Читать книгу Australian Escape: Her Hottest Summer Yet / The Heat of the Night - Элли Блейк, Ally Blake - Страница 14
ОглавлениеAvery’s first glimpse inside Jonah’s place—a shack tucked away in the hills behind the cove—held no surprises; the place was a total man cave.
Surfboards and a kayak lined up on hooks in the entrance hall. Battered running shoes lay discarded on a small pile of sand under a top-of-the-range road bike. A slew of mismatched barstools shoved under an island bench in the utilitarian kitchen the only dining option, and along with a big dark sprawling lounge were a recycled timber coffee table covered in boating magazines and mug rings and a projector screen taller than she was.
Avery glanced back towards the front door; but as the last time she’d checked there was still no sign yet of the man himself.
Right in the middle of a pretty full-on make-out session on his porch, Hull had let out a gut-curdling yowl before taking off into the forest. And if Avery’s heart hadn’t already been racing like the Kentucky Derby from that kiss, the sight of big brawny Jonah staring in distress after his dog—sorry, not his dog—had made her heart flip twice and go splat.
She’d given him a shove. “Go.”
After a brief thank-you kiss he’d gone, leaping off the porch, grabbing a man-sized torch from his big black muscle car, and run off into the forest like some kind of superhero.
No telling how long he’ll be, she thought as she distracted her nerves by scoping out the rest of his home. Down the solitary hall was one seriously cool bathroom with a fantastic sunburst mosaic covering an entire wall and an old brass tub—the kind you sat in with your knees up to your chin. Leaning against the doorjamb of his small office, with its big wooden desk, a wall of shelves filled with books and knick-knacks, another covered in old maps, star charts, pictures of boats, she admitted that, while the house might be a total bachelor pad, with not a feminine touch in sight, it was seriously appealing. Simple and raw, woodsy and warm. Lived in.
It was Jonah.
Pushing herself away from the wall, she walked unthinkingly through the last door to find herself standing in a bedroom.
Jonah’s bedroom.
Her next breath in was choppy, her palms growing uncommonly warm as her eyes skittered over the chair in the corner covered in man clothes. The bedside table—singular—had at one time been a beer barrel, and now boasted a lamp with a naked bulb, a book—pages curled, face down—and a handful of loose change. No curtains shielded the windows, which were recycled portholes looking out over what would no doubt be a spectacular Pacific view.
Her heart beat wildly as her eyes finally settled on the biggest thing in the room: Jonah’s bed. It was big. Huge. And unmade, the white sheets a shambles. It wasn’t hard to imagine his long brown limbs twisted up in the bedding.
Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that she’d be in such a position with a man like Jonah North. A man who made her twitch. And scramble. And think twice. And want. The want she felt around him was crazy, wild, and corrupting.
A man who couldn’t even commit to a dog...
Insides twisting, Avery knew the smart thing to do would be to walk away, before the want became something else, something more. She could already feel it happening, encroaching. Heartbreak loomed with this one. Way better to find herself that cabana boy and piña colada and spend the rest of the summer in blissed-out inactivity.
Too late, she thought as warmth skittered over her skin. Jonah was back.
She turned to find him standing in the bedroom doorway, his broad shoulders blocking out the light from the hall. He’d ditched his shoes, and his shirt, and his eyes were as dark as coals.
Any doubts she might have harboured about what she was doing there went up in a puff of smoke. “Everything okay?” she asked, her voice so husky it was barely intelligible.
“All sorted.”
“No baby birds to check on? Stray cats to nurture? Just saying I could go watch a DVD or something till you’re...ready.”
Jonah’s smile was swift. Sexy as hell. And predatory.
And Avery was done thinking. The sound of a zipper rent the air; and when Avery’s bustier sank forward into her arms she let it dangle from two fingers before dropping it to the floor.
Jonah’s smile disappeared. And Avery’s stomach quivered as his dark gaze raked her from head to toe.
When her hand went to the side zip of her floaty pants, Jonah shook his head. Just once, but it was enough for her fingers to fall away.
All man, this one. Never asked permission—not to rescue her, not to kiss her. The only time he’d asked was when he’d wanted to dance. As if he’d known that her acceptance was as significant as kicking down a brick wall.
