Sex on the Beach (Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin) (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

“I meant to break up with you,” she confessed, mumbling into his chest hair. Her face was hot and damp, as if she’d been crying.

“You did?” He might have been more concerned if she hadn’t been attached to him like a barnacle. She didn’t seem inclined to let go anytime soon.

“I did. But then I couldn’t, because you weren’t here, and I’m so glad because otherwise I might have succeeded.”

I
was just in the shower...oh
,
fuck it.
Doesn’t matter
. “Oh. You’d made a plan?”

She nodded. “But it was a stupid plan. It was never going to work. And that’s okay.”

“I’m frankly astonished to hear you say so, but good for you.”

She pulled back to look at his face, probably to see if he was being ironic. She looked very tousled, and very fragile. He felt the urge, a somewhat familiar one, to tuck her into his pocket for safekeeping. But she sounded strong. “We can figure out what to do. And I can explain it better, what I was talking about before. I gave up and I shouldn’t have.”

For the first time in a long time, the prospect of relationship talk didn’t fill Jeremy with dread, because he felt as if he actually had some small clue at last. “It’s okay. I actually think I get it now. I kinda had a lightbulb moment while I was talking to Alan.”

She gaped, obviously astonished. “You and Alan talked about relationship stuff? Seriously?”

Jeremy nodded. “We did. He’s a good guy.”

“Did he tell you his foxhole analogy?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“So...” Jeremy sat on one of the patio lounge chairs, pulling her down onto his lap. “What was the highlight of your dinner with Julie?”

“Sex on the Beach.”

It took all his powers to keep a straight face. “Please tell me you videotaped that.”

She giggled, pushing his chest. “It’s a cocktail, doofus.”

“Wait, there was cock involved? I thought this tale was about you and
Julie.
”

“I had, like, three of them. And by three I mean...maybe four? No more than five. It’s entirely possible I may have the world’s worst hangover tomorrow.” She straddled his lap, knees to either side of his hips, snuggling into his chest again as if he was the comfiest pillow ever. He was happy to be that, if that was what she wanted. He wouldn’t mind being a few other things, as well. It might not be in the cards, though. Amanda was a serious lightweight.

“So if we’re going to screw around, we should do it now, before you throw up?”

“Ew.”

He shrugged. “Just being practical, honey. So I guess this isn’t the time to try my proof of concept, after all.” There was always tomorrow.

“Proof of concept?”

He brushed his chin over the ruffle of soft hair tickling it, then pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Then another one, just for good measure. “Mmm-hmm. See, I fucked up a bunch of things, but I can try to fix at least one of them if you’ll help. And it can be our test case to prove that the concept is sound and worth investing in.”

“Ooh, talk like a businessman some more.”

He tickled her, jolting her into a slightly more alert state and enjoying the way she wriggled in his lap. “I want to do this right. I want
us
to do this right, okay?”

To his disappointment, she sat up and nodded, looking chagrined. “You’re right. Sorry. Go ahead.”

Time to take things seriously. “So here is a thing I fucked up. This weekend. I said I just wanted to reconnect, not talk about past or future stuff. And that was what you agreed to. I was not honest and I didn’t abide by that agreement.”

“Well. It was just an oral contract. And mostly it was just stuff we were saying so our mouths would have something to do while we were taking our clothes off.”

True though that probably was, he couldn’t take the easy way out. “Still. I fucked up by sneaking all the other stuff into it anyway, and I apologize. I am sorry. I’m also sorry for saying I wanted to
reconnect
instead of just saying,
Hey
,
I
want in your pants really bad
.”

Amanda grinned, suddenly looking much less somber. “Honey, I assumed that was what you meant all along. So there’s really no need to apologize.”

“Still.”

“Okay, fine. Thank you. Apology accepted. I’m sorry I agreed to reconnecting when what I really meant was,
Here
,
please get in my pants this instant
,
or wait
,
no
,
let me just take them off to make it easier for us to fuck
.”

He bit his lip when he would have blurted a request for a reenactment. This wasn’t going to be about that. It
couldn’t
be about that. Sex had never been their problem. Trying to use it to solve other problems was not going to work. If they were going to try again, it had to be about more than that.

Fucking
they could do anytime. But he needed more.

“Not
fuck.
Make love.” It might have been the first time he’d ever spoken those words without putting invisible irony quotes around them.

