But he definitely hadn’t expected the cold, careful, modulated voice on the line when she’d realized it was him. Hadn’t expected her to say that she didn’t want to talk to him. It was like she’d already set herself up for the absolute worst, and rather than try to make sure that terrible thing didn’t happen, she’d given up, checked out. Her complete shutdown had made him so furious that all he wanted to do was to tear into her, to break down those barriers and make her feel as much as he was feeling, to hurt as much as he was hurting. Love as much as he was still loving, stupid, heartsick, dumb-fuck guy that he was, still just wanting to hold her in his arms and dream about what tomorrow would bring.
Zander closed his eyes, that same terrible storm of emotions washing over him once more, making him ache down to his very bones. When he felt the featherlight touch against his fingers, he opened his eyes again, only to see Erin staring back, her eyes as tortured as his must be. As if she, too, was caught up in memories that couldn’t be undone. Memories and betrayal that cut too deep.
“I’m so sorry, Zander,” she said, her words little more than a whisper.
“I know,” he said, surprised to hear the strain in his own voice. “I’m sorry, too.” He sighed and sat back against the booth, signaling for the waitress. “I think we should head back to the room now,” he said, and his words were leaden. He needed to get out of his own head. With all the memories in there, it was getting too crowded to think.
Chapter 17
Erin tried to come up with something to say on the way back to the room. Something…anything. She tried to imagine a new line of conversation that would bridge the yawning gap that now seemed to stretch between them, awkward and impassable. But it was like trying to slap a Band-Aid on a hatchet wound. She had nothing.
Zander wasn’t talking either, but he held her hand at least. She knew, rationally, that he was only doing that for show, that they were supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend, lovers even. She held on to it anyway, though, trying not to squeeze too hard, trying not to show how wrecked she was, when all she wanted was for him to turn to her and pull her into his arms and tell her he forgave her.
Her lips twisted. Like that was going to—
“You have your key?”
“What?” Erin looked up and Zander was frowning down at her.
“Your key.” He gestured to the door. “I’ve got mine, but we need to keep both of them with us at all times, not leave them behind in the room or at the bar. You have it?”
“Oh. Sure, of course.” She fumbled with her purse, came up with the plastic card. While he waited, she leaned forward and slid it into the door. The lock clicked and the light showed green, and Zander pushed the door open.
“Hang on just a second,” he said. He went into the room like he had when they’d first arrived, checking the beds, the bathroom, the curtains at the large sliding door. When he called out, Erin entered and closed the door behind her, strangely unnerved by his precautions.
“Everything okay?”
“It is.” Zander had turned to lean against the armoire, his eyes seeming to track her as she nervously crossed the room and dropped her purse on the bed. She picked it right back up again, rummaging inside, then pulled out her phone.
“No calls,” she said, blowing out a breath. She’d known there hadn’t been, but the energy between them seemed too…electric, all of a sudden. Charged, like one of the explosives Zander had been talking about, only she didn’t know how to defuse it.
“Good.” Zander snagged the collar of his shirt with his hand and pulled it over his head. Despite herself, Erin stared at the movement of his abs beneath his skin, the hot pulse of desire poking a hole through her mess of conflicting emotions. You’d think I’d be used to seeing his body by now. But, no. Definitely no. His next words, though, totally scrambled her brain. “So…What d’you say we hit the pool?”
“What?” Erin looked up, startled, and just stared as Zander slid out of his shorts, leaving him wearing only a loose pair of boxers.
“C’mon,” he said, giving her a lopsided grin. “We might as well use this pool we have at our doorstep. If there’s nobody there we can skinny-dip.” He waggled his brows as she blinked at him. “If there are, I know for a fact that your underwear looks more like a bikini than anything else, and I can absolutely pass off these boxers as trunks.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not?” He laughed, looking almost boyish suddenly, and even the worst of Erin’s tension started ebbing. This was the Zander she’d fallen in love with, all those years ago. The laughing, happy, ready-for-anything daredevil who’d think nothing of skinny-dipping in a public pool, and who would gleefully drag her along with him.
“Zander—”
“Don’t make me throw you in,” he said, pulling aside the curtain to peer through the slider door. “Hmm. Looks like we won’t be alone. Plan B it is.” He glanced back over his shoulder at her, and gestured to her clothes. “Well, c’mon, babe—strip!”
“Turn out the light at least! Geez!” As Zander chuckled, flipping off the room lights, Erin shoved all her gloomy, depressing thoughts into a corner and shucked off her own clothes. She could still see easily from the lights around the pool area, and when they stepped outside, she realized that Zander had been correct. Two couples were enjoying the hot tub at the far end of the pool, but Zander was heading straight for the water. “Are you sure we’re allowed—”
“Better not to ask,” he said, and he squinted hard at the pool markings lining the concrete rectangle. “This end is as deep as she goes, looks like.” With a quick, agile move, he crouched down and slipped into the water.
Without his comforting presence, Erin crouched as well, feeling suddenly more exposed without him by her side, even though her underwear covered her more than a bikini would. “How is it?”
