by Julia Kent
“No.”
A tiny piece of his heart snapped off and floated into his bloodstream, like a branch of driftwood without aim, at the look on her face. He eased himself onto the log, careful not to dump her shoes in the stream, and sat next to her, the soles of his feet on the wood, his knees up as he leaned back on his hands.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll never be your wife.”
The direct answer felt like a slap, like an angry welt across his soul.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it...do you want...do you want to marry me?”
“With all my heart! But I want to marry Mike, too. And we can’t. Josie gets to actually marry Alex at the campground in a few days, and I’ll walk down the aisle, too. Wear a wedding dress. Carry a bouquet. We’ll do all the same things on the same day and everything she does will be genuine and I’m just playing pretend. By the end of the day I’ll be as married to you and Mike as Jillian is to her Barbie dolls when she plays bride!”
“Double ouch,” he said, taking a deep breath, the force of her despair catching him off guard. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of all the things she was saying. He had. It was that he didn’t know she felt the same way.
And with such vehemence.
“I love you both so much. And two years ago, this wedding seemed like the perfect idea. Invite a ton of friends and family, do a double wedding with Josie and Alex. Have it at a great outdoor location. Then we had the twins, and we just spent the last year trying to remember how to sleep again, and I just...” Her words broke up like that piece of his heart.
His blood pounded in his ears, rushing like the stream did during the spring thaw.
“Do you want to cancel the wedding?” He struggled to come up with a way to fix her pain.
“What? NO!” Laura stood abruptly, shaking the log and nearly pitching him into the water. She began to pace, her balance remarkable, toes prehensile, clinging to the wood.
“Then what? What can I do?” he asked helplessly.
“You don’t have to do anything! Just listen.”
“That’s worse than doing nothing.”
She gave him a look so devoid of reason he burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry Laura. I just...I want to solve your problem.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Triple ouch.” His brain felt like hot cotton candy, sticky and fuzzy. He could feel her emotional pain and had no viable options. He couldn’t change the law. Couldn’t change society.
They had to live around it, bending and twisting to make their life fit in whatever way they could.
“I know.” She spoke quickly, as if trying to avoid her own feelings. Carefully balanced, she walked off the log and stood on the bare-dirt shore, worrying a tree root with the tip of her toes. “I’m being silly. I can’t change it. Just have to feel it, then let it go.”
She was right. That was all any of the three of them could do.
“You know,” he said, retrieving her shoes, walking to her, pulling Laura’s sweet, soft warmth against his chest as he dropped the sandals, “If I could give you what you want, I would.”
“You’ve given me everything I could ever want, Dylan.” He wasn’t expecting the kiss she gave him, a warm, sweet mesh of lips and tongue that engulfed him in seconds, turning from affection to passion so fast that before he knew it, he had her backed up against a tree, hands on her creamy inner thighs, pulling her panties down as her hands stripped his shorts down, unleashing him.
He sank into the wet, warm love of her body, their eyes locked as he drove home, her teeth biting into his lip as they kissed, his cotton-candy mind clearing with the hoarse cry from his throat that accompanied a climax that slammed into him as if shoved from the sheer force of love that made him want her so badly.
It was over in seconds.
The best seconds he’d had in a long time.
“What the hell was that?” she murmured against his raw shoulder, her voice woozy and low. She sighed, the rush of breath warm against his back, his hips pinning her against the thick, scarred bark of an old tree. They were on private land, yet so public.
So bold.
“That was exactly what we both needed,” he said, hearing the shake in his voice. Except his words were a lie.
He hadn’t needed that.
He’d craved it.
And now he wanted more.
As he pulled out of Laura, his eyes ate her up, taking in the flushed cheeks, her mussed hair, the slightly dazed look of a woman well fucked. They hadn’t had a quickie like this—so unplanned, so forbidden—in, well...
Not in ever.
“Do you remember our first date?” she asked, as if reading his mind. “The alley? After we ate dinner? We almost had sex right there, up against that brick wall.”
“Remember it?” he asked in a voice thick with sex. “I wish we had. God, I wanted you so much. I knew the second I laid eyes on you that you were mine. Ours.”
Her throat tremored as she swallowed, the delicate line of her neck screaming for a kiss. A suck. His mark, to show the world she was his.
Maybe that’s what this massive thunderstorm of sexual need was all about. If society wouldn’t let them make what their hearts knew to be true legally, then he needed to imprint his scent on her. Claim her. Make her his.
And Mike needed to do the same, too.
It was almost feral. So alpha, so animalistic that as he tucked himself back in his shorts he realized he was hardening again. The thrill of heated desire poured through his muscles, making them tense and loose at the same time, a strange paradox that only Laura could trigger.
“Damn it,” he said, pursing his lips and blowing out a frustrated breath.
“What?” When she brushed her long, blonde waves away from her face like that, all he could think about was having Laura naked beneath him, writhing in ecstasy with the blue sky above them, a field of wildflowers their only bed.
And...fuck.
