Deliciously Obedient Read online

  “What’s so funny?”

  Lydia plopped down on top of a pile of leaves on the ground and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I’ll tell you more later. But nothing about Mike?”

  “Nothing about him,” Krysta confirmed. “It’s a mystery. The tabloids played with the story for a week or two, everyone at work was abuzz and now it’s kind of like he was never there.”

  Her heart pierced, Lydia just sat with that idea. It’s like he was never there. Oh, how she wished that were true. That what she’d had with him were some simple dalliance that she could flush out of her mind quickly, and brush off her body with a replacement touch from Jeremy. If it were that simple, she wouldn’t be here right now, back home, seeking sanctuary.

  “What about the video?” Krysta whispered. “That Diane chick. She totally took the heat off you.”

  “You mean she took the blame.”

  “I don’t think blame was the word that woman would use. I think she took on the fame.”

  “Did it get her anywhere?”

  “I think she has a Playboy spread coming up.”

  Lydia shuddered. “From what Jeremy told me, that should be an interesting one. He might turn it into the backing for a dartboard.”

  Krysta laughed. “Give me an idea of what’s going on with you and Jeremy.”

  Lydia closed her eyes, a wave of warmth filling her at the thought of his touch. Where was he right now? Probably drinking a blueberry beer with her dad, or having the finer art of tree placement in campgrounds for perfect hammock setups being explained diligently by Miles. By now they’d be on the thirtieth or fortieth pairing of trees on the campground, and she could imagine Jeremy’s fake interest fading quickly. Would he keep going? Would he go the distance to get to know her dad? Or would he just fade out like Mike, as if he’d never been there?

  “You’re hurting.” Krysta’s words came out with a clinical detachment, as if she were watching a patient struggle with an ailment. Not a question, not a sweeping declaration—just a statement about Lydia’s current countenance.

  “Yes.”

  The two began to walk slowly down a well-worn path to the beach, out of sync and pushing against each other occasionally, their movement so slow it didn’t matter.

  “And Jeremy? Things fall apart?” Krysta asked.

  “No,” Lydia said, sighing. “He’s great.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  Lydia snorted. “It’s not just some random hook-up. Mike sent him there.” Mike. The word seemed wrong. Incongruous. Unnatural. He was either Matt or Michael Bournham.

  “You started sleeping with your…”

  “Bodyguard?”

  Peals of laughter poured out of Krysta’s mouth. “I can’t imagine calling Jeremy anyone’s bodyguard. Ever. The man couldn’t punch a time clock.”

  “Ha ha.” Lydia paused, remembering that last week in Iceland. “He took out a drunk Viking who was hitting on me in a club.”

  Krysta halted, feet crunching a set of pine cones, the overwhelming blanket of pine scent making Lydia so glad she was home. “Jeremy actually fought someone? He seems so…pacifistic.”

  “You mean he seems like he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Right. That. What happened?”

  “There was this guy I worked with. Siggi. He was at a dance club Jeremy and I went to and he wouldn’t stop hitting on me. Followed us outside. And he said the wrong thing and Jeremy clocked him.” In many ways that shot had been like a face punch to her, as if life were metaphorically giving her one big, painful message. It signified the end of her life there.

  “And then the guy fell on me and pinned me to the ground, but Jeremy couldn’t figure out how to get me up,” Lydia said, laughing.

  “That sounds more like the Jeremy I know.”

  Lydia hesitated, wanting so badly to share more with Krysta. Why the pause? This was her best friend. Of course she should confess all. Of course she should talk about Jeremy and her hopes and concerns. Of course she should be able to share.

  So why the reluctance?

  “I’m not judging,” Krysta added, as if reading Lydia’s mind. “If he makes you happy…”

  “He does.”

  Big smile. “Then that’s all that matters.” Krysta stopped and stared straight ahead, her eyes scanning the woods ahead of them, behind which Lydia knew the ocean lay, in constant motion, waiting for nothing and no one. Content to just be.

