CHAPTER TWENTY
After leaving the farmer’s market, I drive to the lighthouse, my fingers clenched on the steering wheel. Winter is in the air, the crisp red and gold leaves strewn like a carpet over the road.
Tension grips my entire body. Only Flynn’s truck is parked in the lot, the gray cold keeping everyone away from the coast. I hurry up the path to the workroom door, rapping my knuckles against the weathered wood.
Flynn opens the door, a book of Hans Christian Andersen tales in his hand. No expression shows behind his stoic mask, which angers me all the more. I push past him, my heart pounding and my blood hot. The accusation bubbles into my throat like lava.
“You stole my secret.”
He closes the door and turns to face me. “I told you not to see King again.”
“He has nothing to do with this!”
“Why were you with him?” A muscle ticks in his jaw.
“Because I thought he’d be a good person to casually date.” A faint dizziness washes over me, like I’m standing on the deck of a rolling ship. “I wanted to get my bearings again. And because I’m tired of other people, you included, dictating what I can or can’t do. I signed your stupid contract because I want and need this job desperately, but I never agreed to do whatever you dictate outside the bounds of work. That’s why I was with him.”
I can almost see him processing that revelation, a slight crease appearing between his brows.
“What if I ask you not to see him again?” he finally says.
“Well, you might have tried that tactic the first time around.” I sigh, pressing a hand to my temple. “But it doesn’t matter because I’ve already decided I’m not going to see him again.”
“What made you decide that?”
I have nothing to give him but the truth.
“Because you bought scones for our tea. And because I can’t pretend I ever had any interest in him when I can’t stop thinking about you.”
His eyes darken, a crack in his stoicism. I clench my fists. Silence falls between us, heavy and thick. Frustration roils inside me like a tsunami.
“Why did you take my secret?” I ask.
“Part of my job is to clean and maintain the wall.”
“But you knew which secret was mine! You saw me put it in the wall.”
“I knew it was yours.” He regards me with detached gravity. “But first, I knew it was you.”
I pull in a breath past the tightness in my chest. “What does that mean?”
“That day… when you looked at the lighthouse, I saw your face.” He turns away, his hands flexing. “Hit me like a ton of bricks. Max’s Eve, suddenly right in front of me. Almost couldn’t believe it. And when you left, I had to know what kind of secret you could possibly have.”
“Why…” I swallow hard. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“It’s not a secret if other people know about it.”
“Do you steal other people’s secrets too?”
He doesn’t respond. His shoulders look stiff enough to break.
I grip the handle of my satchel. “What do you do with them?”
Again he doesn’t answer. Outlandish theories pop into my head. Blackmail, subversion, witness protection, informant.
Fresh anger surges in my blood. I stalk across the room and give him a hard shove. The impact doesn’t move him an inch, but his eyes widen slightly.
“Goddamn you, Flynn Alverton.” My body suddenly burns with all relentless emotions and curiosity I’ve been struggling to contain. “What is with you? You hide up here like the freaking Phantom of the Opera, and no one seems to know anything about you, much less what you do up here all by yourself. You act like you’re locking me out of the lighthouse, but frankly it feels more to me like you’re locking yourself in. You won’t tell me anything about Max or how you knew him, you make me sign some kind of non-disclosure contract, and now I find out you’re doing God knows what with the town’s secrets…”
I pace to the windows and back, my breath fast and my heart hammering.
“I mean, this is all fine and dandy if you’re the hero in a nineteenth-century Gothic novel,” I snap, “but you like my tea, for heaven’s sake, and sometimes you look at me like you want to rip off my clothes right then and there, and then you kiss me like you’re freaking starving… and it probably comes as no surprise that I haven’t had good sex in far too long, so yes, okay? You make me crazy hot… so hot I fantasized about you at work last week, which is so completely unprofessional, and if you only knew what I do every night alone in bed while thinking about you, you’d—”
The book he’s holding hits the ground with a thud. My breath lodges in my throat. He stalks toward me, his eyes darkening to charcoal, his whole body lining with tension.
