Another shrug. “How many were there for you?”
I couldn’t even pretend to find words. And I hated that he knew me so well. Just knowing what he was up to in New York had made me prowl Lavender Shores at night like I was a fucking vampire searching for blood.
He brought his face to mine, rising slightly on his toes so we were truly even, the soft light from the window illuminating his stunning features. “There will only be you when you say the word.” Micah’s breath was warm against my skin and smelled of cinnamon and brown sugar, probably from the candied yams our mother was famous for.
Swallowing, I tightened my hands into trembling fists, demanding they not reach out, they not touch him. It was all the effort I could summon. Still, I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
Micah’s hand came to rest on the side of my face, his thumb by my ear, his fingers curling at my nape, and he kissed me.
My willpower shattered. All the effort I’d put during the last year or so into avoiding moments like these wafted away into nothingness. My fists unfolded and one hand gripped the back of his neck hard enough to bruise while the other clenched the back of his jeans and pulled him against me. His mouth opened and my tongue accepted the invitation, slipping in to get lost in the familiar taste of Micah, the flavor beneath the cinnamon and sugar, the flavor I’d sought in so many other men but could never find. I let out a groan. One of guilt and surrender. A groan sounding like a man in the desert finally discovering water.
As he kissed me, Micah’s body rocked against mine, building a rhythm that was as familiar as his kiss. The fingers that had been holding my jeans so tightly loosened their grip and slipped inside, found my hardness, and wrapped around with a slow stroke.
I shuddered, sucked in a breath, and broke the kiss. “Fuck, yes.” I thrust against him, loving the feel of his skin on mine, of his firm grasp, knowing as good as his fingers felt, it was nothing compared to the sensation of being buried deep inside him. “Fuck, yes, Micah. Give me your ass.”
This time his chuckle was all heat and victory. Micah pulled his hand out of my jeans and began to unfasten my belt. “It’s yours. You know that.” He kissed me again, but quickly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Even with the lust coursing through my blood, those words brought relief. Truth always did. Like every time I’d spoken them to him before.
“I know you do.” His grin grew devilish. “Now fuck me to prove it.”
I let go of his body and began to tear at Micah’s belt, our hands and arms tangling in our efforts to undress the other.
The distraction was enough, just enough… barely enough. At that moment of struggle, the world came back to me. The Kelly bathroom. The music of Christmas carols, the smells of the feast, the laughter and muffled voices of our family downstairs.
I pushed him away.
Caught off guard, Micah stumbled, but managed to steady himself on the wall before falling. He looked at me in shock and hurt.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to push so hard.” I started to go to him, to soothe away what I had done, but I stopped myself. “We can’t do this. Not here.”
Micah looked around as if remembering where we were as well. He let out a shaky breath and nodded. “You’re right. Sorry.”
We stared at each other, both panting, both on the verge of crashing back into each another.
Micah provided the out. “Meet me later? At our place.”
“Are you kidding? It’ll be freezing.”
He smiled again, and I realized I hadn’t even tried to put up any other resistance. “I don’t think staying warm will be a problem, do you?”
Fuck.
Goddammit.
And fuck.
I refastened my belt, then realized that wouldn’t cover my body’s reaction. I untucked my shirt—there were some advantages to being the pygmy goat. I’d never demonstrated the fashion sense everyone else seemed to innately possess. I walked past Micah and unlocked the bathroom door. “Stay in here long enough so it doesn’t look suspicious.”
“I’m not new to this, you know.”
I started to pull the door shut behind me, but Micah spoke again.
“Connor….”
With a sigh I looked back at him. “I’ll meet you there after this is over.”
He didn’t ask for a promise; he didn’t need one. He just smiled and nodded.
I closed the door and stood there long enough to catch my breath, giving my body a chance to get a hold of itself, then headed downstairs.
As I turned the corner in the winding staircase, I saw Lamont and his boyfriend sitting near the base of the steps eating their dinners. I took a heartbeat to recall names. Tyler. The boyfriend’s name was Tyler something.
Good enough.
Tyler was leaning into Lamont. “I don’t remember you mentioning founding families. What does it mean?”
“Long story, actually, and not really all that important.” Lamont’s reply gave me the distraction I needed.
“Not important!” I forced playful teasing into my tone as I continued down the stairs toward them. “You’d better not let your mom or my dad hear you say that.” I waggled my eyebrows. “They might just keep Tyler here and kick you out.”
If only Micah would stay upstairs long enough so they wouldn’t notice we’d been up there together.
Although, maybe it didn’t matter. People weren’t going to see brothers coming down from the second floor and assume they’d just made a date to fuck after the baby shower was over.
One
Micah
End of May
or
Seventeen Months Later
The solitary candle illuminated the cavern ceiling and walls, casting shadows over the crags. After a few seconds, I blew it out. Once more darkness surrounded me. That was better. I returned to staring through the arched stone entrance that looked out to the moonlit sea. Three arches actually, a large one in the center, and smaller ones on either side. In another half hour or so, the sun would rise, washing the sky and the ocean in various shades of orange and pink. As usual, the ocean lapped gently through the larger opening, forming a shallow tide pool within the cavern, which managed to reflect some of the night sky.
