by JoAnn Ross
Although Sax had told him that the Dungeness crab roasted in butter the Crab Shack specialized in was seduction on a plate, he decided that the two of them getting all greased up eating it might be sexy as hell, but since Mary was in the movie business, it’d probably remind her of that sex-drenched food-eating scene where Albert Finney’s Tom Jones and Mrs. Waters give a new meaning to the word “appetite.” And, although he wasn’t lacking in self-confidence, he saw no reason to invite comparison.
So, he ended up with a bag of crab pesto sliders, rockfish tacos, coleslaw, and marionberry shortcake over biscuits topped with whipped cream. Along with a beer for him and a split of wine for her.
She was already waiting for him. J.T. thought it said a lot about her that she looked just as good in a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers as she did in that black dress and high heels she’d worn earlier.
“I really appreciate this,” she said as they waited for a tall-masted schooner to sail beneath the opened iron bridge over the harbor. “Otherwise I would have ended up resorting to overpriced nuts and candy bars from the minibar.”
“The Crab Shack’s a Shelter Bay tradition,” he said, leaving out what his brother had told him about the roast crab’s alleged aphrodisiac powers. “It’s not fancy, but it’s good.” The bridge lowered. “I also picked up some wine.”
“After reading that blind item on Variety’s Web site, I need it,” she muttered.
“That bad?” he asked as they continued toward the coast.
“Let’s just say that Aaron Pressler believes in the scorched-earth policy of warfare. And I’m the earth he’s currently trying to scorch.”
“Want Sax, Cole, and me to go threaten to shoot him?”
“Of course not!” She’d been leaning her head against the passenger window, but at his comment, she turned toward him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Yeah.” He patted her thigh. And when she didn’t complain, left his hand there. “I was. Though it’s tempting.”
“I have to admit it’s tempting, too. But he’s not worth you and your brothers going to prison for.” She sighed.
“Can he do that?” J.T. asked. “Take your screenplay and give it to someone else?”
“Not my exact screenplay. Because, as I said earlier, the characters and the worlds are mine. But since you can’t copyright an idea, he can certainly change the name and locations and continue making movies about selkies.”
She was sure that was the case. Unfortunately, her agent had turned out to be in Machu Picchu researching past lives. Since she was out of cell phone range, Mary had been unable to confirm that clause in her contract.
“Don’t forget ménages with vampires and werewolves.”
“Aaron doesn’t like werewolves. He finds fur unsexy.”
“Personally, I’ve always had a thing for zombies. That lurching walk, the empty eyes, the flesh dripping from them. Call me perverse, but that’s really hot.”
She laughed. “What I’ll call you is a liar. You just said that to cheer me up.”
“Yeah.” He was definitely cheered up when she put her hand on top of his. “I did.” He turned his palm, linking their fingers together. “Did it work?”
“Yes.” She shook her head. “I’ve always considered myself too levelheaded to get drawn into Hollywood power games. But I guess I must have, because, for a few minutes there, I was more concerned what other people might think than how I felt about the situation.”
“How do you feel?”
“Frustrated. Angry I didn’t see it coming. But, I think, maybe a bit relieved.”
“Because if they do decide to bail on your story, you’ve got your power back. Which sounds more like a win than a loss to me.”
There was still enough light that he could see the surprise on her face. “That’s very perceptive.”
“Despite what my SEAL brother might tell you, not all Marines have muscles between the ears.”
“I didn’t think that,” she protested. “You’ve already proven your credentials, J.T. It’s just that Hollywood’s a very strange and alien world.”
“Yeah. I’m figuring that out for myself. The military might be its own universe, but at least you can usually trust your teammates.”
“Imagine a jar filled with scorpions, and you’ve an idea of the way things work in the movie business. Though,” she said, “there are some good people and I’ve made friends. But it’s rare.”
He turned onto a narrow, sandy road. “So what are you doing living there?”
“Believe me, I’ve been asking myself the same question more and more,” she admitted. Then looked around at the deserted ribbon of sand that hugged the cliff and stretched out in both directions. Sea stacks—bits of the continent that had broken away from the mainland—were still topped with fir trees.
“This is beautiful,” she said as a pod of pelicans flew by in fighter wing formation.
“Our family used to hang out here a lot when we were growing up. In fact, my grandfather built that table when we were kids.”
“It’s perfect. It’s so perfect.” She leaned across the console and kissed him. A quick too-short kiss on the lips that still packed a helluva punch. “Thank you.”
“And just think,” he said, repeating the earlier words she’d tossed at him, “the night’s still young.”
35
It was better than perfect. Rather than sit at the table, J.T. had brought along a blanket and built a fire. The late-setting sun sank into the sea in a blaze of color that gilded the water. The sky turned indigo, then ebony, illuminated by the glow of the campfire and the full moon floating overhead.
After a meal that could stand up to any overpriced chichi restaurant in L.A., Mary sat on the red and black plaid blanket he’d spread out atop the cooling sand, leaned back on a driftwood log, and gazed up at the glittering stars that seemed just out of reach.
“This could get to be a habit,” she murmured.
