Anything but Vanilla (7 page)

‘Is that what you want to do? You want to fuck me again?’ Ric asked.

‘I want to get deep inside you. So deep, that it feels like we’re merging. That I’m fucking through you right into your cock. But I’m not going to touch you, not unless you beg. I’m going to take my fill while I hold your wrists so you can’t jerk yourself off. Then when you come you’ll know it’s all because of me fucking you and not because of any damn thing else. Do you understand me, Ric? I’m going to make you come because my cock is in your arse and you’re loving it.’

Right now, he was making him come just imagining it. It no longer mattered that it was his palm doing the physical work. The essential spark arose from Zach’s words. ‘Oh God! I’m almost there.’ Ric gave a series of airless gulps. His back arched so that his forehead pressed tight against the headboard as his body fired up to release its gift.

He listened to Zach trying to stifle the same moan he always made the second before he came. Whatever he used as a muffler didn’t exactly do a good job. Zach continued to whimper until he was completely spent. ‘Shit!’ he swore. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ Muddled up in the stream of expletives, Ric caught the sounds of footsteps and doors banging. ‘Rest of the family is back. I need to clean up. Gotta go. We’ll finish this later.’ He hung up before Ric could say a thing. No matter, he was content to wallow in his post-orgasmic glow, instead of having to deal with the high emotions that were likely to have followed.

Deep down, he did love Zach. He just wasn’t about to tell him that. And it absolutely wasn’t going to stop him fucking Kara.

Ric roused himself enough to wipe the pool of semen from his stomach. Then he settled back down and thought of his guest. Dependent on how things panned out in the morning, she might make a very nice alternative playmate until Zach pulled his head out of his arse and stopped insisting on exclusivity and a boatload of lovey-dovey stuff. Hell, even after that, maybe they could have fun together.

Kara pre-empted any kind of showdown or breakfast weirdness with Ric the next morning by skipping out on him at sunrise. Since the island stood little more than a mile across, she figured it’d be easy enough to spot an unoccupied barn.

Ric’s study still reeked of sex, when she went in to retrieve the barn keys. They lay exactly where she’d dropped them the night before. For a moment the memories of their loving made her pause. She didn’t blame him for giving her the brush-off. It was only what she’d done to Jack the night before. What irked her about the experience was her own desire to prolong the encounter. She’d genuinely wanted to spend the night with him.

Well, it hadn’t happened, and that was that. Kara bustled herself out into the fresh air. Barely dawn: the sky still held the purple edge of night. A bracing wind blew in off the Channel. Instead of taking the path back to the bay, Kara scrambled down the dirt track to the left of the bridge. Several nettle stings later she crossed a stone boundary wall and spied her new home perched on the headland overlooking a sandy cove dotted with enormous rocks. Her thoughts immediately cast back to Ric’s promise of anytime, anyplace, I’m so going to strip you naked and fuck you in the cove that sits right on your doorstep. It didn’t take a close inspection to know this was the location he’d meant. From the track that skirted the cliff top she could see the iron rings fastened to the rocks. One presumed they were intended to tie boats to but, given Ric’s feudal claims about his family’s past, she couldn’t be sure. Either way, it wasn’t something she had time to dwell on right now. Nope, she was not going to think about mister lean, sexy and emotionally stunted, not one itty bit. The ball lay in his court. She had no problem with casual sex.

Chris’s purchase proved to be dark and cobwebby. It was also minus electricity and hot or cold running water and empty of food, just when Kara’s stomach had woken to the idea of breakfast.

‘Shit!’ She didn’t want to go back to Ric’s to ask for help. There had to be someone else living on this accursed rock who could assist. There’d definitely been some sort of shop in the bay where she’d left her car. With any luck, they’d know the relevant numbers to call. She had to head down to the car to pick up her luggage anyway.

Several vehicles occupied the bay when she reached it, including an ice-cream van that already sported a five-deep queue, and an enormous camper van. An assortment of kids in shorts and cagoule-wearing tourists milled around the bay, carrying camping equipment and chasing after balls. One or two were scrambling over the seaweed-strewn rocks in order to fish amongst the rock pools.

