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Or don’t.
That’s okay. I don’t want to think about anyone other than Maple today. When I unfold my brand-new picnic blanket, Maple’s watching me, her cheeks pink, her smile growing. I can almost see the happy, dirty, playful thoughts tumbling through her head. She’s so gorgeous, I think, and wonder why we’re out here, about to have an afternoon quickie instead of taking our time in my bed or hers. I could strip her down if we were alone. I could make her scream. I could break through that ever-so-slight reserve that whispers to me that she’s still on guard and that she still doesn’t trust me, not one hundred percent.
Her smile gets broader when she pushes me onto my back. It’s a game, obviously, because I’m a big guy and she can’t force me, but I take her love tap and flop down obediently.
“Taking charge, are we?” I give her a mock-stern look and open my arms wide. “So come and take me.”
She drops down onto me gracefully. I wonder if she was ever awkward when it comes to moving and knowing how to propel her body from one point to another. Is it something they teach in ballet schools or was she born that way?
Laughing, she leans down, planting her hands on either side of my head. We did it like this at my house, my brain reminds me. I should make this different. Make it better.
“You’re the expert,” she whispers. “Now show me what you like to do outside.”
We kiss for a long while, my hand sliding up underneath her dress. She wasn’t lying—she’s not wearing panties. I’m content not to rush at first, stroking the soft curves and then delving deeper. She’s just starting to make those happy moans I love so much when there’s a suspicious rustling in the bushes. Maple jumps to her feet, her hands abandoning the buttons of my jeans. A black Lab bursts through the shrubs. A guy calls in the not-so-distant distance and the dog abandons us.
When she laughs, I stand up, lifting her into my arms so that her bare legs are wrapped around my waist. We kiss like that, swaying together to some music she can hear and that she’s making me feel. I’m not really into dancing, but this is good.
Except then the homeless guy wanders through. He’s not quite all on planet Earth—based on his one-sided conversation with invisible alien overlords—but he notices enough to give me a thumbs-up.
Maple buries her face in my throat, shaking with silent laughter. “I can’t. We’re going to end up on America’s Funniest Home Sex Videos.”
It’s funny and awkward and strangely hot. I’ve never laughed with any of my hookups before. Or with a lover. Maple is dying as she points out a very suspicious pile of trash in the bushes. I don’t think our hookup spot is as exclusive as I’d thought.
But the day’s fucking gorgeous and the sun’s warm. It would be a shame to waste it. I can smell roses somewhere, and the ocean. There are palm trees not too far away, and some tall, pink and white spikey plants that I’ll google later because they’ll have a name. The dog reappears.
“Plan B,” I tell her, dropping us down onto the picnic blanket.
As my fingers fly over my phone, she leans back, one arm braced around my neck, the other arched over her head as if she was trying to hold a balloon. Sunlight dances over her face.
“You could take over the world with your hardware.” Her voice sounds dreamy and sun-drenched. There’s an unmistakable note of happy laughter beneath the words.
After I’ve made a strategic donation and pulled some strings, I dash with her across the park and into a back entrance of the conservatory. The conservatory has glass windows and hothouse heating for all the flowers it nurtures. Plus, it’s a popular spot so as I make love to Maple, there’s always a murmur of voices and the erotic threat of discovery. She likes it.
A lot.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Maple#f #beachgoddess #sunsetlover
“SUNSETS ARE DAMNED inconvenient. Always on a schedule.” Max has only just rolled out of bed, which he blames on me jumping him. I blame his bizarre sleep schedule on too much work and too much fun. Two weeks after our park tryst, we’ve managed to have sex in a Porsche, christened every room in the swank penthouse he just purchased, and made an acrobatic attempt at sex in the penthouse’s elevator (Max should have picked a taller building because we ran out of time).
“It’s your fault we’re late.” I resist the urge—just—to smack his butt as he tugs me down the steps to the beach below his house. Honestly, his butt’s a thing of beauty in faded blue jeans but I’ve already left scratches on said ass because the man is insatiable and said insatiability makes me crazy and one thing leads to another and…
Naked things.
