Heat Wave Read online

  Nina. He turned onto the lane that led to his house. They’d agreed that it was just for the summer. No commitment, no strings attached. He drew in a breath and pulled into the driveway. But was that what he really wanted?

  Nina had all but finished packing up her belongings, checking drawers and the closet and under the bed to make sure that she didn’t leave anything behind. She’d called the grocer and put in an order for delivery for all of the basics that she’d used during her stay, and they’d promised to be there within two hours. She simply didn’t have the will or the heart for one last shopping jaunt.

  She cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen, emptied the dishwasher, and tied up the garbage, then went out back to check on the deck.

  She hadn’t heard his car pull in, but he was back. She saw him moving around in the kitchen unpacking his bags. Her stomach seesawed. She turned away and went back inside. She had the fleeting thought of just leaving to avoid what she knew would be a painful good-bye—at least for her. But that wouldn’t be fair. He did deserve to know. Besides, the next few hours would be their last together. She wasn’t going to drag this out and wait until Carlos showed up at the door. She was going home tonight.

  Ian wanted to surprise Nina with a late brunch. He had margaritas chilling in the fridge while he was preparing soft tacos and salsa dip. Although he was an island man at heart and loved his seafood, Mexican was also at the top of his list.

  The doorbell rang as he was heating up the pan to cook the ground beef.

  “Open!” he called out.

  Nina came in and found him in the kitchen. “Hey,” she said softly, her heart lifting at the sight of him.

  “Hey yourself.” He came over to her, pulled her close, and took a long, sweet kiss that left them both with their pulses racing. “Hmmm, guess I missed you,” he said against her mouth, his fingers moving up and down her spine.

  Nina eased out of his embrace. “Something smells good,” she said.

  Ian looked at her for a moment, sensing a strange vibe coming from her, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

  She looked everywhere but at him and finally leaned her hip against the island counter. “I’m leaving.”

  He blinked back his surprise and confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “Tonight. I’m leaving tonight.” She pushed out a breath. “Carlos, the owner, he called earlier and told me that he was coming back early.”

  “I . . . so what’s early, right this minute?” His voice rose, hard and fast.

  Nina flinched, the sudden anger in his voice taking her by surprise. “He’ll be here the day after tomorrow. I didn’t see the point in hanging around. I’ve already cleaned up, ordered groceries, and packed my bags . . . they’re in the trunk.”

  His broad shoulders reared back a bit. Didn’t see the point. He stood there, looking at her in disbelief. Her cavalier attitude threw him off center. He’d expect her to be a little upset, maybe even ask him if they could figure something out temporarily.

  “Is the engine running, or do you have time for a margarita?” he asked, trying to make light of everything.

  “No. The engine’s not running.”

  “I was trying out a new taco recipe,” he said, turning away from her and back to the stove. “Want to try some before you go?”

  He wasn’t going to ask her to stay. She shouldn’t have thought otherwise, not even for a minute. “Sure. Sounds delicious.”

  They worked side by side as they’d done on so many other occasions, and slowly, as they mixed and stirred and simmered, the tension that had them in emotional knots began to loosen. And the laughter was back and the little intimate touches, the intentional bumps, the looks and soft smiles.

  They dined in back and sipped margaritas until the sun had cooled and their heads were light, and by tacit agreement, they found themselves in Ian’s bedroom.

  Ian began his conquest of her body the moment they crossed the threshold of his room. He stripped her naked to the tune of some erotic beat that thrummed through his veins, lifting a piece of clothing here, running his fingers, his mouth, his tongue along thin straps and tiny elastic bands, tasting and teasing her through her barely there lingerie before removing it completely.

  Nina’s body vibrated, heating from the inside out as Ian paid homage to her, stretching her out on the bed and beginning at the top of her head and working his way downward, not leaving an inch of baby-soft skin unattended. Her soft whimpers of delight bloomed to moans of need as his tongue brushed and brushed across her hardened nipple before taking it fully into his mouth, gently sucking and pulling until the dew of passion made her slick and ready, which he found when he slid a finger slowly inside of her.

  Nina’s hips instinctively rose and her thighs widened. Ian groaned in her ear, her reaction to him a turn-on in itself. He relished igniting her passions, seeing her writhe and moan, open and give herself to him without any inhibitions. And because of her uncompromising gift of giving herself to him, he had no other choice but to do the same and more.

  “I’m going to make this last,” he moaned in her ear, slipping his finger in and out and using the pad of his thumb to gently play with her swelling clit.

  Nina’s belly quivered as a tremor ran along the inside of her thighs while Ian moved downward with maddening slowness, taunting and teasing her, heating the blood in her veins. She thought she would go out of her mind when his mouth covered her sex. She gripped the sheet in her fists, and Ian’s large hands clamped down on her hips to mold her to his will.

  His expert tongue dipped in and out of her, stimulated the swollen nub, over and over as she writhed and moaned, crying out, “Please . . . please . . .” as her hips rotated against the onslaught of his mouth and tongue.

