When he reached across her lap to do the same for her, she sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t want to be your latest diversion, Ben,” she said, stilling his hand. “A temporary, meaningless replacement for Olivia.”
He stared at his hand on her hip, feeling a dark storm of emotions wage inside him. He couldn’t lie and say he hadn’t thought of Olivia today. Being at Lisette’s wake had brought back a thousand memories, some painful, most bittersweet.
He was finally letting go of her, and that hurt almost as much as losing her the first time.
“I’m not looking for a replacement for Olivia,” he admitted. “What I’ve always wanted is to have her back.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she tried to push away from him.
“Wait,” he said. “If I had the choice, right now, to have her in my arms or to hold on to you, I’d choose you.” He cleared his throat, feeling anger and sadness building there. “And I hate you for that. I hate you for taking her away from me.”
Her mouth softened with understanding. She lifted her hand to the nape of his neck and threaded her fingers through the short hair there, soothing him, enflaming him. One touch from her and his body was on instant alert, as ready as he’d been in the Bruebakers’ closet. He didn’t want this good-bye to mean too much but he couldn’t bear for it to mean too little, so when he lowered his head to kiss her, he tried to hold his desire in check.
When he swept his tongue over her bottom lip, she made an urgent sound and opened her mouth, not just allowing his entry but actively seeking it. She tasted so good he wanted to fall upon her like a savage beast. Impeded more by bucket seats than self-control, he pulled her into his lap, fumbling with a lever that moved the steering wheel back a few inches.
She squirmed on him, her bottom teasing his erection, and he groaned into her mouth. He was so intent on penetration, with his tongue sinking deep and his hands moving beneath her clothes, that he could hardly concentrate on giving her pleasure. If he could have unzipped his fly and buried himself in her then and there, he would have, but in the meantime, her breasts were a delightful distraction.
It took very little effort to tug down the front of her sweater and push aside the lacy cups of her bra. Her breasts popped free, exquisite and caramel-tipped. Mesmerized, he took one pale brown nub into his mouth, then the other, bathing her nipples with his tongue until they were as wet and stiff as beach pebbles.
She moaned and put his hand between her legs, pressing hard.
Outside the open window on his left side, seagulls chattered noisily and human voices carried on the wind.
Ben lifted his head, panting. The beach was quiet but not deserted. A small crowd was the norm during winter break. “Get in the back,” he said in a low voice.
Her eyes were smoky and her mouth wet. She nibbled on her lower lip for a moment, deliberating.
“The windows are tinted,” he added, helping her off his lap.
The back of his SUV had an extra stretch of space he used to house his surfboards. The conditions weren’t always stellar at Windansea, so he often took short trips up and down the coast. Right now the aisle was clear of equipment, and although it would be a tight squeeze, he thought they could manage. Urgency dictated that he try, at any rate. His cock had been throbbing for what seemed like hours.
By the time he got his long legs untangled and climbed into the back of the SUV, she had already solved the mystery of how they were going to proceed. On her hands and knees, she undid her zipper and lowered her pants, exposing her sweetly rounded bottom, covered only by a pair of very brief, very sheer, blue panties.
Giving him a hot, hesitant glance over her shoulder, she dropped those, too.
Ben was floored by the erotic sight. He knew how aroused she was; he could smell her tangy scent and see the proof on her glistening slit. He wanted to have that moisture on his bare cock, to test it with his fingertips and taste it on his lips.
Wracked by lust, he stared at her, frozen in place.
“Take off your shirt,” she said.
God, he loved it when she bossed him around. He pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it aside, enjoying the feel of her eyes on his naked skin. He wasn’t cold, but his muscles were tense with longing, his nipples tight and hard.
She moistened her lips. He wanted her mouth on him, too, but her gaze dropped to his distended fly and she said, “Hurry,” ruining him for foreplay. He didn’t know why the pressure had escalated to such an agonizing degree, but if he didn’t get a condom on right now he was going to come, with or without her.
With trembling hands, he took the package out of his wallet and unzipped his fly. She was watching him intently, arching her spine in anticipation, and even the process of stretching latex over taut skin, a sensation that was always more awkward than pleasurable, threatened to send him off.
He positioned himself behind her, slipping the tip of his cock between the plump folds of her sex. She made a breathy little sound and backed into him, wanting more, and he couldn’t help but push forward, all the way to the hilt, plunging deep into her sleek heat.
“Oh!” she gasped, digging her nails into his upper thigh.
He closed his eyes, savoring the unparalleled ecstasy of being inside her. She was so smooth and slick, he gritted his teeth against the urge to start pumping.
For most of his adult life, Ben had been as selfish in the bedroom as he had been everywhere else. He’d learned more about pleasing a woman during his brief marriage than in too many years of indiscriminate sex.
He regretted that he’d never taken his time with Sonny and probably never would. Doing her hard against a wall and taking her from behind in the back of his truck didn’t exactly showcase his level of maturity.
The least he could do, this last time, was get her off first.
