Linus studied the face of Charlie’s friend. Last summer he’d met several of her buddies—and seen her besties again at Mr. Frank’s the other night. This person was a complete stranger to him. Hmm. Linus also noted that nowhere on the board was there any sign of her sainted, absent boyfriend.
With a mental shrug, he wandered toward her overstuffed bookshelf. He perused the contents, noting an old Nancy Drew, Life of Pi and a chunky Norton’s Anthology of English Literature. On a lower shelf, a thick scrapbook drew his eye. It had a woven reed cover and Summer was written on the spine. Feeling a tickle on the back of his neck, he glanced over to see Charlie watching him. But she didn’t say anything as he drew out the thick volume.
He settled with it on the bed beside her. She’d returned to key-clacking as he slowly turned the pages. It appeared to be a chronicle of several summers, beginning with her teen years. There were playlists and photos, ticket stubs and sappy song lyrics.
He felt Charlie’s gaze on him again. Without looking away from the book, he said, “Is this your work?”
“No. My friend Rachel makes several new pages every year. She’s the queen of die cutters.”
Whatever those were.
He still had not seen any record of Charlie’s guy. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her about that when he turned the page to see a double layout titled with sparkly letters that read Summer Beaus. Beneath that were photographs of several young women, some that he recognized as members of Charlie’s posse, sporting big smiles and posing with equally happy-appearing tanned young men wearing expensive sunglasses or high-priced watches, or both.
“Summer Beaus,” he murmured, glancing at her.
She made a face. “Old-fashioned, isn’t it? A friend’s grandmother coined the phrase and it kind of stuck.”
Linus studied the facing pages again. Little 3-D graphics were arranged around the photos, suns, hearts, a string of XOXOs, and in stylized letters the words Easy Come, Easy Go.
Easy come. Easy go. Linus stared at those words a long moment.
Charlie cleared her throat. “Those are pictures of the summer guys...you know, the ones who take a vacation at the lake and end up taking out a mountain girl for a week or two or four.”
Easy come. Easy go.
He stared at the pretty girls and the handsome guys, wondering why it bothered him so. What was the big whoop? Healthy young people enjoying the summer sun together. Nothing to be concerned about. Still he was glad to turn the next sheet.
Only to see that the Summer Beaus section continued.
His belly clutched, a sensation he tried to ignore as he finished paging through the summer scrapbook. When he closed the cover, he decided he should have remained at the lake house, after all.
This visit to Charlie’s had netted him nothing, and as a matter of fact, he felt a little sick. He’d not detected a hint of Saint Steven.
Instead, he’d discovered evidence of himself. Because there’d been a photo of Charlie and him. Requisite tans, check. Requisite wide smiles, check. He’d been wearing his Breitling stainless-steel watch and his favorite Matsuda sunglasses, all that made him only another of the interchangeable, last-for-less-than-a-summer sunglass guys. Just another Summer Beau.
Easy come. Easy go.
CHAPTER TWELVE
RYAN HALF EXPECTED his brother to follow him back to his suite, so when the knock came at his door he remained where he was—sitting on a chair, his head in his hands—and told the younger man to go away in a tone that matched his mood. “Fuck off, Linus,” he yelled.
Instead of footsteps receding in the distance, he heard the doorknob turn. Shit.
Squeezing shut his eyes, he tried ignoring the raging tension headache operating as a vise around the top of his head. “Linus—”
“I think he’s left the house,” Poppy said.
Ryan looked up. He’d left off the lights and he could barely make out her figure in the gloom. But her fragrance reached him as the air was stirred by her advance. He breathed in the subtle flower scent and wished like hell she’d go away.
Last night’s bright idea of wireless sex hadn’t lessened her sexual appeal one jot, and he was dangerous to everyone right now, but maybe most especially to delicate, naive little Poppy. In the mood he was in he’d push for more than intercom orgasms if she didn’t get lost quick.
