Wicked: Whispering Cove, Book 3 Read online

  “I’m holding up.” Andie kissed Braydon’s cheek. “Thank you for asking and for the calls over the years.”

  “Hey, we runaways have to stick together.”

  “And apparently come home at the same time.” Brody shook Braydon’s hand again. “We’ll catch up later. We just stopped by to check on Katy.”

  Danica watched as Brody and Andie walked away. He took her hand in his. She pulled away. He pulled it back. They’d been inseparable in high school, the couple everyone envied and, though the spark still flickered between them, she was clearly holding out. If Brody won the fight for her heart he’d be impossible. Happy, but impossible.

  “Now, back to this.” Braydon resumed the same position he’d settled into before the latest interruption. Leaning forward, forearms braced on the table with his calves against hers. “You’re Danica, as in Danica Kent?”

  Her name slipped out of his mouth like a seductive caress. His eyes sharpened, but she couldn’t identify the underlying emotion. Anger?

  She flattened her hands on the table, stroking the fork tines with an index finger.

  “As in the Danica Kent who tutored kids in science?”

  Relief swam in her blood. He didn’t remember the rest.

  “As in the Danica Kent who watched me through the telescope on her widow’s walk?” He shifted an ankle against hers.

  Her muscles twitched. He did remember. Her head bobbed in a nod. She’d wanted him to notice her all those years ago. Now she had his attention and still couldn’t speak. How had she ever hoped to capture his interest?

  “You’ve changed.” He traced the back of her hand. The light calluses on his fingers and palms scraped in contrast to the gentle touch. “I wonder how else you’ve changed.”

  Danica stared at his hand on hers. He knew who she was and that she’d spied on him, but he wasn’t turning and running. Shock overruled the embarrassment she should feel from him knowing of her teenage obsession.

  “I’d say you’re still not much of a talker, but I think you only have a problem with me.”

  She swallowed. She would have to talk to him eventually. Hopefully she’d come up with something intelligent.

  He took her left hand in his, turned it over and traced her palm with his left index finger. Her stare was riveted on his hand willingly touching hers.

  “Do you have nothing to say, Danica?”

  “About what?” The words croaked out, but at least she’d managed something.

  “About you and me and what we never did together but could now.”

  Boat-sinking torpedo dead ahead!

  He was referring to sex, and damn if she didn’t want it, even if he was leaving in a few days, right after the reunion. “We have nine feet of blood vessels, six hundred pain sensors, nine thousand nerve endings, thirty-six heat sensors and seventy-five pressure sensors in one square inch of our hand.”

  “Really? So which sensors would feel this?” He pulled her hand across the table and blew a warm breath over her palm. “Or this?” He kissed her palm. “Or this?” He swiped the tip of his tongue along her lifeline.

  Moisture pooled in her panties. She curled her toes to keep from squirming beneath his attention.

  “Braydon.” She hardly recognized her own whisper. She was in a public restaurant and all she wanted was to find a quiet corner for him to keep touching her. She wanted nothing to shatter the mini dream-coming-true moment.

  “Mmm. I like my name on your lips.” He linked his fingers with hers and smiled into her eyes. “I like your mouth.”

  “I…” Her thighs trembled.

  “You what, Danica?” He raised his foot, brushing his leg up the inside of hers. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I…” Her pussy pulsed. She rolled her hips, slowly rubbing the seam of her shorts over her clit. She was going to orgasm in public and he had done nothing more than touch her hand or play footsies. “Braydon.”

  “Go ahead.” That Herculean purr was back in his voice, enticing and encouraging her, pushing her toward the end of the plank. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I want…”

  “Say it. No one can hear you.” He placed an open-mouthed kiss on her palm and sucked the skin gently between his teeth.

  Her inner walls and core muscles contracted in orgasm. Tingling electrodes of excitement coursed through her body, filling her veins and vibrating her muscles and shutting down her brain. Her vision blurred in a field of brilliant stars.

