Chapter Eleven
The sun was a couple of hours from setting. The beach at Trestles was fairly busy. The grandstands for the surf competition had been completed. Areas for food carts were clearly marked, portable toilets were lined against the bluff, and generators had been brought in. A few enterprising merchants had already starting setting up their booths to sell competition t-shirts, beach accessories, boards, and more.
Luz walked down towards the ocean, the interns had already run ahead of her. Paz, after finding out Lane was no longer denying her access to the event, crowd, and surfers had grabbed a bunch of equipment, shouted orders at her interns, and then taken off, leaving Luz to help the interns with the rest of the equipment.
She knew Lane wouldn’t like her working so hard. The doctors had made it clear she should rest, but she was feeling better. Not so weak, and she figured she could sit with Hollis or on the beach and watch if she started feeling woozy again.
She told herself she was looking for Paz, but the minute she climbed down the long path to Trestles, her eyes unerringly fell on Lane. He had a wet suit peeled down, low on his hips, and even from this distance, the breadth of his shoulders narrowing down to a “V” and his narrow hips sent a shaft of desire piercing her body. Even the sides of his body had defined muscles.
Paz was right. She wanted Lane, more than anything else she could imagine and, if he wanted her back, she couldn’t imagine how she could say no.
Or why. Oh, there were reasons, but they didn’t seem important anymore. She watched as Lane looked through a monitor, his hands stroking through the air as if he were gracefully cutting it, a master chef. Then he turned toward her. His smile was like the sun. He pulled off the glasses/headset he was wearing and then held it out to her.
She wanted to ignore him, but instead, walked toward him. He put the headset on her. Immediately she was on the ocean, her world dark blue, pitching left, right, back, forward. She found herself crouching, as if she were cresting on a wave.
“Wow!” She was floored. “What is that?”
“Virtual reality,” he said. “That’s what I shot with the camera I’ve been working on with some engineers, and then we’ve coded a game that players can log into and experience live or play using stored experiences. This prototype is surfing, but once we have the satellite uplink kinks worked out we’re going to start shooting gaming experiences for skiing, snowboarding, skateboard, motor cross.”
Luz put the headset glasses back on. “So I can see what you saw?”
“We are working on getting it as live as possible, but it can be interactive with the stored experiences. And if we are shooting live, others can log in and share the experience.”
“Lane, it’s amazing,” she said, handing it back to him. “Think about people who are disabled being able to feel like they are riding a bike or skiing and soldiers who’ve been injured,” she said in awe.
“This is my commercial application. I am working with the military on something, but I can’t talk about it.”
“Or you’d have to kill me.”
“No,” he said seriously. “I would have to kiss you.”
His arms wrapped around her. She could feel his heat, his hard muscle.
“I thought virtual reality was so cool,” he whispered, his breath warm against her neck. “But this reality is better than anything I can imagine.”
Luz closed her eyes and breathed him in, warm sand, salt water, spice, and a heat that made her insides melt. She felt a million miles away from herself, drunk on him and on possibility, her life spreading out below and in front of her, endless, dark and light, churning, terrifying and exciting.
“I thought we weren’t going to do this,” she said, and it didn’t even sound like a protest.
“Yeah, I thought that, too,” he said, making no move to release her.
* * *
The sun was a memory, the stars starting to poke through the black of the sky. Luz was tired, but the pleasure of being a part of something—helping Paz’s interns set up a podcast for the surf competition and watching Lane’s excitement about spectators trying his prototype Friday morning when the surf competition would kick off as well as witnessing Kadan’s powerful and graceful return to slicing through the waves—made her feel happier than she could remember ever feeling.
* * *
“I’ll drive you home,” Lane said.
“Is that a euphemism for something else?” She teased.
He laughed so close to her ear and she felt it all the way to her toes.
“Say the word and it can mean anything you want it to.”
“Lane,” she said, not sure what she should say next.
She wanted him. Craved him.
He turned her body into his, his face serious in the last of the grey dusk. “I won’t lie. I want to make love with you more than I want my next breath, but we can talk,” he said. “I just want to be alone with you. I need to be alone with you. I promise I won’t push anything.”
His intensity swamped her. His honesty. The beach disappeared. His team, her sister, whom she knew must be watching, an impatient scowl on her face, the interns, Kadan and Hollis, they all disappeared. There was only Lane and her. They had become an us. The thought hit her with the subtly of a baseball ball.
