Riptide (Limitless Book 1) (3 page)

“Fuck me the way you want to, or get out the hell out of my bed.” She glared at him and he could see the concern in her eyes. The questioning. The fear.

He couldn’t tell her what made him want to screw her senseless until the horror of the last few months disappeared. And he couldn’t be cast from her bed. Not tonight. He couldn’t take rejection from her. It would break him. So he grabbed her hips and drove himself hard into her. He went deeper with each stroke. Each time he withdrew, he plunged back in. He pumped hard and fast as she dug her nails into his arms. With each thrust, the built up anger lessened its claim on him. Then he collapsed on top of her. She tangled her hands in his hair and forced him to look at her.

“Feel better?”

“Unbelievably so.”

She slid out from underneath him and climbed out of bed. “Good.”

She slapped his ass before getting off the bed. He watched her as she headed for the bathroom, catching a glimpse at the clock on her nightstand in the process. Two in the morning. She would be leaving for her morning run soon and he had a plane to catch that afternoon. He’d left her with nothing but a round of rough sex to remember him by. No tenderness. Nothing but selfish need. Hell.

***

N
o time for the usual routine before having to start her day, Phoenix turned the water on as hot as she could stand it, letting the steam fill the bathroom. She stepped in and leaned her head against the glass block wall. Tears slid down her face and mingled with the water from the shower. Her relationship with Hunter wasn’t supposed to be like this. This unyielding sense of longing shouldn’t exist. But it did. And each time Hunter came to her bed, she lost a piece of herself to him. If she wasn’t careful, she would lose everything. He’d slipped under her defenses a long time ago, and when he’d crawled into her bed that morning, she saw something that made her fear that the end of what they shared had finally come. She knew it would. Ends always came. Her mother’s abandonment taught her that. People always leave.

Yet, here she was, terrified even though she knew it would happen. The friends with benefits types of relationships only ever went one of two ways from what she’d heard—love or disaster. The odds were stacked against her and Hunter having a happily ever after. She couldn’t afford to make herself vulnerable to him. Not after watching her father teeter on the edge of sanity after her mom abandoned them, on the verge of losing everything while he fought for years to find himself again. The first lesson she remembered being taught by her dad—always remain in control. Followed by—never lose her sense of self and always keep the upper hand. These were lessons he’d learned the hard way when her mother had run out and left him with a five-year-old daughter to raise. Lessons she wished she could forget.

She stuck her face in the streaming water, allowing it to cleanse the tears away and finished her shower. The ache already started to build in her muscles from her workout with Hunter. Her body would probably feel worse after she sat on an airplane for eleven hours.  A last minute flight home at her dad’s request only added to her to-do list. Just maybe she could forget the whole the haunted look and fierce need that was present in Hunter’s eyes when he’d crawled into her bed...or the whole morning.

When she slipped from the bathroom, she saw the clock on the nightstand declaring it three in the morning. Hunter slept, but it wasn’t a peaceful rest brought on by the exhaustion and contentment from satisfying sex. Instead, he thrashed about on the bed and yelled out. His face looked pained. When she realized it wasn’t stopping, she stepped up to the bed, and gently shook his arm. “Hunter?”

Startled, he grabbed both her arms. She winced at the strength behind his grasp. His eyes widened as realization sank in. “Phoenix? Oh god, I’m sorry.” The panic slowly eased from his face and the grip on her arms lessened.

“Are you okay?”

He sat up and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head against her stomach. She ran her fingers through his dark hair, wondering what caused him to have such violent dreams. He gave her a squeeze.

“I’m fine.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“More than you know, but...I can’t.” He wouldn’t look at her as he spoke, but his voice held so much sadness it made her heart ache.

“When you can, or feel like you want to, you know I’m here.”

She offered him an opening. A chance for them to be more than just two people who shared amazing chemistry in bed; the final choice to cross the line that she’d drawn in the sand so long ago. He looked at her then, his eyes filled with an unknown torment and red from lack of decent sleep. She would possibly miss her flight, but she couldn’t leave him sitting there with the expression on his face. A deep need to erase that look from his eyes drove her.

He moved back on the bed, propping himself up against the headboard, dragging his hands against his face. “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be? I don’t want to make you late.”

She did, but right now, being here with him when he needed her was what mattered. Her dad’s pilot could wait. “Not if you need me to stay.”

“If I could tell you, Phoenix, I would.”

“Is it bad?” She really wanted to know what tormented him but wouldn’t push. “You don’t have to give me details.”

“The worst.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Knowing you would willingly erase the boundaries we set between personal and pleasure means a lot, though.”

She crawled up on the bed and straddled his lap. Bad things happened to good people. The experiences she’d had in her own life had taught her that. She trusted that the man before her would talk to her when he was ready. Her fingers traced the rough area along his side where new scars marred his muscled flesh. “Means enough for you to be able to get some sleep before you leave?”

“Maybe. Or perhaps a kiss would help.”

“I can do that and one-up your offer.” She took his mouth with hers, letting their tongues dance together for a moment. When they parted, she slid her body down his, settling herself between his legs.

“I’m sorry, Phoe—”

No apologies, no looking back, and no regrets. Those were just three of the rules they’d set when they started this, and so far, she’d honored all of them. If she just up and left, she knew this moment would be her first regret. She slid her mouth over the length of him, slowly taking in every inch of him before retreating.

“What are you doing?”

She smiled up at him. “Trying to make you feel better. It’s not working...yet.”

She did it again, taking in as much of him as her mouth could hold. Then ran her tongue along the underside of him as she drew him slowly out. She looked up at him as his hands fisted into the sheets underneath him. Her gaze focused on him, she wrapped her fingers around the base of him, then with a light squeeze, ran her hand up until it met her mouth. With her hand and mouth working together, she brought him to the edge.

