The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (23 page)

“
I kind of want to go chase
that chicken.” She confessed pointing back at the hen bobbing along
the sand.

“
Be my guest, Lee.” Replied
Ace. “I shall watch from right here.” With that, he took a seat
right on the shore. When the waves crashed, a miniature foamy wave
traveled up the sand, barely skimming his toes.

Lee set her hands on her hips and when
Ace glanced up at her, he had to raise a hand to shield the sun
from his eyes. Even with pure light shining on her, the natural
gold in her hair hardly bled through. But her freckles had swollen
to the size of adorable ice cream sprinkles across her nose and
just beneath that, her lips curved in a half smile.

“
Yes, love?” asked
Ace.

Slowly, Lee bent to his eye level. Her
hair slid over her shoulders and hung like curtains opening up to
her view of Ace. “Oh, nothing.” She said and with every word that
followed, her smile brightened, “I’m just thinking about how much I
love you and…” slowly, she sank to a seat beside him. “how much I
adore the fact that we’re alone right now.”

“
Are we?” asked Ace
achieving sarcasm. He was relieved to find that she had mentioned
it before he did. At least now, he knew that there was nothing to
hinder her display of affection.

“
Yeah,” she replied somewhat
casually before scooting closer so that their shoulders pressed
together.

“
Alone on a beach in
Hawaii…” muttered Ace thoughtfully as he shifted his weight to face
her.

“
It sounds like we have
quite a large sum of freedom.” Lee said flirtatiously. “Considering
this day has no to-do list.”

“
Yeah, that sounds about
right.”

“
What do you think we should
do about that?”

“
Oh, I don’t know,” began
Ace, “I was thinking about something along the lines of being
adorable and intimate with this gorgeous amazing girl.”

“
Oh?” Lee raised her
eyebrows as a faint flush spread over her already pink cheeks. “Who
is this girl?”

“
You know her,” began Ace
reaching for a piece of her hair the wind had set drifting over her
nose. The tips of his fingers slid over her temple when he tucked
it behind her ear. “She’s fun, sweet, has this stunning smile and
these beautiful eyes.”

“
Wow,” said Lee when her
fingers too found a way to touch him. As she dragged her hand up
his arm, grains of sand clung to her skin. “She seems like a pretty
cool person.”

“
Believe me, she is.” He
muttered. He was leaning in slowly now as his fingers traced around
her jaw to her chin. He felt her hands glide over the sleeve of his
shirt and over his chest until it clung comfortably to his neck.
Their lips were still inches apart but he could hear Lee’s heart
hammering inside her. He had never noticed this before, but even
with only her fingers clinging to his neck, she trembled ever so
slightly. Maybe it was the moment, maybe it was the anticipation,
or maybe it was just the fact that everything was so perfect on
that beach. As Ace’s eyes slid half shut, he couldn’t help but to
think how adorable it was that kissing him still made her
nervous.

“
Ace?” she uttered as inches
turned to centimeters.

He knew her eyes were shut now too, and
could feel her soft breath on his lips as he hung there waiting for
her words. “Yes?”

Lee swallowed a quick cool breath
before exhaling, “I love you.”

Ace’s stomach flipped as his heart took
off sprinting. He couldn’t find it in himself to hold back any
longer. A mixture of emotion and hunger exploded inside him until
the next thing he knew was the movement of his lips on hers. Both
his hands sprung to her face, clinging to her as if he could never
get enough.

When Lee kissed back with the same
amount of fire, Ace only wanted to pull her in closer. With his
eyes closed there was nothing to guide him around aside for his
hands, and at the moment he was sliding them down her spine until
he was able to grasp onto her boney hips. He wasn’t sure if he was
holding her too tight, or if his touch was making her
uncomfortable. All he knew was that the more her lips tangled with
his, the more he could feel himself losing control.

“
Ace?” Lee moaned when she
managed to pull her mouth away for a quick breath. “Love, I don’t
think-”

In Ace’s mind, this wasn’t a time for
talking. Passionately, he pulled her mouth back on to his with a
little too much force. In the darkness he felt their unsteady
embrace wobble until they were falling. Ace’s back collided with
the hot sand pulling Lee’s weightless body atop of his. Her hair
tumbled over his cheeks so that a few strands got tangled in their
lips.