  She gasped and pulled her hand free to grab her glass of water. Her hand shook as she raised it to her mouth.

  Braydon Mitchell hadn’t run from her. Maybe she should have run from him.

  He could be a fantasy come true she couldn’t handle. But damn if she didn’t want to be the handler.

  Chapter Two

  After stopping by the fire station to catch up with Trent Parker and dodging questions about Katy—he wasn’t getting into that emotional baggage—Braydon headed back to the boat to get some work done. Country music blasted through the speakers he’d run above and below deck. A perk of living on a boat was no neighbors to bitch about loud tunes, and he loved loud tunes.

  Another perk was being far enough away that walking to see tempting salon blondes who were easily excited but unable to talk over a meal wasn’t convenient. Danica. He should have recognized her immediately. She’d changed her hairstyle and lightened it. Her braces were gone and her clothing choices were way more flattering than they’d been in school, but she hadn’t really changed.

  She was still shy and a little clumsy. Her mouth was still as tempting as it had been when he’d stopped her from toppling off the bleachers at a basketball game. And if he hadn’t had a girlfriend then he might have taken a taste. He’d almost taken a taste this morning, but Granddad had interrupted him.

  The mystery of her taste teased him as tauntingly as her earlier reactions. Her eyes had gone cloudy and her chest had pumped in rapid breaths.

  He’d bet the sails on his boat she’d almost climaxed sitting there. Damn if he didn’t want to know what she’d do when he got the opportunity to work at a seduction.

  Checking his watch, Braydon saw he had a few hours before needing to shower for dinner, so he headed to the cabin to grab the polish for the rails. He didn’t like cleaning, but living on a boat and travelling the world writing freelance stories for yachting and sporting magazines made hiring a regular housekeeper tough. Besides, he was particular about his boat.

  Starting at the bow, he sat cross-legged and cleaned and polished the rails. Steady, slow and even strokes back and forth removed the salty build-up and restored the shine. With the front part of the railing done, he moved to work on the rigging hooks on the deck. The action of rubbing the surface to a gleam brought images of Danica to mind.

  Images of her stretched out beneath him on the newly cleaned surface. His hands stroking and rubbing her, awakening her body and the shine of arousal he’d seen in her eyes earlier. His dick hardened, pressed into the zipper of his cut-offs.

  When he’d agreed to attend the reunion, he’d been surprised at how much he wanted to be there. He wanted to see old friends and even those he hadn’t been friendly with. How much did ten years change people? Were the cliques the same? Were the nerds still nerds, snobs still snobs, jocks still jocks?

  He had one answer. Sort of. Danica Kent, for all her awkwardness, was changed and still the same. Every run-in with her in high school had been stilted and awkward. She’d fawned over him, followed him, and spied on him from her room. She’d been unable to talk to him without stumbling over her tongue or spilling things on one of them or tripping. And okay, some had seen her attention as creepy, but mostly he’d found it kind of flattering.

  She was still awkward, but somehow not. Clearly she still had the talking and tripping issues, but she hadn’t spilled anything. And damn if she hadn’t turned into the proverbial swan, even if it was with help from Victoria at the Whispering Salon.

 
“Nice boat.”

  “Shit!” Braydon lurched up, tossed the rag and can of polish into the air, slipped on the newly polished surface and fell overboard with a giant splash.

  Treading the cool water, he eyed Danica as she moved to the rail. No, she hadn’t spilled anything. She’d moved on to dumping him off boats.

  “Do you need help?”

  “No! Just move to the cockpit before you hurt yourself.” Rather than wait to see if she responded, he swam to the back of the boat where their small watercrafts were tied and climbed aboard.

  She opened the gate part of the back edge of the boat. Rather than swing it in toward her, she swung it out, smacked him in the forehead and sent him falling backward a second time with a lancing pain to his head. He fell into the inflatable dingy, which was somewhat padded, but his hand slammed into the motor and his left ankle crashed against the boat with a resounding crack.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Damn it. Sorry.” Danica’s voice didn’t rise to frantic levels, but he could imagine her flapping her hands in hysteria.

