Seeing Red (5 page)

Maybe sometimes, they were unnecessary.

She pushed up a bit more, letting his cock head probe harder against her G-spot, and put her head back.

The sting of teeth against her left nipple forced her gaze down again to watch him laving her stinging tip with his tongue.

She’d said not to move, but that little act of disobedience hardly seemed to count. In fact, it added a little something to the down-low massage she treated herself to. With every flick of his tongue, a jolt of anticipation sparked down her spine. She wanted him to continue this gentle exploration of her body, amping up her arousal, but not to the extent of distraction. She’d lose the ground she’d made.

Once more she closed her eyes and concentrated on the building fullness of her sex as she moved over him. Her clit ground gently against his pubes, creating a pleasurable burn in stark contrast to the gentle glide of his shaft inside her.

Then those big, strong hands latched onto her ass, pressing her lower back a bit flatter, and actually improving the angle of penetration a bit. Still, her mouth opened to scold him, but he did something with his hips—rolled them or tipped them—and bit down into her other nipple, and that was it.

Her body shook, and she let out a torrent of expletives like a woman possessed.

Fuck, it was good.

And then he tipped those hips again, and she actually screamed from the overload of sensation.

“Fuck, don’t do that again!” she warned through clenched teeth, eyes watering, and body still quaking. “Oh, God, do it again.”

He chuckled, throaty and low, and rolled her onto her side, and she barely noticed his weight on her left leg. He wrapped her right one over his hip. “Do what? Do that?” he whispered in her hair, moving his hips a fraction so his cockhead hit her cervix and G-spot nearly simultaneously.

She couldn’t answer. Her teeth were chattering too hard, but she managed a nod.

So, he did it again…then again…and then some more, until she was uncertain if she were still alive or if she’d slipped away into some dimension where there were no words, only sensations.

A tug of her ear from his teeth brought her back to reality.

“Are you close?” she asked. She was nearing the point of intercourse where she’d pretty much orgasmed out, and the stimulation was at the borderline between euphoric and painful.

“If you want me to be.”

“I do. Quickly, if you can manage it.”

“Never heard that one before.”

“And you’ll probably never hear it again.”

Without another word, he sped his pace and made his thrusts longer, deeper. With his hands at her waist, he was pushing her down onto him as much as he was pumping into her.

There was a different kind of pleasure to his exertions now. Not one she thought she’d get off on, but pleasant all the same. She decided to help him along, and clenched her muscles tight around his cock and tried something she’d never dared with Spike.

She worked her arm around his big body, slipped her fingers between his tight cheeks, and massaged his perineum.

For a moment, he stilled, and when he resumed his thrusts, she took it as a tacit permission to increase her press.

“
Chyort voz’mi
.”

She didn’t have to know the literal translations of his words, because his body gave her enough context clues to figure it out.

Chapter 4

“Toby, if you’re not going to finish your breakfast, I’ll do it for you, and I promise you’ll be hungry in an hour,” Seth chided and patted his belly for emphasis.

Toby stilled, ceasing his bouncing from one corner of the table to the next, and stood between his own place setting and Seth’s. He looked at his half-eaten waffle, then up at Seth—who cocked a warning eyebrow up at him—then his plate again.

Finally, Toby sat and picked up his fork.

Stephen, on the other end of the table they shared with Curt and Erica, laughed and shook his head. “I’ve never seen him eat anything beyond that wretched Bran-O cereal my sister buys. Surprised he ate that egg.”

“I like eggs,” Toby said, and he sank his teeth into his second hard-boiled egg.

“Since when?” Stephen asked. “You didn’t like them at Easter when Nanna Maura put one on your plate.”

Toby didn’t respond, just chewed.

Toby had a lot of Meg in him, as far as Seth could see. Not only did he have the bossy gene, but he evidently possessed a similar ability to command all the attention in a room. The waitstaff, even the ones not assigned to their table, milled around, interacting with him. Laughing at his little jokes. For the most part, Toby seemed to like the attention, except for one particular instance when a tactless guest seated nearby asked him what he thought of his new daddy and if he missed Spike.

Then, he’d hidden at Seth’s side and didn’t come out again until that guest had paid her check and left.

Even if he didn’t know what was going on with Seth and his mother, he seemed to have an innate understanding that some things were private and not nice to ask about.

“Toby?” Erica called from her seat adjacent to him.

She refilled his ice water as he mumbled, “Hmm?” around his egg.

“Are you excited about trying preschool again in the fall?”

Toby closed his eyes and gave his head an emphatic shake.

“I remember feeling the same way,” Curt said with a sigh. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his red eyes with one hand while swirling the contents of his Bloody Mary with the other.

Erica rolled her eyes. “Right, Dr. Ryan. You sure stayed in school a really long time for someone who hated it so much.”

“Not quite right, Missus Ryan.” His lips quirked up into a defiant grin. “It wasn’t the schooling I hated so much, but the teachers.”

“Misanthrope.”

“And you love me for it, darlin’.” He made a kissy face and put his glasses back on.

Seth chuckled and speared his remaining bit of sausage with his fork. He loved watching the interplay between those two. Theirs was a relationship of two people who needed a special person to bring out something that made them more human. Until Erica came on the scene, Seth hadn’t thought Curt had a match. Curt had been a chronic womanizer, and rarely dated the same girl twice. He’d found something at fault with all of them. Erica had entered the relationship with a whole heap of baggage, but she gave him everything he needed: a person he could call his home.

“Seth, where’d you disappear to last night? Thought you were going to meet us after my nap.” Stephen stretched his arms over his head, yawning as if were mentally reliving the rambunctious evening right there in his breakfast chair.