  Her body shuddered from the inside out as the intensity grew and grew and her toes suddenly curled. A jolt of electric energy shot up the backs of her legs. Her body grew so hot that sweat popped along her hairline. Her heart thundered.

  Ian slid two fingers inside of her, found the soft, spongy epicenter, aptly named G for gratify, and gently pressed.

  Nina’s ragged scream punctuated the air. Every muscle contracted. He pressed again and the dam broke as one explosive sensation after the other ran over the one before. Her body shook and her cries of ecstasy were trapped in her throat. Her head spun and white lights burst behind her lids, and still the pleasure grew and grew. She felt faint, weightless, as the most powerful orgasm she’d ever experienced seized her and would not let go.

  Tears sprung from her eyes as she thrashed her head back and forth against the pillow.

  Ian gripped the round orbs of her ass, raised her hips even higher as if the very essence of her were on an altar of offering.

  As much as he wanted to continue to take her back and forth to heaven, he knew his own want of her could not hold out any longer. He needed to be deep inside her, surrounded by her wet heat that closed in around him like a perfect-fitting glove. He waited for her orgasm to ebb before he entered her so that he could take her back there again.

  Ian cried out in a sound so deep, so full of emotion, when he pushed past her willing opening, that for a moment he couldn’t move. The sensation was so overwhelming he wouldn’t risk losing it.

  But Nina wanted him. Wanted him to move hard and deep and fast within her. She wanted to make him come so hard that he would never forget this night no matter how far away he went. She wanted him to dream of her, to keep her under his skin, to remember her scent and the way she tossed her cat at him, made it talk, and made him moan.

  Ian rose up on his knees, took her legs, and draped them over his shoulders. He held on to the headboard and moved in and out of her, steady and long, sucking in air through his teeth as he teetered on the brink of exploding. He wanted it to last. He tried to hold out. But he could feel it coming, like a storm on the horizon. He knew it was on its way and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Nina knew it too. She f
elt him harden even more inside of her, growing in width, stretching her even farther. The muscles of his body tightened, his breathing grew more ragged, his thrusts faster. She reached down between their pumping bodies and cupped his jewels, gently massaging them.

  Ian’s head went back. He jammed himself inside her as she milked him with her inner muscles, and he shook as if he was being electrocuted as the climax he’d been holding at bay was released with indescribable force.

  For a long time afterward they lay entwined, damp and weak and plagued by their separate thoughts. Neither of them talked about what the next few hours would mean, as if not talking about it would make it less real.

  Ian curled closer to her, pressing her back to his chest so that he could still fondle her breasts, make her nipples rise again. He wanted to remember how they felt on his fingertips, on his palm, and in his mouth. His jaw clenched as the suddenness of another erection pushed against her.

  Nina moaned softly and pressed herself closer, took his hand, and put it between her legs. He found her wet and ready, which only intensified his arousal.

  Without a word of warning, he turned her on her stomach, lifted her hips to meet him, and plunged into her slick cavern for the last time.

  Chapter 15

  Ian stood beside Nina’s car as she put her purse on the passenger seat and then turned to him.

  She drew in a long breath and made herself smile. “Well, guess this is it.”

  Ian opened her car door for her. “We’ll stay in touch.”

  She pressed her lips together to keep the cry in her throat from escaping. She nodded her head and got into the car. She looked up at him. “Take care.”

  “You too. Drive safely.”

  She fastened her seat belt and stuck the key in the ignition.

  Ian stepped back from the car. She turned the car on, backed out of the driveway and onto the road. She refused to look in her rearview mirror and see him standing there or, worse, not see him. Tears burned her eyes, but she promised herself she would not cry. She had a two-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of her. She didn’t have time for tears.

  “Oh, Nina, I’m so sorry about everything,” Rita was saying three weeks later over lunch at Two Steps Down, one of their favorite restaurants in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

  Nina sighed. Every day since she’d been home, she thought and hoped that she would hear from Ian, at least a phone call, but it never came. On more occasions than she could count, she’d picked up her phone, started to press in his phone number, and stopped halfway. His silence was a clear indication that he had no intention of continuing beyond their time together in the Hamptons.

  Still, when she thought of their brief and fiery romance she couldn’t help but smile, remembering the times they shared and how happy she felt, how he made her feel. Whoever came into her life now would have big shoes to fill.

  But as time moved on and classes started again, she wanted to believe that her real life was the aspirin that Rita said it would be. But the fever still coursed through her veins.

  Classes had been in session for about two weeks and she’d gotten back into a routine—go to class, engage the students, go home and grade papers. She was finishing up her last class for the day and thinking about heating up leftovers for dinner. The students were filing out and she was gathering her things when all of her senses went on alert.

  She looked toward the classroom door and, like an apparition, Ian was standing there. The air hung and caught in her chest. She shook her head to dispel the vision, but he was still there. She didn’t move, but he did. He was coming right to her.

  Her heart was thundering so rapidly in her chest she couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Hello, Nina.”

  She stared at him, taking him in, and her soul filled.

  “I stopped at the office and they said it was okay,” he said, as if that could simply explain what he was doing there, miles away from his home.

  “I . . . What are you doing here?”

