Ocean (Damage Control Book 5) (4 page)

Four years.

Four years of guilt and regret.

So screw the chicks, screw tonight. I prepare to ask the bartender for something stronger, something that will hopefully knock me out for good, when someone taps me on the shoulder.

Turning, I find Jesse Lee and Amber. “What’s up, man?”

“We’re gonna blow this joint,” he says, squeezing Amber’s hand in his. “It’s been a long day for both of us. Would you take Kayla home?”

“Me?” I blink at him, confused. “You going to your place with the three jackasses?”

“Nope. I’ve moved out already, didn’t you hear? We found someone to take my room, and she moved in yesterday.”

“No, I didn’t hear.” Then again, I haven’t pulled my head out of my ass nearly long enough to ask how everyone is doing in a while.

“Yeah. It’s a madhouse in there right now. Plus a friend of Travis has been crashing on the sofa for the past two weeks, and there’s no fucking privacy. We’re going to a hotel for the night. We have an anniversary to celebrate.”

Anniversary? Of what?

But Jesse’s still talking. “I wouldn’t have asked you this otherwise.” He scratches the back of his head. “It’s just that Kay seems tipsy, and we don’t wanna leave her all alone.”

“She’s totally shitfaced,” Amber says, her expression a cross between anger and worry. “Don’t know what she’s trying to prove.”

Dammit. “How about you ask somebody else?”

“Don’t be such a jackass. You’re the one she’d ask for.” Jesse thumps my back and turns to go.

“She asked for me? You serious?”

“Just take her home, make sure she’s all right, yeah?” Jesse harrumphs as he dumps a coat and a small purse on my lap and then tugs Amber away. “And keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

“Go to hell, J.” I watch them go, then I grab the coat and purse, hop off my stool and stride toward the dance floor and Kayla, every last trace of the buzz I had going vanishing. “Me? I’m already there. Been there for years. Lemme tell you, it sucks.”

And yeah, I know muttering to myself isn’t a good sign, not with my family history. Then again, who the fuck cares?

Nobody, that’s who. Nobody ever has, and nobody ever will, and that’s both the blessing and the curse of my mad world.

***

My dark mood doesn’t improve as I wade through the dancing crowd, looking for Kayla. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like a joke. Jesse must have seen me staring at her earlier. Should have known better than to let myself react to her presence, let anything show. Problem is, my control is not so good these days.

And I still don’t know why my body reacts to her like that, shattering my control.

It’s a passing thing, I decide as I push off a brunette who has started dancing with me even though I’m still searching for Kayla. Has to be. I just need to blow off steam. A good fuck and I’ll be good as new. I won’t get hard every time she’s around.

In fact, after this prank, I’m pretty fucking sure I’m cured of the strange affliction.
Screw you, J. Screw this shit.

Dammit, where is that chick? And where is everyone else? Did everyone run back home to fuck like bunnies, leaving me to babysit Kayla?

And shouldn’t I be more pissed off about it?

I stop to dislodge a girl who’s plastered herself to my side—right against my bruised ribs, goddammit.

It strikes me, then, how ironic this is. This is what I came for, to grab a chick and have some fun. Instead, I’m pushing chicks off me to take Kayla home so she can sleep off her intoxication.

Yet for some reason my mouth twitches.

Man, I’m obviously drunker than I thought. And an idiot—because why didn’t I grab Jesse and yell in his face that I’m not doing this? Or go look for Seth or Shane or the other girls to tell them I’m outta here?

Shaking my head, I scan the dancers until the strobing lights hit a glittering green top and huge earrings.

The almost smile that’s been tugging at my lips spreads. Why the fuck am I grinning as I push through sweaty bodies to reach her?

I stop.

She’s dancing alone—and with everyone. Her dark hair is flying around her face, the white-blond highlights catching the light as she lifts her arms and twirls. With her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, she’s…

Jeez.
I rub a hand over my face and tell my body to stop acting like a dog with a bone. Boner.
Ugh.

Time to drive her home, tuck her into bed and return to my own apartment, have some quality time with my right hand under the shower.

It’s getting way too common lately. Way too
lonely
.

Yeah, it’s really time to go.