“Dude.”

“Make. Love. Say it.
Say it
,” he insisted, even though he usually loved to hear her say
fuck.

After a deeply skeptical frown, she finally gave it up. “Make love. Anything else, Mr. Reconnect?”

Amanda squirmed on his lap, generating some heat. Booze always made her amorous, and thinking about how he’d earned that knowledge was already getting him hard. He slid his hands down from her waist to cup her butt, grasping the plushiest parts through the fabric. Not enough. He tried another approach, going in under her skirt, slipping his hands inside her panties to get at skin before pulling her closer. Flush against his dick, grinding through their clothes. She had always loved that.

“We should go inside,” she murmured. Her voice had gone throaty, turned-on. He wasn’t far behind her, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.

“Yeah. Maybe in a minute. Couple things first. I have a whole plan, you know.” He was fast losing his grip on exactly what the plan was, but he pushed ahead anyway. “I want to talk about past and future stuff. I’m not saying we have to come to any conclusions. Just put stuff out there and talk about it, with no pressure to decide anything right away. Just...collaborate.”

“That may be the sexiest thing you have ever said to me.”

Not helping
.

Her skirt kept getting in his way, so he tucked it up into the stretchy waist of the dress. Then, because it seemed vitally important he have completely unfettered access to groping her ass, he pushed her panties down as far as he could.

The lanai was in shadow, but anybody walking by could see them. Jeremy was practically naked, and Amanda’s dress and underwear were pretty flimsy and eminently removable. His brain and libido entered a full-pitched battle for control, the idea of getting her naked in public attempting a coup over his intention to get the important relationship stuff out in the open.

“It might not work,” Jeremy cautioned, even as he pushed her into a slow, filthy grind against his erection. It had escaped its boxer-brief prison and sat between them like a third party to the proceedings. A very valuable member, with much to contribute.

“Oh, it’s working.”

Love
. “You dirty, dirty girl. I am
shocked
at your lewd double entendre.”

Laughing, she licked the ball of her thumb and brushed it over the head of his cock. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“
Fuck
, that feels good. Okay. Okay, one last thing.”

“Just one.”

Specifics
,
man.
Get to specifics
. “Would you maybe move your stuff over here for the rest of the time, so we both know where we’ll be if we have to go looking? Or just, you know, a gesture of commitment to the process? It doesn’t even have to be
all
your stuff. Toothbrush and shampoo, whatever.” There was only one more night after this one, and the day after that they’d be going home. Hardly any time at all. He would have chained her to the bedpost if she’d let him, but he knew that wasn’t a sustainable solution for either of them. If he could get a toothbrush’s worth of assurance instead, he’d take that.

“A good-faith token to let you know if I flounce off, at least I’ll be back?”

He shrugged, hoping he looked more nonchalant than he felt. “Something like that.”

She took a moment to consider, and Jeremy held his breath until she spoke again. “I will agree to one suitcase and all my cosmetics. But my hanging clothes stay over in the other room. And at least two pairs of shoes.”

He wanted to whoop. To kiss her silly, to claim victory. To carry her down to the water’s edge and role-play the scene from
From Here to Eternity
, because now everything was going to be wonderful forever. But that kind of assumption was what had come between them in the first place. They weren’t there yet, and he knew it. He let out a sigh, and held out his hand so they could shake on the preliminary deal. Amanda didn’t take it.

“Not yet. I have a precondition of my own.”

“Oh, okay. This is sounding more like a negotiation. Hmm.” Negotiation was okay. It meant she was taking the whole thing more seriously than he’d thought. She cared, too.
She wants this to work
,
too
.

“Consider it full disclosure. The thing is, I haven’t been completely honest with you, either. Not just this weekend, but for a long time. And now I have to tell you about this before we go any further, because I’ve been telling myself it wasn’t a factor, but it
is.
And I’m sorry for that. For not putting it out there.”

He hadn’t expected that. He thought he knew her backward and forward...what could be so dire? “You’re kinda scaring me here.”

She shook her head and scooted back a few inches, leaving his dick cold and exposed. He realized that whatever she had to say, it was almost certainly going to suck. “It isn’t really about me. It’s...about my dad.”

