by Noelle Adams
She stroked his sides as she kissed one nipple and then other. “You’re getting all tense.”
He took a deep breath. “You pay attention to what you’re doing, and I’ll pay attention to me.”
His comment must have surprised her because she burst into a ripple of laughter, her body shaking over his. “But I want to pay attention to you too.”
Her mouth moved down to his abdomen, and the long breaths he was taking became shaky. “All right. Go to it.”
It felt like she was smiling as she brushed her lips over his belly and then moved back up to his chest. “Look at the sky,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by his flesh.
He moved his gaze from her face to the indigo sky above him. “What about it?”
“What do you see?”
He tried to focus on the heavens, but her mouth was moving lower again, which was incredibly distracting. “A couple of stars,” he managed to say.
“What do they look like?”
“I don’t know.” His hips gave an automatic twitch when her face moved below his belly. “Like stars.”
“You’re a writer. You can do better than that.”
He had no idea why she was asking him this, but he didn’t want her to get upset with him and end what was promising to be a very satisfying encounter. “They’re faint,” he said, shifting his mind enough to look at the stars and find words for them. “Twinkling just slightly. Like candles that are about to go out in the wind.”
“Nice,” she breathed, running her hands over his thighs, so lightly it almost tickled. “What else do you see?”
He couldn’t keep his eyes upward. They strayed down to where her face was poised just above his groin. He was fully erect, her lush lips were just inches from him.
She glanced up at him, saw him looking at her. “You’re trying to control it again.”
“I was just looking at you.”
“You’re trying to control it by looking. It’s such a habit for you that you have no idea you even do it.”
He groaned and bent one of his arms above his head, stretching his body since he desperately needed to move in some way.
Her face softened slightly as she watched him. “You won’t enjoy the moment if you try to control it. You’ll just be waiting for the ending.”
He groaned again but realized she was sincere. She wasn’t just trying to tease or torture him. So he stared back up at the sky. “There are a couple of birds,” he managed to say.
“What are they doing?” She’d taken his erection in one of her hands and was stroking him gently.
He moaned again, almost embarrassed by the helpless sound of it. “They’re circling. Using the last light to search for food.” He stared at the motion of the bird, almost amazed at the strength and beauty of the motion—the shadow against the sky. “They’re like dancers.”
Because he was slightly distracted, he let out a rough exclamation when he felt her lips slide across his shaft. He resisted the urge to look and instead watched the birds do their dance in the sky, against the faintest of stars.
He arched up helplessly when she took him full in her mouth. He felt completely out of control, and it was an entirely new feeling. He was moaning like a boy who was getting his first blow job, but he couldn’t seem to help it.
She let his hard flesh slip out of her mouth and started to kiss his abdomen and chest again. He relaxed, catching his breath. His hands moved up to stroke her hair, which was falling down around her face and over his body.
“Listen to the bay,” she murmured, trapping his erection between their bodies as she slid up enough to kiss his mouth. “What does it sound like?”
His fists tightened in her hair as he kissed her deeply, and he wondered who he was, what he’d done, for her to make him feel like this.
“What does it sound like?” she asked again when she finally pulled out of the kiss. She raised herself up and moved his arms back down to his sides.
“I’m thinking.” He wasn’t thinking. He was feeling too much to make his mind work in any conscious way. “It sounds like waves,” he said after a minute of listening to the lapping of the tide coming in and out.
He breathed deeply as her mouth started to chart a course lower again. He tried to keep his body relaxed, but for some reason it made his arousal even more intense.
He was suddenly conscious of the steady sound of the bay in the background, an endless rhythm of water that filled the air, filled the night. “It’s like a humming,” he said thickly, conscious of her kissing below his belly button, almost reaching the hair on his groin. “Like a…”
His breath hitched when she took him in her mouth again.
“Like a what?” she asked, her mouth full of his erection.
He groaned and arched up into her mouth again, his heart beating wildly in his groin, his ears, his chest, behind his eyes. “Like a song.”
She sucked hard as he was taking a breath, and he felt the tension release without warning. It wasn’t like his normal climaxes, which he worked himself up to. It took him by surprise, coming completely without volition, and he shouted out as the pleasure unwound and rushed through his body.
She slid her mouth up just before he came, and she was stroking him as he released himself. He knew she was watching him, her eyes crawling all over his face and body, and that somehow made his response even wilder, more uninhibited.
He’d never felt like this before in his life. He’d never dreamed it was possible.
He was panting, completely leveled, when the spasms finally worked their way through him. He pulled her down on top of him, wrapping his arms around her.
They hadn’t even had intercourse, and it was still the best sex he’d ever had in his life.
“See,” she murmured, snuggling against him and stretching up to kiss the side of his mouth. “You can enjoy the moment if you let yourself.”
“I guess so.”
