Wet (The Water's Edge #1) (29 page)

His curse wasn’t as mild or quiet as mine when he yanked me closer, putting his full lips close to my ear. They brushed against me as he spoke in an angry, rapid whisper. “It’s been a week from fucking hell, and I’m not sure what’s got your panties in a twist, but running into you here has been the best goddamn thing that’s happened to me since I crawled out of your bed a few nights ago. I know I haven’t texted, but I left you two paper planes explaining—”

“You what?” I interrupted, my body betraying me and turning pliant in his arms.

His arms softened around me, and he tugged on my earlobe with his teeth, his gentle caress at odds with the growl in his voice.

“Didn’t you read my notes? I told you it was going to be a crazy week, and then yesterday someone fucked with my boat, sliced my bean bags, and fucked up one of my engines. I’ve spent two days driving all over three damn states tracking down parts and getting these new seats from the manufacturer. Last night, when I crashed for a couple hours in the back seat at some shitty truck stop along the interstate, all I could think about was your soft bed and your long, sexy legs wrapped around me. I was heading home to you when Wyatt called and told me him and the guys were coming out here to hang tonight. Asshole guilted me into stopping by for awhile.”

Long fingers snagged my chin and turned my face so he could look into my eyes. I lifted my hands up to hold his wrist, my thumb rubbing over my hair tie that was still there.

“I didn’t know she was coming, Sadie. I don’t give a fuck about her. I was going to drink a beer or two with my brother, catch a nap, and come knock on your window.
You
were my destination.”

His last words echoed in my mind, and my eyes raced over his face, taking in the bags under his eyes, the harsh set of his jaw, the fierce slash of his brows as he waited on my reaction.

“I didn’t get the planes.”

He scowled at me. “What?”

“I haven’t heard from you since you cancelled our date.”

His face fell, and he leaned his forehead against mine, his arms tightening around me. Then he pulled back, putting space between us so I could see him in the dim light.

“I’m sorry.”

His whispered words, sincere and simple, floated between us.

Unexpectedly, my eyes filled with hot tears, and I sucked in a shaky breath, determined not to let them fall. He swore and hauled me against him, nothing between us but two thin layers of cotton, and rubbed his hand over my back and through my wind-tangled hair. “Sadie. You make me crazy. Did you really think I could just forget about you?”

His mouth pressed against my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, the corner of my mouth.

“What about tonight?”

His brow crinkled in confusion.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

His gaze softened, and he traced my bottom lip with the rough pad of a finger. “Babe, Wyatt called me when I was twenty minutes from here. He bitched about not hanging out much recently and made it sound like a guy’s night. I was gonna make a quick appearance and bail. I had no idea those chicks were tagging along. Aubrey said she needed to talk about the gala real quick. You fucking saved me from dealing with her shit any longer.”

I bit my lip hard, emotions swirling within me, but it all boiled down to him, the way it felt in the places where our skin touched.

His lips brushed mine, dissolving the last of my anger.

Exhaling, I mumbled against him, “Is that why you smell like General Beauregard? ’Cause you slept in your truck last night?”

He stilled against me. Then his chest vibrated with the force of his laughter. Setting me away from him, he leapt over the side of the truck and pulled open one of the doors. When he ripped his shirt over his head, my mouth fell open in appreciation. The reflected lights danced over his torso, highlighting sharp planes and ridges that I wanted to map, to memorize. Pulling a fresh shirt over his head, he rejoined me on the bean bag, settling me in his lap with my back to his chest, his legs framing mine.

“Better.”

Since it wasn’t a question, I stayed silent, but reached back and ran my hand over the two-day scruff on his cheek. He nuzzled my palm before nudging my hand out of the way to rub against the sensitive skin on my neck. His lips kissed a path along the angle of my jaw before stopping just below my ear.

“What do I have to do to wake up tomorrow smelling like you, hmmm?”

His teeth nibbled a retreat, a hum of approval buzzing in his throat. Callused fingers crept under the edge of my long tee, tracing the waistband of my shorts and dipping just under the top.

I slammed my hand on top of his, cutting his exploration short. “Easy there, tiger. This is a bit of a public venue.”

Leaning forward and forcing me to do the same, he opened the toolbox behind us and withdrew an oversized striped beach towel, throwing it over our lower bodies and draping it across our bent knees.

