Waves of Passion: Contemporary Romance (Holidays Beach Read Book 3)

by Lori Ann Mitchell

  Waves of Passion

  By

  Lori Ann Mitchell

  Waves of Passion Lori Ann Mitchell

  Copyright© 2015 by Lori Ann Michell.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.

  Contact information: LoriAnnMitchell32@gmail.com

  Don't miss the previous books in the series:

  Table of contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Prologue

  Derek

  Derek stood on the second floor deck of his beach house, sipping a beer and feeling the day’s last light wash over his skin. Summer was nearly over, the long, endless nights a little shorter, the endless days a little less endless. His skin was bronze from his time shared between the beach and the sea; his hair longer now, dirty blond from the long summer days.

  Sage was in Orlando at a bookseller’s convention, due to be back any minute. He’d thought about tagging along for the three-hour road trip into Central Florida, but she wasn’t planning on staying the night and besides, what did the big city have to offer that sleepy little Seaside, Florida, didn’t? Besides Sage, that is.

  He sighed and sipped his beer, bemused by how much he missed her! She’d only left that morning and would be back by dark, and yet he felt like she’d been gone for days. How far Derek’s life had come from the carefree surf bum he’d been when they first met earlier that year.

  One day he’d been hopping in and out of towns, on and off surfboards and in and out of beds and, the next… Sage was in his life. It happened so quickly he didn’t even realize she was what he needed until he couldn’t live without her. Beautiful, calm, smart, radiant, feisty and funny, she had captured his heart – and his loyalty – and his life had never been the same, or better.

  Today he was a proud home owner, standing on the second floor of his own beach cottage that he bought a week earlier as a summer home-slash-rental property. Sage had recently finished the long, involved process of moving in with him and, as if that wasn’t enough, he’d just sent in the first draft of his latest book, Locals Only, to his publisher. Not bad for a guy who’d made a career out of his blogging and, later, publishing his surfing exploits all over the globe.

  His cell phone bleated lazy surf sounds and he reached for it immediately swiping the screen of his smart phone without even noting the number.

  “Sage?” he gushed, sounding giddy and childlike as he peered out over the town he now called home. “Tell me you’re back in town already.”

  “Sage?” grunted the voice of his longtime publisher, Carol Manning. “Are you… is that the girl you gave up your writing career for?”

  “Oh, hi Carol,” Derek chuckled, deflating somewhat and sipping his beer disappointedly. “And no, I didn’t give up my writing career for her. Geez, I just sent you my latest draft.”

  “I know, I know,” Carol chuckled, softening a bit. Their relationship had changed ever since Derek had taken up nearly permanent residence in Seaside. Gone were the far flung, sexy, travelogues he used to write for her, and which she made a pretty penny off of.

  Now, their discussions were usually less jovial, and a lot more businesslike. “And I love it, as usual,” she made sure to include. “But listen, something’s come across my desk and, well… I think it’d be great for you.”

  Derek leaned against the railing, scratching his arm with his free hand. “Yeah, what is it?”

  “So there’s this Guest Lecturer program out at Southern California Community College,” she explained rapidly, launching into what Derek jokingly referred to as “business mode,” much to Carol’s chagrin. “You know, they’ll invite professionals from a few different industries – social media, technology, fashion, design, the whole gamut. Anyway, they always invite an author or two to teach there every semester. I was thinking…”

  Derek tried to keep his tone level. “I thought I made it clear I wasn’t traveling for awhile, Carol.”

  “I know, I know,” she chuckled, trying to diffuse the situation. “But this is different. Five months, room and board, even a small stipend and you get a shit load of free publicity teaching, wait for it… travel writing.”

  “Really?” Derek asked, mildly curious. “Just travel writing.”

  “You get a whole course to yourself,” Carol gushed, as if perhaps she was thinking of doing it herself. “So, basically, you teach three days a week, the rest of the time is yours. I’m thinking you might use your class syllabus as a rough outline and spend all that free time writing a book about travel writing, it’s like… getting paid to write a book.”

  “Wow,” Derek murmured, scratching his fuzzy chin. He needed a shave. “That’s… I dunno, Carol… that’s kind of hard to resist.”

  “Soooooo don’t resist it then.” She laughed and so did he.

  “Well,” he hemmed, peering at the ocean two short blocks away and thinking how much he’d miss it. If… he took the teaching position that is. “Can I at least sleep on it?”

  Carol clucked a tongue, trying – and failing – to hide her impatience. “Sure, kid, but… not too long, okay? I need to nail down the details with the English department before the end of the week, so… can you at least give me an answer by tomorrow, one way or the other?”

  His phone buzzed and he smiled. “Sure, yes… absolutely, Carol. Listen, uh… Sage is calling in, so… I’ll holler back at you first thing tomorrow, okay?”

  “You know you want to do this, kid,” she said and, despite himself, Derek nodded.

  “I hear you, but… lemme sleep on it anyway. Bye!”

