by Ann Jacobs
He sank his fingers in her hair, drew her off him. “I’ve got to touch you too. And when I come, I want to be buried so deep inside you, you won’t be able to push me out.”
“I won’t want you out. I love what you do to me, how you make me feel.”
Carefully, as he might have handled a precious, fragile artifact, he laid her back against the dark-blue coverlet and looked at her with wonder, the way he had so many times before. Marcy’s beauty awed him. Aroused him. Made him feel like twice the man he was, just because she’d once loved him. Still loved him if her declaration in the face of death were true.
Satiny tanned skin, with pale triangles that gave away the shape of the bikini she must wear beside the pool…triangles Sam now traced the way a kindergartner might follow the lines on a drawing, not straying from the lines. Just enjoying. Taking in the firm flesh, the silky skin, feeling her heartbeat accelerate under his fingertips.
Bending, he took one turgid nipple between his teeth, sucked it in. Urged on by her whimpers and breathy little moans, he laved it with his tongue. When she threaded her fingers through his hair, holding him there, he nipped her gently.
“Harder,” she murmured. “I won’t break. Please.” She never wanted him to go slow, not when she was hot. As she always had from the beginning, Marcy wanted immediate gratification.
He liked to play, though, and though she’d whine and beg him to fuck her hard and fast, she always came harder and longer when he’d tortured her into a frenzy of need before giving her his cock. “Be still. If you come for me this way, I’ll reward you with a good, hard fucking.” Not stopping to explore the soft curves and flat planes of her belly, he cupped her baby-soft mound, spreading the hot, wet core of her with his fingers.
Then he remembered the cucumber. Grabbing it, he slid it along her slit, rubbing its blunt end in a circular motion around her anus. Her little whimper told him she liked it, wanted more. Good thing he’d bought the smooth, burpless variety at the store. Very carefully he pressed it against her until she relaxed enough to take an inch, then two.
“Feel good?”
“God yes. Sam, make love to me now.”
He slid the cucumber in another inch, imagining it was his cock invading that tight, tight hole. Every minute he got harder and hotter, watching her anus throbbing against the dark-green vegetable. Lubrication gushed from her cunt and gathered along her slit, wetting his fingers and the swollen, stretched tissue around her anus. “You want my cock here?” Did he have a condom anywhere aboard the Lucky Lady? He didn’t think so.
“Not there. My pussy. Oh God, yesss. Sam, I’m coming.” The way she whimpered and squirmed had his balls ready to burst. “Please. Don’t make me wait any longer,” she gasped.
He wouldn’t. Withdrawing the cucumber and setting it aside, he knelt between her legs and sank into her hot, wet cunt. “Like this?”
“God yes. Fuck me hard. Make me come. Damn it, make me forget there’s ever been anyone but you. Oh God, Sam. Nobody can fuck me the way you do.”
Nobody else ever had brought out the need in him to conquer, to master. Nobody else had made him bubble over like this on contact, ready to explode. His balls tightened more painfully with every plunge of his cock into her heat, each retreat against the sucking motion of her cunt.
Determined to fuck her hard enough, well enough to make her forget every other man she’d ever had sex with, he clamped down on the urge to come, to claim. Not yet! Not until he made her scream with pleasure.
Maybe if he thought of something else…shit. Trying to recite the periodic table in his head reminded him of the powerful chemistry that flowed between them. Concentrating on human anatomy got no farther than his cock, her cunt, the explosive reaction when the two merged.
Sam gritted his teeth, increased the motion. Marcy’s whimpers spurred him to go faster, fuck her harder. She liked it rough. Always had. She wanted him on the brink of meltdown, herself caught up in the storm of sex.
He’d give it to her. Hard. Fast. His cock slammed against her cervix with every punishing stroke. The bed shook as he pressed her body into the bed and she threw her cunt at him. He had to taste her, mark her as his.
“God yesss,” she hissed when he sank his teeth into the tender spot where her shoulder met her throat. “Ohhhhh.”
He tasted blood, soothed her damaged flesh with his tongue. “Sorry.”
“Don’t stop. Fuck me hard. Make me come. Please.”