He moved my hair until it all fell over one shoulder and then placed hot kisses along the nape of my neck, sending a shiver straight down my spine.

“I’ve been fucking dying to touch you again, to feel you clench around me and smell you on my fingers. Have you thought about that this week, Sadie? When you were washing your hair with that watermelon shampoo, did you think about my hands on your tits? Did you play with those tight little nipples, wishing I was there?”

His hands snaked under my shirt, teasing the soft skin of my stomach and stroking just under my bra. I squirmed against him, his words making my breasts swell and bead against my cotton bra. His thumb slipped just under the elastic band, brushing the bottom swell on my left. I moaned, and he withdrew his hand, lowering it to circle my belly button.

He tsked in my ear and nodded toward Wyatt’s truck, where our friends drank beer and laughed, barely paying attention to the movie. “Can you handle this, Sadie? Can you keep quiet while I touch you?”

I looked around us. The truck bed came almost to our shoulders, and his truck was higher than most to begin with, but with the lawn chairs in the back of Wyatt’s truck, we weren’t totally hidden. Especially if someone was trying to watch us, like the way Aubrey was glaring at me over her shoulder.

Smirking at her, I raised an eyebrow in her direction, catching her attention, and she whipped her head back around, her hair flying around her shoulders.

I licked my lips and nodded.

He groaned behind me and pulled me against him, pushing his cock against my back. “Do you know what you’re doing to me? I’ve been hard for you every night, aching to sink inside you again, feeling your hot pussy squeeze me.”

I spread my legs under the blanket and laid my head back against his chest, surrendering to him, to the moment, to the heat building in my core.

“Take your shorts off. But leave those little cotton panties on that I felt earlier. I want to feel how wet I’m making you.”

Wiggling under the terry cloth covering us, I slid my nylon shorts down to my knees and slipped one leg out, giving him full access. Rough palms slid down my stomach, over my hips, and across the tops of my thighs, his fingers spread wide.

He moved his hands between my legs, skimming me as he approached my center. Unable to help myself, I lifted my hips, my pulse thrumming an erratic beat in my throat.

“Easy, Sadie. All in good time. I’ve waited all week for your sweet pussy. You can wait a few more minutes.”

Using just his middle fingers, he followed the lacy trim on my panties, teasing the crease where my thighs met my mound, before following the lace lower, his fingers just outside my sensitive folds.

Shifting, I ground against his cock and felt it pulse against me.

“Which do you want more? My fingers, thrusting deep inside you, stretching you, filling you? Or do you want me to play with your greedy little clit? Is it swollen for me? Begging for attention?”

The palm of his hand cupped me fully, and I stilled, my eyes falling shut at the sensation. The heel of his hand ground against my nub, and his fingers stroked me through the wet cotton.

“You’re ready for me, aren’t you.”

Not a question. Because he knew. He could feel it.

His breath rushed past my ear, hot and heavy, and his rough hands gripped my thighs.

Moments later, he shoved a hand under my soaked panties, two fingers pushing deep, and I arched against him, helpless to stop myself. He brought his other arm across my chest, pinning me to him, and I buried my face against his bicep to keep from crying out.

Working my slippery channel, he twisted his fingers, plunging in and out at a pace that had tension building like a tornado inside of me, focusing all of its power on one tiny spot, swirling higher and faster.

A whimper escaped my lips, and I clenched around his fingers, wanting more, wanting less, so it wouldn’t ever end, wanting West.

“Fuck, Sadie. Do you know how hot you feel? Can you feel how hard you make me, just touching you with my fucking hand? When we get back to your house tonight, I’m gonna wrap those silky thighs of yours around my waist and bury my aching cock in your wet heat, and I’m not stopping until I’ve pumped myself fucking dry. It’s gonna be hard, fast, slow, rough, and any other way I can think of between now and then. Are you ready for that, Sadie? Do you need that as much as I do?”

His words had me balancing on the edge, ready to fall, and the light scrape of his thumb over my clit was all I needed.

I bucked in his arms as he held me to him, my long, low moan smothered against the hard muscle of his shoulder.

As aftershocks rocked my limp frame, he lifted his hand to his mouth, licking my wetness off his fingers, his eyes bright and his body taut underneath me.

