The Girl of Sand & Fog (12 page)

CHAPTER 12

It’s
dark by the time we reach Santa Cruz. The six-hour drive has been torture. My
heart is thumping so rapidly it feels like I’m going to have a heart attack and
for some strange reason I really want to call my mother.

Stupid, Kaley. That would
so
be the wrong
move.

I left Pacific Palisades feeling almost drunk
from the wildness of being on the edge of a change in my life—a change I’m
desperate for, lied to get out of the house to make happen, and definitely want.
More than eager to be five days alone with Bobby. No going home at night. Going
to sleep and waking up next to him. No one stopping us. Just us. Together.
Loving each other. Finally totally and completely everything a couple should
be.

I left Southern California feeling determined, in
control; my femaleness pumping through me like an adrenaline rush. Now I feel
tentative and absurdly afraid. Reality started to melt down my euphoria when
the cars with Zoe and Jake, Seth and his date cut out in Cambria for lunch, and
Bobby decided to keep driving up Highway 1 without them.

An hour ago, I lapsed into silence and pretty
much haven’t said a word since. I’ll be alone with Bobby at least three hours
in our temporary digs in Santa Cruz before everyone else catches up—thanks to
Seth’s mystery date keeping everyone waiting at Jake’s, and Bobby deciding we
should start out before the rest of them to get things ready—and I don’t need
to ask Bobby why he maneuvered that one.

He’s going to fuck me the second we get through
the front door. The way he’s been watching me the entire drive tells me that.
He’s never looked at me this way. And the light touches and little kisses
throughout the hours have stirred my flesh into an unrelenting burn from head
to toe.

The air around us is filled with sexual tension,
but even as urgent as I am to have sex with him, sharp bites of nervousness I
can’t quell nip at my insides.

This is so not the way I always pictured it would
happen. I just sort of figured I’d be in the moment, my body carried beyond my
control, and then I’d be screwing some guy and that stupid virginity thing
would be done with. But this is different—and so much harder—a moment I have to
make happen, step into, and consciously decide to do.

I don’t even know how to have sex with a guy. Not
really. Doing bits and pieces in parts has got to be different than the whole
enchilada and going all the way. And holy shit, we’re going to be sharing a bed
for five days.

It’s what I want.

It’s not like I want to turn back.

Why am I freaking out and afraid?

Totally pathetic.

And completely embarrassing that I kind of want
to call my mom and talk about this with her before I do it.

Crap, I hope Bobby can’t see that I’m scared.

He flicks the turn signal and we pull into the
long driveway of a stunning house set right up against the beach. We slowly
come to a stop and he turns off the engine.

My brows crinkle.

A house.

I thought we’d be staying at a hotel.

My emotions shift abruptly. I can’t tell; am I
more or less nervous because of this? So ridiculous. Why does it matter where
we do
it
for the first time?

“Whose house is this?” I ask.

Bobby pulls the keys from the ignition and angles
in his seat, facing me. “Mine. My eighteenth birthday present.”

He says that in a no-big-deal, just-sort-of-is
kind of way.

My eyes widen. “Your parents bought you a house
as a birthday present? My last birthday I got some new cameras.”

His gaze softens into something subdued. “No.
Linda bought me the house as a gift. I think she was worried I was going to
take off and she’d never see me again. And if she gave me this then I’d have
somewhere not too far from her to land if I did leave home.” He shakes his
head. “I’d never do that to Linda. Disappear. I owe her a lot.”

Everything inside me starts to roil. “And are you
going to leave after graduation and not come back like you told your dad?”

Bobby leans into me, brushing my cheek with his
thumb and trailing light kisses along my jaw. “I’m never going to leave you.
Not ever, Kaley.”

I feel a slight internal warning prick even as I
melt into the play of his lips and touch. Not a totally direct answer. I’m not
sure what it means. Right now I don’t care. A few kisses and I’m on fire in my
sex.

He lifts his mouth, not pulling back, and I’m
breathless. “Come on. Let’s go inside. If we stay out here much longer, I’m
going to blow everything and jump you in the car.”

I stifle a laugh and make a face. “Jump me?
Really? You’re such a sweet talker, Bobby.”

His eyes change, the color darkening. “You’re
lucky I didn’t pull off the road two hours ago.” His voice is husky. “You don’t
have any idea what it does to me having you sitting there looking at me that
way. How ready I am to be with you.”

The lines of his face tighten. I become aware
that we’re so close that our body heat mingles in the damp, foggy coastal air.
The feel of him shoots through my veins blocking out all other thought and
sensation.

I want him.

Now.

“Then why don’t you show me?” I whisper, my voice
breathy and excited. “You got me here, Bobby Rowan. Why are we still in the
car?”

He shakes his head. “Tonight we show each other.
I want to make love to you but, Kaley, I want you to make love to
me
also. I want to make love over and over again until neither of us can take any
more.”

Holy shit.

To cover my obviousness and trepidation, I make a
silly little
yikes
and smile. “Extreme about everything, aren’t you,
Bobby? And conceited, too. Maybe you won’t be any good. Maybe I won’t want you
more than once.”

Laughing, Bobby climbs from the car and comes
around to open my door. “With what I’m feeling from the both of us, I don’t
think that’s something I have to worry about.” I climb from the seat and he
drops a fast kiss on my mouth. “I hope you weren’t thinking I brought you here
for a single fuck, a few of days of partying with our friends, and some surf
time. You’ll be lucky if I let you out of the bed.”

