Unforgettable Summer: Wild Crush, Book 1 (21 page)

“You don’t need makeup, Sum,” he said with conviction. “Let’s go inside.”

Once in her apartment, Summer went to the bathroom and scrubbed her face clean. She felt marginally better afterward, although she was still stunned at her violent reaction to her father’s words and the outpouring of emotion afterward. She must have been bottling her resentment and sense of loss up for so long that seeing him at the dinner like that, when she was there with Ty, had made the cork pop. She was tired, but she also felt lighter somehow. Free of a burden she hadn’t been aware of carrying.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she found Ty sitting on her bed atop the covers, his back propped on the pillows. He’d taken off his shoes and jacket, and was dressed in only his black trousers and crisp white shirt. In the soft light from the bedside lamp, she could see his clean shave was already giving way to a shadow of stubble. His eyes tracked her every move as she walked toward him.

Summer had never seen a man look so sexy in her life.

“We don’t have to do anything.” His words made the slow build of desire halt in its tracks. Did he not want her? “But I’m staying the night whether I’m invited or not. We can lie here and talk if you want.”

The idea of Ty lying beside her all night, holding her hand and not making a move, was so sweet that Summer’s chest warmed. She kicked out of her shoes and climbed onto the bed beside him. “I don’t think there’s anything left I want to talk about. Besides, I believe I’m still in your debt.”

She moved her hand meaningfully toward the zip of his trousers. Before she could work it open, Ty gripped her wrist to still her actions. She looked up to find his gaze earnest in a way it had never been before. “I overheard some of it. Were you really pregnant when you married that guy?”

Releasing a shaky sigh, Summer let her hand drop to his stomach and stay there. She nodded. “It was a mistake. A result of a little too much to drink and a lot of desperation to move on. I thought if I went to bed with someone else, I’d feel better. That I’d stop thinking about you. I wished right away I hadn’t done it, because I only felt worse. Then a few weeks later I found out I was pregnant. It was horrible.”

“So your father made you marry him,” Ty deduced.

“He wouldn’t let me live at home anymore or support me financially, and I wasn’t sure I could go through with a termination. My father said he’d disown me if I didn’t get married. Now I see there might have been other ways, but at the time it didn’t seem like it. Jasmine had taken off to live in Noosa with some guy by then. I was alone.”

Under his breath, Ty swore. With one arm he hauled her over him, so she lay across his body, a knee planted either side of his hips. He held her tight to him in a fierce embrace that came close to cutting off her air supply. “What happened to the baby?”

“After I got married, I lost it. Bad timing, huh?” Summer had often had the thought, accompanied by a sharp twinge of guilt, that if she’d waited a few weeks before marrying Duncan she would have lost the baby before the wedding and the reason to go through with it would have been gone. “The vows had already been spoken. I figured I’d made my marriage bed, the least I had to do was try to lie in it. But we never seemed to be on the same page, Duncan and I.”

“Did you love him?”

“I grew…fond of him. He really wasn’t a bad guy, we simply weren’t meant for each other.”

I was meant for this, to lie here so close to you it feels like we share a body.
Summer squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself,
he’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s leaving.

Into the lengthy silence, Summer whispered, “Why did you call me all those years ago?”

He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling beneath Summer’s cheek. “The first year on the tour was crazy. It was great, but kind of scary for a kid from Leyton’s who’d never been out of Australia before. There was so much going on, so many people around me. But I’d left everything I knew back here, and I felt alone in all those foreign places. I missed you like crazy.”

Summer shifted so her chin rested on his chest and she could see his face. “You did?”

He smiled without mirth. “I know you thought I forgot about you. After you didn’t show up at the beach that day, I
told
myself to forget about you. But I missed those long conversations we used to have down on the beach. You always made me feel grounded, and when I left I couldn’t find my feet without you.” He reached up and stroked her hair. “I called because I couldn’t go another day without hearing your voice.”

