Lorelie Brown - Riding the Wave

Her orgasm came first, blasting her off her rocker. The hot flushes of tingles swept over her body from her pussy first, then down her legs. And it was all even better with Tanner’s shell-shocked expression as her sheath clenched down on his cock.

She collapsed in a heap, first on him. Then when the heat and the sweat stuck their skin together in a clammy mess, she slid to the side. “That was my idea of an afternoon workout.”

Tanner laughed, running a hand over her side. “Don’t even think this’ll get you out of this evening’s surf.”

“I wouldn’t think it.” Her jaw cracked on a yawn that almost felt like it spun her eyes inside out. “Maybe a nap first.”

“Yeah?” His mouth brushed over the top of her head. “You think you’ve worked hard enough for a nap?”

“Puh-lease.” She sighed. She was striving for smart-assed but the pure bone-melting pleasure of her orgasm had replaced every bit of smart-mouthed she owned with plain tired. “I rocked your world. You should be thanking me.”

“Thank you, Avalon.” His quiet voice encouraged her eyes to drift shut.

Even the soft trill of her phone couldn’t make her eyes open. “Get that?” she muttered. It could be Sage. Or maybe even one of the WavePro reps who she really ought to give a shit about. But all the care had been fucked right out of her.

Tanner fumbled across the nightstand and grabbed her cell. “Avalon Knox’s phone. How may I direct your call?”

At the very last, absolutely too late second, the bottom sank out of her stomach as quickly as if a shark had taken a chomp. Her eyes snapped open. And sure as shit, it was a shark on the other end of the call. From her position nestled against Tanner’s chest, she barely heard the tinny voice. “Tanner? Is that you? Well, well. Now I see Avalon’s problem.”

Underneath her very grip, Tanner’s muscles locked hard. His body went still. Stiff. Steady in a new, cold way that she’d never seen or felt from him before. “Mako?”

Cold. Tanner felt himself go as cold as snow. The sultry air felt like an arctic breeze cooling the sweat on his skin. His blood slugged to a halt in an absent roar of sound.

Mako still prattled in his ear. Going on about . . . something. Words Tanner couldn’t grab hold of. Because he didn’t really want to. A rattling, horror show of destruction bounced around in his skull. His chest wrenched and pinched on something that was supposed to be air, but fell far short. This was . . . bad. Fucking awful.

Because Avalon was scrambling to her knees on his bed. She’d lost her shorts and bikini bottom but the dark blue strings of her top were still tied in place. As if they hadn’t been crawling all over each other. Wrapped up as if nothing else could get between them. But that wasn’t exactly true, now was it.

Her eyes were absolutely huge. Giant and glimmering. Begging him silently for understanding. But the color in her round cheeks was long gone. Guilt if he’d ever seen it before.

Tanner’s fingers gave a numb tingle. He was clenching her phone entirely too hard, the metal edge biting into his fingertips.

Still watching her, he uncranked his fingers one by one. The phone fell, but unfortunately it landed impotently on the bed in a soft bounce. Avalon grabbed it, then lifted it to her ear.

Half of him cringed at the added betrayal. The other half felt like it was watching from miles away.

He’d almost drowned once. The same time he’d sliced his face open on the reef. The blow had disoriented him, twisting up from down and flipping his mind inside out. He’d lost himself.

So many factors would have kept this from wrecking what little emotional balance he’d been able to achieve. It wouldn’t have been nearly so devastating if she hadn’t talked to the one person he couldn’t stand in the world. Or if Avalon didn’t mean so much to him. Or if their afternoon hadn’t already been so . . . right.

She lifted the phone to her ear, offering him a weak smile. “Not now.”

He didn’t hear the response but it wasn’t like it mattered. He raised an eyebrow. Challenge met. How she thought of him was more than obvious now.

Her tongue slicked across her bottom lip. The fast flutter of her pulse at the base of her neck said she was beyond anxious.

He ought to care. He didn’t. Instead there was the chilled wasteland inside him.

Rolling off the bed, he scooped his board shorts from the floor. At least they weren’t clammy as he stepped into them, then tugged them up over his ass. He wasn’t about to have this conversation with his junk hanging out. Small favors, right? He obviously wasn’t getting any big ones.

“I cannot do this right now,” she said into the phone in a half whisper. “No! Don’t do anything. Don’t go anywhere.” A pause, then her eyes managed to go even bigger as her gaze flew to Tanner’s. She scrambled off the bed, tugging her bikini top back into place. “Do not come here.”