“Try it and see!” Zander said, paddling away. The lights played off his shoulders as he cut through the water a few more strokes, then turned back to her and bobbed. Without listening to her own hesitant internal warnings anymore, Erin seated herself on the edge of the concrete and slid into the shimmering water.
“Oh!” Her feet touched the pool’s floor as Zander swam back to her. “It’s warm!”
“You try baking in the Mexican sun all day,” Zander said. His voice was low and husky now, and his eyes glinted in the reflected light of the pool. “Come here, you.”
He pulled Erin in to his body, and another knot of resistance loosened within her as he kissed her lightly on the lips, then wrapped his arms around her, tugging her into the deepest part of the pool. She held on to his shoulders, though based on how he was standing, there was no way that the pool was much more than five feet deep. Still, with the natural buoyancy of the water, it was all too easy to let her legs drift up to curve around Zander’s narrow hips, resting on his upper thighs as her ankles crossed behind him. He grinned down at her, his eyes steady and strong. “See?” he asked. “Wasn’t this a good idea?”
“You do tend to have a lot of good ideas,” Erin murmured, feeling the last bit of her melancholy drift away as Zander turned her around, seeking out her mouth again. He kissed her long and intently, as if he was searching for answers, and she pressed her mouth to him, wanting to give him those answers, to say whatever he needed her to say, however he needed to hear it. At the far end of the pool, laughter broke out as glasses clinked, the conversation rising and falling, but here in the water, they were experiencing their own private oasis, where nothing mattered at all—not their past, not their future, not even tomorrow. Erin sighed, her body sagging against Zander’s, feeling the rock-solid strength of him holding her up, the water swishing between them in a motion as old as time.
She was already floating away, as well, when Zander shifted again, and the unmistakable touch of his fingers slid up her thighs, pressing into the vee between her legs.
“Zander!” Erin’s eyes flared open and she squirmed in his iron grasp, even as he laughed
and turned her again. “Zander, knock it off. There are people here—”
“Shhh,” he said, holding her still even as his body moved in a light, swaying motion. “They’re not paying any attention to us, babe.”
“But—” Erin’s protest broke off as Zander’s fingers returned to the edge of her panties, sliding the material aside and finding her clit like he was born to the job. “You can’t—”
“Looks like I can,” he said, and his voice shimmered with pure heat. He flicked his fingers against her, and she couldn’t fight the shudder that rocked her body as the strange combination of sensations conspired to heighten every stroke, every shift of his fingers. “And I’m thinking you should pretty much just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
—
Zander didn’t take his focus off of Erin as she tightened her legs on his thighs. He could feel her heat flaring beneath his fingers, and when he dipped his finger inside her, she tightened around him firmly enough to make his jaw clench.
“Zander,” Erin’s eyes were hooded, but they were hazed only with desire, as if she’d given herself over to the moment—to him—with more abandon than she ever had before.
“Yeah, babe,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her. Her lips parted, and he pressed his tongue into her mouth, exploring her even as he moved his fingers up and back, up and back. She groaned against his mouth and it was his turn to shudder, his body hard and ready to do more than just play.
He hadn’t planned to jump her in a public pool, but there was something about Erin that he just couldn’t resist. Especially not now, her arms encircling him, her perfect breasts half out of her soaked bra, her legs tilted up so that the sweet perfection of her pussy was just begging for him to plunge inside—
Shit. He needed to cool it, pronto, or he was going to seriously—
“Mmmm,” Erin pulled away from his mouth and settled her cheek against his, her lips right at his ear. “You think it would be okay if we played a little more?” She wriggled her ass out of his cupped hand and pressed against his body, where damned if his erection hadn’t found its way out of his boxers, stiff as a pole. She hissed as she felt it, and then her hands were on his boxers, fumbling them down around his hips.
Zander didn’t need any more of a push. With a quick, efficient grab, Zander pulled Erin’s panties down and away as well, not even caring if they still stayed hooked on her somewhere as he hauled her against him. She wrapped her ankles around him and let him push inside her, the buoyancy of the water making her already light body virtually weightless, allowing him to focus all of his attention on the impossibly erotic feel of plunging into her without any barriers. He thrust once, twice, and Erin’s groans of pleasure matched his beat for beat. This just felt so…right. So good. So much like the past that all the urgency of eighteen-year-old Zander was crashing to the fore, playing havoc with the much-tougher Zander of twenty-two. He gritted his teeth to keep himself from coming, and angled back from Erin again, his hands moving so that he could splay them on her belly.
This time, when he flicked his thumb over the swollen nub of her clit, she didn’t protest. She didn’t do anything, really, except arch her back and tighten around his shaft, sending Zander’s own urgency soaring. But he didn’t mind so much, as long as Erin kept writhing against him, humming as he teased and tormented her, her body hitching up in the water, shuddering with her own fight against an orgasm that refused to stay down.
He shifted just a fraction of an inch and that’s all it took. Erin came apart in his arms, her hands flailing, her body lifting, her eyes popping open as if sanity and pleasure had just crashed into each other, making her hyperaware of everything and everyone around her. “Zander!” she gasped, half laughing, half choking on splashed water, and he grinned, lifting her off his swollen cock before he gave in to his almost primal need to explode inside of her. She was still laughing as they touched against the side of the pool, and she flopped her tiny scrap of underwear on the ledge. Zander had no idea where his boxers were, but he really couldn’t give less of a shit about that.