When Jonah took a step her way, her breath caught in her throat, and in the low light his mouth hitched into a grin. She scowled back, which only made him laugh; that deep masculine huh-huh-huh that near took her knees out from under her. Lucky for her, suddenly he was there, an arm at her back, his nose rubbing gently against hers.
Then with a nudge he tilted her chin and captured her mouth with all the ease and honeyed smoothness of a man who’d done so a million times before.
Sparks flittered prettily at the edges of her vision before morphing into a deep delicious warmth that curled down her back and into her limbs. And without another thought Avery’s hungry hands roved over all that smooth bare skin. The man was beyond beautiful. He was pure, raw, masculine heat, as if he’d trapped thirty years’ worth of sun beneath his skin, till the heat of it pulsed inside him.
She moved, just a fraction, sliding her belly against the erection burning between them, breathless with expectation that she’d be thrown back onto the bed and ravished senseless. Then whimpered when Jonah pulled back. Not entirely, just enough to add air between them, allow breath to escape. Till she was left hyper-aware of the smallest touch, every erratic change to the beat of her pulse.
Then his lips were on her neck, and gone.
On her collarbone, then gone.
On the edge of her mouth, coaxing, teasing, then gone.
All the while his hands didn’t stop touching, sliding over her back, his rough, calloused thumbs riding the curve of her waist, slipping under the edge of her bra, heading south...
Just when she thought she might melt into a puddle of tormented lust, Jonah took advantage. Completely. His tongue dipping into her sighing mouth to slide along hers, one warm hand cupping her backside pitching her closer, the other delving deep into her hair, capturing her until she was in his complete thrall.
Then his thumbs dipped into the waistband of her pants, finding a heretofore unknown sweet spot at the edge of her hipbones until she curled away from him, gasping. Leaving him all the room he needed to lick his way down her neck, her collarbone, his teeth grabbing the edge of her bra and tearing it away so that he could take her breast in his mouth.
She slipped a bare foot around his calf, keeping him hooked; she dug her hands into his hair, keeping him there, keeping him from ever leaving—ever—as his tongue and teeth and hot breath drove her wild. Until he pulled the other half of her bra away with his fingers, his rough, warm, sure fingers, and, caressing her as if she were something precious, sent the most intense pleasure looping inside her belly it near lifted her off her feet.
When his mouth once more found hers, he kissed her till she felt on the verge of drowning. And her knees finally gave way from under her and she landed on his bed with a thud and a bounce. She flung an arm over her closed eyes in an effort to find her balance.
When she opened them it was to find Jonah standing at the end of the bed, half-cocked grin on his gorgeous face. All golden-brown rippling abs. And dark whorling chest hair. Ropey muscle across his shoulders, veins slicing down his smooth brown arms. A deep tan line from his diving watch wrapping about his wrist.
“You are something else, Jonah North,” she said, shaking her head back and forth.
The grin deepened, and his eyes roved over every inch of her. “When you find a name for it, let me know. As I’m totally in the dark about you, Avery Shaw.”
And crazy as it sounded, that felt perfectly all right with her.
She hauled herself up, curled her fingers into his open fly to drag him closer only to discover the tan line at his wrist was matched by another. This one was a perfect horizon that split the dark trail of hair leading into his pants.
She kissed the demarcation, relishing his sharp intake of breath. She kissed a little lower to find his skin there scorching hot. She pulled back and licked her lips as if burnt to find they tasted like sun and salt and sharp sea air. Like him. When she went in for another lick he slid his finger to her chin, lifted it so she’d look him in his smoking-hot eyes, then bent towards her.
It seemed forever before his lips found hers. Enough time for all her compressed want to collide with what felt like years and years of unmet need and rustle up a very real shot of fear. Fear that this was about to be so good she might never recover.
Then he unhooked her bra with a practised flick, and the fear was smothered to death.
“Done that before have we, champ?”
Her hands sank into his springy curls as he smiled against her ear before taking her lobe between his teeth for a nip. “One of my many skills.”
“Many?”
He lifted his head, moonlight through the porthole window slanting shadows across his crooked nose, his hooded eyes, his beautiful mouth. “You asking me to list them?”
“You seem more like a doer than a talker to me.”
She got a grin, a slash of white teeth in his swarthy face, before he lifted an eyebrow in mercurial promise and set to it.
