Chapter Thirty-Two
Ashland
I stood, turned and stretched my hand back to her.
Fanny gave me a dazed look that made my fiercely possessive gaze burn brighter. “C’mon.” I crooked my fingers.
“But.” She flushed. “Can’t we do the kissing some more?”
“Definitely, but for now we need to get going.”
“Ok,” she mumbled. “But I don’t know what can possibly be more important.”
“Surfing.”
“Oh, hell, no. I already told Simone.” She shifted her gaze to the ocean. “The waves are too big. It’s getting late, too. And sharks eat at dusk, don’t they?”
“The waves are running six to nine feet. That’s about perfect.” Perfect like those lips of hers and that kiss. I captured her hand and drew her up. She put her hands on my chest but peeked around my shoulder.
“You sure?” She started to gnaw on her plump bottom lip, giving me ideas.
Later, I told myself firmly.
“I’m sure,” I said to her, trying to focus on the current priority. “We’ll use my board. It’s bigger. It’ll be easier to balance.”
“But the sharks.”
“It’s not dusk yet. I’ve got plans for dusk.”
“The Deck Bar?”
“Yes, there’s that, but after I want to talk about some things.” Do some other things hopefully. Tonight. Tomorrow. The next and the one after that.
“Alright. But why don’t we talk now?” Grey eyes uncertain, her poor abused bottom lip glistened beckoning me to lick and soothe it.
“Not enough time for a private discussion. And don’t you wanna hang with everyone? I certainly want you with me.”
“Ok.” She looked a little happier with those clarifications.
“So open your bag and get your wetsuit back on.” I framed her face, stroking her silken soft cheeks with my thumbs. “You can do it, babe.”
“Maybe.” Her gaze drifted to the side. The ocean was doing its thing behind us, the waves cracking as they turned over, the foam hissing as the unraveled curls flattened at the shore.
“Not maybe. For sure. I’ll be right beside you.”
“Promise?” Her gaze came back to me.
“Yes. We’ll stay in the shallow water unless you want to go deeper.” Just like it would have to be between her and me. No pushing. No manipulating her. Or not much. Persuasive coercion. Sharing parts of myself bit by bit. Planning. Maintaining control. Making her want me wasn’t actually manipulating, was it?
“How shallow?”
“Fanny, c’mon.” I smiled. “You’ve got to at least dip your toes in the water if you want to get wet.”
“I know that, Ash,” she huffed, putting her delicate hands on her enticing hips. So fucking cute. So sexy with that peekaboo top over her delectable tits. Long shapely legs that I wanted to see, wanted to trace, wanted to feel wrapped around me. Oh the things I wanted to do with her. I was so enchanted, so far gone, I didn’t even get onto her about not wearing a hat or sunglasses right now. The beach was semi crowded, but nobody was paying a bit of attention to us, and anyway, no one was getting to her or coming between us, except maybe myself.
“I just, you know, don’t want to be where a great white might nibble on my toes.”
Great whites didn’t nibble. They took big fucking chunks out of people or their boards mistaking them for sea lions, but I certainly didn’t go there.
“Get your wetsuit on.” I used the tone that always sent her scurrying into motion. And it worked, she turned and started to reach for her bag, but then I stopped her, my hand curling around her arm. “I know you’re brave. So you’re going to rock it. Surfing is part bravado, part balance and mastering maneuvers. Once you know the basic techniques, it’s a whole lot of fun. I love it. I just want to share it with you. Like time with my friends. Ok?”
~ ~ ~
Fanny
“You did great, little one. You stood up on your board several times.”
“Four times,” I corrected him. It seemed important.
“Like I said several.”
“Several is three.”
“Alright. So four. That’s excellent for a first time. So why are you frowning?” He turned my head toward him, his touch warm and his breath visible under the large ‘Ocean Beach is my kind of cool’ beach blanket we were huddled under.
“Because everyone else is still out there, and you made me come in,” I complained.
“Ah. You were having fun.”
“I was just getting the hang of it.” Fun was a stretch. My limbs felt rubbery, my muscles overstretched. I had bits of seaweed stuck to my cap of hair and grits of sand crunched between my teeth. Having Ash’s hands all over me for the exercise had been the payoff. Each time I had fallen off he had plucked me out of the surf and held his board steady on the water so I could climb right back on it again.
“Your suit wasn’t insulated. You were shivering. And you were taking on too much seawater there at the end. I was afraid there wouldn’t be any ocean left for the rest of us.”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.”
