Riding the Wave (17 page)

T
wo days left. Tanner could feel the weight of the upcoming Sebastian Pro like a two-by-four to the back of the neck. All his tension clenched down there in a heavy throb that he couldn’t shake.

The surf was thumping, big, heavy six-footers that would provide plenty of rail time and let him get his fins in the air. But he’d already spent four hours out there in the morning and then another hour at the gym after lunch. Tanner swirled the thick mass of protein shake in his iced glass. There was such a thing as getting too overworked before a big competition and he couldn’t put himself at risk of that.

Sitting on his balcony, feet up on the railing as he watched the surf, probably wasn’t helping. His head might still if he found some way to disconnect, but he couldn’t help but think that wasn’t what he needed.

So he studied the waves. The curl, the fronts. Looking for the pattern that would sink the championship or win it. The second and fourth waves out of each five-wave set were the best. For today. He’d keep scoping until the morning of the competition.

Hell, if he were honest with himself, he’d keep scoping until the moment he had to report in, pretty much.

Just the way he was built.

Nothing could be taken for granted in the face of the water’s strength.

The sliding glass door behind him wooshed open. Tanner craned his head backward to peer at Avalon. From the sort of backward, sort of upside-down angle, she still looked cranky. Her mouth had pulled down into a frown and her green eyes looked even smokier and darker than usual.

“Well?” he asked. She’d had an important conference call with the WavePro marketing, public relations, and creative directors.

She sighed and leaned back against the glass door, sliding her hands behind her ass along with her iPad, as if she were unconsciously trying to hide it. He tried not to notice the way the position pushed out her tits or made her stomach one sleek curve that he wanted to lick. Nope. No way. She was obviously having a moment and to notice such things would make him a shithead.

And he’d realized the night of the WavePro party that he didn’t want to be a shithead. Not to her. He generally avoided the designation, but he wanted to go the extra mile with Avalon.

“It went fine,” she eventually said. Or lied, probably. She squinted into the afternoon sun, looking at the water. Supposedly. If she were actually taking in anything, he’d eat his sunglasses.

The drooping line of her shoulders said it hadn’t gone the way she’d expected, at the very least.

Tanner set down his shake, then stretched his arms behind his head. He could hook the loops of her tiny
jean shorts with the tips of his fingers. One tug, two, brought her reluctantly forward, until her belly ran into the top of his head.

“Tell me.”

She leaned over to put her iPad on the table next to his protein shake. Her fingers combed through the sides of his hair. She dredged up a weak imitation of her usual smile. “You like the view.”

He made an exaggerated examination of her face. There was certainly nothing to complain about. Up the long stretch of her smooth stomach, to her breasts, then her beautiful face bent down to smirk at him.

“I do. I certainly do.” But it was obvious she needed more than goofy. So he pulled her around to the side of his chair, then down into his lap.

“Oh, c’mon. It’s over ninety degrees, the sweat’ll glue us together.”

She pushed at his chest, as if she’d get up, but he wrapped his arms around her hips. And she wasn’t protesting that hard, not really. Avalon spent hours in the water, daily. She could put a lot more oomph into wiggling out if she wanted.

Instead she gave another sigh and leaned back against his chest. One long leg dangled over the arm of the chair still, but the other rested across his thigh. Her ponytail trailed across his bare chest in a silky swish.

All in all . . . right. Avalon was exactly where she belonged.

Everything in its place. A warm feeling that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun melted Tanner from the inside out.

He spread one hand flat across her bare stomach. The
muscles under there were still slightly tense, as if she couldn’t quite relax. “Now spill it.”

“They said everything was fine.” Her voice was quiet, but this close he couldn’t help but absorb every nuance. He wouldn’t want to miss a thing anyway. “Every picture I sent them was useable and good. The spread in
SURFING
will be five pages, with at least one double-page included.”

“That all sounds awesome.” But the muscles under his fingers still hadn’t eased. He kneaded lightly, stroking down her skin. She was gorgeous, every inch of her. But she was about as tense as a newly strung guitar.

“It is.”

