He’d tried to stay away. Knew deep down it would be in both of their best interests, but he’d been unable to fight the pull to her. Now he walked a tightrope between a life he fought tooth and nail for, and the one woman who captured his heart. His life currently remained in a constant state of flux, but during those moments when he was around her, everything calmed. She was the only constant in his chaotic life. Dangerous feelings and realizations. What the hell—he learned a long time ago that one couldn’t surf when the ocean was smooth as glass. Why should he expect life to be any different?
Phoenix stirred a little but didn’t wake. Hunter stood and just savored the moment. Who knew how long it would be before he got to see her again. He had to fly out in the morning for a photo shoot and he was not looking forward to posing in front of a camera. Maybe he could persuade her to go with him. He shook his head and sighed. This was not what he wanted. His own inner demons had plagued him for three months and he couldn’t allow them to interfere with the time he had with her.
He took the rose, and ran it lightly from the tip of her toes, over her long, lean legs, following along the tight mound of her ass, past the thin scrap of black lace and matching camisole, up her back and over her left shoulder where the trident marked her flesh. Careful not to jostle the bed too much, he leaned down and gently kissed the inked flesh. She moaned and he sank down onto the bed beside her.
With mussed hair the color of wheat with natural pale reddish-blonde highlights drawn out by all the time she’d spent in the sun, Phoenix turned toward him. Even in the darkness, he could imagine her gray eyes heavy with sleep as she tried to focus on him. He didn’t want to give her a chance to send him away like she threatened to do each time he came back. Could he blame her? Two years and he still gave her so little of himself.
“Hunter?”
“Yes, angelfish.” Even half asleep, he loved the way she said his name. It sounded different. There were no expectations. Just a chance to be something more together than they were apart. Here with her, he could let the demands and demons plaguing him slip away. He could forget the dangers their love presented and live in the moment. With her, he could be himself, be the man he wanted to be. Have a piece of something pure and good. The man who, at that very moment, wanted nothing more than to lose himself in her.
With a need to taste her, he pressed his mouth to hers. He lightly ran his tongue over her lips, praying that she would accept him. They played this game each time he came home. He knew the risks and accepted that one day it would all come to an end. But it didn’t stop him from returning to her or from holding out hope that this time he wouldn’t be left on the doorstep of a vacant house searching for a key that was no longer there.
She ran her hand down his side and slid it under the hem of his shirt and he stilled. There were a few new scars from his encounter with the treacherous reefs at Maverick’s. He shuddered at the memories as they came crashing to the surface. The riptide he’d been caught in was strong, and even worse, it had cost him his best friend. He hadn’t been able to come back right away. Not until he knew he couldn’t be without her one more night. Staying away wasn’t an option. Feeling her body beside his, made him forget for just a moment, though. It had been too long since he’d seen her because each time he did, it was harder to leave.
“This is a good dream,” she mumbled.
“Yes, it is.” Hunter smiled at the revelation that she hadn’t fully woken. When she was over tired, she talked in her sleep. It was too damn easy to sway her and he took advantage of it time and time again. The woman pushed herself too hard. Wanted to save the world. If he were smart, he’d let her sleep. Just curl up beside her and enjoy the warmth of her body as they slept. It would be too normal. Too much like being committed. An admission that he was in over his head. He followed the waves and chased his dream, which left little time for anything beyond his own selfish need to feel something real. That need eventually took over as it always did.
From the moment he’d seen her on the beach, she’d been the only one he turned to. And this time when he’d finally allowed common sense to take a backseat to his heart, he’d practically run from the airport straight to her house, even amidst protests from his brother. Even turned off his phone to keep from being tracked down. Hunter didn’t want anything interfering with this moment.
“I’m feeling a little out of shape. Just can’t stick the waves like I use to.” Her eyes slid closed and she rolled onto her back, her voice softening to a whisper as she began to drift back into a deep sleep. “Could use a good workout...”
She pulled the pillow closer, and mumbled, “You have too many clothes on.”
“You read my mind.” In more ways than one. He slipped off the bed and quickly undressed. With a gentleness he only ever felt when in her presence, he returned to the bed and placed himself over the top of her, bracing himself on his forearms, to keep the full weight of his body off of her. “Angel?”
“Yes?” The single word breathless and barely audible.
He would seduce her into waking. Placing a soft kiss on her mouth, then her neck, he moved his lips over her body until he reached her center. Slowly, he pulled back the fabric and placed his mouth on her. She moaned and he couldn’t help but smile. One deep pass of his tongue over her flesh—that was all it took.
“Oh God,” Phoenix called out. “You’re not a dream.”
“I can be if you want.” Hunter grabbed her hips and lifted her slightly, so he could access every glorious inch of her.
“I prefer the real thing.”
“Me, too.” The sweet smell of her coconut body wash made him feel at home.
“You were gone a long time.”