I step into him, breathing in his scent before I
touch my lips to his neck. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

He shivers and steps back, taking my hand and
pulling me toward the front door. He pauses at a panel by the garage, punches
in a code, and the front lights come on. We continue to the front stoop and he
punches in another code and the door opens.

“Quite a house you’ve got here,” I tease, as he
hits another panel in the foyer that turns on soft, recessed lighting through
the living areas. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to be that easy for you.
That all you’ve got to do is punch a code into me. That would definitely not be
a moment I’d want to remember always. Unless you do it with your tongue. Yep,
that
might work…”

The look he gives me scatters my words. Oh shit.
Me and my stupid, nervous babbling. OK, it was a lame joke—did I just piss him
off or something else? I can’t read what I’m seeing on his face.

He releases my hand, closes the door behind us,
drops the bags and then pins me against the wall, his lower body grinding into
me, his mouth urgent against mine. His body is on fire, supercharged with
arousal, and I struggle to match the heated thrust of his tongue, the force of
his kisses and the flexing of hips into me.

His mouth lifts, but he continues to rub his
erection into me, his panting drowning out my own rapid breathing. “Don’t mess
around with me, Kaley,” he whispers against the skin beneath my ear. His hands
move up my thighs, under my dress and then his fingers start teasing me through
my panties. “We’ve been interrupted twice this week. I’ve been fucking hard as
a rock since we left the ’Sades. If you don’t stop teasing me this isn’t going
to go at all the way I planned.”

My eyes fly open. He’s really struggling to take
this slow. For me. It’s sweet and totally Bobby and totally not what I want. I
don’t want to think about it a second longer, waste another moment trying to
figure out what to do. I just want to do.

I tell myself not to.

I do it anyway—

I arch my hips upward into Bobby, molding into
his erection straining in his pants, and bite his neck.

“Oh fuck,” he moans before his mouth crashes back
onto mine. He scoops me up into him. His fingers dig into my butt cheeks as my
legs encircle his body, and we frantically consume each other as he starts
moving us down a hallway.

“Why is everything a competition with you?” he
whispers between kisses. “Even this. About you being in control. I want this to
be perfect for you, but you keep pushing so I can’t—”

“I love you, Bobby. It’s already perfect. It’s
what we both want. Let’s just let it happen.”

His eyes are bright, fervent, and I drag his face
back to me, pouring every ounce of my own ragged need into our kiss. My breasts
flatten against his chest with the tight wrapping of my arms around his neck,
wanting to give him the feel of me as much as I can.

He sets me on a bed, sits beside me, and stills
with his face against my shoulder and fingers clutching my hips. I can tell
he’s trying to pull himself back into tight control and this time I let him.

I take a moment to check out exactly where we
are.

The room has a massive stone fireplace in one
corner. Ceiling-high windows overlook the Pacific. On the walls there are framed
photos of him surfing and stunning paintings of seascapes. The enormous bed
faces toward the ocean, the frame made of a distressed timber that looks almost
like driftwood.

He starts moving around the room and I focus on
anything but him, not wanting to lose even a small measure of my nerve now.

There are candles everywhere. Lit. I don’t know
how, but someone was here before us to set them ablaze and I think they opened
up the house because it doesn’t have that stuffy smell of having been shut up
for a while. It smells of clean ocean air.

The room is perfect. Like a dream. And this is
where I’m going to give myself to Bobby for the first time. This is it. We’re
going to do it.

I’m feeling a little badly that I pushed at him in
the foyer because one look at this place tells me it wasn’t bullshit, he does
want our first time to be special, and he took time to think it through.

He slowly pulls back from me and stands. He steps
out of his flip-flops, pulls off his shirt, and his hands move to the
fastenings of his jeans. They sink low on his hips, and I stare at his
beautifully muscled, sun-bronzed torso, suddenly quaking like a leaf even
though the muscles inside me are pulsing almost to the point of pain.

Turning, he gazes at me, his face flushed and the
skin taut across his features. He pulls from his pocket a handful of foil
squares and tosses them on the bedside table. “Do you want me to blow out the
candles?” he asks.

“No. You know I love candles. Everything is
perfect exactly how it is. I can’t believe you did all this, Bobby.”

“I’ve been imagining this, you and how I want it,
since the first night in your car,” he admits, not the least bit embarrassed by
that confession, and his confidence out of nowhere is so sexy that it makes the
blood pump faster and faster through my body.

Leaning down, he kisses me, quietly this time,
his tongue dancing and playing, fucking my mouth in an unhurried thoroughness
matching the glide of his hands on my body. He lifts my hair and his lips are
on my neck. I’m impatient inside and he is moving slowly, agonizingly slow in
this.

He places featherlight kisses along my jaw, my
chin, and then steps back from me again. He pushes down his jeans, and his
erection springs free as his pants fall to the floor.

I flush…
oh my
.

I’ve never seen him one hundred percent nude, not
in a single dose, and he is fucking gorgeous, every inch of him lean, cut and
tan. I never doubted that, but I’m more than a little intimidated by the sight
of him because
that part
I’m pretty familiar with looks different in a
complete, fully revealed package. 

Somehow him standing above me, his desire for me
openly exposed in full length, makes his cock seem even larger than I thought
it was, and it’s so unexpected and hot that I don’t know how much longer I can
remain still on the bed as he guides us through this.

“Why haven’t you undressed yet?” he murmurs,
balancing on a knee, close to me on the bed.

I stare up at him. “Since you’re the one who’s
got this all planned out, maybe you should undress me.”

“Really? You’re just going to lie back and let me
do what I want to you?” He moans, lifting my leg from the bed and kissing his
way down toward my foot.

“Maybe. It depends on what you want to do to me.”