“Whose cock’s inside you?” He had to hear his name on her lips. “Tell me, damn you.”
“You. Only you, Sam.”
“Only me. Now fuck me.” Over and over flesh met flesh, the slapping sounds of his balls connecting with her sopping pussy, his hard breathing punctuating her whimpers and moans. He couldn’t think, only fuck. “Damn it, I can’t be gentle. I don’t want to hurt you but—”
“Be rough. I like it that way. Make me forget…oh yess.”
At the first convulsion of her flesh around his, he bent and caught her scream in his mouth.
And let her take him the rest of the way, coming inside her in staccato bursts of searing heat as she shuddered with the force of her own orgasm.
Chapter Five
“How’d you get down to Port Charlotte?” Sam asked the next morning, once they cleared the treacherous shallows in the channel to the cove and he set a course for the Flying Fisherman Marina.
She shot him a shamefaced grin. “I flew to Fort Myers and took a cab to the ferry dock.”
So Marcy still didn’t like to drive long distances. Good. “Want a ride home?”
“Sure. Think you can scare up somebody on that radio who can get word to my office that I’m still alive?”
Just then the port engine stalled, making the Lucky Lady try to go into a spin. Swearing, Sam wrestled the wheel and slowed the starboard engine to a crawl. “You can call in from the marina. I’ve got to have them see what’s going on with this engine. Hopefully it will be nothing but seaweed caught up in the exhausts.”
The marina owner ran down the dock, grabbing the line Sam tossed out. “Thank God you made it. I was about to send one of the ferrymen over to Cabbage Key.”
“We’re okay. The Lucky Lady has an exhaust fouled, though, I think.” Climbing onto the dock, Sam held a hand down for Marcy. “Can you take a look?”
“Sure thing. Joe, bring the forklift around and haul this boat.” He turned back to Sam. “Can’t tell much about what’s wrong with her in the water. Incidentally, your friends have been worried sick. They got evacuated, but they’ve been calling here nearly every hour asking whether you two got off the island. You might want to let them know you’re okay.”
Marcy smiled. “I’ll go do that in just a minute.”
Sam and Marcy watched the Lucky Lady teetering on the forklift as it came out of the water. It was immediately evident that the storm had done more damage than Sam had been able to see with a few quick dives into the murky water of the cove. Damn. What would have been a relaxing all-day trip on water would take only a couple of hours on the Interstate. He’d been looking forward to some heart-to-heart conversation, maybe even another session of lovemaking. Neither was likely to happen along the busy concrete corridor.
He turned to Marcy. “While you’re calling Ileana, you might as well arrange for us to rent a car. The Lucky Lady won’t be going anywhere today.” Sam couldn’t help grinning at the sassy picture Marcy made in his shirt and a pair of his running shorts. When she came back from the payphone, he put an arm around her. “So what’s happening with our friends?”
“Ileana was frantic. Thought we were both swept out into the Gulf or something. I assured her we’d made it, that we were both okay, but she just kept crying. When she finally calmed down, all she could do was tease me about what had gone on between us.” Marcy shrugged. “I insisted it was nothing.”
“It was a lot more than nothing to me.”
She squeezed his arm. “To me too. What happened mea
nt too much to talk about with anyone, even a good, old friend who’s enough of a romantic to want to see us back together.”
“Doctor Kramer?”
Sam turned to the marina owner. “What’s the verdict?”
“I can have the Lucky Lady running by the weekend so you can get her home. She’s gonna need some major repairs, though. Things I don’t have the equipment to do. If you want, I can get one of the ferrymen to bring her up to Tampa for you. Won’t be much tourist trade around here for a while, ‘til the mess from Kellen gets cleaned up.”
At first Sam hesitated, mentally visualizing him and Marcy taking a lazy trip back up the Waterway next weekend, the way he’d planned for them to do today. Then he came to his senses. He had to work, and she did too. Not to mention there was no guarantee she’d want to spend another weekend on the water, with or without him. “That’s a good idea. See if you can arrange it.”
