Turn Up the Heat (10 page)

“Very nice to meet you, Kincaid,” Kristin said. Tucker shook Kincaid’s hand.

“Kristin and Tucker are my friends from Chicago. Kristin and I were in school together, and she and Tucker just got engaged.”

“You guys visiting?” he asked.

“Yeah—Tuck has a conference in Portland, but we couldn’t come all this way without seeing Lily. Lil, you sure you can’t sit down with us?”

“It’s not fair to Alma,” she said, gesturing toward the other waitress.

Kincaid shook his head. “I should go. I’m just grabbing lunch for my crew.” He held his paper sack aloft.

“Just ten minutes, you guys,” Kristin said.

Kristin was fierce, which was maybe why Lily liked her so much. Though right now, she kind of wished Kristin would leave Kincaid alone. The situation was complicated and awkward enough without well-meaning friends getting involved.

Kristin scooted over. “Slide in.”

To Lily’s surprise, Kincaid smiled and obeyed. She raised an eyebrow and he shrugged.

“Let me just ask Alma if she can manage.”

Alma said that with the diner only half full, she was fine.

Lily slipped into the booth next to Tucker. It would be so nice if this were how things were. If she and Kincaid
were
friends, if they could pal around with her people. It would be nice, and maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t the craziest thing in the world to wish for. Maybe—

Kristin and Tucker were asking her how the work was going and how her finances were shaping up for a return to Chicago.

“I’ll have enough for first, last, security in a couple of months,” she said. “But I can’t come back if I don’t have a job. Doesn’t make sense for me to put down all that money for an apartment if I can’t afford rent.”

“Would it help if I could get you a job?” Tucker asked. “I know Weekdays isn’t your first choice…”

She’d turned Tucker down once before, but that was when she’d had the chance of a job working in Fallon’s restaurant. Tucker’s dad’s chain—it was fine as chains went, and it would be good experience, but it wasn’t what she’d wanted for herself. But now?

Now she wasn’t proud. Now she wanted to get herself back where she was supposed to be. For her mom and for Sierra. For her dad. And for herself, most of all.

“It would help,” she affirmed.

“I don’t know what’s going on with hiring right now, but I’ll find out,” Tucker said.

“Thanks,” Lily said.

“Gaw, Lil, it’ll be
so
great when you come back,” Kristin said. “I found this amazing new spinning class, you’ll have to do it with me, and Tuck and I found this brunch place, and I’ve been teaching myself to make Bloody Marys and experimenting with recipes—oh, and we have a cookbook club. You want to join our cookbook club?”

“A cookbook club? That sounds pretty cool. Like a book club, but with cookbooks?”

“
Exactly.
And we swap.”

“I’m in.”

“Ange is in it. And Cole. Not Fallon, though. We don’t see that asshole. So it’s safe to come back.”

Alma brought them a round of waters and took their drink orders.

Tucker slid his water closer. “We keep saying we can’t wait till you open your own place, Lil.”

Lily looked at the floor. “You could be waiting a long time.”

“Nah,” Tucker said. “Year or two, at most.” He turned abruptly to Kincaid. “Lil’s that good. Have you eaten her cooking?”

“She made me a hamburger.”

“Best hamburger you’ve ever eaten, right?”

“The best.” His gaze shifted abruptly to her face, and his mouth quirked just a little, the beginnings of a smirk.

Lily could feel herself blushing, and she couldn’t look at him. She was remembering all their food banter, and—what had come after.

“So you guys met—?”

“Kincaid’s a diner regular,” Lily said.

“And when you’re not getting fat?” Tucker asked. “You said the food was for your crew.”

“Landscaping,” Kincaid said. He got to his feet, bumping the table and sending vibrations through Lily, like a touch. “And speaking of, I’d better go. It was great to meet you guys. I wish I had more time, but the guys are waiting for their food and I’m on the clock. Have a great visit.”

“Nice to meet you, Kincaid,” Tucker said.

When Kincaid was gone, Kristin leaned in close. “Nothing serious, my
ass.
He was looking at you like he was stranded in a desert and you were a shimmering pool of fresh water.”

“Colorful,” said Lily. “But he’s not interested in a relationship.”

Tucker leaned back easily in the booth and smiled at her. “That’s what I told Kristin the first time we slept together.”

“Yeah, well, he means it.”

“I meant it, too,” said Tucker.

It was 2 a.m. and there was a man leaning on her car, and panic jolted through Lily before she saw who it was.

“Hey,” he said.

