by Lindsey Hart
“Should have booked for two minutes. I’m ready to get off.”
“No! You haven’t even tried them yet. Come on. Follow me. Actually, you lead. I’ll follow you or drive beside you. You’ll get comfortable enough to give it some gas. I promise.”
Steph nods in a defeated sort of way, and I feel bad for forcing this on her. I didn’t think I actually was. Forcing it, I mean. I thought she wanted to give it a try. I thought it would be fun. I really did want to make up for the pretty shitty trip it’s been so far, even if I don’t feel like it’s been shitty. I think this might be the best trip I’ve ever been on, all the mishaps included.
And I’ve been on some pretty good trips in the past to some pretty cool places.
Steph suddenly takes off, so I quit thinking about that and chase after her. As I predicted, within a few minutes, she’s clearly having fun. She’s jumping waves, going through her own wake, and even spinning a few, not so tight circles. Her hair comes free and streaks out behind her, and she lets out little excited screams and shouts of enjoyment.
We chase each other like that for a long time, spinning around, jumping each other’s wake, just letting go, and racing across the lake, though not racing each other. We just race into the wind and sun. By the time our two hours are up, we’re both exhausted from hanging on but exhilarated too.
Steph’s face is flushed, and her hair is totally knotted from the wind. Her eyes are glistening, and she has on the hugest smile that I think I’ve ever seen. She gets back on the dock after I tie up my jet ski and help her tie hers. She unbuckles and unzips her lifejacket, looks at me, and laughs.
“Okay, that was pretty fun. I have to admit I had a good time.”
“Good. I knew you would.”
“I’ve never done anything like that before. And nothing bad happened. It was just…it was really good. I…thank you. Thank you for suggesting it and for getting my butt in gear. It was scary at first, but you were right. They aren’t hard to drive, and they’re actually a lot of fun.”
There’s this crazy part of me that wants to buy Steph her own jet ski just to see her smile like that. To hear those cries of startled and unexpected joy, and to see her skin glow and her eyes shine like that. I imagine a little cabin on some lake somewhere. Our cabin. Our lake. As we take our own jet skis out, relax on the beach, and lie out on our lawn at night, staring up at the stars. Campfires. And not getting sunburned.
I take Steph’s lifejacket and give my head a shake.
A cabin? Who am I kidding? We’re both city people. And there’s the whole bit about us never being together that I’m clearly forgetting.
Lines, Adam. There are lines, remember?
Unfortunately, I do, so I shake off that crazy notion and the unexpected longing it produces, and suggest we go over to the public dock and just sit. Steph agrees, and just like that, the morning of our second last day is over, with everything going pretty well this time around.
CHAPTER 15
Stephanie
Somehow, we survived an entire day without any mishap. No accidents, no blood. I’d call that a success.
Actually, I’d call today one of the best days of my life. It was that fun. And while camping, out of the city, out of my comfort zone, out of my element, and out of my skill set. Imagine that.
After jet-skiing, we sat on the public dock and put our feet in the water to keep cool since the sun was unmerciful, as usual. These little minnows swam up and actually nibbled my toes. At first, it shocked and scared me a little, but then it tickled, and I got used to it. That’s me. Stephanie. Letting fish eat her toes.
We didn’t say much as we sat there. It was a comfortable silence, and I realized how few people I’d be able to do that with, without it ending up being weird.
On the way back, we stopped in at the park office to say hi to George. And we ended up spending over an hour there listening to more of his camp stories.
After that, we went back to the cabin to have something to eat, a few smokies that I fried up on the stove. The cabin doesn’t have a TV, so after dinner, we played a couple of games of cards before Adam decided on a shower. I was game for that. Apart, of course. I’d go after him. The day was long, hot, sticky, and wet. A cool shower and bed with a book sounded just about right.
At the time.
Okay, so that’s not what I really wanted to be doing, but I wasn’t going to act on what I really wanted.
But I do have a problem.