“Oh, Ty. I never knew that’s how you felt.”

“I didn’t really know either, not until I lost you.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead, a kiss so soft it made Summer’s heart ache. “I’m sorry you went through what you did. I wish I’d known that was why you were marrying him.”

“I’m glad you didn’t know. I was ashamed of myself for the mess I’d made of my life. You always used to tell me how smart I was, how I could do anything I wanted. But I ruined everything, and I would have hated for you to know that.”

“But at least I would have known you weren’t marrying him because I was”—he let out a bitter laugh—“replaceable.”

Summer recalled thinking earlier that evening how very irreplaceable Ty had turned out to be. She pushed up on her hands and looked into his face. “That’s one thing you’re definitely not, Ty Butler.”

She dipped her head and met his lips with hers, using her tongue and teeth as well to kiss him for all she was worth. He responded with lazy hunger, groaning into her mouth and moving his hands down to squeeze her backside. Now that the emotions were spent, the confessions made, all that remained was the bone-melting desire that only he could elicit. Summer squirmed on top of his hard body, feeling tight and hot everywhere.

Ty lifted her dress and cupped her bare ass. Summer responded with a grind of her hips that brought her throbbing sex against the solid ridge in Ty’s pants. He murmured against her mouth, “You know that thing I said about not doing anything? If you keep wiggling around like that, the deal’s off.”

“There was never any deal.” Summer ground into him again, feeling the flutter in her clit that told her she could come from this alone, while they were both fully clothed.

But she didn’t want it like that. She wanted him naked. Levering herself up until she straddled his thighs, Summer reached for his waistband. “I think it’s well past time we got these pants off.”

“If you insist.” His words were sardonic but the delivery was breathless. Summer felt him watching her with avid interest as she unzipped his pants and drew them down and off his legs. The sight of him hard and more than ready made her cunt contract and release.

Not yet.
She wanted to take him to heaven first, as he’d so often done for her. She wanted to give him the blowjob of his life.

Shifting on the bed so her body was at right angles to his, Summer took hold of Ty’s cock. She pumped him up and down, a slow, knowing stroke, as she looked into his glittering eyes and showed him her intent. A breath stuttered out of him as she lowered her head and swirled her tongue around the broad tip. A pearl of precome greeted her, and Summer lapped it up.

He drove his fingers through her hair, telegraphing his need. Summer showed him some mercy and swallowed the tip of his erection into her mouth.

“Summer.” Her name was a benediction on his lips as hers wrapped around his staff. She sucked softly, swirling her tongue around his circumference. Ty let out a tortured moan and lifted his hips off the mattress.

Summer raised her head, delaying the moment when she would take him to the back of her throat. Ty made a frustrated sound, but she merely smiled, moving her hands to his shirt where she undid all the buttons and spread the fabric.

She loved his body. He was strong and fit without being bulky, and his skin was golden and smooth. She’d come to see his tattoos as part of him, not a blemish but an artistic finishing touch on an already beautiful canvas. Summer drew a circle around the yin and yang symbol that marked his hip, to the right of his straining cock. Her fingers brushed his hardness as she trailed upward. She explored the ridges of his stomach, the planes of muscle in his chest. His nipples too, which grew erect as she brushed her fingertips over them. Finally she came to that cracked heart on his left pectoral.

Summer ran her fingertip over it, tracing the design. Then she bent her head and pressed her lips against the fissure running through it. She knew a sharp pang of regret for all the years they’d lost, the years that he’d spent with other women. “Whoever she was,” she whispered. “I hope she was worth it.”

He sucked in a breath, but didn’t reply. Summer pressed her lips to the tattoo once more before moving downward. She was through teasing him. All of a sudden she was impatient to give him as much pleasure as she was capable of giving.

When she had her hand around the base of his shaft once again, she looked up at him. “Tell me how you want it, what you like best.” She wanted to do it right, be the best he’d ever had.

“Don’t you know by now, Summer? I just want you, any way you’ll take me.”