“I know.” Wanting to avoid talking about why he’d been missing in action for more than five months this last time, he dipped his tongue between her folds and indulged in the taste of her. Then he did it again. She squirmed. He loved the way her body reacted to the things he did. Each time he was with her, it felt like the first. He worked her. Made her moan for him. Her body arched and her muscles tightened. She grabbed the pillow and pulled it over her face and he stopped. “Don’t do that. I want to hear you scream.”
“Hunter, keep going. Please?”
He growled in frustration. All he wanted was to hear his name on her lips while he brought her pleasure. To enjoy knowing that he made her body sing. “Don’t hide your face.”
“Hunter...” she pleaded with him.
He slowly bent his head closer to her center but stopped. She tossed the pillow at him and he ducked his head, chuckling as he returned his attention to her body. With her hands fisted through his hair, she writhed against him. He moved his mouth a little faster. Sucking a little harder as she neared her climax.
“Oh—God—Hunter!”
The moment she let go, he felt it. Reveled in the sensation of her body writhing against his. This was what he wanted. Her giving herself over to him. Letting him be the one in control. He slid down her body, taking the scrap of lace underwear with him as he went.
“You’re going to be the death of me.” She watched him as he retrieved a condom from his wallet and tore open the package.
“I hope not.” Because he didn’t know what would become of him if he could no longer have moments like this with her. “I hope you outlive me.”
She crawled toward him, then rose up on her knees, taking the condom from him and rolling it down over his length. “Don’t count on it.”
In the blink of an eye, she removed her camisole, leaving her naked as she knelt on the bed. All his. In that moment, she belonged only to him. Not to the clients at her father’s company or the greedy investors who wanted her undivided attention as they tried to claim a piece of the Nash family enterprise. Just his.
“Lie back, angel.”
“Demanding tonight, aren’t you?” Concern creased her brow, but she did as he asked, allowing him what he wanted.
The bed dipped as he settled himself between
her legs. He slid his hands up her thighs and along her sides, and braced himself on his elbows, allowing just the tip of him to touch her.
“And a tease.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Into torture this evening, Mr. Sullivan?”
“No. Just afraid I won’t be gentle once I start.” And it was the truth. Right now, he needed to be reminded that while everything else in his life spun out of control, at least this—what they shared—was real.
She studied him for a moment, her grayish blue eyes seeing right through him. “Then don’t be.”
Her willingness to give him what he needed made him hesitate. He stared down at her in wonder. How had he gotten so lucky to find her? The one person he shouldn’t be with was the only one he wanted. He wished he had the balls to tell his agent to go to hell and tell Phoenix how his world wasn’t right when she wasn’t a part of it. He pushed himself inside her, trying to go slow, allowing himself to withdraw a little, before pushing farther in. He repeated the act until he was fully sheathed inside her. “You okay?”
“Hunter, just fuck me. Hard and fast.”
“What?” The shock of her statement registered in his voice. In all the times he’d crawled into her bed, she’d never said those words to him.
“You obviously need it to be more about you in this moment, so take what you want from me.”
Knowing that she could read him so well broke him a little, and made him reign in the side of him that wanted to be rough. He moved out slowly, then pushed back in. She wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles behind his hips and keeping him in place with a strength that always caught him off guard.
“Fuck me the way you want to, or get out the hell out of my bed.” She glared at him and he could see the concern in her eyes. The questioning. The fear.
He couldn’t tell her what made him want to screw her senseless until the horror of the last few months disappeared. And he couldn’t be cast from her bed. Not tonight. He couldn’t take rejection from her. It would break him. So he grabbed her hips and drove himself hard into her. He went deeper with each stroke. Each time he withdrew, he plunged back in. He pumped hard and fast as she dug her nails into his arms. With each thrust, the built up anger lessened its claim on him. Then he collapsed on top of her. She tangled her hands in his hair and forced him to look at her.
“Feel better?”
“Unbelievably so.”
She slid out from underneath him and climbed out of bed. “Good.”
She slapped his ass before getting off the bed. He watched her as she headed for the bathroom, catching a glimpse at the clock on her nightstand in the process. Two in the morning. She would be leaving for her morning run soon and he had a plane to catch that afternoon. He’d left her with nothing but a round of rough sex to remember him by. No tenderness. Nothing but selfish need. Hell.
***
No time for the usual routine before having to start her day, Phoenix turned the water on as hot as she could stand it, letting the steam fill the bathroom. She stepped in and leaned her head against the glass block wall. Tears slid down her face and mingled with the water from the shower. Her relationship with Hunter wasn’t supposed to be like this. This unyielding sense of longing shouldn’t exist. But it did. And each time Hunter came to her bed, she lost a piece of herself to him. If she wasn’t careful, she would lose everything. He’d slipped under her defenses a long time ago, and when he’d crawled into her bed that morning, she saw something that made her fear that the end of what they shared had finally come. She knew it would. Ends always came. Her mother’s abandonment taught her that. People always leave.
