Held: A New Adult Romance (17 page)

 I nod. I feel my muscles ripple around him and he moans. I'm sitting upright astride him and any moment I'm going to have to move, just to scratch that deep down itch inside. I cup my breasts and gaze down at him; he's rapt and rosy cheeked between my thighs. I pinch the tips of my nipples, offering them to him, but my own touch sends me over the edge, one of those slow, inexorable shuddery orgasms that I've only ever had on my own before. It steals my breath and I make no sound as I grind my hips deep into his lap.

 Jaime cries out; he calls me beautiful and calls me by name. I droop over him, my inner muscles still shivering, my clit so sensitive that I can barely press my pubic bone into him. "Holy shit," he whispers, like I was good, like I was special.

 When we kiss our lips are as dry as if they'd been burned. "You're on fire," he says, as if he could read my mind, and when I look into his eyes I know that there is no way I can ever, ever tell him the truth.

 Chapter Sixteen

Jaime

In the morning after breakfast she wants to go down to the beach.

 "It's practically private," she says, picking her way down the narrow cliff path. The height doesn't seem to bother her but the moment I look down I feel like Jimmy Stewart. The other night when I went down on her on the porch I didn't care, because it was dark and I hadn't yet seen how the earth drops away at the edge. The first time I saw the cliff in daylight it set my head spinning, not least because I started thinking about how the railing had creaked behind my back.

 She just skips on down like a mountain goat. We must be nuts, us Californians - to keep building cities on a seam of the Earth's crust, pretending like one day it's not going to open up and swallow us all.

 Amber reaches the sand and peers up at me. "Isn't it great?" she says, shading her eyes with her hand.

 "Pretty."

 She bites her lip. Maybe it's because she thought I sounded underwhelmed at the view that she seeks to improve it. Then she lets out a crazy seagull shriek of laughter and yanks off all her clothes. "Oh, you are kidding me," I say, but she's already up to her thighs in the water.

 "I can't swim!" I yell. "And isn't it cold?"

 She turns to face me, her nipples hard and her skin white as pearl. "It's bracing," she says, but a wave catches her out in the lie, lapping up her thighs and splashing against her pussy. Her face says it all.

 "Come out."

 "Come in."

 "I can't."

 Amber shakes her head. "You can."

 I glance up and down the empty beach. "When you say 'practically private'..." I say.

 "Sometimes there are surfers," she says. "But they don't give a shit. Come on. We won't go deep. It's time you learned to swim."

 I shake my head. "I'll learn to swim when you learn to tango."

 She puts her hands on her hips, her feet apart. I don't want to go in the water but I'm still a man and she's so beautiful. "I learned some steps," she says. "Which means you should at least get your feet wet."

 Yeah. She's got me there. I sigh and take off my shoes. Amber cheers. "And the rest!"

 "No way. Wet feet. That was the deal." I roll up my pants and step into the surf. Ow. It's freezing. The slight boner that made it past my fear of her being dragged out to sea wilts before the water is even halfway up my calves.

 She drops down on her knees so that the water comes up to her shoulders. "Chickenshit," she says. "How do you expect to learn to swim if you don't even get wet?"

 "It's the ocean, Amber," I say. "People drown. There are sharks." I sound pathetic. I wish I could just do what she wants, tear off all my clothes and run into the water. Did he do that? The one who fucked her up so much she couldn't go from one end of the day to the other without crying?

 "There aren't any sharks," she says. "Well, I mean, there are but they're not..."

 "...not what? Hungry?"

 She paddles up the beach towards me, until she's on her hands and knees in the surf, her wet hair streaming down. She looks like a mermaid who's just washed up and discovered that she has legs, and the place where they meet in the middle. It's getting harder and harder to keep those three little words out of my mouth - I know they're a complication she doesn't need right now.

 “You’re more likely to get hit by a car than attacked by a shark,” she says. “Besides, we’re not going to go that deep.”

 “How do you know we won’t get swept out?”

 “I’m a good swimmer,” she says. A wave smacks her in the ass, nudging her thighs apart. I'm ready to envy the whole Pacific Ocean for that view of her. “I’ll take care of you.”

 I squint at the horizon. “Okay,” I say, stepping back from the water to pull off my sweater. Amber kneels up in the surf, hooting and applauding.