  “What?” Krysta’s silence unnerved her.

  Pulling her eyes off the horizon, Krysta turned to Lydia, expression unreadable, though wistful. “You have two men you’ve fallen for recently. That’s more than most of us get in a year.” She frowned, then counted openly on her fingers. “Three years.”

  Ouch. “You’ll find someone soon.” But it won’t be Caleb, Lydia thought with a heaping dose of guilt. She loved the hell out of her little brother, but there was no way he’d even consider dating Krysta. Too besotted with one of the Stillman girls, Caleb lived for his cooking and for her.

  “Do you know how hard it is to want someone who doesn’t even realize you’re there?” Krysta’s eyes filled with pain.

  Lydia slung one arm around her shoulders and hid her own ache, thinking of Mike. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  Jeremy’s voice made her jump slightly as he said, “Hi,” gently from behind her, an arm slung over her shoulders as her heart raced.

  “Great timing,” Krysta said to him, making him look at the two women and then frown slightly, edging away from Lydia.

  “Should I leave? Did I interrupt?” His face was calm and relaxed, a far cry from what Lydia had expected.

  “No. Stay.” She and Krysta shared a look that Lydia assumed meant they’d talk later. “Besides, Mom asked us to help her with a project.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Knitting.” In Iceland he’d made an unceremonious attempt to get to know Lydia via unconventional methods that included crashing a knitting store. The two giggled and Krysta waved them off as Lydia’s heart struggled to find its beat.

  Mike stood on the water’s edge in one of the many inlets that dotted the campground’s shoreline. The vacation that wasn’t. Whatever Mike had imagined this month would be like, he hadn’t factored in just how much of his old life needed to be unwound and required his attention. Joanie had stayed on as executive assistant to the interim CEO, and part of her job was working with Mike to tie up loose ends related to his position at Bournham Industries. From contracts that needed to be invalidated, to signatures on forms that released him from responsibility or liability for processes, all the way down to which new email address he wanted his old email to be forwarded to, Joanie’s daily missives in the form of email, texts and occasional voicemails were a brutal reminder that just because he had made a decision to snap his life in two and go off into a new future didn’t mean that the stressors of his old life weren’t still around.

  In spite of all that, he found himself slowly, almost reluctantly, relaxing. It was hard not to, here at Lydia’s parents’ campground.

  What were trivial matters to him in his old life took on great importance here. He had chatted with Sandy every day he’d been at the campground. They’d spoken at the general store/office, or in the game room, or at the playground—pretty much everywhere on the grounds. The topic didn’t seem to matter. They could converse about the cherry tomatoes and their sweetness, or point to small children playing and frolicking, and talk about their antics, or discuss the tides and what had washed up on shore that morning. The connection was what she sought, and at first he found it intrusive. Over time it became a part of his routine, and now, at the beginning of his third week here, he was the one seeking the attention, the give and take, that connection.

  Pete, on the other hand, was a doer. So were his sons. Chitchat and conversation came as part of a project, from fixing a fence to cooking the giant lobster and steak dinner that they held each week, to pushing an RV out of a mud rut.


  He liked these people. He liked this life. He could have done with a bathroom in his own cabin. But by the time he realized what a pain that was, it was too late. All of the other homes on the campground were taken. It was high season, Sandy had reminded him, and she was sorry, but at least the price was right.

  “Hey, Mike,” Pete called out as the two men encountered each other. Mike holding a mug of coffee this morning, Pete carrying some sort of tool that escaped Mike’s understanding. It looked like a wrench with a strange head on it and a set of pliers attached. It was the kind of tool his own father would have known to name, but that Mike couldn’t. That was part of a different life, one that he hadn’t lived until this past month.

  “How’s it going?” Pete asked.

  Mike took a sip of coffee and looked up at the blue sky, a spare cloud here and there, dotting what would otherwise be a clear landscape. “It’s going well.”

  “You making plans for the talent show?”

