Off Plan

by May Archer

  “I didn’t even know you had Instagram.”

  “I didn’t, until about two hours ago, when Beale suggested I look at your account.”

  I blinked. “Beale saw the picture?”

  “Yes. Is that a problem?”

  “N-no. Not at all. He just didn’t say anything to me about it.” Probably because it wasn’t nearly as remarkable to anyone else as it was to me. I blew out a breath. “I posted that picture because it was true and honest. But I’m still a work in progress. For the first time I can remember, I don’t know exactly what my future is going to look like. And I know you want someone who’s got their shit figured out. You deserve that. But I… I don’t know how to just be friends with you, so—”

  Fenn swung his legs over the side of the table toward me and used our joined hands to pull me between his spread knees. “You wanna hear my truth, Mason?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled, just a little. “I didn’t want to stop holding you last night.”

  “Yeah?” I sucked in a breath, lost in the blue-blue.

  I didn’t think anyone had ever wanted to hold me before, or even wanted me to hold them. I felt like when Fenn looked at me, he saw a different Mason from the rest of the world—not a fuckup or a passionless, emotionally stunted person, but something closer to the real me. Something closer to the person I wanted to be, anyway.

  “I could have stayed on that blanket for hours, and I would have given you truth after truth to keep you there. And it scared me how much I wanted that. I put it on you, for not having your shit figured out, when the truth is that none of us have our shit figured out.” His mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “Sure as fuck not me.” He hesitated. “So, look. You’re here for a couple more weeks, right? If you want—no pressure—we could spend that time together, and—”

  I pressed my lips to his, cutting off the rest of his words. His arms wrapped around my back, pulling me in closer as our breaths mingled.

  No part of it was weird, no part of it felt wrong, and all the tension I’d been holding in all day leached out through the kiss, only to be replaced by a different kind of tension.

  My hands trailed up from his waist beneath his shirt, and he moaned, fingers flexing against my spine. I pulled back slightly.

  “We have a problem,” I informed him. “This T-shirt is absolutely disgusting.”

  Fenn raised one eyebrow. “It’s my favorite shirt.”

  I shook my head. “Its existence is an insult to high-quality T-shirts everywhere.” I tugged at the sleeve of my own shirt in demonstration. “Your shirt goes, right now, or I do.”

  “Wow. You drive a hard bargain.” Fenn’s lips were red and damp from our kisses as he smiled hugely. He pulled his shirt off and threw it across the room to land on the sofa. “Done.”

  “Much better,” I said delightedly, sliding both hands over those abs that had been taunting me for days.

  “Not so fast.” Fenn grabbed my hands and pulled them away, flashing me a challenging look. “Those shoes are not Loafers-approved footwear.” He nodded down at the ratty, old sneakers I’d pulled on that morning. “We have standards in Whispering Key.”

  “Is that right?”

  “We’re very big on Italian leather.”

  I whistled through my teeth to hide the wellspring of joy that had sprung up in my stomach. “Far be it from me to disregard your local customs.” I toed off my shoes and kicked them in the general area of my desk.

  “Better?” I asked.

  “Much,” he whispered.

  I wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and pulled his smiling mouth to mine.

  As it turned out, Fenn also objected strongly to my T-shirt (too tight) and shorts (too loose), which was fine, because I had strong objections to his boots (too large), and his underwear (too small).

  “You can’t possibly have a problem with my underwear,” he argued, dragging his teeth over my bottom lip in a way that made me shiver. “You can’t even see them under my shorts.”

  “That just makes it worse,” I informed him. “The shorts are accomplices. They have to go, too.”

  He shook his head, grinning. “Who the hell are you, Loafers? Where did you come from?”

  The question made me pause for a second. Who was I? A week ago, I’d been… very, very certain about a lot of things. Now, I had more questions than answers. But it felt like my time on Whispering Key was a step removed from reality—like, the second I’d passed over the Cooter Key Bridge, I’d entered an alternate universe where the old rules didn’t apply. So, for as long as I was here… maybe I didn’t need answers. Maybe I could just take Toby’s advice and see how things went.