Lots and lots of naked things, which now puts us at risk of missing the famous Santa Cruz sunset. I’m not sure whose idea it was to watch it armed with champagne, but Max isn’t giving up easily. He’s stubborn.
“I’m not the one who took fourteen minutes to come.” Nope. He’s not willing to let it go. He’d chased down my third orgasm with the same delicious tenacity when I’d claimed I was too tired to come anymore without permanent injury to my vagina. He may also have promised to kiss everything better later if it turned out I was right and certain parts of me were sore.
“Once again, I blame you.” True story.
He swings around and has me up against the railing before I can squeak. Not that I’m complaining. Max has a gorgeous body, and his front is every bit as drool-worthy as his back. I hook a bare leg around the back of his thigh and pull him closer still because maybe I’ll have found my second wind by the time we get back to his place. Undoubtedly, I’ll be ready to jump him again. The man is more addictive than online shopping.
The gleam in his eyes is all the warning I get before the cold champagne bottle brushes against my boobs. My nipples pebble. I shove it away, but then he leans down and kisses me, which is a problem because once he starts, I never want him to stop. He presses his mouth to my lips, tasting me, and I breathe him in. Our lips slide over each other, nipping, pulling, making room for ourselves because this feeling between us never stays small.
I pull, he tugs, and I forget all about standing on a staircase and the ocean at our feet. There’s just Max and me. I want to eat him up and make him part of me. I want to freeze this moment in time so I can hold on to it and bring it out and relive it in the years to come. A seagull screeches overhead and the moment winks out of my grasp like soap bubbles from a magic wand.
“Come on.” He tugs me down the steps. “We’re almost there.”
I’d follow you straight to the gates of hell, I think.
Which is stupid because that isn’t what Max wants from me.
So instead I tag along on his heels to the beach below his house. I cradle our champagne in one arm and hold on to him with the other, our palms touching, our fingers entwined. It’s the perfect recipe for romance except that we aren’t alone.
In theory, the beach is private, but this is California. Both water and sand are public access up to the high-tide line, so this isn’t the first time we’ve discovered random strangers on the sand or riding the waves. My gaze flickers to Max. I think I want him to be disappointed, too, but I also suspect that he’s making this romantic gesture for me because he thinks it’s what I need. He’d have been happy to stay in bed having hot, dirty sex over and over again.
“Someone stole our idea.” I pass the champagne bottle to Max. He has all those delicious muscles—he can carry it.
“What gave it away?”
I expect him to make a dirty joke about the remnants of someone else’s romantic picnic spread out on our beach. In addition to a sandy, rumpled plaid blanket, there’s an empty wine bottle spiked in the sand and abandoned shoes. When I look closer, I spot a familiar bikini top. I gave it to Lola when I was sent a box of swimwear to promote on Instagram. A girl can only wear so many.
I look around but neither Lola nor Dev are anywhere in sight on the beach. The two of them are cute, almost permanently joined at the hip like Japanese beetles or bunnies, so they must be here somewhere.
Laughter floats across the water—bingo. They’ve paddled way out, presumably on Dev’s surfboard, and now they’re wrapped around each other, doing who knows what. Okay. I suspect I know exactly what. The board rocks wildly, followed by more laughter.
“God. Tell me they’re not—”
Max assesses the situation. “Not.”
Thank God.
I walked in on Lola and Dev once. Part of it was my fault. I was used to doing the knock-and-enter when I stopped by Lola’s. It had never been a problem before, but on that particular occasion I’d seen more of Dev than I should have. And let me tell you: the man had a mighty fine ass and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. I’d pretended an immediate and highly specific case of amnesia and vowed to wait for a hearty “come in” after that. I’m not sure what they expected when they decided to have sex on the beach.