  He knew what Pete meant—that was a pointed question asking if he’d do a skit or an act. “I’m planning to be an active member of the audience,” Mike said in a measured tone, a hint of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  Pete just shook his head slowly. “There was a time when we had to beat people off with a stick, and tell ’em that the roster was full up and it would take two or three years for them to get on stage. Now”—he shrugged his shoulders—“everyone’s looking at Vines on their phones and laughing at these little video skits you can find on YouTube.” He took a long sigh and played with the tool in his hand, switching it from palm to palm, as if it were a ping-pong ball and not a twenty-pound piece of metal.

  “Social media’s destroyed a lot of things, hasn’t it, Pete?” Mike said wryly. Pete’s hard stare unnerved Mike. It was the first time he’d felt anything beyond neighborly chatting, or the down-east Maine mentality that respected someone until they were proved wrong.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Pete said slowly. And then, as if the change hadn’t happened, his face shifted back to the genial Pete that Mike had grown accustomed to. “I imagine you’re heading out to go in the kayaks,” Pete said as he took a step toward his little work shed.

  Mike held up the mug in a gesture of cheers and then took a long gulp, emptying it. “Now I am.” Kayaking was a good idea, for it would help him think. He’d need to clock hundreds of hours paddling, though, to find any peace inside. That was fine; the luxury of time spread out before him.

  “I hope you’re getting what you wanted out of your vacation here, Mike,” Pete said. He didn’t make eye contact, just tilted his chin over his left shoulder.

  As he walked on, Mike noticed the loping gait of the tall, slim man, in contrast with the cheerful countenance he generally exhibited. The word depression, or sadness, didn’t cut it. There was, instead, a contemplation in Pete this morning. Mike would have to “paddle it out” to understand what might be going on inside the man. On the other hand, Mike had plenty of his own issues to figure out. The month was nearly up, and real life beckoned. For as much as he had sorted out so many problems when he fled, so many of them had simply followed him, and the rest? The rest were all waiting behind. But now that he’d gotten to spend a significant amount of time on the periphery of the Charles family, he felt he understood Lydia even more. An ache that had been there from the day she left only grew here, fostered and nurtured by the soil where she’d been raised by the people who loved her and had helped to shape her into the woman she’d become.

  He’d left her to hang out to dry, hadn’t he? Never his intent—sending her to Iceland was a hasty move, and one he now regretted. The undoing of the European operations setup meant that her position was tenuous at best, and he’d done as much as he could to help her, but now he’d been completely untethered from technology for over a week, enjoying going back in time to a childlike state in some ways. Still a man, he had only that which was in front of him—a newspaper and the ocean—and now, as he walked steadily toward the shore, he would hop into a sea kayak and roam the shore for hours, powered only by his own arms, by his core, by all of the small muscles that made up the push of his body over the water, of his own volition.

  Chapter Two

  The brush of a man’s unshaven face startled her, the movement so unexpected between her thighs that she felt a flush begin not in her face, nor across her breasts, but in the skin just above her mons, spreading down and across her hipbones, the feeling illicit and exhilarating, a moan coming forth from her mouth as the sandpapery feel of his chin against her lips morphed into a very different feel, tongue stroking her sensitive, wet self in such a sensual motion she couldn’t do anything but moan.

  Two strong hands slid under her ass, grasping flesh as if savoring it, and then—the heat of another body, this one against her chest, two hands taking in her breasts, a second mouth against her earlobe, teeth nipping, coarse skin making her shiver as hot breath whispered her name.

  The tongue on her clit took its time, as if it were lazy and indulgent, in no hurry to finish its work, choosing instead to linger and love. An orgasm accelerated from a dull fire to a flaming pillar inside her, core superheated and body bucking against his mouth.