“I hope that sweet body of yours is ready for me, Sadie. Because I haven’t even started yet.”

CHAPTER 18

T
apping out the final few keystrokes, I finished the setup of my new Facebook page for Paper Plane Photography. A couple of posts with recent images highlighted the scope of services I offered. Cody’s cake smash at West’s grandmother’s house, the headshots from the realty company, a black-and-white photo of the line of a woman’s bare back — a cropped view from a boudoir session from one of Aubrey’s friends, the engagement session. I left out the wedding I did six weeks ago because as lucrative as wedding photography could be, I didn’t want to immerse myself in that genre again. Thinking about it still brought back too many painful memories of my time in Nashville with Asshole.

Switching back over to my personal page, I scrolled through the last month’s worth of posts, reliving the events in reverse, starting with a few days prior.

A picture of a frayed hammock under the moss-draped oaks edging the shoreline.

West and I had lounged there for hours the other day, too lazy and too comfortable to get up and go out, positioned head to toe so he could rub my feet. We’d shared silly anecdotes from our childhoods and even discovered that one of my brother’s friends was someone he knew from college. I’d moaned my pleasure as he’d dug his thumbs into the arch of my foot and squirmed against him, my calf rubbing against his groin where my leg had rested between his. Teasing him, I’d arched my back and rotated my hips, pressed against his swelling length with my foot.

Holding my ankle, he’d dug a Sharpie out of the pocket of his shorts and drawn on my sole. A sun on my big toe, waves on the ball of my foot, and a heart with an arrow through it on my heel. My breath caught when I saw the heart.

We hadn’t said the words, not out loud, not to each other. I didn’t know if I was there yet. But I was getting closer the more time I spent with him.

The more I ached when I wasn’t with him.

“How am I supposed to get that off?”

He’d pointed at the beach. “We’ll take a walk. The wet sand will — what’s that word girls use? — exfoliate it or something.”

It’d taken two miles to erase the sun and the waves. The heart had lingered, and I’d traced it with my finger that night before I went to bed, smiling like a loon.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago. A picture of him standing beside his old truck, a small Grady White on the trailer behind it.

He’d motored us through the creeks one afternoon, and a pair of dolphins, leaping out of the water and splashing back down, performed a show only we saw. A pop-up summer rainstorm caught us off guard, so we anchored in a sheltered cove and made love behind a veil of raindrops, the rocking of the boat dictating the rhythm, slow and steady and as endless as the tide.

When we’d gotten back to the boat ramp at dusk, West had put me to work. After backing the truck into position, I’d taken over the driver’s seat. The window was down, and I’d been waiting for him to tell me when to pull forward. The boat ramp was crazy steep, and I hated knowing the exhaust pipe was almost underwater. Standing next to the boat, knee deep in the water, he’d yelled and waved for me to go ahead, so I’d punched the gas pedal.

And the truck peeled farther
down
the ramp. The ocean lapped the tailgate as I slammed the brakes and then threw the truck into drive and jerked forward again, stopping partway up the incline, my knuckles in a death grip on the steering wheel.

A white-faced West had approached me, set the emergency brake, and pointed wordlessly to the passenger side. Sliding across the bench seat, I’d faced him wide-eyed.

He’d cut off my whispered apology, his words clipped and abrupt.

“You backed over my shoe. You about ran me over. I think I’ll take over now.”

Later that night, I’d apologized again, my lips wrapped around his cock.

He forgave me. Twice.

Three weeks ago. Feeding doughnuts to the gulls with Rue.

I’d tragically forgotten about half a box of glazed, and we’d walked the block to the beach, tossing stale pastries in the air as the birds flocked around.

Three-and-a-half weeks ago. A panoramic of the Water’s Edge entrance
.

That was the day Grady delivered the news that officially began Paper Plane Photography. I’d been chosen to shoot the stills for the ad campaign for the newest Water’s Edge property opening in Grand Cayman six weeks from then. It was a huge assignment — three weeks on-site, and I had some artistic control. I’d been shocked, stunned, grateful, excited. I may have cried in Grady’s office, turning my face away to look out the floor-to-ceiling window at the ocean. He may have pretended not to notice.