Jilted: Promise Harbor, Book 1 (11 page)

She sighed. She shouldn’t be lying here. She should be roaming the beach searching for Mudge. Or, if not the beach, other places around the hotel. Jeebus, this was impossible. Why had she thought it would be so easy to find him there?

“You okay?” Josh asked.

“Yes.” After a short pause, she said, “This is nice.”

Josh shifted on his towel beside her, stretched out on his stomach, his chin propped on his hands. He stared at the Atlantic Ocean. “Yeah, it is. I don’t get much downtime.”

She glanced at him. “You never were one for relaxing much.”

“True.” He made a face. “But life’s been kinda crazy lately.”

“What’s been crazy? Other than your fiancée jilting you and your sister leaving her husband and running away.”

He laughed. “And that was just yesterday. C’mon.” He jumped to his feet. “Let’s go swim.”

Chapter Eight

Devon protested about cold water, but he dragged her in anyway and they splashed around in the ocean. The coolness was what he needed on his overheated body, and he wasn’t just hot from the sun. Lying there beside Devon with her dressed in that tiny little black bikini showing off all that smooth skin and those sexy curves was heating him up. He’d wanted to roll over onto her towel, stretch out on top of her, bury his hands in her hair and kiss her into next week.

Yeah, he needed a nice cold dunk in the ocean. And some shrinkage. Because he shouldn’t be thinking things like that.

“I’m going in,” she said to him, rising up from the water, rivulets streaming down over that amazing body. He gulped.

“Right behind you,” he said, diving once more beneath the surface. When he came up for air, he watched her wading through the water, her hips turning with each step, her ass barely covered by the little bikini that tied on each hip. The bottom curves of her cheeks made his hands itch to reach out and touch.

When he joined her back on the sand, his gaze fell on her shoulders. “Hey, you’re getting kind of pink. You need some sunscreen.” He found the bottle they’d bought earlier and popped it open.

“I’ll do it.” She reached for it.

“No, I’ll do it. You can’t get your back.” He held it out of her reach. He wasn’t sure why. It was going to be torture, touching her like that. But he wanted to touch her, and this was a good excuse.

He squeezed some of the thick lotion into his palm, then motioned to her to turn. She gave him her back, reaching to lift her hair up and hold it out of his way. He rubbed his palms together, then set them on her shoulders. She was slender, her bones small beneath his hands, and he went still for a moment. Then he smoothed the lotion over her shoulders and down her back, slowly distributing it over her skin and massaging it in. Whoa, those were huge knots in her shoulders.

“You’re tense,” he murmured. “Relax.”

She made a little snort as her head dropped forward, drawing his attention to the nape of her neck, so soft and vulnerable, curving gracefully, damp tendrils of hair clinging there. He wanted to kiss that stretch of tender skin. He wanted to sink his teeth in, so gently, and own her there.

Jesus.

He poured more lotion into his hands to do her sides, his fingers dipping into the curve of her waist, and then her hips and her lower back. He let his fingers brush beneath the bikini bottom over the swell of her butt, and her body tightened again.

“Just getting it everywhere,” he said softly. The coconut scent filled his head, the sensation of her warm, smooth skin beneath his hands like a drug flowing through his veins. “Okay, turn around again.”

“You’re
not
doing my front,” she snapped, her voice a bit breathy. “I can do that myself.”

He grinned. “Damn.”

She turned to face him and grabbed the bottle from his towel. Their eyes met. A hot haze surrounded them as they eyed each other. His heart thudded and his lungs locked, making breathing impossible.

“Josh,” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

“What…?” Her question trailed off.

“We have to talk about it,” he said.

She lowered her chin. “About what?”

“About us.”

“There is no us.”

“You know what I mean. We’ve been dancing all around it and talking about everything but. But we’re going to have to.”

“What’s the point?” She broke the eye contact and put some distance between them, focusing on the bottle in her hand. “Things were done between us a long time ago. You were ready to marry someone else. There’s nothing to talk about.”

He wanted to sigh with frustration. Then his attention was caught by her spreading lotion over her chest, her fingers sweeping over the inner curves of her breasts, then stroking down over her arms. Her skin gleamed in the sun as she worked lotion into each leg, then lay down again, her body all shiny and sexy as hell.

He needed to go back in the ocean. He grabbed the bottle and covered his own body, so much bigger and bulkier and hairier than hers, with the cream, “Do my back?” he asked her, lifting one eyebrow.

She shielded her eyes with one hand and looked at him. “Josh.”

He gave her an innocent look. “Please? You don’t want me to burn.”

“You don’t burn,” she muttered, rolling to her side and pushing onto her knees again. “You always did tan so easily. Give me that.”

He hid his smile as he turned his back to her. He flinched a little as she squeezed cold lotion directly onto his skin, but when she put her hands on his body he went hot again. God, the touch of her hands on him made his insides burn, and he gritted his teeth against the surge of arousal.

At first her hands were brisk and efficient, but gradually her strokes slowed and deepened, as if she too was enjoying the luxurious indulgence of touching him. He wanted to turn and face her, to see the look in her eyes, but he knew if he did she would stop and turn away, hiding from him. So he remained there, letting the pleasure wash over him, until her hands came to rest on his shoulders. Her body was so close behind him he could sense the warmth of her skin, the movements of her choppy breathing, and his body tingled everywhere with exquisite awareness.

Then he lifted a hand and set it on top of hers on his shoulder. For a moment, they just stayed like that, him with his eyes closed and head bent, longing for her to move that final centimeter closer to him that would press her body to his, his skin yearning for that contact, aching for her to slide her arms right around him. He swallowed through a tight throat.

