Beach House No. 9 (14 page)

“I’m going to get my hands on her
right now.
” And then he had her in his grip and was tugging her into the tent before she could comprehend his meaning.

It was just sinking in as his mouth latched onto hers. Without thinking, her palms slid over those pumped biceps and those new, heavy shoulders. If the recently acquired muscles made him look like a stranger, touching them only enhanced the unfamiliarity. Then she curled her fingers in the short, velvet nap of his hair at the back of his head, and her pulse settled a little. This was recognizable. And so were his lips, the sure thrust of his tongue, the taste of the kiss.

It spun her away from the present.

She was nineteen again, her birthday just the week before. She’d had one lover before him, the summer after senior year, the king of the prom who’d bumbled his way through her virginity. But David was a man, and he was the steady, mature kind who didn’t feel it was an ego blow to ask for directions.

Do you like this?
he’d whispered in her ear, pinching her nipples just hard enough to make her gasp. His hand had traveled lower.
Shall I rub light and fast or hard and slow?
Just the words had enflamed her.

Now her husband reached for the zipper of the tent, and she heard him draw it down, prohibiting all light. It only drew her further into the past. He’d shared a two-bedroom house in the valley with a guy who was working in the financial district, both of them saving their paychecks. David’s room had held a queen bed, a side table and a narrow window. With the curtains drawn it was a dark, intimate space where a girl could hold her guy’s head to her breast and not worry that he’d see the embarrassing ecstasy on her face as he sucked her nipple deep.

She wanted that now. She wanted it so badly that she yanked both the sweatshirt and T-shirt over her head in one move. David was already working on her bra, and she felt her skin flush hot as the silky fabric brushed the taut tips when he tossed it away.

Her bare torso rubbed against his. He was hard where she was soft, and he grunted when she ran her hand down the front of his pants and cupped him over his jeans. Nineteen-year-old Tess had done that too, bold as could be in the darkness, but she wouldn’t have dared to attack the fastenings.

She did now, though, and another distinctive
vriiip
of a zipper sounded over their heavy breathing. His erection nudged the palm of her hand, and she squeezed it in greeting, eliciting a half groan, half moan from David. He went for her zipper then too, but she didn’t release her prize; instead she caressed it with the C of her fingers, stroking up and down until she felt a drop of wetness meet her thumb. She smeared it over the crown, and he cursed, rolling away from her touch.

Her protest died as he yanked at the legs of her jeans. The denim hit the side of the tent with a
thwap.
Her white panties rose like a feather in the air. She didn’t see them fall because her eyes squeezed shut as David crouched between her spread thighs.

He’d done that same thing in the sex cave in the valley.
Let me,
he’d said then.
Don’t be embarrassed. You’ll like it. Don’t keep me out. Don’t push me away. Never not let me have you, Tess.

Now, as she had at nineteen, she allowed him to hold her steady, his palms on her inner thighs, his thumbs peeling her open like an exotic fruit he was intent on savoring. A blush burned over her skin. The prom king had probably not even known about the part of her body that David found so easily with the tip of his tongue.

Just the tip. Just the tiniest flick.

The sound she made now was louder than the one she’d made then. At nineteen, she’d swallowed back as best she could those passion noises that had crawled up her throat. David had praised the small moans and whimpers. “Yes, baby,” he’d said against her wet flesh. “Show me that you like it. Let me hear how good it is for you.”

The numbers guy was nimble in so many other ways.

Just when she thought he’d nudge her over the precipice with the edge of his teeth, he’d flipped her onto her belly. The nineteen-year-old hadn’t known this would become her favorite position.

But David had discovered it almost from the first. She could still remember her hot cheek against the cool surface of his sheet. He’d pushed her long hair off her neck and kissed her nape, then pressed a flight of butterfly kisses against the skin of her back, crossing her shoulders and dipping down her spine. Imagine her shock when he’d bit her bottom!

He did it now too, but she didn’t squeak as she’d done then. Instead, she lifted into the sting-and-suck of that carnal kiss and felt the throb of it everywhere, at the tips of her breasts, in the pulse points of her wrists, as an insistent ache between her thighs.

She was too empty there. “David…” she heard herself moan.

He ran his thumb along the seam between her cheeks, brushing past a tiny indent that made her skin break out into goose bumps, until he dipped just the pad against the wet, aching well where she wanted his erection.

