Beachcombing in the Bahamas (Once Again #11)

Chapter 9

9

T he voices quieted, the fire on the beach petered out, and the huddled masses silhouetted against the skyline dispersed.

Yvette had taken a bath, smoothed lotion into her skin. She loved the ritual of getting ready for him. And she loved the fresh scent of his still damp hair when he came to her.

He would be here soon. Yvette crawled into bed, the sheets like silk against her naked skin. She’d left the door unlocked, knowing he would come when it was safe.

She didn’t have long to wait, the snick of the opening door filling the room. Just thinking about him had made her wet and ready for whatever he wanted, for every delicious touch and kiss she craved.

“Christ, I’ve missed you,” he whispered before his lips took hers.

The girls been home for a week. It felt like years rather than days since he’d been in her bed, and oh how she’d missed him.

He trailed kisses down her neck, across her chest, to the tight bead of her breast. Taking her nipple in his mouth, he sucked, and exquisite pleasure shot to her core. His fingers walked leisurely down to her center, and she parted her legs for him. When he slid a finger inside her, he lifted his head to say, “Christ, you’re so damn wet.”

She whispered, “I’ve been thinking about you all night.”

When he made to work his way down her body, she pulled at his shoulders. “No. I want you inside me. Right now. Don’t make me wait.”

His voice came hoarse and needy. “You can’t imagine how badly I want to feel you around me.” And going up on his haunches, he pulled her legs over his thighs until he was poised at her entrance. “Touch yourself for me.”

As she did, he eased inside her, sliding over her G-spot, and excruciating bliss coursed through her body. She didn’t tell him to stop, didn’t tell him to go faster. She let him take her just like that, slow, short strokes while she caressed herself.

Inside her, she felt him grow even harder. He loved to watch her, loved to taste her, loved everything they did.

She trembled with the slow friction, her legs quivering, her toes flexing. She tensed every muscle, her calves, her thighs, her buttocks. An exponential wave of delight shot through her. It was coming, she could feel it, that heat growing, building, as if everything was being drawn to her very center.

Then it all exploded, and she bit down on her lip to keep from crying out. But he knew. He felt the way her body clutched him. And he rammed hard inside her, just the way she needed. The way she craved. He took her like a ram, like she was the prize he’d won over all the others. Every thrust shot agonizing pleasure through her. It went on and on, until tears leaked from her eyes and her body surged up to meet his, riding him as much as he rode her. Reaching between them, she squeezed that sensitive part of him, felt his impending climax throb inside her.

He cried out, a deep, guttural sound at such a low decibel that no one would hear it outside this room. But it was music to her ears as he came inside her, as he made her come again. Maybe she’d never stopped coming.

Then there were only harsh breaths and the slap of their bodies, then one last mighty thrust, and he tensed, his head back, his throat stretched, as he filled her with everything in him.

And she took it all.

“Christ, that was so freaking good.” Holding her close, he nuzzled her hair, loving the silky feel of her body along the length of his.

She traced a finger in the whorl of hair on his chest. “That was perfect,” she said on an exhale.

“Hell yes,” he agreed. “The nice thing is that everyone will sleep in tomorrow. So I don’t have to go back to my room until dawn. I can wake up with you in my arms.”

She shifted slightly, and he knew she wanted to say it was dangerous. But even as she tipped her chin, he took her mouth in a luscious kiss. Then he whispered against her lips, “Besides, I haven’t tasted you yet. There’s so much more of the night to come.”

He wanted that, needed it. His talk with Adeline had left a sour taste in his mouth. But here with Yvette, he could forget about Adeline and her bullying. And the words welled up into his throat. Marry me . Yet he couldn’t say them. He’d said them so often, and she’d turned him down over and over. The time wasn’t right. He wondered if the time would ever be right.

He said the only thing he could, “I love you.”

She kissed his chest. “I love you.”

“That won’t change, no matter how long I hold you in my arms. No matter how many years it takes.” Then he murmured, “Are you expecting to wait until Adeline is dead?”

She squeezed out a long breath as if she’d been holding it. “I’m waiting for the girls to be on their own. I’m waiting for the time when she can’t turn them against me.”

“She’ll never turn them against you,” he said, with a sharp shake of his head. “They love you. Nothing she says can change that.” And yet he thought of Adeline’s sly bullying of Lorna. He didn’t think the woman even knew what her mother-in-law was doing. Would the girls? Before it was too late?

Yvette tipped her head back to look at him, her eyes bright, even though she’d closed the curtains. “She could tell them I’ve been having an affair with you since before Pierce died. She could make them believe it.”

Brock couldn’t say it wouldn’t happen. Relationships soured so easily.

