Page 26 of Fire Island (Fire Island #2)

Twenty-Five

EVIE

L aying on the grass by the shed, I let the sun’s warmth soak into my skin. The ocean breeze is my friend today, caressing my skin as it warms me, lulling me into a restful doze. The days have started cooling off, and I will catch every ray of warmth I can before they disappear.

“Pass the wrench, will you?” Cal’s grunt snaps me back to reality.

I sit up and scan the tools laid out at my side until I find the one he needs. He sits on the other side of the old Indian bike, hands filthy with grease, some smudged over his cheek, and his beard darkened with it where he’s been rubbing his hand as he thinks.

“How long until she’s ready?” I ask.

“Another few weeks, give or take.”

“Real helpful. How’s a girl supposed to plan her first bike trip without a solid deadline?”

He leans to one side, catching my gaze through the gap in the bike’s frame. “Who you road-tripping with, baby girl?”

“Hmmm, haven’t decided yet.”

I give him my cheekiest grin, and he drops the wrench and pushes to his feet. Rounding the bike, he stands, looking down at me.

I lean back, my hands pressing into the soft grass. “You could convince me to take you, I guess.”

He takes one step forward, and he’s between my legs.

His body is alive from the labor of fixing the bike in the sun, grease and dirt stain his clothes, his tight T-shirt sits over his toned chest and bulging biceps.

My heartbeat, which was slow and content moments ago, triples its pace.

Now, it thunders through my core and lights up my body inch by inch with its needy heat.

“You want me to beg, mo ghràdh?”

“I think it’s only fair . . .”

He bends over and hauls me from the grass to his hips. My arms slide around his neck, where they belong, as he studies my face. “You want to see the world with me, please , baby girl?”

“Hmmm. I think your plea needs a little work.”

“Which part?” He raises an eyebrow. The angles of his face are addictive.

“All of it,” I breathe. “How much do you want to leave this island for me, Cal?”

His eyes tighten and I’m sure he’s going to put me down and tell me that’s never going to happen.

I wait, suspended in time just as I am in his hold as he considers my request.

It was a fleeting idea, anyhow... I open my mouth to take back the stupid words.

“How far?” he rasps.

The smile stretching my face takes me by surprise, just as those two words do. “Anywhere... Everywhere.”

“Just on the bike?”

“What are my options?” I ask breathlessly.

He looks up like he’s thinking over a long list of possibilities. “Well, there’s the bike. We could fly. Train. But my favorite would be to sail.”

“Sail?”

“Yup, wind in your sails and hair. Sunshine that melts you to your bones and all that.” The grin on his face steals my breath.

“You can sail?” I clarify.

“Uh huh.”

“You have a sailboat? Like a decent one?”

“Semi-decent?”

“Are you like the master of old things in need of restoration?”

“More like old enough to have things that need restoring. The boat is dry-docked in Em’s bay in the boatyard. We’d always dreamt of getting her seaworthy.”

“You totally should. You and Em could sail around the world...”

He swoops in, nipping my neck, and I squirm in his arms as a giggle bursts from my lips. Teasing this gorgeous man is the highlight of my day.

Well, almost.

The laughter dies out, and I palm his face as it rises, his gaze meeting mine. “Don’t you dare see the world without me, Callum McCreary,” I whisper.

“Never.”

His hold on me turns desperate. His hands spread over my back. I’m crashing my mouth to his a second later. Hungry for every last piece of him, I sink my hands into his hair. My butt meets the warm seat of the bike, and he releases his hold as I steady myself on the Indian.

“Cal, no, I’m going to fall off.” I try to find purchase, leaning back a little. My hands wander over the fuel tank and the back of the seat as I hunt for something to grab onto.

Rough hands slide under my thighs, turning me until I’m lying back on the fuel tank, my head resting on the handlebars. The metal of the back of the bike is hot on my calves. I pull my knees up.

Cal raises one leg and slides onto the seat.

“Still need me to beg, Evie baby?”

My last breath stalls. The thought of this man begging me...

“Absolutely,” I manage to say, and the cheekiest smile tugs up one side of his face.

He hooks his fingers around my cotton shorts and tugs them down over my hips.

The bike moves as he removes them, leaving behind my pastel yellow lacy panties.

On the black motorbike, my lemon-lace-clad body is something out of a boudoir shoot.

The sun has tanned my limbs, put color in my face.

My T-shirt slides from my head, and I settle back.

I can’t help feeling like this is one memory we are making that’s going to make me smile—and my children cringe—thirty, forty years from now.

I live for it.

I live for this man.

The endless possibilities that are Cal and Evie.

All the life we have to live through yet...

Lost in my head, clouds drift in the blue above as the breeze tangles through my hair, now draped over the bike’s small console.

Open-mouthed kisses dust up my stomach toward my bra, and I tilt my head to one side to watch him. Every time his lips press to my skin, I float higher. Every embrace is confirmation of our love.

His love.

And the way I am going to return it, tenfold. Because not doing so would break my heart.

“Cal, I don’t hear any begging...” I pant, but the last syllable fades like my will to resist his touch.

Hands gripping my hips, he looks up from under those lashes framing the blues I adore. “I’m getting to that part.”