“Sure thing. Make sure you leave a number where we can get hold of you if I run into any problems I don’t see now.” The mechanic disappeared under the stern of the Lucky Lady, apparently anxious to start the makeshift repairs.
“Sam?” Marcy turned to him from the pay phone. “The rental agency will bring the car around in a few minutes. Do you need to call your office?”
“No. I’m signed out to my partners until tomorrow. What about you? Will they be able to get along without you for another day?”
She smiled when he put his arm around her and laid his hand lightly along her hipbone. “I think so. Only pressing thing I had going today was a meeting with Gray Syzmanski. It can wait until tomorrow. It’s not as though his client’s locked up in jail. It took all of five minutes after the judge had set bail last week for the kid’s parents to bond him out.”
“Gray’s a good guy. We work out together twice a week.”
“So I heard from Andi. I’ve gotten to know him pretty well since he’s been with Winston Roe. Of course I’ve known Andi for years.” Marcy’s smile faded, but she recovered quickly and shot him a grin. “Leave it to you to exercise with a guy who’s crippled and can’t push you.”
“Gray pushes plenty hard. Just about as hard as any guy I’ve seen. Wants to keep as fit as he can for Andi and those two kids of theirs.”
“I guess. Look, I think that’s our car coming now.”
There it was. That brittleness he hated. At first Sam couldn’t figure out what brought it on—then it came to him. Gray and Andi’s kids. He should have kept his mouth shut, realized Marcy wouldn’t like reminders about the babies she’d wanted but didn’t have.
Though he should have dropped his hand from her hip, let her get on with her life, he couldn’t. The connection was still there, still too strong. If five years’ bitterness hadn’t severed it, Sam figured nothing would. “Come on, baby, let’s go home.” He opened the car door for her, then strode around to the driver’s side.
After dropping the rental company attendant off, they rolled onto northbound I-75. For a long time they rode along past evidence of Kellen’s decimation, the only noise being the hum of the economy sedan’s tires over stress seams in the road. After turning off the highway and heading through downtown Tampa toward the house they’d once shared in Old Hyde Park where she still lived, Sam glanced at Marcy. From the way she stared out the window at passing cars and wrung her hands together, he guessed she was upset. “What’s wrong?”
“You said we were going home.”
He reached over and laid his hand over hers. “Calm down. We are. We’ll be there any minute now.”
“Don’t you understand? It’s over. We’re going home. Our separate homes, Sam. We’re still divorced. There’s still unsettled baggage between us. Too much for what happened on Cabbage Key to have been any more than a nostalgic interlude. Let’s just say Kellen swept away our good sense, made us face the fact there’s still a lot of feelings that probably won’t ever go away.” She reached up, brushed something off her cheek. “I’m glad we had the chance to be together for a little while. It makes me sad, but I know it’s got to end.”
“It doesn’t.” If Sam had anything to say about it, they’d move ahead, not back. He pulled into the driveway, the way he’d done so many times before. “If you think I’m walking away now, you’re not thinking straight.”
“You don’t have a choice. What you did to me wasn’t something that can be dismissed with an apology, even though at least now I halfway understand why you didn’t trust me.”
Hurrying around to her side of the car, he opened the door, blocking her with his body so she couldn’t bolt. “Baby, I trust you now. It was only at first—”
“What would you say if I called you next week, told you I was pregnant and said you were the father?”
Sam’s hand tightened on the open door. “I’d say I was thrilled.” He would be, even though he’d be hard-pressed to believe the same miracle had happened twice. “And I’d get down on my knees and beg you to marry me again and let me come back home.”
“But would you believe me?” she asked, her tone incisive.
Fuck, he couldn’t lie. Chances were, if she were to learn she was pregnant, one of her lovers’ condoms had failed in the past few weeks. The odds against him impregnating her again were too goddamn high. “I’d try. But it wouldn’t make any difference. I’d still want you. I’d believe you’d made your choice and wanted me to be the baby’s father, whether or not it had my DNA. “
“That’s what I thought.” She got out of the car and stared him down the way he imagined she would the toughest crook in the courtroom. “Now let me go. We’ve got too much baggage ever to get back together and make it work.”
