Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Read online

  There was something happening in her chest, something tight. Squeezing. It may have been her heart. His eyes were so steady, his voice so calm. He looked like a man who’d never be unsure. A man who’d never, ever change his mind once he’d made it up. A man who’d never leave.

  At this most inopportune of moments, with her parents watching, with her mother frowning, with her son combing the mane of his impossible blue rainbow pony—with fluffy wings—she looked at Kevin, he looked back at her, and she thought, I am in love with you, boy.

  It was exhilarating. It was terrifying. She didn’t have room for this. It was all wrong.

  It was happening anyway.

  Maybe it was the two glasses of wine she drank that night, or the heady feeling of sitting on a plush, tufted banquette in the darkest, quietest corner of Sidart in Ponsonby, eating food as beautiful as a painting, and not having to talk unless she wanted to. Or maybe it was the look in Kevin’s eyes.

  She met that look with her own secret smile. Truth to tell, she may have been a tiny bit drunk from a Martinborough Pinot Noir exploding with flavors both fruity and savory, from having her hand held under cover of a white tablecloth, from wanting to whisper something a wee bit dirty just to watch Kevin try not to react. A temptation she gave in to at last, when she ran a delicate finger around the rim of her wineglass, glanced up at him from underneath her lashes, and said, “What an answer I’m going to have to give my mum tomorrow. Our weekly visit, and I never have much interesting to tell her. Now, just imagine what I’ll have to conceal.”

  “Like being sixteen, eh.” His words were casual. His eyes weren’t. “And going out with the wrong boy. Sneaking out, maybe, because he’s a bit rough and your parents don’t approve.”

  “Not what being sixteen was. I didn’t have romantic adventures. I just danced. And I’ve never, ever had a rough boy.”

  “No? You sure?” His voice was low, as dark as their tucked-away corner booth. “I’d say you’ve had one now.”

  She dropped her eyes, then looked at him sidelong. “Oh, I don’t think so. He may look rough to somebody else, but he touches me like I’m precious.”

  “That’s because you are.”

  “Until,” she said deliberately, lowering her own voice, maybe just a little drunk on the dangerous thrill of the forbidden, “he gets carried away, gets a little ... insistent. Until he’s got me exactly where he wants me, and he forgets himself.”

  She was right. His eyes were glazing over, and his thumb was running over the side of her index finger under the tablecloth. Slow, steady, and as insistent as the drumbeat inside her.

  “Funny,” he said, “since all I want to give you is everything you’ve never had.” He let go of her hand, then, and stood up. “Come on, baby. Let’s go.”

  When they were walking to his car, tucked away on a side street, though, he said, “Do you want to ring Holly?”

  Holly, not Noelle, was babysitting Zavy tonight. She’d said, “I have homework anyway.” And as Zavy had been enthusiastic, why not?

  Chloe said, “Well, ah ... yes, I do.” How had he known that? Two minutes later, she’d done her checking in, Kevin was holding the car door for her, and she was putting her phone back into her tiny purse and climbing onto a chilly leather seat.

  Five minutes after that, they were on the Harbour Bridge, and she was lying back in that same seat, looking at the necklace of white light lying in gentle swags against the black sky. The radio was playing softly, but Kevin hadn’t said anything, was looking as calm as ever, and Chloe was beginning to feel foolish. She said, “I do have to work in the morning.”

  “So do I,” Kevin said. “But you said you wanted to play by different rules tonight.”

  Alarm bells, then. “I didn’t mean ...”

  He glanced across the dark car at her, and she couldn’t read that look one bit. And then he took the turn for Northcote, two exits earlier than he should have. Down the ramp, under the bridge, and onto a dark road at the edge of the water, where he swung the car onto the side and parked facing the lights of the City. The Sky Tower shining bright, the rest of the skyline adding its illumination, like jewels against the black velvet of sea and sky.

