Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (23 page)

She didn’t have words, but she had nails dug in the back of his hands, thighs clenching and easing on his hips, tremors wracking through her body, moisture coating her skin. She had her head thrown back and her back arched, hair flicked across his hips and fell over his hands in turn, but her stuttered breath, her moans and sighs might be pain, until she shuddered, jerked down hard on him and shouted her ecstasy.

It released his. His head slammed back, he went rigid, but inside he was a kite or a fish, a fleet thing made of speed and sailing on air, tethered to Georgia, as the fish to the rod, as the kite to the runner. Collapsed, shuddering on his chest she cast him out and held him firm, rode the currents and soared with him.

He called her name and she answered with tender kisses. He was earth to her sun; seconds to her minute, coasting, gliding, rotating on visions wrought in shades of reds and blues and knowledge greater than any sight that he was incapable of being separate from this woman.

18: Freefall

Georgia thought they’d spend the day lolling around her flat. She’d hoped they’d spend it proportionally; maxing out in the bedroom, with occasional forays to the kitchen for sustenance. She could hardly believe Damon was sitting at her kitchen counter wearing nothing but a towel and a few random water droplets from the shower on his shoulders, nodding yes to more toast and chatting about the weather.

She’d nod yes, she’d shout it till her lungs burned to anything he suggested. But he’d suggested parasailing and he thought she was going to chicken out. The toast popped up. He knew a guy who could take them, only a half hour drive. It was safe and fun. She buttered the bread. She wasn’t going to wimp out, but she puzzled at the idea. More specifically at the notion of coaxing him to bed and keeping him there, and the depressing realisation he didn’t want that.

She looked at Fluffy, making O mouths from the tank on the counter. They were the perfect shape for her own disappointment.

Damon had almost made Fluffy fish finger fodder with his elbow, sending the tank skidding across the laminex counter, slopping water, before he snatched it from the edge with a shocked shout. He was making her just as seasick with his desire to tip their new intimacy on its head by inviting the whole world in.

She put the toast in front of him. She poured him more coffee from the French press. She ate her yoghurt and watched him. His hair was damp, slicked back. He’d seen some sun, a light tan over his chest and arms, but he had muddy smudges under his eyes. They hadn’t had much sleep, but his face spoke of more than one night’s worth of being short-changed and his voice was still cloudy, instead of its usual sultry heat after a storm.

And yet, parasailing instead of an afternoon horizontal.

Was he bored with her already? That put her off her yoghurt. She turned away from him, tossed the carton in the bin and threw the spoon in the sink. Maybe she was about to get dumped, too. He’d done his Pygmalion thing, turned her into a lady for the night and now it was back to the real world.

“Spoon do something to offend you?”

“What?” He could not read something from a clink in the sink.

“I do something to offend you?”

Maybe he could. She affected a laugh. “Of course not. You think you’re scaring me. If you asked me to referee a fight you’d be scaring me, parasailing—hah. I’ve been parasailing and skydiving before. It’s not cheap. I’m happy to come with you, but I’ll stay on the ground.”

He made a slow hmmm and a fast track around the counter, hand to her back, then he pinned her against the sink. His lips were on her wet hair.

“That tells me two things. The first is that I should’ve said it was my treat. I wouldn’t ask you to pay, especially on no notice. The second is that I have offended you, because you think I’d rather go adventuring at altitude than between your sheets, between your legs.”

“No, I.” Oh God, he already knew. “Yeah.”

He let go of the sink and placed his hands low, warm on her abdomen, pulling her against him. She considered resisting for less than a blink.

“I thought you might be sore.”

“Oh.”

He travelled one hand to cup her mound and she put her whole heart into groaning, her head tipping back and around to find his lips.

He played with the kiss, not letting her take it too deep, his other hand coming to rest over the length of her neck. “Did you think I was so ready to get away from you? Did you think I was lying when I said you were more than one night?” He nipped her bottom lip. “So we’re clear. You’re my new favourite food, my new favourite thing to do.” He turned her so he could play those kisses more directly, then broke off to rest his forehead on hers. “My new favourite colour.”

The crackles in his voice were pitchforks of feeling stabbed all over her body, leaving her aching from the sweetness.

