Chapter 17 #3
“Damn it, you can have the dress right now, if it’s so important. Look, there’s Baby.” He pointed up from the beach, to his Jeep parked at the bungalow’s gate. Wes turned on his heel. “I’ll get it for you—”
She seized his arm. “Screw the dress.”
“What?”
She dug in her nails. He hissed, halting, staring.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the dress!
Because what matters i-is. . . you, Wes,” and now—now her voice broke.
It shattered on his name. She couldn’t breathe.
But she had to make him understand. If these next few weeks were all the time she had left with him before his MORI assignment ended, the days and hours slipping away until she faded into pale, cold silence, alone again?
No. She gripped his arm harder, raising her chin, goading herself on.
“You’ve said it yourself. You never stay in one place for long.
You’re always leaving: for your next assignment, or maybe just because you’re bored.
Bored with Monterey. Bored with. . . me.
The beach-house lease will be over soon, September’s already halfway gone, so you’ll be gone soon.
You’ll leave MORI and Monterey. Leave me, like I’m always, always left, and I—I just can’t—”
“I’m not going anywhere, Isabel!”
But he wrenched out of her grip. He left her on the sand—no—strode up to the pavement and his Jeep at the gate—no!—thrust an arm through the open driver-side window to pop the hood—leaving—grabbed a bundle of Erin’s remastered cables, and yanked—
What?
Wires dangled like de-electrified eels in his grip.
Wes wheeled back around to her. His gaze was scorching through the dusk, but bright: too bright, his eyes glimmering.
“See this? See these? I’m not smart enough to reattach the cables by myself.
Which means we’re stuck here. And you’re stuck with me.
So for once, just tell me, Isabel. Are you happy? ”
Oh.
Should she be? Maybe. He’d sabotaged his precious Baby for her, hadn’t he? Wes couldn’t leave. He had no choice but to stay with her.
Good.
Except. . . could she really be happy, when he was still so angry? Angry with her, when she’d only wanted him to understand.
Worse than his anger, however, was that wet, treacherous gleam in his eyes.
She’d hurt him. She hadn’t known she could. But she had.
Are you happy?
“N. . . no,” she whispered.
She had what she wanted—him, here—even after she’d unleashed her fear and fury against him like a tidal wave storming the shore, after she’d spent herself and emerged panting, raw, and aching on the far side of her own horizon. . . and she wasn’t happy.
But: maybe I can be.
“No?” His voice was a ragged echo of hers.
“Yes,” and then she was running to him, abandoning herself to the undertow of her own wanting, reckless over shells in the gloom, unsteady across broken paving slabs near Baby and the gate, but still running, chasing.
“What the—” Wes caught her when she tripped. He hurtled backward past the Nice to Sea You! sign, under the gate’s half-moon arch and its crystals with his arms safe around her, even as he cursed, as cables scattered to the ground. “Isabel, what the hell are you—”
She took advantage of his teetering balance to seize his sweatshirt again with one hand, while she knotted her free fingers in his hair. She tugged him down toward her.
“—ah!” His curses choked off, exhaled hot and hard against her mouth.
She breathed him in. “I want to be happy.”
“I don’t underst—”
“I want to be happy,” she said. “I want to be happy with you.”
“. . . what?” He staggered back another step, then steadied against the porch risers. He swallowed thickly. His frown deepened. A shiver of shadow was the baffled shake of his head. She tightened her grip, holding him to her, angling her lips just a murmur away from his. “Isabel, I. . .”
“Please,” she said softly. “I want this, Wes. Please.”
I want you. . .
He could have made her wait.
He could have left her precariously balanced between elation and despair—waiting while he decided whether her wanting was enough, whether she was enough.
She would have waited, suspended in this ebb and flow of breath; waited for as long as he needed to want this, to want her as much as she wanted him.
But he didn’t make her wait.
“Oh, thank Christ,” and his mouth crashed down on hers.
Yes—
Yes.
Staggering together up the bungalow steps, searching under the eaves for the key, kissing frantically, her shoulder blades bumped into the door as he grappled at the knob with one hand.
He cursed against her lips again while she laughed in joy and relief—until that laughter expelled in a gasp of startled pleasure when he hefted her up, wrapping her legs around his hips, freeing his access to the lock, her head falling back to grant his tongue access to her throat, too.
“Ah!”
A wet lick of heat flicked over her pulse, and his thumb slipped under her sweatshirt to find the dimples below her spine.
Every muscle in her body convulsed. She whimpered, her thighs straining for purchase against his board shorts—and then the door opened, spilling them across the threshold, their legs braided together, her hands in his hair dragging his head up and into a renewed tangle of lips and tongues.
His breath, her mouth.
They fumbled with buttons in the ember-dim glow of an aquarium light, unsteady with urgency and desire while they kicked free of fleece and denim and leather.
Her lips traced the strong muscle of his neck.
Salt, clear water under a radiant sky. Hungry for more, she laved her tongue against the shudder rippling through him, his whisper of her name, the flex of his palms on her panties.
She guided them to the couch. Her fingertips found the unfinished labyrinth inked over his ribs, found where its lines ended at his hip.
She didn’t stop.
“Is-Isabel—” He choked when the exploratory wander of her thumb dipped under his trunks. She smiled, a little feral with satisfaction as he sank onto the cushions beneath her. “Are you. . . you’re sure?”
“Yes.” She bent low to seal her mouth to his. Her hand delved deeper. She wrapped her fingers around him.
“A-ah. . .” with a weak-kneed, spine-arching groan.
Then she bit lightly down on his lip.
Instantly Wes bucked up off the couch, swearing, his cock pulsing in her grip. “Jesus C-Christ, that’s—Isabel, God—”
She did it again, harder.
And again.
“Ah!” Another spasm jerked his hips higher into her hand. A moment later, another curse was a plea against her tongue. Now his fingers twitched with eager restraint at her panties. “Isa—please, c-can—can I touch you—please, I—”
“No.”
She released him. His broken moan was sweet to taste, and sweeter still against the ache between her legs.
She stepped back. Daring to demand his gaze, to glory in his desperation and deny it, to leave him with a parted mouth and black, glittering eyes, wanting her so badly that each breath rattled his chest and stuttered his hips, she hooked a finger under her panties and said, “Tie your hands.”
Silence.
He’d stopped breathing. She refused to look away. Despite the frantic demands of her body and his, she remained motionless before him, waiting. . . waiting until. . .
Finally—finally—he surrendered to their shared need.
He moved again. Just his tongue, darting across his passion-bruised lips, but:
“F-fuck. Yes.”
“Good.”
He manhandled his way into his duffel bag.
He retrieved a coil of multicolored nylon with a carabiner.
A foil square, too. She toyed with the corner of that packet to extract its latex sheath, then toyed with the edge of her panties as well, inching the silk down her hips, flushed and damp, the pressure at the apex of her thighs narrowing to a throb—while Wes twisted a handcuff bind from the slack in his rope.
She nodded.
When he began to tighten the cord around his wrists, however, she stopped him. “No. Behind your back.”
Another frozen, scorching moment. Then:
“Help me?”