He felt the damp stickiness of his semen between their bodies, but the rest of him felt too perfectly sated to care. She was soft and warm and natural against him, and he held her even closer since he didn’t want her to slip away.
After a few minutes, he asked idly, “Do you ever sleep out here?” He was staring up at the stars again. There were more of them now and brighter.
“Yes. Sometimes I can’t stand to be inside, so I sleep out here all night. Usually when it’s warmer though.”
He realized that the air was cooler now that the sun had set. Her hair was still slightly damp too. She might be cold. “Are you warm enough now?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I don’t want to move quite yet.”
He let out a breath of relief. “Me either.”
They lay together, under the stars, listening to the song of the bay, for a long time before they finally got up.
The next morning, Cade felt awkward, self-conscious.
He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to him last night, but it hadn’t really felt like him. Just memory of it made him slightly hard, as he lay in bed and remembered, but he also wasn’t comfortable with it.
He wondered if Holly felt the same way.
He was tempted to just stay in bed, but he couldn’t sleep anymore, and he knew Holly would be going down to the beach for her morning walk soon.
Despite his unsettledness, he wanted to see her.
So he heaved himself out of bed and took a quick shower. Then he made himself a cup of coffee and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt before heading down to the beach.
She was already there, standing barefoot in the surf, staring out into the bay.
She didn’t turn as he approached, but he knew she was aware of him.
“I wondered if you’d come out this morning,” she said when he stood beside her.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I thought maybe you’d feel…”
“Feel what?” he prompted when she didn’t complete the thought.
“Feel awkward.”
He did. Her perception was amazingly sharp. But all he said was, “I wondered the same thing about you.”
“I do feel awkward,” she admitted, turning to look at him for the first time. Her expression was seriously, completely earnest. “I feel self-conscious and a little anxious, and I wonder why I… why I let myself go the way I did last night.”
His breath hitched at the knowledge that she felt exactly the same thing he did. “And what are your conclusions about that?”
She shook her head slightly. “I wanted to. I just wanted to. No sense to second-guess myself now.”
He smiled, feeling better about the whole thing. “I think that’s a very good attitude.”
She smiled at him, looking more like her normal self. “So says the man who has spent his life second-guessing everything.”
He frowned since he’d never thought that about himself before. He couldn’t help but wonder if she was right. “Well, I have no regrets,” he said at last.
She reached out to take his hand. “Me either.”
They walked along the beach together, holding hands, as the water lapped around their toes and ankles.
He should be focusing on the story, the mystery, the book he needed to write. He shouldn’t be feeling like a boy, wanting to hold a girl’s hand as the sun rose.
He wondered what Holly would say when she learned what his real motivations were in getting to know her.
He wondered if those were still his primary motivations.
They didn’t speak as they walked until they finally returned to her boardwalk steps.
“Today is Saturday,” she said at last.
He blinked. “Yes.”
“You have the house two more weeks?”
He suddenly realized what had prompted the comment. The month was halfway over. She was thinking they had only two more weeks together. “I can extend my lease. I don’t think Bob has a busy rent schedule.”
She peered up at him, her eyes strangely knowing. “Shouldn’t you be starting another book?”
He felt a stab of intense guilt before he smothered it. “I can take a little longer. Books have to gestate in my mind for a long time before I write them anyway.”
“So what are you going to write about?”
He stiffened, scanning her face for a clue about what had prompted to words, wondering if she suspected his motivations. “What?”
“What are you going to write about? There are no story ideas here, so I assume you have some idea about what your next book is.”
Cade couldn’t figure out if she was hinting that she knew what he was up to or not. “I’m still working on it.”
“What are your ideas?”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know.”
“It’s not me, is it?” Her eyes never looked away from his, honest and slightly hurt and making him feel like an absolute monster. “Because there’s not a story here to tell.”
His mind was an uproar of guilt and confusion, but his crisis mode kicked in immediately, giving him the words to say and the attitude with which to say it. He smiled at her fondly and brushed her hair back from her face. “There is a story here to tell, but you’re the one to tell it. Not me.”
She almost smiled. “It’s not worth the telling.”
“I think maybe it is. I’d like to hear it if you ever decide to trust me enough to tell me. Anyway, I do have an idea for my next book.” It wasn’t until the words came out of his mouth that he realized he was about to tell her a lie.
She looked hopeful. “Really? What is it?”
“Up north on the Eastern Shore, in Maryland, there was a series of murders back in the sixties. I’ve been looking into them.” He couldn’t believe he was saying that—telling her such a calm, blatant lie.
But if she suspected what he was up to, she would never trust him again, and he couldn’t stand for that to happen.
A flicker of something unreadable crossed her face before her smile widened. She looked relieved, like she’d believed him. It made him feel even worse. “Really? I guess that’s why you’ve been hanging out in this area. Do you think it was a serial killer?”
