Anything but Vanilla (12 page)

‘Why don’t you?’ Kara murmured.

He shrugged as he straightened back to his full height, allowing the movement to convey his ambivalence. ‘I don’t fancy her. She doesn’t live here.’ He raised his hands in a gesture of indifference, before digging them back into his pockets, so that the denim crept down his hips. ‘You can couple that with the fact that she’s too clingy. I’m not interested in that sort of dependency. I figured you’d have realised that by now.’

Kara folded her arms across her chest. ‘It’s why you cut things dead last night. You didn’t want me thinking that you were somehow available,’ she drawled, extending the syllables of the last word.

Ric had the grace to look contrite. He pulled his hands from his pockets and extended them towards her in friendship. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to piss you off. I just wanted to –’

‘– make it clear that it was sex and nothing more. I got that. I’m fine with it.’ She stared at his hands, unwilling to accept the embrace. ‘I’m nonplussed over this, though. Walking? You’re not interested in dating me so what is it?’

‘Does it have to be anything?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, it does.’

He dropped his gaze to the sand for a moment. ‘OK.’ He looked up, nodding. ‘As you want it. I needed to return these.’ Ric fished about in his pocket and drew out a scrunched piece of cloth. ‘You left your knickers behind.’ He twirled the coloured scrap of cotton he’d stripped from her the night before around the end of her finger.

Kara stared at him, but didn’t reach out and claim her undies.

‘I suppose you know only naughty girls take off their knickers in a stranger’s living room,’ he crooned, still twirling the cloth about his finger. His grin split his face, and warmed the blue of his eyes. ‘And only really naughty girls walk around in short skirts wearing nothing underneath. I dread to think of all the trouble you’ve stirred up on my island flashing your muff at the tourists.’

The tourists hadn’t given her much trouble. It’d been the inhabitants.

Kara made a backhanded swipe at his torso, not caring about the knickers but irritated by his grin. Ric easily dodged. He grabbed her arm and swung her into his embrace, so that she was standing with her back pressed to his front, both of them facing the ocean. ‘Get off me.’

‘Shan’t.’

‘What do you want?’ His loins pressed tightly against her bottom, so she could feel the shape of him beneath his clothing.

‘You know what I want. It’s the same thing you want.’

Was it? Could she genuinely do long-term sex with him without becoming even a little emotionally invested, or knowing the first thing about him? Could anyone do that? Ought she to mention Zach, who seemed altogether more emotionally malleable, and whom she could see building an actual friendship with? She probably should, but wasn’t that the point Ric was making? That he forfeited all right to any knowledge of her?

Kara buttoned her lips and kept the information locked up inside her, where it fizzed, making her feel somewhat volatile.

‘Strangers,’ Ric purred into her ear. ‘Not fuck buddies or friends. There’s nothing familiar about us except our wants and the shape of our bodies.’ His lips traced the pulse point in her neck, lightly at first, though his sucking soon became insistent.

Kara tilted her head, allowing him greater access as her breathing began to stutter. A flood of sexual heat liquefied her insides. That point just next to her collarbone was apparently hardwired to her nipples and her clit.

Her sighs became voluble, and devolved into pleasurable groans.

She turned in his arms, and stretched on to her toes to reach his lips. His hand clasped tight over hers where she held it against his chest. His thigh fitted neatly between her legs as she leaned into him. As for the kiss, Ric’s lips were softly demanding. He teased, never quite giving her all she wanted, like he was deliberately winding her up and holding her back.

Craving more, not less, Kara clung to him. She pushed her hands inside his jacket and explored the contours of his back. This time sex wasn’t all going to be his way. She intended to take a little of what she wanted, not just wait for him to dish it out.

Her tongue tangled with his, spearing into his mouth in an imitation of coitus, while her hands moved to his button-fly and the wedge of his cock lying diagonally beneath.

‘Let me go down on you.’ He’d shown her what he could do. Now it was her turn. She pulled away from his kiss, though he tried to hold her there by pushing his hands into her hair.

Kara backed him up against a nearby rock. Her hands passed up and down his body, taking in the hollows and planes. He was broadest across the shoulders, thinnest at the waist, every inch pleasingly firm. Within seconds she had him out of his jacket and T-shirt, his clothing making a shadowy pile by their feet. ‘You’re not cold, I hope,’ she said a second before latching on to one of his stiff little nipples.