  “Hey babe,” he said in the same breath, both eager – and afraid – to tell Sage the good news…

  Chapter 1

  Sage

  “I never thought I’d say this, Derek, but… get the hell out of town!”

  Sage laughed, cupping her oversized glass of red wine with two hands as they sat on the back deck, the late July evening just cool enough to try out the new chiminea she’d bought Derek as a housewarming present earlier that week.

  He sat up in his weathered wooden Adirondack chair and did a double take, looking even more handsome in the clay fire pit’s glow. “What?” he blurted, looking like a kid who’d just been told he could open one present – just one present – on Christmas Eve. “You… you actually want me to do it?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Sage asked, almost insulted by the question.

  Derek shrugged. “I’m not saying you wouldn’t want me to go, it’s just… geez, I thought you’d put up a little more of a fight, that’s all.”

  She laughed, tired from her long day at the bookseller’s convention in Orlando, yet elated for him. “Why would I fight you on this one, Derek? I mean, it sounds like a great opportunity for you and, besides, I might be able to wrangle a trip out to California out of it at some point.”

  She’d always considered California as one of her “bucket list” items and, like so many other things Derek had introduced her to over the last ye
ar – multiple orgasms, surfing, multiple orgasms in the double digits, fried clam strips and more multiple orgasms – it seemed she might be ticking off that particular item a lot sooner than expected.

  “Yeah?” he asked, and Sage wasn’t sure if he was excited about the prospect of her visiting him at some point… or not. “That… man, I never even thought of that, babe. That would be awesome, you coming out for a visit.”

  He looked so excited, making Sage grateful – yet slightly embarrassed – for these moments when her boyfriend showed every one of his twenty-something years.

  “So when would you start?” she asked, wondering how long they had to store up enough affection for the long, fall semester.

  He smirked, avoiding her eyes. “Well, I haven’t answered her yet,” he confessed, “but while you were driving back from Orlando, I texted Carol a few times just, you know, feeling her about the timetable and she said I’d need to be there… next week?”

  “Wow,” Sage said, suddenly regretting her earlier enthusiasm. “So soon?”

  He nodded, looking equal parts defensive and disappointed as well. “Well, I’d need to write up a syllabus for the class and get it approved by the head of the department and get settled in my dorm and…”

  “Dorm?” she snickered, unable to help herself.

  Derek sighed, sipping his beer. “Yeah, when Carol said ‘room and board’ I was thinking something a little more… mature. But they actually have a special dorm for the visiting professor program, so… hopefully I won’t have to decide between the top bunk and the bottom.”

  “I’m dating a ‘visiting professor’ now,” she teased. “I think I’m going to like this.”

  “You’re weird,” he said, shaking his head playfully. “Here I was, worried you’d flip out and… now you’re practically kicking me out the door. I don’t get you, Sage. Whatever I think you’re going to do, you don’t, and whatever I think you’re not going to do, you do!”

  She sighed, the reality of the next five months suddenly dawning on her. “Maybe I’m just in denial,” she said, sipping her wine as the margherita pizza they’d just had delivered cooled on the kitchen counter.

  He nodded, silently, as if understanding. “It’s kind of sinking in for me as well,” he confessed. “It didn’t sound like so long at first but, if you think about it… it’s almost half a year.”

  She shivered at the realization. “I know, Derek, but… it’s almost half a year you can’t turn down, you know? Teaching a few hours a week, writing the rest, free room and board? You’d be kicking yourself if you passed on an opportunity like that, and I’d feel guilty if I let you.”

  He chuckled, standing and nodding and smiling down at her. “I know, Sage, I just… decisions like this are harder now, you know?”

  “Being a new homeowner and all?” she teased him.

  “You know what I mean,” he said before drifting inside. Sage sank deeper into her chair, the wine and the fire relaxing her in ways she’d become far too accustomed to these last few months. She would miss these long, endless summer nights on the deck with Derek. The distant crashing of the ocean waves, salt spray in the air, warm breezes in her hair, Derek’s smile soft and lazy one chair over.

  She heard him clinking around in the fridge, grabbing himself a fresh beer and pausing before, gently, soft and sultry reggae music followed him onto the deck. She smirked as he offered his hand, taking it as he gently helped her out of her chair.

  They stood, face to face, bare feet on the wooden deck beneath them. He clung to her loosely, and she to him, as the slow reggae found them arm in arm, turning gently around the deck.

  His skin was warm from the sun and his young, sultry breath even warmer on her shoulders as they swayed in time to the jazzy-funky-steel drum instrumentals oozing from his playlist on the coffee table inside the open French doors.

  She hadn’t had anything on her mind, in particular, for that night, but clinging to his bare arms as they danced, feeling his hard muscles and warm skin beneath her hands, made her shiver with anticipation of what might happen anyway.

  They took it slow and soft, his lips reaching slightly down to brush against hers before she returned the kiss, more fervently as their bodies inexplicably drifted closer to one another’s. Their little circles around the porch grew tighter, their kisses more zealous, his breathing heavier… or was it hers?

