Chapter 4

Bain

I was the type of guy who always got what I wanted.

The same guy who’d seen that Mustang GT sitting out on the street, boosted and stolen it at the ripe age of sixteen. The one who’d been banished from the fucking family for it, made to look an ass in comparison to my younger brother.

And now, I was the dude who made shit happen.

All of that fell away at the sight of Hazel with tears on her cheeks.

Who the fuck did this to her? Why?

We walked down the beach in silence, the waves brushing the white sand and chasing up it to tickle our toes. She gasped and jostled out of the water, directly into me, and I caught her and laughed.

“You don’t like the water?” I asked.

“No, I do. I just don’t like the cold,” she replied and lowered her head, probably to hide the cute pink flush on the apples of her cheeks.

“So,” I said and slipped my arm around her waist. It was a comfort to do that. She still made my dick unbearably hard, but everything between us felt natural, easy.

Relax, dick, it’s just a weekend with a gorgeous woman. Nothing more and nothing less.

“So, what?” Hazel asked and looked up at me. “What do you mean, so?”

“Are you always this nervous?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “My mom used to call me a worry wart growing up. I guess that was warranted. I worry and I talk too much. That was what she said.”

“That’s a pretty nasty thing to say to a kid.” And I could sympathize. I’d been labeled a couple of shitty things by my parents. Nothing that I’d let fuck with my head, though. They’d always favored my little brother over me. Jacob was the saint, and I was the sinner. “Is that why you’re crying? You’re worrying about something?”

She spun and looked up at me, skin flaming up again so that I wanted to kiss her, make the anger or pain disappear. “I’m not crying, see?” She poked either cheek. “I’m all good. It was a momentary lapse.”

“Over what?” I asked.

“You really want to know this shit?” she asked and rolled her eyes. “Like I said, you don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t do anything I don’t wanna do.” Plain and simple truth, apart from one thing. Serving time in juvie.

“All right,” she said.

We walked up to a spot slightly removed from the beach, behind a rocky outcropping and right up against the trees. The resort was farther down, and the sounds of laughter and music drifted along the sand, audible above the rush of waves.

I helped Hazel onto a rock and took a seat beside her, looped my arm around her again, tugged her tight to my side. I couldn’t not touch her.

“I don’t even know you,” she said, “and I’m about to tell you my sob story.”

“That just makes it easier,” I replied and watched her.

She made a show of looking out over the ocean, likely because she was afraid she’d break if she looked my way.

I waited it out. Let her think this through.

“It’s nothing big,” she said, at last. “I’m crying because I feel a little – I don’t know. I was with a guy who made me feel less than what I was? Maybe that’s not fair.”

“Why?”

She worried that luscious bottom lip with her teeth. “Because I’ve always been a little insecure. Least attractive quality ever, I know.”

“What did this guy do that made you feel this way?”

Hazel gave a small laugh and I squeezed her, afforded her some strength. “Well, for starters, he broke up with me the minute we arrived here. Just told me there was someone else and it was time for us to move on because things hadn’t been working out for either of us.” Another smile, and thankfully, tearless – I didn’t like that she was hurting or that another man had touched her in the first place. “Funny thing is, I thought everything was fine, ya know, apart from the fact that he wouldn’t introduce me to anyone. We have the same friends but I’ve never even met his family.”

“Wow,” I said and kissed her shoulder. “I’m sorry about that, Hazel. You deserve better.”

“Do I?” She looked at me at last. Christ, she was beautiful. Her blond curls danced with the breeze, eyes the color of a clouded sky. “I don’t know that I do. I mean, clearly he thought he deserved better than me.”

“Hazel.”

“Seriously,” she continued. “I could be an axe murderer or something. You don’t even know me.”

“Ten bucks says you can’t even wield an axe,” I replied.

“And you can? What are you, the lumberjack stripper?” A smile lifted the corners of her lips, and the overwhelming urge to kiss her swam through my gut. Or was it my dick?

I couldn’t bear to break her illusion of me. Maybe she needed to think I was a stripper to make sense of this.

The sooner I told her the truth, the sooner the illusion would shatter. The mystery would be gone. The romance with it.

“You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of things I know how to do,” I said, after a minute.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

Like steal cars, get clean, build billionaire dollar businesses. Like avoid complicated emotions. “You sure you want to know?” I asked. “I can show you, right now. Right here.”

She chewed her bottom lip. “What is it?”

I grinned at her innocence, then rose from the rock, hopped down and turned, offering her a hand. “Come on,” I said.

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. Right here. To paradise.” She took my hand and I helped her down, then pressed her against my chest. Slowly, I swayed from side to side and turned in circles.

Her bare feet, toenails painted as pink as her lips, crossed the sand. She mis-stepped a couple times.

I spun her around on the spot, dipped her and lifted her upright again.

“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “Dancing. I love dancing. I mean, I can’t dance, but I love it.”

I laughed, low in my throat, and swung her closer, held her flush against my loose cotton shirt. “It’s all rhythm. The moves don’t matter that much.”

“See? That’s my problem. No rhythm. Two left feet.” She separated from me and pointed down at her wriggling toes.

I drew her back into my embrace again. “I’ll teach you,” I said, then slid my hands down the cotton back of her dress and rested them on her ass. “Rhythm starts in the soul, and it shows in the hips.”

Her breath hitched in her chest. “That’s not my soul. Or my hips.”

“Move with me,” I said and wound my hips in a slow circle, a trick I’d picked up in Cuba. I’d traveled a lot over the past ten years, one country to another, and in between meetings I’d fully appreciated the culture of each place I’d visited. “Just like that. Press your body into mine.”

The breeze wasn’t cool enough for us. Tension and heat swam in the tiny spaces separating our bodies.

“That’s right,” I said.

Her nipples puckered beneath the cotton. I admired them, then her, and the slack-jawed expression she bore, looking down at the space between us where my throbbing erection, trapped beneath chinos, rubbed against the front of her dress.

“Wow,” she whispered.

Wow is fucking right. “You’re doing great,” I said.

She looked up at me, then, and slung her arms around my neck. “Who are you, really?”

“Does it matter?” I asked. Maybe it does. Maybe it should matter. Christ, one night and I want to tell this chick my entire life story. Too soppy. I can think of way better uses for our time together. “All that matters now is this moment, Hazel. How do you feel?”

She pouted a little, and I squeezed her ass, encouraging her to grind on. Grind right up against me, drive me through the fucking roof with that winding movement.

“I feel – I feel,” she whispered.

“Say it.”

“I feel good. I feel right,” she replied, and her voice gained strength. “I feel a little – uh, you know, horny.” The last word came out a whisper.

I cupped her cheek and worked my fingers up into her hair. “Just a little?” I brought my lips down on hers and seared both of us with the kiss.

This was trouble. Big trouble.

Then again, trouble had never scared me and neither had the prospect of getting caught.