Noah gave himself over to her, freeing his hands to support her as she shifted on top of him until she was plugged. As soon as she found her balance, he took her hand in his and stroked her fingers.
“Play with yourself,” he murmured, circling the tip of her index finger with his thumb.
The idea of taking charge of her pleasure was not a new one, but with Noah it was nearly unthinkable. She’d never gotten herself off in front of anyone before.
Still, she accepted her liberation and wet her finger with the juices around his sheathed cock. Noah resumed his hold on her ass and his gaze moved lower. Something clicked for her at that moment.
He wanted to watch her touching herself as she rode him. There was something dirty about it, like when an ex had asked if he could film her going down on him. She’d refused the ex, but with Noah she embraced the wickedness of it.
She grasped his forearm with one hand and reached lower with the other.
“Don’t let go,” she said.
He gripped both cheeks, fingers digging into the plump flesh while she rocked faster. Even on top, she was still his and he was still taking with his words.
“That’s my girl,” he said as she matched the flick of her fingertip to the steady pace with which she took his cock.
She could only answer with a whimper. She leaned forward and rocked her hips to work the tip against her inner wall.
There it is.
She’d thought it had been his experience that had given him some secret knowledge to her body, but now she marveled that it had been there all along for her to take.
“You do it. Just let me ride you.” Rory dragged his hand between her legs and placed her fingers over his.
Noah grinned. “You know you’re going to make me come so hard, don’t you?”
Rory leaned over and grinned at him. “Baby, I know it.”
Every time she rose up and came down, she could feel all the jiggly parts of her body moving and on display for the milky daylight. The horror of it lasted a second at a time, immediately wiped clean by the perfect sensation of his cock rubbing her, his finger working her clit, and the slight prick of pain where the fingers on her ass dug into the flesh.
His chest rumbled beneath her fingers as the momentum picked up. Rory ground down on him, riding cock and finger at once, until the friction created a perfect storm.
She felt feminine and sexy and driven out of her mind by the glorious swell in her abdomen. As her inner walls squeezed him, Noah gripped her hips and held her tight as he bucked up, pumping her deep to his own finish.
She gasped for air and collapsed alongside of him, laughter gurgling from the back of her throat. “I’ve never done that in the morning.”
“Morning’s the best time if you have nowhere to be. Better than coffee.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she teased, and tittered as he gave her a kick. “I definitely miss being able to sleep in.”
“You can call in sick. We can go back to your place and shower, then spend another night here.”
Rory would have liked nothing more as she shook her head. “I have a shift at Garden View tomorrow morning, and if I call in sick at the bar I might as well not show up. Francie is just looking for an excuse to fire me.”
“I don’t believe your sister would do that to you.”
“Francie’s a cow. She’s always been a stuck-up thing, though I don’t know why. She spent ten years living in a trailer park with her husband and kids before they built their house, and even then she was snotty. I think she’s pissed off at how her life turned out. Her first summer working at the hotel she met Linden. He was her first boyfriend, he got her pregnant, and that big old world she wanted to explore got really small. The White Tip is kind of her kingdom, and all the rest of us are her peons.”
“Except it’s not. It’s my dad’s, and one day it’ll be mine.”
“Tell that to my sister. She almost took your little spiel last night as an act of war.” She made another attempt to stretch out, and this time succeeded in doing so unmolested. As soon as she was loose, she snuggled into his chest. “I’d rather stay here with you.”
“Why do you work so much? You’re young.”
“I told you, I’m going to school soon.”
“Can’t you get a student loan?”
She snorted. “I’d rather work at a cannery than owe any money. When I finish school, I want every penny I make to be for me. It’s not so bad. My grandpa is helping me out.”
“Moncton’s not so far,” he said quietly, and she got the sense that he wasn’t talking about her commute over the bridge to the mainland.
They’d talked about their plans for the fall last night, and he’d seemed excited to learn that she would be
only
a two and a half hour drive away from his schooling in Halifax.