Avery wrapped herself about him as he kissed his way down her belly, his chest hair skimming her bare breasts, then he rid her of her pants and G-string in one smooth yank, and his mouth was on her inner thigh, his teeth grazing her hip, his tongue dipping into her navel.
“Lie still, woman,” he demanded, his deep grey, eloquent eyes boring into hers.
She bit her lip and tried, really she tried. But the deep scraping pleasure was nearly too much to bear. And then she completely lost control—her control anyway; she was clearly helpless under his—as his rough hands skimmed over her sensitised breasts, caressed her flinching waist, dug into that sweet spot at her hips, then easy as you please pressed her thighs as far apart as they would go.
As soon as he broke eye contact her eyes slammed shut, red and black swirls of light and dark beating the backs of her eyelids as his breath fanned over her a split second before his tongue dipped deep inside.
That was where thought was lost to her as her world distorted into beats of purest pleasure. Of breath, touch, taste. The near painful rasp of his stubble on her most sensitive skin, the gentle wash of his warm breath, the glorious graze of his tongue, and her own heat, collapsing in on itself until all sensation balanced on the head of a pin before exploding into shards of light to every corner of her universe.
He gave her a scant few seconds to just enjoy it, to bask in the wonderment of such a bone-melting orgasm; enough time to get naked and sheath himself in protection before he kissed and nipped his way up her belly, her overwhelmed nerves crying out, her tenderised muscles jumping at every touch.
When he positioned himself over her, she had the ambitious thought to flip him over and give him the ride of his life, but he’d rendered her so completely limp all she could do was slink her body against his, to rain a series of soft kisses along the spiky underside of his jaw, and run her hands down his back till she found two handfuls of glorious male backside.
Then, wrapping her legs about him, she nudged her sensitised centre against his remarkable erection, and kissed him long and hard and wet and deep while she took him deep inside.
Her gasp was lost as he kissed her back, taking more, taking everything as he deepened the connection. Deeper, deeper, filling her with sensation so intense, she was absorbed. Lost in him.
When her eyes caught on his, she felt herself swirling, tumbling, drowning. She held him tighter, drew him deeper, his intense gaze her only anchor. As they—
“Oh, God!” she cried as she split apart before she even felt it coming.
When Jonah pushed himself to the hilt, and again, and again, finding sweet spots the likes of which Avery had never known, every ounce of pleasure was wrung from her. Too vast, too much... She found yet another peak as Jonah’s muscles hardened beneath her touch, heat reaching a fever pitch as he came with a roar that shook the walls.
“Hell, Avery,” he said an eon later, his voice muffled in the mess of sheets at her back.
“You’re telling me.”
He laughed, the sound still muffled. While she ran a quick finger under one eye before smoothing a hand down his back, biting her lip to stop any more tears from falling. Pure emotion, exhaustion, the last threads of tension that had built over the past few weeks back home finally finding a way out.
With a manly groan, Jonah rolled away, one arm flung above his head, the other lying between them. After a long moment he moved his arm closer, close enough his pinky finger spun sweet lazy circles at her hip.
Breathing deep, Avery took his hand, lifted it, and kissed the palm till the heat of him sank into her like a brand. And then empty, like a vase just waiting to be filled, and wrapped up in layers of delicious afterglow, she fell deeply asleep.
* * *
Jonah woke slowly, dragging himself out of a deep sleep with the feeling that he’d been in the middle of a really good dream. When he shifted to find the sheets at his hips rather resembled a teepee, he knew; whatever he’d dreamt it would have been nothing on the very real delights of one Avery Shaw.
With a groan that told of muscles well used he rolled over, only to find the other side of his bed wasn’t only empty, it was cold. Meaning she’d been up for a while.
Jonah yawned, scratched his belly, then lifted onto his elbow and listened for sounds of her. Felt with his subconsciousness for a sense of her. That particular snapping heat that sizzled about her like an electric current. But there was nothing.
“Avery!” he called, his voice husky, his legs not quite ready for dry land. “Come back to bed, woman!”
When his voice echoed off the walls and he got no response, the warmth in his limbs started to dissipate.
“Avery?”
In the distance he heard a scratching. Hull at the front door. He’d locked the dog inside the night before, after the odd run for the hills that had worried Jonah something fierce. But that scratching was coming from outside.