“Maybe. I’m still working on it.”
“You should write another book like your first one.”
He was taken by surprise by the words but relieved the tricky moment was over. “My publisher would kill me if I turned in a book like that to them.”
“Why do you have to write about crime?”
“People are interested. And there are real human stories there that have value in writing about.”
She shook her head. “There are human stories everywhere.”
“And sometimes they involve crime.” He wasn’t sure why he was arguing with her. He wanted to stay on her good side, and debating her on this wasn’t the way to do it. But he felt defensive. And he didn’t want her to look down on how he’d focused his career.
She sighed. “Yes. They do.”
They’d reached the spot where she could see the man who didn’t fish on the pier, and she looked for him, smiling when she saw him there. “See him?”
“Yes. I’ve seen him almost every morning for the past couple of weeks.”
His tone was dry, so she gave him a narrow-eyed glare—which he probably deserved. “I was going to say something about him.”
His mouth twitched at her lofty tone. “What were you going to say?”
She looked like she wanted to smile, but instead she looked back at the grizzled man and said, “You should write about him.”
Cade raised a hand to shade his eyes and looked where she was looking. “Really? Why? Does he have a dramatic story or something?”
“I don’t know what his story is. That’s not what I mean. You should write about him as he is now. What he does every morning. That would be a really good story.”
He frowned, suddenly realizing what she was saying. She didn’t like his books. She wanted him to write something different. “I have a feeling it would be kind of boring.”
“It wouldn’t have to be. Like you did in your first book, about the Eastern Shore. Tell some of the smaller stories. Bring them to life. Maybe the funny red-haired lady who always sits in the drugstore. Things like that.”
“That’s not the kind of thing I write.”
“I know. Don’t get offended. You know I think your books are great. You’re a beautiful writer. It just seems like you’ve kind of been… drifting lately, and I thought maybe what you were writing was feeling kind of old. Would it hurt to take a break and try something different?”
He’d actually been wishing he could do exactly that—write something entirely new, test his capabilities, get out of the rut.
But he had a deadline on a manuscript that had to get written, and his publisher was looking for another true-crime book.
He didn’t really have the luxury of writing what he wanted.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said, her mouth twisting. “You’re so good at writing human stories, bringing little things to life. It’s meant something to me.”
Her words meant something to him. And, for a moment, she looked pained, almost broken, and he couldn’t stand for her to look that way, feel that way. He took her head in his hands and kissed her softly. “You’re the most human person I’ve ever met.”
She clung to him for a moment, as if the words had meant something. But then she pulled away, smiling dryly. “That’s a crazy thing to say, you know. Everyone is human.”
“I know. I know. But I meant it just the same.”
She cleared her throat, looking uncharacteristically self-conscious. “Well,” she said at last. “You’re really human too.”
That afternoon, Cade went to the drugstore to ask his uncle about Mason and his no-good brother, who had visited Cape Charles from New Jersey when Margaret Chaney had been living here.
His mother still had vague memories but wasn’t able to land on anything. He didn’t want to ask around too widely because t
hen people would start to wonder what he was up to.
It was important to keep his investigation as private as possible—and not just because he didn’t want Holly to find out about it.
It was two o’clock, but the grill was still busy, and Cade took a seat at the bar, ordered a Coke, and waited until his uncle had the chance to come over to talk.
Roy gave him a sharp look as he refilled his drink. “What have you been up to?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look… I don’t know… loosened up.”
Cade wasn’t sure what to make of that observation, but it made him feel uncomfortable. “I’ve been hanging out on the beach.”
“That’s what your mom said. But there’s something else.” He kept searching his face.
Cade didn’t want his uncle to know anything that he’d been up to—particularly with Holly—so he brushed off the comment. “Hey, do you remember someone named Mason who came to Cape Charles from New Jersey to stay with a cousin? This would be when I was a kid. Someone mentioned it but couldn’t remember any details.”
Roy frowned. “What are you up to?”
“Just asking questions,” Cade said with a casual shrug. “This is what I do.”
“Yeah.” Roy shook his head. “One day your questions are going to get you into trouble.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because sometimes answers are hidden for a reason.”
“Does that comment have anything to do with Mason?”
“No.” His uncle’s expression changed, like he was finally taking the question seriously. “Mason. Oh, yeah. I remember. John Fontina’s cousin. That was a long time ago.”
“What did he do here?”
Roy shrugged. “I don’t know—what anyone does here. Play golf. Fish. Hang out on a boat.”
“How long was he here?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks one summer.”
“Did he… did he get close to anyone?”
“How the hell would I know?”
Cade sighed. “Do you remember anything particular about him?”
“He was smart but kind of a snob. People thought he was rude. A couple of people thought he was a gangster.”
“What? Do you think he was?” Cade straightened his shoulders as he started to think about possibilities.