Her heart beating painfully, Summer lowered her head and took him into her mouth, no teasing preamble this time. She took him deep, sucked him hard. She pumped the root of his shaft with one hand, cupped his balls with the other.

Whenever she glanced up, she found Ty watching her, his eyes glazed with lust and his mouth moving, uttering dirty words of encouragement. He didn’t touch her, didn’t grab her hair or her ass, which was thrust high as she worked him, the dress having fallen to her waist. He simply gave himself and watched her take and take.

At last he cursed loudly and arched his back, releasing himself. His seed splashed into her throat, and Summer swallowed it thirstily, lapping at every last drop. When she knew he was done, she sat back on her haunches and grinned. “That was good for you.”

“Hm-mm,” Ty muttered drowsily. “Gonna have to get another tattoo. On my dick. It’ll say ‘Summer’s Property’.”

Summer laughed, almost drunk with self-satisfaction. “Sounds painful.”

“I shouldn’t have let you take me all the way,” Ty said. “Now I’m going to have to wait twenty minutes before it’s hard enough to get in your sweet pussy.”

Summer reached for the side zip of her dress, drawing it down and wiggling out of the garment. Ty’s gaze remained glued to the way her braless breasts jiggled as she disrobed. Summer smiled. “Twenty minutes, huh?”

Ty smiled back, the familiar devilish twinkle appearing in his eyes. “Did I say twenty? I meant fifteen.”

Next Summer reached for her panties, making slow, deliberate work of removing them. “You want to try for ten?”

“Forget ten. Time’s now been cut to five,” Ty said with a mock growl as he pulled her on top of him.

Chapter Eleven

Ty was on edge.

He shouldn’t be. Not after a sex session that had gone on half the night and run into the morning as well. But no matter how many times he sought relief from his emotional turmoil in the welcoming heat of Summer’s body, the calming effect was merely temporary. When he came to, he still felt things he was afraid to express.

Afraid—ha! He wasn’t afraid, he was scared shitless. Of Summer, the five-foot-two-inch cutie pie who held his heart clutched tight in her hand.

It had been after ten before Ty had managed to drag himself out of bed and head into town to buy them some brunch of baked goods and fruit. While he was there, he stopped in to see Aaron. He’d signed the contract. The house on the hill was officially his.

He should have told Summer the minute he got back.
I bought the house I showed you. One day I want us both to live in it.
But his palms had started that weird sweating again, and Summer had greeted him with a searing kiss that made him forget about the house and the pastries too—for a while.

Now they’d finally eaten and had retreated to the small, paved courtyard that served as Summer’s backyard, sharing a rattan love seat that sat in the dappled afternoon sunlight. Ty had her foot in his lap, and he was idly stroking her instep, thinking
there’s more room at the house. She’ll be happier there. Tell her.

“This is, by far, the laziest day I’ve ever indulged in.”

Ty roused himself from his brooding to look across at Summer.
Say something. Say what you mean, God damn it.
All that came out was a glib retort. “You call going six rounds with me lazy? Babe, I can hardly move I’m so wrung out.”

Summer laughed, tilting her head back in a way that drew Ty’s gaze to the smooth column of her throat. There were several purplish marks there, love bites he’d given her last night because he’d had trouble reining in his passion. So why were his words so damned restrained by comparison?
I love you, Summer. I don’t want this to be over.
It was all he had to say, but the man who rode Pipeline in rough swell was too chicken-shit to say them.

And his own reticence was really pissing him off.

“I’ve had the best time this week, Ty. I’ll always cherish it.” Her smile was wistful, her eyes dreamy. But she spoke in the past tense, and it made Ty’s heart contract. “I hope you don’t forget about me completely when you go back to your crazy, exciting life.”

“Jesus, Summer,” Ty muttered. Did she not think she was exciting? Didn’t she know how crazy this was—the two of them acting like what they had was nothing more than an enjoyable affair when it was so, so much more than that?