by Amelia Wilde
She opens her eyes wide, her hands sliding up to brace against my shoulders. She’s trembling so hard now that I have to lower my hand to her back, hold her in place. I don’t stop running my fingers over her hot slit for a second. We can talk all she wants. I’m going to keep up this rhythm until she explodes.
“Yes.” The word is a whisper that goes straight to the center of me.
I turn her head to the side so I can growl into her ear. “You’re not an innocent little waitress after all.”
“I’m not,” she says, and her breath hitches. “I’m so scared someone might see us—”
“You love the thought of being seen like this, with your legs spread wide for me, with my hand stroking that sweet pussy. You love it.” Valentine tenses. She’s right on the edge. “Say it for me, love. Say it.”
“I love it.” She cries the words into the night air, and I take the opportunity to thrust two fingers into her opening, my thumb circling her clit.
I feel Valentine start to come, her muscles clenching around my fingers, and I brace for the wave to hit.
21
Valentine
I’ve never come so hard in someone’s front yard in my entire life.
I expect to be ashamed of it, but there’s no room for shame when the orgasm hits, rocking me back and forth over Ryder’s fingers. In the middle of the front lawn, my legs spread to let him in, clawing at his shoulders. It’s a damn good thing he has one arm wrapped around my waist because the heat that rockets through me is so intense that I go weak in the knees.
“Oh, fuck.” I breathe the words into his neck through clenched teeth. Is it wrong if I’m hoping, just a little, that someone drives by right now? That the headlights hit us both and the driver sees?
I never felt this way with Conrad. Conrad was the kind of guy who always wanted the doors closed and locked up tight behind us. He grew up wealthy—his dad’s marketing firm, the one I got a job at, is a successful, traditional place that came out of seed money from his even wealthier grandfather—and when we did have sex, it was traditional, and always private. There wasn’t any risk.
There was risk, of course, but we didn’t know it until later.
That doesn’t matter. I never wanted more of Conrad. I want more of Ryder, and I want it right now. My teeth chatter I came so damn hard, and his fingers are still pressing into me. Only I’m not done yet. It’s been a long few weeks since I came back to Lakewood, and it’s been longer since anything like this happened to me.
“I want...I want...” I want to be able to get a full sentence out, but it’s impossible. Sheer electricity arcs through every inch of me and every breath I take is full of Ryder.
He grins, and my insides go molten hot. “I know what you want.”
Then he hooks his fingers inside of me, finding a spot I never believed existed, and I explode again. This time, he really does have to catch me. I’m drowning in pleasure, and we haven’t even had sex yet.
Holy shit. Holy shit.
When it subsides, I’m breathing hard, like I just ran several miles, and Ryder is looking down at me. He keeps his eyes on my face while he pulls his fingers out of my pussy, stroking all of my folds on the way out. I don’t move. I don’t even think about closing my legs. His touch is somewhere between gentle and firm and I’m even wetter, suddenly, than I was before.
I look back into his eyes. For once, I don’t feel like I have to hide my face. Conrad was not an inspired lover, but I thought it was just me—I thought it would always be hard to have an orgasm. I thought I’d always have to put a hand over my eyes.
But I keep them firmly on Ryder’s shoulders. An expression flickers over his face, something dark and sexy. “Don’t look away from me,” he says, his voice low.
“I wasn’t going to,” I whisper back. I wasn’t going to, but now that he’s said it, I feel white-hot need building up between my legs.
“Stay still.” It’s such a simple phrase, but all of my muscles tense with the effort. Ryder’s eyes are catching the moonlight and reflecting it back at me. He strokes between my legs with three fingers. “Damn.”
“Damn what?” My legs are starting to shake again. It’s hard to get the words out, getting harder still to keep my eyes on his, but I can do it, I want to do it...
“You like that, don’t you?” Another stroke.
“What?” Now my difficulty is that I want to throw my head back, want to let another orgasm grow and grow until it’s a million points on the Richter scale, until all of Lakewood knows that I’m out of my so-called rut and that I climbed out of it with Ryder Harrison, the sexiest person ever to step foot in this town.
But I’m not supposed to look away from him. He wants to see me come, see it on my face, and knowing that makes me even wetter. I’ve got juices running down the insides of my thighs, my panties pushed down around my knees...and a burning question pops up in my head.
Ryder’s fingers are still working their magic in slow motion, and I’m clearly not thinking straight because I actually say the words out loud. “Were you...in the Army?”
“I’m doing this to you—” He does this again and now I have to close my eyes because keeping them open through that much pleasure is like keeping them open while you’re sneezing. “—and you’re asking me about my resume?”
“It’s just that—” He does this some more. ”—you have a way of...issuing commands that...”
“Makes you wet as hell,” he says, pressing into my clit with that thumb of his. I’m going to come for the third time. I’m going to explode, fireworks-style, and he’s going to have to carry me back to my house because I’m about to be done for. “I noticed that about you.”
“I’m not into bondage,” I blurt out, my mouth taking on a life of its own, my brain totally consumed by the fiery pleasure making tidal waves that start at my clit and engulf me completely.