  Instead, she climbed down the few steps and got into the dingy with him. “Don’t move.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding.” She pulled her T-shirt over her head with no apparent thought to anyone on nearby boats, leaned over him and pressed it against his forehead to staunch the bleeding.

  Her white, lace-covered nipples hovered just in front of his mouth. His cock hardened again. His body urged him to listen to desire, to lean forward and pull a nipple into his mouth. To taste more than her tempting mouth.

  She moved the T-shirt, now half-soaked with blood, and put it immediately back to the cut. “This is bad.”

  “I’m fine.” Ignoring his body’s impulses, he replaced her hand on the T-shirt with one of his own. “I’ve got this, Danica.”

  “You’re going to need stitches.”

  “I’ve had worse.” He moved to sit up. The boat rolled beneath him from dizziness and nausea rather than waves. Maybe he hadn’t had worse.

  “I’m the doctor here. You need to move slowly, and you need stitches.”

  “Okay.” If she wanted to play doctor without her top, he wasn’t going to argue. No straight man would. “Help me to the cockpit. There’s a first-aid kit there.”

  “My office at the house would be better.”

  As tempting as following her home was, there was no reason. “I have everything you could need.”

  “If you say so.” She refrained from calling him stubborn, but he heard the suggestion underlying her words.

  Neither of them spoke again while she helped him out of the constantly bouncing dingy and up the few stairs. She followed his instructions to find the first-aid kit.

  He sat in the captain’s seat with the sun shining down and watched her move around the boat comfortably. With all the supplies gathered, she stood in front of him and cleaned the wound. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t push the door. That latch smacked the frame and it bounced back.”

  “So your intention wasn’t to decapitate me?”

  “No, Braydon.” She scrunched up her nose, crinkling the thin scar into microscopic puckers, and concentrated on tying off the first stitch. “I took a vow to heal rather than harm people.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to see what happened if you set out to harm me.” He smiled through a wince to make sure she knew he was kidding. She was talking without her regular awkwardness and he wanted to keep her doing so.

  She chuckled. “I’ve never been accident prone, but judging by the state of your emergency kit, the same can’t be said for you.”

  He ignored her remark on the battered case and supplies he’d restocked many times, adding to them with each injury. “So it’s only me who knocks you off your game?”

  “I’ll admit you do something to me.”

  Damn, but the possibility flopped happily in his gut. A speed boat zipped past, rocking the boat. Danica froze with her needle poised above his eye. He grabbed her hips to steady her. Though she seemed to be well-balanced on her own feet, he didn’t release her. Instead, he wondered if she wore panties to match her bra.

  “Something? You won’t be more specific?” He worked his thumbs in small circles over her pelvis. Fully in doctor mode, she didn’t respond.

  “No. And stop moving.” She snipped the thread off. “I only have two stitches to go.”

  His forehead tingled beneath her touch. The pulse in his neck pounded painfully, and it wasn’t entirely due to the blood loss. Her nipples stiffened behind the thin lace bra with little bumps circling them. His balls tightened. “Am I going to have a charming scar like yours?”

  “What?”

  “The scar lining your nose. How’d you get it?”

  “Fishing hook gone awry.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. The hook didn’t catch in the fish’s mouth right. I pulled it out of the water. It opened its mouth. The hook flipped back and caught me.” She tapped her glasses and smiled. “Now I have a scar and get to live with glasses.”

  “It went into your eye?” He studied her face, looking for more scarring than the thin line. There was none. Someone had done great work, yet the lingering imperfection made her more appealing.

  “Yeah. Could’ve been a lot worse. I mean, think about it. What’s sanitary about a fishing hook fresh from the fish’s mouth with the bait still on it?”

  “Not a damn thing.” He would have laughed at the oh-my-gag-that’s-repulsive look on her face if she didn’t have a needle in his forehead. “When did it happen?”