Avery. She’d let him out. When she’d left.
Jonah lowered himself back to the bed, laid a forearm over his eyes, slid another to the aching bulge between his legs and swore.
Of course she was gone. What had he expected—to be woken with coffee and bagels? That all it would take was one night to render his flinty little American all sweetness and light?
No. He hadn’t. But he also hadn’t expected her to run for the hills.
The myriad reasons why he’d managed to keep his hands off her till now had meant that instead of going at it like rabbits, they’d got to know one another in the past couple of weeks. While he wouldn’t say they were friends—the word was a little too beige for the kinds of feelings the woman engendered—they knew enough about one another he’d have expected a little respect.
Jonah opened his eyes and stared at the first tinges of gold shifting across the ceiling. It had taken him months to realise Rach hadn’t respected him. That while he’d been imagining a future, she’d seen him as free board and great lay. A man suitable for a season, not forever.
One night together and Avery had skulked out at God knew what time without having the grace to say Thank you and good night.
“Dammit,” he swore, hauling himself upright to run two hands through his hair. And despite himself he couldn’t help going to that place inside himself he’d worked his ass off to leave behind. The part of him that would always be small town, a lobsterman’s son. That knew no matter how many boats he owned, how many homes, how many helicopters or tourism awards or dollars in the bank, to a city girl like Avery Shaw he’d never be enough.
Rachel. A girl like Rachel. He’d lived with her for a year. He’d slept with Avery once. There was no comparison. None at all.
Punching out enough oaths to make a boxer blush, Jonah hit the floor, tore the sheets off the bed, threw them down the hall to be washed. He didn’t want to hit his bed that night and catch her scent, even if it was all he deserved for letting her in. To his head and his home. Thankfully his heart was tough as an old boot.
Still didn’t mean it wasn’t a smart idea to scrub her scent from his skin, her image from his head, and her presence from his heretofore perfectly fine life. If he saw Avery Shaw again in the weeks she spent in town it would be too soon.
* * *
When the cab dropped Avery at the Tropicana, the sun was barely threatening to spread its first golden streaks across the dawn sky.
She slid her room card into the slot at the front of the resort, opened the door and padded across Reception, which, due to the hour, was even more quiet than usual.
Except that Claudia was behind the reception desk.
Before Avery could think up an alternative escape route, Claudia looked up with a start; slamming shut her laptop, and looking as guilty as Avery felt.
“Hi!” said Claude.
“Morning!” chirped Avery. “What are you doing down here so early?”
“Oh, nothing. Just...bookings. So-o-o many bookings.”
Claude’s hair was a little askew, her eyes a little pink. She had gone hard at the cocktails the night before and yet here she was pre-sunrise, hours before check in, and all decked out in her polyester Tropicana Nights finest.
More importantly, though, she seemed distracted enough not to notice Avery’s walk of shame.
“Okay, well, I’ll catch you later then—”
“Wait.”
Dammit. Avery turned to find Claudia looking anything but distracted, her eyes roving over Avery’s shimmery top, her swishy black dress pants, the ankle breakers dangling from her fingers.
“Yo ho ho! Avery Shaw, you hot dog. You got yourself some Jonah!”
“Shh.”
“Who’s going to hear? The pot plants? Come,” said Claude, scooting from behind the desk to drag Avery over to a sumptuous leather couch where sunlight was starting to hit patches of once-plush rug. “So what happened? Why the pre-dawn crawl home? After all that sexy touching and tractor-beams eyes you two had going on last night I’d have thought you’d have set the bed ablaze. Was it terrible? All smoke no fire?”
Avery sniffed out a laugh. Then laughed some more. Then laughed so hard she got a stitch. Clutching at her side, she bent from the waist and let her head fall between her knees. Nose an inch from an old wad of gum stuck on the underside of the couch, she sighed. “It was...spectacular. Claude, I can’t even begin to describe the things that man did to me. On a cellular level.”
“Ha!” Claude clapped her hands so loud it echoed through the gargantuan space. “Awesome. But if it was so spectacular why aren’t you at Jonah’s shack doing the wild thing with that man right now?”
Because it was only ever going to be a one-night thing? Because her itch for him had finally been scratched? Because she knew Jonah well enough to know he’d give his right pinky not to have to go through a talky-talky morning after?