Kara made her way to the building she’d spied the night before. T
HE
B
UNKER
, the sign said. It had a concrete frontage, but clearly made use of a natural fissure in the cliff face. A plaque outside detailed its history as an ammunitions store and a guard-post some time during the nineteenth century. Inside, the windowless structure felt decidedly cave-like. The air had a damp, sea-salty quality to it despite twin dehumidifiers rumbling by the counter. She’d hoped for supplies, but what faced her was a barrage of tat; tinkling wind-chimes, vast arrays of semiprecious stones, buckets, spades and an awful lot of overpriced seaside-themed holiday gifts. There was not one edible item in the whole shop, unless you considered Kendal Mint Cake edible, nor did there appear to be a shopkeeper.

Downcast, Kara mooched over to the ice-cream van and joined the queue there.

‘What can I get you?’ the serving girl asked her from beneath the brim of a baseball cap.

‘A bacon butty,’ Kara replied wistfully. Given the way her stomach was imitating a chorus line, she needed to put something inside it, and quick. She supposed she’d have to nip across to the mainland for supplies once she’d found out how to turn her utilities on.

The girl shook her head. ‘Sorry, no can do. Hot drinks and ice cream only, and we don’t do anything overly fancy, none of those frappe-latte-mocha things.’ She raised a hand to point out the blackboard hanging from a bracket secured to the outside of the van.

‘Fine, I’ll have a ludicrously oversized black coffee and an ice cream then,’ Kara replied without giving the board much more than a glance.

‘Flavour?’

‘Anything but vanilla.’ She was already regretting the notion of something quite so sweet for breakfast, but she had no idea how far it was to the nearest supermarket, and her stomach absolutely couldn’t wait.

‘My kind of girl.’

Kara jerked her chin upwards, half expecting to find Ric, hands in pockets and sporting an enormous grin. Instead a man with much shorter brown hair stood looking at her. It was the guy from the night before last. ‘Jack?’ She furrowed her brow straining to remember.

‘Zach,’ he corrected

‘Zach, right.’ What the hell was he doing here? When she’d left Zach on the quayside, she hadn’t expected to cross his path again. Doing so made things awkward. It placed certain expectations on them that she hadn’t sought. ‘What are you doing here?’

Zach mussed the long top strands of his hair so that they fell over his brows in a messy tumble. ‘I was going to ask you the same thing.’

Gah! Talk about awkward. Now he probably thought she’d pursued him here and was looking for a repeat performance. Not that he was a bad choice if she was going to contemplate such actions. His appearance certainly lived up to her memory of him, all big-boned and yet oddly wiry. Zach seemed to have been put together by someone who liked strong features, but had no idea about what they actually wanted to achieve. His brows and especially his mouth seemed over-generous for his narrow features, while his nose seemed almost petite. Nevertheless, the result was certainly arresting.

‘Um, my brother just bought Beachcomber’s Barn.’ The actual house name had been handily carved into the front-door lintel.

‘You’re the new occupant?’ His brown eyes widened a fraction, and a ripple of tension seemed to stiffen his limbs. ‘No, I mean that’s great. How are you settling in?’

Kara fluttered her fingers at him in response. ‘No supplies. I thought I’d be able to get some things here, but I guess not unless I want a new wind-chime.’

‘Flavour?’ The girl in the van prompted, thrusting the ice-cream scoop towards Kara. ‘Sorry to hurry you, but there’s a queue. We have cherry, chocolate, mint choc chip, rum and raisin, pistachio, rhubarb, lemon sorbet, toffee or vanilla.’

‘She already said she doesn’t do vanilla, and I can vouch for that.’ Zach flashed Kara a cheeky grin before looking up at the girl. There was an obvious family resemblance. ‘I’m guessing rum and raisin.’

‘Lemon,’ Kara said decisively. She needed something sharp and palette-clearing at the moment.

‘Tart,’ Zach remarked.

The serving girl took no notice, but made an efficient job of doling out the ice cream on to a cone, which she handed over along with the coffee. ‘That’s £4.85.’

‘I’ve got it. It’s on the house.’ Zach settled a hand upon Kara’s arm as she made to delve into her purse, which earned him a look of exasperation from his employee. ‘Whatever,’ the girl mumbled. She turned to the next customer and began talking over Kara’s head.

Kara turned away from the serving window. ‘Your van?’ she asked Zach.

‘Yeah. This and the Bunker.’

She really hadn’t pegged him as the owner of a tat cave, or an ice-cream vendor. He wasn’t dressed in oversized sweat pants and a three-quid T-shirt, for starters. No, he had on a shirt and a pair of beautifully clingy moleskins that made magic out of his thighs and would no doubt set his butt off to perfection. In short, he looked every bit as scrumptious as he’d been the night before last when she’d wanted to lash him to the canal railings and take lewd snapshots of him. The thought of draping him over a rock instead and taking said pictures briefly entertained her, but Kara pushed it aside for the moment. Her muscles still ached from the workout Ric had given her.

