Held A New Adult Romance(48)

I nod. I feel my muscles ripple around him and he moans. I'm sitting upright astride him and any moment I'm going to have to move, just to scratch that deep down itch inside. I cup my breasts and gaze down at him; he's rapt and rosy cheeked between my thighs. I pinch the tips of my nipples, offering them to him, but my own touch sends me over the edge, one of those slow, inexorable shuddery orgasms that I've only ever had on my own before. It steals my breath and I make no sound as I grind my hips deep into his lap.

Jaime cries out; he calls me beautiful and calls me by name. I droop over him, my inner muscles still shivering, my clit so sensitive that I can barely press my pubic bone into him. "Holy shit," he whispers, like I was good, like I was special.

When we kiss our lips are as dry as if they'd been burned. "You're on fire," he says, as if he could read my mind, and when I look into his eyes I know that there is no way I can ever, ever tell him the truth.





Chapter Sixteen




Jaime



In the morning after breakfast she wants to go down to the beach.

"It's practically private," she says, picking her way down the narrow cliff path. The height doesn't seem to bother her but the moment I look down I feel like Jimmy Stewart. The other night when I went down on her on the porch I didn't care, because it was dark and I hadn't yet seen how the earth drops away at the edge. The first time I saw the cliff in daylight it set my head spinning, not least because I started thinking about how the railing had creaked behind my back.

She just skips on down like a mountain goat. We must be nuts, us Californians - to keep building cities on a seam of the Earth's crust, pretending like one day it's not going to open up and swallow us all.

Amber reaches the sand and peers up at me. "Isn't it great?" she says, shading her eyes with her hand.

"Pretty."

She bites her lip. Maybe it's because she thought I sounded underwhelmed at the view that she seeks to improve it. Then she lets out a crazy seagull shriek of laughter and yanks off all her clothes. "Oh, you are kidding me," I say, but she's already up to her thighs in the water.

"I can't swim!" I yell. "And isn't it cold?"

She turns to face me, her nipples hard and her skin white as pearl. "It's bracing," she says, but a wave catches her out in the lie, lapping up her thighs and splashing against her pussy. Her face says it all.

"Come out."

"Come in."

"I can't."

Amber shakes her head. "You can."

I glance up and down the empty beach. "When you say 'practically private'..." I say.

"Sometimes there are surfers," she says. "But they don't give a shit. Come on. We won't go deep. It's time you learned to swim."

I shake my head. "I'll learn to swim when you learn to tango."

She puts her hands on her hips, her feet apart. I don't want to go in the water but I'm still a man and she's so beautiful. "I learned some steps," she says. "Which means you should at least get your feet wet."

Yeah. She's got me there. I sigh and take off my shoes. Amber cheers. "And the rest!"

"No way. Wet feet. That was the deal." I roll up my pants and step into the surf. Ow. It's freezing. The slight boner that made it past my fear of her being dragged out to sea wilts before the water is even halfway up my calves.

She drops down on her knees so that the water comes up to her shoulders. "Chickenshit," she says. "How do you expect to learn to swim if you don't even get wet?"

"It's the ocean, Amber," I say. "People drown. There are sharks." I sound pathetic. I wish I could just do what she wants, tear off all my clothes and run into the water. Did he do that? The one who fucked her up so much she couldn't go from one end of the day to the other without crying?

"There aren't any sharks," she says. "Well, I mean, there are but they're not..."

"...not what? Hungry?"

She paddles up the beach towards me, until she's on her hands and knees in the surf, her wet hair streaming down. She looks like a mermaid who's just washed up and discovered that she has legs, and the place where they meet in the middle. It's getting harder and harder to keep those three little words out of my mouth - I know they're a complication she doesn't need right now.

“You’re more likely to get hit by a car than attacked by a shark,” she says. “Besides, we’re not going to go that deep.”

“How do you know we won’t get swept out?”

“I’m a good swimmer,” she says. A wave smacks her in the ass, nudging her thighs apart. I'm ready to envy the whole Pacific Ocean for that view of her. “I’ll take care of you.”