Affair on the Beach

Chapter 5

The kiss happened so fast, I had no time to react before I was plunged into a deep pool of sensation. I should have really been careful of what I wished for. Not two hours after fantasizing about what Xavier Solomon’s lips would feel on mine, he had me in the clutches of a hot, soul-searing kiss. Oh, the man knew how to use his lips to perfection. He took as much as he gave. I felt every touch of his lips on mine as if he were kissing every inch of my body.

I had my hands splayed on his chest when he curled his hand on the back of my neck to keep me in place while his other hand travelled from my hip to my back like a rope tying me in place. He bit down on my lower lip and I gasped, which allowed him access into my mouth. His tongue explored freely, teasing mine to life. The friction of our tongues rubbing against each other was so exquisite that I melted in his arms. I’d forgotten the protest I was supposed to mount against this stranger who unravelled me. Instead, I surrendered to the feelings contact with his lips caused within me.

Just when I thought the kiss couldn’t get any hotter, he tilted his head to the side and ran the tip of his talented tongue over the roof my mouth, eliciting a moan from a place in me I never thought I had until that moment. A place where the courage to bare my body for someone else to explore came from. Was this what the books called wanton? I certainly felt the need to divest articles of clothing impeding any skin on skin contact between myself and the god holding me in his arms.

I didn’t know how he did it, but soon I was responding to his kisses. We only came up for air when he shifted his position to better accommodate a different kissing technique. And all this time, I kept my eyes closed; relishing each and every new sensation he caused in me. Desire pooled in my stomach like warm honey. My heart beat so hard, I was afraid he would feel it, my breasts pressed against his hard chest. My thighs tingled, aching for his hand to move from my waist to touch them.

Xavier Solomon tasted of the sea. Not so much salt as much as freshness, like I’d taken a drink of ice water on a hot summer day. I would have called his kisses thirst quenching if I’d realized sooner that I had a thirst in need of quenching. The thing was, as I moved my hands up his chest to curl into his kitten soft hair, I didn’t know what I was missing until I was right in the middle of the impromptu make-out session courtesy of a very willing participant. I’d read countless kissing scenes before, but to actually experience the act was miles apart from imagining what it would be like based on a written description.

I sighed when Xavier Solomon moved his lips from my own to my neck, creating a spice trail worth its weight in gold. I promptly lost all coherent thought as I tilted my head back to give him better access. His hand moved up my back as if he knew when and where to hold me so I didn’t fall over or lose my balance. Got to love a man who knew how to support a woman while she succumbed to heart-pumping desire.

To get a better grip, I moved one of my hands from his hair down his arm. My palm felt its way down his cotton sleeve, but when I expected to touch skin at the end of my exploration, I felt something else instead. Something rough and hard, certainly not muscle and supple skin. My eyes flew open and I stared at where my hand stopped. Instead of heavenly tanned skin, I looked at overlapping half-oval shapes that resembled some sort of armor. In the firelight they gleamed golden blue.

“What?” I said.

It must have been the way I gasped out the word or my other hand tugging at his hair that caused Xavier Solomon to cease the path of kisses he was carving up my neck. I moved my gaze to meet his and he blinked those stormy blue eyes several times like he was coming out of a wonderful dream and he didn’t quite understand why he was no longer there. I recognized the question in them and I moved my gaze back to his arm as an answer. He followed what I was looking at and his eyes widened.

“Oh s**t!” he said, standing without warning and dumping me unceremoniously on the sand. He gave the party a quick glance. For what I couldn’t tell since I was too shocked on my ass to fully understand what was going on.

I gasped again when I realized the golden-blue oval armor wasn’t just on his arms. Every exposed flesh up to the base of his neck was covered in them. Despite being stunned silent, a part of me thought: beautiful. Which was a sign I was going crazy or very, very drunk. I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear some of the haze. When I opened them again Xavier Solomon was gone like he was never there. Where’d he go? And more importantly, how dare he leave me sprawled on the beach by the bonfire without an apology? The least he could have done after stealing my first kiss was help me to my feet.

As my anger grew, I picked myself up and dusted myself off. Again, I was reminded of why I preferred the company of fictional men. At least when they left the heroines I always knew they would be back for more a couple of pages later.

I didn’t know how long he had me in the throes of passion in his arms—I blushed in remembrance—but the party went on. The partygoers seemingly oblivious to the theft of my first kiss and dignity. Rony was still on the dance floor, now undulating to a sexy, trance-like beat. She’d attracted more surfers now like sharks scenting chum. I wanted to scream bloody murder, I was so mad, but a fast acting numbness replaced my anger. Feeling taken-advantaged off could do that to a person.

