Gypsy Beach (8 page)

As that wasn’t an option, he once again
resorted to the fantasies that had been his constant companion for
the last ten years. Every lonely night, every drunken escapade in
his wild college days, his chaperone on his wedding night. They
were unable to be forgotten, and he refused to let them go. For so
long, they were the only truth he could access. The memories of
them together were the only part of his life that had ever made
sense. The only thing that could save him.

Her naked body, soft and sweet, swayed
against his. Her nipples beaded tightly against his chest as his
hands swept up from her hips to feel the swells of her tiny
breasts. His tongue seeking and hungry for her mouth.

The shower.
Images of her stepping out
of that shower supplied him the next stage. His wrapped his fist
firmly around his cock and imagined encompassing her small timid
hand within the strength of his own. Showing her how to obliterate
him with the rhythmic pump and pull.

His hands sluiced through the water cascading
over the dip of her back as he grasped her ass, pulled her close,
and pressed his strain against her abdomen. She rocked against him.
Their slick bodies sliding, skin on skin, sending tremors
throughout her that ignited his own. His name fevered on her lips.
Beckoning him. Needing him.

He could make her bloom. His fingers grasped
her waist and then slowly followed the water’s trail down to those
sweet curls covering her mound. Deeper. She continued to pump his
cock up over the thick veins filled with the need to make a claim.
She squeezed him tight and slipped up over his head, pulling a
heady groan from his lungs. It echoed off of the shower walls
around him.

With two fingers he coaxed her clit until it
swelled all for him. Another hungry groan as he began to ravage
that tender bundle of nerve endings, making her whimper and writhe.
He brought his fingers to his mouth, sucking the sweetened nectar
of her.

His mind spun. He pulled harder and
faster.

Her mouth on him. Those beautiful lips
nursing away everything that had gone so wrong while she stared up
at him with those soulful eyes, so sure that he would give her
everything she needed. The pressure of her mouth and strokes of her
tongue tending him. Her face flushing. Her breasts gliding against
him as she sucked the salty need that leaked so readily from him,
all for her.

The reverberations of her moans against his
shaft made him throb thick and fierce. The weight of her beautiful
body as he lifted her up into his arms and laid her out before him.
Her legs spread in invitation, showing him the stunning imagery of
her swollen full, ready, and slicked pink all for him. Her body
giving him needy writhes. Her begging him to satiate her
hunger.

With one, long, penetrating thrust he would
take her over and pump that sweet little pussy full.

A ragged, guttural moan accompanied the beads
of cum that shot from his cock after an embarrassingly short amount
of time by Ryan’s own estimations of himself. He shuddered and
tried to wash away the memories with his own vestige of what could
never be.

By Sienna’s third cup of coffee, she’d gone
through every available scenario as to what to do now that Ryan
McNamara was back in her life, so to speak. She’d called herself
every form of the word idiot she could come up with, but she was
just no good at grudges. The vibes involved in holding a grudge
were exhausting, and that just wasn’t her thing.

He’d completely broken her heart, shattered
it into a million pieces. She should definitely not be thinking
about any kind of reconciliation. Not that he’d said he wanted one,
but he’d wanted to kiss her. She was almost certain of that.

She’d played out forgiving him no matter what
had happened and trying it again. That went against her fiery
spirit, so she moved onto sleeping with him while he did the work
on her house and trying to get him out of her system, but the
makings of a good romance novel probably weren’t going to get her a
happy ending.

She reminded herself that she’d never really
been good enough for him, anyway. His family had tons of money.
They ate at restaurants with multiple forks and things like
fingerbowls that she would never really understand.

“Sometimes simply living will land you on the
right path, Sienna Rose. Occasionally lost, but still on the right
path. Do what feels right in your heart.” Nana’s voice rose up from
Sienna’s soul once more.

He seemed like he needed a friend. She
certainly could use one of those, and a contractor to boot, so
being his friend and nothing more had been her firm decision right
up until the moment that Ryan had pulled up wearing jeans that
showed off his powerful thighs and another one of those white
t-shirts that did nothing to hide his enviable physique.

