New York Billionaires Series

The blanket slips through my fingers as I reach out and steady myself against him. His shoulders are firm beneath my grip, a steady pillar amidst the roil of sensations inside.

His hand weaves into my hair and gives the softest of tugs. He’s everywhere and I never want him to leave. Never want this kiss to end. I slide my hands up the skin of his neck and find purchase in the thick, dark hair. It’s sleek through my fingers, a softness I hadn’t expected.

He kisses me once, twice. Slow and soft before he lifts his head. My breath is coming hard and fast, and his isn’t much better. Dark, wondering eyes gaze back at me. His thumb smoothes over my hip in the smallest of caresses before he releases me.

Takes a step back, chest rising as he gets himself under control. “Goodnight, Summer,” he murmurs.

I run a finger over my lips. “Goodnight, Anthony.”

Summer has been knocked down by the waves more times than I can count. Sitting on a lounge chair on the half-empty beach, I have a front-row seat. Even if I should be focusing on the emails in front of me instead of the brave girl out at sea.

It’s difficult, as it always is these days, when the latter draws my gaze so easily.

She’d been bang on the money yesterday when she’d marveled at the house and the money I’d dropped on it. It had been outrageously expensive.

Even more expensive if one factors in just how little time I’ve spent in it. After I’d hired an expert from the Foundation for the Blind to go through the place and blind-proof it, I’ve avoided it. It’s impossible to forget it’ll one day become my prison, the one concession I’ve made to the doctor’s diagnosis.

There had been awe in Summer’s voice as she’d looked at the place, the pool, the beach. She takes pleasure in everything around her, even making dinner in a place where I’ve only ever had takeout. Enjoying a pool I’d never swum in. Filling the contours of my life with color everywhere she goes, and rarely staying within the lines.

My hand tightens into a fist at my side. It’s not fair. None of it. Not my fucking eyesight and not her, not finding her when I’m like this, when I have nothing to offer her.

Finding the one woman you want when you have nothing to give. If the universe has a sense of humor, I imagine it’s laughing at me now.

“What a world,” I mutter to the dog by my feet. Ace hasn’t left my side since we arrived at the beach, despite watching the seagulls wading along the water’s edge with a hunter’s intensity.

“You failed at being a seeing eye dog, and I’m failing at being sighted. We’re a solid pair.”

His head turns up at my voice and dark dog eyes meet mine. So what, he seems to be saying. We’re on the beach. Enjoy it.

Perhaps he’s right about that, or perhaps I’ve lost my mind to be considering what a dog might be thinking. His mind is probably focused on belly rubs and meaty bones.

I shade my eyes and look out across the waves. Summer’s wading in the shallows. She’s in a wet-suit despite the warmth in the air, an instructor on either side of her. All three are laughing at the latest tumble she’d taken off the surfboard, their wet suits like second skins.

Not for the first time today, I’m wondering how the hell I was so stupid as to not book myself in for the session as well. Have I become such a fun-hating curmudgeon? Already?Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

She’d kissed me last night.

The tentative hope in her eyes as she did it, stretching up, taking the leap, had stunned me. Apart from the tipsy question she’d asked me after that beer tasting, my thoughts hadn’t allowed me to consider the fact that she might genuinely want something.

Want me.

Or want who she thought I was, at any rate.

I should have let her run back inside, to safety, nursing nothing more than faint embarrassment. But after that first, tantalizing taste…

And now I can’t concentrate for shit.

I close my laptop and surrender to the joy of watching her out in the water.

She’s grinning when she walks up the beach to me later. Tendrils of wet blonde hair snake over her neck and hang in a braid down her back.

“That,” she says, “was awesome.”

“It looked like it.”

“Were you watching the whole time? You must have seen me fall off a bajillion times.”

I shake my head. “You did great by the end. Even the instructors thought so.”

She snorts and looks over her shoulder to where they’re disassembling the windsurfing board. “Brody has surfed since he could walk, and Luke has competed for the state. Twice. How did you manage to get them to instruct me?”

“Just made the right phone call,” I say. Her smile makes it all worth it.

“That must have taken several phone calls. God, Anthony, I’m so full of adrenaline I feel like I could run along this beach or scale a skyscraper.”

“There are none of those here.”

She turns around, offering me her back, and lifts her braid out of the way. “Help me with the zipper?”

I grasp the metal between my fingers and tug the wet fabric down. It splits in a straight line down the curve of her spine, all the way to her red bikini bottoms. Two small dimples rest on either side of her spine, right there, at the low of her back.

“There you go.”

She struggles out of the arms of the wet suit and laughs when it gets stuck. “These are great when they’re on and awful pretty much all the time when they’re not.”

“You’ve surfed too?”

“Yes, but it was a long time ago.”

“Can’t be that long,” she says, still grinning. “I’ve figured you out.”

“You have?”

“Yes. You’re only six years older than me, but you can’t have spent all these years business-building. You told me you used to climb. What else did you do?”

“A lot of things.”

“So descriptive,” she says, and there’s teasing in her voice.

“A bit of hiking. Kayaking. Skydived once.”

“Whoa. That’s intense.” She sits down on one of the lounge chairs and peels her wet suit down long, tan legs. I look out onto the ocean. “Did you like it?”

“Yes. But I have no desire to do it again.”

She chuckles. “I feel the same way, and I haven’t even done it.”

“How about windsurfing?” I ask. “Think it’s something you’ll do again?”