She knew she should ask him to take her to Preach’s. But she knew she wouldn’t. Hearing Lane say that he needed her was a balm for her wounded heart. And a match that ignited her soul.
* * *
Lane pulled his car into his circular drive and untangled his fingers from hers. He was out of the car and had her door open before she even unbuckled her seatbelt.
“You still open doors.”
He didn’t answer.
“Lane?”
He closed his much larger hand around hers and then looked into her eyes.
“What are we doing?”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “What I want to do. What I wanted to do from the first moment I saw you walk towards me while I tried to pin your crazy sister down so she couldn’t hurt herself. What I did to you over and over when we were in college. What I lived to do.”
She searched his eyes, not quite believing he could be serious even when he looked completely convinced. How could he still desire her? She was older. Damaged. Rejected by her husband.
“We are so different now,” she said. “So much time has passed.” And it all seemed in his favor.
He took a step toward her, his frame blocking out the rising moon, his face in shadows so she couldn’t read his expression. Only the splash of the courtyard’s fountain accompanied her racing pulse and thoughts.
“That’s just it, Luz.” His hands smoothed her hair, cupped her face. “Nothing’s changed.” He took her hand and placed it over his chest, which was still bare. She could feel his warmth, the steady thump-thump of his heart. “Nothing’s changed. Nothing.”
She touched his cheek, her fingers trailing down. “I’m not the same anymore,” she said sadly.
She wasn’t that girl he’d thought himself so in love with so many years ago. Maybe she never had been.
He smiled, and it was so sad that she felt tears prick her eyes. He thumbed away her tears, pressing the pad of his thumb, against her lips.
“I’m not…I can’t…” She didn’t know how to explain how lost she felt, and she didn’t want to hold on to him like a tree in a hurricane. “I want to come to you whole,” she said. “Not broken.”
“You aren’t broken,” he whispered, tracing his lips along her brows.
She leaned her head against his chest, not wanting him to see the truth. Maybe she could pretend just one more time.
He tilted her face up, his eyes searching hers. He lightly kissed the corner of her eye.
“Dance with me.” He breathed against her lips. “Outside. Like we used to.”
He thumbed something into his phone and a song started, soft, melodic, ringing of promise, with a reggae beat. Luz didn’t recognize the song, but it sounded like Ziggy Marley. Lane hummed in her ear as they moved as one over the pavers of his circular drive and courtyard. She slipped her arms around his neck and laid her head against his chest, letting her lips trail over his skin. She sighed.
Lane began to sing.
She smiled against his skin. He had a beautiful voice. She remembered he used to love to listen to music, always singing along when they were driving, hiking, even making love, his voice tickling her in the dark. She relaxed into him, loving how his arms wrapped around her, sure and strong. They moved around, lit only by the rising moon and artistically placed landscaping lights. The courtyard fountain was like a giant candle in the night.
The music stopped. He held her loosely, his eyes searching hers. His thumbs loosely stroked a circle on her cheekbones.
“Yes,” she said.
* * *
The minute Lane led her up the stone steps to his house she began to panic. What was she thinking? She wasn’t twenty-two anymore. He’d only become more confident. More athletic. Oozing masculine swagger and power. She was older, her eggs dried up before she’d been ready, her body was empty, vulnerable to the passage of time. Her husband and station management had let her know she had to make the most of her good years, be vigilant about maintaining her health and appearance. Lane was used to sex with women Cruz’s age, not their mid-thirties. Only when he ran lightly up the steps, holding her hand and opening the front door with a flourish, did she forget her nerves.
“Tell me when to stop.” He breathed against her mouth.
Her lips parted and she breathed him in, played with his mouth with hers and her teeth, hearing her breathing go erratic and her core pulse with liquid want. He leaned against the door, pulling her with him as the door clicked shut.
His hands slid down her back, molding her body to his, and she responded, tangling her fingers in his hair, jerking him closer so she could feed on his mouth and feel his heat and strength press against her. Lane deepened the kiss, his hands sliding under the hem of the shirt she wore. His hands set fire to her body, and she wanted to shrug out of the clothes so she could feel all of him, hard against her, but the entry light was on. She didn’t want him to see her naked.
“Yes?”
She could barely hear the question over her pounding blood. It had been so long since she’d felt this need, this overwhelming lust that consumed her brain as much as it consumed her body.
“Yes.” She grabbed at his board shorts and tugged them down his legs. “Yes, yes, yes.”
She felt his hand slide inside the waistband of her jeans. Her moisture already coated her inner thighs. He would know how much she wanted him, but she was too aroused by touching him to feel embarrassed.