Right now, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, my legs pressed together, debating the merits of wandering outside and peeing behind the cabin. I really have to go, and Adam just got into the shower. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that before. There aren’t any public bathrooms close by because the cabins all have their own. I know I wouldn’t make it if I walked, and since it’s late, almost everyone is in their cabins. I know someone would see me if I tried to find a bush or a tree.
Jesus, if I walked outside and peed on the grass behind the cabin and prayed no one saw me do it, I’d probably end up peeing all over myself. I’m not good at peeing outdoors. Seriously not good.
Every time I have had to do it, I peed on myself. So, I know it would happen. I just know it.
I count to ten. Then I go backward. Count to twenty. Count back down. I think I’m starting to see double; I have to pee so bad. I can’t focus on anything other than the pain in my bladder. It’s spreading to my stomach, causing flank pain. No matter how hard I twist my legs or press them together, I know it’s only a matter of seconds before something embarrassing happens, such as peeing my pants.
Which I really do not want to do on the bed.
I have to admit defeat when grinding my teeth isn’t enough to stave off the pain. I jump up and run to the bathroom and pound shamelessly on the closed door.
“Adam? I, uh, I really have to use the bathroom.” I thought I had a few of the most embarrassing moments of my life earlier on this trip, but this is the worst of it all. There is nothing more humiliating than this moment.
“Number one or number two?” Adam’s voice drifts through the closed door. The shower doesn’t stop.
Argh! He can’t be serious! “I’m not telling you that!”
“So it’s number two. Hold on. I’ll get out.”
Was he going to suggest I pee while he was in the shower? I mean, there’s a curtain hiding him, but I know it would cause some serious performance anxiety. I have never actually peed in the same room with anyone before in any of the relationships I’ve been in. That screams old married couple, and I guess I’ve never actually gotten to that stage.
I don’t correct him. I do bend my knees in toward each other and resist the urge to grab myself and do a pee-pee dance like a four-year-old kid, though. But really, I’m like seconds away from actually doing it.
The shower shuts off, and a few seconds later, the door opens. Adam is standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist, and holy shit, the towel barely wraps around his waist. He has it knotted low on his hips. There’s this V-thing that is all muscular, and oh, his delicious abs. I’ve seen him without a shirt a few times during this trip, but this slays me. He’s wet, his hair is slicked down, and there are water droplets everywhere. On his face, his neck, his shoulders, his deliciously carved abs, and best of all, on that even more delicious V that points the way to what I’m sure would be an extremely delightful time. There’s a swirl of dark hair around his naval. It’s primal and raw, and it makes me feel primal and raw. So primal and raw that I instantly forget I have to pee, and instead, I focus on trying to force some liquid down my incredibly dry throat.
Thank god I’m wearing a bra, a good bra—not one of those flimsy lace deals. At least it contains my furiously perky nipples from poking a hole through my tank top.
“Okay, it’s all yours.” Adam breezes past me.
“Were you done?” I call after him.
He has his bag by the couch since that’s his makeshift bedroom. He was n
ice enough not to ask me to flip him or rock paper scissor him for the bed, and I don’t turn around because I’m scared I’ll see the towel whip off as he finds his clothes. Not that he would ever do that. No, he would never do that. He’s way too proper and thoughtful to expose his rock-hard bottom to me. Or anything else. He doesn’t know about the time by the pool. Oh, sweet hot dogs and mustard, that time by the pool.
“No, but I’ll give it a few minutes. Let it air out.”
“Jesus,” I mutter. I’m so mortified by the fact that Adam thinks I’m going to poop in here, and he’ll have to enter back into a smelly bathroom.
I hurry into the bathroom, have the best pee of my life before my kidneys explode, wash up, and creep out. I realize I have to fess up when Adam turns around.
“That was fast.”
God, his chest. His abs. All that water I’d like to lick away. Dark, hard nipples. Places I’d like to taste. So much real estate for my tongue. So much room to make bad decisions. So. So. Tempting.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I just…I really had to pee. I was just too embarrassed to do it with you in there.”
