by Timms, Lexy
Amanda caught a glimpse of Nate; his shirt was already off and he was greeting a throng of pretty young women who lingered too long with each hug. Amanda found her way to the back door, seeking asylum from the sound and skin. She found herself facing the Pacific Ocean for the first time in her life. She was stunned and stood framed in the back door, just staring into the vast eternity of the magnificent sight.
“I SAID EXCUSE ME!” a voice behind her said and she felt a tap on her back. She got out of the way of traffic, in this case a barely-dressed young woman who padded out the door and down to the beach.
Amanda looked around, grabbed a bottle, slipped out of her sneakers and socks, and followed.
The sunset over the ocean was everything everyone ever said it was, creating a slow explosion of color and cloud and light and shadow. It flared and faded all at once over the great expanse of water until the surf was nothing more than a great nothingness that swept over the beach back and forth, whispering as each wave spent itself on the sand. She sat watching it, enjoying her drink and the moment.
“There you are.”
She turned and looked up at Nate. He was still bare-chested, but was holding out his shirt for her. “You looked cold.”
“A little,” she admitted, her voice almost a whisper. This beach, this moment, was too beautiful for confrontations. “I’m surprised how quickly it cools off here.”
She said nothing as he wrapped his shirt around her shoulders, but it felt… comfortable, even safe. She grasped it and held it closed around her arms. “Aren’t you going to get cold?”
“Eventually. But not yet.” He smiled at her and for a moment she saw it, that utterly charming dimple, that way his eyes softened and caressed. It was for this that every woman in the country fell at his feet. Who wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a look like that?
She swallowed hard. Suddenly unsure. “Aren’t you missing the party?”
“The party is missing me.” Nate smiled again, and looked at her carefully. “You’re drunk.” It wasn’t a question.
Amanda colored and looked down at her bare feet. She nodded. “I think so.”
“How many of those did you have?” Nate asked, pointing at the bottle of beer in her hand.
“Almost finished it,” Amanda said proudly. “The whole thing.”
“You got drunk on a single bottle?” Nate took a step back.
“Is that bad?” Amanda asked, looking up at him. Damn, it was a long way to look up and up and up. She got a little dizzy. She threw out a hand to stabilize herself and it landed on his chest. His thick, muscular chest. The warm skin felt good against her palm, and she held it there for a long moment, thinking how small and delicate it seemed. She leaned in and kissed his chest. It felt warm on her lips, too. And on her forehead. And her cheek.
She didn’t remember putting her arms around him and couldn’t imagine what happened to the empty beer bottle, but he felt so… warm. That was the word–warm. She turned her head so her chin sat on his chest and she looked up to where the two of his faces were wobbling in front of her.
“How come… how come you’re not drunk?” she asked him. It was almost an accusation.
He chuckled. “I kinda am.”
“How many bottles did you have?” she asked, pushing herself away from him and turning in a slow pirouette. The music from the house was faint, the surf creating a better melody for dancing.
“Of what?”
“Beer!” Amanda stopped and threw her hand out to wave the bottle at him, but she couldn’t find it. In fact, her hand was empty. She stared at it a long moment, as if staring long enough might bring it back somehow. Oddly enough it didn’t. She snorted, the whole thing suddenly very funny. “I bet you had more than one!”
“Twelve,” he said, counting it out on his fingers for her, then giving up as he ran out of fingers. “And half a bottle of scotch. And some gin.”
She pulled back from him. “Hilly shot!” She licked her lips. That didn’t sound right somehow. “Holly shite!” She gave up. “That’s a lot!”
“I’ve been in training a long time!” he said and lunged forward to catch his shirt. He missed and it slid off her shoulders, pooling in the soft sand. She reached her hand up to his neck and hung there for a moment, letting her hands explore the thick muscles of his back. She discovered her toes were flexing and she was rising, closer and closer to him. His chest had been interesting, but it was nothing compared to his steel jaw, square and framed with just a little stubble. Those eyes that penetrated hers.
Her lips covered his and his hands, the large, strong, so capable hands ran up and down her back, finally taking her derrière in his huge palms and pulling her up to his lips, kissing her deeply and fully. His hands massaged her buttocks, pulling them into his massive grip as his tongue found hers.
She ran her hands down the broad expanse of his back, running her fingers through his rough hair. She barely took a break from him long enough to slip off her shirt and toss it uncaring beside the other.
She worked her way down his neck with her lips and fumbled for his belt. She was filled with a sudden need, a burning basic ‘must have’ like air or water or food. She slapped her own belly, trying to tear off his belt and open his pants, but when she finally succeeded the sight of him made her gasp.
He was thick, so thick and long. He woke to her touch, lifting in the darkness to her, and without giving herself time to think about it she fell to her knees and pulled him into her throat, loving the way he filled her. She grabbed his ass and slowly, so slowly, lowered her head onto him and swallowed, easing him down her throat.