“Please, David…”

“You’re so ready for me.”

“I am. I am
so
ready.”

He laughed at the urgent note in her voice, the laugh of a man who knew his way around a woman’s body. At nineteen she’d been only grateful for it.

She was still thankful. “Come inside.” The Tess of the present was bold enough to wiggle her butt at him.

He caressed her hip with one large hand. He had calluses that were new, and they made her skin prickle in reaction. She rubbed her tight nipples against the sleeping bag beneath her. After this, SpongeBob and Buzz Lightyear were going to have to be replaced by brand-new cartoon characters.

Thoughts of the kids intruded.
Oh, God.
What was she doing? She started to rise, but David’s hand clamped hard on her hip bone. His other pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her in place.

His body curled over hers, and his mouth kissed her ear, his hot breath tickling the whorls. “Don’t keep me out. Don’t push me away. Never not let me have you, Tess.”

She let desire spin her back again. She was nineteen, in the capable hands of an incredible lover. Of a real man, a mature man, who caressed her cheek with his mouth as his thick, solid shaft tunneled inside her. She arched, trying to force him deeper, faster, but David was chuckling again, that dark, confident chuckle that had her twisting to abrade her stiff nipples on the surface below her. His hands found hers, and he twined their fingers, gripping tight as he took her that last inch.

They both made satisfied noises and went still.

He was throbbing in her channel, and she tightened it around him, squeezed him as she’d done with her hand. He groaned. “You’re so good, baby.”

The nineteen-year-old had thrilled to that. She’d done it again, and then he’d started thrusting, helpless, she’d thought, against her wiles.

Now she knew better. Nothing about David was helpless when it came to bedding her. He moved deliberately, pulsing deep, thrusting shallowly, driving her mad by not giving her the vigorous pounding rhythm that would get her off. “David,” she said and craned her neck to take his mouth in a kiss.

He sucked on her tongue, and she arched into his next stroke. “Please.” She pushed her bottom higher.

His fingers slid free of her right hand. Still thrusting, he passed his hand over her shoulder, down her spine, around her hip. Then two fingers slid between her softness to brush the hard bundle of sensation. A shudder rolled through her. He circled her there with the wet tips, tight, tight orbits that didn’t let up even as he plunged inside her with more force.

Still, his movements were controlled, each one designed to propel her to orgasm. Her knees slipped against the sleeping bag, and so she wouldn’t flatten, she reared back. It upset the rhythm.

And brought him root-deep.

They both froze again. His heart was pounding against her spine. Their harsh breaths echoed off the nylon walls. She squeezed the fingers of his left hand, and he moved again, withdrawing to drive inside her once more. His right hand went back to its work too.

And Tess let the final pleasure begin to wind inside her. With every turn, her body tensed, until she was tight like a violin string, vibrating at her own personal pitch of bliss. “David…” she moaned again.

“Yeah,” he said, her suave lover finally losing his power of speech. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And on that last word he started shuddering. Her body caught hold and used those tremors and the firming touch of his fingers to take her away….

“To infinity and beyond,” David muttered as he dropped atop one sleeping bag, flinging his forearm over his eyes.

Tess lay beside him, quiet, reveling in the renewed closeness. Then reality struck, leaving her appalled.

“David.” Her voice was faint. “God, David, we didn’t use anything.” They’d
never
been this irresponsible. Those two unplanned pregnancies had been due to birth control failure, not the failure to use birth control.

“It’s all right,” he said.

A hot tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and dripped to her temple. “Positive thinking in this regard has never worked well for us.”

“I was snipped two months ago.”

The sentence didn’t make sense. “‘Snipped’?”

“I had a vasectomy. And I’ve been tested since. When I ejaculate? No swimmers.”

She stared in his direction, even though she couldn’t see him any better in the dark now than she had before. “You…you did that without consulting me?”

His quick gesture she could only sense. “We didn’t want any more kids, right?”

They hadn’t planned on the fourth. A second hot tear escaped her eye. Without another word, she started feeling around for her clothes. The tent was so small they were easy to discover, and the wife in her even neatly piled David’s when she encountered them.

That’s who she was, of course. A wife. They might have briefly recaptured the initial excitement of their early relationship, but she wasn’t nineteen any longer. No matter what happened when they were skin-to-skin, it didn’t alter how
he’d
changed either.