He didn’t touch her. Something that surprised her. He liked to be in control. She hated to give it up, but for some reason, she knew from their first encounter, that if they were going to get what they both wanted out of this arrangement, there would have to be compromise along the way. Last night, he needed to be the one calling the shots and she’d allowed it against her better judgment.

“I’m going to lose it.”

The warning was appreciated, but when she realized he’d given up control to her in this vulnerable position, she made the decision that she wouldn’t stop until he was completely satisfied. Hunter’s thighs tensed under her arms. The muscles in his arms bunched as he wrapped his arms in the sheets and released himself inside her mouth.

He stared down at her, raw emotion present in his blue-green eyes and his hair a mess from sleep. “Not what I was expecting this morning.”

She rolled off the bed and headed back to the bathroom. “A fabulous way to start the day if it made you happy, don’t you think?”

“Yes, and I’m not complaining.” He followed her, reaching into the shower to turn on the water. “It definitely made me giddy like a teenage boy who’d just got to feel his first set of—”

She laughed and playfully slapped his arm. “I get the picture.”

While his back was to her, she brushed her teeth and tried to smooth out her unruly hair.

“I do think I owe you an explanation, though.”

“Don’t feel obligated to tell me just because I gave you a little personal attention this morning. You needed something; I was in a position to give it to you. No need to undo all of my hard work in making you feel better.”

“How is it that you are still single?” He smiled, then kissed her lips, gently.

“Just lucky I guess.” It sounded weak even as she heard the words leaving her mouth. A desperate attempt to convince them both that something outside of their norm hadn’t happened between them over the course of the last several hours.

“Angel, listen, I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you or keep anything from you if it had any bearing on things between us.”

“Stop. I would like to think we’ve spent enough time around each other to realize when you are trying to work through something. When you’re ready to talk to me about it, you will. Simple as that.”

Somehow, though, she didn’t believe simple adequately described what tormented him in sleep. He moved in and pressed his lips to her forehead, making her chest tighten unexpectedly with emotion. Clearly, simple left their relationship a long time ago.

S
he dropped her backpack on the floor just inside the entryway of the vacation house. The rooms were stifling. She hated being indoors and didn’t like her routine being disrupted by her dad. She wanted to be back home in California...in her own element. If Hunter was still there when she arrived, all the better, but she had a feeling he’d be long gone. She considered telling her father’s pilot to turn around, so she could spend the day on her board. The call of the waves were too tempting. Instead, she was in Maui, feeling a little caged in, and wishing she was still curled up in bed with the hard body of a surfer against her back. Not just any surfer would do, though, and that thought scared the crap out of her.

She needed to get her head straight. Remember the rules that had kept her heart from being smashed into a million pieces. Rules that allowed her to enjoy Hunter without taking anything personally for the first two years they’d been together. She walked through the house and opened up the windows and doors, trying to let in as much of the outdoors as possible. The ocean, visible from the windows facing the large patio, helped soother her anxiety. Grateful that her father had requested she meet him here rather than in Oahu, where the office served as her own little hell hole slice of corporate America. She hated being in the city. Too many buildings and homes served as the manmade reef that kept her from her date with the waves. Here, the surfing was just a walk away. She opened the shutters in the kitchen and pushed the large double doors open. The humidity came into the room and she twisted her hair up and pinned it in place with a clip. If she had to be anywhere other than home, she guessed this was as good a place as any. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out onto the stone patio. The sound of the waves and the smell of the surf welcomed her.

“You are letting out all the bought air.”

On a normal day, her father’s voice soothed her. Today, nothing seemed to ease the tension winding through her body.

“Sorry, Daddy.”

He moved up beside her and kissed her on the cheek. “Glad to see you made it here safely.”

“You were notified as soon as I landed. I heard Jimmy.”

“Well, you are my most cherished and irreplaceable investment.” He moved to mimic her position at the window. There was something off about him. She wondered if he still felt the pull of the ocean the same way she did and if he missed it now that work took up so much of his time.

“You never did like being cooped up. Kind of like your mother that way.”

She hated being compared to the woman who walked out on them. “I’m nothing like her.”

Memories of her mother were few and far between and what she could recall didn’t leave her wanting to take after her. Her father was different. His presence always larger than life. People noticed when he walked into a room. It hadn’t always been like that, though. He’d been miserable the first ten years of her life. All because he’d loved her mother so deeply and uncontrollably. In the end, she’d only used his love and broke him.

“Ah, it’s not such a bad thing, princess.”

“Says you.”

“She was an amazing woman.” And there was the rub. After all her mother had done, deep down, her father still loved the woman he’d married. It left him vulnerable and at risk. She hated that this woman she didn’t even really know still held the potential to destroy the man beside her.

“Whatever. I don’t remember her, so as far as I’m concerned I don’t want to be like her and will do whatever I can to not follow in her footsteps.”

Her father leaned against one of the large wood pillars that held up the patio cover crossing his arms and studying her with an intensity that made her squirm. “What’s eating at you?”

“Nothing.” No way could she tell her father of her personal involvement with the face of his surfing division. Or how she was falling for Hunter and wished he’d never signed the deal with Limitless. And she definitely wasn’t telling him that she was breaking not only the rules he instilled in her, but her own set devised to keep her from turning out like the woman who’d abandoned them both. Not now. Not ever. “I didn’t get a chance to eat before I got to the airport. Want to grab some lunch? You could tell me what was so important it couldn’t be discussed over the phone.”

“I’m going to have to take a rain check on lunch. I have a prior engagement. However, I have a favor to ask of you.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “I need your help.”

Without saying much, suddenly the reason he’d asked her to meet him at the vacation house instead of the office made sense. A feeling of unease settled over her and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.