Fifteen minutes of working in the direct
sunlight and he’d disposed of the t-shirt. He had an old, thin
flannel shirt tied around his waist just under that insanely
distracting tool belt. His boots completed the picture of sexy
perfection that had always been Ryan McNamara.

Moving away from the front windows, Sienna
blew back a few strands of her unruly hair to get them out of her
eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and then slunk to the
kitchen to make another pot of coffee.

Today, Sienna was wearing a ragged pair of
blue jeans with the knees ripped out that she’d topped with a
vintage Stones concert tank-top and a dozen thin necklaces that
made him smile. Maybe not much had changed about her in the last
few years. Clearly she still loved eclectic jewelry in every shape
and fashion. If he wasn’t mistaken, he was fairly certain he’d
caught the flash of a sexy little bellybutton ring when the shirt
had swayed.

Another assaulting memory peppered his mind.
Their mocked arguments over which band was best, The Stones or The
Beatles. She was vehement in her adoration of Mick Jagger and the
Exile on Main Street album. A long-time Beatles fan himself, he
happily argued that no one would ever touch John Lennon in this
millennium or the next. It always ended with him pinning her
underneath him and tickling her until she agreed that Lennon would
always be king. The heated make-out sessions that followed always
took him to paradise.

Shaking his head, Ryan tried to loosen the
memory from his skull. He’d been disappointed momentarily when he’d
arrived. Jeans meant he wouldn’t be treated to any more glimpses of
that sexy ass. But she’d just turned from the front windows, and
he’d almost dropped the rip hammer he was using to dismantle the
rotting wood on the porch right on his foot.

There were frayed tears in the back of the
jeans, as well. One of the back pockets hung down just slightly
from its corner. Her lack of panties gave him a tiny peek of that
silky, olive skin of her backside.
Damn, is she trying to kill
me?

She was so stunningly sexy, and she had no
idea. She never wore makeup. Her clothes were somehow always
haphazard perfection. He doubted she owned one single piece of
clothing that would fit the dress code for the Piedmont Driving
Club, and that fact drove him absolutely wild.

She’d spent her entire life with a mother
that was determined to shove her into some kind of box that would
make her acceptable in a world that would never and could never
deserve her. That Gypsy fire that danced in her eyes always
incinerated any fabrication. Sienna was the most authentic person
he’d ever experienced, and that same luscious fire always melted
him thoroughly.

He’d spent a lifetime trying to live up to
someone else’s standards; either his parents, Alexa, or the Atlanta
elite. That had left him on the brink of ending it all, a broken
man walking through hell with no hope of seeing the other side. The
only person that he’d ever wanted to prove himself to was Sienna
Cooper. His one chance at heaven, and he’d blown it.

“I just made some frozen lattes. Would you
like one?” Her sweet voice ripped Ryan from his vengeful thoughts
about all of the old biddies that loved to gossip about his
business, both when it was going well and especially when it
wasn’t, at the Driving Club. He hated going there. When his parents
forced the issue or when Alexa demanded that he attend some event
there with her, he endured the degrading quips about him working
for a living and tried to laugh away the vicious scowls of his own
wife while she joked about his business to all of her friends.

Sienna stood before him with those beautiful
eyes and that smile that turned his insides to liquid. She was
bringing him coffee. The longing and the perfection of it all set
his entire body on hardened edge. “Yeah, thanks.” He lifted the
cold beverage from her and drew a long sip. “Sienna, this is
fantastic! Where did you learn to make all of this stuff?”

A swirl of luscious heat crept up from under
her shirt. It wound through her neck and settled in her cheeks.
“Thanks.” She shrugged off his compliment. “I kind of learned as I
went, I guess. On-the-job training, so to speak. I figured out that
I really like to cook after I got kicked out of college. Well,
actually, my Ramen noodle dorm-room dishes are top-notch, so maybe
it was a little before that.”