Tanner pointed at her. Cold, hard fury rocked down his spine, pushing everything else out of his way. At least if he was pissed, he couldn’t be mopey depressed over chick shit like getting his feelings hurt. So he let the anger come. “Tell that fucker if he shows up here, my fist will finally land in his goddamn face. He’s not a teenager anymore.”

She blanched even more, her cheeks going seafoam green. “Don’t fucking do it.” And then she hung up on him. Finally.

“What the hell is going on here, Avalon?” He yanked open a dresser drawer and grabbed the first T-shirt his hand touched: Tahitian Bureau of Tourism. Fuck that noise. He yanked it right back off over his head again. Plain black worked. “What? Cat got your tongue? Fucking shark got your tongue, maybe?”

She grabbed her shorts and pulled them up over the sweet curve of her ass without even hunting down her bikini bottoms. He looked away. He needed to focus on being mad, on being angry. He couldn’t think of their fucking, or the sex, and absolutely couldn’t think about the way he’d started hoping for more.

The hard yanks she raked through her hair left finger tracks in the dark mess. “I’m not even sure what you think is going on, but I’m damned sure I don’t deserve this.”

“No?” He folded his arms over his chest because he’d be damned if he could figure out what else he could touch. Not her, because he almost wanted to throttle her, and if that wasn’t an old-fashioned idea, he’d never heard one. He’d obviously lost his goddamned mind over her. “Then explain. Were you or were you not talking with Mako behind my back?”

“It’s not like that.” The lush line of her mouth set into a hard pout. “You’re making it sound like I’ve been doing something shitty.”

“You fucking have been. Or you wouldn’t have been hiding it.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to help. He didn’t really give me—”

He cut her off with a hard slashing motion of his hand. “You fucking hid it. How is that at all okay to you?”

“I just wanted him to stop making trouble.”

A dulling roar of confusion washed over him, starting at the top of his head and shaking down to his churning guts. “What the fuck? What are you talking about?”

Over the past couple weeks, she’d taken to bringing along a bag when she didn’t have to be home by a certain time. She fished a tank top out, then tugged it down over her head. Her shoulders bounced on a heavy breath. When she turned around, she seemed calmer. “If he didn’t get to meet Eileen, he was going to go back to SURFING and tell them that Hank first met his mom when she was underage. I don’t even know if that’s true, but would it matter? The Wright name doesn’t need to be dragged through the mud.”

He shook his head. Hard. But nothing put the brains back in order. “Threats? Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Because you’ve been so friendly to him?”

“Mom doesn’t need trouble from him.”

“I know! That’s exactly what I was trying to avoid.” Avalon’s eyes flashed bright, and her lips parted as if she’d say something else. But then she swallowed it down with a shake of her head.

“Say it.”

“No.”

Something hard and mean rose up. The little boy who was so pissed at the father who’d slipped out of his grasp. There was nothing he could do about that, but he could make Avalon say whatever she was holding back. That would be child’s play. And maybe he’d have someone else to be mad at. “No, say it. I insist.”

Her neck was marble. Tendons in stark relief, like she’d shatter at any moment. “You’re not in charge of the family. You don’t get to choose like that. Last I checked, we didn’t elect you as dictator.”

“Last I checked, you weren’t a member of the family.”

She flinched. More than that, she withdrew. Pulled down into herself as her eyes dulled out. “I see.”

He ran a hand through his hair. Only Avalon could make him feel like he’d disemboweled a puppy. “I’m sorry, but you’re not.” If she were, they wouldn’t be sleeping together.

She waved a hand as if she didn’t care, but the line of her spine said otherwise. It screamed hurt in its stiffness. “No, I get it. I was only trying to help. He wanted to meet with Eileen and Sage, and it didn’t seem like that big a price to pay to get him to withhold insinuations. It’s not like paying blackmail or something.”

“I know he did. And I told him to fuck off. It’s shitty that he tried to use you to get to them.”

The stance she took seemed almost like she were prepared to go into battle. “Not tried. I arranged a meeting between Mako and Eileen. Like an hour from now.”

“And you let them?” The rage came back, full force. A heart-thumping takeover of his body that sent his brain black. “For fuck’s sake, did you even think about that at all? Do you have any sort of idea what he could say to her?”