I didn’t need any light to feel safe, I knew this place better than any other in the world. The moon could fall and plunge me into complete darkness, and I would be able to find my way around with no effort. I could make my way to the left side, feel along the wall until it opened into the second smaller room of the cave, the one with the man-sized entrance to the ground above.
I’d been tempted to get more than a solitary candle from Connor’s and my stash, maybe even pull out a few of the blankets we used to soften the stone. But that really would be the highest level of sadomasochism, wouldn’t it? Reenact one of our rituals, take all the steps that would lead to removing his clothes, to him claiming my body, to feeling him get lost in me as the rest of the world faded away. Yeah. That would be fun to set up and then lie there speculating who he might be sharing his bed with, thinking about Seth still asleep in my own.
Clouds must’ve passed over the moon as the silver-tipped ripples across the ocean dimmed, making my little portion of the universe even darker. Fitting, given my thoughts.
I was coming here too much, nearly every morning before work. Seth thought I left at the crack of dawn to get to the farm on time. Instead, I came here to wallow. Sometimes to rage, to curse Connor’s name, to curse all the twists and turns life had thrown at us to keep us apart. We’d been so close. So very close.
But my little hideaway offered sanity as well. It always had. A place to dream, a place that was all my own, long before it had become the place for Connor and me to meet. The tide pool, the arches, and the sea, those had become my religion, my refuge. Where I came to think, to feel renewed, to find the courage and strength to make it through another day. And where I came to heal at the times when the day’s events were too much. Just too much.
> Proving how lost to thoughts and memories I’d been, the next time I glanced through the arches, only the smallest tip of the huge yolk sun still nestled below the sea, the sky streaked brilliantly in yellow and orange.
Shit.
I stood, dusting some of the grit from the cavern floor off the back of my jeans, then hurried to the rope ladder in the other enclave. Leave it to me to get up way before the sun and still manage to be late.
“You might be my favorite person from a founding family other than my own, but there are times I curse the day you stepped foot onto my farm.” Adrian Rivera glared at me, the expression deepening the crow’s feet around his eyes but not dampening his handsome face. “I should have shoved your sorry teenage ass back into your prissy sports car and told you to go get your highlights fixed and leave me well enough alone.”
I made a sweeping gesture around the Green Violin, encompassing the entirety of the small store filled with every sort of vegetable and fruit imaginable. “And if you had done that, where would you be ten years later? You can pretend you hate this place as much as you want, but we both know you love it.” I shook my finger at him in exaggeration. “And, you should’ve told me how bad my highlights were. I can’t even look at those yearbooks anymore. That hair was something.”
“Where would I be? I’d happily only have to worry about my farm, my land, and getting the orders ready by the time the trucks arrived. I wouldn’t be having Charlie Perez yelling at me all morning for not having the damn cilantro he needs. At least when clients were upset before, it was over the phone. I could hang up on them if I needed to.”
He had a point; Charlie had a temper, but the way he’d shouted and stormed out the door a few minutes before, there had to be something more going on than a lack of cilantro. “I know. Sorry about the cilantro. It’s Moses’s first full day on the job. He overslept. That’s what teenagers do.”
This time Adrian’s glare lacked any hint of the humor that had been there before. “This is his only shot, Micah. When you were a teenager, you never pulled that shit. Just because Moses is your….” The confusion seemed to wash some of his irritation away. “What do we call him exactly? Since he’s Connor’s nephew, does that make him your nephew too?”
Good Question. One of many. And one I’d rather avoid entirely. “I do want to point out that the hair situation has been fixed. All of the blond highlights on my perfect head are placed there by the sun, thank you very much.”
Adrian snorted out a laugh, his typical humor returning. “Ridiculous. I still don’t get how a pretty city boy like you fell in love with farming. Even if you have roots in Texas.”
“Isn’t that exactly what your family says about you?” I hated that. Everyone made comments like that all the time. I knew they meant it good-naturedly, but not one of them knew how much those perceptions had cost me. “I’m as much a Lavender Shores kid as you are, and you know it. Just because I lived in the city for a few years doesn’t change who I am or what I want.”
“Whoa.” Adrian raised his hands in self-defense. “Didn’t mean to step on that land mine this morning.”
“Sorry.” None of it was Adrian’s fault.
Adrian gestured around the shop. “Though, your New York sensibilities would explain your design. It’s like Pottery Barn and Whole Foods had a drunken night together and birthed this place.”
He wasn’t wrong. The Green Violin was modern, bright, and consisted of only white, creams, glass, and natural-hued wood. It made the pedestals and crates of vegetables and fruits nearly gleam in their colorful splendor. It wasn’t simply the organic quality of our produce that allowed us to charge designer prices; the shop felt as luxurious as any other in downtown Lavender Shores, even if its owners often had dirt under our nails. “Don’t act like the Green Violin doesn’t help your own founding family feel a little more at ease with your life choices.”
Adrian waved me off with a scoff. “I’m going to head out to the farm. If that boy of yours hasn’t already got the truck loaded up, you’ll be the one enjoying a land mine.”
I started to correct him about Moses being my boy, but let it go.