Yet, here she was, terrified even though she knew it would happen. The friends with benefits types of relationships only ever went one of two ways from what she’d heard—love or disaster. The odds were stacked against her and Hunter having a happily ever after. She couldn’t afford to make herself vulnerable to him. Not after watching her father teeter on the edge of sanity after her mom abandoned them, on the verge of losing everything while he fought for years to find himself again. The first lesson she remembered being taught by her dad—always remain in control. Followed by—never lose her sense of self and always keep the upper hand. These were lessons he’d learned the hard way when her mother had run out and left him with a five-year-old daughter to raise. Lessons she wished she could forget.
She stuck her face in the streaming water, allowing it to cleanse the tears away and finished her shower. The ache already started to build in her muscles from her workout with Hunter. Her body would probably feel worse after she sat on an airplane for eleven hours. A last minute flight home at her dad’s request only added to her to-do list. Just maybe she could forget the whole the haunted look and fierce need that was present in Hunter’s eyes when he’d crawled into her bed...or the whole morning.
When she slipped from the bathroom, she saw the clock on the nightstand declaring it three in the morning. Hunter slept, but it wasn’t a peaceful rest brought on by the exhaustion and contentment from satisfying sex. Instead, he thrashed about on the bed and yelled out. His face looked pained. When she realized it wasn’t stopping, she stepped up to the bed, and gently shook his arm. “Hunter?”
Startled, he grabbed both her arms. She winced at the strength behind his grasp. His eyes widened as realization sank in. “Phoenix? Oh god, I’m sorry.” The panic slowly eased from his face and the grip on her arms lessened.
“Are you okay?”
He sat up and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head against her stomach. She ran her fingers through his dark hair, wondering what caused him to have such violent dreams. He gave her a squeeze.
“I’m fine.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“More than you know, but...I can’t.” He wouldn’t look at her as he spoke, but his voice held so much sadness it made her heart ache.
“When you can, or feel like you want to, you know I’m here.”
She offered him an opening. A chance for them to be more than just two people who shared amazing chemistry in bed; the final choice to cross the line that she’d drawn in the sand so long ago. He looked at her then, his eyes filled with an unknown torment and red from lack of decent sleep. She would possibly miss her flight, but she couldn’t leave him sitting there with the expression on his face. A deep need to erase that look from his eyes drove her.
He moved back on the bed, propping himself up against the headboard, dragging his hands against his face. “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be? I don’t want to make you late.”
She did, but right now, being here with him when he needed her was what mattered. Her dad’s pilot could wait. “Not if you need me to stay.”
“If I could tell you, Phoenix, I would.”
“Is it bad?” She really wanted to know what tormented him but wouldn’t push. “You don’t have to give me details.”
“The worst.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Knowing you would willingly erase the boundaries we set between personal and pleasure means a lot, though.”
She crawled up on the bed and straddled his lap. Bad things happened to good people. The experiences she’d had in her own life had taught her that. She trusted that the man before her would talk to her when he was ready. Her fingers traced the rough area along his side where new scars marred his muscled flesh. “Means enough for you to be able to get some sleep before you leave?”
“Maybe. Or perhaps a kiss would help.”
“I can do that and one-up your offer.” She took his mouth with hers, letting their tongues dance together for a moment. When they parted, she slid her body down his, settling herself between his legs.
“I’m sorry, Phoe—”
No apologies, no looking back, and no regrets. Those were just three of the rules they’d set when they started this, and so far, she’d honored all of them. If she just up and left, she knew this moment would be her first regret. She slid her mouth over the length of him, slowly t
aking in every inch of him before retreating.
“What are you doing?”
She smiled up at him. “Trying to make you feel better. It’s not working...yet.”
She did it again, taking in as much of him as her mouth could hold. Then ran her tongue along the underside of him as she drew him slowly out. She looked up at him as his hands fisted into the sheets underneath him. Her gaze focused on him, she wrapped her fingers around the base of him, then with a light squeeze, ran her hand up until it met her mouth. With her hand and mouth working together, she brought him to the edge.
He didn’t touch her. Something that surprised her. He liked to be in control. She hated to give it up, but for some reason, she knew from their first encounter, that if they were going to get what they both wanted out of this arrangement, there would have to be compromise along the way. Last night, he needed to be the one calling the shots and she’d allowed it against her better judgment.
“I’m going to lose it.”
The warning was appreciated, but when she realized he’d given up control to her in this vulnerable position, she made the decision that she wouldn’t stop until he was completely satisfied. Hunter’s thighs tensed under her arms. The muscles in his arms bunched as he wrapped his arms in the sheets and released himself inside her mouth.
He stared down at her, raw emotion present in his blue-green eyes and his hair a mess from sleep. “Not what I was expecting this morning.”
She rolled off the bed and headed back to the bathroom. “A fabulous way to start the day if it made you happy, don’t you think?”
“Yes, and I’m not complaining.” He followed her, reaching into the shower to turn on the water. “It definitely made me giddy like a teenage boy who’d just got to feel his first set of—”
Riptide (Limitless Book 1) Page 2