30. Ashley
ASHLEY
A s the helicopter banked, I resisted the force that pressed me into Fox, not wanting him to think I was literally pushing up on him. Each time I did end up squashed against him, he subtly pulled away with what felt like avoidance. On the next tilt, he was in my space, though, so I really didn’t know how to interpret it.
He’d been withdrawn when he returned from surfing, but when I asked if he would prefer to do this heli-tour alone, he’d given me the impatient look he threw at me when I stared longingly at a cookie and said, “No thanks.”
“It’s going to be fantastic. You have to come.”
That had been before we were smooshed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh next to the pilot in the front of the chopper. The windshield was a see-through bubble that extended below our feet. We’d opted for the ‘doors off’ experience and were strapped in securely, but I felt as though we would tumble straight into the scenery with each tilt.
On the next angle, Fox seemed to fall away next to me. I grabbed his wrist as if I was some James Bond stunt double, capable of hauling his dangling ass back into this aircraft should he actually fall out.
“It’s like a motorcycle, you nut.” His humor-laced voice cut the music playing in the headset. “Lean with it, not against it. Unless you feel sick?”
“No, I’m just scared. This is the best and worst roller coaster ride of my life.”
“We’re totally safe. Here.” He slid his arm under mine so we were linked, forearms aligned as he wove our fingers together. He hugged my elbow securely into the warmth of his side. “Better?”
Not really. The chopper dipped at that moment, making my stomach swoop. I squeaked in surprise and clung to his arm, but we were both laughing and so was the pilot.
Down we went until we were skimming above turquoise water that smashed itself into shattered rainbows against black, pillowed rocks of hardened lava. It was breathtaking.
Fox flashed me a grin and I stared at his teeth for several awe-filled heartbeats, both of us exhilarated by racing across this wonderland.
I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but my lips began to tingle. His smile faded. He rolled his lips together before he turned his attention out the door again.
The loss was so palpable, my throat hurt, but the chopper climbed then, pressing me into my seat. Soon we were flying over crumpled peaks of tropical jungle. I had thought the east coast of the island a startlingly rural contrast to the concrete metropolis of Honolulu and the sprawl near the military base. The ridges below us were nothing but steep valleys of undisturbed greenery, the isolation giving the impression no human had ever set foot there.
A few minutes later, our pilot landed us ever so gently on a rocky outcropping. Before us, the acid-washed denim ocean stretched endlessly, its edges decorated with white frills of waves hitting the seams of yellow sand on the shoreline. The bowl of the sky was pressed over it, the foothills below us rugged and lush with tangled jungle.
The music stopped and we removed our headsets. As the rotors slowed, I took a few calming breaths, appreciating how the world had grown silent and still. A cool breeze cut through the cockpit, skating across my bare arms and legs.
“This is unbelievable,” I murmured.
“It really is,” Fox agreed.
“I have a picnic for you,” the pilot said.
“I don’t know where I’ll put it,” I said, setting a hand across my stomach.
Harry, the surfer Fox had rescued, had fed us a robust breakfast of eggs benny, quinoa porridge, and tropical fruit with Greek yoghurt before he’d sent us on our way.
“It’s just champagne, cheese, and fruit. Swim first,” the pilot suggested. “Come back when you’re hungry.”
“Swim?” I looked from the cliff that dropped away before us to the craggy peak behind us.
The pilot unbuckled, but stayed in his seat as he pointed out a barely discernible path into the jungle.
“The trail is officially closed. The final leg to the top is called Cardiac Arrest. Three guesses why that is.” He lifted a disparaging brow. “People still hike it, though. It takes about five hours from the bottom. If the heat or their heart doesn’t do them in, a nasty fall can. This is where the rescue chopper lands.” He glanced at his watch. “You should have the pool to yourself for a while, though. Go down, not up. You’ll see the waterfall and the pool in about ten minutes.”
I followed Fox out of his side of the helicopter. He took my hand and I gripped it tightly, knees still spongey from the flight.
“I didn’t know we’d be hiking.” I’d worn a sundress and sandals, but even though the path was a steep incline down, there were plenty of rocks and branches to hold onto.
A few minutes later, as I began to wonder if we’d made a wrong turn, the musical trickle of a waterfall drew us. I didn’t see it until we were pretty much standing in the narrow stream that fed it, though.
