Thorne Bay

by Jeanine Croft

  No matter how much my body wanted his, my head was screaming for me to slow down. To stop. And I would, I promised myself. Eventually. I just wanted to taste a little more.

  The hem of his shirt gave way to my gliding fingers. I dragged my nails up along his flanks, momentarily startled by the growl that reverberated approvingly in his chest. My fingers tentatively found their way to the front of his jeans where the sexy ‘pathway to heaven’ disappeared behind his button and zipper. Where his erection pushed almost painfully at my thigh. A strong hand instantly moved to restrain me, lifting my hands up and securing them over my head.

  Instinctively I bent my knees so his weight centered more tantalizingly between my thighs. A small moan of pleasure slipped from my lips. I clamped my thighs tightly around his hips, restive and needy, urging him closer with my calves. My head was a maelstrom of foggy lust, my back arching in some primordial tempo I was barely aware of.

  Without warning, he ripped himself off me and abruptly pushed away from the bed like a panicked animal from a fire. I sat up cautiously, straightening my clothes as I wondered what I’d done wrong to make him stop.

  “It’s late.” His voice was raw and he’d turned his head away from me. “I’d better go.” Tristan backed away slowly as though I’d just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. My cookie jar.

  “Uh-huh.” Was I agreeing? Or was that an objection? My brain was still coming out of its stupor. “I’m sorry.” Wait, what was I apologizing for?

  “You’re sorry?” Tristan regarded me keenly. Silently. But not with his usual calm. I could tell he was as affected by the kiss as I was, his breathing as unsettled as my own. But before I could work myself into a decent fluster, he brought his lips directly back to mine, kissing me again. Hard. Though it was nowhere near chaste, this one was succinct and purposeful, not meant to incite or rekindle. “That’s too bad,” he said with force, “because I’m not.” Then he gently pulled at the strands of hair that were caught at the corner of my mouth and tucked them behind my ear. “I really have to go now.” He winked, moving away again. “I did, after all, promise to be a gentleman.” He strode confidently towards the door despite the protuberance in his jeans.

  Now who’s walking like John Wayne? I smiled, placing cool fingertips over lips that were still hot and swollen from the aftermath of that stunning kiss.

  His eyes dropped knowingly to the hand I held to my tenderized lips. “Sleep tight, Evan.” He withdrew and shut the door silently behind him.

  Half an hour later, well after the growl of his truck had diminuendoed, my fizzled brain was still trying desperately to reboot itself. I lay on my back hugging my pillow fiercely, my face buried into the cotton so that the feathers could swallow up my happy squeals.

  He’d tasted of rain and forest and something else I was unable or unequipped to recognize. The scent of man and cedarwood still clung to my body. Everywhere that he’d trailed his fingertips along my body still hummed with aftershocks, like living memories. I’d never felt this way before—floating, soaring and heavy all at once. Totally blind drunk in the best and most delicious way.

  “Sleep tight, Evan.” The words he’d left me with still hung in the air because I was unable to let them slip away just yet.

  “Good night, Tristan,” I said softly, heaving an almighty sigh of contentment. But if he thought I was going to “sleep tight” tonight, he was seriously delusional. That was one goodnight kiss destined to keep me awake till dawn.

  16

  A Girl And Her Mop

  No longer was Darth Vader the harbinger of my text messages. At least, not from Tristan. His were now alerted by an excited minion voice—it was the sound of how deliriously happy I felt every time he texted me. It had been an agonizing two days since he’d left me panting in my room.

  Strangely, he had no personal social media accounts, so I couldn’t verify whether or not he really was in Juneau today. No ‘Bragbook’ check ins or cockpit selfies. I had only his word that he was doing some or other pipeline patrol flying up north. Trust in the male species was not something that came easily to me. My mother’s marriage and subsequent dating had jaded my outlook on the idea of love and monogamy. Maybe Tristan was different. Everyone else in Thorne Bay certainly thought so, if rumors could be believed.

  Just as I turned my hair dryer off, wondering what to wear for my shift tonight, the glorious sound of a laughing minion was heard over the music. I snatched my phone up to read Tristan’s text.

  “What are you wearing?”

  My eyes popped wide with excitement, my fingers blurring over the keys to type a response. “Still deciding.” But my finger hovered over the little ‘send’ arrow, hesitating. On second thought, I decided to delete that amateur response altogether. “My favorite bloomers,” I wrote instead, snickering to myself, “and my fluffy pink flannel nightgown.”

  “…” That was all I got in response.

  I beamed at the blank text he’d sent, imagining his horrified face.