“Mmm…” Erin levered herself up against him, easily reaching his lips without him having to bend down. Her eyes were bright and happier than he could have imagined. As if this all really was time out of time for her, just a date between two lovers. She swung her head around and peered at the far-off couples, whose laughter and chatter still filled the pool area. “How good are those guns of yours, soldier?” she asked.
Zander blinked at her. “What?”
She was placing his hands on either side of her on the edge of the pool. “Give me a little workout here. Lift yourself out of the water.” She tried to help him along by giving his hips a little push, but Zander was right there with her. He locked his arms in place, lifting the weight of his body half out of the pool—which, conveniently enough, allowed his cock to—
“Ahhh, shit,” he muttered, his thoughts scattering as Erin pressed forward, taking the length of him into her mouth. The combination of Erin’s heat on the heels of the cooling pool water was enough to practically send him over the edge, but he was already more than 60 percent gone, and she had to know it. She drew her mouth back all the way up to the tip of his shaft, then played with its head with her tongue.
“You gotta play lookout,” she said, her words soft as she licked her way around his twitching shaft. “Anyone paying attention?”
“No one,” Zander said through gritted teeth. His arms were fine. He could hold himself up like this for hours, if he needed to. But Erin’s mouth on his cock was turning him inside out. He wanted to be inside her, really inside her, but he wasn’t about to stop this little slice of heaven on earth. Not when her mouth felt so good on him, her tongue, her lips.
He hissed a long breath as she moved against him again, taking him to the hilt and pulling back. Only now her fingers were in the game as well, and Zander’s brain scrambled as the rapid-fire sensations ganged up on him.
“I think I really like this pool,” Erin murmured, sliding her mouth along his inner thighs. “I’m thinking if I ever sell the brownstone, there should definitely be a house with a pool in my future.”
“Don’t you even think of doing this to anyone but me,” Zander muttered, and Erin giggled, the sound light and carefree in the warm Mexican night. She kissed her way up his shaft again, her chuckle vibrating against him as his body clenched, every muscle straining against the hot, searing pleasure that was shooting through him, spiraling out of control. Erin pulled away just long enough to whisper, her words floating up so quietly he almost missed them. “Come for me, Zander,” she murmured. “Fill me up.”
Then her mouth was over him again, sweet and hot, and Zander’s fingers gripped the edge of the pool so hard he thought the concrete would crack. Following her orders to the letter, his body bucked in a kind of implosion, his breathing nothing more than a rasp as he came, shattered and shaking, barely able to keep his arms steady as his vision blanked. At length, Erin pulled away, her eyes now mirror bright in the reflected lights from the pool, her face brimming with laughter.
“Now, how are we going to get inside, if you don’t have your underwear?” she asked, her brows lifting with mock innocence.
Zander’s own laugh was a bark of pleasure, rifling across the still water as he sank back into the pool with Erin, taking her into his arms. “I think we can make a run for it,” he murmured, drawing her close. “But there’s absolutely no hurry for that. I’m also starting to really like this pool.”
Chapter 18
Morning dawned bright and hot, and Zander and Erin lay wrapped in each other’s arms, watching the clock. The night had passed like something out of a dream—the two of them finally racing back to their room, half-dressed, then crashing onto the bed laughing and kissing and starting the entire process again, until they were both so spent and sated that they could do nothing more than sleep.
“We can go at any time, you know,” he said, and she nodded, but didn’t make a move t
o get up. Instead she lay perfectly still, as if she was willing this moment to last.
Finally, she sighed, the sound filled with resignation. “We’ll just go down with the packs, right?” she asked. “We sit, I have my phone, they drive up or they’re already there. When they see us, they maybe send a guy up. We don’t let go of the backpack until Mom and her boyfriend are several feet away from the car, ideally all the way up to us. You’ll have a gun. If they do anything weird, I’m supposed to drop and let you handle it.” She blew out a long breath. “That about cover it?”
“Absolutely,” Zander said, leaning forward to kiss her on the shoulder. “You’re gonna do great.”
They made it to the hotel café just before nine o’clock. As the caller had indicated, the small eating space spilled out onto the patio, with a view that overlooked low bushes and the side parking lot of the hotel. They took a seat at the table, and agreed to a breakfast of juice and coffee. Erin was rigid with anticipation, glancing around at the other diners. There were only a handful at this hour, the restaurant’s complimentary buffet long since ended. “Once we get them back, is that it? Do you think we’re going to be followed, or whatever?”
“I doubt it,” Zander said honestly. “Like Rey said, these guys aren’t professionals. They just made the best of the opportunity your mom gave them.”
Erin grimaced. “Way to go, Mom.”
“Well, that definitely works in our favor.” He glanced at her. “Your mom and her boyfriend are in pretty good health, right? As in able to walk on their own, no oxygen tanks or any of that?”
Erin smiled so ruefully Zander felt his heart tug uncomfortably. Holy shit, she really doesn’t have any idea. How long had it been since she’d actually seen her mom?
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