Framing Skye’s soft cheeks between his palms, Beck brought his mouth down to hers.
It was like taking a deep breath of cool air after hours of working in the galley kitchen of a submarine, with no ventilation and no windows and no way out.
He just inhaled her, taking the freshness and sweetness of her into himself and savoring the sugar-lemon taste of her mouth. Skye opened for him on a gasp, her small hands coming up hesitantly to clutch at his waist, and Beck immediately seized the tactical advantage by thrusting his tongue between her pink lips.
She molded her body to his, the soft ripeness of her flesh a perfect contrast to his hard, tensed muscles. Beck swept his hands down the sides of her neck and over her shoulders, curling around to her back to press her even closer.
The chill of her skin was replaced by a warm flush. He thought he could actually feel the hot blood pumping through her veins, pushed through her by the rapid beating of her heart.
He ate at her mouth hungrily, and she met his attack with a ferocious need of her own. Her hands, no longer hesitant, gripped and pressed firmly. She seemed to be trying to touch as much of him as possible without breaking the kiss. Beck approved, and twisted his torso like a cat, trying to give her more skin to play with.
Skye made a noise that Beck swallowed instantly, a familiar, kittenish sort of growl that threw him back in time and made his cock throb in his wet, clinging shorts.
He needed to get closer to her.
They were still standing in knee-deep water, their feet sucked into the marshy Bay floor, making it difficult to maneuver.
Not that Beck was about to let that stop him.
Bending down, he got one arm behind Skye’s knees and plucked her out of the muck. Primal satisfaction filled him as he pulled her in against his chest.
At some point in the last ten years, though, Skye had forgotten everything he’d taught her about being swept off her feet. She gave a little yelp as the world tilted around her, and flailed hard enough that he almost dropped her before getting a firmer grip on her wet limbs.
“Put me down! You’ll throw your back out, Henry, I’m too heavy for this.”
“Chill,” he told her. “The issue is that you’re all slippery at the moment. Other than that?” He hitched her up easily, until her mouth was in kissing distance again.
Stealing a quick one off her parted lips, he grinned down at her. “Other than that, you’re perfect.”
She melted faster than butter in a hot sauté pan. He could feel the exact moment when she forgot to be afraid of being dropped or worried about her weight as all the tension left her body.
He’d never understood what she was so worried about, anyway. No woman had ever felt better in his arms.
Beck considered his options. The beach was the obvious choice, but they didn’t have a blanket, and it’s not like it was covered in powdery white sand, which meant they’d run the risk of gravel in uncomfortable places.
Decision made, Beck waded deeper into the water. When he was in up to his waist, he shifted Skye in his arms, letting her legs drop down.
Except she didn’t drop them—she kicked up and locked her thighs around his hips, grinding her pelvic bone against the hard ridge of his erection and making Beck want to howl.
Working on instinct and memory, he cupped his hands under her rear to support her new position, his fingers pressing convulsively into the lush, silky flesh of her ass.
The scratch of her fingernails against the back of his neck, the flutter of her pale eyelashes as she tilted her head up for another of those ravenous, sucking kisses … Beck had to clamp down hard on his control to keep from shooting off in his boxers.
Being with Skye again, after a decade apart … it was as if the years fell away and the rough, scarred outer layer of himself peeled back to leave him new again, discovering the joy of his body and Skye’s for the first time.
Not that he’d been exactly innocent or pure—or unscarred—when they’d met.
But she’d always made him feel like that stuff didn’t matter. When he was with her, he could be the person he so desperately wanted to be. The person his parents would have been proud of, instead of the kid no one wanted.
And she still had that magic touch, he realized as his heart raced and his blood took up a frantic, pounding rhythm.
No one had the power to make him feel like Skye did. Which made her dangerous, a real threat to the life Beck had built so painstakingly for himself—but it also made her irresistible.