  She had worn a casual maroon crinkly skirt and black sleeveless blouse to the conference and it swished, slightly, with each gentle shift and wriggle of their soft, slow dance.

  She found her back pressed against the wooden railing that surrounded the porch as Derek pulled gently away, peering down at her. “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he gasped, lips full and glossy from their kissing, eyes wide with delight.

  “Stop,” she croaked, breathless at his beauty under the full moonlight.

  “I want to make you come right there,” he said, making her both shiver and chuckle at his sudden dirty talk.

  “Stop, Derek,” she said, looking around but making no move to leave her spot. “Someone will see.”

  “The renters have all gone home for the summer,” he said, peering down the row of darkened beach cottages that lined his street. “We’re all alone for now.”

  “Still,” she murmured breathlessly as his hands drifted down to her waist. “Someone could walk by. It’s… it’s…” Her words caught in her throat as the sensation of his hands along her body took her breath away.

  “Tell me to stop, Sage,” he said, kneeling gently down to run his hands beneath her crinkly skirt. “And I’ll stop.”

  He had reached her panties and, a thumb hooked under either side of the waistband, he tugged playfully, wriggling them down an inch or two before pausing to await her verdict.

  “Don’t stop,” she murmured, risqué and suddenly just as playful as her young lover. “Just. Hurry!”

  He tugged her panties down, quickly, tossing them into a moist, damp heap next to her bare feet as he stood back up, placing his soft, full lips against hers as the pressure from his long, lean body wedged her against the wooden railing at her back. They kissed, gently, lovingly, longingly as her naked pussy wept and pressed against the straining zipper of his bulging cargo pants.

  “Not like that,” he muttered between long, lingering, breathless kisses. With his left hand clinging to the wooden railing for support, his right hand drifted beneath the elastic waistband of her skirt and slid along the damp ridge of her pubic trail until his index finger, long and tender, glanced along her throbbing bud.

  “Oh,” she murmured, biting her lower lip to stifle a strange, sudden urge to squeal and whimper and moan at Derek’s expert touch. “Like… that.”

  “Just like this, baby,” he said, using a finger on either side of her glistening mound to tease her quivering clit to life and please it with each glancing inch of loving, knowing skin.

  “We’ve… never tried it like this,” she panted, breath catching in her throat as he intensified his rhythm, pressing and rubbing, teasing and rasping, until she began to grind against him, neighbors – and public decency laws – be damned!

  He leaned closer, breath hot and insistent as he whispered in her ear, “I figure if I’m leaving in a week, it’s time to pull out all the stops and start trying some new things before I go.”

  “Oh,” she panted, already close to coming. “Oh, well… don’t let me stop you.”

  He chuckled, hot and fierce as he nibbled her earlobe and fingered her pussy and breathed on her neck and tempted her lips with his own. His fingers were working her now, the throbbing and quaking and glistening making her hotter than the burning logs in the clay fireplace.

  “You want me to stop?” he teased her, dragging his fingers away playfully as his fingertips rasped through her raven pubic hair before dancing upward to her belly button.

  “No,” she gushed, feeling her belly shiver and drizzle with sweat from the summer heat. “Don’t stop, baby. Please, dam
n… make me come, Derek!”

  “I should keep going?” he asked, dragging his fingertips gently – then more insistently – back down to gather along her throbbing clit.

  “Go baby,” she panted, beginning to buck and cling to him.

  “Tell me,” he panted, voice just above a whisper, body dripping with sweat. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Go,” she whimpered as his fingers applied more pressure, then less, then more, gliding up, then down, as she could feel the pressure building. “Go,” she squeaked. “Go,” she squealed. “Go, go, go!”

  Sage came, bursting forth in a breathless shiver that found her whole body trembling, hands clinging to Derek’s shoulders as the waves throbbed and ebbed and flowed through her whole body.

  He paused, fingers slick in her flowing juices until sensing her ready once more, he needed but press once, maybe twice, before she came again… and again and again.

  “Oh Jesus,” she murmured, pushing him away and straightening her skirt with trembling hands as if suddenly coming to her senses as she realized they were still on Derek’s deck. “I can’t… no more,” she said, taking his hand.

  “Wh… where are we going?” he asked, peering back at the porch as she dragged him inside.

  “What I’m going to do to you, Derek,” she murmured, tossing him on the bed and tugging off her blouse as she licked her lips and prepared to use them for as long as it took, “can’t be shown in public.”

  He chuckled, squirming out of his clothes as he lay, long, tan and brilliant in his soft white sheets. “I like the sound of that,” he gushed before she fell atop of him, drowning his words with her hungry, eager lips and taking his breath away with her own expert hands...

  Chapter 2

  Derek

  “So… yeah…” Kendrick, the kid showing Derek around the campus of Southern California Community College, was young like teenage young, freshman young.