Quirks & Kinks (22 page)

“How am I now?” she teased, fluffing her hair while her bulging eye twitched.

“Slightly less sexy,” I admitted tactfully, feeling my grin all the way in my hair follicles.

“Good. Mood ruined. Let’s go surf!” she cheered, jumping out of the truck and leaving me behind with a semi-hard cock and a smile on my face.

I really wasn’t sure how she managed to leave me unsatisfied and happy simultaneously, but I
was
sure that she was the only one who could.

Turning from the empty space she left behind to my door, I climbed out and slammed it shut, and then walked the few steps to the back to get my board out. Never having included anyone else in anything that had to do with Evan, I only had the one, but I was kind of looking forward to spending all of my time trying to help her catch a wave.

For as long as she lasted anyway. I had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t have a clue what kind of a workout she was in for.

Calling out, I aimed to stop her overly eager romp down the expanse of sand before the ocean. We had one more errand to run, right across the street, before she’d be ready.

“Whoa there, Easie!”

Her head jerked up and her petite feet pattered to a quick stop.

“What?” she asked back, her hands jumping to her hips with a strong show of attitude.

Jogging to get closer to her, I stopped only two feet away. “The water temperature here is about sixty-three degrees.”

“Yeah?” she replied with a cute tilt of her defiant head. “And?”

“
And
comfortable water temperature is a good ten plus degrees north of that. You spend thirty minutes in that water with no wetsuit and you’ll freeze your very attractive nipples right off.”

“Ow.” Her arms came up and crossed on her chest in a defensive reflex.

“Yeah. I’m not real fond of that idea either.” I chuckled. Stared longingly at her attractively ample chest.

She mocked my chuckle with a fake one of her own. “I’m guessing you have an actual other option for me? A solution to this problem? Because if you don’t, I might have to junk punch you. Hard.”

“No junk punching necessary,” I assured her, surreptitiously placing one hand in front of it, just in case. “Only junk love.”

She shook her head, a smirk forming at the corners of her mouth and squishing up the line of her nose. I could feel my smile grow in response.

“Come on,” I prompted. “There’s a shop right across the street where we can grab you a suit and save your nipples.”

“I think you just like saying the word ‘nipples’,” she accused accurately.

“It’s not bad,” I admitted through a chuckle, adding a remark that earned me a dainty slap shortly after. “It’s not as good as touching them.”

The sharp sting of her fingertips on the bare skin of my arm did nothing to deter me. “Of course, that lacks in appeal compared to tasting.”

She shook her head. “Are all men this unashamedly lecherous?”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised I don’t find every last one of you humping a pillow like those little horny dogs every time I enter a room.”

“Ha! Pillows lack a little bit in the warmth and moisture department.”

“Gross.”

“You brought it up,” I pointed out, putting my hand to the small of her back to guide her back across the semi-busy street.

“You’re right. I just underestimated your ability to pick up the ball and run with it.”

“I’m very athletic,” I teased as we stepped onto the curb in front of Rip Curl.

Easie glanced into the window, and in one quick instant, all of her joviality fled. “Anderson, I can’t afford—”

“I’m buying it,” I cut in.

“No, I can’t let you.”

The guilt was immediate and very nearly suffocating. If it weren’t for me, and my undeniable inability to let go, she wouldn’t feel the need to spend money she didn’t have.

“Easie,” I pleaded with my eyes, hoping we weren’t going to have the same old antiquated argument that men and women had been having for years.

She obviously wasn’t as keen to avoid it, striking back with a weighty name call of her own. “Anderson.”

“I totally respect your attempt to pay. And I promise this isn’t the beginning of some misguided alpha attempt to control your life.”

She raised her brows.

“But I suggested we do this. I knew you would need one of these. I never considered making you pay for it.”

Her mouth opened with the beginning of a word, but I talked on, making her slam it closed like a gulping fish.

“Don’t make me waste good time and energy arguing about it.”

She cocked a hip to the side, but I ignored it, stepping into her body and bringing my lips directly to her ear.

“If you want to be in control, take it for yourself later, when we’re in bed and my head is between your legs.”

