The Girl of Sand & Fog (9 page)

CHAPTER 9

We
roll to a stop at the exit of the school parking lot and Bobby looks left
toward the coast highway, the direction Jake went with Zoe, and my heart sinks.

Oh damn.

Maybe we
are
going to the Kettle for
lunch. I’ve never been more disappointed in my life to get my way. How did
Bobby misread my not-so-subtle hints to Zoe?

He makes a sharp turn right.

I start to laugh as we whiz up the road toward
his house.

“Jerk,” I tease.

A twinkle fills his eyes. “No, not a jerk. I
waited until Jake was out of sight before I changed directions. I don’t want
them following us.”

A smile spreads across Bobby’s face and it’s so
damn sexy all I want to do is kiss him. Instead, I lay my head on his shoulder,
curling into his arm over the center console.

“Pretty sly, Bobby Rowan.”

“I am if this works. I love Zoe, but sometimes
shaking her is like trying to shake gum from your shoe.”

I laugh and kiss his arm.

There is no need to ask what he’s planning. Bobby
is pulsing with tension. My fingers move lower and he stops me before I can
brush him there.

We turn down the service alley behind his house
and he parks, his car hidden from view by the back fence.

“Are you sure you want to skip lunch?” His eyes
pin me and a thrill runs across my flesh. “You drive me out of my mind when you
look at me the way you did crossing the parking lot. All glowing and smiling
and happy to see me. It gave me a fucking hard-on before you even touched me. You
know if we go to my room you’re skipping the rest of the day, don’t you? You’re
staying here until you have to go home.”

I nod. He climbs from the driver’s seat, comes
around the car, opens my door and takes my hand.

He guides me to the gate and punches in a code to
open the gardeners’ entrance.

I watch him click it softly closed behind us.
“Pretty convenient thing that back gate. Something tells me you’ve done this
before, Bobby.”

He slants me a look. “Is that what you think?”

The gaze he fixes on me instantly quashes the
giddiness that’s claimed me since leaving school.  

Fuck, I’ve pissed him off.

I shrug in a way that I hope looks indifferent,
but a blush creeps onto my cheeks. “Let’s not do that thing where we tell each
other every detail about our past sexual experiences. I
so
don’t want to
know how many girls you’ve been with.”

We stand in the far side of the yard, staring
into each other’s eyes, both of us weirdly frozen when only a moment ago we’d
been racing toward the pool house, hot for each other.

I shift my gaze to the ground. “Can we just do
this? I don’t want to fight.”

“Nope, not letting that one go,” he whispers.
“I’m not some asshole jerk player. You should know that by now. And if we can’t
be honest with each other about everything, then what’s the point in going any
farther, Kaley? I’d rather turn around now and drive you back to school. And
you brought it up, the sexual history question. I’m going to answer you and if
you’re cool with my answer, then we can see where we go from there. Agreed?”

Fighting to insulate myself against his change of
mood, I nod, and when he lifts a brow I say, “Yes,” but it comes out harsh and
petulant.

“I’ve done a lot of things sexually. I won’t lie
to you about that. I’m as into sex as any guy.”

Fuck.

Not the answer I wanted.

Disquieting sensations from my stomach lodge in
my throat. “I’m sure you have done a lot sexually,” I shoot back, my voice
heavy with sarcasm. “I get it. You’re a hot guy. Popular. You don’t date. But I
never thought it meant you didn’t fuck as much as you can. This is hardly a
news flash, Bobby.”

His gaze combs my face as if irritated and trying
to decide how to deal with me. I carefully avoid his eyes because I can feel
that my features are tense and awash with overly exposed hurt about hearing of
Bobby’s exploits.

Fuck, what’s wrong with me? It’s ridiculous to
get hurt because what he did before me isn’t about me, but his talking about it
is suffocating me.

Stupid, Kaley. Why did you start this?

“Whatever I’ve done doesn’t matter. Because it
was never complete. Not even close to complete. I’ve never felt about any girl
the way I feel about you. You’re different from every girl I’ve ever been with,
Kaley.”

Before I can rally a response, his arms slip
around me, pulling me close and he’s bending low to kiss me. His mouth is
urgent and bruising on mine, not gentle and moving with me in a perfectly
matching flow, the way we kiss when we’re fucking each other with our tongues.

His tongue sweeps through my mouth as one hand
runs up the side of my face, and then his fingers in my hair clutch the back of
my head.

He pulls away, breathless, his lips against my
ear. “But I’m into limits and you’re into control and sometimes you make it
fucking nearly impossible to be the guy I want to be with you. You think we’re
here because
you’ve
decided it’s time we should fuck. You have no idea
how much I want to. How fucking out of my mind you get me. How many times a day
I jerk off thinking about you and what it’s going to be like when we’re finally
together. But I didn’t bring you here to fuck you.”

What?

I step back from him, but the fence stops me.

I cross my arms, humiliated and confused. “Then
what was all that nonsense about not going back to school today if we go into
your bedroom?”

“I don’t want our first time together to be in my
bedroom. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend as much time alone with you as
I can. Maybe push up against the limits until the time is right for both of us
to make love.”

I stare at him, my mouth dropping, frustrated in
every way, not just my body. “Right time? You had a pretty fucking nice
erection five minutes ago and I was pretty fucking ready to do this. It doesn’t
get more right time than that. I’ve already let you know that I want to.”

“We’re not doing it today.
I can
tell, Kaley, that you haven’t gone all the way before. But here’s a news flash.
I haven’t either. I’ve done a lot of things—two people can get off in a lot of
ways together without fucking—but I’ve never fucked a girl because I wanted my
first time to mean something. I wanted it to be with someone I love. But I also
wanted it to mean something to the girl I shared it with.”