And she went on. “That’s why I won’t allow them to live at her house when they come home for vacations. They’ll stay with me until the day they move into their own apartments. And that’s how long I’ll stay in the gatehouse. I won’t allow her to move me out.”

This was the real reason she refused to leave. His mother. Adeline and her poison.

They could get a flat, live together, even marry. But his boys and Yvette’s girls would remain to hear the vitriol.

Maybe Yvette was right. They should wait until all the kids were out on their own, when they would come only for a day in the big house, only for a holiday, when Adeline couldn’t work on them.

Had his mother always been this way? Had he just been blind?

Yes. He probably had been. He could remember now some of the things she’d said to bully Yvette. Pierce had never spoken up for his wife. But Brock remembered times Adeline had nagged about what Yvette fed the girls, about letting them watch too much TV, about letting them talk too much at the dinner table. He remembered telling his mother to lay off, just as he had tonight. He just hadn’t realized the extent of it, and God only knew what Adeline had said when he wasn’t around. Now she was playing her games with Lorna. He knew why. Because she wanted her daughter-in-law to beg to move down to the gatehouse until Trevor finally forced Yvette out.

As if she could follow his train of thought, he said, “I had a talk with Adeline tonight about leaving Lorna alone.”

“I planned to find a moment to talk to Lorna while we’re here. Tell her that Adeline is a viper.”

“That sounds good.” But he was the man who’d let the viper take over. He didn’t know how to curb Adeline. In a previous century, he could have stuck her in an institution, saying she suffered from so-called female hysteria. But first, it wouldn’t work, and second, he’d never do it, not even in a past life.

“Let’s not ruin the night with talk of Adeline,” she said.

He rolled off the bed and padded to the curtains, pushing them aside, leaving only the lace sheers.

As he headed back to her, she said, “Someone might see us.”

He laughed softly, climbing back into bed. “They’d have to put their hands up to the window and peer through to see anything. I seriously doubt anyone will do that.” Pulling her beneath him, he said, “I want to see the sunrise with you in my arms.” He bent to kiss her throat, to lick her sweet skin. “And before that, I want to make love to you at least two more times tonight.”

She finally smiled. “Promises, promises.”

And he kept his promises.

The light of the predawn leeched through the curtains. The sun hadn’t yet risen over the horizon, but it was close.

Yvette lay in his arms, luxuriously satisfied in a way she hadn’t been in a long time.

Brock was right. Waking up in his arms was what she’d craved. His body nestled against hers, the sheets drenched in the scent of their loving, their bodies beautifully musky from a long night of pleasure. Parts of her body ached from the feast of sensations.

Could she have this every night? When he was kissing her, she thought maybe she could.

Holding her close, he murmured, “This is exactly what I wanted. To kiss you awake like Prince Charming.”

She laughed. “I’m too old to be Cinderella.”

He didn’t laugh with her. “You’re not too old for this.” He kissed her again, rekindling the night’s passion. “One more time,” he whispered.

When they were holding each other, sated, catching their breath again, the sun was over the horizon. “I’m heading back to my room.” He stroked tangled strands of hair back from her face. “Meet me on the beach in fifteen minutes for a walk.” He cut her off when she opened her mouth to protest. “It’s just a walk on the beach. No one will think a thing.”

He leaned over, sucked her nipple into his mouth, swirled his tongue around it until she felt she might go mad all over again.

Then he rolled to his feet. “And I promise not to touch you while we’re walking.”

The door snicked close behind him, and she could still smell him in the bed, on her skin, still taste him.

Fifteen minutes later, she met him on the white sand of the beach, the grains cool beneath her bare feet. While she’d pulled on a sundress, he’d changed into board shorts and a T-shirt.

The air wasn’t hot yet, the night having cooled everything down. Brock said politely, “Fancy meeting you out here. I guess we’re both early risers.” He gave her a cocky grin. Anyone overhearing them would have no idea they’d spent the entire night together.

True to his word, he didn’t take her hand as they walked. Not even as they rounded the bend in their cove and wandered onto the next beach. The rising sun spread fingers of yellow and orange across the white clouds of the morning.

She thought about the miracle of it all. To be here with him in the early morning. The beauty of waking up in his arms. The looseness of her limbs after all that pleasure. Of course, they’d slept together on business trips. But this was different. With no meetings to rush to, they could enjoy each other like this, on a simple walk. It might be dangerous, but she could get used to it, even need it.

While they were here, she wouldn’t let him leave her bed until sunrise. Maybe she’d even make him stay to make love to her with the sun streaming like a ball of fire through the curtains.

Such wonderful dreams.