Avery heaved herself to sitting and stared into nothingness. “Because I am a common-or-garden-variety coward.”
Claudia took Avery’s hand between hers, and waited till Avery’s eyes were on hers. “You, my friend, are generous and kind. To a fault. But even the best of us trip over ourselves once in a while. Find your feet again, and you’ll be fine.”
Avery plucked a mint leaf—left over from some cocktail or other from the night before—from Claude’s hair. She just had to figure out which direction her feet ought to be going.
She wondered if he was awake yet. If he knew she was gone. If the decision as to what her summer entailed was already out of her hands.
“So it’s all over for you and Luke,” Claude said, “one would think.”
Avery laughed, then cringed. “Do you think he had any idea that I had...intentions?” Vague, and reactionary, as they’d been.
Claude’s mouth twisted in an effort not to smile. “If it makes you feel any better I had a huge case of the hero-worships for the guy when I was a kid.”
“Re-e-eally?”
Claudia slapped her on the arm at her saucy tone. “That was, of course, until I realised he was a robot. Thank goodness for Jonah or you might yet have married Luke and moved to wet old London and made robot babies.”
Claudia shivered—but whether it was the thought of London weather or making babies with Luke, Avery couldn’t be sure.
“What about you? Seeing anyone? Since Raoul?”
“Too busy,” Claude said with a wistful sigh. “No time. No energy. Especially for the likes of Raoul.”
“Stuff Raoul. Stuff Luke. You should have a fling with some hot blond surfie type, who has big brown muscles and never wears shoes and says dude a lot.”
“Not leaving much room for movement there.”
“It’s a beach. In Australia. Walk outside right now and you’ll trip over half a dozen of them.”
Claudia checked her phone as if checking the time to see if she could squeeze in a quick fling, then saw she’d missed a message. And her whole demeanour changed: back stiffening, her eyebrows flying high. “It’s Luke,” she said. “He’s gone.”
“What? Where?”
“London.”
“When?”
“Some time between when he dropped me back at the resort last night and now. Dammit. We had the best conversation we’ve had all summer last night. About the old days, the mischief we used to get up to behind the scenes in this place, and the crazy plans we made for when we got to take over the resort, and how we used to watch The Love Boat.... And then he ditches me...us faster than a speeding bullet?” Frowning, Claudia pressed a thumb to her temple. “Jerk.”
“Why?”
“Why is he a jerk? Let me count the ways—”
“No, why did he leave?”
Claudia waved her phone at Avery, too fast for her to catch a word. “‘Important Work.’ More important than here? His birthright? This place is the entire reason he’s as successful as he is!” Claudia nibbled at a fingernail, her right knee shaking so hard it creaked, and stared over at the desk. “I’d better get back.”
Avery’s eyes glanced off her friend’s less than perfect chignon, the dark smudges under her sunny blue eyes. The curve of her shoulders since Luke’s message. It was obvious things weren’t as peachy as Claude was making out; even Avery could see the resort wasn’t as busy as it ought to have been at the height of summer. But she knew her stubborn little friend well enough to know that Claude would come to her in her own time.
Till then, Avery worked her magic the way she best knew how. She took Claude’s stressed little face in her hands, removed a bobby pin, smoothed the errant hair into place, and slid the pin back in. “There, there. All better. Now, my clever, inventive, wonderful friend, go get ’em.”
Claude sighed out a smile, and then tottered off, her hips swinging in her shiny navy capris, the yellow and blue Hawaiian-print shirt somehow working for her.
Good deed for the day done, Avery lay back on the couch. Unfortunately the second she closed her eyes the night she’d been holding at bay came swarming back to her.
Jonah’s mouth on hers, tasting her as if she were precious, delicious, a delicacy he couldn’t get enough of. His calloused touch making paths all over her body.
She snapped her eyes open, early morning light reflecting off the white columns and walls.
At least Luke had had the good grace to let Claudia know when he’d done a runner. Avery had dressed in the dark, called a cab and split. Even if none of her expensive schools had given classes on Mornings After, she was well aware that it was just bad form.
She pulled herself up and padded back to her room. She needed a shower. She needed a coffee. Then, as usual, it was up to her to put the world back to rights.