The water dropped a few feet into a handful of smaller pools and finally into a big one that sat like a garden of Eden amid the thick jungle that surrounded it. We picked our way down and Fox reached back to help me as we reached the edge of the pool.
The water was placid and deep blue. A single beam of sunshine cut through the opening in the canopy to glitter against its surface.
“I feel like Adam and Eve,” I said in a near whisper. Innocent of sin.
Except they weren’t. I wasn’t.
I glanced guiltily at him. He wasn’t looking at me, but his brow pulled with remorse, as though some thought or other was torturing him.
“I didn’t know we’d be swimming or I would have worn my bathing suit.” I slipped out of my sandals and waded across the slippery rocks to my shins, holding my skirt above the surface of the water.
He didn’t follow, only stood looking across to the waterfall, expression tense and inscrutable.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“No.” Quick and sure, but sharp.
“You sound mad.” I waded a little further, holding the skirt a little higher while lifting my gaze to the walls of greenery around us. Birds twittered and odd little flowers bloomed next to broad, variegated leaves.
“I’m not mad at you ,” Fox said grudgingly.
“Who then? Yourself? Because we kissed? Just pretend it didn’t happen. That’s what I’m doing.” I was also pretending it was working, apparently.
The sounds of nature filled the silence, idyllic, but the remoteness seemed amplified by the distance between us. I wasn’t even facing him, but I could feel him behind me on the shore, close enough to reach out and touch me.
He wouldn’t, though. We were too far apart in other ways.
“The irony is...” His voice dried up.
I glanced over my shoulder and he was still looking off to the side, gaze faraway. He seemed reluctant to go on. His mouth twisted and his sardonic tone seemed aimed at himself.
“I want to talk it out, but there’s no one to talk to. That’s why I stayed so late at Harry’s last night. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger, but he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t have a business partner who’s been there for him all his life. He comes from money so he doesn’t get how hard I worked to get what I have. Which is chicken scratch compared to the way he lives.”
“Don’t disparage what you’ve achieved.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying it was a failed effort to use him as a sounding board.”
“And you can’t talk to Shane because he’s not here. And it’s me.” The words seemed to stick like a spear in my breastbone. “I’m the problem.”
“I wouldn’t talk to him anyway. We don’t do girl talk. That’s why it took until the last minute and more alcohol than any man should consume for our frank discussion in the cab.” His hand skimmed his hair, then he made an impatient noise of ironic-laughter. “You’re right. You’re the problem and you’re also the person I want to talk to about it. When I call you my friend, that’s what I mean. I trust you enough to tell you anything. More than I’d ever tell Shane. Turns out you’re my best friend. I bet you didn’t know that, did you, Ash?” The words gusted out of him on a laugh that held the force of a small hurricane.
I didn’t even know how to respond to that. It was lovely, but it also made me feel more wretched about this ridiculous situation.
My hands crushed the cotton fabric of my dress as I realized I was suffering a similar frustration. I didn’t want to talk to my sister or Izzy about these conflicted feelings I was having, or the attraction that grew by the minute, fuzzing all my well-developed sense of caution. I wanted Fox to help me make sense of this and he was the source of it.
“Which makes Shane my brother, I suppose,” he mused. “Because I’ve never had thoughts about him like the ones coming into my head about you.”
A wobbly smile tried to land on my mouth. I pressed curled fingers against it, closing my eyes against a hot sting. My hem landed in the water and I felt the skirt weigh heavier on my hip. I came out a few steps so I could wring it out.
“When we get back, I’ll get my own room.”
“No,” I pleaded softly, straightening. Experiencing such a profound loneliness, I didn’t know how to process it. “What you said yesterday about seeing as much as possible of each other... I want that, too.”
“Ash.” His palm came out, beseeching. “That wasn’t a nightmare this morning. I was dreaming about you.” He was glowing with a hard blush. He dropped his hand to his side. “It was pretty graphic.”
My whole body prickled with a shivery tingle and my ears rang. How graphic?
“It was all I could do not to crawl into bed with you. I can’t...”
Don’t say it, don’t say it ? —
“I wanted you to,” I blurted.
He physically jolted. Paled, maybe, but he was standing in a shadow so it was hard to tell.
“After you left, I imagined you coming back,” I confessed in a scraped-thin voice. “Joining me.”