“I can smell you on me.” He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, as if he were savoring her scent. “After we’ve been together, I don’t shower in the morning.”

“You don’t shower before going to work?” She tried to sound aghast, but it thrilled her.

“I want to smell you on me all day long. I want to close my eyes and remember every touch in the night.”

She felt her limbs weaken and her body turn molten. Despite the fresh morning air, she was suddenly hot, as if it were the middle of the day and the sun at its zenith. She almost took his hand as she said, “I stayed in bed a couple of minutes after you left. Because I could smell us there. Our lovemaking. The two of us together.”

His voice came out a little shaky. “I told you I wouldn’t touch you. Not even hold your hand. But you should know that right now I want to throw you over my shoulder like a caveman and carry you off into the jungle to make love to you until you scream everyone awake.”

Sometimes, when he couldn’t come to her, he called her, telling her things that made her crazy, that made her need to touch herself. He was doing it now, but the impact was so much greater with his eyes on her. And she whispered, “I’d let you.”

She’d let him do anything he wanted. Even if she wouldn’t marry him, everything else was his.

His gaze stripped her down. “You’re so tempting.” Then he straightened. “We better go back. Or someone will see me dragging you into the trees.”

They walked back slowly, heat sparking between them as the sun rose higher in the sky. But it wasn’t the sun’s heat that shot out the sparks. It was them. It was what lived and breathed between them. Nothing Adeline could do would ever douse it.

Back at their beach, they saw Jodi sitting on the turquoise swing. Before they were close enough to be overheard, Brock said, “Don’t take a shower. I want my scent on you all day long. Just like yours is on me.”

As he headed into his cottage next to hers, closing the sliding glass door he’d left unlocked, Yvette strolled to her daughter.

The swing rocked gently, Jodi pushing with her toe in the sand. And Yvette said, “Is there room enough for me?” She had a fleeting fear that Jodi might smell the sex on her, like heat rising off concrete.

But her daughter merely smiled, squirming over so Yvette could curl herself onto one side of the swing. Her foot dangling, her toe only just touched the sand, still cool from the night where the sun hadn’t hit it yet. “You’re up early.”

Jodi shrugged. “Time change.” Her long dark hair was like silk over her shoulders. She took after the dark-haired Donnelly side, with the Donnelly mannerisms, the way her mouth curved when she smiled, the way her blue eyes flashed when she was excited.

Yet something appeared off. “You seem a little morose this morning,” Yvette ventured.

Jodi stared at the rising sun, licked her lips, kicked the sand again to keep them moving. “He’s such an asshole.” Her eyes closed slightly as she said the word.

Sadly, Yvette didn’t need to ask who. “But we have to put up with him. He’s your sister’s choice. We can only hope it doesn’t last long.”

Jodi turned to her then, her eyes a little bloodshot from the long day, the time change, and perhaps the drinking out by the fire pit. “It’s like he’s mesmerized her. I don’t get it.”

“Maybe he’s nice to her,” Yvette offered.

Jodi snorted. “Oh yeah, sure he’s nice to her when they’re alone. But I think it’s gotta be the size of his?—”

Yvette’s hands flew to her ears. “I can’t even think about that.”

Her youngest daughter laughed. “She’s not exactly a virgin.”

“I understand that.”

Jodi went on torturing her. “I hear them sometimes at night.” The girls shared a two-bedroom apartment down at the university.

And Yvette said again, almost whining, “Please, please, please, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” Especially not with Darryl. Because Jodi was right, he wasn’t good enough for Kacey. He wasn’t good enough for anyone. But anything she might have said to Kacey could only backfire. “She’s a smart girl. She’ll see the truth eventually. We just have to wait. But you know what will happen if we say anything.” Kacey was as stubborn as any Donnelly.

Jodi rolled her eyes. “I’ve already said something. She didn’t speak to me for three weeks. But only after she told me I was jealous because I was all alone.”

Yvette ached for both her daughters. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not lonely. I’ve made a choice. I’m looking for a guy like—” She shrugged, smiling. “Like Uncle Brock. Or even like one of the cousins. They’re good men. I don’t want to settle for an ass like Darryl just because I don’t want to be lonely. I want the right guy.”

A man like her Uncle Brock. Yes. He was the best of men.

Yvette wondered for a moment if maybe, just maybe, there was nothing Adeline could say that would turn her daughter against her if she knew about the affair. But she wasn’t at all sure about Kacey.

So she said nothing except, “They’re all good men. I know you’ll find somebody of their caliber. It might take time. But you’ll find him. He’s waiting out there for you.”

Just like Brock had been waiting for her. Except that Yvette had made the mistake of marrying his younger brother.

She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Let’s go see what’s for breakfast.”