Not that Max and I have pure intentions ourselves. Since the night of his pop-up party, when we dared each other into hooking up, I’ve had fond memories of this beach. I usually come down whenever I spend the night—or the afternoon or the morning—at Max’s place. The ocean is amazing, even if the temperature never seems to get much above freezing. Max says I exaggerate and that the average temperature is a refreshing fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
Something flares to life on the surfboard and, no, that’s not a euphemism. It looks like Dev has somehow transported a sparkler out there, the kind of cheap but fun firework that you can buy year-round in the groceries in the Mission District. I wonder why he’d be doing something that seems doomed to failure—water and fire not mixing well—but the shrieking and rocking distract me.
I definitely don’t want to know what they’re doing.
Since I deserve a consolation prize, I grab the bottle from Max and plop down on Lola’s blanket. We’ve missed the best part of the sunset anyhow and the sun is dropping rapidly now beneath the horizon, pink and yellow streaking the sky in broad, colorful bands. I lean back against Max, using his legs as a backrest while I try to sort through my feelings.
His hand plays with my hair, finding all the stress points in my scalp. Or maybe they’re chakras? Whatever, it feels good. The man is talented. But with the pleasure comes the usual doubt. He makes me happy, but do I do the same for him? Am I doing enough or am I just taking, taking, taking—and eventually he’ll have had enough and leave?
Lola and Dev reach the shore before I achieve any sort of epiphany. They wear matching black wetsuits, although Dev has unzipped his and tied it around his waist. I try not to stare too hard but the man is seriously built.
“You need to model your wetsuit for me,” I whisper, leaning harder into Max’s touch. I’ll do something nice for him when we get back to his place. A blow job or some sexy naked dancing. Something memorable. Max’s low grunt of amusement floats down to me.
Because…
Dev is grinning like a madman as he leaps off the board, swinging Lola around in an ungraceful little circle. She’s shrieking and Dev’s victory pumping her fist, turning it so we can see what he was really up to out there. It’s so obvious that I’m almost blinded.
Lola has a diamond. A big, canary yellow diamond surrounded by the cutest baby diamonds on a gold band. They’re engaged.
I bolt off the blanket because engagements call for hugs and champagne, and I have both to offer. Lola and I might do some happy dancing as we hug it out, too. Not that I’d want my man to pop the question on a surfboard—that seems super risky. What if he dropped the ring? Or a fish bumped the board? Or a seagull crapped on them? These things happen all the time.
Max and Dev exchange good-natured jibes and backslapping hugs. I know Max isn’t one hundred percent happy with the way his friends are settling down around him, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him.
“Your turn.” Lola points her ring finger at me as if she’s gained a magic wand rather than a ridiculously expensive piece of jewelry. I’ll bet Max is making sure Dev has it insured. “I know you said you weren’t ready but—”
I’m still not. “I’m not interested.”
“You don’t get to be not interested when the right man shows up. You could take Max.” She waggles her eyebrows in his direction.
“Please,” I scoff. “He’s the hookup king. The only ring he’s going to put on it is a cock ring.”
“Why not?” Lola frowns. “You guys are the only ones left except for maybe Jack’s business partner.”
It’s like being the last kid picked for dodgeball.
“You think he wants to get married?”
“Have you asked him?”
“We’re opposites,” I protest. “It would take a year just to sign the prenup!”
Plus, I’m totally not interested in marriage.
Lola looks mulish. “I think you guys would be great together.”
“Right. Let’s imagine how this would go. I drop to one knee and I say, ‘Max, will you marry me?’” I hit the sand on my knees to make my point—dramatic embellishments always help sell the story. “And then he reminds me that he’s all about the hookup. Why on earth would I want to go there?”
Lola bites her lip.
Oh boy.
I turn my head, and sure enough, Max is standing on the sand behind me. Is this where I say I didn’t really mean it? Do you think his feelings were hurt?
No.
Me, neither.
Jack steps off the stairs and onto the beach. “What did I miss?”
