We’re walking on the beach a few minutes later when Shade gets me to sit next to him as we watch the waves roll in. He seems in no hurry to get back to the house. His mind is elsewhere, the conversation falling away when I say, “Man, I can’t imagine what spring break is like here.” I think I’m nervous because I tend to switch conversations quickly. Like now.
“Wild. Parties, naked girls, asshole frat boys.” He sighs, almost sounding annoyed. “I don’t really care for Santa Monica. Everybody gets stupid.”
“Kind of like Vegas?”
“Exactly like Vegas,” he agrees, his head tipping forward slightly.
“One of the guests at the hotel was telling me that he was here on spring break, and he kept seeing college kids having sex on the beach.” I giggle, the thought making me shiver. I’m all for being adventurous, but sex on the beach isn’t something I’d be willing to try. Especially not seeing how I have a cactus spine stuck in my ass cheek. Imagine what sand would do.
Lying back, Shade stretches out his legs in the sand and stares up at the blue sky. “Why won’t you have sex in the sand? Isn’t that every girl’s dream?”
“Maybe some,” I say, my back meeting the sand. Oh God, my ass hurts. I’m really going to have to get it looked at. “But I’m not every girl. Oh, and did you know Willa’s in labor?”
He nods. “Yeah, Ricky told me.”
“Are they like, together or something?”
He nods again. “Neither have said for sure, but I know that kid is his, even if they won’t say anything.” Then he motions to the Ferris wheel. “Seattle has one of those. Ever been on it?”
“Yeah, a couple times. You?”
Leaning in, he bumps our shoulders together. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”
That you’re secretly in love with me? I swallow back my own laughter at my lame jokes. “What?”
“I’m actually afraid of heights.”
I laugh. “Then how can you jump your bike off jumps and fly through the air?”
“Easy. Anything worth fearing is worth doing.”
It’s like he was made in a factory and created for me personally.
I want to kiss him. He must want to kiss me, too, because he tries, and I have to put my hand on his lips. “Shade, you’re my boss. We shouldn’t do that.”
He sighs. “I’m not your boss.”
“Yes, you are.”
His jaw clenches. “I’d rather be your boss in bed.”
I think about it, you know I do, but then I remember him opening up to me just moments ago. “I think you need a friend.”
This earns me a chuckle, and he stands, brushing off the sand from his shorts. “I don’t need a fucking friend.”
“MAKE IT STOP,” Shade says, bringing the bike to a halt on a side road about two miles from his house.
“Make what stop?” I ask when he nods for me to get off the bike.
He shakes his head, adamantly, like I should know. “Scarlet,” he warns, motioning me forward as he twists to straddle the bike backward.
Oh, okay so this is a horrible idea. He wants me to get on the bike with him, again. But he wants me on his lap.
Do I stop?
No. I don’t. I get on the bike, and the moment I’m straddling him, my skin is on fire. I pretend like I have no idea what he’s talking about and ask, “Stop what?”
“Stop doing this to me,” he repeats, curtly. “Make it stop.”
Now I’m slightly confused. “Make what stop, Shade?”
He shakes his head, his eyes squeezing shut. “Me wanting you. I don’t understand why I feel this way about you and why you won’t let me.”
Hold up. Did he say feel? Like as in feelings? Good feelings? Bad feelings? Sex feelings?
There are so many different ways to feel, yet I think it’s just sex. But then again, I don’t think it is entirely. Certainly not after the last few days together.
Before I can ask anymore, Shade slams his lips to mine, and my thoughts drift with them. They’re so warm and delicious I don’t have time to concentrate on anything but the way they feel. It’s different from last night, what I remember of that kiss.
This time he’s trying to convince me he wants more than sex, or maybe he’s just that good at playing this game.
Despite how good this all is, the kissing, I’m not about to lose my job over it. Willa said no sex, and while I know this isn’t sex, the boundaries are certainly being pushed.
I jerk my head to the side, breaking the kiss. “Shade. . . I. . . .”
He doesn’t stop. Instead, his kisses move to my neck, the tiniest pinch of my skin between his teeth, and he grinds his erection into my center.
Goddamn, that’s nice.
“Ask me what I want,” he breathes out, his breath catching at the word want.
“No.” I don’t want to ask because I know the answer. Sex. That’s all.
“I want you to ask me,” he demands, his body pressing into mine, holding me securely to his chest, his feet struggling against the dirt beneath them to find a secure footing.
Wrapping my arms around his shoulders carefully, his breath catches, his arms straining. “What do you want, Shade?”
