Unforgettable Summer: Wild Crush, Book 1 (13 page)

Last year, when he’d gone to Bandicoot Cove with a sinfully sweet blonde by the name of Hayley Bryant, he’d started to realize that was his failing and not a product of never meeting the perfect woman. Someone like Hayley—gorgeous and fun and just a little wicked—should have been Miss Right. She should have made him fall, hard. But she hadn’t.

Now here he was with Summer Campbell, his palms sweating like they never had with Hayley or anyone else. The light, breezy perfume she wore intoxicated his senses. Summer had agreed to have sex with him. That kind of anticipation usually put him in the best possible mood. But for the first time in a long time, Ty had performance anxiety. Her husband hadn’t been able to get Summer off—what if he couldn’t improve on that record?

Ty was shit scared his impatience to satisfy his own needs was going to fuck up Summer’s night.

“So when you said dress casual, I wasn’t sure what to expect.”

Was she wishing he’d taken her somewhere fancy? Shit. That probably would have been the smart thing to do. “You look great.” His mind raced with second thoughts about the plans he’d made. What if Summer didn’t even get the significance?

“Thanks again,” she said, making Ty realize he’d repeated himself like some demented parrot. He sensed her gaze sliding over to him. “So do you. You shaved.”

Ty ran a hand over the strange smoothness of his jaw, his pulse leaping because she’d noticed. “I do that occasionally.”

“I thought the stubble was a Ty Butler trademark.”

“Not yet, but if I find the right sponsor, you never know.”

She laughed, and Ty joined in, some of the tension easing out of him. He had to calm down. This was going to be fine. He was one of the best damn surfers in the world for Christ’s sake. He could handle one simple date with one little woman, and he could sure as hell get her off as well.

“So where are you taking me?”

“A little place near the beach. Not far now.”

“An evasive answer. You’re full of surprises tonight.”

Ty flicked a glance across the car to see her eyeing him with speculation. “In what way?”

“The use of a razor, for a start.” Her gaze rested on his face. “And of course there’s the fact you didn’t ravish me the second I opened the door.”

Her words shot heat straight to his groin. Ty applied the brakes hard when the car in front of him stopped at a roundabout. He stared at Summer. “You wanted me to do that?”

“You usually like to cut straight to the point.”

Was that how her ex-husband had done things? Cut straight to what he wanted without taking time to make sure his wife was satisfied in bed? “I am capable of keeping my hands to myself long enough to get through dinner,” he groused. “Wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”

She shrugged, looking sheepish. “I had a lasagne in the fridge in case we never left the flat.”

“Now you tell me.” The driver behind them honked his horn, and Ty forcibly returned his attention to the road. He revved the Holden a little more than necessary as he went through the roundabout. “Summer, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going with you.”

He could have been coming, according to her. Right now on her living room floor, because he apparently didn’t have the self-restraint to get her to the bedroom first.
I’ll show her self-restraint. Bloody infuriating woman.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said.

“Why would I be upset because you think I can’t control myself?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Ty swung the car into a beachside car park across the road from their destination. Then he swiveled in his seat and pinned Summer’s gaze with his. “I have certain plans for this evening, and you’re not going to derail them with another one of these attempts of yours to get the sex part of them
over with
. I am going to have you, babe, but when and how I want. And no matter how long it takes, you are going to come in my arms and scream my name when you do it. You got that?”

Her mouth fell open, her tongue looking pink and wet and inviting.
Self-restraint, Butler.
He wasn’t going to kiss her, because if he started now he wouldn’t stop and he’d end up acting like the impulse-driven animal she thought he was.

When she didn’t respond, Ty yanked open his door and said, “Right now, I’m starved. Let’s eat.”

As flabbergasted as she was by Ty’s little announcement in the car, it took Summer several minutes to put two and two together. She’d ordered a grilled chicken burger and taken a seat at the last available table that overlooked Shelley Beach before the reality of where they were fully penetrated.

Ty came to sit opposite her. “They’ve freshened this place up a lot.”

“They have.” Summer glanced around at the black countertops and gleaming red accessories that gave the cafe a modern ambience completely different from the aged blue-and-white tile that used to decorate the interior. “I remember when it was a greasy fish-and-chip shop called JJ’s, and all the surfers used to hang out here.”

Will you meet me at JJ’s tomorrow?

Ty caught and held her gaze. Summer knew his request of long ago was playing in his mind as well as hers. At length, Summer voiced the truth that hung between them like the proverbial elephant. “I didn’t show up.”

“I noticed.”

There was no hint of bitterness in the words, but it was the very flatness of his tone that told Summer she had upset him back then. “I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

Summer shook her head and gazed out at the spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean gilded by the orange glow of sunset. “You don’t understand what it was like for me.”

“You don’t know what it was like to stand around here for hours like a loser, waiting for a girl who never came.”

Summer sighed. “Jasmine was so upset. I thought it was because she was still hung up on you. I’d already betrayed her by falling for you, I couldn’t compound the sins by going behind her back to see you again. I just couldn’t do it to her. She’s my sister.”

“There was no message, Summer. You didn’t call or anything.”

“You didn’t call
me.
”

“After what happened with your sister and your dad, the two of them catching us like that…I figured the ball was in your court, and your failure to show was you saying no, that you didn’t want to be with me. That it wasn’t worth the hassle.”

“I thought if I saw you or heard your voice, I wouldn’t have the strength to say no. I had such crazy feelings for you.” She smiled ruefully, wondering how many of those crazy feelings remained. The bulk of them, if her rapidly beating heart and trembling fingers were anything to go by. “I couldn’t trust myself.”

“What about now? You seem to have gotten over your inability to say no to me.”