Her body rolled, her hips sucking to mine like a magnet in time with her small gasp.

Pulling back slightly, her uncharacteristically timid eyes met mine. “You’re willing to give up control
then?
”

I nearly laughed. “When I’m eating you out?”

She nodded, wide-eyed.

Skating my lips from the bottom of her neck upward, I moved them back to the shell of her ear and lowered my voice to a whisper. “I can’t think of a better time.”

A shiver passed through her body, but as I pulled away, she gathered herself fairly quickly. “Okay, you sex-bargainer, you. Buy me things if you must.”

“It’s amazing how you managed to make two very good things sound bad just now.”

She shrugged adorably. “It’s a gift really.”

Only when I looked away from her to the store, did I realize just how long we’d been standing out here.

“Jesus.”

“What?” she reacted, jumping and turning to look where I was looking.

Two beefy hands formed a cone around a pair of beady eyes, and the set of them all was pressed firmly against the glass window.

“Jimmy,” I told Easie, pushing her toward the door and pulling it open.

Jimmy was the owner of Rip Curl, and I’d known him since the first day I came in there, lost and desperate to turn myself into the surfer Evan dreamed of. But even he didn’t know the reason behind my desperation, the factor behind my seemingly endless drive and determination.

Nearly no one did.

“Anderson!” Jimmy greeted as the bell rang over the door.

“Hey, Jimmy.”

“And who is this lovely lady?” he asked, shuffling his sandaled feet directly over to her and grabbing one of her hands between both of his.

Jimmy’s skin was tan and worn with both age and abuse, and his clothes hung shapelessly from his relatively svelte body. An active lifestyle kept him moving better than any other eighty year old man I knew. His hair was completely gray and shaggy with inattention, and the bearded line of his jaw matched it to a T.

And, like
every
other old man I’d ever known, he was a charmer with the young ladies.

“I’m Easie,” she introduced herself, smiling at Jimmy’s disheveled appearance in a fond way that she never would have if he were twenty years younger.

“Oh,” Jimmy cooed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a prettier woman.” Leaning in and speaking conspiratorially, he whispered and jerked a hand in my direction. “Are you sure you want to be hanging out with this guy?”

Easie smiled her prettiest, most natural smile at me.

“He seems pretty worthwhile so far.”

Fuck if that didn’t make me feel good.

“Good, good,” Jimmy tutted, still holding her hand. “I’ve never had a problem with him, but I’ve also never seen him with a woman before. You can never be too careful.”

Easie looked me over as though she was considering the fact that I wasn’t a liar.

And I wasn’t.

Except by omission.

“In fact, I’ve never seen him with anyone. Kind of a loner, this one,” Jimmy continued, spilling everything he knew about me as quickly as possible all in the name of wooing my woman.

“I think that’s enough about me,” I cut in. “Easie needs a wetsuit.”

“Oh, excellent!” he cheered, the informational dumping a memory now that we were talking about his favorite thing.

Surfing.

Jimmy was a surfer of old, a real lifer. He’d been on a board since he was young and reckless, and then he’d never grown out of it, opening up Rip Curl when a life spent constantly in the ocean became too much for his aging body.

He had a singleminded kind of passion and focus, dumping all of his attention into being a surfer and helping other people become one too. I’d spent my time carefully honing myself into the complete opposite.

Often worn thin and spread just past the point of comfortable, I pushed myself, constantly expecting more and never feeling like it was enough.

I honestly didn’t know if I ever would.

“What are we thinking? Full suit? Spring suit?”

“She’s going to use it today.”

“You spend a lot of time in the Pacific Ocean, pretty lady?” he asked, turning to Easie to survey her face.

Her eyebrows shot up just before her whole face scrunched into a comical showing of shame. “None.”

Tilting my chin down toward the ground, I bit into my lower lip to smother a laugh.

“None?” Jimmy questioned, the foreign concept making him reach out to the nearby counter for support.

“None,” Easie confirmed and looked to me for help.