He was hard as a rock.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—”
Her kiss was an unexpected blow, a strike of pure power, her tongue plundering his like she was taking him prisoner and he was doomed. Doomed by the flesh, by the ritual of lust between them that needed no prelude.
Mine, she was screaming with teeth that nipped and lips that would be raw and red tomorrow.
Mine.
He picked her up and set her down on the bare ground, reaching between them with fast fingers to unleash what had just been inside her.
“Again,” she begged.
“I came out here to comfort you.”
“Then do it, damn it. Comfort me like this.” Her hip shifted and one hand guided him in, her back arching up as he pulled her neckline down, suckling one gorgeous, rose nipple into his mouth, her groan all the encouragement he needed. Wild. She was so wild, running on pure impulse, and as his thrusts drove harder and deeper she begged for more.
More.
“You,” he said, his breath coming so fast as he fell, fell deeper and deeper into the hot abyss that was their core, “are everything to me. Everything. This—I—oh, God, Laura,” he rasped as his climax slammed him up and high, driving into her with a pounding that felt ungentlemanly until she matched his rhythm, desperate for it too, needing the force of their almost violent coupling to take them to a place where society didn’t matter.
Didn’t matter at all.
The sound of his name from her mouth made him shudder, pouring more of himself into the same body that had borne him his children, the same ripe, round ass that drove him mad as it walked past him a thousand times a day during the daily grind of domestic life.
Out here, she was wild and free, whispering, “Dylan, Dylan, Dylan,” over and over like she was etching it into her throat, turning his name into something that hummed from her vocal cords, carved deep into her subconscious, claimed by him.
As she panted,
body grabbed by short shivers that meant her nerves were returning to baseline, she ran her hands along his arms, curving and twisting like a cartographer mapping new land.
Except his body was the Old World in Laura’s hands.
Collapsing against each other, the tree standing there as silent witness to their passion, they both began to laugh, a sultry sound of sexual conspiracy. Whatever the hell that just was, Dylan wanted more of it. Every day. Every week.
Just...more.
Her long sigh as her hands groped for her panties, strewn across a pile of green leaves that he eyed carefully, made him feel the same longing, too.
“Not poison ivy?” she asked, her voice lifting up at the end in a question.
She read his mind. “No, it’s not.” Earlier in the spring, Jilly had run like a free little fairy through a new portion of the woods and learned a hard New England greenery lesson: the little leaves-of-three carried a nasty, itchy oil that meant pure torture for a few weeks. If Laura’s panties had fallen on poison ivy, well...
“That’s the last place I want a rash,” Laura said with a laugh, standing and pulling her skirt up, balancing against the tree with one hand to dress herself.
He watched her from the ground, ignoring the ache of one thigh, smiling at the strange domesticity of their conversation. For a few more minutes they could live in this passion bubble, right? Just the two of them. No kids, no Mike, no wedding plans, no calls from Josie, no worries about Laura’s business, no teething toddlers and—
“I forget, you know,” she said as she sat on the ground next to him, resting her leg against his chest. He sat up, and she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder.
“Forget what?”
“To be Laura.”
“You’re always Laura.”
“You know what I mean.”
He did. Their days were filled with being Mama and Daddy and Papa. With Mike running the ski resort, Dylan managing charities, and Laura working on the dating service that never seemed to gain enough traction—but plenty of criticism—to do what she’d hoped for people like the three of them.
“You can be Laura whenever you want.”
She snorted. A part of him wanted to laugh with her, but another part angered. Not at her, but at the notion that she felt their life did this to her. Suppressed her. Made her unable to be.
Because if being Laura meant wild abandon like this, then he and Mike needed far, far more Laura and far, far less Mama in their lives.
“What was it someone once said? The days are long but the years are short?” Laura murmured against his shoulder.
“How about the nights are short because nobody ever gets any sleep.”
She laughed, the sound like the answer to every problem Dylan had ever experienced, as if her giggles alone could solve everything. If he could make Laura laugh like that once a day, he thought, he’d consider his time on earth well spent.
They walked quietly, hand in hand, back to the house. He felt strangely neutral, as if the wild sex had reset him somehow. Was this what it felt like to be Mike? Zen might not be the right word to describe Dylan’s mood, but it was close. He was in balance. At peace.
Calm.
Grateful.
The walk up the steps to the house felt like he was climbing a mountain, his body perfectly drained by the time they reached the cabin. At home, he knew, Mike would expect him and Laura to help out; they’d left him alone for more than an hour, and when you were the lone adult in charge of three toddlers, time multiplied by four.
Parenting math.
Laura turned and looked over her shoulder as she opened the front door, flashing him a dazzling grin that made him hard again. What the hell was going on?
The sounds of happy children playing in the background tickled his ears. Jillian was humming some Disney song to herself while she played with a set of dolls. Adam banged on the back of a pot with a wooden spoon. Aaron stacked blocks in the corner, then kicked them over. All three looked up the second Laura walked into the living room, and Aaron lifted his fat little hands to her, begging to be picked up.
Laura complied, then shot Dylan a look so smolderingly hot he wondered if they could get away with a quickie in the bathroom.