He slipped his fingers under the line of her jaw and tipped her face up, forcing her to look at him. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”

Her mouth finally started to slip out of the smile. “Oh? What would that be?”

“I’ll have to fuck it out of you.”

She laughed, giving an extra little wiggle of her ass. “In the first place, crude much? And second, I don’t think that’s much of a threat.”

“Why Ms. Knox, are you implying you like the dirty things I do to you?”

Her eyes drifted shut and she made a humming noise in the back of her throat. The slinky move of her arms up over his shoulders rubbed her ass across his lap. “Like? No. Love? Oh hell yeah.”

There had been occasions where the word
love
had struck fear in Tanner’s stomach. Once or twice it might have even sent him running in the opposite direction.
Maybe not the best thing to admit, but he’d always been on the up-and-up with the women he got involved in. Never went in without letting them know he wasn’t looking for anything permanent. Not yet.

Not then.

But with Avalon sitting in his lap, he certainly wasn’t going anywhere, now was he? “You’re not getting up until you tell me. So you might as well give in.”

She sighed. “You’re kinda stubborn under all that laid-back charm, aren’t you?”

He laughed a little bit. “Um, yeah. World Championships don’t come free.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” She kept her face trained carefully toward the view. It almost felt like she was avoiding looking up at him. But it gave him the freedom to drink in her fine features and the roundness of her cheeks and her snubbed nose. “People. You don’t give them up. Your opinion of someone can be hard to shift.”

Under her words was something he couldn’t read. Something he wasn’t getting. “Is that good or bad?”

“Both?” She almost seemed to shake it off. The grin she flashed up at him was entirely cheeky. “Depends what you think of me.”

“I think you need to talk.”

She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t the more I hoped for.”

“The more?”

“The spark was missing. Everything was fine, but no more. No one was totally in love with my pictures.” She sighed. Her fingers fiddled with the hem of his shorts and though her gaze had dropped, she wasn’t really seeing him. “It’s greedy, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“I’ve got everything. What I said I wanted—a spread in a major surf magazine. A huge campaign’s going to be run off my shots. But I still want more.”

Something within Tanner stilled and coiled. Leashed energy waiting for the word
go
or a wave before cresting. He’d been bulling his way through life, but all of a sudden, he pulled up short. Ready to wait if needed. The hand he stroked over Avalon’s hair trembled the tiniest bit. No one would ever know, not even her, but he noticed. He felt it. “What is it you want?”

The moment hovered. Three waves crashed into shore in the meantime. Finally, she sighed. “Everything. But I’ve got no freaking clue how to explain it.”

“Try.”

“I want to make people care about my photos. Not because they’re contracted and perfectly decent and show a killer sweep through a barrel. Though they do.” She patted his thigh and looked up. “You look awesome.”

“Not the concern right now, but I’m glad to hear that,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

“I think I do.” He kept stroking over her hair as he gathered a few thoughts. There was a track to grab somewhere along there, not the one he’d almost got lost down. “It’s the difference between technical proficiency that gains me a couple more points in a heat . . . and finding the perfect ride. The perfect moment where wave and board go together.”

She nodded. “Exactly the way they were meant to. I want that. I need it. There’s a technically good picture, and I think I do that just fine, but there ought to be emotion and feeling behind it. I didn’t hit that. I can tell by
their voices on the phone. All fine, but . . . no one fell in love. The pictures are ‘appropriate’ and ‘sufficient.’ Exactly what I hate.” Her sigh almost drifted away on the ocean breeze.

“Did you send them everything?”

“Not exactly.” Her cheeks hollowed as if she were suddenly holding back a smile.

Suspicion narrowed his eyes and had him bending his head to look at her features. “What does that mean?”

“I didn’t give them certain ones.” The held-back smile burst into a full-fledged grin that was as bright as the sun. She wiggled over and grabbed the iPad. A couple flicks opened the photo-viewing program. “Like, oh I dunno. You drinking coffee in this very chair the morning after we slept together. Or this one. You have a fine ass.”