His hands hung at his sides, but his fists curled tight. His voice was strained. “Are you saying?—”
I fought to swallow and barely nodded, but it was enough to make him seem to expand inside his own skin, hardening to granite. He stepped into the water so he was right in front of me. The fierce light in his eyes made the embers of passion still in my belly flare hot.
I’d never felt so exposed in my life, but I met his searing gaze and let him read my guilty secret in my blush. The best orgasm of my life had come by my own hand with thoughts of him delivering it. Flutters of uncertainty struck my middle as I let that hover unspoken but acknowledged between them.
“Why would you tell me that?” His voice was almost scary, it was so gritty. It abraded and caressed at the same time.
“I thought—” I could hardly breathe, let alone talk. “I thought we were being honest.”
“Not that fucking honest!” His voice bounced off the rock wall above them. “Jesus, Ash.”
Then he clasped either side of my head and his mouth slammed down on mine so hard and thorough and powerful, I was nearly driven to the ground by the force of it.
My feet slid and I grasped at his forearms. He shot his arm around me, pulling me up against the solid strength of his body.
It should have felt abrupt or rough or objectifying, but it was what we had both been craving. His full lips became my everything, claiming mercilessly while giving up his entire soul to me at the same time. I tasted his wildness, his greed, but also his helplessness. His agony.
That’s what was in me. Yearning and selfishness and shadows of self-reproach that I pushed to the edges so I could glory in the golden light. The taste of him. The feel of his warm sides and strong back beneath my splayed hands.
We melded into one another, bodies pressing, arms closing tight. Clinging. Transmitting to each other the fear we would be torn apart.
For a few minutes, it was only this, locked in a stolen kiss that neither of us should want, but neither wanted to end. It was sweet and lurid. Blatant and explicit and so rare, I wanted to hang onto it forever. He was hard and thick against my stomach. The ache that had kept me awake most of the night returned. I knew he felt exactly as I did, knew it , and it made the shared kiss all the more profound.
“Tell me to stop.” His breath wafted against my lips as he nipped at my jaw and took my earlobe in his teeth.
“I can’t.”
He sucked in a harsh breath as though I’d stabbed him. His head went back and he groaned his torment at the sky.
I was shaking and ran my trembling hands over his tensile strength, savoring every sensation, every texture and scent while a distant clock ticked in my head. I had never felt this way, as though the sky pressed down and the earth pressed up and the only escape was into his arms.
“I can’t...not want to touch you,” I breathed and claimed more. The cords at the base of his neck, the balls of his shoulders, the flex of his biceps and the meaty firmness of his twitching pecs all filled my greedy touch. He was so hard and wide and strong. Hot and fierce and tender as he smoothed his hand down my hair and pressed a kiss to my crown as he drew me in tighter and closer, sheltered and held prisoner.
Stopped.
“Ash...”
“I know, I know.” I trembled as he pressed me into this tiny space—this single moment.
But I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I offered my mouth.
With a vanquished groan, he covered my lips with fresh reverence. His fingers against my throat absorbed the vibration of my tortured moan while I drank and drank the sensation of him slaking his thirst for me.
We can’t, we can’t, that infernal voice warned in the back of my head. But when he drew me out of the water and backed himself against a mossy boulder and set his feet wide then drew me to sprawl half over him, I joyfully went. My breasts mashed flat against his chest and my hands found his hairy thighs beneath the edge of his shorts, stroking and making him hiss with pleasure.
His mouth was trailing down my neck now, light fingers sliding the strap of my dress off my shoulder and taking the strap of my bra with it. He claimed all of that real estate with soft wet bites of his mouth and an erotic dart of his tongue into the hollow beneath my ear and along the line of my collarbone.
I held my breath, skin shivering pleasantly while wires of tension drew electric and taut into my erogenous zones. My nipples tightened with anticipation. I hadn’t known something so small could cause so much havoc, making every inch of my skin feel too tight and ultra-sensitive. I melted more heavily against him, stomach taking the impression of his erection. When he tickled his fingertips against my spine, I arched and he groaned with pleasure.
I liked that noise. I wanted to make him do it again and ran my hands under his T-shirt. He picked up his arms and I followed the motion, blindly throwing his T-shirt to the ground, gaze pinned to his mouth. Come back, come back .
He slouched a little further down the rock and cradled my jaw in his big hand as he slanted his head and kissed me deeply. Like it was all we would ever have, but all we would ever need.