*
Somehow, the water didn’t feel nearly as cold now that Skye was wrapped around Beck’s huge, solid form like a honeysuckle vine climbing a fence.
Panting lightly, Skye tilted her head to the side as Beck’s mouth went for her neck.
The lights of the Golden Gate Bridge sparkled at the edges of her vision. She knew they were close enough to hear traffic noise, the way sounds carried over water, but all she could hear was the rush of her own blood and the harshness of Beck’s breathing.
And when his teeth closed firmly over the sensitive spot where her neck sloped into her shoulder, Skye heard moaning. It took her a second to realize those particular sounds were coming from her.
There was something intensely liberating about being out here, at one with the water and the cool night breeze. She felt as if she was taking part in some ancient, pagan ritual of sex and fertility, an earth mother goddess being worshipped.
She tingled all over, prickles chasing each other down her arms and legs and up her stomach to tighten her nipples where they nestled against the planes of Beck’s broad chest.
She felt alive. Extra alive, as if she’d just woken up from the longest sleep ever, a coma patient suddenly sitting straight up in bed and gasping for that first breath of consciousness.
The whole world was new, charged with sensation and feeling, and Skye surrendered to it completely, let it wrap her up and send her flying.
It was so amazing to be naked and unashamed, to know what she wanted with utter certainty for the first time in … way too long.
Although she wasn’t totally naked, which she remembered when Beck’s fingers shifted on her behind, catching at the lacy edges of her thin panties. The damp material didn’t seem to hinder him in any way that Skye could notice—those long, agile fingers had her underwear pushed aside faster than she could blink, giving him complete access to the damp, aching secrets of her body.
“God,” he groaned against her neck, the vibrations making her shiver. “You feel amazing.”
“I do,” she said rapturously. “I really do feel amazing. More of that, please.”
But Beck wasn’t the type to get carried away—not if it meant dropping Skye on her ass. Instead, he walked a little farther out into the bay, until she floated weightlessly against him, only her locked ankles keeping her close.
Her locked ankles, her hands behind his neck … and the indescribably luscious glide of his fingers under the elastic band of her underwear.
His touch left a trail of fire that seemed as though it ought to be making the water around them steam like a pot over high heat. But above the surface of the water in their protected inlet, nothing stirred.
While below …
Skye hung motionless in Beck’s embrace, head lolling back and eyes closed, all her senses transfixed by the slow, sure strokes of his strong fingers.
He petted her gently, exploring the hot, wet seam at her core, before spearing first one, then two fingers between her lips.
She shook, nonsense words trapped in her throat, vibrating against the delicate pressure of his teeth where he’d bitten down again and was sucking up a circle of heat that prickled and stung deliciously.
More, more, more was all she could think, and Beck gave it to her, his knife-callused thumb finding the knot of nerves at the top of her slit and flicking it teasingly.
He found a rhythm, a combination of glancing tweaks and deep, smooth invasion, and she followed it blindly, her body
parting gladly around the thick intrusion of his long fingers.
When he finally lifted his head, she knew by the possessive glint in his smile that he’d left a livid mark at the base of her neck. She could feel it throbbing, all the blood called to the surface there, an echo of the thob lower down.
Squirming restlessly, Skye whimpered because even this wasn’t enough. “More,” she demanded, and Beck’s eyes flashed.
“Hold on to me,” he ordered, and Skye pushed her sore, aching muscles to obey the command.
Without taking his hand from her aching center, Beck let go of her rump and moved his other hand between them.
For a long, liquid moment, Skye was suspended between the water and the sky, held up by nothing more than Beck’s maddening touch deep inside her.
Then, without warning, that touch disappeared, leaving her empty and cold.
Mindless with desire, she writhed against him until she realized he’d freed himself from his boxers.
She couldn’t see the thick, intimidating stalk of his erection, but she could feel it, blunt and uncompromising, rising high and tight to his flat stomach. The movement of the choppy water pushed her into him, and suddenly her slick, open core was rubbing against the smooth underside of his cock.