“The thought had crossed my mind.” J.T. tossed another, smaller piece of driftwood on the fire, causing a brief flare of orange sparks. “As impractical as it would be. And if you did it all the time, it might lose its appeal.”
“True.” She took a sip of her wine. He was right, of course. The novelty was probably what made it so special. That and the man that she was with.
They could have been the only two people in the world. Moonlight streamed down, making the sand sparkle like diamonds. The only sound was the distant crashing of surf, and a bit beyond the blanket, wavelets lapped on the glistening sand. It was a night tailor-made for romance.
J.T. lay back on the blanket, folded his arms behind his head, and looked up at the vast expanse of sky. “Those stars look as if you could reach up and touch them,” he said, unknowingly echoing her earlier thought.
“Mmm.” Although she murmured an agreement, she wasn’t looking at the sky. Instead her eyes were drinking in the way his brown T-shirt molded the hard lines of his body. Which, in turn, had her gaze traveling lower, lingering on his muscled thighs.
“When I was downrange, there were times when I’d look up at the sky and think how those stars were the same ones shining back here. I know it probably sounds dumb. But sometimes it helped, remembering that.”
It was yet another rare glimpse he’d given her of that time in his life. “It’s not dumb,” she said quietly.
He turned his head toward her, just as Mary’s gaze returned to his face. “Come here.”
Her mouth was suddenly dry. She took a sip of her wine. Then another. It didn’t help.
“I want to.” More than she’d ever imagined.
“But…?”
“I think I’m afraid.”
“Of me?” When a gust of sea breeze ruffled her hair, J.T. sat up, leaned toward her, and brushed a few dark strands away from her face.
“No.” She finished off the wine, which still didn’t do anything to soothe her sudden tangling nerves. “I think I’m afraid of us.”
> “Us?”
“You.” She pressed a hand against his chest. “Me.” His heart was beating beneath her touch. Strong, but with a sped-up rhythm that equaled her own. “Us together.”
“Believe me, sweetheart, I know the feeling.” He did not sound all that thrilled about the prospect.
The air around them grew thick and heavy, and felt sparked with electricity, like heat lightning just before a storm.
Mary’s mind, usually so logical and cautious, reeled with images, all of them erotic. All of them having to do with J. T. Douchett.
She imagined his mouth on her throat, her breast, his hot breath cooling her night-chilled flesh, trailing flames down her body until…
He lowered his head until his lips were a whisper away from hers.
Her eyes were drifting shut in anticipation of the kiss she’d been waiting for. Aching for.
Like their earlier shared kiss, this was more promise than pressure, a feathery brushing of lips, a slow stroke of his tongue, his teeth nipping at her bottom lip. Mary let out a shuddering breath as rich, liquefying pleasure flowed through her.
“This is crazy.”
“Insane.” He abandoned her lips to press kisses along the curve of her jaw. “But that doesn’t stop me from wanting you.”
“Nor me wanting you,” she admitted.
His hands stroked her back with a confident, practiced touch, slipping beneath her sweatshirt. “You deserve better.”
“You’re underestimating yourself.”
“I wasn’t talking about me. Well, that, too, probably. But I was talking about location. You’re a woman who deserves silk sheets, candlelight, and champagne.”
“I slept quite well for years on muslin sheets before anyone thought to count threads. Champagne is overrated, and we don’t need candlelight because we have the firelight. And the stars.”
As she glanced up at the star-studded sky, thinking about him looking at the same stars while in Afghanistan, one went shooting across the black velvet sky, then twinkled out.
“I think,” she murmured, “that if I ever build a house, I’m going to have a glass ceiling.”
“Sounds great. Although a bit impractical.”
“True.” She sighed. Reconsidered. “My rental house in Malibu has five skylights. One in the foyer, another in the living room, a third in the dining room, yet another in the master bedroom, and a fifth in the master bath.”
“Tinseltown decadence,” he said teasingly.
“You scoff,” she said, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “But maybe when this festival is over, you can come visit.”
It would certainly be no hardship. J.T. imagined making slow, smooth love to her in a wide feather-top bed with music playing from whatever hidden speakers the builder of the house had undoubtedly installed. Or better yet, in a Jacuzzi tub, with her up to her chin in bubbles, drinking the champagne he was now wishing he’d bought, her flesh gleaming like pearls in the starlight while he washed her back. Or her front.
Yeah. Like that was going to happen.
He paused, a desperate man caught on the edge of a jagged, treacherous cliff. One more step and he could send them both tumbling off.
Even knowing the impossibility of the fantasy, understanding that what was happening between them wouldn’t—couldn’t—last beyond the festival, he decided for now just to concentrate on the moment.
She drew in a quick breath as he began to caress her breasts. Sighed as his mouth captured hers in a slow, drugging kiss. She tasted like wine and sweet, forbidden fruit.
She shifted, lifting her arms as he drew the sweatshirt over her head. Then hummed deep in her throat as he drew her jeans down her long, slender legs.
He’d seen her body in her films. The bodysuit she’d told him about hadn’t hidden all that much, and although the movies hadn’t gotten anywhere near an X rating, there had been scenes when she’d obviously been bare breasted.