She was the mother of four, and she’d gotten exactly what she’d come for. She’d stripped every pretense away to discover that David wasn’t the same husband and father that he’d been in the past. He was unwilling, Tess understood now, to be that same man.

Where that left her, she didn’t yet know.

CHAPTER TEN

G
RIFFIN
DECIDED
the only redeeming feature of his new home office and the requisite laptop computer inside of it was that his mind-numbing solitaire hands dealt themselves. He’d put up with Jane bustling about the small space all morning, chattering about outlines, marking a whiteboard with a time line, setting up an internet cloud account so they could share the chapters she expected him to produce. All the while he’d tuned her out by pretending to reread the articles he’d written during his embed year.

He’d merely stared at the black squiggles on the white pages.

When the noon hour hit, he’d banished her.

Through the office’s open window he could still hear her, though. Twelve feet away, she was sitting at the table on the deck with his sister and Skye. The three women were sharing a platter of fruit and cheese and watching over the small hoodlums who were his middle nephews. Rebecca, apparently, was still at summer school, and Russ was curled on his mother’s lap.

“Oh! Look at that.” Jane’s voice rose over the
whoosh
of the waves spreading over the sand. “They’re going up the cliff.”

Worry tried to clutch at Griffin’s gut, but he pushed it away along with the urge to rush to the window. It wasn’t his problem if those damn kids of Tess’s got into trouble. They weren’t his concern. He clicked on an ace, moving it to the top row on the screen.

“I still think it’s a peculiar thing to do,” Jane added. “Somebody could get hurt.”

“I’m going to post warning signs,” Skye said. “It’s really not safe.”

“They’re big boys,” Tess replied, her tone complacent.

Complacent! With Duncan and Oliver scrambling up those sharp rocks? Griffin tried breathing through his sudden agitation, but then he gave up and leaped to the window for a view of the bluff.
Oh.
It wasn’t his nephews climbing after all. It was Tee-Wee White and his firefighting compadres.

“
Very
big boys.” Jane might have sighed a little.

Through the window screen, he sent her a sharp look. Her expression was impossible to discern beneath that straw hat once again sitting low on her forehead. He already knew what she was wearing: a sleeveless, tailored dress in ribbon-candy stripes and another pair of her ridiculously feminine shoes. They were high-heeled and toe-revealing, with little froufrou flowers made of matching leather stuck all over them. It was as if she’d strolled through a field, and the wildflowers had walked out with her.

Ridiculous. And she smelled like those wildflowers too. The faint scent still lingered in the office.

She lingered in his mind, damn it. That absurd way she gave herself to his kiss. Feisty, prickly Jane was stubborn as hell until he got his mouth on her. Cool as could be until he put his hand between her thighs. There he found her as hot and sweet as melted candy. As addictive.

A man could get used to pleasing a woman who came so damn easy and so damn hard. Hell. It was only a small leap of thought to those pink panties he’d tucked away in a drawer. He needed to return them—or better yet, throw them into a fire. Somehow he needed to neutralize the spell they’d cast, the one that had made him obsessed with all that Jane hid beneath her buttons and bows.

“I still don’t get the lure,” she said now, on the deck outside the window. “What’s the point of daring death like that?”

Griffin glanced at the firefighters and almost laughed. They weren’t daring anything. They were prepping to jump from approximately one-third the distance that was the cove record. The record that belonged to Griffin.

“For the adrenaline rush,” Tess said. “At least that’s what Gage told me once. He said it’s powerful enough to numb pain.”

This time he was sure Jane sighed. “And anesthetize emotion? That would explain why Griffin made his latest leap after hearing about his soldier friend’s accident.”

“‘Epic leap,’” Tess corrected. “Said that surfer dude who hangs out around here.”

“Remembering makes my stomach hurt,” Jane murmured. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

Perfect, Griffin thought. He didn’t need his sister and the governess psychoanalyzing him about cliff-jumping or about Brian. The other man was on the mend; they’d spoken just yesterday. Bent on returning to solitaire and dismissing the women from his mind, Griffin stepped over Private, sprawled in the patch of sunshine on the hardwood floor.

“Let’s talk about Ian Stone instead,” Skye put in, an excited note in her voice. “Tess, did you know that Jane worked with the famous author? That she’s his acknowledged muse?”

