No Strings Attached (9 page)

His lips lifted. “Both, probably.”

She frowned. “That freaks me out a little.”

He laughed. “No, it doesn’t. But if my looking at how beautiful you are when you come
bothers you so much, how about we do this instead?”

He rolled her over onto her stomach and pulled her to the end of the bed, her legs
dangling over the edge. That placed her ass right up against him, which made his cock
dance in anticipation and his balls draw up tight.

She threw a glance over her shoulder and wiggled her butt. “Oh, I like this.”

He held on to her hips, rocking against her. “Me, too. Sure you aren’t going to worry
I’m looking at you?”

She rolled her eyes and arched her back, rubbing her pussy against his dick. “Smartass.
Are you going to fuck me or psychoanalyze me?”

This was what he liked about Ella—she was such a guy in so many ways, always throwing
his sarcasm right back at him. But where it counted—the sweet softness of her—she
was all woman.

He slid inside her. “Oh, I’m definitely gonna fuck you.”

As he thrust to the hilt, she threw her head back, all that glorious dark hair spilling
over her shoulders. He rolled his hips against her, rocking back and forth, giving
her a little, then a lot, gauging the rhythm she liked.

He already knew what he liked—whatever made her moan again. And he found that the
harder he powered against her, the more noises came from her—and they weren’t noises
of complaint.

“You want it harder?”

“Yes.”

He pumped deep inside her, withdrew and thrust again. He pulled back and this time
those beautiful brown locks resting against her back were too much of a lure. He wound
his hand in her hair and used it to pull her head back while he drove deep. She let
out a soft whimper, followed by a loud moan.

“I like that. Do it again,” she said, her nails digging into the sheets.

“Which one? Pull your hair or shove my cock deep inside you?”

“Both.”

Now it was his turn to groan, his cock demanding he roar to the finish line.

Not yet. Not nearly yet. Not when Ella’s sweet ass bounced against him. He smoothed
his free hand over her ass, keeping the other tight in her hair, and tugged while
he thrust. She cried out and her pussy tightened around him.

“Clay, I’m going to come.”

That was exactly what he needed to hear. He increased the pace, pumping hard and fast
inside her, feeling her walls close in around him. His balls slapped her pussy with
every thrust, sweat pouring off him as he powered to climax. And when she let go,
when she cried out with her orgasm, he let go, too, his orgasm ripping through him
like a free fall off a high cliff, taking everything he had and exploding outward,
inside her, until he had nothing left, until he was shaking. He dropped on top of
Ella’s back, then rolled over on his side, taking her with him.

They breathed together for a while, rapid and spent at first; then both slowed to
a regular rhythm. Ella put her hands over his and was doodling designs or something.
He didn’t know—didn’t care. He just liked the feel of her touching him.

“I hope this boat has a shower,” she finally said. “I’m all sweaty.”

“Me, too. You make me work for it.”

She giggled, then pulled away and sat up, flipping her hair out
of her face. “Yeah, well, gotta get our workout in some way. We don’t want to head
back to work with potbellies, do we?”

She sauntered toward the bathroom. He admired her walk, waited a few minutes until
he heard the shower running, then got up to join her, realizing how damned content
he was with how things were going.

That content feeling surprised the hell out of him. He’d expected to like the sex.
But he hadn’t expected to love spending every moment with Ella. Then again, he didn’t
know why he was surprised. They spent a lot of time together on jobsites. Their companies
often worked side by side on projects, so they invariably worked in tandem. There
had always been camaraderie between them.

This, though—this was more than a camaraderie. It was a connection. And Clay felt
it growing deeper.

He didn’t do deep. He didn’t do connections. And he’d promised Ella no strings.

So why in hell did he of all people suddenly feel as if he was tied to Ella? And why
did he of all people think that wasn’t such a bad thing?

“Grip it harder, Ella. That’s it, babe. Oh, yeah. Just a little bit longer and you’ll
be there.”