 “Here’s the deal,” I say, taking off my pants. “If I do this, you have to be naked for the rest of the day.”

 I wade towards her and almost turn back. It’s freezing and my windswept dick has shriveled to a sad little nugget.

 She stands up. “What if I’m cooking bacon?” We’d figured out earlier that bacon is not a thing you want to be frying in the nude.

 “You get to wear an apron.”

 She holds out her hand to me. “Done.”

 A wave laps up my thighs. Oh goddamn. I’m up to my waist and she swears it’s fine, even though her nipples are hard as rock and I’m sure her lips are beginning to turn blue.

 “Okay, now lie back,” she says.

 “And sink?”

 Amber laughs and holds out her arms. “You won’t sink. I’ll hold you up.”

 I shiver. The water looks uninviting. “You owe me big,” I say. “You’re going to master that tango step if it kills me.”

 “You can teach me later,” she says.

 “While you’re naked?”

 “While I’m naked.”

 Oh boy. There’s an incentive. Amber – warm and dry in my arms, naked except for a pair of heels. I wonder how many steps I can teach her before we get distracted.

 She holds out her arms again. “I’m naked right now, in case you didn’t notice.”

 I wrap my arms around her and we shiver together, waist deep. “Yeah,” I say, against her wet hair. “And in case you didn’t notice, I’m unlikely to pop a boner in this condition.”

 “All the more reason to get moving,” she says. “Now, how’d it go? Right foot forward, two side...?”

 I laugh and take hold of her. “A naked tango lesson in the ocean?”

 “Why not? You were complaining that I kept staring at my feet – now I can’t even see them.”

 “Much longer and you won’t be able to feel them. Aren’t your toes numb already?”

 “Quit bellyaching. You can’t say I’m not an enthusiastic pupil.”

 We’re off balance in all kinds of ways as the waves tug us in different directions, but she’s right – it does feel warmer when you’re moving. And there’s something to be said for her not being able to look at her feet. She seems to be treading on my toes less, or maybe it’s just because I don’t feel her doing it.

 Then she goes for a full-on, dramatic rose-between-the-teeth cross and a wave catches us off balance, tipping us both into the water.

 For a moment I’m fully under – a moment of airless gray-green, all ice and salt. Then my head breaks the surface and I flail for an instant, before I feel her arms under me.

 “Relax,” she says. “I’ve got you.”

 It’s like magic. One moment my limbs are these hopeless, thrashy things that cut through the water and drag me down, and the next they’re happy to hang there just under the surface. I can feel her hands – one between my shoulders and the other on the small of my back – and somehow feeling her there makes all the difference. I’m floating, held in her hands. Holy shit.

 “Told you,” she said. “All you had to do was forget to sink.”  

When she kisses me her lips taste of salt and her skin is icy and wet to the touch. I want to be indoors, warm and dry, rolling around in the big bed with her. She tugs her clothes on while she's still wet and grimaces at the scratch of sand. We start up the path and I slap her lightly on the butt. "Move," I say. "I want to collect on this deal as soon as possible."

 I'm still smiling as I approach the door, but the smile freezes the second I see movement behind the glass - a shadow. A person. Amber yanks open the glass door and says, "What the hell are you doing here?"

 John Gillespie is standing in the middle of the room. There's a woman with him - I've never seen her before - short hair, nice legs. She looks middle aged in a well-kept, un-Hollywood kind of way. Amber looks so pissed that I'm surprised her wet hair doesn't start to sizzle.

 "I might ask you the same question," says her father.

 "This is my house!" she hisses. "I can come here if I want to. What gives you the right to barge in on me like this? Everything was fine - I told you everything was fine, didn't I?"

 "Yeah. After the paps chased you for I don't know how many miles," says John Gillespie. "You don't think I was slightly worried?"

 I open my mouth to speak, but I get half a word out before the look in his eyes tells me to stop. "And you didn't think to persuade her to turn around?" he says.

 "I..." She looks at me and I hardly recognize her. She looks like she did when I first met her - trapped, frantic, like someone who has forgotten how to smile.

 "I had a gun," she says. "I made him drive me here. It's not his fault."

 "You had a gun? What the hell is wrong with you?"