They both laughed. The melody of their
laughter mingling together touched places in Ryan’s heart that he
thought were long dead and gone.

“You’ve probably never heard of Ramen
noodles, right?” Her face fell. Ryan wanted to bring back her
laughter and her beautiful smile.

“I’ve had more than my fair share of Ramen.
Trust me.” He hated that she used to always feel somehow less than
his family. He’d wanted to pretend that she’d forgotten all of
that, but apparently that hadn’t changed either. In any case, he’d
been living on Maruchan products for the last several months.

That dizzying grin returned, much to his
delight. “Anyway, I worked at a bunch of different restaurants and
like a dozen coffee shops. Cooking just kind of clicked, I guess,
and I think it’ll help me run this place.”

“I’ll say. This is great.” Ryan lifted the
half empty glass of frozen frothy coffee in exultation. “Hey, just
let me get these beams down, and we can head into town.”

“Right.” Sienna nodded, but concern had
dampened the previous color in her cheeks.

Maybe she was having second thoughts about
spending the afternoon in town with him. “Uh, if you don’t want to
go…” he forced himself to make the offer.

“Oh, no, it isn’t that. I’m excited to go. I
just don’t really know anything about what I need, and I can’t
spend more than my loan. I have to be able to pay you. It’s kind of
overwhelming. I’m not that good with money,” she admitted
fretfully.

Sienna watched his neck contract as he
swallowed. He gave her a kind smile and an encouraging nod. “I’d be
honored to help you figure everything out for this place. I’m
pretty good at all of this, and I think I have a good idea what you
want it to be when we’re finished. We don’t have to buy anything
today. You can just get some ideas. No pressure.”

Her stomach performed several quick backflips
and then missed the landing as it spiraled downward somewhere
towards the vicinity of her feet. He always made her feel like she
could do anything, and that if she needed help he would be there.
He was never overbearing and never made her feel ashamed about what
she didn’t know. The sincerity in his eyes made her entire body
long to rush into his arms and just let him hold her and make
everything that had gone so wrong disappear.

“Thank you,” she tore her eyes from his,
afraid of what she might do if she kept staring up at him.

Ryan had washed up in one of the guest
bathrooms again, and a half hour later, Sienna found herself seated
in his Ford Ranger. “I’m sorry about the truck. It needs a little
work.” He pressed the gas pedal several times to coax the engine to
start and tried to hide his embarrassment.

Sienna giggled. “I own a 1974 VW van, and it
runs about as well as you’d think a 1974 VW van would run, but I
love it. I could never sell it.”

The grin of abject relief that he gave her
made her entire body come alive. That heat that he always ignited
inside of her turned liquid between her legs. She shifted in her
seat and realized that if she was going to be hanging out with Ryan
for the foreseeable future, she might have to resort to panties.
The crotch of her jeans was likely to show off what he did to her
body, and that was going to be super embarrassing.

“I like your van. It’s very you.”

“You think?” She did genuinely want to know
just what he thought of her, but he just gave her another
smile.

She shrugged. “I guess it is. It was all I
could afford after working at a coffee shop in Norfolk for about
six months. My mom let me move back in after the whole college
thing, but Carol and I should really never live in the same state,
much less the same house. I bought it when I decided to travel
around the country, so we’ve been through it all together. The bed
area in the back is handy if you don’t have anywhere to stay for a
night.”

Ryan tried not to show her his shock or his
panic. Where had she gone that she’d had nowhere to stay? Had she
seriously lived in her car? What if something had happened to her?
He willed his heart to remain inside his rib cage and gripped the
steering wheel to keep from wrapping his arms around her and trying
desperately to build her a sanctuary and a stronghold out of his
body.

An hour later, they were pulling onto the
main drag into Wilmington. He had a few friends that ran several
contractor supply houses and appliance shops up there that would
still give him credit. The fact that his client was with him and
had money wouldn’t hurt either.