Somewhere on St. Thomas: A Somewhere Series Romance (11 page)

I felt a wave of self-consciousness. “I’m sorry. I know I’m funny-looking,” I said, transported back to the gym showers at school, where my odd coloring had provoked so much teasing from the girls I’d refused to go back, choosing homeschooling instead.

“Exquisite,” he said. “You’re gorgeous.” He bent close and blew on me. The puff of air was a tantalizing hot caress that promised pleasure. I thrust up toward him, wantonly craving his touch. He cupped me, stroked me. I tried to open my legs, but he didn’t let me. He chuckled a little painfully as his hands made swirling patterns over my hips and thighs.

“You’re an impatient woman,” he said. “Slow down. Be gentle with me. You’re my first and only redhead, and I want to savor every moment of how amazing you are.”

“Please,” I panted. “I need you. Everything. All of it.”

He just shook his head, and proceeded to awaken my body.

He smoothed me, petted me gently, exploring and arousing. He kissed me at my core, stroking, and the incredible sensations pushed me past shyness as he flicked me with his tongue.

It didn’t take long. Sensation like a wave swept up from my toes, broke over my whole body, and engulfed me in a storm of lights that exploded in my brain and washed me up on the shore of
after
, boneless and wordless.

He rolled my limp body over to lie face down.

I lay on my bare front as he rubbed his rough, hard chest across the silky, firm rounds of my buttocks, an incredibly good feeling of a different kind.

I turned my head, and in the mirror, I could glimpse him squeezing my butt between his hands, rubbing himself back and forth over my ass. Even I could see that the only thing better than my breasts to look at were the firm, high rounds of my creamy-white ass cheeks, set off by little thumbprint-sized dimples above my slim waist.

“Dammit,” Rafe said, tracing my buttocks with his hands. “I can’t wait any longer.” He dropped his pants in a quick movement and hauled me higher on the bed, still face down. I could see in the mirror as he mounted me, his hard thighs clamping around my hips. I didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing as he said, “This won’t take a minute,” and slid his huge, rock-hard shaft along my butt, rubbing up and down against me as his hands clenched the tops of my hips convulsively.

I saw and felt him come with a heart-moan, his back a vast arching of muscles I watched and longed for in the mirror above. I felt a wetness that slid like hot honey into the small of my back.

I gave a yelp of outrage. “No. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be!”

I tried to struggle up from beneath him, but Rafe had collapsed over me with his full weight. He groaned.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. And we were never having sex today. At least not the kind you had in mind.”

I slid out from under him at last. “Why do you get to decide what we’re doing?” I was furious and embarrassed. I stomped into the palatial bathroom.

My eyes were flashing and cheeks flaming as I glanced in the mirror at my swollen breasts, heavy and pink, blotched with hickeys. My hair was a snarled mess. I was marked with kisses and beard stubble, and there was something wet sliding down my back.

I’d had orgasms, and now so had he, but I was deeply disappointed.

“Total bummer,” I muttered. I turned on the shower and got in.

Moments later he got in with me. I scrubbed my body furiously with soap and a washcloth.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t…I was going to explode. Now I can take my time with you the next time,” Rafe said. “Besides, I didn’t have a condom.”

“You booked a room and ordered wine, but didn’t have a condom? Besides, there won’t be a next time,” I snorted, but slowed my angry movements as he began working a fragrant lather of shampoo into my long hair, massaging my scalp. He washed my hair tenderly, rinsing each section of hair, sliding it over himself as if studying the contrast of the vivid color with his own hardened, tanned, hair-roughened body.

The anger gradually melted out of me under his gentle, tender touch.

He carried me out of the shower. Wrapped me in one of the huge bath sheets. Turned down the bed and tucked me in, blotting my hair with the towel.

I fell instantly asleep.

Chapter 6

I woke up abruptly, overheated.

Rafe was sleeping next to me, one arm over me and one heavily muscled thigh holding down my legs. His face was beside mine on the pillow, and in this unguarded moment, I could study it.