Instead of stopping before him, she walked directly into the bathroom. Moments later she was back, a pair of capsules in one palm, the other wrapped around a glass of water. “Pain reliever,” she said.
“I’m not your kid,” he growled, his voice mean. “I don’t want any pills. I don’t want any water.”
She set the items on the small table by his elbow. “Is there something else I can do?”
“No.”
“Is there something that I’ve done, that Mason—”
“No.” The kid, the blood, his big blue eyes. Duke, am I gonna die? The vise around Ryan’s skull cinched tighter. “Go away, Poppy.”
She kneeled at his feet. “Surely there’s something I can do—”
“Yes. It’s called leaving me alone.” He shut his eyes and started counting off the seconds until she was gone.
At twenty-two, she’d yet to budge a muscle. “Damn it, Poppy,” he said, wincing as his loud voice reverberated in his aching skull. “Aren’t you listening?”
“You’re not talking,” she pointed out. “Clearly you have something on your mind. Why don’t you open up about it?”
“Look. It’s fucking March.”
“All right. What specifically about March?”
He wasn’t going to tell her. Though it struck him, suddenly, that he’d never had to recount the facts to anyone. Everybody he’d ever met besides Poppy already knew the particulars thanks to media outlets such as Celeb! magazine and cable’s Tinsel Town TV. During the past several months—due to last year’s fucking March mistake—the details and all his failings that followed had been hashed and rehashed and rehashed again in a book, on talk shows and at that goddamn, weirdly popular website, PornStarsTellAll.com.
“What specifically about March?” Poppy repeated.
He stared at her, seething in anger and exasperation. Why the hell was she insisting? He was playing the hero, wasn’t he, trying his best to hang onto the role he lived in for eleven months of the year—the archetypal strong-and-silent type. Being Duke, on the job, saving the day, keeping the world safe for women and chil—
Not for children.
Not for all the children.
The headache squeezed, the pain stabbing again and again until misery spilled over and slid down his body like a wash of copper-scented blood. Reaching for the glass of water, his hand trembled like a dead leaf in wind.
He already felt a thousand agonies old and they were nowhere near the end of the month.
“Ryan.” She whispered his name but he heard it all the same. “Tell me.”
Tell me. Tell me. Tell me!
Shooting to his feet, he turned his back on her, fighting for control. But it was fucking March, when he too easily lost command of himself. His whole body was shuddering now, from scalp to heels, and when Poppy stood, too, putting her small hand on his back, he lost it.
He wrenched around. “Tell you? You don’t know what the hell you’re asking for.”
“Explain it, then.”
He shook his head, but her implacable expression told him she wasn’t going to back off. His mood cranked up to another level of viciousness. Pressing his fists to the side of his head he tried once more for calm, but it was swept off in a vortex of pain. So fine, he would give it to her, explain himself, just blast away, be real. The real Ryan Hamilton, who was no good guy. The real Ryan Hamilton, who walked through life a casualty of its cruelties.
�
�Four years ago this month I lost my son.” His mouth tasted bitter. His belly roiled. “He died.”
She stepped back, but Ryan didn’t let her retreat stem the flow of his words. “On March 1st an electrical fire started at his mother’s house. She succumbed to smoke inhalation. My son was rescued, but his injuries were so severe they put him in a medically induced coma.”
Poppy put her hand to her mouth, unsuccessfully stifling a small sound of distress.
And still Ryan didn’t stop. “Tate died without ever waking up on March 31st...which also happened to be the day after his sixth birthday.”
Poppy’s face was set, her eyes as wide as he’d ever seen them. Her obvious shock didn’t trigger a single regret, though. She’d harassed him into it, hadn’t she? That she’d come in here, with her fresh face, sweet scent and stubborn attitude—tell me!—was not his fault.
As a matter of fact, her stunned expression only served to piss him off even more. “Now get the hell out,” he said, and it sounded like a snarl.
