Audrey’s Inn

by Aycart, Elle

  “Are you kidding me? We’d loved to have them.” An event like that would be huge for the inn.

  Then she paused. “Wait. Whose idea was it?”

  Kyra laughed, pointing with her gaze at the pickup. “We all loved it though.”

  Yeah, the OGs again. Having such high-profile guests was going to be dangerous, but Audrey could steer clear of the cameras. It should be fine. Man, her brother would so freak out. He loved Amantis. For a split second she had the impulse to call him and tell him about the party. Invite him. No, no, no. Too dangerous for him. It was better if he didn’t know where she was—just in case.

  “By the way, Rach, have you guys decided on a date for the wedding?” Kyra asked.

  “Not yet. We’re not in a hurry. Just enjoying ourselves at the moment. What about you?” Rachel glanced at Audrey. “You and Con.”

  “We are… hmm…” Difficult to explain? “Fine,” she said at last. “We’re fine. So, where are we going?”

  “No clue,” Rachel confessed, sighing loudly. “You, Kyra?”

  “No clue either.”

  So they were as much in the dark as Audrey was. But no one seemed overly worried.

  Until they saw the OGs park in front of some sort of sports center. Rachel cursed, following suit.

  Audrey looked up at the name of the company, which didn’t mean anything to her.

  “Are you sure I can’t talk you out of this?” Rachel begged the OGs the second they reached them.

  “Con said no to parachuting,” Greta answered. “This is the closest alternative we could find.”

  At Audrey’s and Kyra’s frowns of confusion, Rachel said, “This is a free-fall wind tunnel.”

  “A what?” Audrey asked. Then she noticed the huge-ass transparent, vertical tunnel with people inside, their arms and legs spread wide, floating.

  “Come on,” Greta said. “The instructor is waiting.”

  “That’s what you’re going to do?” Audrey asked, pointing at the floating people. Con was going to freak.

  “No, of course not. That’s what we are going to do,” Greta replied, patting Audrey’s hand and then pushing her from behind.

  * * *

  Connor was almost finished painting the door when he heard the beep of an incoming message. Not used to being glued to his cell at all times, it took a while for him to figure out where he’d left the device, and by the time he spotted it, there’d been a couple of beeps. Then he got a call. He glanced at the name on the screen: Mike.

  “Did you see the picture the OGs have uploaded to Alden’s FB page?” came from the other end of the line before Con could even open his mouth.

  “No. What pic?” Rachel had told him that she was on OG watch and that she was taking Audrey along for a girls’ afternoon out, so he hadn’t thought much more about it. “Today was bingo, no?”

  “Ha! Bingo my ass. Check the pic.”

  “Wait a sec.” Connor opened Facebook and saw it right away. The OGs, plus Rachel, Kyra, and Audrey—Audrey’s face was half-covered by her hand—were wearing jumpsuits, helmets, and aviator glasses, and they were all flashing the thumbs up. They were posing in front of something that looked like a sky-diving simulator, with people floating in the background. “What the fuck?”

  “My words exactly. Now that the court has accepted the shrink’s evaluation and the competency hearing has been dismissed, they’re back to normal. I checked the tracking app, and they’re at the diner now. Adrian and I are on our way.”

  “See you there,” Con said, terminating the call and hurrying to clean up. There were no pics of them in the ER. If they really were at the diner, all must have ended well. That wasn’t the reason why he was leaving in a rush.

  He missed Audrey. He’d spoken about her in group therapy today, about his fears of hurting her and about their unorthodox solution. He’d been surprised to hear many others had similar issues, which got him thinking that maybe it was fear of intimacy itself that scared him. Of being totally exposed. Of lowering his defenses and giving himself to someone, as broken and as vulnerable as he was.

  Either way, he’d begun to think that he feared being without her more. Now that was a terrifying idea. He hadn’t known the chick for that long, and look at him, running to her at every chance he got. He should put distance between them, he knew. Yet there was no real executive power behind that thought; he couldn’t refrain from seeking her out again and again.

  He made it to Main Street in time to catch up to Mike and Adrian, who were about to barge into the diner, where the girls were obliviously eating ice cream.