She’d just finished her shift at Lefty’s and she was dragging, nursing an exhaustion so deep it hurt her chest. She’d had a wonderful couple of days with Kristin and Tucker, hanging out, catching up, plotting the future when she returned to Chicago. For those couple of days, that future had seemed more real than her life in Tierney Bay, and more important. Tucker was convinced he could get her a good kitchen job at one of the Weekdays in the city or the near suburbs, and both Kristin and Tucker promised to help her look for an apartment when she came back. They fantasized aloud about the fun they’d have when they were all back in the city…

But at in-between moments, when she was alone in the basement at her sister’s, or working a shift, when Kristin and Tucker weren’t there to keep the fantasy alive, then what came back to her was Kincaid’s smile in the diner.

His expression was more tentative now. “I thought—” He hesitated. “I thought you might want to take a walk on the beach.”

It wasn’t what she’d been expecting, and her stupid, hopeful heart thudded wildly. “Sure.”

He took her hand, and that touch, tentative and tender, was so different from the cuff he’d made with his fingers or the slap of his palm on her flesh that it made her breath catch.

They walked together to where steps led from the end of the street down to the broad, flat expanse of Tierney Bay’s town beach. The ocean was moonlit and vast, the wind low but steady. Here and there in the sand they could see glowing coals where hours earlier beach bonfires had burned, but now they were the only people as far as they could see in either direction.

They walked in silence for a bit, where the sand was firm but not wet. She took off her sandals and clutched them in one hand, and the wind blew her skirt around her legs, to one side and then the other, until she knotted it up around her thighs so it wouldn’t blow so much.

“Did you have a good visit with your friends?”

“I had such a good time.”

But I missed you.

“They seem great.”

“They’re the best.”

But I’m happier right now with you than I was with them. More
me
in some weird way I don’t even totally understand.

What would happen if she spoke those words out loud? Would she break the spell? Or deepen it?

“I bet you’ll be glad to be back in Chicago with them.”

She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t confirm, couldn’t deny. She just kept strolling along the beach, loving the feel of his hand around hers. Even the silence felt good, rich with a sense of connection that went further than any words they could speak.

After a while, she asked, “So do you like the landscape work?”

It seemed like a safe question, since he’d told Kristin and Tucker that’s what he did.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “More than I thought I would. Might even want to own my own company at some point. Or—” He hesitated. “Study law, maybe.”

“I saw you reading that law book in the diner. But you’re not a law student?”

“Not now. Not yet. I’d like to be. It’s not easy to get in.”

“Have you applied?”

He shook his head.

“Can’t get in if you don’t apply.”

As the words were coming out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back, afraid they’d make him clam up, but he only said, “True enough.” He dropped her hand, closing off that line of conversation.

“So what do you like so much about landscaping?” She dug her toes into the sand.

He looked skyward, where the moon played peekaboo behind banks of thready clouds. “Maybe the same thing I love about law. It’s a mix of art and science. You know, certain times of year when you do certain things, but then also, hey, will this look better if I cut this branch? Or this one?”

There was something new in his voice, a hesitancy, like he wasn’t used to talking about himself or his work, but also a warmth, the edge of a passion she knew must go deep in him because she’d seen it the night he tied her up, how he was when he let go, when he broke wide open.

“Like cooking,” she said. “The art and science part. This is what sugar or yeast or oil does at this temperature, but also, what combination of ingredients are going to work together, and what’s going to look beautiful on the plate.”

He nodded fiercely. “Yeah. And there’s an audience, and you’re also trying to please them, which is sometimes frustrating but also part of the pleasure, right, when they love what you’ve done?”

She felt his excitement as sharply as if he’d touched her. “Definitely,” she said, and then, “I love the way you eat.”

He laughed out loud at that. “How do I eat?”

“Like someone’s about to take the food away from you.”

He stiffened, as if she’d insulted him.

“Sorry. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a compliment. But when someone feels that way about something I’ve made, it’s a compliment.”

“No, I know. I took it that way. I hope—” He hesitated.

“What?”

“I hope you’ll cook for me again sometime.”

Oh.
Something else was happening here, something that went beyond the tug she felt whenever she was in his presence. The tug was still there—she could feel the heat of his body several inches away from hers, and she still wanted to turn into him, to be held and then held harder and deeper and longer, but there was this other layer, another level. Something new he was offering her. Walking on the beach and talking about work and an invitation for
sometime
in the future.

“Of course I will. Any time.” Her heart was clamoring joy, but caution damped it.
Be careful. He doesn’t necessarily mean anything by it.

“You learned to cook from—?”

“My mom.”

“Does your dad cook, too?”

“Died when I was fifteen. Machine accident in the factory where he worked. His shirt got caught.”

“Shit,” Kincaid said.

It wasn’t eloquent, but it was exactly right, and she was glad they were walking because her eyes filled up with tears. “Yeah. There was a lawsuit, and we won, and that’s why—that money paid for me to go to cooking school.”

“That’s—hard.”