He grabbed his keys off the counter and headed toward the front door, then called out over his shoulder. “When you order our lunches from the Daily Deli, remind them just because I provide them with bean sprouts doesn’t mean I eat that shit. They have no business on a perfectly good Havarti-and-turkey sandwich.” Then he was gone. After a few moments, his yellow Camaro sped down Bluffs Boulevard, past the store window, and out of town. How times had changed.
I leaned against the counter and looked around the shop. I’d been the one to talk Adrian into opening an organic produce store downtown. Providing for the restaurants alone was a sizable income, but really the whole thing had been another reason for me to stay in town. Not that I didn’t love it. But I enjoyed being on the farm just as much as Adrian, much more than managing the store. The earth and the music were my two great loves. Well, two of my great loves. The customer service that went along with the Green Violin was not. But it was one more tie to Lavender Shores. You’d think being the fourth generation of a founding family would come with enough ties to the town to satisfy my family. But everyone insisted I was destined for New York, or at least LA. Even my mother, as glad as she was at my return, couldn’t understand why I’d moved back from New York City four years before. She feared I was turning my back on my dreams.
My dreams weren’t in New York or any other city across the globe. My dream was here. Probably tattooing someone at that very moment a block and a half away.
The opening beats of Britney’s “Oops I Did It Again” cut through the piped-in background music. I pulled my cell from my pocket, glanced at the screen, and forced a friendly tone into my voice that I wished was more genuine. “Hey, Moses. Please tell me you’re on your way.”
His newly deepened voice was nervous, which even nearly a year in town wasn’t close to alleviating. “I am. Sorry. I’m really, really sorry, Micah.”
I might resent him, but every time I looked at him, I saw Connor. “It’s okay, kid. It’s your first day of summer, and of working full-time. But, just so you know, you lucked out. Adrian is on his way to the farm. If you’re smart, take a back road as you come into town. Just so you can avoid an earful.”
“I already passed him actually. He just waved.”
Figured. I loved that man. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“Of course.”
“Will you stop by Charlie’s before you come here, hand deliver his cilantro, and throw in a couple bushels of peppers on the house. That should make him happy.”
“Sure thing, sorry again.”
“Oh, and hey, congratulations. Now that school’s out, you’re officially a senior.” Another thought hit me. “In fact, why don’t we talk to Tyler. He could do some killer senior pictures for you.”
“No, I can’t ask him that.” Despite his words, I could hear the longing in Moses’s voice.
“Moses, you’re family now. It’s what we do.”
“Yeah.” There was a catch in his tone. Maybe it was the recent voice change, but I doubted it. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up. Definitely not just the voice change.
Guilt bit at me. Moses had been through so much, and I knew more than most the effect his upbringing could have on a person. I was fairly certain Moses had never picked up on my resentment of him arriving in Lavender Shores. Or at Mom’s suggestion that he start working part-time for Adrian and me barely a month after showing up, to give him a sense of belonging. But Moses was sensitive, just like Connor. Chances were high that both of them were aware.
Charlie’s Tavern was packed, as was normal for a Saturday evening at the beginning of tourist season in Lavender Shores. Somehow, Seth and I had gotten a booth that could easily accommodate six people. Though fourteen years older than me, Seth was the hottest man I’d dated, at least long-term. Not that there’d ever been anyone long-term before. Was pu
shing six months long-term? Maybe not for most people. It was for me. He held my hand on the tabletop, and though he cast a quick scowl around the restaurant, he smiled at me. “If I didn’t know better, Micah Bryant, I’d say you were testing me for some strange reason.”
I doubted the teasing in Seth’s tone was genuine. He was a bartender, a good one, reading people was second nature. Even so, I wasn’t going to admit he was right. That would make the test null and void. “Oh come on, you can’t hate Charlie that much.”
“Yes, actually”—he nodded solemnly—“I can. Although I’m not sure hate really encompasses it fully.”
I spared a glance at our hands, wishing his touch stirred my heart in a similar way as it did my body. “You shouldn’t hate people. And besides, you can’t feel that strongly about him. We’re having dinner at his restaurant, after all.”
Seth shrugged. “I’m Italian. I’m passionate. Hate is just an extension of that.” Though I could tell he meant the words as a joke, it was easy to hear the truth in what he said. “And I’m here because you seemed insistent. If you’re so desperate for second-rate carnitas, I could’ve attempted to make them for you at my house.”
And there it was. The answer to the test. Although Seth being willing to darken the door of Charlie’s Tavern had already been the answer. He had failed the test fully and completely. And I needed to figure out what to do to fix that situation. Well, I did know what to do. The hours in the cavern hadn’t been unclear. I just wasn’t ready to do it. I pushed the sinking feeling away and leveled my gaze on him. “I promise to make your sacrifice worth it when we get back to your house this evening.”
“You always do.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand, drawing my attention there once more. Another failing of the test.
Seth and I had hooked up frequently over the years. We were both good in the bedroom, and we always had a lot of fun. I thought giving dating him a try would have the best chance of finally breaking free of Connor. But I didn’t want to be free. I never had.
The Hideaway (Lavender Shores Book 5) Page 2