He flattened his palm over her belly, his heart knocking hard against his ribs, his breath rasping against the back of her neck. She jerked and moaned, trying to move, but he held her in place, knowing he had only a few moments before he exploded. Stomach muscles quivering under the effort of restraint, he reached up with one hand and down with the other, brushing his fingertips over her stiff nipples and parting the damp curls at the top of her sex.
A few quick strokes and she was flying apart, crying out as her snug sheath gripped him like a silky fist.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, unable to stay still a second longer. Moving his hands to her hips, he drew back and lunged forward, thrusting into her again and again. He was locked in, driving hard and deep, riding the wave of her orgasm as his own slammed into him. It hit like a white hot crusher, closing out on the back of his skull and washing over his entire body, rushing from the base of his balls to the tip of his cock.
When it was over, he collapsed on her back, his legs quaking as if he’d just come in from a marathon session.
She didn’t complain about his weight, but he slid off her, vaguely aware that while he was struggling to recover, she was setting her clothes to rights. Embarrassed by how roughly he’d handled her, he got rid of the condom and jerked up his pants, casting a guilty look toward the front windshield to make sure no one had caught a glimpse of them.
He considered apologizing, because he knew she’d been honest about her past. Underneath her tough-girl exterior, she wasn’t that experienced with men.
“I have to get home,” she said. “I’ve got a meeting with Grant.”
He stared back at her for a moment, disliking her carefully composed expression. “You’re lying.”
Her brows rose. “Why would I bother?”
“Because you’re going to do something dangerous, and you don’t want me to worry.”
“Why would you worry?” she asked lightly. “You hate me.”
Anger flared in his belly. Those words had been closer to a confession of love than hate, and she damned well knew it. “If you think you know who murdered my wife,” he said, gripping her upper arms, “I want you to tell me.”<
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Her cool blue gaze met his. “Why would I do that?”
So I can protect you, he wanted to shout. So I can do for you what I couldn’t do for her. “So I can kill him,” he said, because he wanted to do that, too.
She laughed in his face. Her gaiety was forced, but it still made him furious. “Ben,” she said, cupping her hand over his cheek. “Catching bad guys is what I’m good at. Why don’t you stick with what you’re good at?” Slowly, insolently, she rubbed her thumb across his mouth, tracing the scar he’d had, compliments of a surfboard fin, since he was seventeen.
By implying that he was just another dumb surfer with a soft head and a hard dick, she was trying to make him mad, and it worked. But what really got to him was the feeling of helplessness. She would do whatever she wanted, no matter what he said.
He pulled away from her and climbed back behind the wheel, driving her home in silence. After he dropped her off, he watched her ascend the stairs to her apartment, wondering if he’d ever see her again. At that moment, he decided karma was a real bitch.
Now he knew exactly how Olivia must have felt every time he walked away.
CHAPTER 22
James approached Carly’s front door, a lump in his throat and a package under one arm. Taking a deep breath, he raised his left hand, the one that wasn’t covered with angry red scabs and ugly black sutures, to knock.
Ben answered the door, his face set in criticism. “Yeah?”
James cleared his throat. “Is Carly home?”
“Yes.”
They stared each other down for a moment.
“Can I see her?”
Ben widened his stance and crossed his arms over his chest. The movement emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the size of his biceps. James felt puny in comparison, as he was assuredly meant to. “What for?”
He paused, searching for the right words. “To apologize for yesterday,” he said, glancing back at his dad’s old blue junker. Stephen was slouched in the passenger seat, offering nothing by way of encouragement. “And to, uh, give her back the watch she gave me. It’s too expensive, and…” He started to say that he wasn’t worth such a gift, but that sounded pathetic. “And I wanted to ask if she would go with me to distribute my mom’s ashes.” There, that was better. Still pathetic, but more to the point.
Ben considered him for a moment. “Do you remember how you felt when I dragged Carly across the parking lot by the arm? When you said I was hurting her?”
James nodded miserably.
“That’s how I felt yesterday. Do you get me?”
“Yessir,” he replied. He held out the box containing the watch he’d never worn. “Just give this back to her for me, and I won’t bother her anymore.”
The watch was probably worth more than the truck James was driving, but Ben didn’t bother to take it from him. “Carly,” he yelled, turning toward the stairs. “James is here.” With that, he cast an averse glance over his shoulder and walked away. It wasn’t a good-luck wish, but it was better than getting a door slammed in his face.
Carly came down the stairs, looking so fantastically beautiful that James’ heart threatened to burst from his chest. Her black eyes flashed with defiance and her hair bounced jauntily with each step. She was wearing jeans and a faded T-shirt with gold lettering across the front. TRIUMPH, it said. Even James knew it was some kind of motorcycle, but that detail paled in comparison to the way her breasts moved beneath the soft cotton.
On the last few steps she slowed down, sticking her hands into her pockets and hunching her slim shoulders in a way that was irresistibly tentative. A silky strip of midriff was visible between the hem of her T-shirt and the low waistband of her jeans. Less than an inch of taut, smooth skin, more than enough to send his pulse skyrocketing.
He jerked his gaze from her belly to her face. She stopped in the entryway, waiting for him to speak.
All the words he’d practiced on the way over, everything he’d imagined saying while he lay in bed awake last night, every carefully constructed explanation flew from his mind in that moment, and he could only stare at her.
