Somewhere on St. Thomas: A Somewhere Series Romance

by Neal, Toby

  He turns me away from him, though, and I know it’s so he can see and touch and play with my ass, his other favorite part of my body. He pushes me down in front of him across the end of the bed, and I know he’s gazing at my butt, each cheek smooth and silky, firm and shapely, lightly freckled like a plover’s egg. He strokes and explores me, driving me mad, and finally he tests my readiness with a skillful hand, and I cry out for him. “Yes! Yes!”

  And then he drives into me from behind so deep and hard my head snaps back and I let out a wail of fulfillment. He’s grasping my hips and surging into me, watching and controlling everything that feels utterly wild and abandoned. I’m right there with Rafe, in his body, enjoying the hell out of his conquering of mine, and at the same time I’m in my body, reveling in the heavy, deep strokes of his conquest.

  I want even more sensation, so I pull my legs up and kneel on the end of the bed before him. He gives a husky groan at the sight of my folded body with him so deep in me it’s as if we’re one. He grasps my waist, and all is a pinwheel of colored light and inarticulate sound and overwhelming pleasurable sensation as he cleaves me again and again until I’m boneless and melting around him.

  When the sensations have abated a little, he leaves me and I moan at the loss but don’t have time to really feel it before he pushes me down on my back now, puts my legs up on his shoulders, and enters me in one long stroke.

  I gasp with the shock, with his sure and confident handling of me for maximum pleasure. My hands grasp his muscular buttocks as he gazed into my eyes, the intimacy almost too intense.

  More.

  More and more and more.

  Just when I think I’m going to fly apart, broken on the anvil of his desire, he comes, arching like a hawk flying above me, his arms tight and body vibrating with the release of a hoarse and triumphant shout.

  The depth and heft tips me off the ledge. I spasm in his arms, my whole body rippling as waves of pleasure surround the rock that has fallen into the lake of my being in one long endless now.

  Whatever else happens to us, there was this moment in time when I lived in two bodies and almost died of the pleasure of it. If I have to go, this is how I want to—death by pleasure in the arms of the man I’ve come to love beyond life.

  Chapter 29

  Rafe

  Ruby’s feet are up in the stirrups finally and I’m clutching her hand. It’s been a long nine months of life, work, Pearl, and other travails, and eight hours, so far, of labor. I totally get why they call it “labor,” and I’m exhausted. Ruby’s exhausted, too, but I think we’re finally in the home stretch of this arduous adventure. She’s looking at me, her vivid hair stuck to her face with sweat. Her eyes are round and scared and so very green.

  I’m scared, too, but I’m smiling to hide it.

  She’s been telling me she thinks she’s going to die for an hour now. Her belly, that great heaving mountain, looks enormous to both of us. The fact that somehow, any minute now, she’s going to push whoever’s in there out still seems totally unrealistic to me, but everyone assures us things are going well and nature is cooperating.

  “I don’t want to die this way,” she says to me, dead serious. “I want to die having an orgasm with you.”

  The doctor, a woman who looks way too young for the job, is checking around down there under the sheet, and she snorts with laughter.

  “Think of this as the biggest orgasm you’ve ever had,” she says. “One that actually produces something. You can push on the next contraction.”

  We see the contraction begin before the pain hits. Ruby’s vast belly seems to pull upward into a teardrop shape; then it goes square and harder than stone.

  I know because I’ve felt it happen under my hand a hundred, maybe a thousand times now. Those muscles would put a world-class weight lifter to shame.

  She’s still looking at me when the pain hits, and her eyes widen with the shock that, no matter how many times it’s happened today, never seems to get less terrible.

  I squeeze her hand hard. “Go for it, Ruby! It’s time to push. You can do this!”

  She seems to gather herself and sit up past even the inclination of the table, and she bears down, turning bright red, and damn if I don’t see something emerging between her legs.

  “Go, Ruby! Go! The biggest one ever!” I yell.