His forehead and eyebrows draw together tightly, his breathing uneven and shallow. “I want to fuck you. I want you to feel how badly I want you and how much this sucks that you don’t want the same. It’s torture having to see you every goddamn day.”
He’s right. I want him just as bad. I want him so badly I can’t physically handle the need. It shakes my entire body.
With a jerked motion, his fingers dive into my hair, tangling the windblown strands around his hands as he inhales deeply. It’s everything I’ve been waiting for since last night, but I also know when Willa said no sex, she meant it.
Our lips part and he slides one hand between our bodies to the button of my jeans. “Please?”
Needing to breathe, our mouths part, gasping, and we stare at each other.
“Jesus, Scarlet,” he murmurs, running his nose along my jaw, attempting to catch his breath. “Please let me.”
His eyes scan over me, lingering on my breasts before dropping lower.
A slight smirk touches his lips, his eyes blazing with desire. “Your body reacts to my touch every time.”
Damn him.
His eyes close, and he swallows a drawn-out sound and presses down on my hips. Seeing him want me like this floods me with thoughts I can’t quite decipher, or want to.
This is what I wanted, isn’t it? For him to feel something for me, even if it was just purely sexual.
I don’t think it is. I really do want to be his friend.
When he lifts his mouth to mine, my eyes flutter closed. I fight back a shiver, wanting to melt into him. And then my mind starts to reason with me or make shit up.
Willa’s in labor which means she’ll want her job back soon. Right?
And that means having sex with him now really wouldn’t be that big of a deal, right?
No. Wrong. Scarlet. You need this to mean more to him than just getting into your pants. Today has been a perfect example of why I’m here. For him.
As he fists my hair in his hands, his groans are lost against my lips.
When his palm meets my breast over my shirt, I know where it’s heading again. His thumb grazes my nipple, his other hand brushing over my back where the sun is beating down on it.
My lashes flutter closed. His thumb catches my nipple ring, and pleasure shoots through me. His lips are so soft and tender, pouring emotion and sweet desperation into his touch, something you wouldn’t think someone only wanting a one-night thing would do.
The kiss deepens and he lifts his hips up and then pushes down on the tops of my thighs, forcing me down on his hardness. Oh God, so right, yet sooooo wrong. Shivers ignite through my entire body at the contact. “Me inside of you will feel so much better than this.”
I moan, and he grunts at the contact, his hand moving from my thighs to wrap around my waist, grinding me into him once again.
As his bike rocks back and forth, he struggles to keep it steady with our movements. His eyes find mine, shades of blue revealing a desire I never thought I’d see from him. “I’m obsessed,” he whispers, the warm glow of the sunset dancing against his skin.
It’s in that moment I realize where this might be going. On his bike. While this is strangely erotic, I can’t let it happen.
His hands curve around my hips, to my ass, my very sore ass and he squeezes. I wince, not from excitement, but from physical pain over that damn cactus.
Shade doesn’t seem to notice one bit. No, he’s one tracked on getting me out of my clothes.
It’s when his mouth moves to my neck and his teeth graze my collarbone much like they did the night we were together, it’s a reminder that I need to stop this. If I have sex with him now, that’s all I’ll ever be to him.
At first, I was just the maid he fucked and didn’t remember.
If I have sex with him now, on his bike, I’ll always be his assistant he banged in the first two weeks of her employment.
I don’t want to be that girl. I want to be his friend.
I have to stop him.
Determined, I push back on his shoulders, but he’s driven, grinding his cock into me, over and over again, and it’s almost enough that I let it continue, for a few minutes anyway.
Then I realize I have to do it now, or he’s going to come in his shorts, or I am.
It’s with great sadness my hands push against his chest, against his bare chest.
Fuck, when did his shirt come off?
“Shade. . . .” I twist my head away from him, only to have him cup my cheeks and hold my head still so I have no choice.
“Don’t stop us,” he grunts, raising his hips again. “I know you want this.”
My pulse thuds so loudly I can hear it over my labored breathing when I whisper, “But I don’t.” At least not like this. I leave that last part out.
His body tenses. It’s sudden and uncontrollable for him, like I just slapped him in the face. “What?” he mumbles, his brow pulling together.
Crap. Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that.
Do you see the hurt in his eyes? Do you see the way his breathing changes? The way his hands fall from my cheeks to beside him?
I hate the disappointment he must feel, but I recognize it as I experienced it every time I saw him step foot in the hotel and never noticed me.
He blows out a breath, searching my eyes. “What do you mean you don’t want it?”
“It’s exactly what I mean.” I maneuver myself off the bike to stand beside it, trying to calm my breathing. “Shade, I work for you. I can’t have sex with you.”