Kayla

Spinning colors, laughing faces, bodies moving to the music. It’s a magical place, a fairytale place, and I laugh as I spin, too, letting my arms flow to the sides and my hair fly.

Free.

Moving.

Leaving the orbit to hurtle into starry space.

Everyone has left already—Ev and Amber and Cassie and the guys. It’s all right. I know they came to please me, and that sure pleased me. But they want to go home and have kinky sex, which I perfectly understand.

I giggle, because it’s so funny, the guys are so funny, panting after the girls, and the girls…

Do the girls really like the sex? The few dates I’ve gone on since moving here and starting college were a disaster. And the sex? It was dead boring.

Want details? Sure, here you go.

Orgasms achieved: zero. Fun had: zero, unless your definition of fun is getting naked and sweaty in filthy guys’ rooms, with nothing to show for it afterward except the soreness between my legs.

Nada.

Which sucks. I want to experience exciting sex, orgasm-inducing sex, something I’ve never had, which begs the question, it is even possible—?

A girl bumps into me, not even noticing, and I stop to catch my breath. I’ve stopped spinning, but the bar and the lights haven’t. They swirl lazily in my eyes, and my stomach roils.

Gah.
Nice.

Maybe I need to sit down for a bit. Not ready to head home just yet, especially since Amber won’t be there. Jesse said something about arranging a bodyguard for me.

I think he was drunk, too. God, I hope he wasn’t driving.

Wait a sec, what did I do with my coat? And my purse?

Fear hits me like cold water. Did Jesse or Amber say anything about that? Did I just leave them at the table?
Oh crap!

Where is the table where we sat at? Disoriented, I turn in a circle, trying to locate it. The crowd blurs. The music beat is hammering behind my eyes, at the base of my throat. Another girl jostles me as she dances her way around a guy, and I stumble backward.

My back collides with a rock-solid chest, and a pair of steel arms close around me. I yelp, my shoes scrabbling on the floor, my arms wind-milling as I fight for balance.

The arms tighten, keeping me upright even when my heels screech and slide from under me, leaving me hanging in a stranger’s hold.

This is… This is
funny
. Another fit of giggles hits me. I should be pushing off this guy, this is stupid, this is thoughtless, but the strength in his arms feels good, and he smells somehow familiar.

Like crushed peppercorns and warm metal and ink.

Wait a minute…

I fight his hold, and he releases me, then grabs again my elbow when I stumble as I turn to face him.

“Steady,” he says, his voice a low rumble, barely heard over the music.

I know that voice. “Ocean?”

“The very same.” He grins at me, blinks those deep blue eyes at me, and I kinda lose my train of thought. I mean…
whoa
.

Pretty.

I want to know what he’s hiding behind those blue eyes and that wide grin. Hey, I’d do a full-body search, if he’d let me.

Boy, if I could run my hands over that chest, so muscular under his tight-fitting T-shirt…I’d totally read the lines of his chest instead of his palm. I wonder what story they’d tell me.

“I thought you were gone,” I whisper.

“Not without you.”

Damn, that sounds… sweet. And hot. And like a line from a movie, or somebody else’s life. Because this makes no sense.

Unless… “Jesse mentioned something about—”

“Jesse,” he says, “told me that you—”

We stare at each other. Around us people are dancing, lights strobing, music playing.

“He told you what?” I demand.

His jaw clenches. “Nothing. I have your purse.” He shows it to me. It’s hanging from his shoulder. My coat is bundled under his arm.

“Oh thank God!” I make a grab for it, somehow trip over my feet and end up smashed against his chest.

His hard, muscled chest.
Again.

How mortifying.
And also how pleasant…

“Here.” He unplasters me from his hot, hard body carefully, which makes me sad, and hands me the coat. “Put this on. We’re going.”

“But you haven’t danced yet!” This strikes me as even more tragic than the loss of contact with his cotton-clad chest. “Can’t leave before dancing.”

“What the…. Kay, no.”

Aw shucks, I
love
how he says “Kay” in that smooth, deep voice of his. “Say it again.”

“What?” With his sky-blue hair falling into those sky-blue eyes, he’s adorable. And hot. And he’s totally going to dance with me.

“My name.”

“Kay,” he says again, a ghost of a question tagged at the end, and I swoon.