  She sucks a great big breath and bears down again. Our child slides out into the world after three massive pushes.

  “Fastest first baby I’ve delivered in a year!” the doctor exclaims. We’re both crying and laughing and trying to get a look at the baby and see what it is.

  Ruby says, “I didn’t die!” in some astonishment, and they hand him—he is most definitely a boy—to me first.

  He’s crying a bit, covered with that white stuff, flailing his long arms as the nurse helps me tuck a thin blanket around him. I hold him close against my scrubs and angle him so Ruby can see his face. I can feel tears pouring down my cheeks, but I’m grinning so hard it hurts.

  “Oh, hello, Peter,” she says, and I swear I see him recognize her voice. He goes still. His eyes open and they’re dark blue. His hair is dark like mine, and I can hardly bear to part with him for a second, but he needs his mama now.

  Ruby’s putting our son, Peter Kane McCallum, named for both our dads, to her breast, cooing in a soft voice I’ve never heard from her before.

  Ours is an ordinary story, really. Girl meets boy, they fall in love, they get married, and they have a baby. He’s rooting around and getting hold of that tasty nipple, and he latches on so hard she yelps, and we laugh. We look down at him together, amazed at this miracle that happens to people every day.

  And it happened to us.

  Dear Readers,

  I hope you enjoyed this story of a deep and fateful love filled with life’s layers of complication. I know it’s sexier than I usually go, but Somewhere on St. Thomas is the story of a young woman’s awakening sexuality with the man she loves, an incredible time for anyone lucky enough to have that experience. Continue reading for an excerpt from Somewhere in the City, Ruby’s sister Pearl’s very different story, but an equally thrilling path to love.

  Special thanks to Eden Baylee, a romance/erotica writer I particularly respect for her classy handling of some of the stickier parts, who read my earlier drafts and said, “You’ve got a nice way with this!” Believe me, I needed the encouragement.

  Yes, I’m a hopeless romantic that believes in Big Love. I hope you enjoy these “take me away” stories! And if you do, please leave a review. I read them all, and they matter so much!

  Much aloha,

  Toby Neal

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  Somewhere in the City

  a Somewhere Series Romance

  by Toby Neal

  Chapter 1

  It’s dangerous to be too beautiful.

  I know. I’ve lived it. Right now I’m sitting on a hard metal folding chair in the recovery meeting, enduring the way guys scope out my body and girls judge me. I’ve dressed down for the occasion, too—I’m no threat to anybody in my ratty hoodie, the hoodie that’s been a kind of security blanket for the last six months since Dad died and everything changed.

  I have on baggy jeans, and my hood is up to hide my hair. I’m thinking of dying it. Some mousy color, like muddy brown. My hair draws way too much attention.

  In fact, that’s what I’ll do, right after this stupid meeting.

  The leader gets us going with the Serenity Prayer, and then we are supposed to go around and share our “experience, strength, and hope.”

  I don’t have much of any of the above, at eighteen, just moved here, and my biggest hope is to get everybody off my back as soon as possible.

  I endure the stories. Sad ones, really. Kids ripping off their parents. Guys giving other guys blowjobs in parking lots for a few bucks to get high. I was never into any of that shit or did anything radical like that. In
fact, I’d have been fine, would never have had to come to this meeting, if it weren’t for the Carver boys.

  But who could resist the Carver boys? The only thing to do in that pothole in the road, Peterborg, on Saint Thomas. Yeah, it all started with Connor, but then there was Keenan. I shut my eyes and indulge in a little memory starring me and the Carver boys.

  Someone elbows me. “Your turn.”

  I sit up. The leader, a chubby lady with one of those soft do-gooder faces I’m too familiar with, gives me a hairy eyeball.

  “Welcome to our meeting,” she says. “Is this your first time with us?”

  I nod. “Hi. My name is Pearl.”