She took a deep breath and allowed him to close off her airway. She sucked and licked and bit and massaged his gorgeous shaft all while stroking his skin. Her mind had kicked out completely somewhere along the way. For once there was no nagging little voice about jobs and responsibility. There was only him. Only here. Here and now as she bounced her head against him, swallowing his full length and letting it slide back along her tongue and over her teeth. She delighted in his taste, in the way he felt in her mouth, in her throat, as she pulled back and sucked the head while flicking the tip of him with her tongue.
He pulled away suddenly; she thought she’d done something wrong, but he laid her out over the shirt she’d dropped in the sand and pulled off her shorts and underwear savagely, as though his need was as bad as hers.
She was whimpering, pulling at him with a frantic urgency as he parted her thighs and dropped his head between her legs, his tongue flashing and flickering over her. It was electric, as though all the sensations of her body were concentrated in the single point of her clit. It ran through her, springing every nerve ending; every breath was caught and held and her throat burned from stifling the screams that would bring the entire party down on them as he probed her depths and grasped the little bud with his teeth. She whimpered and begged, though she had no idea what she was begging for as he used his thumbs to spread her folds. The air was cold against her heated center and she gasped, thinking that she would lose it here and now, and she wasn’t ready for that, not by a long shot. She wanted more…
As though reading her mind, he moved his head again, diving back into her sex like a man starved, flashing tongue and magic fingers, bringing her to the edge of orgasm again and again, but pulling back until she was weeping with frustration.
Then she felt him shift and she gasped and bit her lip as he rose above her, his entire body outlined dimly against the darkening sky as he entered her, piercing her to the core, stretching her, opening her to take his length. He slipped into her wetness easily. She was ready to surrender to him. More than ready. She sighed as he filled her. It was like coming home.
But even this was only the beginning. He slipped between her folds, moving his hips against her, his hardness reaching through her and pressing her from inside out until she thought he would pin her to the soft sand. He filled her and, with her head thrown back in wild abandon, sh
e wrapped her legs around his waist and reveled in the oldest of night-time pursuits. She moved with him, her own hips rising and falling as she pulled herself around him, pulled him into her, until she was well and truly filled. And even then, she wanted more.
Maybe he understood. He took her with a wildness, animalistic almost in the way he pounded into her, until his movements echoed the crashing of the waves on the shore. She met him, frantic for him, kissing every inch of skin. Biting him along the neck and shoulder, tasting his sweat upon her lips and tongue and reveling that he would be so…so…male. So him.
When the orgasm came, it wasn’t a slow gentle thing like fumbling with boys when she was younger, or the quick, efficient way she pleased herself. She came around him with him buried into her, her legs twitching and jumping, her hips high and back arched, clutching desperately at his body, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, holding her anchored there.
She bent and screamed and bit into his shoulder to keep from crying out worse, to keep from drowning out the vast ocean and its might with her climax. He finished while her body was still spasming and flailing.
Then he collapsed beside her, breathing heavily as if he’d just run the length of the field and scored whatever it was they scored when they ran the length of the field. Words weren’t important anymore. Nothing was. She melted into the sand, his massive body curled around her, one giant arm across her breasts in a possessive gesture.
There was nothing to say, so they lay there in silence. Her hand reached. Found his as she thought how odd it was to be lost like this on some unknown beach, in the darkness, next to him, until finally the darkness and the liquor and the languor claimed her.
Chapter 10
Dawn came and Amanda woke stiff, feeling gritty. She opened her eyes and closed them again quickly against the glare of the sun.
Oh shit.
The memories of the night came flooding back to her. She didn’t dare turn around behind her, just in case…oh yeah, there was a hand on her thigh.
Shit.
She was naked on a beach, out in the open where anyone could see.
Shit.
She turned, just a little. Yep. It was Nate. Holy mother of…. he was naked, too.
OH SHIT!
Amanda slid out from under his hand, holding it to prevent it from falling and waking him. She edged out from the hole she’d made with her body and tried to hold on to her head before it fell off and rolled down the beach somewhere. Not literally, but it felt like it. Not an easy task given the wave of pain flooding through her.
She fished for her shirt and denim shorts, couldn’t find her bra or panties, and after a frantic search remembered that her sneakers were on the porch where she’d left them the night before.
Mostly dressed, she felt a jabbing pain somewhere near the back pocket of the shorts and fished out Nate’s keys. For a moment, she considered just taking the car and running but then thought better of it. She spotted his pants crumpled up underneath him and very slowly tucked the car keys into his pocket where he would be sure to find them, and took off over the warming sand to the house. Grabbing her shoes, she found her phone in her hip pocket and called a taxi to get back to the hotel before she could think better of it and instead just book a flight to Timbuktu. Or something.
Please let him be too drunk to remember. She repeated it like a mantra. Please let him be too drunk to remember.
The problem was that Amanda remembered. She remembered every detail, every nuance, every feeling. She pushed it down but it refused to stay there, her body screaming from the loss of him.