Once again she refused to obey. She stepped right up and put her soft hand on him. It wrapped his forearm, and the very gentleness of the touch detonated the full force of his temper.
He shifted, breaking her contact, only to grip her wrists and then force them behind her back. Yanking her close, he brought her breasts to his chest. As he stared down at her, her breathing turned ragged, and in the dim light he saw there was alarm in her eyes. It excited him.
That was the real Ryan Hamilton, the man he was in March, fucking aroused by the girl in his arms who had finally caught a clue and understood the trouble she was in. He recalled the husky sweetness of her voice saying his name over the intercom the night before, and he wanted that again—but without the sweetness. He wanted to make Poppy Walker hoarse from calling out his name as he took her in rough and dirty ways.
“I’m going to count to ten. You leave before I get to the last number or then you’ll find out exactly what else is weighing heavy on my mind, sweetheart.” There was nothing endearing about the last word.
“Ryan...”
He ignored her. “One.”
Her small body was quivering against his and her gaze was trained on his face as if she were trying to comprehend the fullness of the threat. His fingers circled her loosely—she could break his hold without effort, yet she didn’t move.
“Two,” he said, from between clenched teeth.
He saw her swallow. Then her face went pink.
Holy hell. It was her flush of arousal. Her I-want-Ryan flush. His erect cock jerked, his body tensed. And then he smiled, all teeth, like a shark. “Ten.”
Her eyes widened.
And so did his smile. “Yeah. Too late.”
His head bent and he felt her quick exhalation against his cheek before he slammed his mouth to hers. Her lips went soft and he drove his tongue between them, tasting her as his fingers tightened on her wrists, pushing them against the small of her back so her hips tilted.
He ground his hard cock against the softness of her, more lust pouring like gasoline onto the fiery cocktail of dangerous emotions coursing through him. The sound she made in her throat was low and helpless and goddamn, but he loved having her at his mercy.
Holding both her wrists in one hand now, he slid the other under the gauzy blouse she wore with jeans. The skin of her belly twitched as he slid past it on his way to her bra. It had a front clasp that succumbed to his cruel twist, and then he had her heated breast in his palm. He squeezed and stroked, not the least bit worried about gentle because she was moaning against his mouth and pressing herself into his hand.
He drew in his fingers, gave her nipple a firm pinch and felt her knees buckle. Dropping her wrists, he slid his forearm around her hips to hold her steady as he played with her other breast. His mouth moved off hers on his way to her ear.
He bit the lobe.
Crying out, she grasped his shoulders, her fingers digging into his skin. The little pain made his stiff cock jump, then ache with pleasure. He swept her into his arms, leaving the sitting area and striding for the bed.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I... Mason’s alone....”
The boy’s name didn’t hitch his stride. “We can monitor his room,” Ryan said, and flipped a switch on the built-in intercom panel.
Then his mouth was on Poppy’s again as he laid her on the mattress and followed her down, covering her body, giving her all his weight. She squirmed beneath him, the friction so good that he groaned, and when she did it once more he slid his mouth to her throat and sucked on the thin, fragile skin.
Her hips jerked high and her fingers twisted in his hair. But he broke free of her hold to sit up, still straddling her. Grasping the hem of her blouse, he yanked it over her head, revealing her naked breasts in the dim light. The loosened bra was dispensed with next, then his shirt was flung over the side of the mattress.
Lowering his head, he tongued one of her stiff nipples and she moaned again, the sound filled with vibrant need. He switched to the other side and sucked in the second crest, pressing it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue.
“Oh, God,” she whispered again as his fingers went to the snap of her jeans. “Ryan...Ryan, I...I should...”
He sat up again, working at her zipper while his gaze ran over her half-mast eyes, her flushed face, her reddened and wet nipples. If her brain had objections, his will and her body thought otherwise. “You’re staying right where I put you.”