“You’re more than funny.” His tone was low. His gaze had dipped to my mouth. “You’re capital A-adorable with all your feisty determination, and I want to kiss you very badly right now to warm you up.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because you’re covered in sand for one thing.”
“Oh. Hmm. Well, that didn’t stop that couple in ‘Here to Eternity’.”
“That was a movie, and you’re making my case about the implausibility of most of the shit that comes out of Tinsel Town. But the main reason I’m not laying you out on the sand right now like I want to is because the next time I kiss you I want to take my time, and I plan for you to be naked.”
“Oh.” I smiled.
“You like that plan.” He traced my saltwater sticky sandy lips with his finger, his eyes turning as dark as the surf was now. I stopped shivering as heat rolled through me.
I nodded.
“Me, too.”
“Yo, asshole. This is a public beach. Get a room.”
“Go fuck yourself, Le.” Ash used the finger he’d had on my mouth to communicate his displeasure to the bassist. He could multitask with it apparently.
I turned my gaze to the ocean watching the wave warriors with their boards under their arms emerge in a line horizontal to the shore. There was just enough light left to illuminate them. Diesel smiling his mocking smile. Ramon shaking out the saltwater from his curly hair. Karen laughing. Simone and Linc with their boards under their outer arms so they could hold hands.
“We’re going in to wash up,” Linc announced when he and Simone were only a couple of feet from where Ash and I were huddled.
“By washing up you mean fucking in the shower,” Diesel snickered.
“Busted.” Linc grinned. Diesel didn’t seem to get under his skin as readily as he did Ash’s. The cousins were as different in personality as they were at surfing. Linc free and easy seemed to go with the flow of the waves, doing tricks, laughing and smiling. Ash wore a look of intense concentration, his movements controlled, the ocean another something for him to master. “I like that idea. Too bad your partner’s gonna be your hand.”
“Uh, no. I met a brunette that’s gonna swing by my hotel room in a couple of minutes. So if I’m doing things with my hand I won’t be doing them to myself.”
“Diesel,” Karen complained, rolling her eyes. “You are such a skank.”
“So we all meet at the Deck Bar in an hour,” Ramon decided. “We bringing instruments to do a little impromptu jamming,” the guitarist asked the man beside me, “or we just eating, dancing and having some drinks?”
“Bring ‘em,” Ash replied. “It’s been a while since we played together.”
“The benefit concert in New Orleans,” Linc remembered.
“Yeah, so if we’re all agreed, and we sound decent I might be able to put the Dogs on as special guests on Ramon’s tour. Anyone game?”
“Hell, yeah,” Diesel said. “I’m going anyway. Double paycheck.”
“Me, too, obviously,” Ramon said. “But no additional stops. When Karen’s at six months I’m not going anywhere.”
“Noted.” Ash turned to regard his cousin. “Linc?”
“I’m always ready to play and hang with you guys. And the women are with us on this tour. We mainly disbanded the band for you, dude. The question is are you up for it?”
“It’s not a full tour, Linc. Just a half dozen stops to promote a greatest hits release. Add in some live recordings maybe an additional song if we can find something in the vault to dust off or something new if one of us gets inspired.”
“You’re putting out a greatest hits CD?” I asked, excitement ringing in my voice.
“Yeah,” he answered. “A double album. Vinyl pressings included.”
“Alright! So cool. Love it.”
“I forget you’re such a big fan until you do shit like that.”
“Sorry if I got a little enthusiastic.”
“There you go.” His eyes went warm. “Making me smile again.”
~ ~ ~
Fanny
“What are you doing?” I asked as Ash stalked into the bedroom, his gaze sweeping over me in my olive bikini, my gauzy skirt a white puddle beneath me and my mesh tank clutched in front of my chest. “Is it time to go already?” Had I lost too much time recapping the afternoon events to my sister? The swoon worthy kiss. My surfing experience. “Why did Hollie rush out of here as if a secret lost episode of Gilmore Girls was being aired in the other room?”
“I had an order of fish tacos delivered from the Deck Bar for her.”
“But I thought we were bringing her some after we ate.”
“That was the original plan yeah,” he said distractedly, looking at me again, sticky head to sandy toes, only slower this time. “I have a different plan now.”
