Sex and Key Lime Pie (7 page)

“You want to pick up where we left off?” She snapped her fingers. “Like nothing happened.”

“Try to tell me you don’t want that too. It will take me five minutes to prove you wrong.”

She didn’t want to pick up where they left off, but she wouldn’t mind a chance to start over. As the adults they now were, not the people they had been. With a sad shake of her head, she turned away from his heated gaze. “You don’t know me any more.”

“I still know what you like.” He slid one arm across her shoulders from behind, pulling her against his rock hard body. God, he felt good. As warm as a fleece blanket, as solid as granite. “What makes you hot...” His free hand slipped inside the towel. Calloused fingers played across her stomach, causing ripples of pleasure to cascade over her. His hand moved lower, tangling in the damp mat of hair between her legs. “And wet.”

Erotic sensations shot though her body. She shuddered. Her head and her hormones waged a battle within, and damned if her hormones weren’t winning. She should be outraged, not out of control. “I don’t want this.” But she did. She wanted to remember the good times. She wanted to forget the bad. To do that she needed to change the memories of Luc in her mind.

His lips played over her shoulders, tasting, sucking and generally driving her distraction. “Then stop me.”

“I can’t.”

“I know. You never could say no to me.”

She braced her hands against the wall for support. Her towel fell to the floor. Warm breath fanned her neck, sending chills along her spine. He continued to touch her, stroking lower with each caress. She loved the way he touched her, the way she responded to him. He knew her body more intimately than she did. As he found that sensitive bud under the folds of skin, she lost the will to put up even a token resistance for pride’s sake.

A small gasp broke in her throat. The speed with which he aroused her had always been amazing. She fought against the sensations that threatened to send her over the edge too quickly. She wanted this to last, but Luc had other ideas.

“Don’t fight it,” he muttered against her ear.

He cupped a breast in one hand, rolling the nipple between his thump and forefinger until it pebbled to a hard throbbing point. Too much, too fast. Her head spun. He thrust against her, his arousal pressing firmly against her buttocks. Rough denim rubbed against her flesh. The barrier of his clothes became a torment. She needed to feel his skin, hot and damp against her body.

“Give in to it, Chey.”

She was so close, so ready that she could easily let go and enjoy the last free fall of this rollercoaster ride of excitement. But she didn’t want it like this. Not with her back to him. She needed to see his face. Needed him to be out of control too.

In a move that caught him off guard, she spun around and met his confused gaze.

“What’s wrong?”

“I want you inside me.” Her words came out in a breathless rush. Mindless of the fine quality of his shirt, she yanked it over his head. Muscled rippled across the wide expanse of his chest. She reached for his belt buckle and released it with one quick jerk. “Do you have a condom?”

She might as well have dumped a bucket of ice water on him. With a painful groan, he took hold of her wrist. By the look of shock on his face, she knew the answer.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

****

Luc leaned against the wall and tried to get his rapid heart rate under control. Not an easy task when the woman next to him still panted from the let down of unfulfilled sexual arousal. Cheyanne still loved to be touched. Her body responded to each caress with reckless abandon. She was so damn easy to get off and too damn hard to get over.

He wasn’t sure which frustrated him more, being unprepared or knowing he forgot about protection in the heat of the moment. He’d never been so far gone that he forgot his first and most basic rule of sex—not without a condom.

Cheyanne reached for a T-shirt and slipped it over her head without meeting his gaze. She could cover her body but the smell of her, the taste of her, and the feel of her skin still raced through his mind.

He caught her hand and pulled her against him. “I owe you one.”

“Why? You proved your point. You can still make me want you.”

Burying his fingers in the silky strands of her hair, he forced her to look at him. “And I can do it again tomorrow, when we can finish it.”

“No, you can’t.”

She tried to wriggle out of his arms. He tightened his hold. “Is that a challenge?”

“No. Just a fact. I won’t be here tomorrow.”

“Going somewhere?”

“Yes,” she groaned against his chest.

“But you’re not saying where.”

She glanced up, her blue eyes studying him in question. “Are we going to start sharing our lives? Is that what you want, Luc?”

He wanted to possess her, body and soul. To make her his. And he would. But she would not own him in return. That kind of power he wouldn’t cede to her again. He grabbed his shirt from the bed and tossed it over his shoulder. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

Her laughter rang with a hollow tinge. “Maybe.”

“Now, that was a challenge.”

“It won’t be as easy as you think,” she warned him.

He headed for the door.

“Like taking candy from a baby.”

She perched her hands on her hips and shot him a sassy little smile. “I might meet somebody else while I’m away.”

He grinned. “Yeah. I’d like to see how you explain that big red mark on your neck to him.”

As he left the room she ran to the mirror.

Halfway down the stairs he heard the stream of obscenities that would have made a sailor blush. Like any good predator, he’d marked his territory.

Chapter
Five

Luc stormed into the police station fit to be tied. His head throbbed as if a jackhammer pounded his skull. For the lousy two days a week his stepfather came into port, Ray should, at least, stay sober enough to keep his ass out of jail. He’d already lost his driver’s license twice. He’d spent more nights sleeping off a binge in a cell than in his house. But for God’s sake, why did the man have to pick a fight with the chief of police?

Luc was already the largest contributor to the Police Athletic League in Mystic Cove. If not for Isabelle he would let the bastard rot in jail. Either Luc bailed Ray out or he would call his daughter. In her condition, she shouldn’t have to come into town to get her drunken father. She’d done it too many times in the past.