In an effort to salvage some of my dignity, I fixed my maxi dress, its material shifting over my body due to the lip-calisthenics I’d become a willing participant of. I touched my swollen lips. The felt pillowy beneath my fingers. I had myself to blame. It wasn’t like I pushed him away. I certainly could have at any point during his search for hidden treasures within my mouth pushed him away.

I frowned at my logic. Oh, who was I kidding? Not even an impending alien invasion could have separated me from the pleasure I was experiencing beneath the expertise of Xavier Solomon. I huffed. Of course, in my vast inexperience, I had nothing to compare my make-out session to, not even the time Rony volunteered to teach me the intricacies of kissing. She employed a watermelon back then and it was a million times less pleasurable than actual lips touching mine. I wrapped my arms around myself, no longer feeling the heat coming from the blazing fire yards away from where I stood. My body begged me for another kind of heat, one that came from a virtual stranger who had to have come from the heavens to look the way he did. Then painful realization hit me. He must have remembered who he was kissing and felt so disgusted by what had happened that he left running. He was probably brushing his teeth as I stood there feeling sorrier and sorrier for myself. But the golden-blue armor…

I bit the inside of my cheek. It was clearly a hallucination caused by the heady mix of alcohol and making out in public. No one had golden-blue armor for skin, I reminded myself. That was the stuff of paranormal romances and fantasy novels.

On the verge of tears, I found myself landing on a new low. As the majority of the crowd became progressively louder as they got drunker and mothers ushered their children home, I began to wish more and more that I didn’t let Rony bully me into coming. I could be in the middle of a new novel by now, a new love story that promised conflict and heart-pumping moments and a happy ending. Not this loneliness that came from literally being dumped on my ass by a god of a man who realized I wasn’t worth his time after all.

Blessed anger returned.

I searched the dance floor and found my target. I stomped my way to the writhing mass and waded between undulating bodies. One of the surfers pulled me into his arms, grinding his hips on mine. I pushed him away, warning him to stay away from me, adding a choice expletive in there, before I continued my pursuit of the unsuspecting target of my current jolt of anger. Pissed off Tamara wanted blood. I was like a heat seeking missile ready to do damage. When I reached Rony, she was currently rubbing her backside against the front of a surfer who was clearly enjoying himself way too much for public consumption. I saw red.

I pulled Rony out of the clutches of the drunken surfer with a clear bulge on his boardshorts. Before my best friend realized what was happening, my palm connected with her cheek. She stumbled to the left several steps, covering her reddening cheek with her hand.

The shock in her eyes was what I would have imagined mine looked like when Xavier Solomon dumped me on the sand and left. Then, like a match being lit, anger sparked in those shocked molten caramel eyes. The pain of my slap must have set in.

“What the hell is the matter with you, Tamara?” she said through her teeth, barely keeping herself together.

The dancing bodies around us dispersed, creating a blast radius like a nuke had detonated.

Oh, she used my whole name. I was scared now. As if! I pointed at her, feeling a little better having transferred some of my anger into the slap, but still eager for a fight. “That will teach you to mess with my business.”

“What?” She spat the word. “What are you saying?”

“What I want to do with my time is none of your business. If I want to stay home and read a book, I will stay home and read a goddamn book.”

Hurt sneaked into her rising anger. “I thought you were having a good time.”

“I was until …” I swallowed, memories of Xavier Solomon leaving me alone threatened to overtake me. “I’m leaving!” I announce to everyone staring at us.

“Oh no you’re not!” Rony lunged at me, taking me down with her.

We rolled around in the sand, all claws and bared teeth. The people around use shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I grabbed a fistful of Rony’s hair at about the same time she wrapped my braid around her wrist and pulled as hard as she could. We both cried out. Then a strong pair of hands grabbed my arms and lifted me off of Rony while the DJ did the same for Rony. We bucked and kicked, but those holding us were too strong.

“Tamara, stop this,” Hudson said. The severity of his command sliced through my rage. “You too, Veronika!” he added to his sister, who froze at how cold his voice sounded. “Not the time or place for this nonsense. You’re both clearly drunk and need to go home to sleep it off.”

Hudson tightened his grip on my arms before he turned me around and hoisted me over his shoulder. He walked off the beach without looking back at what was left of the stunned bonfire partygoers. I didn’t see what happened to Rony, Hudson was moving too fast. I screamed and struggled, but being upside down and the rocking took its toll on my drunken state. And like a wilted flower, all my limbs went slack.