“Really?” I asked, feeling short of breath, his husky voice and accompanying perusal eliciting a needful shiver.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” My nipples tight aching points beneath my damp top, I had drawn the mesh tank to my chest to hide my obvious response to him.
“Hide yourself. It’s a tease. But gliding my hands all over you in the ocean was about all the tease I could take. I had to take care of myself in the shower. Now it’s time to take care of you.”
“Oh.” My lips rounded. I was disappointed he hadn’t thought to invite me to join him. But disappointment gave way to desire as I imaged him stroking himself in the shower. One hand palm pressed flat on the tile wall, his other urgently pumping his wet cock while water sluiced all over his glorious nude body.
“Being the recipient of all that gliding was a tease for me, too,” I informed him. “And imagining you touching yourself and ejaculating…” I trailed off, licking my lips. His gaze dipped to my mouth.
“Don’t, Fanny. Don’t do sexy shit like that.”
“Like what?”
“Talk about my cum while licking your lips. Just looking at your mouth, your lush lips and hearing your breathy voice is making me hard again. And with you I need to be…I have to be…” He blew out a breath. “Later we’ll talk, and then we’ll have more time. Right now it’s about you.” His gaze dropped. “I want to see you.” His voice deepened. “All of you.” His eyes rose, and they were a darker impassioned midnight blue. “Ditch the shirt.”
I released it immediately. White and black now at my feet, he took a step closer. My breath hitching inside my chest, my gaze lifted. Indigo wash jeans, clinging in all the right places. Thighs. Hips. Other places. I resisted licking my lips. Creamy long sleeve linen shirt. His masculine hands, neatly trimmed nails, long fingers that he’d used to grip my waist and lift me onto his board. I so wanted to feel his wide hands all over my skin, his firm grip parting my thighs, his finger one maybe even two dipping inside me to see how wet I was for him.
“What are you thinking?” he demanded abruptly.
“Huh?” I asked, my gaze jumping to his face. “Just now. Your face flushed. Your lips parted. Fucking hell, tell me.”
So I did. In detail. His expression grew tight, his eyes dark and heated. His body, too. He was only a couple of inches away, but I felt warmth coming off him in waves. My chin lifted to regard him.
“Touch me,” I begged. I wanted to feel all that heat and his strength pressing against me. “Please, Ash. I want you. I want to feel your touch.”
“Yes, little rose.” He lifted his arm and laid his hand against my cheek skimming his fingers against my soft skin. I leaned into his touch, turned my head and drug my mouth across the inside of his hand, the rounded part at the base of his palm first then traveling to the middle where his lifeline began. I kissed him there, darted out my tongue and tasted him, too. Salt. Citrus. Smoke.
He hissed and jerked back his hand.
“Fanny. Fuck.” His fingers on the hand I had kissed curled into a fist. First that hand then the other at his side. “I felt that in my cock, you know.” His gaze was steamy blue, his voice a velvet growl, his expression drawn. He looked hungry. For me.
“I can feel you between my legs,” I told him wanting to feed that hunger. “When you look at me like you are now, I feel hot there. I get wet. I ache, and I need you.”
“I know what you need. Hold still this time.” His hands flexed then loosened as he came closer stripping the space between us, the edge of his Reef flip-flops against my dainty toes. His firm thighs in his jeans to my trembling ones. His pelvis a cradle for my hips. His cock thick, hard and lengthening.
I glanced up. “You’ve got to hold me.”
“I’ve got you.” He grabbed me by my upper arms as I swayed, and I arched my spine to bring that part of me that most ached to the part of him that felt just as turgid with need.
“You feel so good,” he groaned. His grip tightened on my skin. “I want you so badly.” His fingers bit into my flesh. I could feel his restraint, see the cost of it in the rigidity of his expression. “I thought I could take it slow. Come in here. Play. Tease you. Unthread those strings from that top. Separate the sides. Have you shrug it off like you did your robe this morning. See your gorgeous tits. Watch them swell and those pretty dusky nipples draw tight.”
“Yes,” I panted, imagining it, my breasts already doing those things. My entire body hot, needy and preening for him.
“But then you, Fanny. Shy and seductive. Giving and demanding at the same time. I had in mind what to do. How things should go with us. How far they could go. How much time we had, but I…”
“Hey, Ash,” Hollie yelled from the hall. “Your cell’s ringing.”
“That’ll be Karen. I told you how she is about people being late.” He sighed and pried his fingers from my skin. “Go get your shower. We’ll finish this later.”