Seacrest Sunsets Page 18

  She clenched her jaw. She’d denied him the first night, but she doubted he’d be derailed tonight. She might as well settle in and see if he could redeem her past experiences. If ever there was a man who could…

  Nudging her legs apart, he lay before her at her center, and she had to close her eyes from the rush of want and intensity that ran through her just seeing him there, knowing what he was there for. Tingles fanned throughout her body as warm and wet sensations registered in her brain. How did this act she’d always steered away from feel like the most natural thing in the world and altogether unlike the stiff, darting tongue of her first boyfriend in quite the wrong spot?

  She squirmed, grabbing fistfuls of the sheets as she went on this ride with him. Just when he had her settled into one pattern, he started another, working his tongue in a way she couldn’t even figure out, and honestly, didn’t care to. When she thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, he slipped a finger inside of her, and her body quaked with a variety of sensations so powerful she wasn’t even sure who she was anymore.

  No longer able to contain the sensations coursing through her from the inside out, she let out a wail as the heat crested in her core and tingles flooded through her arms and legs, all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  She lay there still for a moment, her eyes shut, processing what he’d just done to her, what he’d allowed her to experience. She thought she’d be there a good thirty minutes waiting on an orgasm, but the whole thing felt like it lasted seconds instead.

  He lay beside her, leaving kisses on her shoulder and the top of her hand. She opened one eye and tried to contain her smile. “Thank you.”

  He laughed. “You don’t have to thank me for going down on you.”

  “Oh, yes I do. I had no idea what I’d been missing out on all these years.”

  He turned toward her and moved his hand around on her stomach. “I’ve been waiting all week for that.”

  A million butterflies leapt to attention in her belly as he climbed back on top of her and took both of her hands. He pulled them up beside her head, staring into her eyes.

  “I’m so ready for you,” she whispered.

  “I’m so glad.” He lifted off of her and pulled a condom out of the drawer. Losing his boxers, he readied himself and found his way to her.

  She squeezed his arms. “I think this will work best if you just really go for it hard.”

  He pushed inside her, the length of him reaching to her chest, seemingly. As he kept pushing, the pain subsided, turning into intense, full-on, filling-her-up pleasure. Every push of him into her intensified her passion, her body’s need for him. He lowered himself down farther onto her, holding himself up with his elbows, their bare bodies melding together as one as they fell into sync with one another. Her hands rested on his ass and she pushed him harder into her, needing him further inside her though it was physically impossible.

  He buried his face in her neck, kissing her a few times, still moving hard into her, and then he lifted up off of her and sped up his pace, her body filling with the familiar rush of heat and sensation so strong she thought she might detonate right there on the bed. She pressed her hands against the wall behind her, holding herself in place as his movements got stronger and faster. Her breaths came short and stilted as her body hit its crescendo, and she let out a wail that could be heard throughout the Greater Panama City Beach area.

  He let out his own groan as he slowed down and ultimately collapsed on top of her. His heart pounded against her chest, their bodies so full of heat, damp from their workout, their bare skin mingled with one another’s. He pulled off of her slightly so he could see her face. “I don’t want to get up.”

  She gripped his shoulders, and then pulled his body back down on top of hers. “Just stay inside me, Bo.”

  He kissed her neck and then guided her arm over her head, running the backs of his fingers down her arm and across the side of her breast. “I’ve never known anything as gorgeous as you.” She smiled at him, her heart swelling like a balloon. He ran his hand down her side and gripped her thigh. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  He made his way to the bathroom while she covered her face with the pillow. She’d never felt happiness and contentment like she did at that moment. How was she going to leave him? What was she leaving him for, a stupid job?

  She stared at the ceiling while trying desperately to organize her thoughts. Her job was not stupid. It was the job she’d been poised to move into for years. It was a VP job. She’d be the youngest VP in the company’s history. And all it took was an amazing orgasm for her to think it was stupid. Jeez, she was turning into her sister.

  Bo shut off the bathroom light and walked toward her, his body still entirely exposed, penis that could be in porn hanging down between his legs. He handed her a washcloth. “Do you need this?”

  She took it from him. No man had ever brought her a towel after sex. The simple gesture was so earnest that it made her eyes water. “Thanks.”

  He sat on the bed next to her. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, using the clean washcloth to dab at her eyes. “I’m totally fine. It’s just, you’re very unexpected, Bo Harrison.”

  “Well, if you think I saw you coming, you’re nuts.”

  She sat up, pulling the sheet over her lap. “So, be honest with me. How many times have you done this?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Had sex?”

  “No, please, I don’t need to know that. How often do you spend the week with a girl down here on vacation?”

  He frowned, repositioning himself in front of her. “I’m not gonna lie, darlin’, I’ve done this a lot. But I thought I’d sworn off week-long relationships.” He met her gaze with half a smile. “That’s why I didn’t ask you in on that first night. I wanted to. Goddamn did I want to, but I knew you weren’t someone I could sleep with and forget about.”