  “So there you are,” Adrian said loudly.

  “Oops.” Wilma cringed. “I think we forgot the tracking app in our cell phones.”

  Con spotted Audrey right away, smiling and waving at him. Her bright blue eyes shone, her dark hair framing her cute face. There was a free chair by her side.

  “So now you’re dragging innocent bystanders into your shenanigans?” Mike walked to Kyra and kissed her. Adrian sat by Rachel, and Con slid into the empty chair near Audrey, discreetly grabbing her hand.

  “Please, we did nothing illegal.” Greta rolled her eyes while Mike grabbed a chair and sat between his wife and Rebecca. “Or hazardous. We wanted to play killer poker. We learned it at the Eternal Sun Resort in Florida. Everyone puts one of their pills on the table, and the loser has to take them all. But these youngsters—” she pointed at Kyra, Rachel, and Audrey “—don’t carry their own stashes of pills. Killer poker ain’t fun if you know what you’re taking.”

  Mike took a deep breath. He was about to lay into them, Con could tell, but his grandmother patted his arm. “Mike, my boy, we flew,” Rebecca said, so loudly that everyone grimaced. She must have realized it because she grimaced herself. “Ouch, sorry. I lost my earplugs in the tunnel, and now I can’t hear too well.”

  By “not too well,” she meant “not at all.”

  Mike turned to Rachel. “You were on duty. Where were you when they were flying around?”

  “Me? With them, of course. I’ve given up on trying to stop them. I’ve settled with going along and making sure no one gets injured. Don’t worry about her hearing; the instructor said in a couple of days it should go back to normal.”

  Adrian gave them a stern look, starting with his fiancée. “Don’t you remember the hot-air balloon fiasco not so long ago, ladies?”

  Audrey whispered to Con, “What fiasco?”

  Con shrugged. “Not sure.” He’d heard something, but only in passing.

  “This was a legit company,” Wilma interjected. “We checked.”

  “Was there no age limit in that damn simulator?” Adrian demanded.

  A communal snort came from the senior group. “They tried to pull that one on us, but we prevailed,” Greta stated, smirking.

  Con frowned. So did the other men. Rachel sighed. “They have fake IDs.”

  Adrian choked. Mike covered his face, his shoulders shaking. With laughter, or so Con thought.

  “And in those IDs you are…”

  “Sixty-nine, of course,” Wilma said, giving them a duh-look. “The big seven-oh is the graveyard of any kind of fun. Anyway, we were newbies, so they lowered the speed of the wind in the simulator when it was our turn. Otherwise we would have flown to the top.”

  Greta nodded. “And that was with all our saggy skin hidden inside the jumpsuits. Without them, we could have just opened our arms and we would have shot right out of the tunnel and up into the sky.” She demonstrated by spreading her arms and shaking them. Wilma followed suit. “Look at those flaps. We’re like flying squirrels. Flying squirrels,” she repeated louder for Rebecca, who caught on and also shook her spread arms.

  “Like the one from Ice Age. And about as old,” Greta added while her partners-in-crime laughed.

  Con did try to give them a lecture, but for the life of him he couldn’t keep a straight face. Not even Adrian could. He did a facepalm, and Mike laughed openly. “You’re nuts.
”

  “Did you have fun?” Con asked.

  The six vixens looked at each other and gave them a unanimous, double thumbs up.

  “I guess all’s well that ends well,” Adrian grumbled, not sounding reassured. “I’m going to have to confiscate the fake IDs.”

  “We promise not to use them in Alden,” Greta pleaded while all three old ladies clutched their purses. It looked like they weren’t giving up their IDs.

  “How did you get them? Don’t tell me XL—”

  “No, no,” Wilma hurried to explain. “He just knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.”

  Man, Adrian had brought XL and two other kids to Alden to rehabilitate them, and now the OGs were using them to become real OGs.

  “I thought you had bingo today,” Mike said, probably trying to defuse the situation.

  “We did, and we went, but we gave up,” Wilma explained. “Until Rebecca’s hearing goes back to normal, bingo is going to be tricky.”

  No shit.

  The waitress came for coffee refills and to ask if they wanted to order anything else.