“If you’re not too sore, we can go do whatever you like.” His hand under her shirt, thumb stroking along her spine.

She licked into his mouth. There was butter on his tongue, sugar in his words and they melted her anxiety. She was sore, but the kind of tender that would only last as long as it took for the adrenaline rush to take over, which was to say, hardly sore at all. She was already parasailing with no desire to ever come down.

He bundled her hair in his fist and pulled so her chin came up, and she looked in his face. His eyes were focused on hers and he knew every one of her doubts. “It’s my intention to get very naked with you again very soon and very often, but I thought you might like to come out in the sun and fly with me in a different way.”

She would fly with him without straps, without wings, without a net or a re-entry plan.

She should be worried about that, the speed of the fall because it was already upon her. She stood on her toes and raked her fingers through his wet hair, studied his face: the offset dimples, the one on his chin that was constant, the one in his cheek that was fickle, only showing up when he was amused, the scar above his eyebrow, the curve of his cheekbones, and the fan of his lashes. The eyes so steady, so bright, it was difficult to imagine them sightless.

She was falling, falling, hopelessly fallen, and it was too soon, too impossible, too present and too wonderful to escape. “I like your intentions.”

She got dimple, she got soaking kisses, lashings of tongue and hands that roved with the aim of pushing them both into new airspace, somewhere between joyous freefall and heart-rending plummet.

She got out, “Not in front of Fluffy,” and he responded with an evil laugh, and made things even dirtier, dropping his towel, lifting her leg under her knee to open her hips to his.

They might’ve ended up horizontal again, but he backed off as abruptly as he’d started up. They were going parasailing. All of them. Damon arranged it in a frenzy of phone calls. One to Angus, one to Taylor, one to Sam, one to the parasailing operator. This was not what she thought she’d be doing and she wasn’t ready to share him, especially with his gang again so soon. But she struggled to be a sour lemon in the face of his snap, crackle and pop. It was a beautiful day, why not spent it in the sun?

She tidied the kitchen and listened to him joke, persuade, and argue with Taylor. He was excited about this and resenting it was a waste of energy. She wasn’t in a competition with adventure sports for his time. Still, she was grateful he couldn’t see her sulky expression and she did no more spoon tossing or cupboard door banging to give herself away.

When he had it all arranged, the meeting place, the car-pooling, he made his way to the bedroom and got dressed. She gave him a few minutes and went in to him. He was sitting on the end of her bed, dressed but with his shirt unbuttoned. He had his head down, eyes closed. After his energetic organising, his posture was a surprise. She backed away. It felt like the right thing to do, like he needed a moment to himself. She didn’t get far.

“Georgia.” He was behind her in the hall. “Your place or mine tonight?”

She couldn’t get her sulky pout out of the way quick enough to answer.

“I need this.” He flapped an arm at his side, his eyes closed tight. “I can’t explain why, but it’s not because I don’t want to be alone with you, so your place or mine tonight? You have to work tomorrow, so I thought I’d pack a bag and come here. Does that work for you?”

It worked in ways she was embarrassed to admit, starting with the rush of heat to her face and the need to blink away tears. He had to have guessed how she felt. He was extra affectionate, keeping her close, both hands on her as they went down to his cab. He leaned against it to kiss her, and if it wasn’t for the driver she’d have done her best to prolong the moment. As it was, she had to open the door and push him inside or no one was doing any kind of sailing.

She was on the street waiting for him within the hour. He pulled up with Sam in a truck that had Royal Flush and a picture of a tap painted on the side. The two of them were surfer boy cool in their board shorts and singlets, both of them rocking sunglasses and caps.

Damon leaned out the passenger side window. He said, “Going my way?”

From inside the truck Sam said, “Lenny Kravitz.”

Damon shook his head as he got out to let her slide in between them. “Bing Crosby.”

Sam said, “Never heard of him.”

Damon climbed in behind her, cleared his throat and sang the first line of
White Christmas
.

Sam turned the music up to drown him out, MKTO’s
God Only Knows
, one of those playboy meets the one songs with a snappy beat. Damon simply switched tunes and he and Sam rocked it out, Sam drumming on the steering wheel. She sat there grinning stupidly happy, explosively so when Damon felt for her hand.