His hands skirted her stomach, cupped her butt and pulled her flush against him.
“I love that you are so tall,” he whispered against her mouth. “That we line up like this.” He pressed against her, and she felt her stomach drop and another flare of desire pulsed between her legs.
She whimpered as she reached for his erection and his hard length filled her hand.
“God.” She breathed, wanting to stroke him as much as she wanted him inside her right now.
The feel of him. The power of him. She felt dizzy being this close to his intoxicating maleness.
“You make me feel drunk,” she whispered.
She squeezed him a little, let her nails lightly rake his length before her fist, moistened with her juices, gripped him. He moaned her name, and the electric charge to her body almost hurt. She licked her palm and then wrapped her hand again around his length pumping two times hard and fast.
“Baby.” He panted against her. “You have to let me calm down.”
“Like this?” She stroked him up and down again with her fingertips and then pumped him with her fist, and he moaned, sounding feral, and something wild in her woke. “I want,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want you.”
“I’m yours.” He ground against her, his hands trying to slide off her clothing.
She stopped him. His breathing was harsh in the quiet of the house. She dropped to her knees, right in his stone entryway, and swallowed him deeply.
“Luz,” he cried out her name, helplessly rocking against her. His face was harsh, edged in intensity and passion. “Baby.” He ran his fingers through her hair and shook as she tasted him, her tongue and her lips and her teeth lightly grazing him until he caught her shoulders and pulled her back.
“I’m hungry.” She demanded, staring at what she wanted the most.
He seemed to be pulsing, close, and she wanted to bring him to the brink, make him lose control in her arms, in her mouth. Make him remember her when he must have had so many others since.
He cursed softly, fluently under his breath. “I want that, too,” he admitted his voice strained. “But I need to be in you so deep you’ll never get me out. Now.” He demanded. “I need to be inside you now.
She swiped her tongue across his swollen, purple head, catching a drop of moisture. He gripped himself and she wrapped her hand over his.
“Mine,” she said, feeling more territorial than she ever had before in her life.
“Always,” he promised. “But I’m not making love to you here,” he said, looking around the entry way as if surprised to find them there. He pulled her to her feet. “You might get bruised.”
He cupped her face and nibbled on her lips. Luz bit back a sob. He was so tender, always thinking of her health, her feelings.
What had she done, giving him up so many years ago?
She deepened the kiss and raked her nails over his chest, needing to get swamped again by passion, not guilted by her past. His hands slid down her body to pull her close and then back up to her face, kissing her over and over again, until she was practically keening with desire.
“Baby, you taste and feel so good. Like heaven, but if I don’t get a condom, I’m going to die.” He groaned.
“I’m—” Reality intruded.
He didn’t need a condom. She couldn’t conceive. And Alex hadn’t touched her in months and months, and after she’d discovered that he’d been a cheater, she’d had a checkup.
“I—” She moistened her desert dry lips. “You heard your mother.” She pulled away from him, wrapping her arms around her shaking body. “I can’t…I can’t have a baby. I tried for two years.”
What was she thinking? Lane could have any woman. He would want one who was whole, who could give him a family. He reeled her back in, his large hands holding her hips in place so he could kiss her again, over and over, his mouth tender, his hands hungry.
“Baby.” He kissed her until she began to relax again. He laid his forehead against hers, his breathing ragged. “Luz, do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She wanted to forget. She’d had to focus on her failure for two years.
“Do you want to me to stop?”
“Do you want to?” She could barely push the words past her disappointment.
“Hell, no.”
“Okay.” She struggled to pull out of her funk. She’d spent too long feeling down, and she might never have another night like tonight. “Where were we?”
He laughed and pulled her close. “I believe you were about to make me the happiest man on the planet.”
“I was?”
“Definitely.” His hand slid under her shirt and spanned her flat stomach.
She tensed. Her breasts were small again, and he had certainly enjoyed them when she’d been in her early twenties, but her skin was still a bit stretched out, soft from her former implants, not as tight and probably beginning to sag.
He cupped one of her breasts. “You feel incredible.” He moaned, his thumb lightly massaging her nipple.
Luz relaxed a little as reality receded.
His hand slid lower on her stomach. That was at least still very tight from all her dieting and exercise, although she’d have to join a gym soon even though she’d no longer have money for a personal trainer.
“I want to touch you,” he said against her mouth. “I want to be inside you.”
“Yes.”
