much so that there was no fucking way he was letting the cottages out ever again. Once the summer was done, that was it. He didn’t give a rat’s arse about the income. No amount of money was worth sacrificing his privacy for. This was his island, his home, and he did not appreciate being lectured by members of the chiffon brigade. Nor did he appreciate being told how to dress.
Yes, it was a pointless form of retaliation, but he unzipped his fly while still two hundred metres from Kara’s front door.
Of course, the real malefactors of this current situation were ahead of him waiting by the front door of Beachcomber’s Barn. Kara and Zach – it was their fault the island was swamped with tourists. Between holiday lets and restaurants, they’d obliterated his peace. Ric preferred things how they’d been when it was just rock pools, crabs and ice-cream sold from the back of a van. Better that than withered old prudes getting snotty because he’d taken his shirt off and got on with making his living.
‘No more tourists,’ he growled as he shoved his way between his two lovers and entered the house.
Bypassing the living room, Ric headed straight for the kitchen.
‘Upstairs.’ He flung out his arm in the direction of the staircase when they attempted to follow him. Supplies were why he’d come in here, nothing more. One wooden spatula, snatched from a pot on the worktop, and a tray of ice cubes from the freezer and he was set.
Unsurprisingly, the pair of them were still loitering at the bottom of the stairs. Ric smacked the spatula across Zach’s arse, which got them both moving. Zach took the steps two at a time, while Kara attempted something similar, misjudged and ended up on all fours with her bum in the air.
Not that he was complaining, because Kara had a very cute arse, and he was being blessed with a spectacular view of it, given the shortness of her skirt and the itty bit of nothing she was wearing that ostensibly classed as panties. The temptation was too great. He clamped both hands down upon her curves, squeezed, and then used his strength to roll her over. The moment Kara lay on her back, he stretched out above her.
In truth not all his irritation was down to the kid and his nan interrupting his photo shoot. Some of it was plain old sexual frustration. You’d think, given that he had two lovers, sex would be easy to come by, but no, Zach was forever at the restaurant and Kara had developed an annoying habit of talking about drains and wallpaper at inopportune moments.
Glamour was sexy. The way a well-placed lamp cast a glow over a model’s skin fired his pulse. Wet clothes pulled tight over perfect abs got him hard, so did the wind blowing through a lover’s hair. As to whether a septic tank was stocked with the right flora or the general décor was courtesy of Laura Ashley or B&Q, who the fuck cared.
‘Don’t say a word,’ he warned her. All that mattered was that their bodies knew one another. He kissed her hard, to make sure she obeyed.
In return, Kara shoved her hands inside the back of his jeans. Her nails bit into his flesh, but that only spurred him on. Rough, aggressive, a little bit cruel – these were all things guaranteed to set his blood alight.
Ric shoved her short skirt up to her waist. The wind and the sprint to the barn had dried her skin, but her clothing was still damp from her roll in the surf. He’d deal with that in a moment, strip her naked as the day she was born. First, he dealt with his own footwear. He toed off his boots and let them fall. Hopefully, nobody would trip over them the next time they came downstairs. Then he drove his hips down against hers, letting her feel his arousal. A shiver of anticipation rolled through her body.
‘Are you gonna fuck me bare, Ric?’
He left off kissing her with a snarl. ‘Get upstairs, before I decide to go for it right here.’ He didn’t doubt her arousal. Zach had taken her halfway to paradise already, eating her out down on the beach. If he pushed his fingers under the silly scrap of lace, he knew she’d be sopping wet. And as for ‘fuck me bare’, while he didn’t normally act so irresponsibly, none of them had fucked outside their relationship since Kara first turned up. And he’d seen her swallowing birth-control pills.
Kara turned back onto all fours and scampered upwards, pale bottom waving enticingly at him the whole way.
Ric shucked off his jeans, leaving them alongside his boots. Then, having reclaimed his spatula, he sprinted after Kara. Damn bitch had stolen his ice cubes. He made a dive for her on the landing, only for Zach to hurl himself into the line of attack. He got a shoulder in the chest and a lightning-fast smack across his rear for his trouble. No one got between him and his lady, except maybe this man.
Zach didn’t attempt to wrestle with him. He forced his mouth down hard over Ric’s, snatching the kiss he was clearly eager for.
Yeah, OK, that derailed his thoughts of humping Kara in favour of getting hot and sticky with Zach. The guy had his hands entwined within the long blond strands of Ric’s hair, so that he couldn’t have moved his head, even if he’d wanted to. Right now, he didn’t. Not when staying meant feasting on kisses that made his heart pound and created a second pulse in the tip of his cock.
He was burning. Hard as steel and ready to rock.
Zach tasted good. Of lime and soda with a dash of something exotic added to the mix. They kissed aggressively, not quite snarling, but coming close to biting in their desire to somehow lock themselves together. Ric wasn’t about to let Zach dictate though, not for more than fifteen seconds. If he lost a few strands of hair to the process, then so be it.
Rather than backing up to give himself space, Ric leaned into Zach’s body, forcing his lover to do the moving; only one pace to begin with in order to maintain balance, then another, until they were no longer at the top of the stairs, but across the landing almost level with the bedroom door.
The moment Zach’s back hit the wall, he made like he was superglued to the plaster. His hands left Ric’s hair and splayed out to the sides, palms to the cool surface.
Every time, back him into a corner and Zach was mister I’m-all-yours. Fuck if that notion didn’t fire up Ric’s blood to boiling point.
Zach was exactly the right mix of sexy and vulnerable. He had a way of looking up through his eyelashes that jellified Ric’s limbs, and a body that was so pretty you couldn’t resist licking it.
Ric licked the side of the guy’s neck, tasted salt, sweat and need. ‘I’m going to fuck you hard. It’s what you want, isn’t it?’
Ric pressed his index finger to Zach’s kiss-reddened lips to stop him answering. He didn’t need answers. He could see Zach’s need…taste it…smell it in the form of the musk on his body.
He claimed Zach’s wet T-shirt. The man needed to be naked. He was hairy beneath. Not ape-like, just enough of a sexy fuzz to get the blood pumping, and provide a trail down the centre of his abs leading to his groin. There was no resisting that lure. Fingers walking the path ahead of his tongue, Ric followed the signposts, peeling away the barriers to his gaze. He needed Zach every inch as naked as he was.
Oh, yes, the man was a god. There was a reason he’d been photographing him for years.
Ric dropped to his knees, bringing Zach’s beach shorts down with him. The guy did for him every fucking time. Yeah, the scent of him, the look, those long firm muscles…He couldn’t help himself. He had to take, had to possess, especially when he was standing proud and so desperate for some red-hot loving.
Ric traced with his tongue the small pentacle tattooed just below Zach’s right hip and then, palms planted either side of Zach’s cock, his thumbs teasing the tops of his balls, he rose up, mouth open and claimed Zach’s cock.
Glorious! Far more than a mouthful, but sweeter for that fact.
Ric worked him with greedy pulls, using his tongue to ramp Zach’s need up to boiling point. He didn’t believe in doing anything by halves when it came to sex. When he fucked, he gave it everything. And he liked fucking Zach. Actually liked it a whole lot more than he generally cared to admit. Zach had been right on that score: moving in together