“That’s okay. So, I can go back in? I actually left shampoo in my hair.”
“It’s all yours.”
I leave the door open and intend to walk away. Adam obviously intends to walk toward it and continue the shower that I interrupted with my call of nature. Except he takes a step, then another. I don’t move because the towel…there’s something wrong with the towel. It looks loose, dangerously loose. I part my lips to say something, to tell him I think the knot is working its way undone. I know I should spin around, cover my eyes, make a break for it, and let him get to the bathroom, but the knot. That stupid, evil knot thwarts both of us.
Adam takes another step, and the knot comes undone. That knot is the devil. The very DEVIL. The towel ruffles open, the edges creased from the knot. It holds for a few seconds, trying to defy gravity before it falls away completely.
We both freeze.
Neither of us knows what to do.
Because holy shit, the towel is in a heap on the floor, and Adam is standing naked in front of me. How is this not a recipe for extremely bad decisions? Boundaries? Lines? What the heck was I saying about those? Boundaries can be crossed, and lines can be blurred, I think. Actually, I don’t think. That’s the problem. I can’t think.
Because Adam Fino, my god of a boss who I have never wanted because I thought there was no chance he’d ever want me…
My boss who I never wanted because I thought he was never going to be over his ex-wife…
My boss who I should not want because I did not want to be his rebound…
My boss, who is my boss, who is totally wrong for me...
The opposite of relationship material…Mr. Perfectly Wrong.
My boss who…who… What the heck am I even saying? I don’t remember.
Because Mr. Perfectly Scrumptious with the Greek God Physique is. Totally. And. Utterly. Naked. Right in front of me.
CHAPTER 16
Adam
Holy freaking shit. Talk about a wardrobe malfunction.
There’s another malfunction. Steph’s eyes, of course, go straight down to below my waist. She stares at me, the heat of her gaze both scalding and exciting me. I mean, my dick has an ego all of his own, and the fact that Steph can’t tear her eyes away and makes a little sound, a sort of gasp, definitely strokes it. Strokes it like she would have with her hand, her fingers feathering over the shaft and up to the tip. That thought is all it takes to send the fucker into a straight tailspin. Straight, as in hard, as in, very erect.
Steph gasps again, and she reacts before I do. I’m still frozen. She strides forward and snatches the towel off the floor. She’s close now. Just a few inches away. She doesn’t thrust the towel at me. Instead, she hugs it to her chest. Her face slowly inches up, and she looks at me.
Her lids are heavy, her eyes all pupils. She wants me. She wants this—all of me. No one has ever looked at me this way before. Like she already knows we’ll fit before we’ve even tried it. I told her I never really felt like I belonged anywhere, but the thing is, I feel like I belong with her.
Which is maybe why I don’t reach for the towel. The absurd emotion that tells me to obliterate and erase lines. That tells me this is the right thing to do, even if it’s not, for a thousand reasons that I should be able to recall but suddenly can’t.
Because Steph is tilting her chin, and her lips are parting. Her eyes fixated on my mouth. Sparks sizzle through my bloodstream.
My hands move—both of them. I lift them up. Higher. Not for the towel. They don’t even brush it. Instead, they cup Steph’s jaw. My fingers spread over her cheeks, smoothing out a pattern over her left one. Her skin is softer than flower petals. Softer than water. Finer than air. Touching her is like caressing warm porcelain—real, vibrant, alive.
Her lips part, and she gasps again, just the tiniest sound. Her lips part even further. I have to taste her. I know her. She’s forward, direct, and absolutely no bullshit. If she didn’t want to do this, she’d shove the towel in my chest or kick me in the balls. She’d tell me to get the heck back in the shower, wash the shampoo out of my hair, and the crud out of my mind. She’d tell me it was impossible.
But Steph, who always has something to say, is totally silent.