“You’re not singing.”

“I engineer it, I don’t do it. I’ve got the musicality of a loaf of bread.”

Sam laughed. “You picked the wrong crowd to fall in with. It’s like battle of the vocal chords every weekend with us.”

She shrugged and Damon must’ve felt it. “You really don’t sing.”

“I really, really don’t.”

“Ever.”

“Never.”

She caught Sam’s smirk. “Heather doesn’t sing,” he said.

Damon leaned his shoulder into hers but turned his face to the window as if he was studying the scenery. “Might have to rethink this.”

Sam snorted. Which meant they’d talked and Damon was having a lend of her. “I didn’t realise it was a prerequisite.”

His hand came down on her thigh and he turned to face her. “It’s not a prerequisite, it’s a challenge.”

“Hah. One you’ll lose.”

“I’m backing Damo. Sorry Georgia, you seem like a top bird, but he’s got a way about him.”

“No contest, I’ve already won.” Damon’s expression gave superior a slack reputation.

“How do you figure that?”

He took his cap off and dropped his head to the headrest, eyes closed, dimple kinked. Sam laughed and pulled into a beachside car park. He unclipped his belt and got out.

Georgia touched Damon’s shoulder. He was going to give that up. She repeated her question. “How do you figure that?”

He unclipped his belt and leaned in so his face was close to hers. “I’ve already heard you sing and it was the sweetest sound.”

There was no way. She wasn’t even a hummer. Tap a rhythm out, dance badly when no one was watching, sure, but sing. “You’re hallucinating?”

“Every tight breath, every little vocal hitch, every sigh, all those throaty moans and murmurs.”

Oh, God. Oh
. She checked over her shoulder, no sign of Sam.

Damon’s hand went from her thigh to her waist, to her shoulder and trailed up her neck. He took her chin and angled her head so he could whisper in her ear. “I’m going to take it personally,” his voice was secret crystal cave bright and stealth of night wicked and it made her flush, “if you don’t sing for me, and only me, every time I make you come.”

“Oh dear God.” She put her hand over his mouth. “That’s not… Damon… Hoo. That’s not fair.”

He smiled under her palm, before he peeled her hand away. “Provided I succeed, I’d say it’s very fair.”

“That’s not… That’s.” She was a stuttering mess and he was getting out of the truck. And the thing is, he was right. He only had to put his lips to her ear and she was one semi-quaver off choir practice.

She followed him out of the truck into the sun, shutting the door behind her, as stunned in the sudden glare as she was by Damon in her life. Only anxiety about how she was going to fit in with his friends prevented her luxuriating in what he’d just said and how it made her feel.

The gang was all assembled: Angus, Taylor, Jamie and another woman. Georgia recognised her as the one who’d kissed Angus behind the bar—Heather, the other non-singer.

Damon was talking to Angus. She put the back of her hand to the back of his and he took it, held it possessively, only releasing her to let Jamie give her a welcome hug, then taking it again. That helped her deal with the pissed off look she scored from Taylor whose face-swallowing sunglasses didn’t hide her annoyance. It was better to watch the parasail operator on the beach, the boat out beyond the break, than deal with whatever that was about.

Turned out everyone but Heather had done this before. Heather was visibly nervous but insisted on going first and not in a tandem with Angus. She was so skinny it was a wonder there was a harness small enough for her.

On the beach, Angus produced food and cold drinks from an esky. Jamie set up a shade tent. Damon sat behind her, his legs on the outside of hers, his chest trapping humidity between them. They faced the ocean and Georgia fed him strawberries, blueberries and slices of sticky mango over her shoulder and almost forgot they weren’t alone when he sucked at her fingers, until Heather arrived at the tent in a fit of excited laughter.

Taylor went for her turn. Georgia listened to Damon and Angus talk cricket and watched Jamie and Sam throw a frisbee. Beyond some eyebrows going over sunglass rims when they’d showed up together, no one was fussing over her. She wasn’t being singled out for attention or ignored, and although they were with the group, nothing Damon had done suggested he didn’t want her close to him.