  He stepped up to her and lifted what he had in his hand. She hadn’t noticed anything but him.

  “You left without this.” He held up the portrait he’d done of her. But now another image was in the background—a man. “I looked at this every day,” he began. “Ridiculously hoping that you would step out of the picture and back into my life. I found myself adding my own image, the one who longed for you, missed you . . . loves you.” He knew the moment that she was gone that going back home to Barbados, maybe even trying to work things out again with Cara, wasn’t what he wanted. So he’d spent his time on the island getting things settled, and hoping that when he came for her, she would want him as much as he wanted her.

  Nina’s chest pounded.

  “When it was done, it told me the story of two people who were destined to be together, in one place, Nina, working things out.” He reached out and stroked her cheek, his eyes doing a slow dance over her face. “I came to be here with you. If that’s what you want.”

  “Ian . . . here . . . What about your work, the lounge, the business?”

  “That’s one of the perks of running your own business, love; you get other people to do what needs to be done.”

  Was he saying what she thought he was saying, or were her own desires playing tricks on her?

  “I’m crazy in love with you, Nina. I love you enough to leave everything I know behind to make a life with you. If you don’t feel the same way . . . I’ll catch the next plane and be out of your life.”

  She looped her arm around his neck and pressed her lips against his—the feel, the taste so familiar, like coming home.

  Ian melted against her. The fear that had clenched his gut eased.

  “I love you,” she whispered against his mouth. “Love you from the bottom of my soul.”

  He lifted her in his arms and spun her around until she burst into fits of laughter.

  “You think you can put up a homeless bloke until he finds accommodations?” he asked before setting her on her feet.

  “I’m sure I can think of something.” She looked up at him, delirious with happiness. “And I have the perfect place for our painting.”

  “Where?”

  “Right above our bed.”

  Ian took her in his arms and made love to her lips with his own.

  The painting, bursting with color, life, and vibrancy, sizzling with heat between the man and woman who’d found each other, was an eternal reminder of the summer fever that brought them together and would forever burn in their veins.

  One Hot Summer

  Niobia Bryant

  Prologue

  It’s amazing how pain—that deep, searing, emotionally based heartache—can eventually lead to feeling completely numb. The line between the two is way thinner and flimsier than the one floating between love and hate. The jacked-up part was, Nylah Lovely knew about each line very well, and in that moment, she drifted across both.

  Bzzz . . . bzzz . . . bzzz . . .

  Her body was stiff with shock, afraid to move, afraid to do anything to intensify the pain that felt as if she had been shot by a bullet and not shocked by the truth. And so nothing but her pain-filled eyes shifted from the computer to take in the vibrating cell phone on the edge of her desk.

  “Do you want me to get it?”

  Her eyes shifted to the concerned face of her best friend, Tashi Oyoni. “No. It’s either Byron with more lies or the press with more questions and speculations,” she said softly, barely above a whisper, before she sighed as she forced her body to lean back against the leather sofa in her office. “I don’t have it in me for either.”

  Falling in love and getting married was risky no matter what the circumstances. Everyone took a chance on placing their heart into someone else’s hands and could only hope not to have it crushed within their grasp. Love under the spotlight was even more tenuous. It felt like groupies, bloggers, and the entertainment news media were drooling, waiting to hear about one of the mighty falling. Like her h
usband, multiplatinum R & B star Byron Bilton.

  Their entire relationship had been chronicled, from the first spotting of them trying to have a low-key dinner at a tucked-away restaurant to their two-year relationship and subsequent fairy-tale marriage at a castle—and everything in between. They knew her name, they took her picture, but truly they forgot about the person out of the limelight—the noncelebrity—just trying to be happy in her relationship, just trying to make it work, just trying to enjoy being in love. That person became a casualty of something they simply considered news.

  They cared nothing about her shame, her pain, her heartbreak. Her embarrassment. And yes, yes, she was woman enough to admit that having his infidelity exposed to the world before she even knew and could process it made the pain all the more hurtful. All the more haunting. All the more difficult to forgive . . . or forget.

  What woman—what person at all—would want to discover that her husband had cheated via some blog post showing the crappy cell phone video of him, his privates, and some faceless woman?

  Bzzz . . . Bzzz . . . Bzzz . . .

  Tashi looked down at the BlackBerry. “It’s Byron again. Do you want me to answer it?”

  Love said nothing. She had nothing to say.

  She had nothing to say to him. She had so much to say to him.

  Another line to swing back and forth over.

  “Byron, hold on, Love’s right here.”

  Her eyes widened as she looked up at Tashi setting the cell phone on the table in front of her.

  “Love,” he said, his deep voice echoing.

  “You put him on speaker?” Love mouthed, her face incredulous.

  Tashi immediately looked apologetic. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed back, before biting her bottom lip.

  “Love, I know you don’t believe that bullshit.”

  Love’s eyes shifted again to take in the photo. “I know that I am looking at a picture of your privates snuggled deeply in a woman’s mouth . . . in our condo . . . on our couch . . . during the weekend I went home to Holtsville,” she said, her voice hollow.