“Your voice rocks,” I inform him, throw my arms around his neck—God, this boy is tall!—and start swaying to the beat, to show him how. “Do you sing in a band?”

He just stares at me.

And we dance.

Granted, the beat is way faster than my movements, but hey. Can’t beat slow-dancing, like in the eighties. It would be a waste of time, time a girl could spend glued to a hot body like Ocean’s. I mean, crap, he’s like a god imagined by crazed female worshippers. He’s perfect.

I’d love to be glue on his ripped chest, dripping down his stomach to his hard-on… I wonder how big he is down there, and how much bigger he’d be aroused, and…

“What are you doing?” He’s resisting my concerted efforts, stiff as a board against me. “Kay.”

“Dancing.” I thought it was obvious. I grin up at him.

He frowns, and I tilt my head to the side, studying him.

Weird.
This isn’t the Ocean I’m used to. In the strobing lights hitting us from above, he looks so serious and focused. Sharply defined, made of angles and shadows.

Nothing like the sunny boy I’ve observed for so long, drinking and flirting and having fun with his friends. More like the tortured heroes in the novels I like to read.

And that’s too bad. Because, like Ev so aptly explained, I’m attracted to those tragic, brooding boys in the novels, and I should learn to separate reality from fiction.

You’re drunk,
Kayla, I tell myself.
So drunk. Stop with the weird thoughts. Focus on the physical evidence.

Check for clues.

Like the width of his heavy biceps under my hands, the hard and warm muscles under the fine cotton of his T-shirt.

Mmm.
This is more like it. Wait until I tell Ev I finally copped a feel.

“You’re not dancing.” I pout and tug on him again, and reluctantly, awkwardly, he moves along with me.

“Kay?” he whispers, and this time my name is weighed with more questions than I want to think about. His eyes look dark in the changing lights, his hair a silken curtain falling in his handsome face.

We’ve never danced together before. We had shots, and beers, and talked about movies and music and all sorts of unimportant things—but I’ve never touched him, except by chance, my hand brushing his as I reached for something.

I sure am touching him now.

Through the haze of alcohol, I feel the lines of his body, and man, he’s more ripped than I thought. I lift my arms and lock them behind his neck. For some reason, he’s so tense tendons stand out under my hands like steel cables. My boobs are mashed to a chest hewn of rock, and my stomach is pressed to…

Something long and thick and hard. Something so hot it’s burning through the layers of clothes and branding my skin.

I blink.

Is that for me, or is he packing a tattoo gun in his pants? Is he—?

“Kay.” He grabs my shoulders and peels me off him like I’m a badly-stuck sticker. “You’re drunk. And it’s time to take you home.”

Nah, he’s hung, I guess. I lick my lips at the thought.

And he’s no fun tonight.

“What’s the hurry?” I whine as he drags me off the dance floor, then holds out my coat and dresses me like I’m a child. Probably because I’m whining like one. “We came here to have fun.”

Something shifts in his thunderous expression. Something flashes through his eyes. Guilt? Remorse? Regret?

Nah.
Probably impatience.

“Next time I ask for a bodyguard,” I say sighing, taking my purse from his hand and slinging it over my shoulder, “I’ll ask for someone who’s fun.”

Now he definitely looks pissed. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“’S okay, we can still have fun in your car,” I say, my mouth happily flapping away without any real control from my brain. “Maybe you’ll finally let me take a look.”

His mouth opens and closes. “A look at what?” he croaks, and I frown, not sure why his face is turning red.

“Your palm. I want to read your palm for you.”

Duh.

Also, I totally wouldn’t mind putting my hands on his chest again. Say goodbye to his solid pecs and hard abs.

After reading his palm.

He shakes his head. “Dammit, Kay. I’m not letting you read my palm, or spread the cards for me, or… Shit.” He runs his hands over his face, lets out a sigh and reaches for me. “Let’s just fucking go.”

“Okay, fine. Jeez.”

He takes my hand, his big fingers wrapping around mine, and I follow him through the bar, fighting not to stumble as the room tilts with every step.

Fine, I won’t read his palm. You’d think I was asking him for the moon or something. It’s okay. If only he didn’t seem so… off. For Ocean, that is. So
not
happy.

Sad. And angry. And so confusing.