“
Love,” Lee murmured again
as she pulled away.

Over the pounding of his own heart and
the crashing of ocean waves, Ace didn’t hear her call him a second
time. When her lips were away from his, he brushed her hair back
before craning his neck up to kiss her. With each passing moment,
Ace felt the intoxicating sensation of wanting more and never
getting enough. He needed to feel her thin ribs and small chest
pressed tighter against his. Before Lee could pull back a third
time, Ace had rolled over once more.

Carrying his weight over her was
completely foreign. They had never been pinned together like that
and Lee didn’t like it one bit. The weight of his legs was crushing
her own as his stomach pressed do tightly against her ribs that the
air was forced back up her lungs. She could feel the sand covering
every inch of her body. The movement of his lips had gone from
tasteful to overwhelming. She could hardly even breathe especially
since his face was pinning hers in place.

Not a moment later, a vibrant zap
escaped her fingertips as they were pressed against his chest. With
a faint grunt, Ace pulled back and gaped down at her with a dazed
expression. A faint blush covered his cheeks just beneath his
golden skin and his lips seemed swollen and pink.

“
Ace.” Lee said, seriously
before he could press his mouth against hers once more. “We need to
stop.”

For the first time in their
relationship, he had lost control. Intentionally, Ace had never
wanted their kissing to grow this fierce. Every time in the past,
when their lips were touching, he knew where he was. He knew where
he placed his hands, how tightly he held her, even on Valentine’s
Day when he pulled her around him, and he knew full well what he
was doing. But this time around- this time it was completely
different.

He couldn’t remember how they had
gotten there. As he flashed back through the previous moments
together, all he could remember was the intoxicating hunger
pounding through his body. When he finally gazed down at her
frightened face, things began to piece together. The rapid rising
and falling of Lee’s chest beneath him, the hammering of his own
heart, the swollen feeling in his lips… He had never been so
powerless- especially in a situation like that. As his sight
focused down on her, he could see her wild hair tossed about like
tangled curls in the sand. When the radiant sun fell around her,
her lashes almost seemed invisible. It turned her face to an even
blanker canvass with nothing but two deep green eyes and identical
pink cheeks.

His mind was still fogged up from
kissing, and in all honestly, a major part of him wanted to be back
in her embrace. But he felt her body wiggle beneath him a she tried
to pull away. When he sat up, she did too and for a moment he eyed
her with a perplexed expression before saying. “No one is watching
Lee. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Lee hadn’t lifted her eyes from the
small waves in the sand since she sat up. “I thought that was what
I wanted too.” She mumbled softly. She could see the outline of
where their bodies had been in the sand and her stomach churned
with embarrassment.

Ace chucked as he reached for her once
more. “Well then what are you doing over there? Come
here.”

“
No,” She replied finally
pulling her eyes up to meet his. She nibbled on her thin lips
anxiously as she thought about what she was going to say next. She
had lead him to think that she wanted the same amount of fire as he
wanted, but she was also the one to pull away. It wasn’t fair to be
sending mixed signals to him and with a sigh, she realized she
couldn’t delay talking about how the physical part of their
relationship made her feel.

“
We should talk.” She
finally said. She had spoken so softly that the oncoming sea breeze
nearly ate up her words. “About… us.”

Ace pursed his lips together before
frowning. When he brushed his fingers through his hair, tuffs of
sand fell out and were carried away by the wind. He didn’t like the
way Lee said that. Even she looked uneasy as her eyes went back
down to the sand by her side. But he chose not to say anything
until they were sitting side by side on the hot dry sand. “What did
you want to say?”

Lee swallowed hard. She had been
thinking about it for weeks now. It should have been easy for all
of her thoughts to tumble from her mouth but when she opened her
lips nothing came out. “I’m kind of embarrassed to say.” Lee
confessed.