  I’m supposed to say, “and I’m an addict,” but I don’t. I can’t. It would be a lie. I just barely got going with some hard stuff and everybody freaked the hell out, and now here I am enrolled in this “day treatment” daily meetings routine. It sucks. But at least I’m not in Eureka, Armpit of California, with Mom’s tears and Jade’s compulsive cleaning.

  The group leader narrows her eyes a little that I haven’t said the catechism. I remember she has to sign my attendance sheet, though, as she says, encouraging, “Would you like to share your experience, strength and hope with us?”

  “Not really, no. But thanks for asking.”

  A titter goes around the circle, and the leader moves on.

  There’s a guy across from me, long thick legs extended into the circle, his jeans just the way I like them—broken in, with split knees. He’s wearing black boots and a leather motorcycle jacket that looks like it’s the real deal, like he got here on a Harley or something. His arms are folded on a chest I wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at, and dark brows are pulled down over eyes that look black from here.

  I stare back at him, and touch my tongue to my lower lip. Then, I shut my eyes very slowly, and open them again, so he can see how blue my eyes are, how long my lashes. I uncross and recross my legs, so he can appreciate that mine are almost as long as his.

  His face doesn’t change and he looks away with such a bored expression I feel heat rise up my chest under my hoodie.

  Well, getting him to notice me will make the meeting a little more interesting. I push my hood back so my naturally curly blond hair tumbles out like Rapunzel sending down her ladder.

  He doesn’t so much as glance at me, and I spend the rest of the meeting trying to get him to.

  When it’s finally over, I get up from my chair, unzipping the hoodie so my black turtleneck showcases my curves, but he’s already walking out without talking to anybody, picking up a helmet from beside the door.

  Well. That gives me something to look forward to tomorrow when I come here again, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. And maybe I’ll keep my hair blond for a while longer.

  Unfortunately my antics have attracted someone else’s attention, one of those lumpish hockey-player types that think they’re God’s gift—not that I would know a hockey player from a pole vaulter, since we have nothing but soccer on St. Thomas.

  “Hi.” He actually reaches out and picks up one of my curls, rubs it between his fingers like he wants to smell it or something. “Pearl.”

  I yank my hair out of his hand and bundle it into my hood and zip it up again. “Howdy, fellow druggie.”

  That puts him back a bit, rubbing his rash-roughened chin with a hand. “Need a ride somewhere?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I’m Steve.”

  “And I don’t recall asking.” I turn and walk out. I can feel his eyes burning holes in my back, and I can feel the other girls hating on me. Everyone judging me, like they always do.

  Well, if they’d walked a mile in my boots they wouldn’t envy them, I can tell you that. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not in Eureka, California, after all. Instead, I’m living in Boston with my sister Ruby and her hunky husband Rafe, and they’re pretending they have some idea how to deal with me.

  I don’t need anything but to be left alone.

  That’s what I tell myself as I walk home from the meeting. It feels lonelier and more pathetic than I ever like to feel, the wind cutting through my jeans and the last of the fall leaves rolling along the sidewalk. There’s a sharp wind off the Charles River, only a few blocks away from my sister’s sweet old Back Bay neighborhood. I go up the stairs of their brownstone with the sandstone lions that guard the door. I’ve nicknamed the lions Beowulf and Odin, and I pat their heads as I get my key out and go inside.

  Yeah, every time I think I’m lonely or sad or get tempted to drink or hit someone up for a line or a hit, I have to think: EUREKA. I don’t have to go there. And I need to be grateful.

  Up in my girly-pink bedroom, I turn my radio to the rock station and flop backwards on the bed, listening to the Top 40 of 1989.

  I really am grateful to be here.

  Rafe and Ruby didn’t have to take me in, make me the third wheel to their two-person googly-eyed love fest, especially now that Ruby’s pregnant. Right on cue, Ruby knocks on the door and then opens it. “How was the meeting?”