Ella braced her feet on the edge of the boat’s stern and yanked hard, the muscles
of her arms straining each time she pulled back to reel in the fish. It wasn’t a marlin—the
crew said it was a mahi mahi—but it would be her first big fish and she’d been excited
as hell about this expedition. They’d set out before dawn this morning and had traveled
to the deep part of the ocean where the best fish could be found.

Clay had caught a big one a few hours ago—a nice-sized blue marlin. Ella had been
so excited watching him fight for that baby she knew she had to experience it herself.
The pure power, the exhilaration of human against powerful fish—it was primal and
fierce watching the two of them battle it out. And when he’d won and reeled it in,
she’d seen the gleam in his eye, the pride…Oh, yeah, she wanted a taste of that, too.

She hadn’t minded at all the hours of sitting there trolling along
slow and easy with their lines in the water. It had given her time to sit and talk
with Clay.

This was their last day in Hawaii, their last day together as lovers before reality—real
life—set in again.

“Okay, looks like he’s going to play dead in the water for a while.”

She looked to Clay. “What?”

“Your fish is resting. Go ahead and relax the tension in your arms. But don’t let
go of the rod just yet. He may decide to take off.”

“Okay.”

“So I just sit here. And do what exactly?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be a good time to paint your toenails. Just chill. He’ll come around
in a few minutes.”

She laughed. Talking with Clay was so easy, so natural. Not at all like talking to
a stranger. They’d had conversations about work, about projects coming up and ones
they were finishing. Though she hadn’t broached anything personal with him. And maybe
she should. After all, other than work stuff, she really didn’t know all that much
about his personal life.

“You’ve owned Mansfield Builders as long as I’ve been in the business,” she started.

He tore his gaze away from the trolling lines and onto her. “Yeah?”

“Is that all you’ve ever done?”

He nodded. “Pretty much. I started out in construction as a punk when I was eighteen.
My dad worked construction, said it was an honest living. It just seemed natural to
do what he did. As soon as I got out of high school, I wanted to get down and dirty
alongside him.”

“He died young, though?”

“Yeah. When I was twenty-one.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

Clay shrugged. “He’d been in the business a long time. Never wanted to move up the
ranks or become a foreman. Never saw himself on the business side of things. Just
liked the physical aspect of the job. It was hard on him.”

“How old was he when he died?”

“Fifty-four.”

“That’s really young. What about your mom?”

“She died when I was sixteen. Cancer.”

How had she not known these things? Because she’d been so wrapped up in her own life,
and then her own grief, that she’d never bothered to find out—that was why. What kind
of friend was she? “I’m sorry again.”

He smiled at her. “It was a long time ago, Ella. I’m okay with it.”

“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”

“No. Just me.”

“So there you were at twenty-one with no family. That must have been hard.”

His gaze drifted out to sea. “I managed. I had my job, my friends. I focused on those.
Took college courses at night because the foreman told me I had a head for numbers
and I should do something besides work my body to death like my dad had done. So I
listened to him, and instead of partying my paychecks away, I went to school and got
my degree. Eventually I moved up the ranks and ended up starting my own business.”

“A self-made man.”

He shifted his gaze back to her. “Something like that.”

“I admire your drive and ambition. A lot of guys that age would have pissed away their
future. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to end up like my dad.”

Ella could only imagine how difficult it had been for him to lose so much at such
a young age. Maybe that explained his inability to commit to any woman. Maybe he was
afraid of losing someone he loved again.

She understood that way of thinking. The thought of loving someone that deeply again—and
then losing them—was unfathomable.

The line tugged and she focused her attention back to the fish. So did Clay, who moved
behind her.

“Give it a little line,” he said, noticing she’d tensed up and was
pulling against the straining fish. “You don’t want it so tight that it breaks.”

She unwound the reel to relax the line.

“Okay, now start reeling him in again, nice and easy this time. Bring him in closer.
This is your game now.”