“If you vomit on me, so help me God, I will leave you on the lawn,” Hudson threatened.

A hiccup tasting of acid escaped my throat. I swallowed and said, “You might as well drop me here because if you keep jostling me around, I will lose all those lettuce wraps I’d been eating.”

Hudson didn’t say anything else until we reached his house. He nudged the door open and went straight for my bedroom. I burped when he deposited me on my bed. Ugh! I really was going to upchuck any moment now. I closed my eyes and groaned, lying on my side. When the spinning abated, I peeked out of one eye.

At the side of my bed stood a pissed Hudson, the lines of his handsome face hard and unyielding. He watched me with obvious consternation, like he was trying to figure out something. Then, like a bubble had burst, he exhaled and rubbed the back of his head. I waited, all my fight leaving my system to be taken over by a profound sense of fatigue. I was just about ready to call it a night and forget this night. Maybe in the morning, things will be different. Maybe I will wake up from this dream turned nightmare and find myself back in my apartment with a book cradled in my hands.

“Why’d you pick a fight with Rony?” Hudson finally asked.

I rolled onto my back and covered my eyes with my arm. Unbidden tears streamed down my temples. The gates opened long before my brain registered I was crying. I hated crying. It made my head hurt afterward. Well, considering the amount of beer I downed that night, tomorrow promised to be delightful.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said between hiccups. I was full on sobbing now. Then I contradicted my own statement. “I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I was back home thinking about what I would wear to work the next day before I sit down on my bed to read a book. That’s why I picked a fight with Rony. I wish she’d just leave me alone and stop making me live my life.” Once I started, I found myself unable to stop speaking, spilling my shattered thoughts like they were jellybeans.

“It’s not that bad, Tamara,” Hudson said under his breath as if he was afraid someone was listening in on our conversation.

I faced away from where Hudson stood and grabbed a pillow, curling my body around it. “Just go, Hudson.”

“I don’t think I should leave you like this.” The floorboards creaked, indicating that he was shifting his weight from foot to foot.

I went for the standard girl response. “I’m fine.” My tears wouldn’t stop falling despite my attempts at swiping them away.

“Tamara,” he tried again.

I hated the pity in his tone. “Just go, Hudson! I’ll see you tomorrow.” I modulated my voice after hearing how harsh it sounded. “You should go check on Rony, she’s an ugly drunk. And I saw one or two surfers leering at her.”

Shifting Hudson’s attention to his sister was the right thing to do. He murmured something about seeing me in the morning as he walked to the door of my room. He came into view for a second before closing the door as he left. I breathed a well-deserved—in my mind anyway—sigh of relief. Finally, I was alone…again. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I was too emotional and wasted to rationalize anymore.

Only my refusal to sleep in the sand clinging to my maxi dress forced me to sit up and hobble my way to the bathroom, drying the last of my tears as I went. It took me several tugs before I managed to pull the suffocating fabric off my body. I dropped the maxi dress on the tiled floor of the bathroom and stared at it for a long minute, contemplating its demise. No way was I wearing it again. It needed to be burned and all memories attached to it forgotten. He stared at me in that dress. He held me in it. And worst of all, he kissed me in that dress. I stomped on the pool of fabric like I was crushing an ant. Ugh! I hated it! Hated it like a bad cold.

Disgusted by the offensive dress, I whirled to face myself in the mirror. My hair resembled the snakes atop Medusa’s head, sticking out everywhere likely from Rony’s invading fingers. My eyes were red rimmed and my lips still too kiss-swollen. I touched them again and found myself hating them too. I hated how pink and plump they looked, all because of him. Xavier Solomon. Thinking his name made my skin crawl.

I yanked my toothbrush from the holder above the sink and squeezed a dot of toothpaste on it and vigorously brushed the taste of him out of my mouth. If I had to stay in Maverick Bay one more second, I wanted to erase everything about him in me. I needed it.

After brushing my teeth, I hopped into the shower and used the body sponge to rub myself clean. All the while I thought of the reasons why book heroes where far superior to actual men. First, they were reliable. Second, feelings weren’t hurt. And third, they wouldn’t leave on a lurch after an intense make out session. My scrubbing reached a point where I had to stop or take off a layer of skin.

All pink and washed, I pulled on my favorite pajama bottoms and ratty T-shirt. Still feeling worked up, I brushed my hair until the comb no longer caught in the tangles. When that didn’t help, my gaze landed on the offending heap that I once called my maxi dress. Then an idea sparked in my head. I rushed out of my room to find Carmela loading the dish washer in the kitchen.