Griffin’s head swiveled back to the window. Ian Stone? The writer responsible for romantic dramas that hit the top of the bestseller lists and stayed there? He’d never read one—women were the intended audience, he surmised—but he couldn’t miss the guy’s name as he passed through airport sundry stores. The foil letters were four inches high on glossy dust jackets featuring bucolic, color-saturated scenes.

“No kidding?” Tess said.

Skye answered instead of Jane. “The last three books are dedicated to her. It’s in black-and-white. ‘For my muse, the lovely and generous Jane Pearson.’”

“Wow.” Tess was clearly impressed.

Griffin, not so much. If Jane had worked with the man, then she’d likely hounded him into writing those words. She’d probably added the line herself when the author wasn’t looking.

“I can’t believe you know him. What’s Ian Stone really like?” Tess asked, an annoying trace of celebrity worship in her voice.

She should know better, Griffin thought. Hadn’t chewing gum made hers a household face?

“Norm Scrogman.”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t hear this from me,” Jane said, “but his real name is Norm Scrogman.”

“No. No way.” Skye sounded put out. “A guy who looks like that can’t be a Norm Scrogman. A Norm Scrogman doesn’t have burnished gold hair and dreamy green eyes and the kind of smile that hits a woman right where…well, you know.”

Griffin found himself standing at the window again, and he could see his sister staring at the younger woman. “I didn’t know
you
knew, Skye. From what I hear, as far as you’re concerned, Crescent Cove might as well be Celibacy Cove.”

Mumbling, Skye slid lower in her seat. “Ian Stone’s a gorgeous literary superstar. I’m not made of ice.”

A tickle on the back of his neck made Griffin switch his gaze to Jane. She was paying careful attention to a handful of green grapes. Did she find Ian Stone gorgeous? And what exactly was there to this muse business?

It pissed him off that he was even posing the questions. Though he tolerated her dallying in his office, he was working at getting Jane off his mind. He’d made clear he didn’t want her in his bed, hadn’t he?

He saw her glance up at the cliff again. “Hey, look! Another firefighter’s going to jump.”

It seemed a clear attempt at redirecting the conversation. Tess took the bait. “Teague,” she said.

A sly little grin overtook Skye’s face. As had been her usual uniform this summer, she was dressed in shapeless clothes that might have come from a much larger male cousin, but the brightness of her smile reminded Griffin of how very pretty she was. He wondered what Gage would think of his pen pal if he ever left the danger zone long enough to meet her man-to-woman. “Does his crush go both ways now, Tess?” Skye asked.

Griffin swallowed his groan. Was this the direction the wind blew? Not that he wanted to be bothered with the ins and outs of his sister’s relationships, but Deadly Dull David wasn’t a bad guy—he wasn’t even that dull, and finding his brother-in-law camping on the beach told him that the other man wasn’t altogether the absent husband and father his sister believed. But if she was interested in Tee-Wee…

The best part of evading entanglement with a woman, Griffin decided, was that it kept him clear of being at the mercy of someone else’s emotions. Jealousy had to sting. Wanting someone for oneself when they pined over another was a condition he planned to avoid his entire life.

“I’m married,” his sister said with a little sigh. “Which leaves the admittedly attractive Teague up for grabs. Have you thought of asking him out, Skye?”

“No!” Skye tempered the tone of her voice. “I mean, no. I’m not really, um, looking for a relationship at the moment.”

“Who’s talking about a relationship?” Tess replied. “You can get…satisfaction without getting ensnared in coupledom.”

Ensnared. His sister was sounding more like him by the minute. Poor David.

“Huh,” Jane said. “That doesn’t sound bad.”

Skye straightened in her chair. “Are you telling me that muse plus superstar author doesn’t equal one happy pairing?”

“There’s nothing between me and Ian,” Jane murmured, looking toward the cliff again. Teague White was braced against the rocks, and though in Griffin’s mind’s eye he was still the scrawny tagalong of childhood summers, he had to admit the guy had gained inches and pounds. He glanced back at the governess and saw her take off her hat.

The expression on her face was speculative. “I might be due some satisfaction,” she said.

He frowned. She certainly was not! Hadn’t he doled out some satisfaction to her just the other night? Sure, it had been quick and they’d both remained on their feet, but that wasn’t his fault, was it? If she’d been a little more patient, he’d have taken her to his room—

But he’d told her he didn’t want her in his bed.

And he didn’t.