She’d changed the subject. She didn’t want to have any “we” discussions with him beyond the summer. She didn’t want to build up her hopes only to watch them get crushed.
He wrapped his arm across her back and rubbed her shoulder. “There’s still coffee, and some breakfast, and there’s time for a quick swim.”
“I don’t have my suit, remember?”
“That wasn’t a problem last night.”
“It was dark last night. I don’t want to moon some old lady hanging her wash on the other side of the cove.”
She ultimately agreed to accompany him to the beach in a towel so she could have some privacy tidying herself up. It seemed like a good idea as she crouched at the shoreline, until he grasped the edge of the towel and threatened to yank it off if she didn’t get into the water. Unable to stop laughing, she let him pull it off and she dove in, but refused to come back out until he met her on the sand with the towel stretched out for her to step back into.
It had been a perfect little excursion, and so had been the rest of the afternoon. Noah refused to let her ride to work when he had the truck, and so they’d showered off at her place and grilled burgers on the deck. Unlike the last time, she hadn’t been the least bit ashamed of her rustic accommodations. He wasn’t going to judge her. He was simply Noah, who wolfed down cheap hamburgers and instant rice, who dozed on her ratty sofa while she got ready, who insisted they leave a little earlier than necessary so he could buy her an ice cream at the canteen at the entrance to the park.
“I won’t be by the bar tonight,” he told her as they headed to The White Tip. “I called Dad while you were in the shower, and he wants to see this plot of land I bought, so I told him I’d take him up after supper.”
“Don’t tell him we ‘christened’ it, okay?”
“He probably already has that figured out,” Noah said with a laugh, and laughed harder as she gaped at him. “You think he doesn’t know I took a woman up there last night?”
“He doesn’t know it’s me, does he?”
“He knows you work for the hotel, but I’ve been shady about who it is.”
This did nothing to assuage Rory’s nerves. If anything, it made it worse. In Vincent Hyland’s mind, she was probably just one of scores of women who flitted in and out of his son’s sphere. She couldn’t even be sure she wasn’t
.
He put up a fight when she insisted he drop her off at the service entrance, but she won by citing company policy about employees entering through the front entrance. She didn’t care if anyone saw when he leaned in to kiss her, or when he insisted on keeping her overnight bag and taking it back to his chalet.
She crossed paths with her sister as she made her way to the lounge. Francie was coming out of her office, where she no doubt had seen the whole thing.
“Remember what I said, Rory.”
“Fuck off, Francie.”
“
Excuse me?”
Rory spun around. “As you have repeatedly reminded me, I am not your sister when I walk through that door. I am your employee, and as your employee I find your comments highly inappropriate. I’d hate to have to file a grievance about your comments.”
That shut her up. The slam of Francie’s door was the perfect start to her shift.
*****
“I thought Noah was supposed to be here tonight.”
If one more person, just
one more person
said a damn word about Noah Hyland to her, Rory was going to explode.
“I have no idea,” she said, and dissuaded further questions by sending the blender into a grinding frenzy.
Yes, he was supposed to be there. He had been talking about it all week. That morning when he dropped her off at Garden View with her bike, he had said he would see her that night.
But it was nearly closing time and he just hadn’t shown. She hadn’t seen him all day. At first she’d been worried, but when eight o’clock rolled around a vicious little thought came to her.
He got what he wanted, so now he’s off fucking some other girl.
Try as she might to push it back out, once the thought entered her brain it burrowed deep. Her mood soured as she imagined him at a bar in town or on the mainland, flashing that gorgeous smile around until he had a small harem surrounding him. He’d take one, or maybe a couple of them back to whatever hotel room he had booked.
Worse, he brought them back to his waterfront paradise and was fucking him in the same tent he had fucked her.
She thought about it as she dumped margaritas into salt-rimmed glasses. They’d both been so tired that their coupling had been hurried, but it was still intense. She’d spent the entire day thinking of his soft tongue gliding between her slick crease, getting her off before he mounted her in the middle of that big bed. She’d been looking forward to a repeat, and maybe the toys he had hinted at but still hadn’t produced.