Incredibly, he felt the burn of tears behind his eyes. He’d cried a little last night, but it had been a painful, awkward release, as if his heart wanted to keep the agony locked away inside, holding him prisoner. Now, in front of the one person he wanted to be strong for, he was breaking down like a baby.
She pulled the door shut behind her. “James?”
He shook his head, unable to reply. He desperately tried to deny his emotions, to hold it together, to keep the tears from falling.
He wasn’t up to that task, either.
She took the box from his trembling hands and set it aside. Then she put her arms around his neck, let him bury his face in her shoulder, and held him there while he cried.
Ben had misgivings about letting Carly go with James and his hoodlum brother to scatter his mother’s ashes, but the poor kid was so emotionally wrecked that Ben couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, and Carly was brimming with renewed love.
Trying to keep those two apart at this stage would only encourage a disaster of Shakespearean proportions.
Maybe he was being naïve, but he didn’t think Carly could get into too much trouble on a boat in broad daylight with Stephen “chaperoning.” He made sure her cell phone was charged and told her to get home before dark. When he reminded her to take a sweater, he grimaced, sure he was turning into his mother.
If he was honest, Ben would have to admit his attitude toward James had changed. He didn’t hate Carly’s boyfriend anymore, or pity him, or think he was trash. Begrudgingly, he’d actually come to like him.
“Ugh,” he muttered, shuddering with distaste. He needed to go surfing.
Instead of walking outside, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. What Sonny had said about the killer having a connection to Olivia and Lisette had been bothering him, niggling at the corner of his mind. Like his complex feelings for the elusive special agent, he didn’t think a few hours on the water would solve this problem.
Frowning, he crossed the room, moving toward the sliding glass doors facing the ocean, drawn inexorably to the Pacific.
After Olivia had been murdered, Ben had considered selling this house, and the decision to stay had been a difficult one. Her death had been so tragic, so pointless, so impossible to make sense of. O’Shea’s confession had brought no closure, no relief. The police had called the incident a home invasion murder. A random act of violence.
Moving had seemed like the only option in those first few weeks. He and Carly had stayed with Nathan and at his parents’ house more often than in their own home. He’d been like a zombie during that time, the only extended period of his life, since the age of ten, that he hadn’t given in to the lure of the waves. He hadn’t deserved it.
Surfing had always been more than a job to him. It had been his religion, his drug, his ever-faithful panacea, curing what ailed him without the pesky hangover or drunken misbehavior. Quitting had been the ultimate punishment, and he’d earned every minute of it for letting Olivia die.
A month after the funeral, Carly returned to school and Ben went home for what he thought would be the last time. He’d wanted to memorize every detail, to remember how Olivia had looked in every room. He wanted to see her in the living room, laughing as she put up Carly’s homemade Christmas ornaments. He wanted to revisit the kitchen, to run his hand along the granite countertops she’d selected. He wanted to lie down in the bed where they’d slept together every night. He wanted to say good-bye.
The instant he walked through the door, he was assaulted by images more horrific than sentimental, from the nightmare morning he found her dead. Stomach lurching with nausea, eyes brimming with tears, he rushed through the house and ran outside, desperate to escape the overwhelming sadness.
He hadn’t been able to. On the sand below the steps at the base of the cliff, he’d fallen to his knees and sobbed like a madman. It had been t
he only time he’d broken down completely. Holding his grief inside had been painful, but this uncontrollable outburst had been worse. Cathartic, perhaps, but an agony to experience.
James’ reaction to his mother’s death reminded Ben of that feeling, one he still wasn’t comfortable reliving.
After a long while, eyes burning and throat raw, hands buried deep in damp sand, he came to grips with himself. And had some kind of epiphany. Leaving his home, abandoning his profession, denying what his soul needed to carry on…it was wrong.
He wanted to stay in the house he’d loved Olivia in. That Carly had grown up in. His wife may have been taken from him, but no one could steal his home, his past, his memories.
Ben remembered staring out at Windansea Beach and noticing the wave conditions for the first time since Olivia died. He didn’t go back to the ocean that day, but he knew without a doubt it was where he belonged. He’d always known.
Surfing had been his downfall and his salvation.
Looking out at the same scene today, standing in front of the sliding glass doors in his upstairs bedroom, he still felt the same way.
He’d made some major changes over the past three years, to his house and to himself. He’d had a security system installed. The bedroom and master bath had been remodeled because they reminded him too much of Olivia, but the west-facing wall remained the same.
Open to the ocean. Visible from the beach.
He rarely bothered to close the heavy curtains. He liked the view. It was one of the main reasons he’d bought the house.
Now he couldn’t help but think someone had been looking in.
James was having trouble driving. He’d taken the bandage off his hand, and the swelling had gone down, so his injury wasn’t bothering him. The problem was that every time he shifted gears, the back of his right arm brushed Carly’s left breast, and he had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t wearing a bra.
She was squashed between him and Stephen, straddling the gearshift console because the pickup truck had a narrow bench seat. When he put the truck in reverse, to back out of her driveway, he practically had to place the stick right up against her crotch.
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