“Ms. TW, can I do something for you?” she asked, surprised to see me there.

I must have looked half-wild to her. But I didn’t care. I was a woman on a mission. A purging mission.

I splayed my hands on the kitchen counter and said, “Carmela, do you have a lighter lying around somewhere?”

Suspicion sparked in Carmela’s gaze before she produced a box of matches from a drawer beside the stove. She handed it to me without asking questions and I thanked her before I ran back to my room.

I grabbed the maxi dress and padded my way to the deck. Then I descended the stairs to the beach. Once I was near the shore where the gentle waves lapped at the sand, I dropped the maxi dress. Tonight, I was making my own bonfire. I looked toward the party for a second and wondered if Rony was still dancing the night away. Judging from the bass beats thumping in the air, the party was still in full swing without slowing down for a while yet. I shrugged. What does it matter if they wanted to party until the sun came up? That wasn’t me.

I returned my gaze to the dress and slid a match out of the box. I struck it and a bright flame burst on the red tip. I held the match aloof until its flame ate half the stick then dropped it on the dress. It took three matches in total to get the fabric to burn.

Clutching the matchbox like it was my link to reality, I sat on my hunches and hugged my knees to my chest. I watched the dress burn. I watched it burn away the ache that settled in my chest when Xavier Solomon cast me away like riffraff. Thinking of his name didn’t make me tingle anymore. I was so mad at him. Then I reminded myself that it was better this way. I would help Hudson out at the Shack because I said I would and during my free time I would devour the books I brought with me.

Decision made, casting thoughts of him out of my mind, I moved my gaze from the flames to the black waters stretching to forever before me. There was something so calming about watching waves come in. The distant sounds of the party faded away in my head and I concentrated on the effect of the water as it touched the shore. I briefly contemplated wading in, but another documentary I happened upon during one of the rare moments I wasn’t reading said water predators were more active at night. In the interest of keeping all my toes and a good chunk of my legs, I decided against a midnight wade.

As the flames of what was left of the dress faded into embers, I spotted something in the water, bobbing in the distance. I narrowed my eyes to get a better look and thought to myself I was right not to get in. Whatever that was, it couldn’t be good. I blinked once and the mass seemed closer than it was when I first noticed it. Huh, that was weird. It was too far away for me to make out clearly. The lights behind me from the houses weren’t enough to illuminate the beach properly. The most I could see clearly was a few meters out into the water and the rest was inky darkness.

“Is it just me or is that thing closer now?” I asked myself. The twinge of fear manifesting in my gut told me to return to the house. So, following my instincts, I stood up and put out the rest of the embers the pile of ash that was once the dress by pushing sand on it. Then I turned back toward Hudson’s house, calling it a night. Whatever was coming closer was none of my concern.

About halfway to the house something splashed in the water. I froze, my shoulders reaching my ears. The fear I felt asked me to run, but I couldn’t move. All my sense zoned in on the splashing, like something was getting out of the water.

A chill much like the one I felt at the bonfire crawled down my spine like cold fingers. I kept telling myself not to turn around, but as the splashing grew louder and louder, I found myself morbidly curious. My brain must have detached itself from my waist down because my feet began to turn me around when what I should have been doing was running back to the safety of the house. To think, just that afternoon I was telling Rony I wasn’t the kind of girl who walked into the room I knew hid the ghost or slasher.

Once my one eighty was complete, I gasped, my heart stopping for a whole second before it restarted again. I felt all the blood drain from my body.

There on the beach stood the one person I didn’t think I would see again that night.

Xavier Solomon in all his glory.

Rooted in place, I still managed to cover my eyes with my hands. “Oh God, you’re naked!” I managed to say around my beating heart in my throat.

“Tamara.”

There he went again, saying my name in that exotic R rolling way he did that turned my knees to jelly. I peeked through the slits my fingers made over my eyes and squeaked. He wasn’t naked anymore. Instead, his entire body was covered with the golden-blue armor I’d thought I’d hallucinated at the bonfire.

“Look at me, Tamara,” he said in that deep, caressing voice of his.

“I am looking at you,” I said. My trembling entered my words. I felt like my whole body was on vibrate. It was good and bad at the same time. I should be running away, but the invisible force that kept me in place every time Xavier Solomon was around stopped me.

“Put down your hands and look at me.” He emphasized the word. He spread his arms wide. The golden-blue armor gleamed from what little light the houses behind me provided. “This is what I am.”