Summer almost laughed at the slightly peeved tone of his voice. She supposed that in Ty’s world, waiting a week for a woman to agree to sex was an eon. “I’m here, Ty. If I could resist you I wouldn’t be.”

His smile was slow to spread but all the more dangerous for it. The corresponding warmth that infused Summer was like an unstoppable force that gradually took over her body, starting in her lower abdomen and radiating outward to all her erogenous zones. By the time the server came to deliver their burgers, her breasts tingled and her thighs were clamped tight beneath the table.

All that from a mere smile. She was in so much trouble.

The teenage boy who delivered their meals seemed almost as entranced by Ty’s presence as Summer. He fussed over whether they wanted sauce for their hot chips or additional drinks, all the while proclaiming it to be “fully sick” that Ty Butler had come into his place of employ. Ty was patient with the waiter, asking him what kind of board he owned and what were his favorite maneuvers. Barrels and hacks and snaps were mentioned. Summer smiled to herself. The language of surfers was a unique one.

When the boy had finally moved on, Summer rested her chin on her hand and regarded Ty thoughtfully. “Does that happen often?”

“Not that much. It’s not like being a movie star or anything.”

Maybe not, but he was on some roadside billboards and banners in surf-clothing stores, and he was a world champion in his sport. It could have all gone to his head but it hadn’t. Despite his occasionally outlandish cockiness, Ty was at heart a modest, generous person who gave others his time and attention without a thought. “You’re very good with people.”

Ty shrugged off her compliment. “Save for a few notable exceptions, I like people.”

“Notable exceptions, huh? Like who?”

“Like guys who drop in or cut me off in traffic—which amounts to pretty much the same thing. Anyone who kicks a puppy or steals from old people.” Ty pinned her with his gaze. “Any guy who’s ever slept with you, especially if he failed to make you feel good about it.”

Summer’s heart fluttered at the note of possessiveness inherent in the remark. “Neither of us are virgins anymore, Ty. Ground we covered fairly comprehensively within earshot of Mrs. McIntosh yesterday.”

“Maybe part of me still remembers you that way, as the girl who’d only ever let one guy touch her—me. I must have hung on to that notion because I liked it.” Ty grinned and stuck a fry into his mouth. “Call me a jerk for it if you want.”

“Oh, I think that’s implied.”

Chuckling, he leaned over the table and popped a fry from his plate into her mouth. “And yet you’re here with me. Maybe you do find me irresistible after all.”

Summer thought that was implied as well, so she didn’t do him the favor of confirming it. Instead she chewed on the fry he’d given her. Then she took one from her plate, dipped it into the tomato sauce and proffered it to Ty.

He took the fried potato between his teeth and swallowed it into his mouth, holding her gaze the entire time. Summer would never have thought chewing could look so sexy. When Ty offered her another one of his fries, Summer laughed. “This could go on all night.”

His wicked grin made her thighs clench tight again. “Not this, no.”

It was all Summer could do not to whimper. “I don’t know what you’re doing to me here.”

“I’m warming you up. Can’t you tell?”

“I guess not.” Flushing, Summer picked up her burger and took a bite, hoping Ty would miss the allusion beneath her statement.

No such luck. He picked up his own burger, but before he took a bite he said, “Not enough of that in the past I gather. Your ex was a do-it-now-eat-lasagne-later type.”

“Not exactly.” Duncan had never been that impatient to get her into bed. He’d turned to her when the urge had come, knowing she would accept him because she always did, her acquiescence born of her guilty conscience. She’d married him without loving him, so at least she wanted to be a good wife in some ways, in the physical ways if not the emotional ones. So Duncan had never had to push or rush, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to take his time either. “We had more of a Wednesday-and-Saturday-night just-before-lights-out kind of arrangement.”

“Twice a week.” Ty ripped into his burger like a T-Rex might rip into a smaller dinosaur. “What a stud.”

“Ty, I don’t think we should be talking about this.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Ty conceded. “Because I’m getting the feeling ol’ Duncan is one of those few notable exceptions when it comes to people—the kind of class-A prick I wouldn’t like.”

That was highly likely. It would be difficult to find two men more different from each other than her ex-husband and Ty Butler.

They ate their food in silence for a while. Ty finished his burger but Summer got through only half hers before she declared herself full and pushed her plate aside. Ty leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head, studying her. At length, he asked, “Have I screwed this up by having a go at your ex?”

Summer eyed the way his posture pulled the material of his white T-shirt across the muscled wall of his chest, how his biceps bulged against the sleeves. “No, you haven’t.”

He smiled softly. “I keep thinking I’m going to—screw this up I mean. I’m acting like a toey nineteen-year-old without a brain cell to his name. Must be this place bringing back memories. Or maybe it’s you.”

“If you think I’m being my most poised self,” Summer drawled, “you’re very much mistaken.”

“You always seem so bloody self-possessed to me.”

Summer’s sudden laugh was almost a snort. “Around you? God no.”

Beneath the table, Ty nudged at her calf with the toe of his shoe. Even that scant contact gave her gooseflesh. “Aren’t we a couple of crazy kids.”

“Feels like it,” Summer agreed.

Leaning forward in his seat, Ty reached across the table and cupped her chin, running his thumb over her lower lip. He must have collected a grain of salt, because he pulled his thumb back and licked it. An impatient rush of heat shot straight to the place between her thighs that had been pulsing with awareness all night.

“I want you, Sum, in the worst way. In a very adult way.”

Her reply was barely a rasp. “Me too.”

“It’ll be better with us. I’ll make sure.”

“I know.” She knew that whatever happened tonight, orgasm or no orgasm, it would surpass anything she’d experienced with Duncan or the few other men she’d tried to share her body with. She knew because she was going to be with Ty. He was like no one else in the world, and he was hers, at least for tonight.