Thankfully the cab arrived before anyone else surfaced. The ride all the way back to the hotel gave her way too much time to think. It didn’t help that the cab driver kept smirking at her in the mirror, as if everything she’d done last night was written all over her face.
At the hotel she paid him, stiffing him the tip because he’d leered at her one too many times. Feeling filthy, and certainly not herself, she slunk to her hotel room without meeting anyone. In minutes she was stripped and under the hot water, where she tried to scald off the memory of last night.
It didn’t work.
Still, she stayed put until the water ran cold. She spent most of that time pulling grains of sand out of her hair and from her toes and inventing new names to call Nate. None of them pleasant. Still it was only fair, given the names she was calling herself.
Eventually she fled the shower and curled up in a tiny heap, seated on the bed and wrapped in a hotel robe, rocking back and forth and debating whether she should just look for a job out in L.A. since she was already here.
The knock on her door made her cry out and dive for the blankets.
The problem was she wasn’t four, the bogeyman sounded an awful lot like Coach Johnson, and as it turned out he wasn’t going to go away until she answered.
Shit.
Her creative range of vocabulary had definitely taken a turn for the worse.
Amanda dragged herself from the bed, wrapping the blanket around herself over the robe, using the layers of fabric as armor.
It was Coach Johnson all right. It was a very angry Coach Johnson. He shoved his way through the door the moment she cracked it. “I said that you were imitating boyfriend-girlfriend,” he said without preamble.
Amanda contemplated the floor, wondering what it would take for it to open up and swallow her. They had earthquakes here, didn’t they? She sighed, wet her lips and tried to talk, then had to try again when the first attempt didn’t work out with anything audible. “I know, I went too far…”
“I said not to hook up with anyone out here!” Coach was getting a full head of steam now.
“I didn’t think it was going to happen either…”
“I said it to him! I didn’t think I would have to say it to you! You were the sensible one! You were the one I thought I could trust to understand what’s at stake, You, I thought, would be smart enough not to throw away everything for a date!”
Amanda blinked. “I’m not sure what we’re talking about right now—”
“You brought a DATE to the game! You were on the KISSING CAM! What the hell?!”
Realization dawned. The blanket drooped. “Are you talking about my cousin, George?”
Coach stared at her. “Cousin? That guy’s your cousin?”
Amanda stared at him. “What do you think, that I’d bring a date to my job where I’m supposed to be dating some notorious football player?” She shook her head. “George is a huge football fan. I was using him to explain the game to me and, yeah, have someone to sit with in the stands. As far as the KISSING CAM is concerned, may I point out that it was a kiss on the cheek, for which we were booed?”
Coach actually backed toward the door, glancing over his shoulder as his hand fumbled for the knob. “Well, it’s gonna be awkward explaining that to the press, but it should be easily proven…”
“Don’t worry about them,” Amanda said, flopping into the chair next to the window. “If that’s all you wanted, you may as well leave now. The secret is safe. In fact…there was someone with a camera when I left the bar with Nate. They probably followed us…” The blood drained from her face. It was a good thing she was sitting down. “Oh. Shit.” She looked at Coach with widened eyes. “Could they have… do their cameras see in the dark… Double shit.”
Coach stalled out in the act of leaving, letting go of the doorknob and watching the door he’d just opened swing shut under its own steam. When he turned, it was in slow motion. “What are you talking about?”
“Last night. We were on a beach…”
Coach wasn’t getting it.
“All night…”
Still not getting it.
“ALL. NIGHT.”
Coach got it.
His jaw worked. It took a while for the explosion to build. Amanda pulled the blanket up again, this time not stopping at her shoulders.
“Are you…? You were only supposed to pretend to
be his girlfriend!”
She peered out from under her fabric tent. “I know! But he was so sad and kept talking about quitting and that was such a …”
“QUITTING?! No one wants him to quit! What did you do?”
“Me?” Amanda squeaked despite herself, letting the blanket drop back down over her head. “I didn’t do anything. He was just under so much pressure and so overwrought…”
She never even heard him move. One minute the blanket was wrapped securely around her, a nice safe little cocoon, the next she’d been tumbled onto the floor, blanket long gone and her robe half off.
“You thought it would be good for him to quit?”
She scrambled to right herself, tugging at the robe to save her modesty, such as it was at this point. “It wasn’t my idea!”
“It had to have been… Nate doesn’t HAVE ideas of his own!”
That did it.
Amanda was on her feet in an instant, to hell with the robe. “Wait right there! Nate isn’t an idiot. You keep treating him like a child and he becomes a child. He’s smart, smarter than he lets on. You keep saying these horrible things about him, and you’re no better than all the people who want to see him fail! Maybe he should retire, just to get away from people like you! It’s bad enough to have a world full of people who want to see him screw up, but at least none of them pretended to have his best interests at heart first!”
“You have his best interests at heart? Really? You’re his babysitter. Just because you fucked him doesn’t make you any different from a host of women who…”
Amanda’s hand left four distinctive red welts across his face.
“Holy shit,” Coach said quietly. “You’re in love.”