  She huffed a laugh, her heart full of bittersweet irony.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I just can’t believe my luck. I finally meet this unicorn of a guy, and you’re four states away.”

  “You’re calling me a unicorn?” he asked.

  She gave him a smile. “Mmm hmm.” She took his hand. “Have you ever done the long-distance thing?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “How does that usually work out?” she asked. He gave her a look, and she nodded, already having known the answer. She narrowed her gaze, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Tell me about Angela.”

  With that, his soft expression toughened, and he let out a resigned sigh. “What do you want know?” He said it like a suspect who’d been worn out and was reluctantly ready to spill.

  “She was someone important to you?” Maya asked, not necessarily wanting the answer but needing it.

  “Yeah, she was.”

  “How long were you together?”

  He adjusted himself on the bed, moving to sit next to her, his back against the wall. “A long time.” She lifted her eyebrows, waiting for his response. He let out an exhausted breath. “Nine years.”

  She blinked, turning her body toward him. “Nine years?” He winced at the look on her face, and she grabbed his arm. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I’m just curious why you haven’t mentioned her. That’s a long time to be with someone.”

  “We’ve been apart since before I was thirty. Honest to God, I don’t know why Jennifer had to mention her the other day. It’s not like they were good friends.”

  “Did you know her from high school?”

  “No, college.”

  “Is she from here?” she asked.

  “No, she’s from a little town about a half hour outside of Tallahassee. We were at Florida State.”

  Maya narrowed her gaze. “So she moved here with you after college?”

  “More or less.”

  She wanted details, the whole story, but she could tell she was going to have to drag this out of him p
iece by piece. “Did you meet her in class, or at a party, or…” she trailed off, hoping he’d finish that sentence.

  “I met her at the library of all places.”

  She smiled, lifting her eyebrows. “Most people study at the library.”

  “I was there studying, if you can believe it. Grad school was kicking my ass. She was a few years younger than me, but as far as school went we were both in study mode. So we sort of settled in with one another. It was like a whole different life for me. I’d been drinking and chasing tail for four years, and now I was studying and hanging out with a girlfriend.”

  “How much younger than you was she?”

  He thought about it, squinting. “Three years. I was twenty-two when we met, so she would have been nineteen.”

  “So did you graduate around the same time?” She knew that couldn’t be right, but she was still trying to figure out the story. Not only did she want to know, but she sensed that he wanted, or needed, to tell it.

  He pulled the sheet over his lap. “No, she was behind in school. She hated it. She threatened to quit all the time. I was always encouraging her to keep trying. When it came time for me to graduate, I was ready to leave Tallahassee. I couldn’t get home fast enough. Shayla was already back, most of my good friends had already graduated, and I’ll just tell you, I was homesick. I’d been working on my business plan all through grad school. I couldn’t wait to get home and get started.”

  “So what happened?”

  He frowned, picking at a fold in the sheet. “She wanted to come back here with me. I wanted her to stay and finish, but she was commuting from home, and she had a horrible home life. Her mom was hooked on drugs, always had men around.”

  The look of disgust on his face told her there was more to that story, but she would definitely not push him there.

  “I went home with her one Saturday and that was all I needed to see. I never wanted her to go back there again.” He shook his head slowly. “I couldn’t leave her there, knowing she’d have to move back into that hellhole. I was the only stable thing she’d ever had in her life. Goddamn, it made me thankful for my family.”

  Maya took his hand in hers and kissed the top of it. As he smiled at her, she was overcome with gratefulness for this time with him.

  He looked at the wall in front of them, seeming like he was drifting off to a past world. “I kept trying to get her to finish school online, encourage her to start building a career, but she had no interest. She said she was fine waiting tables.”

  “So did she work with you to build the pool business?”

  “No. We kept everything separate from one another. We were together, but after a while it felt more like a roommate situation than a romantic one. She was always private, so I respected her keeping her distance, and, hell, I was always working, building the business during the day and working construction or bartending at night. It was nothing for us to go a few days without even seeing each other. I kept telling myself it was the hours I was keeping, and once things calmed down, I’d remember why we were together.”

  “Did that happen?”

  “I finally got the business to a point I could quit the side work and started focusing on her more. But she wasn’t focused on me.”

  Maya’s gut churned at the possibilities. “Was she with another guy?”

  “No, but she’d picked up her mother’s prescription drug habit. I was just too in my own world to see it until I really started looking at her.”

  “That’s so tough, Bo.”

  “Man, have you ever seen anyone go through that?”

  She shook her head, realizing just how insulated her life had always been.

  “It was heartbreaking. She’d go through rehab, and then just when I thought she was going to make it, she’d slip back away, and we’d be right where we started.”

  Maya hadn’t known anyone with a drug problem, but she did understand feeling out of control. “Did she ever pull out of it?”

  He let out a deep sigh, his face turning even more solemn than before. “She’d been clean for ten months, which was encouraging. But she started talking about wanting a baby. There was no way I was bringing a kid into that life. She wasn’t even a year clean, and besides that, we weren’t in love. Hell, I don’t know that we ever had been.”