His finger slides beneath the lacy panties and sweeps over my aching center. “Is this where I come to pay my penance and beg for you by my side for?—”

His jaw feathers before it grinds.

My chest rises and plummets as I take in the emotion toying with his handsome face.

I rise a little, brows lowering. “You don?—”

He shakes his head. “Yes, I do.”

I want to say something to ease the burn that’s taking us both down. Having no idea what words could hold such power, I press my lips together and slide my hands over his, still at my hips. They slide away and he tugs my panties down.

With a soft nudge to the inside of my thighs, his hands lace with mine at my hips again.

“Close your eyes, baby girl.”

My eyes flutter shut of their own accord. My body, his plaything. His will, my command...

His tongue runs through my center, and I cry out, a quick arch pulling me off the bike. It moves under my weight and I still, torn between moving with the pleasure he brings and the need to not tumble off this damn thing.

“Evie...” he rasps. His tongue swirls around my clit.

I open my mouth to respond, and his hands squeeze my fingers.

No talking back, got it.

“Please, baby.”

He nips at my aching center.

I resist the urge to tilt my hips upward to his tantalizing touch. And fail...

“Let me come with you, please ?”

His tongue dives into me, hot and fast.

The whimper that leaves with my exhale crumbles to a shattered cry.

One hand leaves. The pad of his finger—no, his thumb—brushes over my clit.

“Baby, take me with you. Wherever you go.”

Two fingers sink into my swollen core. He traces my soaked entrance with his tongue before lapping at my clit.

“Say yes, Evie. Let me come.”

“I—” I pant. Stars fade into my peripherals. “You?—”

I tighten around his fingers, now pumping in and out in a slow, torturous rhythm.

“Is that a yes?” he growls before sucking hard on my aching nub.

I come hard around his fingers. Each blissful wave heavier, more delicious than the last. The bike, almost forgotten, moves with my writhing weight. I settle with ladened breaths, hands hunting for Cal. For the man I will never leave behind.

Who am I kidding? He didn’t need to beg.

He’ll never need to ask for the things he needs with me.

Because the feeling goes both ways.

I need this man more than oxygen. At this point, suffocating would be easier, less painful than spending another day without him in my life.

An hour later, I’m standing beside Em on the Coast Guard boat, heading for the mainland for lunch with Iris and some solid library time. God, I have missed the internet, the smell of hundreds of books, the soft chatter of book talk as I tap away on my laptop, brain whirring, the story building.

Tensions rising . . .

Plot, plotti?—

“Iris is excited to have a girls-only date,” Em says, interrupting my reverie.

I chuckle, pushing my glasses up my nose. I really should wear my contacts. “I’m starving. Did she say where she’s taking me?”

“Some place over in Huntington, I think.”

“Have you been there before?” I study his expression, trying to discern from his answer whether he and Iris eat together and how often—besides at the café, that is.

“Nope. You must be special.”

Well, that gives me nothing to work with, Em. Disappointing. Feeling a little nosy and a lot bolder than I should be, I ask, “So, you and Iris? How long are you going to make her wait, Em?”

He glances at me, too quickly, as his face surrenders to a blush I’m sure can be seen from space. Clearing his throat, he tightens his hands around the wheel. “Wait for what?”

I give him my best you have to be shitting me look and roll my eyes at him like some teenage girl.

“What?” he says with a chuckle.

“Nothing. Keep your secrets, Officer Bradford. But you should get onto that, if you ask me.”

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, Miss Evie, but I didn’t.”

It’s all I can do to beam up at him. A smile wobbles over his lips, and he keeps his focus straight ahead.

“You want me to change the subject?” I ask, nudging his arm with mine.

“Please,” he mutters.

“Okay, sure, what’s with you and Cal and having old relics lying around needing to be fixed up? Old before your time?”

“Relics?”

“The Indian and the boat in your dry dock?”

“Oh yeah, I kind of forgot about those. Cal’s rolled the old dust bucket outta the shed, has he?”

“He has. We’re fixing it up.”

His stare holds for a beat. “That’s great. I never thought I’d ever see him ride that bike again.”

“So, about the boat? How much would it take to make her seaworthy?” I sound ridiculously like I know what I’m talking about, which is stupid.

He rubs a hand behind his neck. “The Pearl—and don’t laugh, Cal let Iris name her when we got the boat not long after their parents’ accident—would take a fair bit of fixing.

But the bones are there. The problem is, nobody has the time.

Not me, and least of all Cal. Especially now, he has something else consuming his every spare moment. ”

“Ha, ha. Could we find someone to do it for us? What would it cost?”

“Geez, Miss Evie. That would take a significant cash injection.”

“What kind of numbers are we talking?”

“Well, she would need re-rigging, a new comms and nav system, paintwork. and probably some upgrades on the inside living area.”

“Can you put a price on it, even roughly?”

“Maybe somewhere between fifty and seventy-five, depending on who does the labor?”

“Okay, thanks.”

I turn my gaze to the water ahead, leaving Em hanging.

Serves him right for holding out on Iris, if you ask me.

Not that anyone did. But life’s too short to be indecisive about the things you want. The past six years have taught me that.