He got it. That no matter how hard she tried not to think it, sometimes she felt like she’d traded her dad for the opportunity to learn to cook professionally. “Yeah,” she said. She blinked, and the sea wind whipped the tears away, and she felt his hand come back around hers, gentle. “That’s why I’ve gotta go back. My mom and my sister could have done anything with the money, but they didn’t. They gave it to me. My sister is a dental hygienist, and I know that’s not what she wanted for herself. But they knew I had this dream, and they saved the money for me so I could go to cooking school, and now—for my dad, for them—I gotta go back. So he—”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I get it.”

She knew he did. Couldn’t have said how, but knew it the way she knew she could let him tie rope around her wrists. And yet she had to finish it, the awful thought, the one she’d never quite let herself speak aloud. “So he didn’t die for no reason.” She choked on it.

He turned to her, then. Like he was finishing aloud a sentence she’d started in her mind. He stopped her in her tracks and wrapped his arms around her, huge and implacable and hot, like there was a furnace, not a stone, inside him. He made it so she couldn’t move, so she could barely breathe.

“He
didn’t,
” Kincaid said.

The ocean roared, like the thing inside him. The impulse stronger than his need for justice and stronger than self-preservation. The part of him that had to have Lily, and not just the skin and flesh and soft liquid heat of her, but
all
of her in a way that made him realize that before Lily he hadn’t even had a sense of
all.

She tilted her face up and gave him her mouth, and the roaring got louder, in his ears and his chest, inside his head. Because she tasted sweet and salty, because he could smell her sweat, a faint female tang, and because inside the fierce grip of his arms she was moving against him in a way that was driving him fucking crazy. He broke the kiss and tightened his grip a little more, and she stopped struggling and made a sound, like a sigh of relief.

She trusts me completely.
She will let me do anything, whatever I want.

She trusted him despite what her ex had done to her, despite all the reasons she shouldn’t trust him.

It had been so long since he had trusted or been trusted, and the bottom fell out of his control, like a crevasse opening in an earthquake, exposing a craving as deep as his soul.

“What if I said I wanted to fuck you? Right here, right now?”

She whimpered and tilted her hips against his thigh, pressed her breasts harder against him.

“I mean it.” He released his hold on her, let her draw back and see as best she could in the dim light how serious he was.

She shook her head. “We can’t.”

“Of course we can.”

“We’re on a public beach and anyone could see us. We could get arrested for indecent exposure and lewd and lascivious behavior.”

His parole officer’s voice echoed in his head, but he pushed it away. John seemed very far away and very unimportant compared to the feel and scent of Lily, her trust. “So you’d say
no
?”

She got it, suddenly. He could see the excitement on her face. “Yeah,” she said, her breath already coming fast. “Yeah. I’d say
no.
”

She was so game, so ready to play—it got to him the same way her squirming in his arms did, or those little noises she made, and he realized he’d do anything to push those boundaries with her, anything she asked, anything she couldn’t or wouldn’t ask, and all the things she pretended not to want. Playing here, at the edge, felt wrong and dangerous and
so fucking good.
He was alive in a way he’d never been alive.

He pressed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to her knees. She cried out in protest, but the truth was, it didn’t take much force. Neither did putting a hand between her shoulder blades and shoving her forward so she was on all fours.

“Kincaid—” It was halfway between a warning and a plea, so perfect it made
him
weak-legged, and he sank to his knees.

He knelt behind her and flipped her skirt up. She was wearing peach lace thong panties and he pushed them to the side and slid a finger into her. She bucked and cried out. “Kincaid, we can’t—don’t—”

He almost said it.
You know how to make me stop.
But he didn’t. Because she trusted him, and part of that trust was the rules of this—not a game, it wasn’t a game, not by a long shot—what was it? A place—that was what it felt like, a location they’d escaped to, a land far away from normal, from bland, from unsatisfying. A kingdom, and he was king, and they both knew the laws of this land. He wouldn’t break them.

He clamped a hand over her mouth, and she bit it hard, hurting him. He stuck the bitten finger in her mouth and she sucked it so hard he felt it in his dick.

He was rapidly becoming an expert in getting himself free one-handed, and he did it now, rubbing his dick, which was leaking pre-cum, against the bare satin of her ass. He reached into his jeans for the strip of condoms he’d pocketed earlier, liberating one. It took two hands to manage the condom, and she flicked her skirt back down, started to her feet, saying, “Kincaid, what if—we shouldn’t—stop—” but he grabbed her and yanked her back down.

“Kincaid—” Again, protest and plea, push and pull, but when he spread her open with his fingers and pressed the head of his cock into her, he found her wet and swollen. “Ye—” And then, as if remembering, “No—”

He hesitated, just for a second, then took her, hard and fast, cock inside her, fingers on her clit, in the dark of the beach, where anyone could have seen, where they could have been caught, where he could have been hauled off and locked down, and in the end, the only sound was her cries as she came, drowning out the roar of the surf and the roar of his own pleasure.