“Lola’s trying to sell me to the highest bidder,” Max says drily. “But she set the opening bid too high.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Maple#rockyroad #guiltypleasures
IN THE WEEKS that followed Lola and Dev’s engagement, I expect something to change, but nothing does. Max and I spend most of the nights together. We may have started out as a hookup, but now? Now I don’t have a clue, although it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Max has never had a relationship in his life.
Item: He wrote a hookup app so an algorithm picked out his perfect match.
Item: He let a million billion strangers use it.
Item: And then when he was filthy rich because everyone wanted to throw cash at their dating problems, he had women (and men) throwing themselves at him because filthy rich plus mad bedroom skills makes Max a very, very popular boy.
It’s hard not to resent that, even if he claims he doesn’t even notice it happening anymore. When he attends industry events, business meetings or even the Whole Foods grocery because he needs beer, bread or toilet paper, women come up to him. They give him their numbers or offer to send pictures, all while making dirty suggestions in the produce aisle. He dismisses it as the side effect of the billion dollars. In Max’s world, money is the ultimate aphrodisiac and if he was broke, he’d be able to pick out tomatoes unmolested.
I’m not sure he’s right, but a controlled, scientific A/B study isn’t possible. Max is super careful with the billion dollars. This is a guy, after all, who plans everything, up to and including an orderly, aisle-by-aisle assault on the grocery store. There’s no way he’d lose a fortune…and that is why women hunt him down in public like he’s the last lion or bear or unicorn. For all his bad boy, dirty sex outside, the Max inside is safe. More important, he keeps the small handful of people he cares about safe.
I, on the other hand, barely have a nodding acquaintance with safe, as my dating history bears witness. My high school boyfriend loved dirt bikes and race cars. He sped through life, and giving him my virginity was simply another speed bump he flew over with reckless disregard. We had sex on the hood of his car, and I was pretty sure he was already thinking about his next race and his next track bunny before he pulled out.
My second boyfriend was a fellow dancer I met as an apprentice at the New York City Ballet. He up and left when he got offered a company position in Moscow. I maxed out my credit card to pay him a surprise visit, but the surprise was on me as I discovered him in bed with not one but two dancers. My dreams of monogamy and happily-ever-after dashed, I raced back to New York.
And then there was Madd.
Madd who I’d been ready to propose to and who’d also decided that I wasn’t enough.
My man picker clearly needed a reboot, so it was a wonder that I’d hooked up with Max. Or maybe that was why we were together—because he’d made it perfectly clear from the very beginning that he never, ever did long-term relationships. He hooked up. He moved on. I was the one tempted to linger.
Max and I? We aren’t a real couple.
Someday soon, he’ll stop texting or I will, and then we’ll be done, too.
I don’t know who he is, not really, not any more than he knows who I am. I know the superficial things, like the drink he’s most likely to order (or not) from a bar menu. I know the names of his favorite beaches and that if there was a surf competition, he wouldn’t be in it but he would be part of the security patrol zipping up and down the waves on Jet Skis and keeping things safe for everyone. I know he buys Fruit of the Loom cotton boxers and white Champion tube socks in a twelve-pack because that’s what he’s always worn and if it isn’t broken, he doesn’t fix it.
I know exactly how he likes his sex—and that I love it the same way, too.
But I don’t know the big things.
Or what goes on inside his head.
What scares him.
Or what he loves.
It isn’t just that we come from different worlds, or that his bank balance has far, far more zeroes than mine does. He lives his life shields up, shutting everyone and every intimate emotion out, and I understand that—even as I want to get inside him while keeping myself private. I could have feelings for him. Like greedy, greedy Icarus, not content to fly, I have to soar higher and higher, closer and closer to the one thing I’ve been told repeatedly is off-limits.
But—even though I know our breakup is coming more inevitably than Monday morning after Sunday—I am still glad when my phone buzzes with an incoming text. Are you free tonight?
Yes, I am.
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