He stops a foot away, his chest heaving and hands clenching. The air crackles and sparks with electricity, the only sound the rasping of our breath.
We lunge toward each other at the same time. Closing the distance. Desire breaking, splintering, shattering. He opens his arms. I drop my satchel and fly into them, crashing against his chest, wrapping my legs around his waist. Our bodies collide and fuse. He closes his arms around me, holding me against him, our eyes level. His heart beats against my breasts. Hunger fires the air.
“Fuck if I can stay away from you.” He brings one hand to the back of my neck, pulling my head closer.
He crushes his mouth down on mine, our lips meeting in a kiss of hot frenzy. Everything else falls away—the unanswered questions, the suspicions, the town gossip, his reticence. Only one thing matters. I’m finally in his arms, his body solid and secure against mine, his arms locked around me and his kiss spinning me into a whirlwind.
I drive my hands into his hair, reveling in the sensation of the thick strands sliding through my fingers, so much better than I’ve ever imagined. He urges my lips apart and delves his tongue into my mouth, licking and biting. He’s tense, hard, his muscles straining with self-restraint.
“Hurry,” I whisper against his mouth, tightening my legs around his waist. “Don’t be gentle. I can take it. I’ve dreamed about you so much and want you so badly…”
His groan echoes inside me, his eyes brimming with lust. But just when I expect him to set me down and start ripping off my clothes, he adjusts me in his arms, one hand curving under my knees and the other around my back. He holds me like I weigh no more than a feather.
“What…” I tighten my fingers on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
He smiles at me. My eyes widen, my heart almost exploding into a song-and-dance because… oh my God. He’s gorgeous all stern and unforgiving, but his perfect white smile transforms him into downright beautiful. His eyes crinkle at the corners, a dimple pops into his left cheek, and his face transforms from hot forbidden fantasy to sexy, warm, tangible man.
“I’m taking you to my bedroom.” He shoves open the cottage door and crosses to the kitchen.
“Your…” I’m so surprised I barely have the brain power to look around as he carries me through to a dining room, a living room, and up a narrow staircase to a hallway lined with doors.
He kicks one open and brings me inside, lowering me onto a large bed covered with a rumpled navy comforter. Eyes glimmering with desire, he climbs over me, engulfing me in his heat, his hands on either side of my head. He lowers his mouth to mine again. Shivers of anticipation race over my nerves.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” He strokes his hand up the front of my sweater, cupping my breast. “You cast a fucking spell over me.”
Rather than unnerving me, his confession fits right up against my own obsessed thoughts, the lust-drenched visions that have the smoky, blistered quality of a dream.
But now, he’s anything but a dream—his solid, strong body pinning me to the mattress, his arms trapping me, his kiss spiraling through me. Stifled by the weight of my clothes, I’m burning up. I wiggle beneath him so I can yank my sweater over my head.
“Perfect,” he mutters hoarsely, lowering his head to press a trail of kisses over my throat and shoulders, down to the curves of my breasts.
“Wait,” I whisper, need rising in me like steam from a boiling pot. “Let me…”
I tug futilely at my yoga pants. He grasps the waistband, pulling them off me and dropping them to the floor. Cooler air prickles my skin, but our carnal heat is ratcheting up with every passing second.
He lifts his head to stare at me, his eyes hot on my breasts, my stiff nipples pressing against my bra, the cotton panties hugging my hips. He twists the straps of my bra, pulling it off my shoulders and down.
I shiver, acutely aware that I’m mostly naked and he’s still fully clothed—and while, yes, I have imagined this exact scenario more than once, I’m never shy in my imagination. Just the opposite, in fact.
“Goddamn, Eve.” His throat works with a swallow as he stares at my naked breasts. Never in my life has a man looked at me with such aching need.