  “Delaying the process won’t go well for you. Or the underwear,” I assured him.

  “You sure about this?” Fenn cupped the side of my neck with one large hand and stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “We can take things slow. I’d be more than fine with that.”

  “I’m very sure.”

  “Committed to acquiring data, hmm?” His thumb moved to trace the corner of my lips, and his voice said he was kinda teasing, but not. “Gotta have an adequate sampling? For scientific accuracy? To test your hypothesis?”

  I moved my tongue to trace the tip of his thumb. “No, um. That portion of the experiment concluded last night, as far as I’m concerned. Overwhelming clinical evidence outweighs theoretical every time. I just… really, really wanna see you naked.”

  Fenn laughed out loud. “Well, hot damn, Loafers. Why didn’t you say so?”

  He unzipped his shorts and let them drop, then kicked them over by my desk to join my shoes.

  He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his underwear and started to drag them off, but I pushed his hands away. I didn’t want to be a passive observer here.

  “Let me,” I said. I knelt in front of him to pull them off slowly and toss them to one side, then stayed there on the hard floor, staring at everything I’d unwrapped. I traced my splayed fingers down the center of his stomach, over his high navel, and his happy trail, and the place where his tanned chest gave way to whiter skin.

  Fenn leaned back against the exam table, and his fingers clenched the padding at the edge.

  It felt almost unbearably intimate, looking at him like this, getting to touch him like this. Like something I hadn’t known I’d wanted until I’d almost lost the opportunity to have it.

  Fenn’s cock was half-hard, and his blue eyes stared down at me, daring me, but I didn’t need a dare to do what I wanted to in that moment. I slid my hands up his thighs slowly and wrapped them both around the base of his cock.

  “Mason. Fucking fuck.”

  I laughed, but it came out more like a gust of breath.

  “So, what I’m hearing you say is that you have some sensitivity here?” I asked in my best doctor voice. “I’m thinking I’ll need to do more tests.”

  I leaned forward and bit the freckle on his right hip. Fenn banged his palm against the table and made a strangled noise.

  “Mmm hmm. Very interesting,” I said, but it came out slurred because my lips were already busy mouthing a damp path to his navel. I moved one hand off his cock to hold his hip in place.

  I’d received plenty of blow jobs in my lifetime, so I had a vague idea of what I was supposed to do, but the buildup was so much better and more distracting than I could have imagined.

  Fenn smelled musky and soapy, which was incredibly arousing. He was trying to play it casual, but his fingers were clench-releasing the table every time my breath hit him.

  “Trying to be patient here, Loafers, but you’re gonna wanna move this along. However you’re moving it along.”

  I snorted. “I’ve been waiting thirty-five years for this, Mr. Reardon. So you’re gonna wanna work harder on your patience.”

  He laughed helplessly and threaded his fingers into my hair, tugging slightly. “If you’re gonna do something, do— Oh, fu-hu-ck.” He broke off as I ran my tongue up the underside of his
dick.

  “You were saying?” I breathed against his damp skin.

  “Nothing.”

  “No thoughts or opinions to share?” I swirled my tongue over the tip, knowing it would taste bitter and salty but completely surprised to find I liked it.

  “I’ll say this,” Fenn croaked. “You’re way better at blow jobs than you were at truth or dare.”

  “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you?” I demanded.

  And then I wrapped my lips around him, just to shut him up.

  It was objectively not the best blow job ever given. I had a very well-developed gag reflex, and I choked every time I tried to take him deep, but Fenn didn’t seem to give a shit. He was breathing like he’d been running for hours, stomach muscles rippling beneath my hand, like I was making him lose his mind and he liked it, which was basically how I’d felt about Fenn since the first day we met.

  The whole thing was a mindfuck of sensation. All the things I would have thought I’d hate—the pain of the hard floor under my knees, having him stare down at me, the discomfort of stretching my mouth wide around his cock. I wanted those bruises on my knees, I wanted the stretch, because they meant I’d earned every second of the look he was giving me, the pure blue fire in his eyes.

