Playing for Love at Deep Haven (22 page)

Zach rubbed his
wrist and the words
a girl
hovered
uncertainly on the tip of his tongue before his songwriting rocker personality
asserted itself.

“I don’t want
Ace fucking with my work, that’s all. I’ll be in touch.”

“Right,” said
Malcolm. “Cheers.”

Zach pressed the
end button, lay down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes,
taking a deep breath and feeling his taut muscles relax. It felt like a near
miss. If Malcolm had decided to work with Ace instead, he’d have been in a
really bad position. He sighed, grateful he’d dodged that bullet. Violet was
back in his life, and he intended to keep her there no matter what. It was all
coming together.

***

That night, as
they lay naked under blankets in front of the fire, Violet leaned on Zach’s
chest, letting her hands flatten and splay over his muscled
pecs
.
She looked at him and grinned while he pushed her hair away from her face, smiling
at her with those post-sex lazy eyes that made her want him even though he’d
already had her twice. She was starting to get used to the way he looked at her,
and it didn’t make her gasp anymore to see the love soften his hard eyes. It
made her insides warm. It made her feel languorous and sexy. It started to feel
like something that
belonged
to her,
that look.

She glanced down
at his smooth, contoured chest. “When did you get so big?”

“Every man’s
favorite question, Vile.”

She sighed,
trying not to grin. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh,” he said,
wrapping an arm around her waist and repositioning her over his erection. “It’s
not?”

“Fine, Zach. You
have an enormous . . .” She glanced down, and her cheeks flushed, which made no
sense, since they’d spent more time unclothed than clothed over the last few
days. “. . .
you know
.”

“I
don’t
know. I need to hear the words.”

She picked up on
his double meaning and stiffened for a second before relaxing. She wasn’t
saying “I love you” until her heart felt safe or until she was ready, and Zach
wasn’t going to goad her into it.

He
arched
up, rotating his hips, rubbing against her. “You’re
a writer, be
descriptive.
”

The way he said
descriptive
was so low and dirty, her
heart kicked into a gallop. One of the best surprises about Zach was how
confident and playful he was as a lover, and Violet, who’d only known
Shep’s
somewhat mechanical lovemaking, was often taken by surprise
by his spontaneity and then carried away when his eyes darkened to a blackish-gray
that demanded everything she had inside to give him.

Now she grinned
at him, licked her lips, and slid down his torso to sheathe his sex between her
breasts, bending her head to kiss the tip with a swift peck. When she looked
back up, his eyes had ignited.

“Descriptive?” She
kept her voice low and sultry, sweeping her tongue around the indent of his
navel then blowing gently on the wetness. He groaned softly, his breath
hitching just enough to make her grin. She grabbed a condom from the pile on
the bedside table, ripping it open with her teeth and rolling it slowly over
his rigid, throbbing length. “Enormous. Throbbing. Pulsing. Massive.”

He flipped her
onto her back, pressing his weight down on her, and grinding into the soft
triangle of hair below her tummy.

“Impatient,” she
continued, wrapping her legs around his back as he dropped his head to suck on
her neck, licking a path to her ear and taking the lobe between his teeth. “
Ahh
! Impetuous . . .
ahh
. . . demanding
. . . ah-ah . . .”

“I want you.”

“Then take me,”
she sighed, gasping as he penetrated her. He held her eyes captive as he slowly
pushed inside, entering her body with an aching deliberateness until the skin
of his pelvis pressed up against hers, until he was flush and full—enormous,
throbbing, pulsing, massive—inside her. He held himself still, intimately
connected with her, his chest heaving, brushing her sensitive breasts with
every breath.

His eyes raked
across her face, fierce and burning, like it hurt him to look it her, but would
hurt more to look away.

“I love you,” he
finally rasped, rigid and unmoving inside of her, as if to prove that the feelings
were more important than the act, though beads of sweat betrayed his body’s
perilous grip on control. She held his gaze. She understood. She wanted him to
let go and find his pleasure with her.

Reaching up to
hold his face, she drew his lips down to hers and kissed him with all the love,
past and present, in her heart, swirling her tongue around his as he started to
move within her. And again that feeling of completeness, of truth and
rightness, overwhelmed her. In all her life, she’d never felt as naked, as
vulnerable with anyone as she did with Zach. It was written in the way her legs
clamped around his back, the way they moved in a rhythm mutually decided by
their hearts, in the way she rose to meet his every thrust, begging in
sighs
, in the way she gripped his hips and dug her nails
into his skin. Could he read her? Did he know without her saying the words?
Could he feel it? Could he see?

That beautiful
aching pooled below her belly, and she moaned into his mouth, feeling the
cresting, the peaking, and then the falling as she exploded around him in
spasms of exquisite pleasure. Her brain flooded with endorphins as her arms
tightened around him, jerking and flexing as the swell subsided.

She was vaguely
aware of him thrusting into her a final time, kissing her womb as he called out
her name with a strangled cry. His fists curled into the sheets by her head,
and he finally fell on top of her, spent and fulfilled.

“Oh my God,” he
sighed into the hollow of her neck, his body still trembling and shivering with
aftershocks. “Violet . . .”

She
slid
her hands gently up his back, then flipped her hand
over to run the backs of her nails down to his perfect ass. He convulsed again,
lightly now.

He started to
pull out, but her hands raced to his hips, gently held them in place.

“Don’t go,” she
whispered.

He slid back
into her slick warmth and buried his head in her neck, his lips against her
damp skin.

“I love you so
much,” he murmured.

She wrapped her
arms around him, leaning her cheek against the warm skin of his shoulder. She
pressed her lips to the light at the top of the lighthouse, then closed her
eyes.