He had planned to be supportive and sensitive, but
come on
. She wanted to talk about her
father?
Five seconds ago she’d been sitting on his dick. He was still hard, for God’s sake, though obviously not for long “Oh, man. Really? Right now?
Really?
”

“Can I just say this?”

He held up a hand, silently asking for patience while he took a moment to process the gigantic shift in tone and subject matter. There was no way out of it. But he couldn’t have this particular conversation without making a few changes first. Clearing his throat, trying to clear his mind’s eye, as well, he reached down and tucked his rapidly softening penis back into his boxer briefs so it could sulk in privacy. Then he pulled Amanda’s underwear back into something like the appropriate place, and flipped her skirt down, smoothing the fabric and patting her thighs.

Better.

“Okay. Ready now. Go ahead.”

Chapter Twelve

Why does he have to do adorable things
? That only made it harder to talk instead of jumping his bones as she would have preferred to do. But even if this was a terrible time, Amanda knew there would never be a better one. Once Jeremy was done rearranging the scene to his liking, she blew out a sigh and started.

“You know how, before we got to the Bay Area, my family moved every year or two? When I started third grade in San Jose, that was my third elementary school. And my mom had been trying to finish her bachelor’s degree ever since she got married. She kept having to transfer credits, apply to new places, take new prerequisites. Sometimes we’d move in the middle of a term, or at just the wrong time, so she’d have to wait almost a year to start classes. At which time...”

“Another move.”

“Exactly. But when I was in fifth grade, she was finally about to finish. It was the longest we’d lived anywhere. I’d been in that school for almost three years. I had friends. Dad was doing really well at work. And Mom was actually happy we’d ended up where we had because she was going to be getting her degree from Berkeley instead of some podunk school nobody ever heard of. I think, looking back, that year was the only time in their marriage she’d
ever
been happy. I’d never invited friends over to the house before then, it was always so tense. My parents wouldn’t be talking to each other, or my dad wouldn’t come home until really late, and my mom wouldn’t say where he was. We’d have to cancel plans to go on vacation or even out to dinner at the last minute because there was suddenly no money for that. Stuff I just accepted as normal at the time because I didn’t know anything different. But that year things seemed so much better, at least for a little while.”

“Fifth grade. That was the year they got divorced, right? Your dad moved away.”

“No,” Amanda corrected him. “Well,
yes
, but there was more to it than that. Dad came home one day a little after spring break and just announced he’d accepted a transfer that came with a promotion, and it was time to pack up and head to Montana! He was excited about it. Which made him all the more startled when my mom, who never even raised her voice, stood up from the table and slapped him right across the face.”

“Oh, shit! I had no idea you grew up with that type of thing.” His horror—and frustration at his own helplessness about it—was evident.

“No, no, that wasn’t a regular thing. It was the only time, as far as I know.” It was the truth, but even if it hadn’t been, that wasn’t the story she needed to tell at the moment. “And obviously he’d known she’d be upset, or he wouldn’t have put off telling her so long, I didn’t figure that out until later. Anyway, Mom barely spoke for the next few days while we packed. He’d told us on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and he had to start work in Montana the next Monday, so the plan was to pack up both cars and a U-Haul, and convoy to Missoula over the weekend. Mom was fantastic at packing, since she’d had a lot of practice. Me, not so much. And I couldn’t even go to school to say goodbye to everyone, there was no time and I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. I’d finally been somewhere long enough to have real friends, to have a best friend, and now it was all just ending. I cried and cried. Packed and cried. We got in the cars Friday morning, and I was still crying. For some reason I was fixated on the fact that we had to leave most of the furniture behind. It was the first time I realized we’d always rented furnished places. I’d never been old enough before. I guess I thought the furniture just magically changed between houses, I don’t know.”

She was grateful for the liquor’s blessing of numbness. Even that wasn’t a complete antidote to the pain, though. It hurt as much to tell as she’d feared it might. If she’d tried to share this with anyone as a little girl, she might have broken down completely in the effort.

He started to reach for her, to embrace her, but when she didn’t meet him halfway he defaulted to patting her legs again. It was awkward and comforting at the same time. A hug would have been too much. She’d have started crying again if she’d let that happen.

“You were just a little kid, honey. Kids don’t know how all that stuff works.”