Now, she just felt horrible.
“Hey, does anyone feel like going to Mermaid tonight?” she asked Fiona once the drink order was ready.
“Fuck, yes, after tonight,” Fiona growled, and glanced over her shoulder to a table filled with blonde, middle-aged women. “Bloody trophy wives. Tom had to switch tables with me, they were giving him such a hard time. You’d swear they’re at a bachelorette party.”
“Money can’t buy you class,” Rory muttered, but it wasn’t the trophy wives she was thinking of. “I don’t want to get falling-down drunk, but I’ll split a pitcher with you if you can talk your brother into driving us home.”
It was a lie. She wanted to get falling-down drunk. The more she simmered as she thought about Noah, the more she wanted to wake up fully clothed and drooling on her pillow.
The Blue Mermaid was one of the only restaurants in the area that stayed open past eleven o’clock. It made shitty food and the staff wasn’t that friendly, but they offered a discount on pitchers to the folks they knew. Fiona’s brother doubled as cook and bouncer, though he only had to exercise his duties as the latter once or twice a month if things got rowdy.
“Seriously, you need a car,” Fiona told her once they’d loaded Rory’s bike into the back of Fiona’s truck. “This must be killing you.”
“It’s a pain in the ass, but at least my ass is taut and toned from all the peddling.”
A car loaded with the rest of the wait and kitchen staff honked as they passed the truck, and Rory squeezed over to give Hannah room to get in.
“So, you don’t want to talk about it?” Hannah asked as Fiona drove them through the park.
“Not really.”
Neither girl said anything more. In a few days, Rory would unload to them, but she needed the sting to subside a little first.
The bar was located at the mouth of the park, and so they arrived in minutes. Claiming the two tables by the window, Rory and her co-workers ordered up pitchers of the cheap beer that The White Tip wouldn’t even carry and everyone leapt into the tradition of gossiping about what went on at the hotel. In previous summers, when they were all too young to legally drink and they would take their beer to Rory’s cabin, Noah was a frequent topic of conversation, mainly who he was fucking.
No one mentioned his name that night, and Rory found herself immensely grateful to her friends.
“Look, I’m magic! I wished for it and it came!” Gord, one of the hotel’s security guards, exclaimed as a platter of nachos appeared at the table, compliments of Fiona’s brother.
“Wish me a bigger dick!” Tom shouted, setting off a round table of wishes that were so silly and outlandish that Rory’s stomach hurt from laughing.
By the time half-past-midnight rolled around, she felt a little wobbly and her bladder was nearly bursting from the three glasses she’d had. On the way from the bathroom her stomach flopped as she realized she hadn’t thought Noah since they sat down, and that’s when she bumped right into him.
“There you are,” he said, grabbing her by the elbows to steady her. “I almost had a heart attack when I got to the cottage and you weren’t there. I was about ready to start looking for your bike in ditches when I remembered you said this was where you sometimes go.”
She jerked back, which proved to be a foolish move when she tripped on her own feet. When she was righted again she was in his arms.
“I don’t wait around for you,” she grumbled, and wriggled out of his grasp. “I was having a good time. I can do that, you know.”
His brows flew up. “All right. Message received. You’re pissed at me.”
Rory glanced across the bar to her table. Every single one of her friends had gone quiet, but only a few openly watched what was happening.
“Can we go outside?” he asked.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
“Look, you never gave me your number. I would have called--”
“You could have called the bar,” she reminded him, a little louder than she had planned. No one was looking now. Their heads were all down. She folded her hands across her chest as embarrassment flooded her. “Okay, let’s go outside.”
He led the way. She didn’t want him to, but her feet wouldn’t work right. She’d gulped down her portion of the beer too fast, and now her body turned against her. She only wished her brain was as soused as her legs.
Once more he had his father’s SUV. He leaned against the front bumper, an apologetic smile on this face. “Okay, so I could have called the hotel, but my head was on backwards all day. I’m sorry.”
“I thought you were supposed to work with me tonight.”