  Kevin turned off the car and said, “No bad boys in your teenage past. A pity, maybe, or maybe not, from my point of view. No parking under the bridge. No secret groping at the beach. No messy, sticky, too-quick loving behind a dune, having a beer and then having another one, getting carried away and knowing you shouldn’t. Washing up afterwards, finding sand everywhere, and remembering how it felt when you were touching each other and you couldn’t kiss long enough, when your head was swimming from that beer and your body was aching so hard. No first time when he touched you everywhere, and you wondered how it could feel that good, and he told you that nobody had ever felt so good to him, either, and nobody ever could.”

  She could barely breathe. “No. No beer, and no beach. No boy.”

  “And no love in the back seat.” He climbed out of the car and walked around to her side while her heart beat harder and her breath came faster. Then he was opening her door, taking her hand in his, and helping her out.

  The faint slapping of waves against the shore, the cool of the evening breeze, the dull roar of the traffic passing on the bridge overhead. And the secret darkness under this bridge, not a soul around on this Sunday evening. Kevin pulling her into him, lifting her up against the car with one arm, the same way he’d held her against the wall in the studio, as if he knew how right that had felt, and how dangerously exciting. Kevin brushing her hair back from her cheek with a tender hand, then lowering his mouth over hers.

  He kissed her, slow and sweet, not rushing one bit, until her hands were under his jacket, grabbing his shoulders, exploring the shifting muscle there, much too big and far too bulky to be anything like elegant. To be anything but pure hard man. And then he kissed his way to her ear and breathed into it, “Got to give the lady what she wants. Let’s get in the car, baby.”

  He didn’t wait for her to do it. He still had a hand under her, was pulling her away from the door, was opening it and lifting her inside, then coming in after her.

  She was trying to laugh, and it wasn’t quite working. “We can’t do this, not really. You’re an All Black.” She knew what that meant, and she knew he must have always remembered it, because she’d never heard a breath of scandal about him, and she would have heard.

  “You’re right,” he said, and she jerked upright from where she may have been leaning against the door of the car. Oh. They weren’t, then. They were just ... what? He went on, “But I can kiss you and touch you, and you can do it to me, too, until we’re both aching with it. We can touch through our clothes, the way we would’ve done when you were sixteen, before I took you home to your dad the way I promised. We can go as far as we dare and wish that we could do more. We can kiss until you’d give anything for me to be inside you, and I’d kill for it. And then we can go home, sneak around the house and through the sliders into my bedroom, and I can fall on you the way I need to, the way I’d have imagined if we really were sixteen.”

  After that, he set out to give it to her, every last sweet, forbidden bit of it. He kissed her until she lost track of time, until she forgot about discovery and danger, and then he moved his mouth to her neck and kissed her some more there, then did it harder, until she had to squirm. He got a hand inside the neckline of her dress, then eased it inside her bra, and teased her until she wanted to moan into his mouth. And after a long, long while, he sent the other hand drifting under her skirt, skimming up her bare thigh, and whispered, “Open up, baby.” And when she did ... he sighed.

  Rough hand over damp nylon, fingers rubbing the fabric into her, getting it better, getting it right, until she was rocking on it. And then, when she couldn’t stand it another minute, he was finding the lace-banded edge and slipping stealthily inside, and she was gasping.

  A hand at the back of her neck holding her head, the cold gl
ass of a car window at her back, his mouth at her neck, kissing and sucking and biting, and those fingers on her, and then, at last, hard and insistent, inside her.

  “Never been fucked by a bad boy in the back of a car?” he asked in her ear, his voice as rough as his hands weren’t.

  She jumped at the word, at his touch. “No.” It was almost a sob. “But we ... can’t. We can’t.”

  “Right.” He took his hand away, and she didn’t want it to go. He was pulling her across the car, then out of it, opening the front door for her again, and she was climbing in. Aching with it. Burning for it in exactly the way he’d said.

  Five minutes in silence, not even the radio now. Out from under the darkness of the bridge, onto the quiet Sunday-night streets of Northcote, then into Takapuna. An endless traffic light on Lake Road, and then the quiet again off the main road, until they were in the driveway. Home.

  Out of the car, stealthy progress through the night and around the house, where a few lights burned. The fountain burbling and splashing endlessly, and Kevin with a key, opening the sliders of his room, closing them behind him.