His breath escapes the instant before his mouth covers mine again. He palms my breasts, his long fingers pinching my nipples gently. Electric currents travel down to my core, melting my self-consciousness into pleasure. Arousal coils through my lower body, tight and tense. Oh God, he’s going to make me come just by touching my breasts.
He slides his mouth across my cheek, down to my neck where my pulse beats. He flicks his tongue out to lick the throbbing vein and closes his teeth around my collarbone.
I can hardly pull in another breath. I spread my hands over his chest. His body heat burns through his gray cotton T-shirt. Slipping my hands underneath it, I moan at the sensation of his rigid abdomen and smooth, hard muscles.
“I’ve thought about this so much.” He lowers his head to press his lips against my breasts. “Tasting you. Touching you. Hearing your moans. Sinking my cock into you…”
He curves his hand over my inner thigh, so close to my pussy that I buck upward in invitation. Easing one finger under the elastic of my panties, he groans when he discovers how wet I already am.
I’m trembling with excitement, every part of my body sensitized and attuned to this man. I can’t think past the lustful fog drenching my mind, can’t move my body under the drugging effect of his touch.
He kisses me as if he wants to devour me. God knows I want him to. I want him to invade me, fill me up, turn me inside out. I want him to fuck me, force me, make me come so hard I forget my own name.
Time slips away. Rain patters against the windows. A crashing sound echoes in my head, but I can’t tell if it’s the ocean or my heartbeat. He kisses my cheeks, my neck, my breasts, before moving back to my lips. He tastes like everything delicious—peppermint, allspice, amaretto. I squirm beneath him. He lifts himself away from me long enough to pull my panties off.
“You’re like a nymph.” He slides his hand over my breast to my belly. “A naiad dwelling in the water. All pale skin, red hair, perfect curves.”
Images of Victorian painted nymphs appear in my mind, their wild beauty mirroring forests, rivers, oceans, and meadows; their creamy, supine bodies spread decadently alongside riverbanks and sea grottos.
In all my years of studying such images, never once have I felt a kinship with the much-coveted erotic nymphs of mythology. Not until now.
He strokes lower, edging his hand between my legs, his fingers caressing the tender skin of my inner thigh. I shiver, a nascent flame rising in my blood as I open myself for the questing penetration of his touch.
And, oh dear lord, touch me he does, stroking my labia, sliding his forefinger into my opening, circling my clit. His breath rasps against my neck, hot and heavy.
I fumble for the buttons on his fly, my fingers shaking. He pushes to his knees and unfastens the buttons, shoving his jeans off. Need trembles inside me like the start of an earthquake. His cock is a heavy weight in his boxer briefs, his thighs corded with muscle.
My eyes widen. I swallow to ease my dry throat and slowly pull his briefs over his hips, moaning at the sight of his erection—long and thick, the veined shaft pulsing with blood, the smooth, damp head tempting me to close my lips around it and suck.
God in heaven, he’s beautiful.
“Flynn. Hurry.”
He moves away from me only long enough to retrieve a condom packet from the bedside table. He sheathes his erection and turns back to me, his expression filled with both lust and something else… a touch of disbelief, wonder… awe.
Desire snaps between us, like a piece of stained glass breaking in half. Then he’s hauling me toward him at the exact instant I pull him down to me, our bodies colliding and lips crashing together. I open my legs, wrap them around his hips, dig my fingers into his smooth shoulders. He braces one hand beside my head and position himself between my legs.
I gasp, arching into his touch as he fingers my pussy and slides his thumb around my swollen clit. He knows instinctively what I like, a firm, steady pressure that lights my blood on fire and has me aching for more.
He bites out a curse, low and sharp, before sliding his hands to my damp thighs and pushing them apart. Dizzy with longing, I expect him to plunge into me with one hard thrust, but he eases into me slowly, his muscles taut with self-restraint, his fingers digging into my thighs.
