As Christian nodded, Houston kicked off his shoes and dropped his towel down on the sand next to Dennis. He tossed his phone onto it. He wasn’t on call, and he didn’t really expect Josie to text him, but on the off chance...he sure in the hell didn’t want to miss her if she did.
With a firm grip on his board, he went down to the edge of the water, squishing the wet sand beneath his toes. He bent over and attached his leash to his ankle. The device kept him and his board from being separated if he fell off.
Then he was on his stomach, paddling out, relaxing under the hot sun. Christian was next to him, but they didn’t talk. This time was for silence. For just enjoying the ocean and listening to the melodic roar of the waves rising and falling in a timeless pattern.
There were shouts of excitement and groans as other surfers rode and crashed, but Houston blocked those sounds out and concentrated just on stroking back and forth with his hands lightly skimming the surface of the warm water. When he came to a wave, he lifted his waist and let the water pass between him and the board.
Josie was on his mind again, a disturbing floating presence in his thoughts constantly, confusing him with her unexplainable attraction.
She walked with a bounce. Nearly a foot shorter than him, she had to almost run to keep up with his stride sometimes. How would that petite curvy body fit against his?
Her full chest would press against his ribsand her mouth would glide across his bare skin, rolling over him with teasing little strokes. Then she would go down on her knees and pull his cock into that same sweet pink mouth and he would hold her head against him, tugging on that shortish hair of hers.
He groaned aloud in disgust. Imagining her giving him head was not doing anything but giving him a huge boner in his swim trunks. Since he was in the water, and his trunks were soaked, he was going to shock the hell out of his fellow surfers when he stood up.
Yeah, it was a damn good thing she wasn’t going to call him. Forget abouthermorning-after reaction to a night together. He wasn’t sure he trusted himself not to want more.
Pathetic. He commanded himself to put Josie out of his mind, and focus on the wave rising in front of him instead. It was a big one.
On the outside of the crest, he suddenly leapt onto his board and hunched down, feeling the spray of the thrusting water fly across him as he turned the board quickly back and forth using his leg muscles.
He was on top of the wave, soaring through the air, catching a view of the huge expanse of beach and feeling the tenuous balance between him and his board, resting on nothing but water.
It was exhilarating.
He lasted a solid eight seconds before the crest buckled and he dropped into the pit at the bottom of the wave. In another second the whole of the wave crashed over the top of his head, sending him catapulting off his board and sailing through the water.
Closing his mouth, he let the surf pummel him and knock him around until he, the broken wave, and his dangling board all washed ashore.
Not one of his finer endings to a run.
Rubbing the dripping water off his face, he unhooked his leash and reined his board in with a self-satisfied grin. That hadbeen a blast.
“Whoa, Ice, total wipeout.”
Houston looked up from his undignified position sitting in two feet of water to see three teenage boys grinning at him. He shrugged it off. The fall had been worth the ride. These guys knew that as well as he did. They were out here just about every day and had nicknamed him Ice since he was known for riding his board without a lot of movement. He suspected it also had a thing or two to do with his serious personality. He wasn’t exactly lauded for his social skills.
One of the teens didn’t look like he’d been in the water that day and was sporting a big bandage on his foot. “What happened to you, Andy? Jellyfish?”
Andy grinned, tossing back his scraggly brown hair. “No, I got bit by a shark yesterday. Six stitches in my foot.”
“Really?” Houston stood up and leaned against his board. “Does it hurt?”
“Nah.” Andy shrugged it off. “It was like getting a big paper cut, you know? It was a little shark, just a three-foot black-tip.”
Black-tips were common in the waters around Acadia Beach and were known for coming in close to shore in search of fish and mistaking human limbs for them. Usually they sank their teeth in, then released quickly, probably realizing they’d bitten something bigger than them.
“Well, no going into the water until those stitches are out, all right?”
“I hear you.”
Christian came up beside them. “How many is that? Like six bites in the last few weeks?”
“Something like that.”
Another one of the boys said, “They were talking about closing the beach, but I think that’s crazy. Getting bitten by a black-tip’s no worse than a jellyfish, and they never talked about closing the beach forjellyfish.”
Houston thought he had a point. Shark or jellyfish, nothing was going to stop the majority of them from coming out here.