Maisey Yates – An Australian Surrender: Girl on a Diamond Pedestal / Untouched by His Diamonds / A Question Of Marriage (страница 19)

“I …”

He leaned in and her heart stopped. He was so close to her, close enough that if she just dipped her head, she could brush her lips against his.

He moved first, angling his head, but not the way she’d been anticipating. He took a long lick of her ice cream cone before leaning back again. “Thanks,” he said, his voice rough.

Her hand was shaking from anticipation. From the fact that watching his tongue sliding over the ice cream had actually been pretty hot. She didn’t know herself right now.

No. That wasn’t true. She was getting to know herself. A sexual encounter on a piano bench and an ice cream cone on the beach at a time. It was like finding out there was a whole different side to herself when she’d always thought there had only been one. She’d been all about the piano. All about performing. But this was living. Real living.

“This has been … this has been great. Thank you,” she said, still trying to catch her breath from the sexual shock of watching him lick her ice cream cone. “Sorry I unloaded on you earlier. About my mother.”

“We all need to let it out sometimes.”

“We both lost the parent lottery, didn’t we?”

“Seems so.”

“Will you be happy when you get the resorts? I mean, will that be it? Will you win?”

“Is that a trick question?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not a trick. I’m really wondering. Because I want my … I want my life back, Ethan. Not exactly like it was. I want beach days. But I also want to perform. I want the recognition, the hard work, the reward. The money. I don’t … I don’t know what to do without it, and I have to believe that if you have a goal like that, when you reach it you’ll be satisfied.”

Ethan looked toward the sun glinting off the crystalline waves, his brow furrowing. “I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t really care. I’m more than happy to keep fighting for the next thing. Bigger and better.”

“That sounds … exhausting.”

“More exhausting than doing piano drills for the rest of your life?”

“Infinitely more.”

“There’s not really anything more to life, Noelle. You keep going, you get more. I doubt you’ll be satisfied just playing again. How many people do you need in the auditorium, and after you fill up a large one, won’t you need a stadium? That’s how it works.”

“I don’t …” Noelle’s voice trailed off. She didn’t like what he was saying. Because it was frighteningly close to what she feared might be the truth. That there would be no satisfaction in ‘reclaiming’ her career. That she would get back to that life and find it as empty as the one she was living now. “I don’t believe it. I won’t need more. I’ll be happy sitting at the piano, playing.”

“Maybe you think sitting at the piano will satisfy you. But then, you do know how to have fun on a piano bench, don’t you?”

His words hit her like a physical blow, the sudden venom in his tone shocking her. She stood, brushing sand off the back of her shorts. “Why would … why would you say that to me?”

“Noelle—”

“I want to go. Today was … fun. And it was neat to kind of play hooky from life. But we both have a plan. And hanging out on the beach just isn’t in it.”

He nodded. “Not for either of us.”

“I don’t think hanging out on piano benches is in it for us either.” She turned and headed back to the path that led to the teeming boardwalk area. A little noise would be good. A little something to keep her mind off the raw wound in her chest.

How could he say that? As if she let men touch her like that all the time? Though, he might think she did.

Well, so what if she did? She knew he was an epic playboy, and if she wanted to get off with men on piano benches every other night of the week that was her business. Not her mother’s and not Ethan’s. Hers.

She whipped around and was not that surprised to find Ethan only a couple of paces behind her. “You know what, Ethan? It’s none of your business what I do in my spare time. Beyond this little charade of ours, my life is none of your business. I could have had sex with a hundred guys, and guess what? Not your job to judge. I’m the one who has to live my life. The one who has to live with me. So … there.”

She turned again and walked away, her heart pounding hard in her head, her entire body shaking. It was true, and she hadn’t even realized it until she’d said it.

She had to live her life. No one else. Why had she always taken the path other people put her on? Why was she still doing her drills for hours every day?

It was her life. No matter how much her mother had wanted to treat it as her own, no matter how much her instructor had fed his ego on her success. They had had no right.

She was angry now. Not just about her situation, but for herself. For everything she’d accepted, her whole life, because she’d believed that her only option was to do as she was told.

Ethan’s firm grasp on her arm stopped her in her tracks. He didn’t seem at all concerned by the people walking by, craning their necks to see if there was going to be a huge fight between them.

“You’re right, Noelle, it’s not my job to judge you. And I don’t. My comment was out of line.” His dark eyes blazed with an intensity that stood in direct opposition to his apologetic words.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I … you apologized,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think anyone has ever apologized to me.”

“I’m a confident guy, Noelle, and that means my ego can take it when I have to admit I’m wrong. That was wrong. It isn’t my business how many men you’ve slept with, or intend to sleep with. It was my sexual frustration talking there. A bit of jealousy, which, I’ll be honest, is unfamiliar to me.”

“The … jealousy or the sexual frustration?”

“Both.”

“Oh.” She looked around at the people, moving around them now as though they didn’t exist, no more interesting than the pylons that divided the boardwalk from the sand.

“You sound shocked.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever aroused either emotion in a man before. So, yes, I am a bit shocked. Maybe as shocked as you are.”

“Not possible. I’m sure you make men feel like this all the time.”

He looked at her, his dark eyes intense, his jaw shifting as he tightened it, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I … I doubt it.”

He stepped closer, the hand on her arm gliding up to her shoulder, around to the back of her neck, his thumb moving over her skin, fingers sifting through her hair.

“I don’t. Not for a moment. You really are beautiful.”

“Ethan, I thought we decided that … it’s a bad idea.” She hated that. Why was it a bad idea? Ethan felt good. And warm, so warm. Everything had been frozen over for so long, dead and dry. Ethan was like the sun.

She wanted to bathe in his warmth, in the promise of new things that seemed to come every time he touched her.

But it was a bad idea. They’d decided that. She’d agreed.

She moved closer to him, her heart pounding. His hand was still on her neck, massaging her, spreading heat and fire through her.

She didn’t want to move away. Didn’t want to break her connection with him. It was her life. And she had to live it.

She wanted a little bit of Ethan in it. For as long as she could have it. Because he made her angry and happy and he turned her on. He made her feel, when for so long she’d simply been existing. He made her aware of things—needs, desires she’d never been mindful of before.

It was like finding a new dimension to life. And that was more than just the beach and sand and ice cream. It was deeper, it made everything seem as if it had broader scope, more depth.

She didn’t want to run from that. She wanted to dive into it head-first.

She stood up on her toes and leaned in, brushing his mouth with hers, her entire body trembling as she increased the pressure of the kiss, as the shock of his flesh on hers fired through her, charging her like a bolt of electricity.

It didn’t satisfy her. Not even close. She felt like he was water and she had been lost in the desert. She felt insatiable. She touched her tongue to the seam of his lips, explored the shape of his mouth, tasted his skin.

They hadn’t kissed enough last night. He’d done the touching, he’d done the pleasuring. But she wanted more than that. She wanted it all.

A short groan vibrated in his chest, and he locked his arm around her waist, pulling her to him, holding her against his hard, well-muscled body. She arched into him, could feel the heavy weight of his erection against her stomach.

And that was when she realized they were standing on the boardwalk, in broad daylight.

She pulled away from him, blinking hard. Pushing shaking fingers through her hair, she looked around, trying to see if they’d caught everyone’s attention. No, there were one or two people in line for ice cream who hadn’t noticed them. Great.

“I … for someone who was trained not to draw the wrong kind of attention, I seem to be doing a pretty bad job at … not drawing the wrong kind of attention.”

“You kissed me,” he said.