by Marie Force
“Anything.”
“The other night, with me. Was that the first time?”
“No, but it was the first time in a long time and the first time it’s mattered, and that’s why I wanted to tell you about this.”
“I’m glad you told me, but I hate that you had to go through such an awful thing.”
“Thank you. I hate it, too. I hate it for everyone who loved him and all the others who were lost that day. I hate it for him because his life was just getting started, and it was snuffed out by people with no regard for what a gift life is to all of us. I hate a lot of things about it, but more than anything, I hate when people look at me and only see my tragedy.”
He thought about that for several quiet minutes.
Jenny took a sip of her Diet Coke and waited to hear what he would say.
“You said it was the first time that mattered. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know, but it’s been different from the beginning with you. I’m almost afraid to say that, because it’s awfully revealing. And the last thing I want to do is put more pressure on you at a time when you have more than enough to contend with.”
“I don’t feel pressured. I feel honored that you care enough to tell me yourself before I heard it from someone else. I appreciate that you told me what you don’t want, and I get that, too. I hate that everyone here thinks of me as the guy whose mother has dementia. Those things have a way of defining a person.”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh of relief. “Exactly.”
“It was why I liked that you didn’t know who I was at first or what I was dealing with. There was comfort in the anonymity.”
“For me, too. My friends have been fixing me up on dates, and I know the guys are fully prepped, and it’s sweet of my friends to see to that. But I liked it so much better that you didn’t know.”
“I was rough with you.”
“No, you weren’t. You were perfect. If the next time is different, I won’t be happy with you.”
That drew a short laugh from him. “I stand warned.” He looked up at her. “You’re amazing.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve survived the worst possible thing, and you’re still able to laugh and joke and tease and smile so brightly you make me ache. If I say you’re amazing, you’re amazing.”
Deeply touched by his kind words, she said, “It took a really, really long time to be able to do any of those things.”
“I’m sure it did.” He kissed her hand, setting off a firestorm on the surface of her skin with only the rough brush of his whiskers. “Do you feel better after telling me about it?”
“I do. I felt bad last night that I didn’t tell you when you asked me about him. You told me about your family and your mom. It didn’t seem fair that I was unwilling to do the same.”
“You weren’t unwilling. You weren’t ready.” He reached up to caress her face and then wrapped his hand around her nape, giving a gentle tug to bring her down to him, pillowing her head on his arm. “What you said about this being the first time it mattered?”
She nodded, breathless as she waited to hear what he would say.
“It’s the first time it’s mattered for me in a very long time, too. I had a girlfriend in DC when I lived there. I thought she was the one, until she let me know she wasn’t going to wait around for me to work out my family issues.”
“She actually said that?”
“In so many words. But the funny thing was, I barely gave her a thought after we broke up. I guess it wasn’t what I thought it was.”
“She hurt you.”
“She disappointed me more than anything.”
“I heard what you said about this being a bad time for you to start anything—”
“It is a bad time. Probably the worst possible time, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s already started.”
Jenny rested her hand on his face. “For me, too.”
He curled his arm and brought her in close enough to kiss her.
“Don’t you want to finish your lunch?” she asked over the racing beat of her heart.
“I’m ready to move on to dessert.”
“How about I put the rest of this away and then we talk about dessert?”
“Hurry up about it. Dessert is my favorite part of the meal.”
He made her laugh when she’d expected to cry. He made her smile all the time. He embarrassed the hell out of her sometimes, but even that was charming. Most important, he made her feel again after twelve years of numbness that she’d once thought was permanent.
With the remnants of the picnic back in the bags and set off to the side, Jenny said, “We’ve got cookies for dessert.”
He held out his arms to her. “I had something sweeter in mind.”
Jenny snuggled into his embrace.
“I don’t want to get you all dirty.”
“I don’t care. I’m going home after this.”
“That sounds like a green light for dirty,” he said with a sexy grin.
“Wait. What did I just agree to?”
“I’ll show you.” He kissed her long and hard, his tongue demanding and persuasive.
That he now knew her story but still wanted her and still kissed her the same way he always had was a huge relief that had her relaxing in his arms. His lips and hands were everywhere, or so it seemed, and then he was on top of her, their bodies aligned for sensual pleasure. “I want you right here,” he whispered, his lips soft and his whiskers rough against her neck.
Jenny shivered from desire as much as the need she heard in his voice. “What if someone comes?”
“We’ll both come. That’s the point.”
“Alex! You know what I mean.”
Laughing at her outrage, he pressed his hard cock against her, letting her know how badly he wanted her. “There’s no one around. We won’t get caught.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, live dangerously.” As he said the words, his hand traveled up her leg, taking her skirt with it as it went.
While she was still formulating her objections, he had her dress completely off.
“Alex…”
“Shhh, relax. Trust me.” His lips on her neck were almost as persuasive as his gruffly spoken words.