I stare at him, stunned.

“You’ve never had sex before?” I ask, unable to
hide how floored I am by this admission.

This time he steps back from me, raking his
fingers through his hair. “Not completely. I want the milestones of my life to mean
something. Not just be something I do, move on, and forgot about. I want my
first time to be with someone I can see in my life long-term. I want it with a
girl I love. I want it with you. I’ve never believed in anything the way I
believe in the possibility of us.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth he’s
completely discomposed. He looks both nervous and embarrassed—the vision he
makes melts my heart and douses my temper. My tough, extreme sports, hot surfer
boy all sensitively heavy, laying bare his soft underside.

I lift my hand and stroke his cheek. “That’s
about the sweetest thing any guy has ever said to me.”

He stares down at the ground, shoving his hands
deep into his pockets. “There is only a handful of moments in everyone’s life
that really matter. Not enough of them to waste.”

My eyes scroll over his features, taking in
everything written there that Bobby hasn’t said. We’ve talked about him being
adopted and he denies that it matters to him…
but oh, Bobby, you are wrong.
It’s why you are so careful about the people you care about. You need things
to matter because a piece of you is incomplete like me, but unlike me, you
can’t get that part of you back.

My eyes widen. “So if you’re not going to do me,
why are we here?”

He looks up, laughing in a rough, half-frustrated
and half-amused sort of humor. I can tell by the way he’s studying me that if I
kiss him, he’d let me, this would be over and we’d be on the way to his room to
do
whatever.

“I just want to spend some time alone with you.
And I definitely want to push up against those limits as far as we can, as far
as it’s right, for the both of us. Fighting with you only makes me hornier than
hell.”

I can’t help but smile at him. “Me, too. Do you
still want to hold me hostage in your bedroom until I have to go home?”

Ah.

Instant spark in his eyes.

“More than you know,” he says, his voice thick
and breathy. “Even as pissed off as you got me, my erection didn’t go away. Not
completely.”

This time I laugh.

I move in to him, lifting my lips to his, and
then we’re kissing, hot and frantic. His hands run down my back to my butt, and
he picks me up. I wrap my arms and legs around him, and he starts carrying me
toward his room.

I drag my mouth from his, trailing down his neck
with my lips and tongue. I make a light nip and his body shudders as he sucks
in a full chest of air.

I swirl my tongue and then lift my face. “Limits,
huh? You don’t want to rethink that one, Bobby? I’m pretty much a sure thing
today.”

Low laughter makes his chest shimmy against me.
“Don’t make this a competition, Kaley. I want our first time to be what we both
deserve. Respecting the limits today is going to be really hard.”

I tuck my face into the bend of his neck and
shoulder to hide the color on my cheeks. “Really hard? Maybe that’s a moment
you shouldn’t waste?”

He struggles to kiss me and open the door to the
pool house. “That’s a moment we don’t have to worry about not happening again.”

Once we’re inside, he kicks the door closed and
drops us on the bed. We both kick off our flip-flops then scramble until we’re
lying full-length
on his bed, with him on top of me. Kissing in an
unending, devouring flow, we press into each other, straining with our bodies
to get as close as we can.

I tug on the hem of his shirt and he eases back
from me and immediately pulls it over his head, flinging it on the ground. I
stare up at him, wide-eyed, at the smooth, nearly hairless bronze-tanned skin,
the nicely cut muscles of his shoulders and chest, and the rock hard six-pack
of his abs.

My hands lightly skim his torso. His breathing
grows deeper and more ragged.

“I want this shirt off me,” I demand, my voice
husky and impatient. “I want it off now.”

He slides the straps of my tank top off, kissing
my bare skin, teasing my breasts through the fabric with his warm breath. Then
he pulls it from my body. I unhook my bra to free my breasts and toss it to the
floor.

The gleam in his eyes as his gaze roams my body
makes want and hunger roar through my flesh.

I haven’t done this before. Bared my upper body
completely. But I want us skin to skin, his heart beating against mine, even if
he intends not to have sex completely.

“Oh fuck, Kaley,” he whispers in awe. “You are so
gorgeous, baby.”

He leans forward placing gentle kisses all along
them, the journey of his mouth slow and potent, teasing the tops of my breasts
with light touches and my nipples with his breath and swirling flicks of his
tongue. Everything inside me liquefies, the wetness concentrating between my
thighs.

I arch upward into his mouth and he takes a
nipple fully into his mouth, sucking as his hands massage and roam the slopes.

My lower body twists and rubs against him. His
erection feels like it’s trying to rip through his shorts and escape. I start
grinding against him, my body growing anxious and hot while Bobby’s panting
turns into near airless spirts as he pushes into me over and over again.

A whimper escapes me. His mouth leaves my
breasts, claiming mine in a deep kiss, his tongue filling me, before he lifts
his head and kisses his way down my body.

His fingers glide up my thighs, around the edge
of my panties, then inside. He teases my clit and I moan loudly.

He kisses my stomach and then lifts his face. “I
want to go down on you. I want to taste you. Are you OK with that?”

Holy shit.

He wants to eat me out?

That’s within the limits?

That
I didn’t expect.

I lift my head from the pillow to look at his
face.

The expression in his eyes blasts heat through my
veins. His words bring color to my face, because we haven’t done
this
before—the
oral sex thing—and Bobby is right, two people can get off in lots of way. He’s
definitely proven that in our prior sexcapades. But this is a new line of
intimacy. As much as the place between my thighs is pulsing and screaming
yes,
yes
, I’m kind of afraid and a touch embarrassed to let him do it, and irrationally
hurt again because I can tell by his touch and his voice that this isn’t going
to be a first for
him.