I lift my legs, my muscles straining. My heart beats wildly, my blood spilling like molten lava through my veins. I swallow and bite down on my lower lip as he pushes into me, inch by impossible inch, the invasion both exquisite and intimidating. His shaft throbs against my inner walls, his body a big, heavy weight over mine.
I arch my hips, encouraging him to thrust even as I brace myself for the pain. A groan shakes his chest. He sinks fully inside me, breaching my tender flesh with a power that wrenches a cry from my throat.
“Goddamn, Eve…” His lips comes down hard on mine, his tongue penetrating my mouth, his cock so deep inside me I feel it pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. I’m lost, overpowered, conquered.
He lifts himself off me, his eyes black with lust and urgency. Panting, I fist the bedcovers, my body quivering as I struggle to adjust to his overwhelming heat and size. He strokes my breasts, twisting my stiff nipples between his fingers, sending shocks of pleasure to my core. Our gazes lock like a chain through the tension-thick air.
“Do it,” I whisper, forcing my body upward. The head of his cock hits a particularly sensitive spot, and blissful tremors ripple through me. “Fuck me.”
He pulls back and pushes forward, not taking his eyes off me, his jaw tight. Slow at first, a delicious glide stroking me from the inside. Heat unfurls through every part of me.
I unclench my fingers from the bedcovers and brush my hand over his chest, awed by the strength of him, the power he’s kept leashed. I shift, wrapping my legs around his hips, encouraging him to move faster.
He lowers himself on top of me, his thrusts a heavy, rhythmic cadence that submerge me in lust. I can’t take my eyes off him, this extraordinary specimen of man with his sweat-damp chest and burning gaze, his messy black hair glowing in the late-morning light, his muscles bunched with urgency.
I never want it to end, the rocking and thrusting of our bodies, never want to emerge from the drenching haze of lust. I rake my fingernails down his smooth back, inhaling the clean, male scent of him. A sweet, hot pool of need expands inside me, pushing against the barriers of self-restraint.
“Oh, please…” I drag my lips across his stubble-rough cheek. “I want to come.”
“You will.” He grips my wrists and pins my hands to the bed, driving his cock into me. “Come on my cock. Let me feel it, nice and hard.”
I match the rhythm of his thrusts, my head filling with the wet, smacking sounds of our bodies. Arousal spreads through my belly, tightening my nerves, urging me toward the blissful peak.
“Oh my God.” I gasp, sweat trickling between my breasts, everything in me alive and on fire. “So good… I’m going to… I’m so close… oh!”
Sensations burst through my veins, a thousand colors sparking and popping. I arch upward and throw my arms around his shoulders as if he’s the only secure element in the rapturously spinning whirlwind. His voice is a low murmur in my ear, his cock still sliding in and out of me as I slowly descend the other side.
“Amazing,” he whispers, the word guttural and rough.
“You…” I fall back against the pillows, my body still pulsing. “I want to watch you come.”
He eases away from me, his chest heaving. He discards the condom and straddles my hips. I can only stare at him in a daze, captivated by the sight of him stroking his cock, his body taut as his hips rock back and forth. His breath increases. The head of his cock, appearing intermittently in the vise of his fist, grows dark red and damp.
“Almost…” He clenches his jaw, his hand moving faster. “Almost there… yeah… fuck.”
A deep groan rumbles from his chest the instant before semen shoots onto my belly and breasts, the creamy liquid dripping over my nipples and down my sides. I shiver with forbidden pleasure, unable to express even to myself why I want him to brand me with his seed. To claim me as his.
He collapses beside me and hauls me against him. Our breathing rasps through the hot, sex-drenched air. I stroke my hands over my breasts, rubbing his semen into my skin. He watches me, his eyes still filled with lust. I shift onto my side facing him.
He threads a hand through my hair, twisting a few strands around his fingers. Fatigue washes over me. I close my eyes.