As warm as his fingers had been, they hadn’t prepared her for the searing heat of his erection.
“Yes,” she gasped. “In me, come on.”
But Beck’s hands slid around her hips, holding her in place, his cock jammed up against her but not doing anything, not going in, just burning into her softness.
She might have whimpered. She couldn’t be sure; everything was a little hazy.
“No, like this,” he whispered, shifting her weight, and that slight movement, that hint of friction, was enough to send a pulse of sensation straight up her spine.
“Okay,” she groaned. “I guess I can be satisfied with—oh!”
Beck’s hips were in on the action now, thrusting his hardness up then raking it back down, the ridge of his cock head catching with agonizing regularity on the swollen nub of her clit.
Every thrust drove her higher, towards that shiny, elusive, just out of reach … damn it, she needed more!
Skye twisted to drag her taut nipples across his chest. She curled her fingers into the waves of his hair, loving the way she could get a good grip on him, and pulled his head down to attack his mouth with hers.
Her lips parted, inviting him in, and when his tongue rubbed velvety over the ticklish roof of her mouth and began a dance of swift in and out, it was the last bit of sensation she needed.
Skye pushed her hips against Beck’s as hard as she could and froze there, quivering as she exploded in his arms. Shivers wracked her frame, aftershocks rocketing through her, and Beck let out a hoarse cry. A moment later, warmth spread between their tight-pressed bellies.
Exhausted and wrung out, Skye tucked her face into Beck’s neck, feeling the rapid pounding of his pulse as they began to come back down to earth.
“Skye.” His voice was wrecked, guttural and deep. “Christ, I missed you.”
She stiffened all over, reality descending with a crash, scattering afterglow like a bowl of fresh peas spilled out onto the ground. Three little words, so close to the words she would’ve given anything to hear in a voicemail, on a postcard … heck, even in a text.
But to hear them now, after all this, reminded her of exactly how long he’d been gone. And what had happened since he left.
Jeremiah Raleigh.
She’d met someone else. A good man, someone she supposedly loved. And yet she’d done this.
Never mind that she and Jeremiah had an “open relationship.” Never mind that her parents applauded them for being so sensible and practical, mature and liberal-minded about the outdated sentimentality of fidelity.
Skye had never believed in it. In her heart of hearts, she’d always known that what she wanted was a secure, loving, monogamous relationship, so even though she’d agreed to the open relationship because it was what Jeremiah wanted, she’d never been unfaithful.
Until tonight.
“You can put me down now,” she said quietly, shame and self-loathing creeping into her chest and making it hard to breathe.
Beck didn’t answer, just waded in a little closer to shore before setting her on her feet.
Shaky, Skye looked up at him and tried to smile.
It wasn’t Beck’s fault that she’d just betrayed everything she believed in. Tempting as it was to lay the blame at his feet, she couldn’t do that.
No, the simple truth was that Skye had been forced to take a look inside herself. And what she’d found was that she wasn’t the person she’d thought.
“You okay?”
The words were cautious, quiet. The beautiful openness Beck’s face took on during sex was gone. Even as Skye wished it back again, she couldn’t blame him. She was acting like a fruitcake.
“Sorry, yeah.” She tried that smile on again, and this time it didn’t wobble so badly. “Just tired. Been a long day, you know?”
“A long day, full of surprises,” Beck agreed as they made their way back up the beach to the clothes piled at the foot of the big, flat rock.
Even the reminder that she and her team had been called first as finalists in the Rising Star Chef competition couldn’t lift Skye out of the pit of guilt she’d fallen into. Not all the surprises the day held had been great, after all.
Surprise! You’re a faithless tramp!
They got dressed in silence. It wasn’t a shocker—Beck had never had a whole lot to say for himself, even when they’d been together. Which had been a big part of the problem.
Silence weighed on Skye. Made her antsy, made her babble just to fill it. Only right now, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
But it turned out Beck had one more surprise for her.