  Darkness, but not, because the golden light shone on the fountain, and the curtains weren’t drawn. Dangerous, and exciting. Light enough to see Kevin cross to the bedroom door and lock it, then reach down and yank his shoes and socks off. She began to take off her heels as well, but he was there, pushing her back onto the bed without a word.

  He took her shoes off. And then he pushed her skirt all the way up.

  No gentle lover now. This was the bad boy under the bridge. His hands were demanding, and he wasn’t taking her thong off. He was rubbing it into her again until she thought she would scream from it, and his eyes were fierce. Focused. And then he rolled her fast onto her stomach, straddled her, and unzipped the sheath dress all the way to her hips, then yanked it down her body and off her.

  His breathing was harsh in the silent night, but she couldn’t see him, because her face was pressed into the mattress. She started to push up, but he shoved her back down with a hand at the back of her neck, and she sucked in a hard breath. She felt her bra come off, being pulled down her arms, and then his hands on her hips, pulling them up.

  This time, he didn’t wait. He pulled her to her hands and knees, still in her thong, and she was rocking again from his hand on her, then collapsing to her elbows when his other hand went to the back of her neck again.

  He didn’t give her one bit of warning. When he thrust into her, she wasn’t expecting it, and she nearly cried out. She tumbled forward, her forehead on her hands now, and he had one hand on her hips and the other in front of her, rubbing hard.

  Silence. Nothing but their breath, loud in the silence, the feel of him plunging deep, retreating slowly, then plunging again. A relentless rhythm, and she was starting to pant, going up fast.

  He hadn’t been joking. He’d meant it. It was just this side of rough, and it was all the way thrilling. She was tightening around him, the pulse too hard, going up in flames. Higher and harder, rocking forward with every thrust, barely able to hold herself up. And then he hit exactly the right place, and she moaned.

  He went rigid. And then he went faster. Fast, and hard, and deep. Both hands on her hips, hauling her back against him, slamming forward. She was past the point of no return, tipping over that edge, and the orgasm was on her like a tidal wave.

  It was thirty-two fouetté turns, spinning until you knew you couldn’t possibly spin one more time, throwing every bit of your energy and your emotion into it, giving until it hurt. Until it exhausted. Until you lay, limp and spent, on a white bed with a heavy body over you, pressing you into the mattress. Until you felt broad hands running down your arms, spreading them out to the sides, like he wanted to hold you hard. Like he wanted to possess you, and you knew that, at this moment, he did. Until you shuddered at the lips kissing the back of your neck and moving to the sensitive spot in the hollow of your spine.

  Until you were boneless. Until you were his.

  He could have moved off of her, but he didn’t.

  He kissed her again in that tender spot along her spine, wrapped his hands more tightly around her wrists, levered himself onto his elbows, and said into that barely pointed ear, “I made you make some noise.”

  Her voice was muffled, because her cheek was pressed into the mattress, and he liked it that way. She asked, “Did that bother you? Before? I just ... I go inside. Inside myself. The better it feels, the more I have to take it in.”

  “Mm.” He let go of her wrists at last, rolled off her, got rid of the condom fast, and rolled back over to take her in his arms, to hold her against his chest, where she belonged. “I don’t think I’ll complain. That you’re so quiet ... maybe it gives me a thrill all its own. Like we’re doing something secret. Something dirty.”

  She was kissing his chest, her mouth moving over him as if she couldn’t get enough, and he had his fingers brushing all the way down her spine and back up again, just to make it last a little longer. “I need to go upstairs,” she said. “I need to go to bed, and let Holly do it, too.”

  “Hate to tell you,” he said, and if his arm had tightened around her, whose wouldn’t have? “It’s not even ten. And I’d love to have you spend the night in my bed, or to spend it in yours.”

  She was sitting up, reaching for her clothes, retreating once again. “I can’t. You know I can’t. Zavy ... he’s got enough confusion. And he’s going to have more.”

  That thought wasn’t one bit welcome. “When does Rich take him again?”

  Her eyes on his, not a bit of languor in them now, none of the sweet release he’d given her. “Saturday.”