He whispers a word, something poetic and musical that floats into my encroaching sleep. I reach for the word, but it’s gone, vanished, as if I tried to grasp a fistful of light.
I wake to the scent of Darjeeling tea. An early-afternoon sunlight has broken through the clouds and slants through the window. I must have been asleep for at least an hour.
I roll over and open my eyes. Flynn is slouched in a chair beside the bed, wearing a pair of drawstring pajama pants, his gorgeous chest bare. His foot is planted on the edge of the bed, and he’s watching me with an intent, pensive expression in his gray eyes. The way a person looks at a painting or a sculpture.
I push to my elbow, holding the sheet to my breasts. Our eyes meet. Hot and tender.
“You look like Flaming June.” He skims his gaze over my body. “A lovely dreaming woman draped in rippling folds.”
“That’s the most poetic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It’s not the most poetic thing I’ve thought about you.”
“Really?” I finger-comb my hair away from my forehead. “And here I thought you were so busy slamming doors on me you couldn’t be bothered to think much about me at all.”
“I’ve thought about you, Eve.” His voice roughens with desire, sparking heat in my blood. “I’ve been thinking about you for a very long time.”
Consternation flickers in his expression, as if he’d just said too much. He turns to a tea tray on a nearby table and pours two cups from a pot. After adding milk and sugar to them both, he hands one to me.
“You made this?” I accept the cup, then shift to sit and face him on the edge of the bed, adjusting the sheet around my body.
“Warmed the pot and everything.”
He settles back into the chair. The sun streams through the window and falls over him, spiking his hair with gold and caressing his muscled chest. For the first time ever, I’m jealous of the sun.
“So… a long time?” Given how much I’ve been dreaming about him, I’m not about to let that comment pass by unremarked.
“Since Max showed me that picture of you in the forest.” Flynn shrugs. “Aside from being the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, you looked so… I don’t know. Happy. Content, like you belonged there. Guess I envied you.”
My heart warms. “So why have you been trying so hard to lock me out? When I first started working for you. If you and Uncle Max were friends, why didn’t you want to be my friend?”
Flynn looks at the mug, his eyes clouding. “I knew I couldn’t just be friends with you. And getting involved with me is the worst thing you can do. You don’t need people talking about you more than they already are.”
Rebelliousness stiffens my spine. “I don’t care what people say anymore.”
“Yes, you do.”
You have to. The statement snaps through my head in Juliette’s sharp voice. But even if I didn’t hear her, I’d know the truth. If I want to restore both my career and reputation, of course I have to care what people say.
What people said had destroyed my life once, and what people will say can help rebuild it, unless I make another terrible mistake.
Flynn is not that mistake.
“I’ve already done the worst thing.” I set my cup on the nightstand. “And I paid the price. Now, for the first time in a long time, I trust myself. I won’t let anyone take that from me again. Not even you.”
He gazes at me for a long minute, emotion shifting behind the darkness in his eyes. “I can’t offer you anything else.”
“I’m not asking for anything else.”
“You deserve something else, Eve. As much as I appreciate this town, it’s not the place for you.”
“Flynn.” Frustrated, I lean forward and put my hands on his thighs. “First you try and shut me out with your I’m-a-brick-wall act, and now you’re trying to keep me at a distance like you’re afraid I don’t know what I’m getting into… well, stop it. I’ve been burned so badly the roots of my hair are still scorching, and it’s taken me a long time to put myself back together.
“However, you have made me hot as fuck since the day I ran into you outside the bookstore. I love that you bought Uncle Max’s collection, that you were friends with him, that you remembered a picture of me, and that you couldn’t stay away from my two o’clock teatime. I think you’re adorable for reading books about the Firebird and buying scones. I just like you.
“I like being with you, looking at you, talking to you, and God knows I love touching you… all because you’re the most compelling man I’ve ever met, and more importantly because you make me like myself again. So shut up with the excuses and the futile efforts to push me away because they won’t work. The only thing I want from you, Flynn Alverton, is you.”