“Could be I’d benefit from getting some kinks worked out of my system….”

Kinks! Tee-Wee White wasn’t owed Librarian Jane’s kinks. Griffin was the one who had to put up with her demands and with her maddening perfume and her crazy-making footwear. For God’s sake, he should be the one who deserved any kinks that rose to the surface.

And what did anyone really know about Tee-Wee, anyway? He used an ax on the job, didn’t he? He could be an ax murderer. Or just plain lousy in the sack. Griffin could practically guarantee that.

“If Skye’s hesitating, I guess that means you can have him, Jane.” Tess glanced over her shoulder at the window where Griffin lurked.

He jerked back. Had she known he was eavesdropping?

Jane gnawed at the bottom lip of her puffy mouth. “It’s not really my nature to be the aggressor in this sort of situation…”

Didn’t Griffin know it?
Be still,
he’d said, and she’d done just that. He’d kissed her and she’d been made boneless. She shouldn’t just go around asking men to melt her, because that’s what she’d done under his hands and under his mouth—and she seemed to be aware of that. Blowing out a breath, he relaxed.

“…but I suppose nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

His spine snapped straight. What? Had she actually said that? The same woman who’d also once repeated “Failure is not an option”?

Nobody knew better than he how determined the woman could be.

And Tee-Wee White was an ax murderer.

Tess shifted Russ from her lap to her shoulder. The baby snuggled into his mom’s body, as peaceful as Griffin suddenly wasn’t. “I know,” his sister said. “You could ask Teague to Captain Crow’s tomorrow night. On Sundays they have a special menu, live music, dancing. It’s a lot of fun.”

A little burn kindled in Griffin’s gut. He remembered Jane that second night she’d ventured into Party Central. There’d been music then too. Dancing. She’d been dressed in a bikini top and exposing an ungoverness-like amount of naked skin. What she’d run into hadn’t been fun.

Hell, he thought, scowling. Something had to be done to occupy her Sunday night. Of course, he didn’t
want
the responsibility to fall to him, but he was the one with the means and opportunity.

Three quick steps took him to his laptop and he xed out solitaire to peruse another program instead. He’d cursed the return of email to his life, but now he was happy to scroll down the list of correspondence he’d trashed after barely glancing at it.

There.

It took but a moment to compose a quick RSVP. Griffin Lowell plus guest.

The women were still in their seats when he strode onto the deck. His businesslike footsteps caused the wooden surface to vibrate, but not even his sister looked his way. The trio continued their avid perusal of the half-naked firefighters on another scramble over the rocks.

For a second he considered running over there and showing the rookies how it was really done, but he had another item on his agenda. He sailed a paper airplane toward the book doctor. The breeze caught it, and it nearly flew over her head. But at the last moment the wind died, and the folded sheet dropped, landing on the table right in front of her.

Jane glanced up.

So sweet and innocent she looked, with those wide-set eyes and that soft mouth. “Do you need something?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He reminded himself that she was a favorite of his agent. He owed the man, which just made this rescue more imperative. Frank would never forgive him if he let Jane find trouble here at Crescent Cove. “I require your assistance.”

“Now?” She made to rise.

He shook his head. “Tomorrow night. We leave in the morning. Pack a bag. Put in a party dress.” It struck him as he said it how rarely he’d left the beach house. See what she was making him do! But still he was determined to take her away. Save her from herself.

She arched a brow. “I told Tess I’d babysit.”

“Look at it that way, if you want,” he said with a shrug. “In any case, I need a date.”

* * *

L
ONGNECK
BEER
in hand, Griffin leaned against the wall of the California Pioneer Heritage Museum near L.A.’s Griffith Park. “How are you?” he murmured to a passing guest when their gazes briefly caught.

“Great. You?” the other man answered, without pausing for Griffin’s answer.

“Smug,” he murmured to the guy’s retreating back. The evening was working out better than he’d planned. Not only had it given him a legitimate excuse to avoid writing, but it was restful to disappear in the crowd. His original motivation still stood, however. He’d accepted the invitation to the book launch party—another of Frank’s clients was making a big splash with a literary mystery set during L.A.’s Spanish Era—in order to save Governess Jane from making a romantic misstep. She might say she was interested in “satisfaction” and not a relationship, but that didn’t add up to Griffin. With her prim appearance and rule-bound nature, he figured she was ripe for throwing her heart into the wrong ring.