His deep blue eyes were closed, fans of long dark lashes resting against high, slanted cheekbones. Stubble marked the planes of his cheeks, the firm jaw now relaxed in sleep. His mouth, with its thinner top lip and wide lower one, a mouth that could look hard or tender, was slightly open, and his breath mingled with mine.

I was tempted to kiss him, and even though I was too hot, I didn’t want to wake him. A feeling swelled in me, an overwhelming tenderness. I sneaked a hand up and stroked the line of his dark brows. His breathing never changed.

I wanted to wake up in his arms every day.

The thought chilled me. Scared me. I’d not come all the way out here, lied to everyone who mattered to me, to fall for a guy who was so wrong for me.

Surfer, sailor, drifter. Rafe McCallum.

I wanted solidity. A career. To own my home and drive a decent car. Maybe have a few kids someday. I didn’t want to be dependent on the whims and generosity of strangers like my parents had been. I remembered too well how they’d had to scramble to find work, how Mom cleaned houses and Dad did yards until they’d eventually built up their vacation-rental management business.

I’d come out to San Francisco because I wanted Rafe’s body. I wanted to experience sex with someone who knew what he was doing, and his behavior confused me. First he seduced me with his letters and got me out here. Then he put on the brakes and said he wanted to get to know me. Today he’d caved to my sexual pressure and we’d ended up in bed, but even that was confusing.

On the one hand, he’d certainly known what he was doing with his mouth and his hands, but on the other—no condom? That clumsy grasping, pumping himself over me, leaving me no way to give back to him?

I didn’t know what Rafe wanted from me. It almost seemed like he didn’t, either.

All of a sudden the weight of his arm and leg felt stifling. I eased out from under him, sliding gently to the edge of the bed and out from under the sateen spread.

He slept on. I loved the shine of late-afternoon sun on his long, tumbled bronzy hair, the round of his shoulder marked by an eagle, the curled open hand that rested in the dent where I’d lain.

I looked around the gorgeous suite. At the open bottle of champagne, at the view.

This room was costing poor Rafe the earth, and the longer I stayed, the more it would cost, and worse, the more vulnerable I would be to the hold he had on me. A hold that had begun to feel suspiciously like falling in love.

It seemed he wasn’t going to have sex with me, and that’s what I’d come for. So what I needed to do was leave before things got any worse, before my heart broke any more at leaving him.

I needed to get back to school and figure out what the hell I was doing with Henry and Sam. Breaking up with everyone right now seemed like an excellent idea. It was about time I remembered I’d come to college to get an education in something more than sex.

I pulled up my skirt from the carpet, stepped into it, and zipped it up. Found my shirt and yanked it on. Dug my panties out of my purse and put them on. Buttoned my jean jacket over my loose breasts.

I found a little bathroom kit containing a comb and a rubber band, and in the bathroom I braided my long bright hair, still damp and fragrant from that memorable shower.

I splashed water on my face.

My cheeks were pale now. The flash had gone out of my eyes when I stared at myself in the mirror.

I had two more days here, and now I had to find a way to avoid Rafe.

I picked up my purse and sneaked out, closing the door gently. Out in front of the hotel, I hailed my first San Francisco cab and took it back to Rafe’s boardinghouse.

Lisa, the innkeeper, met me packing my things into my backpack in the little sitting room where I’d been sleeping on a couch. “Where are you going?” she asked sharply, hands on her hips.

“Things aren’t working out with Rafe.” I felt my eyes fill spontaneously. “I need to find a place to stay until I fly out.”

“Oh, girl.” Lisa’s warm ebony arms encircled me, and she drew me in to her remarkable bosom. “I’m so sorry. I thought he was really into you. More than anyone I’ve seen him bring home.”

“Ha.” I sniffled, grabbing a tissue out of a nearby box. “No. It’s just not happening with us. I don’t want to see him anymore. It’s too embarrassing. Can you tell me a cheap hotel to go to?”

“I’ll take you to a friend’s,” Lisa said firmly. “I don’t want you to end up in one of those nasty places in the Tenderloin.”