  He let out a breath. “I have a match at Eden Park on Saturday. I was hoping you’d come. Meet my parents as well.” He tried to make it casual, although it wasn’t, not really.

  “Maybe I can. He’s—Rich—is taking Zavy for a shorter time, meant to have him back by three. So ... maybe I can. I’ll have to see how it goes. If one of the girls can mind him, but mainly—if I can leave him.”

  “Good.” Girls were normally rapt at the invitation to come watch him play, but then, Chloe wasn’t “girls,” and it was clearly time for him to get over himself. “And this week?” He put a hand on her hip, because he needed to touch her. “We could cook together, at least, couldn’t we. Call it ... oh, call it tomorrow. Call it every day.”

  Her mouth curved in a smile, and she bent and dropped a kiss on his lips. “You aren’t greedy much, mate.”

  “I’m greedy always. I want what I want. And I want you.”

  “Call it tomorrow,” she said. “And then we’ll see.”

  He got up with her, got dressed, and took her to her door as if he really were taking her home to her dad. He paid his sister for the babysitting, and then he kissed Chloe goodnight, long and sweet, wished he didn’t have to say goodnight at all, left her there, and went to bed alone.

  It wasn’t until he was lying there with the lights out and too much emptiness around him that he remembered. That Chloe was meant to be moving. That he’d told her she had to leave. And that it was the last thing he wanted.

  Chloe almost made an excuse and skipped seeing her mother on Monday morning. She ended up going all the same, for the same reasons as always. Even though it was harder to do for some very new reasons. Including that she was (a) tired from being up later than usual the night before, (b) behind on her work from spending exactly—well, zero hours that same day before catching up on paperwork, not to mention little items like laundry, and (c) ... well, (c).

  Her mother didn’t disappoint. Straight to (c), or at least in its general direction.

  “How’s the housing search going, darling?” Fiona asked as soon as Chloe had a slab of pumpkin quiche on her plate.

  “Still looking,” Chloe said. Oh, yes, (d). The housing search she hadn’t spent one single minute on the day before, or the day before that, either. She may have ... forgotten about it, in fact.

&
nbsp; “How many weeks do you have left?”

  “Three.”

  “Better get your skates on, then, hadn’t you?”

  “Thanks, Mum. I would’ve forgotten otherwise. Kevin isn’t making any noises about chucking me out. In fact, he’s made it clear that I can have three months if I need it, though I’d rather do it and get it over.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, darling. It’s childish.” Her mother took a sip of tea, and Chloe waited for it. For (c). Or (K). Or, perhaps, (r) for rugby. Which would, she was fairly certain, be at the heart of the matter.

  Sure enough, here it came. “Is that wise, do you think?”

  “Is what wise?” Chloe took another bite of quiche. It was delicious.

  “He’s not quite at your level, is he?” her mother asked.

  Chloe took a moment, making sure she could keep it neutral. Faintly amused. Adult. “You’re right, I suppose. He probably out-earns me by ... call it ten times? Twelve? I don’t know. We haven’t got round to comparing bank balances yet.”

  “You know what I mean. I’m not talking about what he earns. At the moment.” As if Kevin’s career were a puff of smoke, or a fluke. And, yes, Chloe had looked him up. An All Black since he’d been twenty-one? A perennial for the seven years since? He would’ve been earning star money for some time now. Look at his house.

  And, yes, she had noticed that he was younger than she was. By more than two years. But if anyone had ever sent the message, “I’m a full-grown man,” that man was Kevin.

  And a fluke? No. That kind of career didn’t happen by accident. She considered saying all that, but who would she be trying to convince?

  “Who are his parents, though?” her mother was saying now. “Did he go to university? I sincerely doubt it. Whether you like it or not, darling, those things say a lot about a person.”

  The problem was, however much Chloe tried, she’d never be as good at “calm” and “relaxed” as Kevin. At least not in this room. “Really?” she asked her mother. “Did those things say a lot about Rich? Who were his parents? Snobs, that’s who, back in the UK again because New Zealand’s too small for them, and not even caring about their grandson. How much did those schools do for him, or for that matter, for me? I didn’t even do Year Twelve, much less go to Uni.”