He caught her hand and began walking backwards further into the house. His eyes seemed to scorch her and, again, she marveled at his desire for her.
“Take off your shirt.” His smile was sexy and sweet and made her want to launch herself into his arms.
“We should turn down the lights, first.” She ventured.
“Why?” Lane threaded his fingers in her hair. “You are so beautiful, I want to see, and smell, and feel, and taste every moment with you.”
Her heart thumped hard, but at the same time, her stomach lurched in cold dread. “I…um…I think I’d be more comfortable in the dark.”
“Why?” He stepped back from her, blue gaze serious.
“Ummmm…” How could she answer that without turning him off. She wanted him so much. Wanted him to want her.
“Are you shy with me, Luz?” He took an almost compulsive step towards her, his large hands gentle as he cupped her jaw. “Do you want more time?”
“No.” She covered his hand with hers.
He would stop this right now. She knew that with him. He might be assertive in other areas, but he’d never been with her. He’d been the one man who had never pushed her to give more than she wanted to give.
“No, I want to be with you. I want to.” She repeated and pressed her lips to his, hoping to rekindle the flames of just a moment earlier. Why was she being so stupid and ruining this?
“But…” He gently disengaged.
“But nothing.” She could see he wasn’t going to let it go. “It’s just been a while since we were together.”
A while since she’d had sex. Since she’d felt desire and been desired.
“And you will be remembering me as I was,” she said softly.
He didn’t answer. His eyes searched hers, reading her secrets and fears, she thought guiltily, but she forced herself to face him. She couldn’t walk around with “I have no fear” tattooed on her forearm if she were afraid to tell Lane what she thought. What she wanted. What she felt.
“Is this a you thing or me?”
“What?” So not what she’d expected him to say.
“Do you think I’m a total shallow idiot?”
“What? No.”
“That I can only get it up for some twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old grad student?”
“Of course not, Lane! I—”
He took her hand and pressed it against his still very hard, very potent erection. She sighed and let her hand sink into him, grip him.
“So, obviously what you’re worried about has nothing to do with me.”
She looked down. “I just don’t feel…my best.”
“Because of your illness?”
That should be it, but it wasn’t. Lane had made sure she’d eaten two small meals while they’d been working at the beach, and he’d personally watched her swallow her antibiotic. He’d insisted she rest in a lounge chair, and she’d surprised herself by falling asleep and waking up a couple of hours later with Lane’s hoodie over her body like a blanket and an umbrella shading the chair. So, no, she felt better than she had for weeks. She felt alive and keyed up. Positive about her new future.
“No.” Did she have to spell it out for him? By the way his hand had slipped to her hip, but he hadn’t pulled her in close, obviously she did. “I’m just older,” she said. “You’ve always been younger, which I had a hard time dealing with when we were in school, and now I just feel it more, and you’re probably used to much, much younger women.”
“You’re serious. Really.”
Now she stepped back from him, making sure the shirt had dropped back down to cover her hips and that her jeans were buttoned. She nervously smoothed her hair, but there was no place for her to hide. Lane walked away from her, his hands holding his head like it was going to explode.
“Part of me wants to hit something. Part of me wants to laugh. And then there’s this other part that wants to cry. I don’t know what to do. What to say to you right now.”
“Don’t say anything,” she said softly, coming to him, her fingers soft against the nape of his neck.
She stroked circles feeling like she’d come home, like she was back where she belonged, full circle, and she just had to be brave enough to embrace her new life.
“Let’s just be.” She breathed, letting her tongue trace the outline of his ear, as she remembered he liked. He shivered, and she pressed her advantage, stepping in sideways to his body, letting her arms go around him, pull him in close.
“Let’s just be together. Tonight. It’s been so long. I want you. I need to feel you inside me.”
His eyes closed and his fingers captured hers.
“Can we do that?” she asked.
He dragged in a shaky breath and then looked at her. “I’m in,” he said. “All in.”
She found herself relaxing until he spun her around so he was behind her. She was facing a huge mirror framed in aged wood. His eyes glittered with determination. He reached out and, with the remote, turned on a gas fireplace in the living room and turned on another bank of recessed lights.
“Lane.” She bit her lip a nervously, not sure what he was doing.
“Do you want me to make love to you?” His hands were on her body.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you want to make love to me?”
“Yes.” She whimpered as his hands slid under her shirt and cupped both of her breasts, his thumb and forefinger lightly massaging her nipples, and she was amazed that she was still so sensitive.
“Then watch.”