  “Summer before freshman year.” She tied and cut off the last stitch and set the scissors aside. “There. Keep it clean and the stitches will need to come out in four or five days. If you use Vitamin E after that you won’t scar.”

  He hooked his index fingers into the waist of her shorts and pulled her closer so she stood between his legs. “Are you that good?”

  “I trained with a plastic surgeon and worked in a New York City emergency room.” Her breasts rose and fell with choppy breaths. “If you’re going to be hit in the head and need stitches—”

  “You’re the woman to do the hitting.”

  “The stitching at the very least.”

  “Tell me something, Danica.” He slid his palms over her stomach, tracing the subtle edges of her abs with his fingertips and slowly edged toward her breasts. “What are you doing here?”

  “Huh?”

  His thumb tweaked her nipple. “Why did you come to my boat?”

  “Did you know the human body can function without a brain?”

  “Good. You can shut yours off and just respond.” He didn’t care why she’d come to his boat. He’d endured her hands on him for as long as he could. She was there. She was half naked. He was all for getting her completely naked.

  Braydon leaned forward and kissed the edge of her bra, swiping his tongue beneath the lace edge. She moaned and canted closer. He popped the button of her shorts and lowered her zipper. His body begged from his goose-pimpling flesh to his tingling scalp to his pulsing cock. Release. Soon. Very soon.

  “Be sure, Danica.”

  She kissed his ear lobe, pulling the tender skin between her teeth. “I’m sure.”

  He didn’t need more encouragement. He shoved her shorts to the ground and pulled back enough to see her underwear. She stood before him with a white lace thong hugging her hips, which flared out from the indentation of her hourglass waist.

  “Holy shit, woman. I didn’t think bodies like yours existed.” He licked his mouth in anticipation. “Makes me wonder what secrets you hide.”

  “Thanks.” She tugged him to his feet. “Do I get to see yours?”

  Another speed boat zipped by, rocking the boat. A group of men whooped and wolf whistled. He hungered for Danica, wanted to spread her before him with the sun beaming down, but not with the other boaters rushing by. “Yeah, but not up here.”


  He nudged her toward the cabin door. Down in the cabin, too impatient to go to his bedroom, he backed her to the couch. She released the button and zipper of his shorts and pushed them down. His cock sprang free and swelled more with the freedom.

  The expert hands that had sewn him together cupped and squeezed his balls and threatened to shred him apart. “You’re not going to drag this out are you?”

  “Hell no.” Wherever the shy Danica with a fondness for the ground before her had gone, she could stay gone. For a very long while.

  “Good.” She squeezed him in time with the purr rolling on her tone. “I’ve waited long enough for this.” With her free hand she cupped his neck and pulled his mouth to hers.

  Eager to indulge, to take them both farther, he unhooked her bra and set her breasts free. With a gentle nudge he knocked her to the couch, pulled off her thong and tossed it behind him. She lay before him wearing only her glasses, a smile and temptation.

  He braced a knee between her legs and bent over her. “I am going to discover your secrets. Know you.”

  “Sex now.” The good doctor shifted below him, dropped her left knee aside, offering an unimpeded view of her pussy. “Discoveries later.”

  “You’re bossy.” Compelled by her beauty, sexuality and the touches of shyness lurking beneath the surface, he traced a fingertip from the indent of her throat to her belly button to her neatly trimmed mound.

  “You’re going to be late for dinner. Your grandparents eat early.”

  “You’re worth it.” And Grandfather Byron would understand. Once a man, always a man. And a man never stopped appreciating a naked woman like Danica.

  “Prove it.”

  “Gladly.” Done wasting time, he lowered himself.

  She arched her hips, and when he’d have gone slowly, she thrust up, taking him in. Her blunt, square-tipped nails dug into his hips. Wet and tight and hot, she gripped his cock.

  “Danica.”

  “Do it, or flip us over and I will.”

  The idea of her riding him, of her controlling how fast they got to the edge, thrilled him. Tension gripped the base of his spine. Following her request, he grabbed her close and moved so he was sitting and she straddled him.