“True. Breaking the leases, too.” It must have cost a fortune. And it happened so frequently. “I think there also may have been some gambling addiction involved. A few times I remember Dad rolling in around breakfast, looking like he’d been in the wars. Split lip, black eye, once a broken nose. My parents would always say he’d had a fall or been in some kind of accident, but now I’m pretty sure he sometimes ran afoul of...gambling people, bookies, whatever. He was probably lucky it was just a broken nose and not a broken leg or worse. It all went over my head back then, but now I think that was maybe why we always seemed to get poor again whenever we moved. He obliterated the savings quite a few times.”

“But not that time.”

“No. Mom told him she would notify the landlord, but the letter never went out. She had it with her when we got to the house my dad had rented in Montana. And she ripped it up and threw it away the next day, before she and I drove back to California with the U-Haul. A few days later we got back to the house, unpacked everything, and the next Monday I was back at school.”

“Why make the drive at all? Was she—sorry, never mind. None of my business.”

It was obvious he was appalled by the story, that it was worse than whatever version he’d conjured in his mind. Amanda tried to imagine what it must feel like to learn the girl you’d assumed was pretty much like you had instead grown up in that kind of environment. That her childhood had been, in many fundamental ways,
not okay
.

And her mother’s decision to drive to Montana and back...she’d spent years wondering about that herself, but never got up the courage to ask. “I think she was trying to salvage the marriage. Then when she saw the new place, she couldn’t go through with it. I don’t know for sure, that’s just my take.”

“Your dad and the replacement wife haven’t moved, though, have they?”

Her dad had moved back to California for good a few years later, and Jeremy had met him a few times. Now he seemed to be rethinking his assessment of the man, from amiable but ineffectual underachiever to selfish, flighty douchebag.

“Nope. Same house since they got together. Over ten years now, which is a definite record for him. I don’t think he gambles anymore, so nobody’s coming after him for debts. And she has a job and money of her own, and real estate, so she’s in a stronger position to say no if he just gets the idea to move. Mom never had that back then.”

She did now. Amanda’s newly single mom had parlayed her degree into an accounting job, earned a CPA and now ran a boutique financial-planning company. She made almost seven figures a year. Her home had a footprint larger than four or five of those crappy rent houses combined. And she still never raised her voice.

“This—the whole moving-around thing—is also why I was so surprised she encouraged you to come on this mission,” Amanda admitted.

“Yeah, so am I, now. But she’s got a big heart, your mom. So I may need to take a trip to your neck of the woods really soon for the sole purpose of kicking your dad’s sorry ass. I thought you should know.”

She gave him a watery smile. “That’s very sweet of you.”

“I’m absolutely serious.” He pulled her closer, glaring sternly. “The guy deserves a beat-down.”

“He’s a fifty-nine-year-old with rheumatoid arthritis who’s had two heart attacks in the past five years. I think Mother Nature and various bad guys have already beaten him down sufficiently.”

Jeremy pouted, clearly disappointed. Amanda was still smiling, but she could see the underlying sentiment was genuine. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders flexed as if awaiting the command to punch. Maybe all the extra testosterone from working out had given him a new aggressive side.

It was kind of sexy.

The tears had been cathartic, the disclosure liberating. Amanda felt lighter now, cleaner. Scoured, but shiny. Nothing had been decided, but at least all the cards were on the table now. The door was finally open for good-faith negotiation. She was only slightly chagrined to realize the lack of that before had been as much her fault as Jeremy’s. The important thing was they had another chance.

“This is turning out to be an okay vacation.”

Jeremy snickered, shifting under her before pulling her into a more compromising position. “Just okay? I guess I need to work harder. What’s it gonna take? We’ve already done the moonlight stroll, the turtle-watching thing, fancy beach cocktails, crazy hookup sex. You didn’t want flowers. What’s left? Couples’ massage, maybe? Horseback riding? Maybe a dolphin encounter, do they have those here?”

“Hmm. I’m not that charmed by dolphins, they seem like the obnoxious dude-bros of the sea.”

“True, true. Hey, could you scoot a little closer? Just...yeah. Thanks.”

He was hard again, his erection straining against the stretchy gray fabric of his underwear. Amanda obligingly leaned into him, rolling her hips and gasping at the unexpected flush of heat when her ploy to tease him ended up striking her in just the right place, as well. A quick pulse picked up behind her clit, not quite a throb but close.

“Weren’t we going to move this inside?”

