CHAPTER TWELVE
JAKE
†
IT WAS DAMN HARD to eat my breakfast without looking over at Nikki, and it was even more difficult to get through that fucking wedding rehearsal without staring at her long legs and beautiful ass. Every time I glanced at her as we stood near Clea and Brandon while they went through their vows, I had to tear my eyes away because every time I looked at her, I’d look at Brandon and remember the reason we were here, and just who Nikki was.
I took a long walk after the rehearsal, right along the stretch of sand. When I came back, the beach was full, the wedding party of nearly one hundred guests now having arrived. Most of them were on the beach, sitting under umbrellas and drinking cocktails, and I scanned the crowd looking for Nikki. I saw her friend, Mia, lying on a towel, but Nikki was nowhere to be seen. My eyes moved over each and every figure on the beach, and then I glanced out into the sea.
And, there she was, treading water a little further back from a group of kids playing ball in the waves. I dropped my things on the sand and took off my t-shirt. I waded out into the water and pushed through the clear blue sea with intent. I could see her, but she hadn’t spotted me yet. I got closer and closer, and then she caught my eye. She stared at me, squinting her eyes before frowning. She didn’t speak to me as I approached her.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you?”
“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” she said, angrily.
“You ignore me at breakfast when there are people around, and then you don’t even look at me during the rehearsal, again because there are people around. But now we’re all alone in the vast ocean, you can stoop low enough to acknowledge my existence?”
I wanted to grin at her, but I knew she’d be mad at me.
God, she was stunning when she was angry.
She had the same intense passion she’d had when her hands were on my face and she was kissing me as I was inside her. I must have been thinking about that image a little too long because she began to swim away. I grabbed her arm.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I don’t want to be around you,” she said. “I don’t like the way you make me feel.”
“That’s not what you were saying last night,” I teased, and she spun around.
“Forget last night,” she hissed. “It meant nothing to either of us, right?”
She stayed there, treading water, and she had to keep her arms out to the side to balance or, I was sure, she’d have folded them in defiance. I ran my hand over my head and sighed.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well, you’re wrong,” I shrugged. “It meant something to me. A lot, actually.”
“What, so much you couldn’t talk to me?” she asked, but I was sure that in her voice I caught a little more softness, a little less anger.
“For God’s sake, Nikki, I know I could’ve handled it better, it’s just… I couldn’t look at you at breakfast or at the rehearsal, because I knew that I might just do something I shouldn’t,” I said.
“Oh, like what?” she asked.
I moved toward her, and reached out and touched her face. Then I leaned in and kissed her lips, quickly. She pulled away, looking around her, but nobody had spotted us. “Don’t!” she cried, but I could see from the flush on her cheeks that she was thrilled.
I liked it.
She wasn’t mad at me any longer. She moved closer to me and bit her lip. “I thought you just didn’t want anything to do with me after last night.”
“Fuck, no! Quite the opposite,” I replied. “But every time I look at you, there’s a war waging in my head. I look at you and I want you. And then I have to stop myself from thinking like that, because this weekend is more than just about the two of us, and you know it. Just look at your reaction just now when I kissed you. You’re also concerned.”
“Because of Brandon.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“Yeah. Look, we’re both adults, and I certainly don’t need anyone’s permission to do whatever the hell I feel like doing. But, I have a history with Brandon. I need to be considerate, and I do want him to be part of my future as well. So, I guess I don’t think this is the time and place to openly flaunt that I’m involved with his sister.”
“You’re right. I was thinking the same.”
She was only inches from me, but we weren’t touching. “It’s not the time or place. It’s best if he doesn’t know about us. I don’t want to stress him out or hurt him,” she said.
“Yep,” I agreed, feeling frustrated with the damn situation.
She put her head back and sighed. “It’s not fair,” she said. “I still feel like such a kid.”
“Well, after last night you sure put that behind you,” I smiled, lifting my foot and playing with hers in the water. She blushed again.
Fuck.
“You must have a couple of nights to compare it to,” she said. “For me, it’s the only time I’ve ever known. Was it… you know… any good?”
“Any good?” I repeated her question, my eyebrows raised in surprise. “Couldn’t you tell how much I wanted you? How my body reacted to yours?”
“Yes,” she smiled, her blush returning.
“Look at me,” I told her, firmly. She did.
“Believe me, Beautiful. You were fucking incredible.”
She giggled and disappeared beneath the water. Her head bobbed up several feet away, a bit closer to the beach. I laughed at her beautiful innocence. It just made me want her more.
I followed her to where she now was standing, the water reaching up to her shoulders.
She peeked at me from underneath lowered lashes, a hungry gleam in her eyes, without a doubt. Feeling daring, I moved behind her a little in the water so we both looked out at the beach, I stroked the firm roundness of her ass. My fingers drifted lower, to the tops of her thighs.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but she certainly didn’t move away.
“I’m reminding you about last night,” I said, my mouth close to her ear. She reached behind me and stroked my thighs, and I could hear her breath getting quicker. I moved away from her just a little, but my fingers remained on her thigh, and then moved inside her thigh, between her legs from behind. She gave a little cry as I moved the fabric of her bikini to one side, my fingers grazing against the hot slit of her womanhood.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. We were only a few yards from the beach and she looked at me over her shoulder. “We can’t,” she said.
“Oh, but we can,” I replied as my fingers moved inside her under the water. If anyone had looked at us, they’d have thought we were doing nothing more than just talking, like friends.
What they couldn’t see were my fingers playing with her clit and, what they couldn’t hear were the tiny moans of pleasure that escaped her lips.
I wanted to kiss her, but that was out of the question. My erection rubbed against her leg, and she stroked me through my swim shorts. But, this was all about her, giving her pleasure, making her feel the way she’d felt the previous night. I had to put my own desires on the back burner as I stroked her, claiming her with my fingers. She gripped the wrist of my other hand and pressed the other between her legs, making me rub her harder.
It’s not easy to make a woman orgasm in the ocean. Believe me.
The elements were against us, the rising water pushing us closer to the shore, necessitating us to kick back against them every few seconds.
But, nothing could’ve prepared me for the pleasure of seeing her look at me, her mouth slightly open, then closing her eyes with pleasure as she sucked in her breath and, with a gasp, whispered my name.
“Jake!”
As we bobbed up and down in the water, which seemed to be moving in time to my fingers now, I felt her spasm, heard her groan, and she rubbed herself on my hand, her hips moving quickly until she couldn’t bear it any longer. She pushed my hand away, clamped her thighs together and swam away from me.
I grinned at her until I could see that she could barely swim. I quickly went over to her and held her up with my hands on her waist. “Are you okay?” I smiled.
“I can’t seem to catch my breath,” she said, and then she laughed. “Jeez, I didn’t think it was even possible to do that here!”
She looked so gorgeous that I wanted to hold her to my body and kiss her, but we were both too aware of everyone on the beach and in the water not too far away from us. We edged closer to the shallows. We stayed in the water so that she could recover from her orgasm and for my erection to die down. Then we waded out of the water with a wave to one another, and I walked back to my belongings on the sand, while she joined her friend on the towel.
I went back to my hotel room, and I got straight into a cool shower where I held my returning erection in my hands and, with just a few strokes, I climaxed with a roar.
God, she was doing things to me that I wasn’t even aware of and could barely control. I closed my eyes and thought of the way she’d pushed my hand and made me fuck her with my fingers even faster, and that just made me hard all over again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted a woman this much.