She didn’t move right away. She looked up through the curtain of her hair, then pushed it off her eyes so she could really see him. Nick smiled. His grip on her hips eased, and he shifted. Bess put her hand on his chest to support herself as she leaned forward to brush his lips with hers. “If this is a dream, I don’t want it to end when we’re finished.”
“It’s not a dream.” His voice was low and hoarse, but unmistakably his. “I told you that.”
He lifted the hem of her nightgown to skim her thighs and belly. “Does this feel like a dream? I’m touching you.”
He pushed upward. “I’m inside you.”
Bess gave a half-strangled laugh. “You’ve been inside me before.”
“Not like this.” He thrust harder and she gasped at the sweet pleasure-pain of him stabbing into her.
He’d been inside her for the past twenty years, but no. Not like this, though she’d thought of it often enough. She didn’t have to think about it now, because now it was happening. Bess ducked her head again as her fingers curled against Nick’s chest. Beneath her palm she should have felt the thump-thump of his heart as it sped up. She took her hand away before she could notice if it was there or not. She gripped him again with her thighs and slid both her hands to the bottom edge of his ribs.
She rode him, remembering how sometimes their rhythm had faltered. She knew her body better now, and when Nick’s pace began to stutter, Bess adjusted easily. She moved when he did, and when he thrust harder, biting his lip in the expression she’d never forgotten, she slowed him with a murmured word and a shift of her body. She slid a hand between them, her finger on her clit and circling just the way she needed it. She groaned at the touch and opened her eyes.
Nick’s eyes flashed as he looked between them, to where her hand moved. He bit his lower lip. His grip tightened again on her hips and he ground her against him, harder and harder. Faster.
Bess closed her eyes. Sensation filled her. This moment. His touch. The sound of her breathing and the skid of his fingertips along her sweat-damp skin. She stroked her clit slowly, then faster, in time with his quickening thrusts. Pleasure built until the hard, sharp shards of it shattered inside her the way her mug had shattered on the floor. She came with a gasping cry as her head tipped back. Her clit pulsed under her finger and she pressed it, urging another wave of climax to surge forth. Nick moaned and thrust once more, his body jerking.
She collapsed on him as she got her breath back. Her face found the perfect spot in the curve of his shoulder. She kissed his neck. Nick stroked his hands down the sides of her spine before he wrapped them around her and squeezed.
“I missed you,” he whispered. His arms tightened and his mouth brushed her ear.
Another spate of tears stung Bess’s eyes and this time, she didn’t blink them away. They mingled with the sweat on her lips and the salt tang of Nick’s skin.
“You don’t have to miss me,” she said. “Not anymore.”
Chapter
04
Then
Sugarland wasn’t the worst place Bess had ever worked. That honor would’ve gone without a second thought to the summer camp counselor position she’d held between her sophomore and junior years of high school. The trauma of that experience had been so severe she was still convinced she’d never have kids.
Waiting on tourists wasn’t as difficult as keeping twenty third-graders interested in weaving lanyards, even when the tourists got pissy about waiting for their food. Bess reminded herself over and over that not everyone in the world had been raised by apes. It just seemed like it.
“Where’s my damned waffle cone?” The red-faced man pounded the counter hard enough to make the napkin holder jump.
He hardly needed any sort of cone, much less a waffle one, but Bess pasted on a bright smile for him, anyway. “Just another three minutes, sir. The machine broke down and we weren’t able to prebake the cones. But yours will be fresh.”
The woman with him, who’d already been handed her cone, but hadn’t offered to share, stopped in midlick. “You mean, mine ain’t fresh?”
Bess bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, but by that time it was too late. The woman wanted her money back on a cone she’d already eaten most of, and her husband was pounding the counter and demanding two new cones. It was quickly heading into chaos, and Bess’s co-worker, Eddie, wasn’t much help. Only a senior in high school, he suffered from a god-awful case of acne that made him so self-conscious he never looked anyone in the eye. Plus he harbored a not-so-secret crush on Bess that rendered him nearly helpless in her presence.
Brian had called in sick, and the other counter girl, Tammy, was even worse than Eddie. She couldn’t make change without a calculator, and wore her Sugarland T-shirts cut off so they’d show her tanned and taut tummy. She spent more time filing her nails and flirting with the lifeguards than anything else. If Tammy hadn’t been screwing the boss’s son, Ronnie, Bess would’ve fired her.
“Are you listening to me?” the red-faced tourist-troll hollered, while slamming a meaty fist onto the countertop.
Maybe being a camp counselor hadn’t been so bad, after all.
So caught up in squaring away the greedy husband-and-wife team, who were finally mollified with two new, “fresh” waffle cones and a tub of caramel corn on the house, Bess didn’t notice who else had come into the shop. Missy wasn’t one to be ignored for long. She sidled up to the counter and flipped Bess a five, then pointed at the slushy machine.
She wasn’t alone.
Nick Hamilton was with her. Tonight instead of a ball cap he wore a red bandanna with tattered edges folded over his sleek dark hair and tied in the back. Among the cloying sweet odors of caramel and fudge, he smelled like fresh air and sunshine and sunscreen. His skin glistened with it, and his cheeks and the bridge of his nose bore a faint pinkish stripe. Proof of his day in the sun.
“Blue,” said Missy. “Nicky, you want any?”
He shook his head and smiled at Bess. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She nodded, her gaze going back and forth before focusing on Missy. “What’re you up to?”
Missy shrugged as she lolled against the counter. Her sly glance over her shoulder at Nick told Bess more than she wanted to know. “You know. Little of this, little of that.”
A whole lot of that, was more like it. Bess forced away a frown but couldn’t stop herself from looking at Nick again. Missy was eyeing him like he was a big old bowl of ice cream and she wasn’t even going to wait for a spoon to eat him with. Jealousy, stupid and formless, stabbed into Bess’s stomach and tightened her throat. Nick wasn’t hers. From what Missy said, he wasn’t going to be hers, either. Unless, of course, Missy had lied. It all made sense. It wouldn’t be the first time Missy’d told Bess a story to get something she wanted, and Bess couldn’t believe she’d fallen for it.
She grabbed up Missy’s money from the counter and filled a slushy cup three-quarters full before shoving it across the counter. She made change and slapped that down, too. Rage stiffened her fingers and hooked them into clumsy claws. The coins scattered on the counter before some clinked to the floor.
“Hey!” Missy protested, bending to pick up her fallen dimes. “What’s up your ass?”
Bess glanced around the small shop, but no other customers had come in. Tammy cracked her gum and looked away when Bess glared at her, and Eddie had already disappeared into the back room. Bess folded