Jeremy shook his head. “I have a better idea. The
best
vacation idea. We should move this farther outside and have literal sex on the beach. There is so much beach, it seems like it would be a crime not to take advantage of it.”

Boys
. “Jeremy, it’s clear to me you’ve never actually had sex on a beach before, or you would never suggest that.”

“Why? It’s hot. The sand, the ocean, all that nature.”

She brushed a kiss over his lips, fond and indulgent. “I’ll take ‘Things I’d rather not have in my vagina’ for four hundred, Alex.”

“Are you saying you
have
had sex on a beach?” He didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect. It was more a lazy curiosity, something to discuss while his hands were busy elsewhere. Very busy.

She squirmed in his lap, trying to ease the growing ache between her legs. “It was college. I was stupid. And let’s just say that sand and delicate sex flesh should never meet. It’s pretty much like doing an emery board. Took me like a week to recover.”

“Ouch!”

“Yup.” She tried to stand up, but he held her in place. “Come on. Bed. You, inside me. Now. Please?”

Jeremy sighed. “No beach?”

“No beach. Bed.”

“How about a compromise?”

“Maybe?”

“Awesome! Wait right here.” He stood up, carrying her with him just long enough to swing clear of the chair then lower her back into it. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“’Kay.”

He was already gone, vanished into the room.

What the hell did I just agree to?
Did I agree?
Wasn’t that just a maybe?

Jeremy leaned back outside just long enough to stage-whisper, “Take off your underwear,” before disappearing again.

“All righty.”

Amanda glanced around automatically, although it was pretty clear they were the only ones up in the vicinity. All the other cottages’ lights were out, their occupants either sleeping or engaged in other lights-out activities. It was probably completely safe, but she still felt the thrill of the forbidden as she reached under her dress and slid her panties down. She balled them in one hand and tossed them over the threshold into the room, and heard Jeremy’s wicked chuckle just before he stepped outside. He wore a towel around his hips, and he gestured at her to get out of the chair, then took her place there.

“Okay, where were we?”

“Shh.” She looked around again before sinking back down to the chair, straddling Jeremy’s lap. Her bare pussy grazed over the rough towel, and Jeremy groaned when Amanda arched into the erection she could feel through the terry cloth. He slipped his hands under her dress, skimming his way up her thighs and flexing his fingers around her hips. She braced her hands on his shoulders as arousal rushed back into the foreground of her attention. He’d brought her to orgasm more than once like this, just fooling around on the couch.

“Do you remember that night we first met?” he whispered, possibly out of deference to her request for quiet, or maybe just because the mood called for it. It was a sultry version of his voice.

She did remember, and it was still a trifle embarrassing. “The part where we got into a half-hour argument about what the snake picture in
The Little Prince
really looked like?”

“Heh. No, I meant the part where we made out half the night and you were riding me just like this, and got so worked up you came. Then tried to pretend nothing had happened, as if maybe I hadn’t noticed the beautiful girl orgasming in my lap.”

“It was an accident. God, that whole thing was such a flashback to college.”

“It was amazing,” he contradicted. “Hottest thing I’ve ever seen. My dick was so hard I think it sustained a sprain attempting to jump out of my jeans to get to you. I still jerk off to the memory of that sometimes.”

Sneaky man. Amanda felt a cool breeze on her butt again, and realized he’d distracted her with dialogue while tugging her dress up. No underwear this time, just straight-up indecent exposure.

Yeah
,
okay
,
that’s actually pretty hot
. She circled her hips, bearing down harder. “Are you planning to jerk off to this memory, too, later?”

He smirked and freed up one hand to untie her dress straps, coaxing the elasticized top down to her waist. She shivered, not from cold but as a by-product of his scrutiny, the electric charge his gaze seemed to carry as he scanned her mostly naked form. “Yeah, I’d imagine this will be a keeper.”

He brought his mouth to one nipple, sucking hard and flicking his tongue over the responding flesh. Amanda’s brain shut down, forced out of commission by more insistent parts of her body. Nerve endings, skin, hormones. She even forgot about the semipublic setting, as Jeremy worked her higher with his mouth and hands. Kisses began with frantic energy and quickly escalated, a mutually assured destruction of near-brutal teeth, lips and tongues. When he worked a hand between them and slipped two fingers inside her, Amanda whimpered in frustration. It felt so good but wasn’t nearly enough.