  Con took advantage of the reprieve and turned to Audrey. “You had fun? Sure?”

  She smiled so wide, it was a miracle her jaw didn’t dislocate. “Yes.”

  Con smiled back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Greta caught them.

  “Good to see you came to your senses. Otherwise we would have locked you two in one of Audrey’s barns. We were already planning the logistics,” she informed them.

  Audrey frowned and opened her mouth, but Adrian was faster. “I keep thinking we got the short stick. The elevator? What were you thinking? We could have suffocated.”

  Wilma waved him off. “We had everything under control.”

  “Yeah, famous last words,” Adrian muttered under his breath.

  “Mike and Kyra got locked up in the community center,” Rachel explained to a rather confused Audrey. “We were stuck in the elevator. It’s the OGs’ way to solve couples’ issues.”

  Audrey’s eyes were as big as plates. “Stop it, guys. You’re scaring her,” Con warned them. Although he had much worse issues than the OGs, and she wasn’t running. He took her hand and kissed her on her lips. “Now, if you don’t mind, and if you’re done tempting gravity, I’m going to take my woman out for some quality time.”

  By the looks of it, they didn’t mind—not at all. They started clapping, Greta leading the way.

  “You wanted a public date, right?” he whispered to Audrey as they left the diner. Everybody at their table was still clapping and cheering. “You got it.”

  She looked giddy, holding tight to his hand, smiling so sweetly that his breath caught in his chest. Damn, she was beautiful. And pleased that a poor broken motherfucker like him was claiming her. He couldn’t figure out how he got so lucky.

  “You kissed me,” she whispered as they walked hand in hand on Main Street.

  “What?”

  “You kissed me first,” she explained, sounding awed. “You never make the first move. Except that day in the pool, which didn’t end well.”

  “I don’t?” At her vigorous shake of the head, he pondered it. She was right. “Maybe it’s time I did.”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely,” she said. But before he could kiss her, she had placed her lips on his cheek. “Best day ever.”

  “Did you enjoy flying?”

  “It was amazing. We didn’t fly higher than maybe fifteen feet, but you should had seen the pros there. They were totally skydiving. Then we went to eat. Then bingo. I’ve never been kicked out of bingo before. Heck, I haven’t been to bingo before.”

  Con stopped dead in his tracks. “Greta said you guys gave up and left.” Of their own accord. Or so he’d thought.

  “Well, after a fashion. We were strongly encouraged to leave because of the ruckus caused by Rebecca’s lack of hearing.”

  “You were kicked out,” he stated.

  “Yep,” she said, giggling. “Then we went for ice cream. Ice cream makes everything better.” She grabbed his arm with both hands and snuggled against him. “So, you said you were taking me out for some quality time. What’s your idea of quality time? I’m not really dressed for anything fancy. You feel like going to the movies?”

  God, public displays of affection came so naturally to her. “What do you think of stopping by the gym?”

  She scoffed. “Quality time means training?”

  “Under the current circumstances, yes.”

  “I’m not dressed for that either,” she complained.

  “Mike always has extra workout clothes in reception. Come on, Au. I’ll have a reward for you afterward.”

  That got her attention. “Really? What reward?”

  No clue yet. “First the work, then the fun. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  On the way, Audrey’s cell rang. “It’s the inn,” she explained, sounding a bit anxious as she took the call. After several “okays” and “fines” and one “bye,” she hung up.

  “Is there a problem?” Con asked.

  “Not really. A client has reserved the Jet Ski for tomorrow morning. He’s never used one before.”

  Connor studied her worried expression. “Do you know how a Jet Ski works?”

  “Well, I have the manual. I’ll have to read it tonight.”

  If she had problems figuring out power tools, a Jet Ski was going to be an impossible feat. Con looked at his watch. “We have some sunlight left. I’m good with manuals. I’ll browse through it, and then we can take the Jet Ski for a ride. What do you think?”

  Her sigh of relief was huge. “Great. So sorry we have to bail on the gym.”

  He chuckled. His woman was a shitty liar. “Sure, you’re heartbroken. I can tell. Come on. I have the car parked here.”