I tried to lift my arms to go around his neck and my bra strap cut across my arm. I whisked it down and pulled my arm free of it, then swept the other one away before I twined both arms behind his neck, loving the feel of my naked chest against his.
He kissed me once, brief and hard, then clamped one arm around me while he pushed off the rock with the other. He turned us. My feet caught and stumbled on the uneven rocks, but he held me securely and now my back was against the moss on the rock. He kept one arm behind me to cushion me against it while the other eased the front of my dress all the way to my waist.
I sucked in a breath at the sensation of cool air and the avid heat in his gaze, worshipful yet so visceral he didn’t even have to touch me to make wet heat rush heavily between my thighs. When he caressed with light fingers, gently shaping around the side of one breast, I trembled. He danced the backs of his fingers beneath the other and I bit my lip, knees going soft.
“Fox,” I murmured shyly.
“You’re so pretty, Ash.” His voice, so coarse and moved, raised goosebumps all over my body. “Beautiful.”
I usually felt very average, but not today. As he caressed me so reverently, my eyes dampened with emotion. I felt beautiful. Like a freaking goddess who was more a spirit of nature than a being, one who had come up against another force of nature in the type of storm that left scars across the landscape. The kind of heat and energy that cracked and bolted like lightning, capable of melding two things into one. Indelible.
I shivered again, realizing this would never be the sort of encounter I might have with another man. For me, sex was pleasant and sensual, but a bit routine, like washing my hair. I could go through the steps and feel refreshed afterward, but nothing in my life was different afterward.
This would change everything. It was carnal and intimate and meaningful .
This was the point where I should tell him to stop, but I didn’t. Couldn’t. I looked down at the breasts that captivated him. At my own nipples, beige with pink tips, sharpened to tight points by arousal and the cool mist coating the air.
I watched him lick his lips and dip his head.
I curled my toes and closed my eyes and still wasn’t prepared for the heat. For the pull that sent a sharp jab of acute arousal straight into my pussy and dragged a groan from deep in my chest. A pulse point seemed to throb and grown in strength between my legs, calling to him.
My hands went to his shoulders, his hair. This wasn’t new, I acknowledged distantly, but it felt new. It felt like nothing I’d ever experienced. This wasn’t a sharing of self but loss. Surrender. Not to him. To need . To this thing that gripped both of us equally.
All I knew was Fox. His smell and the shape of his shoulder and the feel of him shifting between my thighs.
I ought to feel excruciatingly wrong, doing this with him, but a bizarre tenderness filled me. Something that wanted to savor and memorize the textures from his thick, crinkly hair to the fabric of his shorts against my inner thigh. I wanted to breathe him in. Lick him. Bite.
He moved to my other breast and I made a garbled sound, arching myself flagrantly. My knee came up and I felt him press more firmly into the space I’d created, keeping me in place with this weight.
He lifted his head and cupped my face, kissed me with such tenderness I could have cried. The stiff line of his erection met the pulsing folds of my mound and I sighed.
He rocked and the sensation coaxed another noise of abandonment from me, driving my arousal to higher and higher degrees.
“I won’t get pregnant,” I confided when his lips trailed across my cheek.
He stilled his mouth against my skin. He dropped his head against my shoulder while his whole body seemed to slump in defeat.
“I had a physical before I came away—” I realized I was starting to sound desperate.
All the beauty from this moment bled away. I was desperate. Because I could tell that I’d ruined it. I wanted to cry, I was so angry with myself. With him, for being more noble than I could ever hope to be.
He was shaking. He lifted his head as though it weighed more than he could manage. The regret in his eyes arrowed straight into my heart, cracking it into jagged pieces.
“We can’t. You know we can’t.” He licked his lips and rubbed his thumb against my cheek in a caress that was probably meant to soothe, but it felt as though it would break the skin and leave an open wound. “This was too much. Incredible,” he breathed with a restless track of his gaze over my face and hair. “But too much. It shouldn’t have happened. Can’t.”
He drew away in a hunch like an old man, catching my hand as it fell off his shoulder. He tried to kiss my knuckles, but I yanked my hand away, stupefied by the plunge from arousal to incredible pain.
He flinched and his gaze held mine. Begged forgiveness.
“Let’s go for a swim. Cool off.”
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, that swimming was the last thing I wanted to do.
But since the waterfall was the only place to hide my tears, I skimmed off all but my underwear and waded into the pool.