  “You must have loved her though to stick with her through all of that.”

  He shrugged, shaking his head. “I’m not going to say I didn’t.” He turned to Maya. “But I didn’t have a clue what being in love was.”

  Maya’s hands trembled with the intensity in his eyes. She fought tears that she couldn’t allow. She didn’t want him to think she was reading too much into his words.

  “So, the baby?” she asked, needing to return to the story before she said something she couldn’t take back.

  He adjusted himself on the bed. “She started wanting to have sex again.” He glanced over at her. “I’m not trying to give too much information here, but we hadn’t had sex in at least a year, hell, probably longer than that. She was wanting a baby, and I just wanted out. Hell, I wanted out as much for me as for her. Neither one of us was happy. But I couldn’t leave her until I knew she was stable enough. I kept putting her off, the talk of babies worrying me. I got suspicious and found her pack of birth control pills. It was a Thursday, and the last pill she had taken was on a Sunday, who knew which Sunday.”

  Maya’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh wow.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That was a wakeup call like nothing I’d ever had.”

  “Did you confront her?”

  “I ended it. I’d had all I could take. I packed a bag and headed over to Shayla’s apartment to think straight. She texted me and told me she was headed home to see her mom. She was baiting me, I knew it, but I couldn’t sit still thinking about her going there. They hadn’t spoken in years, and as badly as I wanted out, I didn’t want her back on those drugs or way worse. So I jumped in my truck and drove down there. When I pulled up to her mom’s trailer, I was sick at my stomach to see Angela’s car was already there. I was praying the whole way that she was bullshitting me, but I knew she hadn’t been. Other than hiding shit from me, she rarely lied to me. I opened the truck door and heard screaming, so I ran inside. I found her mother passed out on the couch and some greasy old man pinning Angela to the floor, trying to unbutton his pants one-handed while he held her wrists with the other hand.”

  Maya held one hand over her mouth, squeezing his hand with her other one. “Bo.”

  He shook his head. “I knew right then I’d never be able to leave her again.”

  Maya felt sick as she imagined the scene in vivid color, the desperation both Bo and Angela must have felt. “How did it finally end?”

  “A cousin of hers called one day and said her mother died of an overdose. Six months later I came home from work one night and found a couple of bags by the door. The place looked like it’d been thinned out, but my laptop was still at the kitchen table, and the television was still there. I heard music coming from the bedroom. I opened the door to find her on top of some guy, him about to let go inside of her right there in our bed.”

  Maya’s heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Oh my God.”

  He gave a humorless smile. “He scrambled off the bed, grabbing for his clothes saying, ‘Fuck, fuck. I didn’t know she was married. I swear to God.’ She hadn’t let him in on the game, apparently.”

  Maya swallowed hard. “Did you know who he was?”

  “Not a clue.”

  She let out a huff of air, blown away by the story. “What did she do?”

  “She just laid there on the bed, staring at me, not making a single move. After he was gone, she pulled a dress over her head, walked over to me, and said, ‘Now you’re off the hook completely.’ She walked out the front door, and I haven’t seen her since.” Maya didn’t have a clue how to respond, so she didn’t. He turned to her, his brow furrowed. “I’ve never told anyone that last part, not even Shayl
a.”

  Maya blinked, feeling honored that he’d felt okay to share it with her. “Why does she think you broke up?”

  He shrugged. “She just thinks Angela left, which is true enough.”

  “What did Shayla think about her?”

  “She’d wanted me to end it for years. She always felt bad for her, but when I told her it was finally over, she cried she was so relieved. I hadn’t seen Shayla cry since we were little.”

  Maya’s heart warmed as she wished so badly she could stay one more day so she could meet Shayla on Saturday, but that was just silly. Bo needed to spend time with Shayla when she got here, and Maya would need to be out of the picture by then, because who was Maya going to be to this family? Nobody.

  Maya slid her arms around his waist, and he brought her into his chest. “Thank you for trusting me with all of this,” she said.

  He huffed a laugh. “Damn. I know how to bring down a mood, don’t I?”

  She kissed his chest, wondering how she was ever going to let go of him. “I wanted to hear it. I hope I didn’t push you too hard.”

  “I’ve been needing to get that out for six years.”

  She squeezed him harder, understanding so much about him now. “So I take it this has something to do with why you’ve never settled down into another relationship.” She sat up so she could see him.

  “I’ve been scared as shit. But I can’t let my past keep me from what could be a great thing. Not anymore.” He gazed into her eyes, and she’d never felt closer to anyone in her life. She nodded, words failing her. He took her hand. “We’ve still got tonight and all day tomorrow. I want to spend it all with you. I know you’re here to see Sebastian, but—”

  “I want to spend it with you, too.”

  He smiled at her. “Good.”

  She hiked her leg over him, straddling him, and then taking him into her hand. She moved up and down on him, watching him grow before her very eyes. When she had him ready, she pulled a condom out of his nightstand and held it in front of him. “When’s the last time you had sex without one of these?”