  Ruby’s so pretty. She has green eyes and long dark red hair, and the kind of heart-shaped face with blushy skin that makes guys want to protect and take care of her, when nothing could be further from what she’s really like: stubborn as a mule and smart as hell. She just got her law degree, and the only person who can sometimes beat her at an argument is me.

  “It was fine.”

  “Where’s your paper?”

  I got so distracted I forgot to have the leader sign my attendance sheet. “Dammit, I forgot to have it signed. But Ms. Betsy can sign it next time.”

  Ruby comes all the way into the room. She’s about three months pregnant and just beginning a little pooch of belly. “Pearl, come on. You promised. Let me see your arms.”

  I push up the sleeves of my hoodie, biting down on all the ways I want to tell her to back off. She and Rafe trying to lay down rules is really kind of funny, when Mom and Dad never could get me to obey anything.

  I’m the original rebel without a cause. I don’t know why it’s always my first instinct to do the opposite of what everyone wants.

  She sits next to me. “I hate this, Pearl. I hate having to hold your feet to the fire like this. But I just don’t think you get how serious things are.”

  “Oh, I get it.” I pull my legs up under my stretched out, comfy old hoodie. “I do what you and Rafe want or you ship me back to Mom.”

  “I guess that’s the bottom line, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I just don’t think you get how worried we are about you. You have a problem.”

  I can’t take it anymore, and surge up off the bed in a waft of anger.

  “You don’t get how it’s really not a big deal and never was.”

  “Mom and I talked. She said she’s thought a lot about how things started going bad with you and traced it back to a Christmas party two years ago that you went to at the Carvers’ house. Did something happen there? Something bad?”

  Yeah, I remember that party. What I remember is that I don’t remember.

  “You know what? If I’m too much trouble, send me back already. I’m sick of the inquisition, of nothing I do being right.”

  I slam out of the bedroom, feeling tears at the backs of my eyes.

  If only Dad hadn’t died because of me.

  I could have still turned things around if he hadn’t died when he did. How he did. I jump on the smooth walnut railing and slide down the long curving stairs to the entryway.

  I’m not a total nutcase. I grab a coat. Boston in November is pretty damn chilly at night.

  Out on the street it’s quiet. I head for one of the walking bridges that crosses over the freeway to the park that runs along the Charles River. I just want to walk, to clear my head. I’m not looking for trouble.

  But trouble has always seemed to find me.

  Look for these Toby Neal Titles

  Contemporary Fiction/Romance:

  Somewhere on Maui: (a S
omewhere Series Romance)

  Somewhere on St. Thomas (a Somewhere Series Romance)

  Somewhere in the City (a Somewhere Series Romance)

  Somewhere in California (a Somewhere Series Romance)

  Mystery:

  Nightbird: a Jet World Novella

  Lei Crime Series:

  Blood Orchids (book 1)

  Torch Ginger (book 2)

  Black Jasmine (book 3)

  Broken Ferns (book 4)

  Twisted Vine (book 5)

  Shattered Palms (book 6)

  Dark Lava (book 7)

  Fire Beach (book 8)

  Rip Tides (book 9)

  Bone Hook (book 10, 2015)

  Lei Crime Companion Series:

  Stolen in Paradise: a Lei Crime Companion Novel (Marcella Scott)

  Unsound: a novel (Dr. Caprice Wilson)

  Wired In: (Sophie Ang) Coming 2015-16

  Middle Grade/Young Adult

  Island Fire

  Wallflower Diaries: Case of the Missing Girl

  Nonfiction:

  Under an Open Sky: a Memoir with Photos on Traveling and the National Parks

  Children of Paradise: a Memoir of Growing Up in Hawaii

  Sign up for news of upcoming books at http://www.tobyneal.net/

  About the Author

  Toby Neal was raised on Kaua`i in Hawaii. She wrote and illustrated her first story at age five and credits her background as a mental health therapist with adding depth to her characters—from the villains to the heroes. She says, “I’m endlessly fascinated with people’s stories.”