Luc strode to the counter. Marcus Arrusio, an old pal from school, met him. “I’m sorry, Luc. We had to book him this time. He broke the windshield on the chief’s car and took a swing at him.”

“Forget it. How much is bail?”

“Five hundred. But you might not want to take him just yet. He’s out of control.”

“Let me see him.”

Marcus buzzed him through the gate and led him back to the three-celled jail. Ray was rattling the door like a big gorilla. His clothes looked as if they hadn’t been changed in a week and he smelled like a frat dorm after a keg party. When he saw Luc and the officer, he backed away.

Marcus unlocked the cell door.

“Took you long enough,” Ray slurred as he stumbled forward.

“I was busy.”

He grunted like an animal. “Yeah, I heard Waitley’s stepdaughter is back in town. Out getting a piece of ass?”

“Shut your mouth, old man,” Luc growled through clenched teeth.

“Not that I blame you.”

His hands clenched into tight fists. “Shut up.”

“It cost you a hell of a lot of money the first time you nailed her. I figure you’ve got some coming to you.”

The blood shot to Luc’s head. If his friend had not restrained him, he would have popped Ray square in the jaw, and he might not have stopped there. If he took his stepfather now, he wouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. “Leave him. If he asks to call Isabelle, don’t let him.”

Ray fell into the cot in the corner. “You can’t leave me here.”

“You think not?” Luc walked back into the station house. He gave Marcus the bail money but asked his friend to hold Ray a few more hours.

Once outside the police station, Luc tried to get his anger under control. Why had the old man’s attack on Cheyanne’s character caused such a swift and violent reaction? Hadn’t he thought those very things himself? Didn’t he still believe she owed him even though she had once tried to give it all to him?

His bitterness had never been about the money. Not when he’d had time to calm down and think. He resented that she’d found a man to replace him, while he spent many torturous nights imagining her making love to someone else, and knowing he had no one but himself to blame.

This crappy start to his Monday morning topped off an even worse weekend. He’d made a trip to the Waitley house, to check on specifications for the demolition he’d told himself, but he was really checking on Cheyanne. She hadn’t mentioned the estate sale. No wonder she’d skipped town for the weekend. It couldn’t be easy watching people pick through her family’s life like scavengers plucking the carcasses of dead animals. And there were a lot of scavengers picking through the leftover remains of Harlan Waitley. Antique collectors and bargain hunters arrived earliest, but the local population made up the bulk of the traffic passing through the house for one last look.

Knowing why she’d left town didn’t relieve his curiosity as to where she had gone. Or with whom. And how she passed her time. If Isabelle knew anything, she withheld the information. She treated him friendly, but she changed the subject whenever he brought up Cheyanne.

Despite his arrogant assumption that she was his for the taking, Luc knew he had a challenge on his hands. To possess her completely, he had to know her completely. Too much of her past remained a mystery. Where had she been the last nine years and what had she been doing? He had spent the better part of the weekend dwelling on her private life instead of his own. She held a world of secrets inside her and the key to possessing Cheyanne lay somewhere in those intervening years.

****

When Cheyanne returned on Monday, Elisabeth planned a girls’ night in. She took Cheyanne on a tour of her renovated home. The house had all the flavor of a coastal New England residence. The built-in cabinets displayed blue and white antique china and a lovely collection of scrimshaw. Floral curtains bordered the wooden windows. It was so different from her parents’ contemporary house. Warmer, homier. A reflection of the person Elisabeth had become.

“I like it,” Cheyanne said as she settled into the corner of the colonial sofa.

Elisabeth put out a platter of vegetables and dip, then slipped into a seat. “We’re still working on it.”

“The beauty of home ownership. It never ends,” Isabelle said. “Especially the older houses. But it really brings a family closer to make their home together.”

Cheyanne nodded as if she understood, but she didn’t know since she and Sam had never owned a house of their own.

“Did you have a good weekend?” Elisabeth asked.

“Actually, I did.”

“What’s his name—Dracula?”

“What?”

“You have a love bite on your neck.”

Cheyanne rubbed her hand over the ugly mark and fastened her top button. “I had an accident. Something was clogging the vacuum and when I went to pull it out it got stuck on my neck.”

Isabelle giggled. “Right. My eighty-year-old grandmother wouldn’t believe that one.”

“All right. It’s an allergic reaction...”

“To some guy’s mouth on your neck?” Elisabeth finished for her.

Cheyanne squirmed in the seat. Damn Luc and his arrogant need to prove her lack of self-control. “Can we get off the subject of my hickey? It was someone’s idea of a joke.”

“You have some odd friends. So if you weren’t in Transylvania with Dracula, where were you?”

“Visiting family.”

“Your mother?” Elisabeth asked.

“No. My son.”

Two jaws dropped and one can of beer hit the floor. Her friends gaped as if she had grown a third eye. She’d planned a more subtle way to tell them, but as an opening, she wouldn’t have gotten a better one.

Slipping her feet out of her sandals, she tucked her legs beneath her. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner. It was hard to come back here after all this time. I didn’t know what kind of reception to expect.” She shook her head sadly. “I wanted things to be like they used to be, for a little while.”

A long silence hung in the air.

Elisabeth stared at her with watery eyes. Was it sadness or envy that caused her tears?

Isabelle reacted with excitement. “Where is he now? When are we going to meet him?”

“He’s at camp.” Cheyanne beamed. Thoughts of her son had that effect on her. “I’m picking him up Saturday.”

“And then you’ll be bringing him to Mystic Heights?” Isabelle pushed.

“I can’t. The closing on my mother’s house is Friday so I have to be out of there.”