CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

ALICIA

“He is so freaking infuriating,” I muttered to myself as I tried, and failed, to control my temper. Rage like I’d never felt before was zipping jolts of lighting from my stomach to my extremities, causing goosebumps to rise on my skin and my head to swim.

Who the hell did my father think he was? After what he’d done, me walking around in underwear wasn’t even a blip on the radar, and yet, he thought he had the right to chastise me for it? Even if I had been walking around naked in a house occupied by strange men and having Roman orgies while snorting drugs off of their cocks, it still wouldn’t have come close to his unscrupulous moral behavior.

If anyone had the right to be pissed at anyone, it definitely wasn’t him with me. The fresh ocean breeze that was cooling my skin didn’t help calm the fire raging inside me. I felt hot everywhere, and not in a good way.

It felt like the little clothes I was wearing were tightening onto my skin, choking and suffocating me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I whipped the shirt over my head and dropped it on the balcony, running onto the warm sand as I shed my underwear as well.

It was still early enough that despite the brightness of the sun and the clear blue skies, the sand wasn’t burning my feet. I still ran like it was, leaping into the icy waters of the Nantucket sound completely in the nude.

A quick scan of the beach revealed that there was no one around for miles. There weren’t even any other houses in sight. Not that it would have put me off my desperate mission to prove that I still had some form of independence. In fact, after everything I’d just yelled at my dad, it might even have made me feel a bit better if there was more than one person around to witness my lame attempt at sovereignty.

The water lapped at my skin, freezing it until my teeth were chattering and the heat burning in my veins had all but disappeared. I kept going. Swimming had always been therapeutic for me, and I found that it helped now. Every once in a while, I would turn my face toward the beach. I’d heard Nick calling for me shortly after I’d leaped into the water, but I’d ignored him over the rush of blood to my head from how damn furious I was with my father.

I was grateful for the fact that Nick was letting me swim, not trying to take away this one last thing from me that I was clinging to with all my might. He seemed to understand my drive to be in the water, that I was using it to reclaim some of the freedom that had been yanked away from me without my permission.

Instead of dragging me out of the water and ordering me back under lock and key, he was standing at the edge of beach, his hands tucked into the front pockets of his low-slung jeans. I loved that he hadn’t put his suit back on this morning, that he was allowing himself, in some small measure, to be himself with me while we were alone.

It didn’t mean that he liked having me out here, though. Even across the distance that I’d put between myself and shore, I could see that he was tense. His eyes were darting around all over the place to detect any possible threats, and his shoulders were locked.

And then suddenly, I didn’t want to be out in the sound by myself anymore. I wanted Nick’s arms around me, and I wanted to watch his muscles tense because of pleasure, instead of worry. I wanted him, and it had nothing to do with the fact that having him meant doing the one thing that would prove to be the biggest act of my frail independence under the circumstances.

It was because he’d held me all night long and couldn’t get enough of me, just like I hadn’t been able to get enough of him. It was because even though I’d woken up to an empty bed, the smell of bacon wafting from the kitchen comforted me almost as much as waking up in his arms would have, because it meant that he was watching out for me. It was a million little things, from the deep glow of the golden specks in his eyes when he told me that he loved me to the fierce way that he protected me like it was his own life on the line.

With long, sure strokes, I swam back to shore. My eyes pinned on his as I emerged from the sound. I was naked and dripping wet, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of self-consciousness. If anything, I’d never felt as confident as I did when Nick saw me naked.

As if the sight of me had flipped a switch inside of him, the worry in his eyes turned to the burning heat of desire. His tongue even darted out to wet his lips, and he swallowed like his mouth was actually watering.

It was empowering and the exact opposite of the helplessness that I’d been feeling earlier. I walked right up to him, cupped his face to feel light stubble scraping at my palms, and pulled his head down, kissing him aggressively.

The most amazing thing was that he let me. His arms came around my waist almost automatically, without as much as a second of hesitation. Nick’s warm lips parted, and he sucked my tongue into his mouth with a low groan. With one hand pressed to my lower back, he jerked me closer to him, my hard nipples meeting the soft material of his Henley. I arched my back to push my breasts into his chest, and his hands went for my ass.

He lifted me against his taut stomach, and my ankles hooked around his hips. My arms were around his neck, my fingertips digging into the muscles of his shoulders that I’d admired from afar. His body was so hot against my freezing skin that he was setting me aflame both inside and out.

His rough jeans pressed into my core as he held me against him, his erection thick and warm against my center. I moaned out load, grinding against him.

“Jesus, princess. What’s gotten into you?” Nick’s voice rasped against my jaw, his breath fanning across my face.

“You, hopefully,” I told him, squeezing his hips with my thighs.

“Whatever you want,” he promised, starting to walk us back up to the bungalow. “Let’s get inside.”

“No,” I breathed against his ear, licking its shell and reveling in his responding shiver. “Let’s stay out here.”

He pulled back to look at me, disbelief clear on his face. “You’re into having sex in public?”

“Don’t know. I’ve never done it. But look around you. There’s no one else out here. Let’s christen this beach for ourselves.” I held my breath while I waited for his answer. I’d never been so forward about what I wanted sexually, and the longer he took to do as I asked by scanning our surroundings, the more nervous I became.

Nick set me down, dropped with his ass on the sand, and then pulled me down onto his lap so that I was straddling him again. My knees dug into the soft, warm sand, my skin stinging slightly from the scrape of it. My hair fell in a wet curtain around us.