The picture showed Tanner in bed, completely racked out. He was naked except for the pale gray sheet covering his ass. She’d focused on the small of his back, and though his face was in the picture, turned to the side on the pillow, he was fuzzy and gently out of focus. He groaned, pressing his eyes to the warmth of her hair. “Thank God for small favors, I suppose?”

“More like more of me being greedy.” She wiggled a hand under his hips, fingertips grazing the ass in question. “I want to keep it all to myself.”

“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” What he really wanted to ask was if
they
were more than that, but he also wanted to be able to look other men in the face now and then. Asking such a chick question would leave him terminally embarrassed.

She craned up to look at him, one eye slightly squinted. “Maybe? I don’t want . . . us wrapped up in my career any more than we already are. It’s one thing if I
can still take a brilliantly awesome picture of you catching air. It’s another if I make my mark with something pretty damn intimate.”

He curved his hand over the back of her neck. “That’s us. You and me. We don’t need anyone else looking in on it.”

He slicked his fingertips across the iPad, moving to the next picture. In this one, he sat on the beach. His knees were up and his wrists drooped between. He’d been grinning at Avalon, teasing her about what they’d do later that evening, and looking at the photo, he realized every single thought was in his eyes. He blazed with dirty intent. He swallowed. “Thanks for not sending these ones in. They’re . . . Christ, they’re too much.”

She nodded, her head tucked under his. “Yeah. I . . . These are more snapshots than anything else.” She tilted her head back enough that she could flash him one of those naughty smiles. “For my own personal consumption.”

Part of what he loved about Avalon was how complicated she was. Serious depths one moment, cheeky and dirty the next.

That quiet part of him shuddered to a stop again. The wave that had gathered earlier broke open. Wild. Uncontrolled, like a freak swell from some far-off storm that couldn’t even be seen over the horizon.

Did he love Avalon?

More than that, if he did, where did that leave them? If anything, his career was ridiculously in flux. The next two days would leave him either a reigning champion or the sad sack who’d given up something epic to a fluke missed wave. Anything was possible.

A ten-year span of history waited to be marked down
in the rule books. And here Tanner was, more worried about the woman in his lap.

The special, amazing woman who shared his sense of focus but took it up a notch with a life-affirming energy that lit him up.

His hands clenched down on her hip.

“Us,” he echoed. There wasn’t much else he could say, not until everything else was settled. Not until he had the smaller details worked out. Then he’d be free to chase Avalon. And he’d chase her all the way until the ocean froze and she ran out of surf to photograph.

A
valon loved the way Tanner kissed her. The absolute perfection of it. The way it made her feel both calm, as if everything were right with the world, and incredibly bubbly at the same time. An effervescent joy that could sweep away everything else in its path, if she let it.

So she did. She tossed all her worries away. Let herself be overwhelmed by the strength he poured into her. The way his mouth moved over hers was a benediction and an endorsement. She’d given nothing of herself away that couldn’t be taken back later.

They were friends. Very good friends who frequently got to rub naked bits. And friends talked about the setbacks of work and career. There was nothing unusual there.

Except she’d felt safer in his arms. Telling him her fears while sitting on his lap had taken so much of the pain out. He probably had no idea how difficult it had been for her to share. She and Matthew had never gotten to this point. Though she’d always blamed him for being too closed off, maybe it had been her all along. Years with her mom had taught her how dangerous opening up could be.

She’d reached a new level in relationship land by exposing the vulnerable part of herself that feared simply not making it in her career. Never rising the way she needed to.

Part of her almost resented that she felt so exposed. He’d already been champion once; this extra round was a bonus. Though she knew he had pressure riding him, it wasn’t exactly the same. The part of her that was so frightened wondered how much he could really understand.

But then his hands slid over her back and she managed to forget altogether. Letting herself absorb the strokes was entirely tastier. She had to pull her mouth away long enough to twist and straddle him.

Her knees dug past the cushion to the poking wicker back of the chair, but she didn’t care. Not when she could get closer to him. The warm, achy core of her was only barely appeased by straddling. She rocked down over the hard ridge of his cock.