He stands up from the bike. “Then why even kiss me?”
“Because I do like you.”
Wrong words to use.
In an act of frustration, I assume, or just pure built-up rage, he kicks the bike over. “Why the fuck not? Give me something better than you work for me because that’s a bullshit excuse.” His scowl deepens the frown lines on his face. “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me. You want me too.”
Angry Shade + sex-deprived Shade = holy fucking hot spoiled-brat Shade.
Despite the fact that I’m insanely turned on by this little temper tantrum, I’m also angry with him. He’s acting ridiculously. I bet you this bike of his cost him over a hundred thousand dollars, yet he just kicked it over more than likely scratching it or worse, breaking something on it.
I glare at him, my eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “Pick up your bike you spoiled brat!”
Okay, I could have done without the spoiled brat part, but who kicks over their bike?
Shade. That’s who.
Regardless of being pissed off at me, he does pick it up and tosses the helmet at my feet and throws his leg over it. “Get on.”
Did you miss that part? He tossed the helmet at my feet in the dirt. Nice. What a jackass. “No.”
Look at his face. He doesn’t like being told no. “Get on the fucking bike!”
I rip the helmet off the ground and slam in on my head practically ripping off my ears in the process. “I’m only getting on because I can’t walk back in these shoes.”
He grunts something, but I can’t hear him once I have the helmet on.
Revving the bike, he tips it to one side and heels the kickstand up. Looking both ways, he pulls out onto the road, and I fear for my life.
The two-mile ride back to the house is nothing like I’ve experienced before, or ever wanted to experience. I nearly died, at least three times when he lost control in a corner, fishtailed the bike and then wheeled out of it with me on it.
Look at me, now. Shaking, near tears and pissed off beyond belief. Almost dying has a brash reaction to your emotions.
Do you think I’m amused by any of that?
No. Not only is my fucking ass still on fire, but I can’t control my racing heart. It’s like the time I decided to run a 5K race in the streets of Seattle with Tom. I don’t run. Ever.
This time I throw the helmet at his feet in the driveway. “You will never put my life in danger on a bike again! How would you have felt if I would have died?”
My words hit him like a ton of bricks. Maybe they’re reality or that his friend died and he wasn’t there that night. I hate that I said it, and despise the look on his face even more.
He draws in a breath, then another. He meets my eyes and I can see his frustration. He looks lost and caught in between something I might not fully understand.
“Why?” he shouts back at me with a sharpened edge, getting off the bike and standing in front of me, the veins in his neck protruding, the muscles in his chest bulging. He still doesn’t have a shirt on. In his little tantrum back there, he left it on the side of the road.
I cross my arms defiantly over my chest, attempting to hold my ground, trying not to look at his bare chest and how fucking sexy he looks. “Why what?”
“Why won’t you have sex with me?”
I roll my eyes. “Good God, is that all you think about?”
He drops his helmet to the ground. “When I want something, yes. What’s your problem? I can walk out my front door and get ass anytime I want, but you’re acting like you’re too good for it.”
“Oh, you poor baby. Someone denied the guy who has it all!” I shout and begin to stomp away from him. I knew going into this it wouldn’t be easy. Willa warned me out of the three of the boys, he’d be the hardest to deal with, and I can totally see how his determination has gotten him to the levels it has.
But it’s not with me.
I’m ten feet away when his arms encircle around my waist, his face buried into the crook of my neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, holding me to his chest. Moving my hair, he kisses my neck, and his warmth surrounds me. Soft lips move against my skin, the words, “I’m acting like an idiot,” breathed into the curve of my neck.
I turn, wriggling out of his embrace and draw in a shaky breath. “You are acting like an idiot.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, dipping his head forward to catch my eyes. “I really am. That was stupid, the bike, what I said, I just.” Vulnerability takes over, his hands finding his hair as he tugs at the ends. “I’ve never been denied something before, not like this, and for you to kiss me, and let things escalate like that only to stop it, it confuses me. I like you, Scarlet. A lot.”
“I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have let it get that far. You cloud my judgment and I let it get out of hand,” I admit, nearing tears once again. “But you’re being a butthead.”
In that moment, that’s what I say to him. Butthead. He’s the best freestyle rider in the world. Won gold medals and is hotter than sin, and I just called him a butthead. Like a little kindergartner would call her crush.
He laughs, his shoulders shaking. “A butthead?”
Okay, at least it lightened the mood. “Yep. Totally.”
He starts walking toward the house, and I follow him. He looks over at me. “Did you seriously call me a butthead? What are you, six years old?”
“You were being one. I speak the truth.”