I’ve been guarding myself for a long time. I thought I was trying to prove something, prove I wasn’t something and was something else, but now I know I was really trying to keep watch over a heart that I could never fully turn to stone. I didn’t want this. I didn’t think I wanted this with another person. I didn’t want to be vulnerable again, but it happened. It’s happening.
Steph’s hands flutter over my shoulders. Her fingers trace the line of muscle there, sweeping over my bicep, exploring me, learning me. She never looks away, and we stare at each other. So close. And I know this isn’t about anything for her other than me. She’s always looked at me like I’m a person, not a way to get something—more and more and more. She’s always looked at me like I actually matter.
She tilts her face just a little and leans in. I can’t stop.
I lean in too and brush my lips over her perfect, petal-soft, lush mouth. She gasps again. I inhale her breath and drink in her sweet scent, beautiful even after a day in the hot sun. I run my tongue over her bottom lip, tasting her, tasting all that sweetness. The fingers of her one hand curl into my shoulder, not painfully. No nails. It’s like she’s holding on, not grasping but steadying.
I know we need to think about this, to think about all the consequences, but my gray matter brain is refusing to function, and the D-brain is taking over.
“Adam,” Steph whimpers against my lips.
It drives me insane—the sound of her saying my name like that with so much need, so much meaning, and so much emotion. Her lips part, and this time, when I brush mine over hers, she responds, furiously. She opens up to me and tilts her chin. She’s eager, on fire. Her tongue sweeps over my lips but darts back into her mouth. She whimpers into my mouth and arches into me. She stands on her tiptoes and wraps her arms around my neck.
The towel is long gone. It must have fallen from her hands a long time ago, and I only realized it now. She pulls me closer, her hands firm but gentle, and I cup her face the same way. Longing. There is so much longing in the kiss. The kiss that’s so powerful, so full of fire, so warm, it could power a household for an entire year. If kiss-generated electricity was a thing, that is.
Socks.
Socks make sense to me. I know all about socks. Hundreds of different kinds of socks. Socks for every day of the year. For every activity imaginable and for every age. Socks are what I do. They’re a part of me in so many ways.
Her kisses and touch are like socks. Warm, comforting. A barrier between us and the rest of the world. Protective, beautiful, and soothing.
Her body is also like socks—a perfect fit. Just right. Like she was designed just for me.<
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The kiss changes. It deepens and becomes even more frantic and furious, peppered with whimpers and groans though I’m not sure which ones are coming from me and which ones are Steph’s. I kiss her like I’ve been waiting to do this for years, and maybe I have.
I know all about Steph. I know what she does for me, and I truly appreciate her. I just never realized I might feel something for her. That I might have felt something for her for a long time. I never thought that with her kindness, her words, and her care, she was the one who healed me, who slowly nurtured me back into living, who picked up the terribly shattered pieces of my life and glued them all neatly back into place.
I just didn’t realize she was doing that. That while she was making sure my house was cleaned, and I had fresh clothes to wear, good food to eat, all my meetings booked, my travel handled, all of it, she was actually working on something else entirely—my heart.
Steph’s kisses become more and more frantic, and suddenly, we’re moving. I’m moving us. I’m backing us up, down the hall, and toward the bedroom. She’s coming with me, clawing at her clothes, undoing buttons and zippers.
When we reach the bedroom, my hands join hers and send her tank top flying. She rips her shorts off, and I unhook her bra. It’s dark in here, too dark. I wish it were lighter because I’d like to see all of her and appreciate every single bit. Her panties are still on, and I’m not sure how far she wants to take things, so I drop my head to one pert breast and suckle her nipple into my mouth, keeping my hands at her hips instead of touching her lower like I want to.
She whimpers and arches her chest, thrusting her nipple into my mouth. When my tongue rolls over the pert bud, she rocks against me, her hips thrusting straight into my aching dick. I swear I see stars—just as many stars as when I hit my head on the rock.
“Adam,” she moans. Her hands rake through my hair, tugging my head up. “Touch me. Touch me everywhere.”