He stripped off her pants, then trailed one fingertip up the inside of her thigh from her knee toward her panties. Her leg fell open and he stroked over the damp fabric, pressing into the heated cleft. His forefinger found the jut of her clitoris and he stroked that, too, using the friction of the fabric covering it to arouse her further.
She was panting, her hands clutching and releasing the bedspread. He bent to rim her belly button with his tongue, flicking at the sensitive flesh of her belly before succumbing to his need to bite her again.
Lifting into the scraping pressure of his teeth, Poppy cried out. Then he had to taste her more succulent flesh, and he tore away her panties and went down on her, opening her with his thumbs so he could lap at her, tug at her clitoris with his teeth, penetrate her with a firm, driving tongue.
She was moaning, her body quivering and her thighs pressing hard to his shoulders. Her fingers twined in his hair again, and she lifted into his mouth, offering him everything she had.
He took it with ruthless intent, letting her taste and scent take him up, spin him away. His teeth took delicate hold of her clit again as he speared two fingers into the soft, hot, clasp of her body. She stilled, her body caught midarch, and then she climaxed, her body quivering, quivering, quivering as he licked into every pulse of bliss.
Taking his mouth from her, he looked up her flushed body to her face. The stunned satisfaction on it worked like a jerking hand on his dick. “Good God,” he said, as lust roared through him. It took seconds to dispense with the rest of his clothes.
Then he crawled up her body, peppering her belly, her breasts, her neck with kisses. When he reached her mouth, she opened for him and he rubbed her tongue with his. When he lifted his head, she stared at him. “I taste me,” she said, the words so innocent and so damn hot.
When she wrapped her arms around his neck, tugging him down for another kiss, she nearly undid him. His cock was pressed against the notch of her thigh and her belly, the tip sliding wetly against her.
He broke free of her, diving for a condom in the bedside table. By the time his fumbling hands had found one and donned it, Poppy was propped on her elbows, her wide gaze trained on his straining, throbbing, needing erection. Her pretty face struck him like a blow, finding a weak spot in his solar plexus. Damn it! This was sex to forget and with her big gray eyes on him, he would want to slow down, to p
lay the gentleman, to somehow cherish her through the act.
Ryan couldn’t have that.
So he flipped her. With ungentle hands, he lifted her knees, spreading them wide. His heavy palm on her back pushed her shoulders low. “Cheek to the sheet,” he said, in his hardest voice.
A tremble worked its way down her spine. He tried telling himself if she protested he’d let up, but the fact was, he really didn’t know, and when she didn’t he kneeled behind her and on a long groan, drove into her.
Pleasure shrunk his skin to his muscles and his muscles to his bones and he was hard as a machine, driving into her, slamming into her, taking her in order to forget about her and everything else.
But then she was moving into each thrust, accepting him to the root and squeezing down on him as he retreated. He grasped one of her hips, the flesh heating beneath his palm, trying to keep her still. But she continued to rock back on his pummeling cock, ratcheting up the heat and the fiery burn in his blood.
Never letting up on the driving rhythm, he slid one palm around her hip, past her belly, until his fingers found her hard, swollen clitoris. She jolted at this new touch, but he didn’t let up on this, either, instead continuing to stroke, rub, drive, doing it all in order to draw from her what he wanted for himself.
Pleasure.
Satisfaction.
Forgetfulness, however transient.
And when he felt her go over again, his balls drew up and his cock forged ahead one last time. Connecting one last time with her as he came.
When it was over they lay side by side on the mattress. With a sidelong glance, he cataloged her fuzzy hair and swollen mouth. She would have a bite mark on her inner thigh and memories of that and everything else would likely make innocent Poppy Walker blush for a decade.
She looked good debauched, he decided, not regretting an instant of it. Now she knew nearly all the truth about him—enough, anyway, to keep her away and keep her safe from getting any wrong ideas about who and what was the real Ryan Hamilton.
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