'd been burned.

  "You're on fire," he says, as if he could read my mind, and when I look into his eyes I know that there is no way I can ever, ever tell him the truth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jaime

  In the morning after breakfast she wants to go down to the beach.

  "It's practically private," she says, picking her way down the narrow cliff path. The height doesn't seem to bother her but the moment I look down I feel like Jimmy Stewart. The other night when I went down on her on the porch I didn't care, because it was dark and I hadn't yet seen how the earth drops away at the edge. The first time I saw the cliff in daylight it set my head spinning, not least because I started thinking about how the railing had creaked behind my back.

  She just skips on down like a mountain goat. We must be nuts, us Californians - to keep building cities on a seam of the Earth's crust, pretending like one day it's not going to open up and swallow us all.

  Amber reaches the sand and peers up at me.

  "Isn't it great?" she says, shading her eyes with her hand.

  "Pretty."

  She bites her lip. Maybe it's because she thought I sounded underwhelmed at the view that she seeks to improve it. Then she lets out a crazy seagull shriek of laughter and yanks off all her clothes.

  "Oh, you are kidding me," I say, but she's already up to her thighs in the water.

  "I can't swim!" I yell. "And isn't it cold?"

  She turns to face me, her nipples hard and her skin white as pearl.

  "It's bracing," she says, but a wave catches her out in the lie, lapping up her thighs and splashing against her pussy. Her face says it all.

  "Come out."

  "Come in."

  "I can't."

  Amber shakes her head. "You can."

  I glance up and down the empty beach.

  "When you say 'practically private'..." I say.

  "Sometimes there are surfers," she says. "But they don't give a shit. Come on. We won't go deep. It's time you learned to swim."

  I shake my head.

  "I'll learn to swim when you learn to tango."

  She puts her hands on her hips, her feet apart. I don't want to go in the water but I'm still a man and she's so beautiful.

  "I learned some steps," she says. "Which means you should at least get your feet wet."

  Yeah. She's got me there. I sigh and take off my shoes. Amber cheers.

  "And the rest!"

  "No way. Wet feet. That was the deal." I roll up my pants and step into the surf. Ow. It's freezing. The slight boner that made it past my fear of her being dragged out to sea wilts before the water is even halfway up my calves.

  She drops down on her knees so that the water comes up to her shoulders. "Chickenshit," she says. "How do you expect to learn to swim if you don't even get wet?"

  "It's the ocean, Amber," I say. "People drown. There are sharks." I sound pathetic. I wish I could just do what she wants, tear off all my clothes and run into the water. Did he do that? The one who fucked her up so much she couldn't go from one end of the day to the other without crying?

  "There aren't any sharks," she says. "Well, I mean, there are but they're not..."

  "...not what? Hungry?"

  She paddles up the beach towards me, until she's on her hands and knees in the surf, her wet hair streaming down. She looks like a mermaid who's just washed up and discovered that she has legs, and the place where they meet in the middle. It's getting harder and harder to keep those three little words out of my mouth - I know they're a complication she doesn't need right now.

  “You’re more likely to get hit by a car than attacked by a shark,” she says. “Besides, we’re not going to go that deep.”

  “How do you know we won’t get swept out?”

  “I’m a good swimmer,” she says. A wave smacks her in the ass, nudging her thighs apart. I'm ready to envy the whole Pacific Ocean for that view of her. “I’ll take care of you.”

  I squint at the horizon.

  “Okay,” I say, stepping back from the water to pull off my sweater. Amber kneels up in the surf, hooting and applauding.

  “Here’s the deal,” I say, taking off my pants. “If I do this, you have to be naked for the rest of the day.”

  I wade towards her and almost turn back. It’s freezing and my windswept dick has shriveled to a sad little nugget.

  She stands up.

  “What if I’m cooking bacon?” We’d figured out earlier that bacon is not a thing you want to be frying in the nude.

  “You get to wear an apron.”

  She holds out her hand to me.

  “Done.”

  A wave laps up my thighs. Oh goddamn. I’m up to my waist and she swears it’s fine, even though her nipples are hard as rock and I’m sure her lips are beginning to turn blue.

  “Okay, now lie back,” she says.

  “And sink?”

  Amber laughs and holds out her arms.

  “You won’t sink. I’ll hold you up.”

  I shiver. The water looks uninviting.

  “You owe me big,” I say. “You’re going to master that tango step if it kills me.”

  “You can teach me later,” she says.

  “While you’re naked?”

  “While I’m naked.”

  Oh boy. There’s an incentive. Amber – warm and dry in my arms, naked except for a pair of heels. I wonder how many steps I can teach her before we get distracted.

  She holds out her arms again.

  “I’m naked right now, in case you didn’t notice.”

  I wrap my arms around her and we shiver together, waist deep.

  “Yeah,” I say, against her wet hair. “And in case you didn’t notice, I’m unlikely to pop a boner in this condition.”

  “All the more reason to get moving,” she says. “Now, how’d it go? Right foot forward, two side...?”

  I laugh and take hold of her.

  “A naked tango lesson in the ocean?”

  “Why not? You were complaining that I kept staring at my feet – now I can’t even see them.”

  “Much longer and you won’t be able to feel them. Aren’t your toes numb already?”

  “Quit bellyaching. You can’t say I’m not an enthusiastic pupil.”

  We’re off balance in all kinds of ways as the waves tug us in different directions,
but she’s right – it does feel warmer when you’re moving. And there’s something to be said for her not being able to look at her feet. She seems to be treading on my toes less, or maybe it’s just because I don’t feel her doing it.

  Then she goes for a full-on, dramatic rose-between-the-teeth cross and a wave catches us off balance, tipping us both into the water.

  For a moment I’m fully under – a moment of airless gray-green, all ice and salt. Then my head breaks the surface and I flail for an instant, before I feel her arms under me.

  “Relax,” she says. “I’ve got you.”

  It’s like magic. One moment my limbs are these hopeless, thrashy things that cut through the water and drag me down, and the next they’re happy to hang there just under the surface. I can feel her hands – one between my shoulders and the other on the small of my back – and somehow feeling her there makes all the difference. I’m floating, held in her hands. Holy shit.

  “Told you,” she said. “All you had to do was forget to sink.”

  When she kisses me her lips taste of salt and her skin is icy and wet to the touch. I want to be indoors, warm and dry, rolling around in the big bed with her. She tugs her clothes on while she's still wet and grimaces at the scratch of sand. We start up the path and I slap her lightly on the butt.

  "Move," I say. "I want to collect on this deal as soon as possible."

  I'm still smiling as I approach the door, but the smile freezes the second I see movement behind the glass - a shadow. A person. Amber yanks open the glass door and says, "What the hell are you doing here?"

  John Gillespie is standing in the middle of the room. There's a woman with him - I've never seen her before - short hair, nice legs. She looks middle aged in a well-kept, un-Hollywood kind of way. Amber looks so pissed that I'm surprised her wet hair doesn't start to sizzle.

  "I might ask you the same question," says her father.

  "This is my house!" she hisses. "I can come here if I want to. What gives you the right to barge in on me like this? Everything was fine - I told you everything was fine, didn't I?"

  "Yeah. After the paps chased you for I don't know how many miles," says John Gillespie. "You don't think I was slightly worried?"

  I open my mouth to speak, but I get half a word out before the look in his eyes tells me to stop.