Tanner looped her wrists in his big, rough hands. “Hey now,” he said softly. His voice was deep and rumbly and vibrated her nipples. “We have time.”

She rubbed her entire body up against him. Absolutely shameless. “My schedule’s yours, after all.” Until he was gone again.

Or not exactly gone, but not hers anymore. How hard would that suck, to see him all the time and not have the right to touch.

She ran her fingers through his hair, down around the back of his neck. “I love what you do to me. Love the way you make me feel.” It was as close as she could come to putting words to how she felt.

But she wanted to believe he heard her anyway. That he knew at least how important he was to her.

His hands under the curve of her ass, he stood in one fast swoop. The blood rushed out of her head, down through her body. Naturally it pooled in her dampening pussy.

She locked her ankles at the small of his back. “What happened to having time?”

That grin of his sent its own set of tingles through her. “We’ve still got time.” He laced openmouthed kisses along her neck. Nibbles that made her melt across her chest like some kind of wanton strumpet. “We’re going to spend that time in my bed.”

And God, wanton strumpet was so much better than messed-up neurotic pile of goo.

She could deal with slutty. She could
be
slutty. That was all body and sensation. No biggie.

But when he tossed her onto the bed, he stood at the edge. The bounce jostled her brains for a second, but she blinked rapidly to find him looking down at her. With his hands on his hips, he looked every bit a man.

Her man.

The dark blue board shorts barely dipped over the blades of his hips and above them were those deliciously angled V-lines that pointed to the promised land. With his elbows out, he looked half marauding pirate.

His bright grin only confirmed it. “Now there’s a picture a guy could get used to.”

She lifted up on her elbows, suddenly a little anxious. “What?” She ran a hand over her stomach, caught by the sudden worry that she had a huge old smear of dirt or pudge that had popped up from nowhere. No, she didn’t always claim to be rational.

If a girl couldn’t be a little bit crazy inside her own head, where could she break out with the nutso?

But he shook his head. “You’re so fucking sexy. Do you know that?”

When he looked at her with that hot glint, he could make her believe it all the way down to the soles of her feet. She ran those very toes over the hard plane of his abs. So fucking tasty. Sometimes she was tempted to push him down and rub herself all over him. A perverted game of tag, maybe. To get her hands all over him. “So come here and show me what you think’s sexiest.”

That quickly, he was on the bed, stretched alongside her. A blessed sort of magic. “I’m not even sure where to start. Here?” He slid a kiss over the end of her shoulder, dipping down her arm. “Here, maybe?” This time it was her ribs, the bottom edge that stood out in stark relief from her leaned-back position. “No, this.” He ringed the shallow well of her navel with his tongue.

Avalon melted into the rumpled bedspread. Let him take her away. Let him worship at her body. She could cope. One way or the other.

She bit back the grin, not wanting to explain.

Tanner’s head continued lower, leaving wet tracks of attention all the way across her lower stomach and along the band of her shorts. But his long, blunt fingers tugged them down with no trouble, especially when she gave an extra hip wiggle to help him along.

The way he licked her was a freaking miracle. If she weren’t nearly so selfish, she’d insist that every woman should get a chance at his licking, sucking, blessing of a mouth. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she clenched fingers through his golden hair. The sweeping tingle was almost enough to send her over, and she only wrenched higher when he thrust two sure fingers in her pussy. The
fullness was enough to make her want to hand over anything. Everything.

But he apparently didn’t have her orgasm in mind, not yet at least. When she got close, the leashed pleasure inside her tingling through her insides, drawing her nipples tight, he pulled away.

When he lifted his head, the wet gleam of her juices limned his mouth.

And she didn’t feel the least bit guilty over that. She grinned. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? Get back down there.”

He laughed and swiped the back of his hand over his lips. But then he stuck the two fingers he’d had inside her into his own mouth. The pink of his tongue slicked over the mess she’d left on him.

The hard thump inside her chest was half turn-on and half owned. He could have so much of her, if he only took.