‘If I were, what would you do?’

Kara unbuckled his belt. She didn’t bother with the buttons of his fly, choosing instead to simply tug the denim down until it hugged the tops of his thighs. ‘I’d tell you to man up and cope.’

He responded with a soft guffaw that morphed into a sigh as she slid her tongue down the tight contours of his abs to where the head of his cock bucked expectantly against his flesh. His cock stood flushed red and eager, his balls drawn tight to his body.

Kara stood back to admire him. Ric Liddell had to be one of the most beautiful men she’d ever met and just because they weren’t headed for something deep and meaningful didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate that. Lord, even his cock was pretty, ramrod-straight and streaked with pale blue veins like a Ming-dynasty vase. Only at the tip where the skin was taut and smooth did the colour grow fierce; there it darkened to a pinkish-plum.

In fact, he looked so perfect, so lewd and magnificent all at once, that she got out her phone and took a snapshot.

Ric didn’t bat an eyelid at her recording his image, not even when she turned the screen towards him so he could see how proud he stood. He sniffed. ‘Definitely one for the female gaze, that. Lighting sucks.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to follow that with “I hope you do too?”’ Kara smiled up at him sweetly. ‘You could ask nicely and I might, you know.’

‘How about I ask nastily?’

God, that feral grin of his, it damn near turned her inside out. Somehow he managed to make his subsequent growl of ‘Suck my cock, Kara’ the sexiest sound on the planet.

Ric hooked a hand behind her head and pulled her down towards his erection. She knelt willingly and took him fully into her mouth. The hot, pungent taste of his body, all male, laced with the salty taste of pre-come, hit her tongue and sent a welcome ripple of arousal through her body. This was simple and straightforward. She knew all the rules. Sex could be so uncomplicated. It didn’t need prettifying with unnecessary sentiment. All that mattered was that he shagged her senseless and that at the end they were both satisfied.

God, she hoped he was going to shag her senseless, and that he didn’t just come in her mouth and then walk her home.

Ric, it turned out, was a little more than she could comfortably swallow. Kara stuck to lavishing attention on the head of his shaft, swirling her tongue against the delicate slitted eye and claiming each precious drop of pre-come that spilled.

Ric’s palm rubbed over the back of her head, not so much encouragingly as though he was keeping a tight hold on where she was taking him. It still came as something of a shock when he pushed her away.

Kara fell back on to her haunches. ‘What?’ She gazed up at him expectantly. ‘What?’ She wriggled her jogging bottoms down to her calves so he had only to pull aside the scrap of her knickers to get to her.

‘All the way,’ he insisted. He kicked off the rest of his clothes, while she tugged her trousers over her shoes. He didn’t immediately fall on her, though. Instead he ran into the water.

‘Wait.’ Kara gingerly tiptoed after him. The surf soaked through her deck shoes, chilling her toes and making her screech. She hated the water, had always done so. She could swim, but only just. ‘I’m not coming in. It’s too cold.’

‘Not even if I promise to warm you up?’

He turned his back towards the moonlight so that he stood facing her naked. Salt spray coated his skin and gleamed with the light from the stars, save where the black lines of ink covered his biceps. ‘Come and give my cock another kiss, Kara. Let me make love to you in the foam.’

‘You don’t want to make love. You just want to shag my bottom,’ she taunted. She stuck out her tongue and refused to budge. Ric flicked water in her direction, provoking a scream as she tried to dash out of range of the spray.

‘Been thinking about that, have you? I haven’t forgotten how hot you were back there.’

How could she not? No one had ever treated her quite so brazenly. No other man had offered to fuck her there, or even really explored the nerve-endings in the way he’d done. Not that that meant she was going to roll over and just let him do it. She clucked at him. ‘If you think I’m going to consent to that, you’re deluded. You’ll have to tie me up first.’

‘Damn,’ he hissed. ‘And I seem to have forgotten my rope.’ He padded towards her, edging her back on to the beach, his erection still standing proud and filthy glitter in his eyes. ‘You know it really is time to get you out of those clothes.’