“Thanks. But you have to promise not to tell him where I am. No matter what.”

“Cross my heart,” she said, with a gesture over her left breast. “Now come with me.”

We got into her purple VW Beetle, and she drove me to another house made into temporary boarding rooms, this time with her friend Triad.

Triad was another gorgeous Puerto Rican woman. “Po’ thing,” she cried, welcoming me into the dimly lit hall of the house she ran. It smelled of cabbage and marijuana. “Come on to your room. We’ll keep your mind off that man with movies, and I have chocolate ice cream.”

Apparently, getting over Rafe wasn’t a new situation for either of these ladies to deal with.

I wished the thought didn’t make the tears well up and pop out of my eyes, but I was at least able to stifle the sobs until I bade Lisa goodbye with further promises from her not to tell where I was hiding.

Alone at last, I flung myself face down on the twin bed with its thin, pilly, paisley-print spread, and cried.

* * *

I spent the next day in the room without coming out, watching soap reruns on a tiny TV, VCR movies, and eating a pint of chocolate ice cream Triad dropped off.

In the late evening I finally pulled myself together enough to ask Triad for the number of a takeout place, and when the knock came on the door, I hurried to open it, expecting the Chinese food delivery I’d finally got hungry enough to order.

Rafe towered in the doorway. His face was dark with anger. He wore the same black T-shirt and jeans he’d had on before, and he was holding a white bag of Chinese food.

“Rafe! How’d you find me?” I exclaimed, snatching the bag out of his hand.

He stepped inside and shut the door with great deliberation. I didn’t look at him as I dug in the bag for the little white food cartons, unloading the chopsticks, napkins, and containers on a little side table.

“I was worried,” Rafe said, each word measured out and snipped off as if with scissors. “I thought you were maybe lost somewhere. I couldn’t imagine where you’d run off to and what I’d done that was so wrong that you had to sneak off and ditch me like that.”

I sat on the twin bed with the takeout carton in one hand and the chopsticks in the other. I knew my eyes were hugely puffy from crying and my hair, still in the braid from yesterday, was unraveling and matted. I’d never been a pretty crier.

Good. Maybe he’ll be so repulsed he’ll leave.

“Lisa promised she wouldn’t tell you where I went,” I said through a mouth stuffed with noodles. “I thought she was a friend.”

“She’s my friend first,” Rafe said. “And she only told me where when I was going to file a missing-persons report.”

I choked on the mouthful of noodles. “That would not have been good.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Well. I changed my mind about being with you,” I said to the carton in my hand. “I don’t want to be with you after all. I’m going back to school and I’m going to be single. No dating. Just focus on my studies.”

“What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t just tell me that. And then I have to remind myself you’re not even nineteen yet. Your brain isn’t fully mature.”

I looked up and glared, and he grinned at finally catching my eye. “Good. That’s better. Now tell me what’s really going on. Just spit it out.”

“Fine.” I pushed back from the edge of the bed and sat cross-legged with my back against the wall. “I came here to lose my virginity. And somewhere in the middle of all we got up to in that hotel room, I realized you had no intention of doing the deed with me.” I picked up the noodles again. “I have no idea what you want from me, but if we aren’t going to have sex, I don’t want to be with you. There. Now you have the truth. I hope you’re happy.”

I tried to take a bite of noodles, but my throat had totally closed. Tears were pouring out of my eyes and giving lie to my tough words. I fumbled for a napkin to blot them.

“I thought we were having sex back in the hotel,” Rafe said mildly. “There are lots of ways to do it, you know.”

“I begin to,” I said, flapping a hand. “But I don’t understand why you’re being how you are with me. What are you trying to do? Make me fall in love with you or something?” The question came out on a squeak. “Because I can’t fall in love with you. You’re all wrong for me. Long-term.” The words came out in a rush. “And I have to get back to school and get away from you before…before.” I ended the muddled speech by stuffing my mouth with tasteless noodles before I told him that
before
had already happened. It was too late.