Clay stepped back and let Ella and the crew do the rest. By the time they hauled the
squirming fish on board, Ella’s face was red, and she was dripping with sweat and
utterly exhausted. But she grinned in triumph. She’d done it. The crew held it up
and took her picture next to it. Not even half the size of Clay’s marlin, but to Ella
it was magnificent.

“She’s a beauty,” Clay said as Ella left the stern, wiping her hands and face with
a towel.

“That was so much fun. And grueling. I can see why you love it.”

He patted her shoulder. “You put some energy into it.”

She laughed. “Yeah, my arms feel like limp noodles right now.” She shook them out,
needlelike tingles shooting down to her fingers.

“You’re tough. You can handle it. I’ll give you a massage later.”

She tilted her head back to accept the kiss he offered. “I look forward to that.”

After their first night together, they’d been inseparable. They’d gone snorkeling,
sightseeing, bodysurfing and fishing over the past few days. And whenever they weren’t
doing something outside, they were inside making love with a furious intensity that
left Ella exhausted and more than satisfied.

Being with Clay had been more than she’d expected out of this trip. Being with someone
she knew, someone who knew her, who understood her and had no expectations about who
she was—now, that was a bonus. On the work site, Clay laughed and joked with her,
treated her just like another guy, which was what she expected. He treated her like
a colleague, and she respected him because of that.

But this past week he’d treated her like a woman. There was a
comfort level with Clay that she could never have experienced with a stranger. How
foolish of her to expect that she could have come out here and chosen some random
guy and had the same kind of experience she’d had this week with Clay.

It had been like a honeymoon—without the love and marriage. They’d laughed, talked,
held hands, kissed, made love and talked some more. They knew each other better than
any two people could. And what they didn’t know they’d started to learn about each
other in the past week.

It had been perfect.

Almost too perfect. Because she’d discovered she could care about a man again. That
maybe love wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Every moment she spent with Clay made her realize that the time with him had become
about more than just sex.

Her no-strings week had become something more binding—at least to her. She didn’t
know what it had meant to Clay. Probably nothing at all. Just fun, no strings, exactly
what he had promised her. Exactly what she had wanted.

At first.

After the boat docked they spent the rest of the late afternoon at the beach and the
pool, just swimming and lying in the sun sipping drinks. It was relaxing and fun and,
after her hard workout of marlin fishing, just what Ella needed. She even fell asleep
under a shaded cabana with Clay massaging her aching shoulders. It wasn’t until he
pressed his lips against her neck that she woke.

“Sun’s going down and you have goose bumps.”

She’d been sleeping hard, hadn’t even realized how tired she was.

They went upstairs—she had ended up staying the entire week in his suite—and Ella
showered. She came out wrapped in a towel. Clay was on the balcony.

“What are we doing tonight?” she asked.

He turned to her, his gaze raking her body. God, she loved when he so unabashedly
appreciated her like that and made no excuses for doing so. “What haven’t we done
already?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. We’ve seen every inch of this island, been in the water
and on top of it. We’ve fished, done a luau, gone to shows…. So, I guess we’ve done
it all—except one thing.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“We haven’t gone dancing.”

He laughed. “I told you. I don’t dance. I want you to leave this island with good
memories of me.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “You can’t be that bad.”

“Really. I can.”

“Okay. What would you like to do tonight?”

He stood and walked over to her, slid two fingers inside her towel between her breasts.
“Maybe stay in. Order room service.”

Her breasts swelled, her entire body flushed at his words and the images they conjured.
Just the brush of his knuckles against the swell of her breasts was enough to fire
up her arousal, make her want him. The thought of never touching him after tonight,
never feeling his mouth on her again, made her fight tears.

Instead, she swallowed past the ache in her throat and managed a smile. “Staying in
sounds like a really great idea.”

He removed his fingers. “Let me go shower. Why don’t you order us something to eat
and drink?”