  Fenn’s hand tightened in my hair, pulling me off. “Enough. Not yet. Come up here.”

  “Hurry up. Slow down.” I licked my lips as he helped me stand. “You’re impossible to pl—”

  He cut off my teasing by thrusting his tongue between my lips, and the heat of it made my knees weak.

  “I promise you…” He stood and turned us so my ass was against the table. “I am very, very pleased.” He knelt and pulled my tented boxers down. “This was not how I saw today going.” He looked up at me. “Which means I’m kind of an idiot.”

  “Are you?” I had no idea what we were talking about. “That’s… Hahaholy shit!” I laughed in disbelief as he put his mouth on me. That was impossibly good.

  Fenn snorted and pulled off me. “Did you just laugh during a blow job?”

  “Shhh.” I tugged at his overlong hair. “Back to work, buddy.”

  He snorted again, but his eyes met mine and… fuck. It was better than the blow job—okay, total lie, but almost. His gaze held mine as his mouth slid up and down my length, and his eyes were full of lust and appreciation. In that second, I knew every single molecule of his attention was focused on me, and it made me more turned on than I’d ever been in my entire life.

  “Fenn,” I whimpered, reaching one hand back to the table and one hand forward to Fenn’s jaw.

  Fenn’s blue eyes went cloudy with lust, and I watched him stroke himself with one hand while the other held the base of my erection as he sucked me.

  I stroked a finger over his cheek, loving the way his stubble felt against my skin. I could feel myself in his mouth, and an overwhelming wave of arousal had me punching my hips forward, something I’d never let myself do during oral sex before. I’d always sort of felt absurdly grateful that someone was doing this for me, and I’d never wanted to be rude or presumptuous. I’d never before felt like doing something for me was doing something for someone else. But Fenn moaned and pulled at my hip, encouraging me to thrust into his mouth again and again.

  “Christ, Fenn.” I cradled his head in both hands, never breaking eye contact as I moved against him. “Fuck, baby.”

  The word slipped out, startling both of us, but the look in his eyes said he liked it. His hand clenched around my hip hard enough to bruise, and it felt like he was saying it back.

  That was it for me. My release took me by surprise, rushing over me like a tidal wave, and I clung to Fenn for support as he swallowed me down.

  Then, before I could even process what was happening, I was bent backward over the table and he was standing over me, jerking himself while his hand ran possessively up and down my flank.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, and then he came all over my stomach.

  Well, hot damn.

  I blinked up at him, utterly stupefied. “That was…”

  “I know.”

  “I never…”

  “Me neither.”

  I surged up and kissed him, and he laughed.

  A little while later, we were cleaned up and sitting on the sofa eating Lety’s lucky soup. She’d packed up two containers and wrapped them both in foil to keep warm.

  “Do you think she’s psychic?” I demanded, leaning back against the arm of the chair and nudging Fenn’s leg with my foot. I was so relaxed, I couldn’t bring myself to obsess over how weird it was that I was so relaxed.

  Fenn grabbed my foot and trapped it under his thigh before going back to his soup. “No such thing. She’s just very observant and very nosy. And very kind.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Come on, Mason, you’re a doctor. You know better. No such thing as mystical woo-woo.”

  I shrugged. “I know enough to know there are things we can’t explain.”

  “What, like Beale’s auras and crystals? Nope. I believe what I can see with my own two eyes.” He slid his hand up my thigh, and my breath hitched. “For example, I can see that…”

  “Mason?” a high-pitched voice called before there was a tentative knock on the door. “Doc Mason?”

  Fuck. “Gloria!” I stared at Fenn in horror. “I forgot she was coming by this afternoon.”

  “Did you lock the door?” Fenn demanded.

  “I… don’t…”

  Fenn jumped up and vaulted over me, reaching over to flip the lock just before someone tried the door handle.

  “Be right there, Gloria!” I called. “Just finishing up with a patient!”

  Fenn dropped his chin to his chest and laughed silently.

  “Get dressed!” I hissed, barely able to keep from laughing, though this was, by far, the least professional moment of my entire life.