“I didn’t get that vibe from you,” Ryder says as if we’re just having a regular conversation, if one has regular conversations in which you growl things like that into the other person’s ear while making them come on your fingers.
“Good...because—” I suck in another breath because whatever this is, he’s taken it up several notches and I’m just...almost...there...
I open my eyes at the same moment that a light flashes against the front of the Culvers’ house. Then comes the voice, echoing across the yard like an avenging angel, if that avenging angel was eighty years old and friendly with my parents.
“You two all right?”
I don’t even have to look. I know who it is. It’s Harold Finneman, from two lots down. He and his wife converted their cottage to a year-round home when I was in elementary school, and my mom has taken over countless meals when they go through their yearly health crises. And that aged voice is like ice water down my back. My entire body freezes, and not in a sexy way. I lean my head into Ryder’s shoulder.
Nope. Nope nope nope. This is not the scenario I was imagining. I was imagining a pair of headlights sweeping by, illuminating our graceful forms and then disappearing into the night. Not Mr. Finneman out with his dog.
“Absolutely,” says Ryder, and there’s a hint of a laugh in his voice. Of course he would laugh. He’s not the one standing here with his panties around his knees. He slips his hand out from between my legs and wraps it around my waist. There is no way Mr. Finneman is going to believe that this was just a friendly hug. But maybe, since it’s dark...
And a full moon...
But hopefully dark enough to—
“We’re great,” Ryder continues, and I realize Mr. Finneman must still be standing there.
“Valentine? Is that you?”
I take in a deep breath through my nose and try not to melt into the earth.
This is my life.
I half-turn in Ryder’s arms and give Mr. Finneman a big smile and a wave because I’m the kind of person now who smiles and waves in this kind of situation, I guess. “Hi, Mr. Finneman!” I call
out. “Everything’s fine!”
He’s standing near the road, his flashlight pointed down at the concrete, and I can just make out his wrinkled face. “All right, Valentine.” Another long pause. “Come on, Walter.” Walter is his Golden Retriever. Walter, at least, has no idea what’s happening.
They start to make their way down the road, and then, mother of God, Mr. Finneman pauses. “Oh, Valentine?”
I bite my lip, hard, trying my best to keep the smile on my face. Can he even see me? I don’t want to know. “Yes?”
“What time does the Short Stack open up tomorrow? I was thinking of taking Walter for breakfast. To sit outside, you know. You have that water bowl there, and—”
“Six o’clock!” I try not to scream the words at the old man. “Six o’clock on the dot. That’s when we open.”
“Thanks, Valentine,” he says, and then finally, blessedly, trundles off down the road with Walter.
The moment I turn back to Ryder, he presses his mouth against mine, but there’s no way we can take back this moment. Not now. He tries, but he’s laughing into my mouth.
Then his phone chimes. His monitor—his daughter.
He pulls away, still laughing. “That’s my cue.”
“Forget all of this,” I tell him, reaching down to yank up my panties and retrieve my phone from the ground. I don’t know when it fell, and I don’t care.
“Not a chance, Valentine,” he says from the doorway. I turn to go, my face burning in the dark. “Oh—wait.”
I wheel back around. “What?”
“When does the Short Stack open tomorrow?”
I raise one finger into the air at him and turn my back as haughtily as I can. He’s still laughing when I get to the road.
And I didn’t even get his number.
22
Ryder
I fall asleep with laughter still on my lips, which is a strange feeling. It’s been a long time since I could be this lighthearted about anything. The last few years haven’t exactly been a cakewalk—not that I was expecting one when I joined the Army—but nothing could have prepared me for the hell of what happened with Angie.
I want to laugh like this every day of my life.
But even as I think it, even as I’m starting to fall asleep, the dark descending over my eyes, part of me pulls back from it. I want that now. But Valentine isn’t a sure bet. Angie sure as hell wasn’t, even with Minnie in the picture.
She woke up from some nightmare, standing at the side of her Pack ‘N Play and howling—not that I was going to be able to recover after Old Man Winter showed up on the road.
I’ll never tell Valentine that I saw him coming. Who could miss that damn flashlight? But I wasn’t going to stop doing what we were doing a second earlier than I had to. I don’t care, anyway. I’m not going to be here long.
I feel a pang at that thought.
I used to think the same way when I was in Afghanistan, everything covered in sand and dust, the heat inside the tents more oppressive than actual hell. I won’t be here long. I won’t be here long. That would be true no matter how things played out. If an IED on the side of the road blew me to pieces, it’d be true. If I went home, it’d be true. Back then, not much mattered.
Now there’s Minnie, and I have to keep moving. I can’t stagnate in Lakewood and let somebody drag me down into the depths of some fucked-up relationship again.
Not that it would be that way with Valentine. In fact, I’m sure it wouldn’t.
I’m just not sure that I can take it again if it does go south.
“Stop,” I say out loud, into the dark. Wallowing isn’t going to make this any better. I need to just enjoy the fuck out of this while it still lasts.
I open my eyes and look around at the outlines of the room in the moonlight. I’m not in Afghanistan. I’m not trapped in the city with Angie. And I’m not trapped in the city waiting for Angie to return. That’s not going to happen.
