Page 25 of Take Me Tender

“I—”

His hand on her arm halted her words. “Thank God. There she is.”

There was all of it—gathered around a concrete fire ring just down the beach. The girl, the looks of a party, and grilling, though Nikki couldn’t tell from here if it was weenies or even those marshmallows Jenner had promised.

Jay grinned, looking as relieved as she felt. He blew out a long breath. “Good. Now we can take ourselves to a more private place.”

“No,” she said quickly. Public places would keep clothes and secrets safely in place. “We should keep an eye on them a while longer.” Her gaze cut to the scene down the beach.

He looked back toward the twenty or so teenagers, his eyes narrowing as another five or six joined the group. A girl in a shoestring bikini shrieked in mock fear as a boy chased her across the sand. A pallet was thrown onto the fire, sending up sparks. Someone turned up a boom box so that rap music pounded the air like fists.

“I don’t know.” Jay shook his head. “Fern’ll kill me if she spots us.”

“We can plant ourselves on the other side of the lifeguard tower.”

Jay gave her a sharp look. “Spy much?” But he headed off in the direction she’d indicated.

She moved slower. The sand was soft and deep, and churning through it wasn’t easy on her knee. With Fern secure, Nikki’s reluctance about the whole evening and all the danger attached to this “date” was returning.

He had selected a patch of sand and was already opening the basket when she reached him. “What’s with the snail’s pace?” he asked.

Letting her gaze wander to a wet surfer emerging from the water, she shrugged. “Now that I’m out of the hetero closet, I’m taking my time checking over all the hot guys.”

A long arm slung around her shoulders and he gave her a brief, companionable hug. “Damn. I’m going to miss the old days when we could troll for girls together. How much fun was that?”

She didn’t dignify the remark with a response, just watched him proceed to shake out a checked tablecloth and spread it on the sand. Once she chose her spot on it, he sat close, and poured something from a flask into a blue plastic cup that he handed over.

He poured another for himself, then set down a platter of cut vegetables and another of fruit. Next he dug out a fat votive candle, lit the wick, and anchored it into the sand nearby. “Aren’t you going to taste your drink?”

Nikki brought the cup under her nose and sniffed. A very dry Pouilly-fumé. “Isn’t alcohol banned on the beach?”

He leaned back on his elbows and crossed his legs at the ankle, the picture of a man at home with seduction. The smile he sent her way made her clothes start to smolder at the edges. “Let’s break some rules, baby.”

Like the one that said no smart cookie of a chef would get involved with the guy she was cooking for? She frowned, suddenly irritated. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that in the real world you wouldn’t give me a second glance?”

“What world is that, again?”

“The one where you spend your days in a downtown office peopled by adolescents who look like grown men and tits and asses that somehow manage to walk and talk…though certainly not both at the same time.”

His eyebrows rose. “You have a real thing against women who take off their clothes for a living, don’t you?”

She refused to let the comment sidetrack her. “But instead you’re stuck all day in your Malibu house where I’m in your kitchen and you’re confused—”

“Like you were about your sexual identity?” He sipped from his wine.

“You enjoy the food I cook, so—”

“I want to eat you. I’ll go with that.”

She threw a strawberry at him, though her aim wasn’t any better than it had been at high school softball. “Jay, don’t—”

“Make you think about it?”

His voice lowered but she could still hear every word over the shush-shush of the incoming waves and the pulse of the rap beat down the beach. “C’mon, cookie. Imagine how it will be. For an appetizer, I’ll start with that soft spot behind your left ear. You know about my sweet tooth and I have a feeling your skin is going to be extra sugary there. I’ll lap at it with my tongue, then give it the slightest suck until I feel you shiver. Next on the menu is that sleek curve on the underside of your breast. I wonder what will happen to your nipples when I take the tiniest of bites—”

“Stop.”

“And wait until I tell you what I’m planning for that curvy little backside of yours.”

This time her aim improved and the baby carrot bounced off the end of his nose.

He rubbed at it with the back of his hand. “Hey!”

“That kind of talk might work with…with…” She had trouble articulating when her mind was spinning with images and her body was prickling in the places he’d mentioned as well as some he hadn’t. “With…with…”

“Those breasts on sticks,” he interjected helpfully.

“Aarh!” She threw up a hand in frustration. “You’re impossible.”

“Not for you. For you, I’m available.” He sat up and took a sip of his wine, eyeing her over the rim of his cup. “Unless, well…You’re not holding out for true love, are you, cookie?”

“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes at him. Cassandra had asked a similar question earlier and it rankled even more now.

“Just answer the question. It’s not like I think it’s a bad thing.”

“Then why aren’t you? Why aren’t you holding out for true love?”

“I’m thirty-two years old and my mom, sisters, aunt, and cousins have at least that number of theories. Go ahead and pick one.”

“What do your father and uncle think?”

“That I need another beer and we should turn up the volume on ESPN.”

She had to laugh. “All right. So expound on these theories your female family members hold.”

“Hmm.” He topped off her wine and then his own. “Current thought is that I’m like a certain kind of rodent. A weasely kind of thing if I remember right, but not a weasel.”

Nikki laughed again. “I think I’d like the women in your family.”

He snorted. “Remind me never to introduce you. But the fact is, I really can’t blame them for the idea, because it comes from an article published in NYFM last year.”

“I must have missed that issue.”

The air was cooling as the sun slipped lower. She pulled the sweater she’d brought with her around her shoulders and didn’t edge away when Jay shifted closer to block the breeze.

“It goes like this,” he said. “There are two kinds of these rodents. One quickly finds their mate and bedded bliss, so to speak, and from then on identifies sexual pleasure with that particular individual. The other variety likes to do the wild thing, too, but unlike their cousins, the way their brain processes the intimacy and orgasm hormones is different. They apparently don’t have the same receptors, which means their enjoyment isn’t heightened or even affected by their partner in the deed.”

“Any weasel will do?”

“So the research says.”

“That explains a lot of men I know.”

“In this case, Wanda and Wally Weasel Type 2 operate exactly the same way. Both genders cheerfully pursue their one-night stands.”

“Huh.” While she didn’t bond with anyone—man or woman—easily, she wasn’t an indiscriminate sex-seeker, either. But the reasons for that were something less to do with brain receptors and more with memories she’d buried very deep. “So, Wally, what else do you have in that basket?”

He drew it close to rummage around inside. “I’m not exactly Wally, at least that’s what my family’s females hope. When it comes to humans, the idea is that it’s not so black-and-white as bonders and nonbonders. Some persons, though, may be born with fewer receptors than others.”

“Say, like you.”

“According to my mom and Aunt Annie.” He handed her a sandwich that looked like smoked turkey and cheese on a crisp baguette.

“The man of few receptors,” he went on, “likely considers all this love business the stuff of rom com screenplays. Then comes a day when our unattached bachelor discovers the one with whom the hormone release of intimacy and sex finally reaches those diminished receptors of his. For the first time, our man fully experiences the effect of a serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin cocktail. He’ll never want to let go of the sole female who provides that euphoric high.”

Nikki took a bite and chewed, wondering what it would be like to introduce such a man to those feelings. Every time they had sex, the bond would only grow and his attachment would only strengthen…A hot shiver wiggled under her skin.

Jay looked at her over his own sandwich. His smile was sly. “So when you think about it, I’m actually disabled. As a matter of fact, you should take pity on me because the receptor-impaired need their comforts. You’d be doing a poor guy like me a favor by taking me to bed.”

Her focus snapped back to him, golden and gorgeous. Or, as he put it, pitiable, disabled, and receptor-impaired. His seductive smile widened.

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