  And then—one muscled cock inside her, sliding against her slickness as he plunged in, the room tilting as pleasure exploded through her, the timing so perfect she tightened and couldn’t ever imagine letting go as he pumped into her, Lydia suddenly in his lap and controlling the movement as another body stroked her clit from behind, making a trail of her juices up to each nipple, using her own wetness to add the right amount of pinched pain to make her clamp down even more on the other man’s hardness, her body all rhythm and flow as four hands claimed her, the man behind her unseen yet known.

  Looking down, her breath hitched with each thrust, the man’s eyes closed, features blurred and unfocused. And then he opened his eyes.

  China blue.

  Turning sharply, she sought to see the man behind her, the room a faded, misty, glowing orb around them. No scent but their combined musk, no sound but their fevered breath, no touch but the clarity of each hand on her mons, her clit, her ass, her breasts, one hand now holding her hair over her shoulder, creating a curtain around the man she impaled herself against, the other man—those eyes.

  Sapphires.

  Mike and Mike? Warmth poured over her as wave after tight wave of climax hit her, waking her—

  Waking her.

  Before she even opened her eyes, the sounds outside told her exactly where she was: tucked away in one of the guest cabins that her mother had likely scrambled to set aside for her when she let them know that she was coming. Keeping her eyes closed, she reached across the rough sheets, her hip aching on the lumpy mattress. A ray of sunshine shot through the tiny little window as if aimed directly at her face, and she turned, squinting one eye, flinching in pain. A deep breath, and she felt the crisp autumn chill. These cabins were barely heated, and she and Jeremy, in the passion of the night, had forgotten to turn on the small ceramic heater that would have fought the elements valiantly and still lost. Fortunately, the down comforter—she looked carefully—the two down comforters that Sandy had left for them sufficed through the night. That and body heat, and, of course, her dream.

  With a start, she began to sit up, then froze. A man’s arms, sprinkled liberally with dark brown hair, encased her. The air was freezing, but her body was warm, nether regions throbbing with need.

  At least I’m not sleepsturbating, she thought, the faintest hint of a chuckle rumbling in her chest and throat. Jeremy’s steady breath faltered briefly when she made the silent, self-deprecating sound. She stilled. He settled back into sleep.

  In future months Lydia would wonder if that dream were a premonition of sorts, as if her subconscious had been screaming, waving runway lights and flashing red signals in a desperate effort to get her to realize what was coming.

  Or, maybe, she just desperately wanted Mike.

&nb
sp; The truth would be found somewhere in between. Kind of like Lydia herself.

  Between two men.

  One of those men, though, was here. Blissfully here and all male, hot skin wrapped around her, strong legs pressed against her softer thighs, chest against her back, her ass sliding against a very stiff symbol of how he affected her.

  Both subconsciously and very, very consciously.

  Lydia rolled over to face Jeremy, who always looked so rumpled and sweet every morning. His eyes were closed, long lashes residing against his cheeks, face serious and contemplative. Careful to keep every spare inch of skin under the thick down comforter, she slid one arm under his neck, slinging one leg over his hips.

  “Well, good morning,” he murmured against her cheek as she peppered his jawline with kisses. “That’s one hell of a wake-up call. I rather like this hotel.”

  “Wait until I pull out the maid uniform,” she whispered, reaching down to stroke him.

  His groan was a victory she didn’t realize she needed. The force of his kiss shocked her. How could he go from asleep to on top of her, mouth bruising hers, tongue exploring without mercy, so quickly?

  Don’t question it, she told herself.

  Enjoy it.

  As his palm trailed its way to find her wet and wanting, his mouth moved into a grin of delight, her eyes closed, her lips noting the change in him.

  “You’re wet.”

  “You’re perceptive.”

  “You’re ready?”

  “You’re slow.” With that, she altered her leg’s position and centered herself on his tip, curling her hips out to let him enter her—just an inch. Not enough.

  Never enough.

  Without breaking their connection, Jeremy hovered over her, the fluidity of their acting in concert a lover’s dance she knew innately. It worked, and soon she was filled with him, his arms on either side of her, biceps bulging with effort that made her swell and moan, knowing it was all for her.

  Her.