Shaking his head like a wet dog, Beck threw himself upright and slicked the dark waves back with both hands. Turning to watch her roll her crumpled tank top down over her naked breasts—she’d taken off the wet bra and stuffed it in her pocket—Beck went still.
Then he said, “This doesn’t change anything.”
Skye jerked the shirt on angrily enough to almost rip it. She was terrified that this night had changed everything, her entire future … and for Beck, it was, what? A trip down memory lane?
Before she could snarl at him, he narrowed his eyes and pointed at her. “The bet is still on, Skye.”
Awareness crashed over her. The bet? He was worried about the damn bet, when her whole life was falling apart?
“You listen to me, Henry Beck—” she started, furious.
He cut her off with, “No. You listen. You want your divorce? Fine. But I’m not through with you yet.”
Her mouth dried out as he stalked toward her, prowling like a big, hungry predator. She didn’t move, caught like a mouse in a trap, and he leaned in close.
“That was only the appetizer,” he murmured, nuzzling her jaw line and starting that sweet thump of desire pulsing through her again. “Next time, I want you naked all the way. I want you under me. And I want more than a taste of you.”
Surprise! Skye’s brain caroled happily. You’re an unrepentant faithless tramp!
Because as Beck pulled away and grabbed her hand to lead her up the trail and back toward civilization, all Skye wanted was to tug him down to the forest floor with her and make “next time” happen immediately.
She was such a mess.
Chapter 16
Loud pounding on the hotel room door woke Beck up. Instantly alert, he swung his legs off the bed and padded, naked, to check the peep hole.
It was Winslow, wearing a blue shirt with a simple black line drawing of a bunk bed with the caption Top or bottom? and a worried expression.
“Hold on,” Beck called. “Gimme a sec to find my pants.”
“Okay.”
Beck paused. Win didn’t say anything else, and Beck realized he’d been
waiting for a zippy, vaguely sexual comeback that hadn’t come.
Shit, something must be really wrong.
But when he opened the door for Winslow, one hand still zipping up his jeans, the first words out of Win’s mouth were “Do you know what’s wrong?”
“You’re the one who woke me up,” Beck reminded him, glancing over to the nightstand for the clock. “At … Christ, what is it, oh six hundred?”
Win jittered into the room, nearly sloshing the two white-lidded to-go cups in his hands. “Don’t growl. I brought you coffee. And I’m freaked the eff out, man. Something’s up—Jules called a team meeting for an hour from now. I couldn’t wait that long, sitting around my room all by my onesie, knowing nothing. Here.”
Beck took the caffeinated peace offering and sipped at it appreciatively, letting the dark, smooth roast wake him up the rest of the way. Win had a genius for ferreting out the best coffee shop, no matter where they were.
“You can hang with me,” Beck said, crouching to grab a T-shirt from his tightly packed duffel bag. “But I don’t know any more than you do. Probably less. What did Jules say when she called the meeting?”
Win threw himself down on the unused bed, rumpling the coverlet. “Just to meet in her and Max’s room at seven. But she was definitely wigged, in that tough-as-nails Jules way.”
Pulling the navy-blue shirt on, Beck was glad he’d showered the saltwater off the night before. He stood up and went to brush his teeth, grimacing at the crazy mess of his hair in the bathroom mirror.
Gathering the top part of it into a rubber-banded ponytail, he wandered back into the room just as his cell phone buzzed against the nightstand, where it was plugged in.
His mind leaped instantly to Skye—was she calling him? Did she want to talk about last night? Did she want to plan when they could do it again? Because the trip back up the hill to her car, parked at the Kirby Cove campground, had been mostly silent.
He wasn’t used to being unable to tell what she was thinking, and he didn’t much care for it.
But Winslow said, “I bet that’s Jules calling to clue you in about the meeting, even though I told her I’d tell you. Nobody trusts me to do anything.”
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