  Turned out, having your clothes strewn around the room made it difficult to dress quickly, and somehow when we were nearly done, I found myself holding Fenn’s disgusting shirt in my hand and watching him pull my size-too-small-shirt down over his abs.

  I bit my lip.

  Fenn kissed me briefly on the cheek. “You ready?”

  “Wait, no! You’re wearing my shirt.”

  “Mmm.” He ran a hand down his stomach. “You’re right! It really is high-quality.”

  “I hate you.” I pulled his shirt over my head, not nearly as upset as I was pretending to be. In fact, not upset at all.

  He grinned and moved toward the door. “You can show me how much. Later.”

  “Gloria!” Fenn opened the door with a wide smile. “Sorry about that. Hey, thanks for seeing me, Dr. Bloom. I’m feeling much better.” He pressed a hand to his diaphragm, took a deep breath, and let it out with a grin. “You’re a miracle worker.”

  I leaned against the doorjamb. I needed to focus on Gloria, but I couldn’t quite get there while this demented life force was staring at me like he wanted to laugh at me and devour me at the same time. “Anytime, Mr. Reardon. Really.”

  Fenn grinned. “I’ll be back in an hour with your town car.”

  I snorted. “Thought you weren’t a livery driver.”

  “We can all learn to enjoy new things, can’t we?” He gave me a jaunty salute and Gloria a bright smile before strolling away.

  “That boy,” Gloria said fondly. “Doesn’t half know his worth.”

  I grinned. I was pretty sure I did. And I was gonna enjoy every minute I got to spend with him.

  Fenn was right. My plan for the day hadn’t looked a damn thing like this either… But I was getting really comfortable with going off plan.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Fenn

  “You really wanna do this?” I demanded, pulling Mason against my chest the second he cleared the walkway to the Mary Anna. The sun brought his brown hair to life, teasing out glints of red and gold as he grinned up at me.

  “I really, definitely wanna do th
is. Why wouldn’t I?” He pressed his free hand to my T-shirt, pushing back just far enough that he could look up at me.

  I rolled my eyes. “Because you already know all about the treasure, and I could think of a hundred things more fun than spending your day off on this boat?”

  “I can’t! Not when you are on the boat.” He blushed, like he couldn’t believe the shit that came out of his mouth, but he didn’t take it back.

  Oh, man. That blush. That little smile. The sweet shit he said. Fucking temptation.

  If you’d told me three weeks ago the lengths I would go to for those things, I would not have believed you. I would not have wanted to believe you.

  But here we were, three weeks into this fling of ours—three weeks of Mason kissing me goodbye in the Charger when I dropped him off for work, Mason sitting beside me at the town meetings about the Extravaganza, and Mason going bright red when Lety called me Mason’s novio like he knew the word meant boyfriend, but not correcting her. Three weeks of nights where I’d brought my tablet with its hot spot to his room so we could “watch movies,” but mostly just so I could lie on his bed, watch him putter around his room, put things away just so, hang up his clothes, and brush his teeth, before giving me a big smile and climbing into bed beside me like I was the reward for his work. Three weeks where my sandals had gotten their own spot near his door, and where he’d bought me coffee in exchange for me washing his clothes, since he hated the dark, tomb-like laundry room on the first floor. Three weeks where we’d missed almost every episode of whatever-the-fuck British period drama Mason had chosen for us to watch, because we were too busy making out or trading blow jobs.

  And now I got why Big Rafe kept sinking money into finding treasures, and why my own dad had never given up the bottle for long. If you had this happiness once, what wouldn’t you do to keep it? What lies wouldn’t you tell yourself? What risks wouldn’t you take?

  “Besides,” Mason continued, leaning back against the boat’s rail, “I don’t know all about the treasure. I know the bits and pieces you told me when we were in Rafe’s office, and I know a little from spending a day at Wynott’s Books last weekend, but I would not say I have a comprehensive picture. So I’m gonna play tourist and sit there with all the blue-haired ladies—” He waved a hand toward the bench seats in the rear of the boat. “—and ask the handsome tour guide lots of questions.” He wiggled his eyebrows.