Powerless to resist the desire that thrummed through her like a live wire connected directly to an electrical source, Jenny decided to trust him and forced her rigid muscles to relax.
“That’s it,” he whispered as he kissed his way to the tops of her breasts. He reached under her to release her bra with one-handed skill that indicated lots of practice. She’d have to ask him about that sometime. With her breasts bared to his intense gaze, she couldn’t have found the words just then.
He bent his head and ran his tongue in teasing circles around her straining nipple.
Jenny grabbed his head and tried to direct him where she wanted him, but he wouldn’t be rushed. By the time he finally sucked the tip into the heat of his mouth, she was prepared to beg. He made it well worth the wait with a combination of tugging, sucking, biting and swipes of his tongue that had her pressing her sex against his shamelessly.
And then he switched sides and did the whole thing over again.
The sweltering heat made her skin slick with perspiration as he slid down the front of her, forcing her legs apart with his broad shoulders.
“Alex, no. Not that. Not here.”
“Yes that. Yes here.” He pulled her panties down and tossed them aside, using his hands to open her to his questing tongue.
Jenny couldn’t believe this was happening, right out in the open in broad daylight when anyone could come upon them and find his face buried between her legs. She also couldn’t deny it was the hottest, sexiest thing she’d ever done. And when he sucked on her clitoris and pushed two fingers slowly and carefully into her, she ceased to think of anything other than the exquisite pleasure that accompanied the slight bite of pain.
She wasn’t entirely recovered from the last time, but he took it easy on her, seeming to sense she was still sore.
“Hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
“Tell me if it does.” He went back for more, his tongue relentless as he took her up, up, up to the straining edge of completion, and then backed off, leaving her hanging and desperate. “I want to be inside you when you come.” He knelt before her, wiped his face with the back of his hand and pulled open his shorts.
With all her earlier reservations about where this was happening forgotten, Jenny held out her arms to him, welcoming him as he came down on top of her, kissing her with broad sweeps of his tongue, which bore her flavor. The blunt nudge of his cock between her legs required her full attention until he moved ever so slightly, abrading her nipples with his chest hair.
God, he was nonstop sensory overload—and sex on a stick. Let’s not forget that part. The thought made her giggle at the worst possible moment.
“What the hell is so funny?”
His indignant tone only fueled her laughter.
“Don’t you know how crushing it is to a guy’s ego to have a woman dissolve into laughter when he’s trying to make love to her?”
“There’s nothing wrong with your ego.”
“Tell me what’s so funny?”
“My nickname for you.”
“Do I want to hear this?”
Jenny started laughing again.
He took advantage of her preoccupation to nibble on her neck, which turned her laughter into moans of pleasure. At the same time, he teased her with the slide of his erection over her sex as his fingers tweaked her nipples.
Suddenly, nothing was funny anymore. She arched her back, seeking him. “Alex… Please.”
“Not until I hear my nickname.”
“Sex on a stick.”
He stopped moving to look down at her. “Are you for real?”
She bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing again at the incredulous look on his face. “Um, if the stick fits…”
Alex slid into her slowly but surely. “The stick definitely fits.”
Jenny sighed with relief and pleasure. “Yes, it definitely does.”
“Sex on a stick,” he said with a disdainful laugh. “I should spank your ass until it’s hot pink for that.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?” He looked down at her, watching her intently. “Anything hurt?”
“No.”
“Will you tell me if it does?”
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on the delicious sensations traveling from her core to every sensitive place on her body. She tingled everywhere, from her scalp to her lips to her nipples to the soles of her feet. His slow possession was every bit as overwhelming as the fast and furious coupling the other night.
Jenny forgot all about where they were, the emotionally fraught conversation they’d just had and everything other than the sublime pleasure they generated together.
“So fucking good,” he whispered gruffly against her neck as he hooked his arm under her leg, opening her wider to his possession.
Jenny cried out when he went deeper, igniting a fire inside her. “Don’t stop,” she said, grasping his backside.
He groaned and pressed harder into her, which was all she needed.
Her cries of completion melded with his as they strained together, lost in a moment of perfect harmony.
“Holy shit,” he said as he gasped for breath.
“We’re a sweaty mess.”
“I know.” He throbbed inside her as she twitched with aftershocks. “Isn’t it awesome? Stick with me, kid. I’ll get you dirty any time you want.”
“I’m starting to want pretty much all the time.”
He raised his head off her chest and touched his lips to hers. “Is that right?”
Jenny nodded, unable to look away from the dark-chocolate gaze that had captivated her from the very beginning.
“I’m right there with you. It’s a good thing you can’t know how often I think about you while I’m working. You’d want to get a restraining order.”
His words weren’t flowery or romantic, but they went straight to her heart just the same.
She reached up to push his hair back from his sweaty forehead. “You need to get back to work.”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “But not yet. A few more minutes in paradise, please?”