Tension coils through him. Heat strikes the air. He flexes his hands, his jaw clenching as if he’s waging some kind of internal battle. For one heart-stopping instant, I think he’s going to be vintage Lighthouse Guy and walk out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Instead he sets his cup down and pulls me onto his lap, settling me against his warm muscled chest. He twists a few strands of my hair around his fingers and brings them in front of me.
“Look.” He rubs my reddish locks. “In the light, your hair is a thousand different shades of red and gold. It was the first thing I noticed about you when I saw you at the wall. But then I realized it’s not just your hair. It’s you. You’re crimson, gold, scarlet. You’re a sunrise.”
I stare at him. My throat closes over. When has anyone ever called me a sunrise?
“I changed my mind.” I swallow hard. “That was the most poetic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He smiles faintly and runs his hand over my cheek. “I lost track of how many times I had to stop myself from touching your hair. From touching you. And when I did, there was no turning back. I’ve never met someone with your honesty and strength. You’ve already changed my world.”
More broken pieces slide back into place, seamless and smooth. If I let him, he could make me whole.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
He covers my lips with his, bringing both arms around me, locking me against him. His strong, eternal heart beats in rhythm with mine. His body is a wall of strength, his arms a protective circle I never want to leave. He lowers me onto the bed, his hands stroking, reawakening the desire simmering just beneath the surface of my skin.
I surrender all over again, enfolding him with my arms and legs, our lips locked, endlessly seeking. There’s not an instant when we’re apart. Our skin slides together, our limbs tangle, his cock eases into me again and again.
We fall into the sweet hot crush of urgency before spiraling and cresting upward. His groan echoes my cry of pleasure, like a timeless call of promise.
Afterward, I curl up against his side as fatigue washes over us both. He caresses my shoulder with slow, lazy circles.
“I figured it out.” I run my hand over his abdomen, tracing the ridges with my fingers. “Your favorite fairy tale is The Emperor’s New Clothes. I, for one, would be happy to see you walk naked through town.”
He pats my hip. “If you were the only one watching, I would.”
“But it’s not your favorite?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Pursing my lips, I lift my head to study him. “What about a story about a mischievous, magical imp, like Rumpelstiltskin? He could spin straw into gold, after all, even if he does tear himself into two at the end.”
Darkness and something else I can’t quite read—Shock? Trepidation? Fear?—flash over his features, quick as a comet.
My stomach tenses. I suddenly feel like I said something wrong, though I have no idea what. To deflect the cloud, I trail my fingers across his upper arm. “Considering you like my hair, maybe it’s Rapunzel?”
He shakes his head and tugs at a lock of my hair.
“I don’t think it’s an animal fairy tale,” I muse, mentally reviewing a list of popular stories. “Max always liked Puss in Boots. He said trickster characters are always hard to pin down. They can be heroes or villains, geniuses or fools. And trickster animals have been around for ages. The origins of Puss in Boots can be traced all the way to the fifth century and a Sanskrit text called Panchatantra, a collection of animal fables that included a conniving cat. Uncle Max said fictional tricksters are more like real people than most human characters are.”
“Max also talked a lot,” Flynn observes, his voice drowsy. “Must be an inherited trait.”
I lift an eyebrow and give his thigh a little pinch. He squeezes my ass in response.
“You like to order people around,” I remark peevishly. “So maybe your favorite is a more obscure story, like Andersen’s The Evil King. An arrogant king wants to conquer all the countries of the world until he’s defeated by a tiny mosquito.”
“I have zero interest in conquering the world.” He closes his eyes, circling his hand slowly over my rear. “I wouldn’t get enough sleep.”
“Ah, is it Sleeping Beauty?” I nuzzle his shoulder.
“No.” Tension ripples through him. “But I do wish I could stop time for a hundred years.”
“Why?”
He tightens his arm around me. “So everything would stay exactly the way it is now.”