Ace frowned as he glanced over at her.
The rising sun was scorching the back of his neck, but he didn’t
care. He reached over to set an arm around her small shoulders and
pulled back the wall of hair that had been separating their gazes.
“Lee.” He muttered gently as he stared into her eyes. “You can tell
me anything.”

Her heartbeat had dropped to a regular
pulse and the soothing flow of his words helped loosen her tongue.
She nodded, took in a big breath and found herself closing her eyes
before she let the train of thoughts run out her mouth.

“
I love kissing you Ace. I
love being with you, I love it when you hold my hand and I love it
when we are silly together like when we were walking along the
beach. Times like that make it so easy for me to fall in love with
you. But I get confused when all the kissing comes in. It’s like
my… my body wants to be kissing you, but my heart and my mind are
telling me this isn’t the way to go. When physical romance gets out
of hand, I feel embarrassed and all… icky inside.” Lee sighed. She
hoped she was making sense to him because the words sounded like
vomit in her ears.

“
I guess what I’m trying to
say;” She tried to conclude, “Is that…” But her mind was starting
to swarm with all these different thoughts and she couldn’t spit
anything out.

But Ace nodded and wove his fingers in
between hers. “Like sometimes we go too far.” He said for her and
she nodded with agreement. “And you want to talk about the
limits.”

Lee nodded. Her stomach churned as
another blush rose to her cheeks. She wasn’t sure what it was about
the subject that made her feel so uneasy, but she was relieved that
Ace understood her. “Ace, is this a weird thing to be talking
about? I feel like it is…”

Her brows were folded in an unpleasant
sort of way and her cheeks hadn’t stopped sporting the color pink
since she started talking. Ace sighed. She was so innocent; it was
everything that he wasn’t. He thought back to the time after they
had been chased by the entire Tarrillian City Police Department. He
had gotten sick after evading them and had invited Lee to lay in
bed with him. But instead she chose to sit on the floor. It wasn’t
that she was rejecting him, but rather she was uncomfortable when
situations grew too intimate. It was innocent, but it was honest
and that was the reason why he loved her so.

“
It’s not weird at all.” Ace
said as the corner of his lip turned up. “I’m actually glad you
brought it up. It’s about time we talked about this.”

“
You feel awkward too?” she
beamed with a twinge of relief in her voice.

“
Sometimes.” He confessed,
“Don’t laugh at me. This is kind of a taboo subject for me, but I
mean this with all sincerity. Lee, I love you. I want to treat you
like you’re a princess, but sometimes all this passion gets in the
way. I know that I need to respect you, and I want to- but Lee, you
are so much fun to kiss. I’m sorry for letting things get out of
hand.” He concluded, “Do I sound like a total loser or
what?”

Lee giggled as she gave their fingers a
light squeeze. “Not at all. You sound like someone I want to be in
love with for the rest of my life.”

Ace smiled as he pulled his fingers
from her and wrapped them around her back. He pulled her close but
not too close and held her there for a moment. His eyes sailed over
her shoulder into the lush tropical forest surrounding them. “Those
chickens are still there.” Ace muttered.

“
Oh cool!” Lee exclaimed
whipping around to gaze at them. “Ace lets go chase a chicken!” Lee
tried to scurry to her feet but Ace tugged her right back
down.

“
Wait a second.” He said
when Lee gaped up at him. He leaned in and pressed his lips against
hers for a sliver of a moment. It was just long enough to express
how he felt before he pulled back and muttered, “I love
you.”

Lee smiled back and whispered, “I love
you too.”

~To Larissa’s left a young girl in a
summer dress let the bundle of balloons slip from her fingers. The
four friends watched as the cluster drifted into the sky, nearly
catching on to the arm of the harbor’s fairs wheel. When the little
girl began to cry, her mother promised to buy her an ice cream.
That was the last Larissa heard because now their group had rounded
the corner of a hot-dog stand and now stood on the farthest end of
the harbor. Cassie climbed on the wooden fence and sat on the
railing. Her hand hooked onto a lamp post to keep her from falling
back into the dark blue waves.