After a long moment thrumming with tension, she moved away.

“There,” she said, the word low and husky. “You should be good.”

“Thanks.” Still without looking at her, he returned to his towel and stretched out on his stomach to hide the erection throbbing in his loose board shorts.

Neither of them spoke for a long time, the sounds of the beach rising and falling around them: the rhythm of the waves rushing onto shore, the cry of seagulls, laughter from nearby children. Josh willed his body to relax. Now he was the tense one, but it was sexual tension, hot and fierce. Christ, he wanted her.

He kept his eyes closed, his cheek against the towel, arms at his sides. He hadn’t felt this horny in…a long time. He tried to think back and remember a time he’d been so on edge. And he had to go back quite a while.

He and Allie’d had a pretty good sex life. When they’d started dating, they hadn’t rushed into having sex. It wasn’t until they’d decided to get married that they’d agreed it was time they slept together. She was pretty and had an attractive body, and it hadn’t been a hardship to sleep with her. It had been…nice.

Only now he was realizing “nice” was actually kind of sad. Compared to the sizzle burning its way through his body, the almost desperate need to touch Devon, to feel her, to kiss her, to bury himself inside her—“nice” was nothing.

Memories of being with Devon flooded back. How could he have ever forgotten what sex with her had been like? Now he was acutely, painfully remembering, scenes of sex in their beds, sex in the shower, Christ, sex in her kitchen, playing through his mind like a porn movie.

He had to stop this. Somehow he’d stopped it for the last year. Somehow he’d put that all out of his head when he’d gotten together with Allie, and he’d been happy to have comfortable, nice sex with her, conveniently forgetting the intensity of his physical connection with Devon. Now his body was on fire, and he began to doubt his ability to control himself.

He thought about Greta. About the news that she and Ryan had split up. His little sister. Jesus, she was always in some kind of trouble.

And he thought about his mom. There was a buzz-killer. He loved his mom and would do anything to look after her, but man, marrying Allie…that might’ve been a bit too much. Already it was getting to be a struggle to work up a good steam of anger at Allie for walking out on their wedding.

He rolled over and glanced at Devon, stretched out on her back, face turned to the sun, eyes closed. “How’re you doing?” he asked, his voice now sounding normal.

She turned her head and opened her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “It feels weird, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just lying here. I feel like I should be jumping up and rushing off somewhere to do something.”

Amused, he asked, “Do what?”

“I don’t know. Just something. I always feel like I should be doing something.”

“You need to learn how to relax.”

“I know how to relax.”

“Sure. If you say so. That’s why you’re lying there thinking about what you should be doing, instead of just enjoying it.”

She sank her teeth briefly into her bottom lip, and he knew he’d scored.

“Just say when you’re ready to go back to the inn,” he said.

“Actually I might want to swim again,” she said. “It’s really hot.”

“Yeah.” Really, really hot.

So they swam again, this time keeping their distance from each other in the water, no playful dunking or splashing, and again sat on their towels to dry off and warm up in the sun.

“I love the ocean,” Devon said on a sigh, staring at the expanse of water.

“Really?”

She glanced at him. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“Because you live in a big city. And the way you talk about your dad and his business, I got the feeling you didn’t like the water much.”

She blinked at him. “Well. Um. Actually, I guess I didn’t realize how much I miss it until I came back this weekend.”

He nodded. “I love it too. It’s so powerful.”

Again she gave him a sideways look. “Yeah. That’s a good word. Lots of people say it’s beautiful, and it is, but that’s not enough to describe it. Powerful is good.”

“It’s a nurturer of life. It’s kind of humbling, really.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

A feeling of warmth spread inside him at the fact that she shared his thoughts about the ocean. He loved the ocean. He loved living near it, being on it, being in it. He loved looking at it, at the seemingly endless expanse that stretched across the globe, marveling at the immensity of it, the power and strength of it but also the way it was mysterious and unfathomable. How it could change in an instant from serenity to chaos. Beneath the beauty was the ever-present threat and danger that only made it more fascinating. The constant rhythm, the sense that the ocean was a nourisher of life, never failed to amaze him, to calm him, to put things in perspective. It was difficult to imagine that his problems were the worst thing in the world in the face of such boundless magnificence. With the sky arcing blue above him and the water in front of him and Devon sitting beside him, it was hard to feel down.

He leaned over and snagged his cell phone from where he’d stashed it under his T-shirt. He checked the time. “It’s getting late,” he said. “We should go back and shower before we go out for dinner. I’m getting hungry.”

“Mmm. I guess so. This is so nice. It’d be nice to watch the sunset.”

“We can come back later if you want.”

With her legs bent up and her arms linked around them, she laid one cheek on top of her knees and regarded him.

At her look, he shifted and said, “What?”

She just smiled and shook her head, rising gracefully to her feet. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

They flicked sand out of their towels and gathered their things. She slid that big T-shirt she’d bought over her head, hiding his view of her half-naked body. Just as well. Now they had to go back to that hotel room, his body still pulsing with lust.

“Wanna go out somewhere to eat?” he asked. “Or stay at the hotel?”

“Let’s stay here.”

“Okay. It seems like a nice restaurant. We can go out somewhere tomorrow.”

They took turns showering, and Josh waited with excruciating awareness of her in the bathroom, naked, picturing her in the shower with water streaming down her body. Wow. Yesterday he’d been aware of her, definitely, but today it was almost overpowering, the way his body reacted to her presence.

Then it was his turn, and goddammit if he didn’t find himself reaching for his aching cock again, hand slicked up with soap, and once more rubbing one out in the shower. Jesus.