She might have been right. But Sam wasn’t convinced of anything except that around Marcy he felt complete, fulfilled in a way no other woman had managed to accomplish since their split. Yeah, they had baggage—resentment, distrust, probably a dozen other disquieting emotions. Still, Marcy had reached out to him when they faced mortal danger. She’d admitted she still harbored a few warm feelings toward him too.
He had to touch her. Do something to reach her. Following her to the door, he set his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “What we had back there was good. More than good. Do you really want to toss it away without—”
“It was sex, Sam. Incredibly hot sex and memories and fear, all jumbled together. Maybe, in a way, the storm forced us to acknowledge the parts of our relationship that always had been good. Perhaps it forced you to talk and me to listen. If there’s a God, maybe now He’ll grant us closure.”
Closure. The last thing Sam wanted. He knew, though, from the sound of Marcy’s voice and the tight set of her chin that now wasn’t the time to pit his limited debating skill against her innate talent for argument that she’d honed in courtrooms for over ten years now. “Maybe. Don’t count on it being over, though. I don’t give up easily.”
“Go on, Sam. Thanks for saving me. And for the best time I’ve had in bed for longer than I can remember. Thanks, too, for explaining after all this time why you shoved me away when I needed you most. Maybe now I can let go of the hate.” She stood on tiptoe, brushed a quick kiss across his lips.
Then, before he could stop her, she turned and stepped inside, leaving him staring at the dark-blue door with its bright, brass knocker he remembered having installed there soon after they’d bought the place.
Sam had never felt so alone.
* * * * *
Inside, Marcy regarded the blinking light on the phone, wondering if she dared ignore it, crawl into bed, and forget about the outside world. Damn it, she’d wanted to ask Sam in, so much she ached inside. It had taken every bit of strength she’d been able to muster to stop with that brief touch of lips to lips, then close the door in his face.
No. She’d made a life apart from him. She had lovers, as he so painfully had reminded her with his hesitation, his carefully chosen answer to the hypothetical question she’d raised about how he’d react this time if she
turned up pregnant. She had a job as important as his, and since it was only a little past noon, she might as well keep the appointments she’d made before leaving for Ileana’s wedding. After listening to her messages, she called her office, then dressed and headed downtown. If she were lucky, she’d have an hour or so to go over the case of Florida v. Stephen Katz before her meeting with Gray.
Would Gray leave her office after their meeting and go join Sam at the gym? Disgusted with herself for mooning over Sam when she should have been working, Marcy slid her briefcase under her desk and rifled through case folders until she found the one she wanted. Setting aside her vanity, she fished a pair of reading glasses out of the drawer and began reading.
Stephen Katz. Twenty-one years old, a senior at the University of Florida. Marcy had met his parents, although she didn’t know them well. Prominent couple, always taking part in some charity or other. Neighbors of Sam’s parents. In any case, they’d attended her wedding. Stephen would have been starting kindergarten about then. As she read the charge—aggravated assault that took place a week ago at a sleazy club on Nebraska Avenue—she felt for the boy’s family. What the hell had the kid been thinking, venturing into an area known best for its pimps and whores and dealers?
Now he was in hot water up to his neck. Though he claimed he’d been robbed at knifepoint and that he’d fought back in self-defense, the arresting officers had looked at him and at the other guy and arrested Stephen. Apparently Manuel Soto, the would-be robber, was still hospitalized, while Stephen had escaped serious injury.
Harper Wells, her boss, apparently would take heat from the large Latino community if Stephen were allowed to walk. That had been one of the messages waiting for her when she got home. It made no difference that the so-called victim had a rap sheet that required a binder clip, not a staple, to hold it together. He’d been badly hurt, from the information in the file that mentioned a cut throat and serious blood loss.
Marcy closed the folder. Gray would be along any minute. While privately she considered the case in question one in which a variant of the old southern defense, He needed killin’, might have merit, she dared not decline to prosecute the case. Not if she wanted to keep her job. Maybe…but Gray hadn’t sounded when he made the appointment as though he’d entertain the thought of letting his client plead to a reduced charge.