“Uh…” Seth cut his gaze toward Toby, who was paying them no mind. He’d somehow gotten his hands on Erica’s phone and played some video game featuring little bouncing candy pieces. “Was in the cabana for a while, you know, relaxing. Then I…”

What was he supposed to say?
My wife asked me to screw her, and I said yes?

“I turned in early.”

Stephen quirked one dark red eyebrow up. He got it. They were sharing a room, and unless Seth was sleeping out in that cabana, there weren’t many other places he could be, especially considering it was Seth who’d gotten Toby dressed that morning. Meg had been dead to the world, facedown in the bed and looking like one tired mess of an angel. He hadn’t wanted to disturb her when Carla delivered Toby to the bungalow early. All she’d said when noticing his rumpled hair and his hastily donned attire was, “Be careful, Red,” before hurrying away to catch her flight.

It took the implication a bit longer too settle in with Curt. He made an O shape with his mouth and leaned back in his seat. He’d thought this farce was a miserable idea from the get-go, but had conceded it was Seth’s life to ruin as he saw fit.

Erica didn’t seem to care one way or the other about the discussion. She leaned toward Toby and clucked her tongue. “No, no, no. You have to make the little pink lizard lick the candy, or it won’t stick,” she said.

Toby responded with an, “Oh!”

“Tobias Scott Coffman, have you been on the beach already this morning?” asked Meg in a somewhat high, though well-modulated, voice originating a few feet from Seth’s back.

Toby’s eyes widened. He set down the phone, and his shoulders slumped. “Yes, ma’am,” he said in a nearly inaudible volume.

Meg’s scent reached Seth’s nose long before she was at his side, at the corner between his chair and Toby’s. She stood with her back to him, hands on hips, and said nothing for a moment.

Seth leaned forward to see Toby hesitantly casting his gaze up to his mother’s face.

Meg’s shoulders relaxed, and her weight shifted so her left hip jutted out.

It wasn’t Toby’s fault. It’d been early and the morning was cool, so Seth had taken him down to the beach before breakfast. He’d been careful, but there was no way Meg would have known that.

He rested his palm on the small of her back and she jumped, and turned, lips tight and eyes narrowed.

Shit.

“Megan, I took him. It’s not his fault. You were asleep, and he had some energy to burn off.”

That was an understatement.

“He was never more than five feet from me.”

The hard set of her jaw relaxed somewhat. “You should have woken me.”

“Why?” Stephen asked. He leaned back for the waitress who’d arrived and let her top off his coffee.

“Megan, would you like some coffee?” Seth asked, already clearing Toby’s space at the table for her. Toby used that distraction to hop off the cushioned chair and squeeze himself between Curt and Erica.

Erica sighed and handed him the phone back.

Meg took Toby’s seat and nodded at the waitress. “To answer your question, Stephen, it’s because that’s what parenting is about. You don’t pawn your kids off on other people and expect them to watch them all day while you sleep off the previous day’s mistakes.”

Seth’s gut roiled.

Mistakes?

“Get a grip, sis. There are four other adults remaining here besides yourself. Yesterday, there were eight. Never at any time have we felt outnumbered by that guy.” He crooked his thumb toward his nephew, who was now locked in an intense conversation with the waitress about the best strategy for beating his current round of
Sticky Candy Safari
. “I’m flying back to Massachusetts tomorrow. Let me teach the kid a few bad habits before I go, huh?”

Seth wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard the squeak of teeth being ground together.

Meg gave her brother a stare that could have probably bored holes in cement.

Stephen just pushed his sunglasses up his nose and grinned.

Disarm her.

Slowly, Seth reached his hand toward her right wrist and drew her attention toward him. There was a bit of a flinch in her eyes, but then her face smoothed to a blank.

What was going through that mysterious head of hers?

“Before the waitress goes, do you want something to eat?”

She stared at him a moment as if the question was somehow offensive, or else foreign, then scanned the table, likely assessing the remnants of their food. She shook her head. “No. I’ll just have the coffee, and I’ll probably take Toby back to the room to shower the sand off.” She squinted at the boy. “Toby, is that zinc oxide on your nose?” With her thumb, she rubbed off an errant white smudge.

“I dunno.” Toby shrugged and hopped on Erica’s lap, eliciting a grimace from her at the impact. “Seth put it there so I wouldn’t burn, so that means I can go back out after breakfast and play some more.”

“No, that’s not what it means, but thank you, Seth.” She said that last bit so quietly that he was pretty sure it was meant for his ears only.

She looked down at his hand, still on her wrist, and he drew it away. As soon as the connection was broken, he missed it. Such a casual little touch. He’d never known a small interaction could be so fulfilling.

The waitress paused at their corner, and he said, “Could she have a pot of coffee to take back to her—our bungalow? And perhaps some cheese and fruit?”

Meg’s forehead furrowed. “I don’t—”

“Shut it,” Stephen said, tipping his head over the chair back. “Friggin’ eat something, for crying out loud, or you’re going to be a rampaging battle-ax all day. Come on, don’t kill my island mojo, little sister.”

She cocked her head to the side and squinted down to the other end of the table. “Why are you even here? Certainly I didn’t invite you. I’ve done some really insane things the past few weeks, but I don’t have any memory of that particular one.”

Insane?

Erica caught Seth’s gaze over Toby’s shoulder and shook her head at him. The warning was clear:
Don’t say anything. The best response is no response
.

He nodded and locked his stare onto a cantaloupe wedge.

“Please bring what my sister’s husband ordered,” Stephen said to the still-lingering waitress. “Oh, and, uh, is the concierge around? Can you send her over? Thanks.”