“Don’t give her a hard time, old man. She’s going in today.” I lifted my eyebrows in Easie’s direction, hoping I’d passed her test. And that’s what it was. She’d taught me enough times for me to get it. “Which is why—”

“She needs a wetsuit. Got it, got it,” Jimmy muttered. “Full suit it is,” he decided, turning to her. “You’re gonna freeze your ass off. Pardon my french.”

“I get it, I get it,” she huffed dramatically. “I’m going to freeze all of my valuable parts off. Consider it noted.”

Jimmy looked to me in question, but he did it with a goofy smile on his face.

“You’re going to be fine in a full suit,” I assured her, realizing for the first time that we were doing a good job of talking her out of something we didn’t want to talk her out of.

Pretty fucking brilliant of us.

Jimmy looked at me like I was crazy, so I pulled Easie to my chest and wrapped my arms around her as a distraction.

Over her shoulder I made the universal motion for ‘shut the hell up,’ slicing a single finger across the line of my throat.

He finally got the hint, making his way to the women’s end of the store and pulling a low-temperature-rated suit from the rack.

“Here, Easie,” he called, forcing me to slowly let her go. “Why don’t you try this one on.”

I watched as she swayed her way to the back and slipped into the dressing room and closed the curtain. Jimmy didn’t bother walking back to the front of the store, opting instead to lean on the rack from which he’d pulled her suit.

“First timer?” he asked, making small talk for the sake of getting to the bottom of the deeper issue. He’d been trying to get me to spill my beans for years, but I had a lot of practice making sure my nut was tough to crack.

I guess he thought lulling me into his trap with innocent topics first would end in a different result.

It wouldn’t.

“How’s it going in there?” I asked Easie instead of answering him. He just looked to the ground and shook his head, bemused.

“Fuck me, this thing is like a fucking medieval torture device.”

Both Jimmy and I chuckled. “The neoprene can be tricky the first few times.”

“Tricky?!” she shrieked. “Spanx aren’t even this bad. And the last time I tried to get into those I swore to myself I’d rather jump into a life of prostitution than wear them again!”

“Spanx?” Jimmy muttered, just as clueless as I was.

“Um, what are Spanx?” I ventured, walking over to the dressing room and standing just on the other side of the curtain.

“An invention intended to make fat women feel skinny and skinny women feel even skinnier. Or, one of Satan’s best jokes. Depends on how you look at it really.”

“And I suppose that means that the fit is too tight?”

“How the hell should I know? I’ve never worn a wetsuit before.”

Sliding the curtain open, I stepped in to find her hair disheveled and her face beet red. She looked like she was about five seconds away from stabbing herself, just to escape having to spend one more minute in that suit. “If it has you contemplating death, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s too tight.”

“Death has definitely been contemplated. Not only that, I’ve planned it out thoroughly, decided on the method, and found the perfect way to blame it completely on you.”

“That’s bad.” Teeth clenched and eyebrows raised, my lips stretched and pulled back into a grimace.

“I get that you’re cute and everything, but if you don’t get me out of this thing in the next two seconds, I won’t be the only death reported on the news.”

I laughed, stepping forward and rubbing my hands down the line of her tightly packaged body. “It should fit snuggly at the wrists and ankles, and just a touch snug at the neck, but you shouldn’t feel like an over-swollen tick.”

“Then this is definitely too small. Or I’m too big, but I prefer the first option.”

I bit into my bottom lip and rubbed my hands up and down her perfect body some more. “It’s definitely too small.”

“Great,” she fake cheered, making fists and shaking them upward quickly. “Now get me out of it. I already made like Gumby to zip the damn thing up, but now my bendy bone is broken.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” I whispered, sliding the zipper at the back of her suit down slowly and letting the knobs of my knuckles drag against her skin. “I have a really strong feeling that I’m going to like your bendy bone.”

“Good God,” she moaned—and not in the way that I’d hoped. “You’re like a whole different breed of human. No wonder that person wrote that book about us being from different planets.”

“Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus?”

“More like Women Are From Earth, Men Are From Oh Look, A Vagina!”

Rough chuckles hopped their way up my throat, rattling slightly with the shake of my head. “What? And women aren’t into innuendos? Good try, sweetheart, but I don’t think so.”