When he asked so nicely, how could she deny him anything? Despite the outrageous heat that was multiplied by his nearness, she wrapped her arms around him and held him close.
Chapter 14
Grant McCarthy tried to meet his friend Dan Torrington at least once a week so they could read each other’s work and offer critiques. While Dan was a lawyer and not a writer by trade, he’d had some excellent suggestions for the screenplay Grant was writing about Stephanie’s efforts to free her stepfather from prison after he was wrongfully accused of abusing her.
The writing of the screenplay had been more emotionally exacting than he’d expected it to be, as he relived the horror of Stephanie’s childhood through interviews with her and her stepfather, Charlie Grandchamp. It had taken some time for Charlie to open up to Grant about the details of the abuse and neglect Stephanie had withstood at the hands of her mother, some of which he’d heard for the first time from Charlie.
That left him with a dilemma—did he tell Stephanie what he’d learned from Charlie or let her read about it in the screenplay? He was still mulling over that question when Dan came bounding into the South Harbor Diner, looking woefully out of place on Gansett with his wrinkled dress shirt and the loafers he insisted on wearing with shorts, even though he looked like a total fool.
Dan stopped to chat with Rebecca, who owned the diner, which was jammed for a weekday morning.
From what all the women said, Dan could wear anything he wanted, because he was so good-looking he could get away with it. Whatever. Grant loved to bust on him about how out of place his West Coast style was on their East Coast island, but his opinion on such things didn’t matter to Dan. No, Dan was far more interested these days in Grant’s opinion of the book he was laboring to write about the unjust convictions he’d helped to overturn.
Ever since the day they’d spent in freezing-cold water together after a sailboat accident, Dan had felt more like a brother than a friend, and Grant was thrilled to have him around—not that he’d ever tell Dan that. His ego was big enough without that kind of validation.
Dan slid into the booth across from Grant. “Sorry I’m late. My mom called right when I was leaving, and she’s full of questions about me and Kara.” Dan rolled his eyes. “She’s like a dog with a bone.”
“Nice. Comparing your mother to a dog. How did she find out about the ‘bone,’ as you call it?”
“I refuse to refer to the woman I love as ‘the bone.’”
“Why? Does it give you a boner?”
“Jesus. Shut up, will you? I might’ve made the huge mistake of mentioning that I’d met someone here. You should know how mothers of sons in their mid-thirties get hopeful at the first sign of commitment of any kind.”
“So it’s your own fault that she’s planning the wedding.”
“Yes, I guess it is.”
“Speaking of weddings, is there going to be one?”
“Not you, too! We’re not talking about weddings or other such foolishness. We’re enjoying our time together. Why isn’t that enough for everyone?”
“Because you’re no longer in your mid-thirties. You’re thirty-six now, which is that side of forty rather than this side of thirty. You ain’t getting any younger.”
Dan picked up the bread knife and ran it over his wrist.
“Not sharp enough,” Grant said. “And I didn’t waste an entire day saving your sorry life so you could end it with a dull butter knife just because your mom wants you to get married.”
“Wasted? I’m hurt.”
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“Not anymore you aren’t. So what’s stopping you from popping the question? You know you don’t want to let her get away.”
“What’s stopping you from getting married? Seems to me you popped the question quite some time ago, but I don’t hear any bells ringing in your neighborhood either.”
Grant kept his expression impassive as Dan’s question struck at the heart of his insecurities. Despite frequent attempts on his part, Stephanie had dodged all conversations about setting a date for their wedding. But Grant would never admit that to anyone, so he went with the obvious excuse. “We’re both so busy. We haven’t had time to breathe, let alone plan a wedding. We’re not in any rush.”
“Need I remind you that you’re thirty-six now, too? Just in case you’d forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” That was one of his many concerns. He wanted a family, and he also wasn’t getting any younger. At some point he’d have to sit Stephanie down and force the issue, but he was reluctant to do that during her busy season at the restaurant, when she had more than enough going on. Timing was everything in these matters, so he planned to wait until October, after the season ended, to try to get her to set a date.
After hearing last night that Evan and Grace were getting married in January, he felt a greater sense of urgency to nail down his plans with Stephanie. They’d been engaged longer than Evan and Grace. Shouldn’t they have plans by now? Even after more than a year together, he still worried from time to time that they weren’t as solid as they could be. Part of that went back to her upbringing and her constant fear of the floor falling out from under her without any warning.
That was one reason why he’d proposed when he did. He wanted to assure her that he was in it for keeps, but every time she dodged talk of their wedding, he had reason to wonder if she was in it for keeps, too. The very thought that she might not be was enough to give him heart failure, so he tried not to think about it. Much… Absorbed as he was in writing about her fourteen-year effort to free her beloved stepfather from prison, it was hard not to think about her all the time.
This was especially true in light of the crisis they’d withstood following the sailboat accident, when he’d been so riddled with guilt over his inability to save both Dan and the boat captain, Steve, who’d died.