  In five minutes, they were at the inn. In ten, Audrey was changing clothes while he stood by the Jet Ski, skimming through the instructions the receptionist had given him. It all seemed pretty straightforward to him. Similar to a motorcycle, really: ignition, key, start, off switch, throttle. And the engine shut-off clipped to the driver’s waist.

  “Ready to rock,” Audrey said, buckling up her life vest. She wore shorts and a T-shirt and scrunched her nose at his jeans. “I hope you’re wearing boxers under those.”

  “It’s either boxers or commando.”

  She lifted her brows, cleared her throat. “Do I dare ask?”

  He chucked his jeans. As luck would have it, his boxers were black.

  “Spoilsport,” she mumbled. “Do you already understand how the Jet Ski works?”

  Please. He’d operated sensitive machinery under fire and deep behind enemy lines. He could handle a Jet Ski. He explained the basics while he put on the other life vest. “Do you want to go first?”

  She shook her head. “You in front. I’ll hold on to you.”

  They got on and started slow so that Audrey could get a good look at how to operate it. Soon they were flying over the lake, water splashing them, and she was cheering and laughing and having the time of her life.

  “Come on. Let’ s swap seats. You drive.” It was going to get dark soon; they didn’t have much time.

  She faltered but accepted. Con attached the shut-off clip to her waist and held on to her.

  “Relax. You’re too tense,” he instructed. “You need to let your body steer, not your arms.”

  Once she got it, she started to step on the throttle. Audrey liked speed, but she lacked experience and landed them in the water twice. At first he was scared for her, but she resurfaced sputtering water and laughing and ready to get back on the saddle.

  The sun was setting when she finally turned the engine off, and they watched the sky turn pink and orange.

  “Look.” She pointed at the sun disappearing behind the horizon. “Breathtaking.”

  “Yep.” The second most breathtaking thing he’d seen today, after her.

  But he wasn’t going to comment on that. It would s
ound too corny. She would surely laugh at him and accuse him of exaggerating, which he wasn’t. The fact that someone like her would welcome him into her life was to him as awe-inspiring as any sunset. As breathtaking and mind-boggling.

  He kissed her jaw. “You cold?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her, keeping his chest glued to her back for warmth.

  “Nah. I had so much fun. Thanks, Con.” She rested the back of her head against the crook of his neck.

  Then he did what he’d been dying to do for a long time now. He slid his hand under her shorts.

  She gasped. “What—”

  “Your reward,” he whispered into her ear.

  * * *

  Holy mother of God.

  She struggled to make her throat work while he cupped her mound. “We didn’t train. You said no reward without work.”

  “I thought you deserved an exception. Besides, you’ve been rubbing against my hard-on all the time I’ve been sitting behind you.”

  She glanced around. There was no one in sight, but still. Kinda public for sex. “People will see us,” she insisted, a bit panicky, but not moving his hand away.

  “Whoever sees us will think we’re a snuggly couple watching the sunset. And don’t think for a second I didn’t notice how you just opened your legs a bit wider.”

  Damn him, but he was right. Not only was she spreading for him unconsciously, but liquid heat was rushing down her folds. She was creaming for him and he hadn’t technically even begun.

  Before she could think of any comeback, his fingers brushed over the waistband of her bikini and dipped under it.

  “Fuck me, you pussy is bare,” he let out in a gravelly voice while caressing her mound. “I’m going to love eating you out. Watching your folds turn red and puffy from my tongue and teeth. But most of all, I’m going to love ministering to this sweet hole, creaming like crazy, pulsing, and begging to be fucked.”

  Jesus Christ, this man knew how to talk. She tried to control her breathing. Fat chance.

  Cupping her pussy proprietarily, he nuzzled her ear and then nibbled and licked down her neck. “Once I get down on my knees and spread you wide open, I will eat this sweet pussy again and again, until you’re out of your mind and dying for me.” His voice deepened, becoming more gravelly. “Then I’ll fuck you with my cock, hard and deep so that you’ll feel me at your womb. By the time I’m done, I promise your throat will be sore from screaming my name and your pussy won’t remember a time when it didn’t belong to me. I can’t wait to have you. I can’t wait to make you mine.”