“You’re kind of bossy.” He dipped his head, rubbing his mouth over her sternum. His tongue curled around the center string of her bikini top; then he took the strap between his teeth. Tugged. Goose bumps washed out over her flesh. “You’re lucky I dig it.”

“You dig lots about me.” She wanted to believe it. Needed to hear it a little more.

“Lots and lots and . . .” The last word was lost as he sucked her nipple into the wet heat of his mouth.

Avalon moaned. Her fingers found purchase across the back of his head, and they didn’t even know if she wanted to pull him closer or push him away. She pretty much could listen to him forever, but the way he made her feel would do as well. He was drawing tiny layers of
sensation from her, layering it all together like some sort of sex god. The whisper of his fingers over her hip, the push of his rough thigh against the hot center of her pussy. The licking, nipping delight of his mouth.

It almost became too much. She thought the hard-edged pleasure would shake out her bones and fly away if she didn’t grab hold. Her hands dove between them, pushing down his shorts.

He snagged a condom from the bedside table, from the most recent box they’d been zooming through. A minute later, he pushed inside her.

He was hard and big and exactly what she’d needed. More of him, more sensation. And he didn’t stop touching her. His hands were everywhere, his mouth at the bend of her neck. His tongue along the top of her chest. A special, wet kiss to the knot where she’d broken her clavicle at eleven.

The way they moved together was enough to make her forget everything else. She needed nothing but him. She lost track of how long, until she needed something more. A little harder.

The pushes on his shoulders weren’t missed. Wrapping one arm low around her waist, he flipped them over so she was riding. Speed made her gray at the edges with dizziness. She put her hands flat on his chest, reveling in the hard strength thrusting up into her.

Part of her wanted to scrunch her eyes shut to get what she needed. But the way his eyes almost seemed to glow couldn’t be denied. Tanner couldn’t be denied.

He was such an elemental force of nature. And she was only riding along until she was shaken free.

But Christ, what a ride it was.

Her hips worked over his, the burn in her thighs more
than worth it for the rubbing, blunt thrusts. She needed more of that. Sweat pooled at the base of her spine, trickled down in another wet lick. More sweat beaded across his chest, and she curved down to lick at him. The new angle of her pelvis stroked the head of his cock against some throbbing, clenching place inside her. Blunt-edged perfection.

Her orgasm came first, blasting her off her rocker. The hot flushes of tingles swept over her body from her pussy first, then down her legs. And it was all even better with Tanner’s shell-shocked expression as her sheath clenched down on his cock.

She collapsed in a heap, first on him. Then when the heat and the sweat stuck their skin together in a clammy mess, she slid to the side. “That was my idea of an afternoon workout.”

Tanner laughed, running a hand over her side. “Don’t even think this’ll get you out of this evening’s surf.”

“I wouldn’t think it.” Her jaw cracked on a yawn that almost felt like it spun her eyes inside out. “Maybe a nap first.”

“Yeah?” His mouth brushed over the top of her head. “You think you’ve worked hard enough for a nap?”

“Puh-lease.” She sighed. She was striving for smart-assed but the pure bone-melting pleasure of her orgasm had replaced every bit of smart-mouthed she owned with plain tired. “I rocked your world. You should be thanking me.”

“Thank you, Avalon.” His quiet voice encouraged her eyes to drift shut.

Even the soft trill of her phone couldn’t make her eyes open. “Get that?” she muttered. It could be Sage. Or maybe even one of the WavePro reps who she really
ought to give a shit about. But all the care had been fucked right out of her.

Tanner fumbled across the nightstand and grabbed her cell. “Avalon Knox’s phone. How may I direct your call?”

At the very last, absolutely too late second, the bottom sank out of her stomach as quickly as if a shark had taken a chomp. Her eyes snapped open. And sure as shit, it was a shark on the other end of the call. From her position nestled against Tanner’s chest, she barely heard the tinny voice. “Tanner? Is that you? Well, well. Now I see Avalon’s problem.”

Underneath her very grip, Tanner’s muscles locked hard. His body went still. Stiff. Steady in a new, cold way that she’d never seen or felt from him before. “Mako?”