I accepted the call with a smile on my face. “So glad it’s you.” My heart was still racing. Despite all my tough talk, I might have been weak enough to finally answer.
“That ass**le still bugging you?”
My smile broadened. Stacia had the appearance of someone wholesome and sweet, with long ebony colored hair, baby blue eyes, and innocent cherubic features. However, she cussed like a sailor and was a beast in the courtroom. We’d met in the café across the street from my office a little over a year ago. There was this one two-piece suit, a self-important guy who always ignored the line and skipped his way to the front. Stacia had been in front of me, ripping some poor soul a new one, when the skipper strutted in ready to do his usual routine.
“Hey you,” she’d hollered, her voice rising above the espresso machine and conversations. The businessman froze and looked back, then turned back to the front, sure that he wasn’t being confronted.
“Yes, you in the overpriced Armani, with the misplaced belief that your time is worth more than ours.”
The man whipped back to her, his face turning red, steam shooting from his ears. “Who do you think you are?”
She rose to the challenge, not at all intimidated. “I’m Stacia Martinez, and apparently I need to teach you some f**king manners.”
The man left, flustered and embarrassed. Everyone applauded Stacia with whoops and hoorays. I bought her a coffee as a thank you, and the rest was history.
“You haven’t talked to him since that night, right?” she asked warily.
I nodded slowly, then remembered she wasn’t sitting beside me. “Right. Radio silence.”
“Good,” she snarled. “Good f**king riddance.” A beat passed and her voice borrowed some of the sunshine streaming in from my window. “Are you there yet? I’m living vicariously through you, remember? I need every detail, the way the air smells, how hot all the surfers are--”
“There will be no hot surfer stories.” I cut in with a laugh. “I am still firmly in the Men Suck stage of my break up.”
“Well, I’m not saying hit up Craigslist for some vacation dick. But something hot, golden, and muscled could do your body good.” I could picture her winking. She’d recently ended a long term relationship herself. She’d been with her guy for three and a half years when he told her he wanted to spice things up and bring a third into their bedroom. And then it was a fourth. And then a fifth. She loved him, but group sex was way out her comfort zone. Stacia was definitely of the ‘best way to get over someone is to get under someone’ school of thought.
“You’re single, you’re not getting any younger--”
“Hey!” I pouted. “I’m twenty-three. I’m in the prime of my life!”
“And you’re going to a prime surf spot with sweaty, delicious surfers,” she said pointedly. “And for some reason, you decided now is a good time to take some sort of vow of solitude.”
I sighed. “It’s three days, Stacia. I can survive three days without a man.”
“I’m just saying don’t build a wall. What happens in Santa Cruz, stays in Santa Cruz.”
“Oh God,” I chuckled, shaking my head as I switched lanes. According to my GPS, my exit was coming up. “Don’t you have an assistant to berate?”
“And a backlog of cases up to my ears,” she groaned. “Which is why you need to find someone yummy and ride him like a surfboard.”
“All right, Beyoncé,” I snorted. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Have fun, okay?” Her voice became serious. “This vacation is about you. It’s your new beginning. Bright, sunny, and ass**le free.”
I bit back the emotion that rushed to my eyes and managed to promise her I’d be safe and take lots of pictures. She was right. This was a blank page and I decided what would be written. For the next three days, it was all about what made me happy.
I rolled the windows down and inhaled deep. The air smelled like salt, sun, and promise. There was no concrete jungle here, no booming metropolis where everyone was busy hustling to their next meeting or appointment that they forgot to look up. You couldn’t help but look up here. The sky was the softest blue, inviting and vast. I dipped my fingers out the window, the wind and warmth kissing my skin.
I turned on a quiet street lined with modest homes and palm trees. I glanced at the directions. The house was a block down, painted white with sea foam green shutters. It was a two-story plantation style house with a private studio tucked away at the back of the property. My parking space was marked by orange cones so I hopped out, moved my car into the space behind an ebony Range Rover, and killed the engine. Confirmation in hand, I went in through the gate as specified and maneuvered down the cobblestone path toward the studio. I heard the sound of running water and froze. I don’t remember any mention of a fountain. I rounded the corner and my heart trampolined to my throat.
The running water? It was streaming from a showerhead…and down the hottest ass I’d ever seen.
This man was over six feet of tight golden muscle, the planes of his shoulders flexing as he moved his body beneath the water. My eyes traveled down, lust pooling in my panties – his behind looked too good to be true, perfectly carved out of marble. I could imagine my hands gripping it, pulling him deeper inside me.
Inside me. If his backside was this delicious, I could only imagine how –
“Aaah!” I gasped as something furry brushed against my leg. A chocolate Labrador stared up at me with big, inquisitive eyes.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Too late for that. There was no way he didn’t hear me.
Wincing, I re-opened my eyes and nearly passed out on the spot. My gaze went down the muscular legs, his powerful thighs, and hit the brakes on hardened proof that his front was in fact just as amazing as his ass.
He cleared his throat and my face tingled with embarrassment. My core tingled with something else entirely.
My eyes locked on his turquoise colored gaze and lingered before my gaze traveled south to his strong nose, angular jaw, and lush kissable lips. I was in full on swoon mode. Guys like him weren’t supposed to exist in real life. That kind of perfection was reserved for Hollywood and the brooding, handsome men that cast their smoky eyes at you from the pages of magazines. But here he was. A butt-naked, very aroused, very attractive man who was looking at me like I was the sexy one. Who was currently drinking up my curves like a margarita on a hot summer day.