He wrapped his arms around me and looked deep into my eyes. In this light, his were soft and bright, the tiny golden shards that flecked the emerald shining with such intensity that I felt captivated by them.

His hands traveled up my back, tunneling into my hair as he guided my mouth toward his and kissed me with every ounce of that intensity. One of his hands stayed at the nape of my neck, holding me toward him while the other settled on my breast. I cried out when he pinched down on my nipple. Nick took advantage of my breaking our kiss by leaning down and sucking the same nipple into his hot mouth while the toying with the other with his fingers.

My nipples had always been sensitive, but never before had I been able to feel every little thing that he did to them reverberated in my pussy. I reached for the hem of his shirt and tugged it off, needing to feel his skin against mine. I ground into his erection until I was sure that his jeans were soaked with my juices and not giving a damn about it, except that they were blocking me from getting to him.

My hands fell to the button of his pants, and I fumbled with it before I finally managed to slide it through the loop. Unzipping his pants, he shifted slightly so that I could free his cock, groaning when my fingers closed around it.

I’d never thought of the male anatomy as anything but practical, but I found Nick’s cock beautiful. It was long and thick, with dark veins protruding from his hard length. The head was a deep red and already shone with wetness of his own.

I wanted to taste it and taste him. Now.

Somehow, I’d managed to make it to twenty-four without gaining too much experience in giving head. Oral sex was extremely intimate to me, more so than intercourse to a certain extent, especially if you were doing it in the dark like I had in all my previous relationships.

The result? I always put off that aspect of the sexual relationship at first, and since guys typically didn’t stick around long once they realized who my father was, I was sadly inexperienced, but I’d never wanted to do it more.

Nick’s muscles quivered, and he sucked in a deep breath when I touched his wet tip. A heady feeling of feminine power surged through me when I realized that I was the one doing that to him, turning him on so much that the man who was so very much in control was straining to keep from losing it because of me.

My breathing quickened, and I leaned down to run my lips from his neck to his chest, pushing his back to the sand. He groaned and reached up to drag the rough pads of his thumbs over my nipples. Each one of those brushes sent another pulse of pleasure straight to my core, heating me up, despite my wet skin.

“I want to taste you,” I whispered.

Nick’s half-lidded eyes blinked, and his breathing grew choppy when I reached the waistband of his jeans and pulled them clear off, along with the boxers underneath them.

His expression was tight as I stared at the erection that had sprung free between us. He was fully erect and virile. I licked my lips in anticipation, and Nick’s cock twitched.

“I haven’t done this very much before, so could you maybe just… uh.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it, but it wasn’t necessary. Nick’s head fell back onto the sand, sending a tiny puff of the grains flying as he finished for me in a strangled growl.

“You want me to teach you?” he asked.

“Um, yes.” Then I realized that a man like Nick, or any man for that matter, might not quite like the idea of having someone inexperienced have their teeth so close to their junk. “Unless you don’t want me to, I—”

The muscles in his throat worked before he bit out his answer. “Trust me, I want you to, but only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure, Nick. I want this.” My answer was so comically fast that Nick’s eyes sparkled with amusement, which was quickly replaced with desire so intense that I felt the ache of it in my own core when I slid down the length of his body and positioned my mouth above him.

I was slightly intimidated by his size and by the fact that I could feel the heat of his gaze on me as sure as I could feel the warmth of the sun on my back. As always, Nick knew exactly what I was feeling and what I needed. He threaded his fingers into my hair and reached for one of my hands to wrap it around his dick. “It’ll be easier for you if you use your hand, too.”

I nodded slowly, starting to give him a few gentle strokes before I closed my mouth over his crown. I licked at the wetness leaking from his tip. His hips came off the sand as he arched them into my mouth.

“Holy fuck, princess,” Nick growled.

His uneven breathing and his strangled voice egged me on. I grew bolder, stroking him faster and sucking my lips down his hard shaft. Nick started groaning and tugging at my hair as if he couldn’t contain himself. I loved it.

I eagerly drank in his sounds of pleasure and paid attention to learning when he made them so that I could repeat what he liked again and again. Soon, he was squirming and cursing as he grumbled a low warning. “I’m gonna come.”

Encouraged by his words, I doubled my efforts and was rewarded when rope after rope of his cum hit the back of my throat. It was so much that it nearly gagged me, but I kept going, reveling in the fact that I could make this self-contained powerhouse of a man come apart under me.

Nick’s muscles trembled and quivered, his eyes wild as he dragged me back up onto his lap, not even giving himself time for his breathing to slow before he had me in position over his cock. I was aching for him, starting to lower myself over his impressive erection that hadn’t waned in the slightest. It pressed hot and ready at my entrance when Nick muttered. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” I stopped immediately, my body screaming out in protest.

“I don’t have a condom on me,” he gritted out, his heart racing in the pulse of his neck.

I hesitated, then leaned forward to kiss him. “I’m on birth control. I’m clean, but if you don’t want to...”

A low growl reverberated from his chest. “Stop thinking that I don’t want to do anything. I want everything with you, warrior princess. And I’m clean, too.”

“In that case.” I groaned as I slowly worked him into me. “Stop worrying so much, and take what you want.”

And that was exactly what he did. Until I had sand in places that sand should never get to and Nick carried me back into the house and straight to the bath, then proceeded to clean me as thoroughly, as he’d gotten every inch of me caked with sand.