A sudden thought briefly entertained her. Maybe she could persuade Ric to give her photography lessons, or take her on as an apprentice, and she could start a new career as … as what – a pornographer? Actually, sticking to happy snaps might be a better idea.

Zach offered her a tight smile, so Kara raised the oversized paper cup in a gesture of acknowledgement. ‘Well, thanks for this.’ She headed to her car in order to eat, feeling just a teeny bit guilty at dismissing him.

Just moments after she’d settled into the front seat with the radio on low, Zach rapped upon her window. Kara wound it down, squirming a little in her seat, then fixed on a smile and endeavoured to be nice. It wasn’t as if she’d say no to a repeat performance with the guy. He was smoking hot. It was just a tad awkward, seeing as she’d fucked someone else in between.

‘Have you met Ric yet?’ he asked, much to her astonishment. Kara gaped at him, knowing it to be a loaded question. Hell, she could see it in Zach’s eyes, and the way he scanned her face searching for an answer.

‘Last night.’

‘Yeah?’ His mouth broadened into a slightly uncomfortable grin. ‘And how did that go?’

Kara spluttered coffee over the dashboard. What sort of question was that? Did he expect her to relate every sordid detail and then cry on his shoulder about the horrible nasty man? ‘It was interesting,’ she replied, once she’d wiped the droplets away with her hand.

‘Yeah, I’ll bet it was.’ Explicit knowledge glittered in Zach eyes, which suggested he knew all of Ric’s quirks and exactly how x-rated her introduction to island life had been. Evidently, her supposition that Ric Liddell tried it on with all the island’s newcomers was right on the mark. Yet, she didn’t detect any sort of censure from Zach. In fact, he continued to smile in a genuine way.

‘Word of advice, not that I especially think you need it, but just so that you’re straight. He’s not for keeps. As long as you realise that, I’m sure you’ll have a great time living here.’

Somewhat embarrassed, Kara grinned her way through another slurp of coffee. ‘Oh, that’s subtle,’ she muttered against the paper lip. She hadn’t particularly intended Zach to hear the remark, but he shook his head slightly, betraying the fact that he had.

‘Believe me. Nothing about Ric Liddell is subtle. He’s sexy as hell, but if you’re after an emotional connection look elsewhere. The guy’s heart is at zero Kelvin. You’ll get more affection out of a barnacle.’ Zach began walking back towards his van.

‘Hey, what about you?’ She couldn’t figure him out. Had that been intended as friendly advice, to warn her off, or to set himself up as a better option? Zach swung around to look at her. ‘Me? I go with the flow, Kara. Best way when your life’s dictated by the tide.’ He jerked a thumb towards the causeway. ‘Catch you later.’

‘Wait up.’ Kara hung out of the car window. ‘How did you know? Did Ric do you your first night here?’

Zach’s lips split into a brilliant smile, which he backed up with a chuckle. ‘I don’t live here.’

‘Oh!’ Now she felt like a fool, and the excitement that had started brewing in her stomach transformed into an odd sort of disappointment. She lowered her gaze to the cobblestones beneath Zach’s baseball boots – an odd choice to go with his clothes – only to find him moving towards her again. He bent down once he drew close. ‘Round the back of the Bunker in five minutes and I’ll show you what he did to me. But only come if you’re game. Otherwise –’ he tapped the side of her head with his index finger ‘– I guess you’ll just have to imagine the scene. You know, two hot blokes, getting a little bit intimate with one another.’ He straightened up, and then shoved both palms into his pockets in order to mooch off back to his business.

Kara watched him go while finishing off her ice cream. What the devil did he intend to show her? All right, fair dos to him, she was intrigued.

* * *

Kara North … Kara North. Zach shook his head. No way was she here. After she’d left him on the quayside with his fly undone he’d hoped they might run into one another again. Actually, he’d fantasised about it. But he hadn’t expected it to happen, especially not here and not after Ric had given her the serfdom speech. OK, so it wasn’t all that much of a speech. Ric tended to go for the more hands-on approach, not that he couldn’t sweet-talk the panties off any bugger he wanted if he set his mind to it. And who could blame him wanting a piece of the delicious morsel that was Kara North, with her pretty blue eyes, quirky smile and absolutely straightforward attitude. Her never-ending legs that disappeared into that tiny skirt didn’t hurt either.