Kara shook her head. While the evening was balmy, a breeze still blew in off the sea, and she wasn’t looking to gain a reputation for streaking. He might be comfortable frolicking on the sand in the altogether, but she’d rather they took this home.

Hence, when he sprang towards her, she ran.

At first she easily outpaced him, only for her gait to become unsteady as she crossed the shingle and headed towards a track leading back up towards the headland. Ric didn’t seem to encounter nearly so many problems, for he had a long slender build, backed up by plenty of muscle, so that he seemed to skip over the pebbles, while her feet sank in them.

He grabbed hold of her jacket as they neared the old way marker stone at the top of the cliff.

Kara squirmed in his arms, shrieking and protesting as he wrestled her up against the rock. ‘Got you,’ he said, laughing as he unzipped her top. ‘Now I’m going to eat you.’ He gave a snarl and aimed for her throat. He didn’t bite; rather he sucked, right over the sweet spot in her neck he’d found before, where his renewed efforts caused her legs to wobble. Kara pressed tight against his naked body, unable to do anything but groan.

Ric might not appreciate her clothing on a visual level, but it had several bonuses on a sensual one. The jersey fabric hugged tight to her form. Thus, when he rubbed up against her, she felt all his raw power, plus the damn heat of his skin. Kara clawed at his shoulders, suddenly desperate for everything he offered. It wasn’t enough. She dug her fingertips into the thickly bunched muscles of his arse in order to bring their loins closer. In return Ric shoved up her sports bra, so that her breasts bulged beneath the elastic, squashed into fullness, and he took possession of her nipples.

‘Yes,’ she crooned. ‘Yes. Oh, please.’ He effortlessly stripped off her jacket. To Kara’s surprise he claimed her phone from her pocket, and used it to snap her picture.

‘This is definitely more my thing. You look positively sluttish.’

‘I thought you were into creating art?’

Ric glanced at the image on the screen again, then back at her. ‘You and me, babe, we’re definitely doing that.’ He took a few more shots, recording in explicit detail the lush, wet swell of her cunt as he fingered her.

‘I hope you’re going to let me photograph you properly. I was serious about that offer to set you up.’

Kara pushed a hand up against his chest, trying to slow him down. He knew just how to fire up her senses so that she was on edge and ready to come in hardly any time at all. She didn’t want to explode just yet, and she was trying to keep up with what he was saying.

That, and they really ought to move this indoors, just in case Zach came by, or Robin was out with her binoculars.

No amount of tugging or twisting made any impression on him, though.

Ric spun her around. ‘It’s time,’ his breath whispered against her ear.

‘For what?’

Realisation struck the moment he fitted his body to the curve of her back and his erection nudged into the channel between her cheeks.

Apprehension coupled with the pressure of the icy rock against her front caused her nipples to further pucker. In contrast, Ric’s naked body warmed her back and promised additional heat. He kissed all the way down her spine to her buttocks, where he lavished attention on the curves of her arse. His big hands took possession of her rounded globes, holding them, massaging them. Thence followed some subtler strokes, gentle caresses that raised the hairs and walked the border of sensitivity. She’d never have tolerated them if not for the rougher handling that came first.

‘Is this really the place to be doing this?’ Kara’s words came out in a rush, betraying her nervousness.

‘Absolutely, the view is magnificent.’

Whether he meant the view out to sea or the sight of her doing mermaid impersonations against the rock, she wasn’t sure.

‘Just say if you’re not up for it, Kara.’ His tongue made a swift foray into the channel between her cheeks, where he gently dabbed at her furled entrance. ‘But –’ the word came out as a gasp ‘– I’ve got to tell you, you’ve no idea how much I want to fuck your arse.’

The words to deny him clean escaped her, because the connections caused by his delving tongue seemed to short-circuit the reasoning part of her brain. Suddenly, everything was about pushing back against that pressure, and squirming a little left and right in order to maximise how good it felt.

‘Do you like my kisses, Kara? Shall I push a finger inside?’

Should he? ‘Yes … oh, God!’ This was crazy, she was chilled and exposed, and somewhere in the back of her mind the fear of being seen lingered. But her nipples were so pointed and stiff that they almost hurt, and yet she knew she couldn’t move from that boulder until he’d delivered on his promise.