Aaron yawned. Adam paused his drumming and yawned, too.
Laura scooped them up, one twin on each hip, a look she called her newest fashion.
“I’ll lay down with the boys for their nap. I could use a little rest.” She gave Dylan a wink.
Dazed, he wandered into the kitchen to find Mike stirring something on the stove.
“You take care of Laura?” Mike asked, his voice casual and pleasant.
Dylan was dumbstruck. Frozen in place, he could only blink. Each time his eyelids snapped shut he tasted Laura, heard her breath rasp against his ear, lived their passion one snapshot at a time. He hesitated for so long that Mike paused, too, tilting his head like he had a question to ask.
Finally, Dylan did the only thing that made sense. He told the truth.
“Um, yeah.” He took in a deep breath, eyebrows raised, and ran a firm hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “I sure did.”
Chapter Seven
Jeremy
Weddings gave him the willies.
Ceremony. Standards. Rituals and all sorts of protocols that the rest of the world seemed to know, but Jeremy didn’t. Stand here. Wear this. Hold that. Say the following. He’d never been in an actual wedding, thank God. Without any brothers or sisters, and born to his parents so late in life that his aunts and uncles were all married off and his parents had died before he’d formed close relationships with cousins—all much older—he’d only had to attend the weddings of a handful of high school and college friends.
This wedding at the campground carried a kind of dread.
For the past few years, he and Mike and Lydia had lived either at the campground or in various places around the world, their little threesome a haven from, well...pretty much everything. The rest of the world went on, and they lived their life together however they wanted. Lydia had been stubborn, at first, refusing to accept money from him or Mike. She had worked for her parents for the first year they’d lived here, while the house her father gave her was being built.
The house was a beauty, he had to admit. Nicer than any of the others. His and Mike’s money had allowed them to do upgrades, and having an off-the-grid energy system had softened even old Pete when it came to letting him and Mike foot the bill.
Stubborn, these Charles folks. Time had been the best tool for getting them to accept the only resource Mike and Jeremy really had in this new life: money.
Escape Shores Campground was the epitome of a family business, and Jeremy had spent the first year living there just marveling at how so many people could come together to form a cohesive unit. There were arguments and fights. Snits and hurt feelings. Tempers and accusations. But when push came to shove, all of the family members who worked there came together to make sure the customers got what they wanted:
A true escape.
Maybe that’s why he and Mike had folded on the issue of where to live so quickly. Lydia had been adamant that they spend one year here.
At the end of that year, he understood.
“Honey!” Lydia called out. “Can you help with this box of lobster lollipops?”
Sentences you never, ever imagined directed at you.
“Sure,” he replied, ambling over to where a truck was unloading boxes and even pallets. Pallets of what looked like chairs.
“What’s that?” he asked as he jutted his chin toward the chairs, picking up the box that was, indeed, marked “Lobster Lollipops: Gross 144.”
Right. Gross.
“Mom and Dad are so inundated with requests for big weddings now that enough people are hearing about this one that they decided to buy a hundred more chairs.”
“Where are they going to store them?” Space was at a premium these days.
“We’re building a new st
orage structure,” Adam replied cheerfully, coming from behind and picking up yet another box of lollipops. What the hell were these wedding people doing with nearly three hundred lobster-shaped lollipops?
He was about to open his mouth and ask that when Adam shouted to Lydia, “We need to schedule the extra security—can you call that in?”
“Sure!” she shouted back, disappearing behind one of the delivery trucks.
“Security?” Jeremy and Adam walked at a swifter pace than he would have chosen. Adam looked just like Sandy, but with a masculine, military air about him. He was in the National Guard, but hadn’t served in combat. Not yet.
Not ever, everyone hoped. After losing one sibling, Luke, to war, Lydia and her siblings couldn’t handle losing another.
“The billionaires and their bride have some mild threats that require increased security,” Adam explained.
Jeremy came to a dead halt. “The billionaires and their bride? That’s how you refer to them?”
“How else am I supposed to refer to them?”
“How about by name. They have names, right?”
Adam chuckled. “Fine, Laura, Mike and Dylan. Better?” His eyes had that same prankster look in them that Miles had.
The comparison wasn’t a compliment.
“Where’s Mike?” Jeremy asked, looking back at the enormous amount of stuff that needed to be unloaded.
“Which Mike?”
“What do you mean, which Mike?”
Adam raised his eyebrows.
Jeremy got it.
“Oh. Right.”
“Two Mikes. Both billionaires.”
“Technically, Mike’s still not one.”
“Fuck you, Jeremy,” said a familiar voice from behind them. “You constantly point that out, don’t you? It’s like a dick-waving contest, only with bank accounts.”
Adam didn’t even try to hide his grin, brown eyes widening, then narrowing. Something in the quirk of Adam’s mouth resembled his brother, Miles. He might as well drop the box of lobster lollipops and grab a bowl of popcorn.
“I am not constantly bringing it up. We were just trying to distinguish you from Mike the billionaire who is getting married here.”