I’m in Lakewood, only feet away from the hottest woman I’ve ever looked at or touched in my entire life. A woman whose blush makes me want to run my thumb over her cheeks and kiss her until she’s melted in my arms.
A woman who, frankly, I’d like to bend over this bed and fuck absolutely senseless. And when Valentine comes? Stop the fucking presses. I could watch that all day.
I would if I had all day. If she had all day.
My hands are still aching with the need to touch her, touch her again, have her curves under my palms, when I finally fall asleep, hard as a rock.
“So, who’s your new girlfriend?” Jamie stands in front of his grill, carefully rotating a cast of brats and hot dogs, while Poppy chases Minnie around the backyard. He has a nice backyard. It reminds me of the house we grew up in in Michigan. My dad spent weeks and weeks tending to the grass back there, making sure my mom’s flowerbeds were weed-whacked. He died of a heart attack when I was living in New York City with Angie. We didn’t go to the funeral.
One of the bigger regrets of my life.
I raise my beer to my lips and take a sip. Jamie’s shoulders are tense like he’s expecting me to start an argument with him at any moment. I’ve only seen him a few times since I joined the Army, and none of them were what you would call cordial. That was largely my fault. I can’t blame him.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
He shoots a glance across the expanse of the deck at me. I’m leaning against the railing, half watching Minnie run around on her chubby little legs, half watching Jamie to see what kind of mood he’s in this afternoon. I was surprised as hell when his text came in earlier inviting me to a cookout—a cookout—but even with the undercurrent between us, I’m not one to turn down free food. And if Poppy doesn’t mind taking Minnie off my hands for an hour, everybody wins.
Or everybody should be winning. I wish Valentine were here.
“Seemed like a pretty important date.” I scan Jamie’s face again and catch the flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth. That asshole. He always wanted to know about the girls I dated in school, too. But I’m not dating Valentine. I just want her so much I can almost taste her juices on my tongue. I want her so much that I’m walking around Lakewood with a permanent erection just thinking about the way she spread her legs and let me have my way with her.
It’s a hot summer fling. Really. That’s it.
“It was important in that—” In that the night ultimately ended with that fiery hot scene in my front yard. If Minnie hadn’t woken up, I’d have taken her inside. Maybe I should have anyway. No, best to keep that separate. We’ll be gone by the end of the summer. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I want to tell Jamie how Valentine looked in that oversized t-shirt, how we got caught out by that old man, but something stops me. I try again. “It’s nothing serious.”
“You wanted to get laid, didn’t you?”
I roll my eyes. “Who doesn’t?”
He shrugs. “You really should leave Valentine alone if you don’t want to date her, you know.”
I stare at Jamie. “I never told you her name.”
He rolls his eyes, in such an exaggerated fashion that he almost falls over. “You’re a dumbass. Valentine Carr is practically from here. When she showed up again a few weeks ago, everyone was talking about it. And anyway, she’s the only waitress at the Short Stack. Unless they hired someone else for the crowds at Summer Surf.” I make a gagging sound, and Jamie laughs. “I didn’t decide to call it that.”
“Even by participating, you’re guilty of making this place too fucking cutesy.”
Jamie clamps a hot dog between his tongs and turns it over, methodically moving to the next. “You’re good at that. You’re really good at that.”
“Good at what? I’m just drinking a beer.”
“Changing the subject.”
“So, do you have plans for the big Summer Surf?” Summer Surf is the dumbest name for a festival the city council here could have come up with, namely because Long Lake, the lake that Lak
ewood is pressed up next to like Valentine was pressed up against me last night, is too small for surfing. It’s just a bunch of people paddling around on those stand-up boards and drinking heavily.
Which, to be fair, is probably a pretty good time. I’m just not ever going to be caught dead paddling around like some idiot who couldn’t find the ocean.
“Valentine’s a really nice girl,” says Jamie, like we’re still having this conversation. “You shouldn’t screw around with her.”
“How do you even know her?”
“I eat breakfast just like everyone else. And I’ve heard she’s great.” Jamie cuts a glance across the deck at me. “She’s your girlfriend. You should know.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” The more I say it, the more it sounds like a lie. But Valentine and I aren’t ever going to go there. I can’t risk it, and neither can she. She wants out of Lakewood again as much as I do.
At least, I think she does.
“Okay. Sure,” says Jamie, looking back down at the array of meat on the grill. “I believe you.”
23
Valentine
The summer heat cracks open like a big, fertile egg over Lakewood, and the place floods with tourists. Sharon, naturally, takes full advantage, which means I hardly have any time to feel mortified over what happened in Ryder’s yard. She keeps the Short Stack open for extended hours, serving breakfast well into the dinner shift.
I’m running ragged trying to keep up, but at the end of the day my apron is fat with tips. I need every penny I can get if I’m going to make it out of here by spring.
I’m motivated as hell, but in the lulls between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner, I can half-heartedly begin to admit that it’s not getting out of Lakewood that’s making me hustle between every table.
It’s the heat between my legs. The only way I can keep my mind off of it is to focus completely on taking orders, rushing them back to the kitchen, and getting those trays out as fast as I can. And that heat is all Ryder.