I love you, too.

***

“So,” she said a
little later, as he held her, “you never answered my question. You weren’t this
big at Yale. I can’t even remember you ever working out.”

He sighed
against her neck. “You seem pretty fixated on the changes in my body, Vile.”

“Like you mind,
Z.” She laced her hand through the one he held under her breasts, and he kissed
the back of her neck.

 
“Okay, yeah. I work out. I like the way it
feels to be muscular and hard-bodied.”

“And your
groupies must love it,” she
snarked
, instantly
regretting her show of jealousy. But she couldn’t help it. He’d been honest
with her about sleeping with a lot of women. She’d seen Flick reach out and
touch him like she had a right to. Violet knew she had no right to feel upset
or jealous about his past, but she did. It felt like no woman, before her or
after, should have ever laid her unworthy hands on him. Like they should have
seen the little violet on the inside of his wrist and known,
Oh, he already belongs to someone
. She
unlaced her fingers from his, and drew his hand away from her chest so she
could see her tattoo. She pressed her lips to it before replacing his hand, and
he kissed her neck again.

“Some of them do,
I guess. But they won’t anymore. Or they will, but I’ll be off-limits.”

“Why’s that?”
she asked, hating herself for offering pathetically easy bait. She wanted to hear
him say it—that he belonged to her, that he wouldn’t be with anyone else but
her.

“Because I’m
taken.”

Because I’m taken.
His words made her shudder with
pleasure before her heart caught at the idea of him being on tour again. With
women throwing themselves at him every night. Deep Haven, as blissful as it
was, shut off from the world in their own little cocoon of perfection, couldn’t
last forever. Reality was more tricky.

She rolled in
his arms to face him, loving the twinge of longing elicited by the tips of her
breasts brushing his chest and worrying as her heart swelled with love for him.
As though he knew how much she struggled with her feelings, he dipped his head
to kiss her lips, then kissed his way down her cheek to her neck, where he
rested his lips against her pulse.

She was glad the
room was dark except for the glow of the gold and orange and lavender embers in
the fireplace, throwing off gentle, constant warmth. Hard questions were easier
asked in the dark.

His lips lingered
on her throat as she whispered, “Do you really think this can work? How does it
look in your head, Zach? I’ll come stay a night in New York, and then you’ll
come stay a night in Greenwich? We’ll get together on weekends? What about when
you’re on tour?”

He pulled her
closer, burying his face in her neck, which muffled his voice a little. “I
don’t want us to live apart.”

“You want to
move in together?”

He shrugged, then
leaned back, kissing her nose. “I want us to get our own place.”

She marveled at
his single-mindedness. From the second she’d reentered his life, he’d seemed so
sure of them, so certain about their future together. She’d heard of things
like this—a couple who’d dated in high school meeting fifty years later when
their spouses had died and getting married a week later, high school
sweethearts who met at their twentieth reunion as if not a beat had passed
since their last kiss—but she never thought something like that would happen to
her. She wasn’t against it, per se, but the speed was jarring. It made her feel
breathless, like she was free-falling, and while she didn’t hate it, she wasn’t
totally on board with it either.

“In Greenwich?”
she asked.

“If it’s a deal
breaker for you, yes. But I wouldn’t exactly blend in there, Vile.”

“Then Manhattan?
But you don’t own a place. You rent.”

“Doesn’t mean I
can’t
buy,
we
can’t buy.”

“
Buy
a place?”

“I’ll pick up
some gigs if I have to.”

“You make five
thousand a song plus royalties! You can’t possibly have money woes.”

“Yeah,” he said
softly, looking away from her. “I shouldn’t. But I haven’t had to live a very
grown up life. I have a kickass apartment that I barely use and a lot of
awesome guitars. I haven’t saved very much. I’ve never had anyone in my life to
be responsible for.”

“And now?”

“I’ll grow up.”

“For me,” she
murmured.

“I’ll do
anything for you.”

She leaned
forward and brushed his lips with hers, loving the sweet, quasi old-fashioned
meaning behind his words. Despite his tattoos and piercings and tough rocker
demeanor, his once-crazy lifestyle and the myriad temptations he met while
touring, he wanted to take care of her. The idea was so sexy to her, it made
her breath catch, made her face soften with tenderness for him.

“You amaze me,”
she whispered, kissing him again.

“No. It’s the
other way around,” he whispered back. “You amaze me. Everything that’s good in
me is because of you.”

“It was all
there the day I found you, Z,” she said, reaching up between them to touch her
spot under his eye. “I saw it from the start.”

He shuddered
lightly and gathered her into his arms, pressing his lips to her shoulder,
returning to their conversation. “So live with me? In New York?”

She sensed his
urgency to hammer out a plan and sighed, thinking about the hustle and bustle
of New York which she appreciated in small doses, but felt bewildering as a
place to live. “I don’t know if I can live in New York.”

 
“Then Brooklyn. Or New Haven. There’s still a
train that goes from New York to New Haven, right?”

She leaned back,
fixing her eyes on his tiny mole so that they wouldn’t fill with tears. She
concentrated on it as hard as she could, though it was useless and her eyes
filled anyway. “You’d do that for me? Move to Connecticut?”

“Violet, you
don’t get it. I keep saying it and you don’t get it. I’d do anything for you
but let you go. I love you.”

He searched her
eyes after he said this, looking for her to return his feelings, for her to
reciprocate his words.

She dropped her
eyes, the intense emotions between them and discussion about living together
starting to overwhelm her. A low-grade panic spread uncomfortably in her gut.
“New Haven’s where our story got messy.”