 "What do you
think
is fucking wrong with me?" she says, her voice rising to a crazy, panic-stricken scream. Her dad reaches out to touch her but she shakes him off in a rage. "Same thing that was wrong with me before," she yells. "After everything that happened you didn't think I was going to get a tiny bit antsy about being
watched?
"

 I don't know her. I don't know what she's talking about. And I'm trying so hard to look like I don't know what she looks like naked. She isn't ready, he said. She doesn't need another man right now. She needs friends.

 I let her seduce me. That's the truth of it. I could have walked away. I knew where she'd put both guns. I could have locked them away and I could - I can be pretty persuasive - have talked her into going home to her Dad.

 But I didn't. Because I wanted to fuck her. It's that dumb and it's that dirty.

 "I feel I should take responsibility for that," says the woman, stepping forward. Amber stares at her as though she's grown an extra head. "The extra camera," the woman adds. "I suggested it when your father was concerned that you might be contemplating a further relationship..." She trails off, like she's been shamed into silence by the look in Amber's eyes.

 "Yeah," says Amber, flatly. "You're done."

 "I apologies for..."

 Amber cuts her off. "Get out of my house," she says, without raising her voice. "You're fired."

 Even John Gillespie looks ashamed. "What were we supposed to do, Amber?" he says, eventually. "You know the last thing you need right now is another man in your life..."

 She snorts. "What would you know about what I need? You thought I'd be okay with being watched? Really?"

 He sighs. "Okay. Fine. I admit that was a mistake..."

 "You think?"

 "In my defense, you did kind of kidnap the security guard." He waves a hand at me. "How about you?" he says, turning to me. "You're okay, right?"

 I nod. "Yeah. I'm fine. Really. No harm done."

 "Well, that's a matter of opinion," he says.

 I have no idea what to say. If this was a movie this would be the moment when I tell him that I love his daughter, and he'd look at me and then at her and she'd smile and he'd see she was happy, right? Except I know that won't happen, because the last time she was in love she had her heart broken so badly it drove her nuts.

 "You need to come back home," he says, but she's shaking her head before he even gets to the end of the sentence. "Amber, you know the rules. You have to keep up your therapy..."

 "...not with her, I won't."

 "No. All right. We'll find another doctor."

 She slumps down on the couch, her head in her hands. Everyone may as well be speaking Chinese for all the sense this conversation makes to me. I can't make her happy. How the hell am I supposed to even start? She hasn't told me the first thing about herself, not really.

 But then she glances up through the straggles of her lank, salty hair and I see a light in her eyes that wasn't there before this little adventure of ours. Maybe she would have told me everything, if we'd only had more time.

 Maybe.

 I got fired, obviously.

 For the first few days I walk around in a daze, thinking she'll call, at least. If only to say she was sorry for making me lose my job. But she doesn't. The days slide by one much like the other. Halloween and
Dia de los Muertos
only stand out because Chuy eats too much candy and pukes all over Beca's hard-won hardwood floor.  Jo and Pops talk about me when I'm not in the room; whenever I walk in they sound like they just changed the subject. My mother thinks I'm losing weight. It's left to Beca to broach the subject with her usual trademark tact.

 "Are you seriously still hung up on that skinny white bitch?" she says.

 It's on the tip of my tongue to say Amber is not a skinny white bitch, before I realize she answers to at least two of these descriptions and right now I'm too sore to refute the third. "I'm not hung up," I say. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm busy. It's hard enough to find a job these days."

 "Doubly hard if you never smile," says my sister. "Pull your head out of your ass sometime. She's not worth it - the last guy she 'loved' ended up dead." And then she's out the front door before I can even ask what she means by that.

 My laptop is open in front of me - I was looking for job applications. Fuck it. Why shouldn't I break the promise I made to myself? It doesn't count now, now that she's humped me and effectively dumped me. I type in 'Amber Gillespie boyfriend' and a face peers out at me from the image search. A mugshot.

 I hate him on sight. He made a police mugshot look like a professional photoshoot - that good looking. Pale eyes, black lashes, curly dark hair. A kind of squished nose and a full mouth - a sensual, Jim Morrison sort of face. This is the man who made her lose her mind. 1989-2011. And she didn't even tell me he was dead.