But as good as she’d looked on the screen, here, now, bathed in the glow of firelight, she was a thousand times more perfect in person and J.T. thanked whatever gods or fate had given him yet another gift by having her wear a front-fastening bra.
He flicked it open, filled his hands with her breasts, and felt her warm wherever his hands and mouth touched. He tasted the leap of her pulse at the base of her throat, then felt her heart hammer beneath a breast as fragrant as midnight gardens.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” she murmured as he stripped off her lace panties, then nipped at the cord behind her knee.
“Have you, now?” His mouth trailed down to her ankle.
“I have.” She sighed, and closed her eyes, as if reliving it. “Wicked, wonderful dreams.”
J.T.’s senses filled with her until his own heart was racing, and although he’d already discovered that control seemed to disintegrate around this woman, even as the hunger clawed at him and his body screamed for release, he deliberately, ruthlessly slowed the pace. And experienced a rush of power as she willingly, eagerly surrendered, giving him her mouth, her body, in the same way her selkie character had surrendered to the human male.
“Well, then.” Entranced by the true siren she’d proved to be, he lowered his still fully clothed body over her naked, lean one. “Let’s see what we can do to make your wicked dreams come true.”
Which he did his best to achieve as he drove her higher, again and again, to the edge of release.
When his roving tongue slid up the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, she quivered in response, her nails digging into his shoulders.
She was erotically hot. Wet. Ready.
But even as she moved under him, turning to quicksilver in his arms, still he retreated, rolling onto his side, leaning up on one elbow as his free hand stroked down that strong, slender leg, then back up again, stopping where her leg and hip came together.
“J.T.” Her voice was rough with need as she arched toward him. “I want.” She moaned low and deep in her throat as he cupped her. “I need.…”
“I know.” All too well. If he didn’t end this soon, he’d make an IED explosion look like one of those firecrackers he and his brothers used to set off on this beach on the Fourth of July.
All it took was a flick of his thumb, followed by a long stroke of his tongue, to send her over. She bucked. Shuddered on a gasp that gave way to a whimper.
Then went lax.
“Oh,” she murmured dreamily. “That was lovely.”
“And we’ve only just begun.” He skimmed his fingers over her breasts, which tightened at the light touch.
“Well, then…please, sir,” she asked, her eyes like blue fire in the starshine, “may I have some more?”
The look of her staggered him. And amazingly, for now, at least, she was his. “Much, much more,” he promised.
He stood up and watched her watching him undress. He’d never had a woman look at him the way she was doing at this moment. She made him feel invincible, as if he could leap tall buildings in a single bound, as if bullets would bounce off him.
Like, he realized, he’d felt during battle, before he’d had his life sucked out of him.
But better, he decided, as his blood heated to near boiling when she unconsciously licked her lower lip.
After he’d rid himself of the boots Kara had complained about, pulled off his socks, then ripped off his shirt, tossing it uncaringly onto the sand, he desperately hoped, as her remarkable eyes followed his every movement, she wouldn’t notice that his hands were less than steady as they struggled with the metal buttons on his jeans.
“Oh. Wow.” She let out a long, lusty breath as he stood naked in front of her. “When you come to Malibu, I’m going to have to make sure to keep you all to myself. Because one look at that body and every female agent in town will be tearing each other’s hair out to have you.”
He noticed that the hypothetical trip to visit her after the festival had shifted from possibly to when.
But since this was so not the time to
discuss their future, after sheathing himself with a condom from the stash he’d driven down to Newport to buy after leaving her at the inn last night, he lay back down on the blanket.
“Know this,” he said as he braced over her. “The only woman I want, the only woman I want to have me, is you.”
Finally free of the barrier of cloth between them, he covered her body with his, heat to heat, flesh to flesh, male to female. With a long sigh, and a dreamy murmur, she wrapped her legs around his hips.
“Now,” she said achingly.
“Now.” Thank God.
As he slid into her, she opened to him, taking him in, enfolding him. He moved slowly, in…out…in again as his rhythmic strokes went deeper, until he felt her contractions as she came again. With the sound of the surf roaring in his ears, swamped by what felt like a tsunami of sensation, J.T. gave in to his own release, which went on. And on. And on.
Finally, spent, he collapsed on Mary’s warm, pliant body.
They lay there for a long silent time as the tide ebbed and flowed and stars whirled overhead. “Are you sure we’re still on the beach?” she asked, sounding like a woman who’d polished off an entire bottle of that champagne he’d been wishing he’d bought.
He trailed a finger along her moist skin, between her breasts. “Last time I looked. Why?”
“Because I feel as if I just got swept away by a riptide.” She laughed softly. “Or one of those sneaker waves all the beach signs warn about. Because you certainly sneaked up on me, J. T. Douchett.” She lifted her hand and went to playfully bat his arm, but missed. When her hand fell limply to the blanket again, J.T. picked it up and pressed a wet kiss against the center of her palm.
“Although I hate to break this party up, we’d better leave.”
“Do we have to?” She rolled over and pressed her lips on his chest, leaving a trail of sparks as she kissed her way down his torso.
“Unless you want to get washed out to sea,” he said, fighting back the groan. “Tide’s coming in.”