  “I have no words,” he said at last. “That’s way too much sexy for me to handle.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, I’ve got a mud mask on my face.”

  “Now you’re talking dirty.”

  “Wow, punny,” I replied with a chuckle. “Are you wearing that tight little flight suit again? I can’t resist a man in uniform.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Especially when he’s wearing Wet Dog Eau de Cologne.” I added a drooling emoji and fired the text off with giddy speed.

  “Stop flirting with me!”

  I burst into laughter, my heart swelling in my chest. “You in Juneau for the night?”

  “Guess again.”

  I frowned. Did that mean…? Was he back in Thorne Bay? I waited to see if he’d write anything else, but the missing ellipses at the bottom of the screen indicated that he wasn’t typing a long response but was waiting for me to say something. Or maybe he was already busy with something else. His texts always left me wanting more. In an effort not to appear the horny teenager, I resisted the urge to reply and forced myself to set the phone patiently aside. Hopefully I, for once, would leave him unfulfilled. And eager for more.

  Since there was every possibility I might see Tristan tonight, or so his text had alluded, I applied some mascara and opted for my favorite emerald blouse, pairing it with dark skinny jeans. I would trudge over to the bar in my new Ketchikan sneakers, since it’d rained earlier, but once at the Bear and Beaver I’d swap them out for a pair of comfy, yet pretty, green pointed-toe flats.

  Feeling suddenly confident and sexy, I faced the mirror for a little female powwow. “Okay, Ev,” I said sternly. “Are you ready to lose the V-plates?” Taking a deep breath, I gave my reflection a bolstering smile. “Yes.” It felt good giving myself permission for…whatever happened tonight. I turned on my heel and left my little apartment with the giddy anticipation of this night being the most epic one of my life.

  * * *

  “Shotgun not mopping!” Melissa grinned smugly as I sauntered into the bar.

  “Ugh, fine.” I headed over to the storeroom to shed my boots and get the mop.

  My nose filled with Murphy Oil Soap, tobacco, and leather as I dragged the mop absently across the hardwood floor. The Bear and Beaver had the look and feel of a colonial big game hunter’s lair, apart from the pool table and the TV mounted on the wall, and I could almost picture Allan Quatermain sitting broodily by the fireside with his rifle. There were antler chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and disgusting taxidermied corpse heads staring from the timber walls, their glassy eyes creepy and lifeless. There was even a twelve-foot bear standing on hind legs in the corner, it’s frozen snarl like an eerie snapshot of the grizzly that had nearly attacked Tristan and I last week. On the wood paneling beside it hung a large salmon, life-like as though leaping from its mount. Amidst all these ‘trophies’ were other grim hunting paraphernalia—pelts hanging like tapestries, photographs of middle-aged dentists b
eside bears and wolves, hunting books and magazines on shelves, and an antique shotgun mounted over the fireplace. The pool table notwithstanding, it was a shrine of violence and dead things. I wasn’t sure I could bear working here much longer.

  “Ev,” said Melissa, leaning over the bar top as I ran the mop around the tall chairs, “did I ever tell you my mop story?”

  “No. Do I want to hear your mop story?”

  “Of course you do.” She smirked and wriggled her eyebrows at me. “Have I mentioned Laura before? Your predecessor.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Melissa’s smile turned devious as she nodded. “Oh, Laura was a horse of a different color. One time I arrived here an hour earlier than I usually did so I could scarf a meal before my shift. The place was pretty dead.”

  My gaze meandered to the sightless caribou head nearest the bartop. “Hmm.”

  “Laura was suspiciously AWOL. I checked the kitchen and the bathrooms. Nothing. There was really only one last place she could be.”

  “The storeroom,” I guessed.

  “Yeah, so that’s exactly where I headed.” Melissa was biting her lip to keep from grinning wickedly. “But when I opened the door…” She dropped her head to her forearm and began hooting with laughter.

  “What happened?” I shook her arm. The suspense was infuriating.

  “Lusty Laura was riding that handle—” pointing to the mop in my hand “—like it was American Pharaoh and she was winning the Kentucky Derby!” She slapped the granite counter enthusiastically. “I mean she was literally—”

  “I get it, Mel!” Horrified, I dropped the mop. “Spare me the details.”

  “A closet paraphiliac, that Laura.” Mel had laughed so hard that her eyes were moist with tears. Still chuckling, she wiped at them.

  “There’s a word for that?” The mop received a glare as I stepped over it. “Gross.”

  She rolled her eyes as I pushed her out of the way to lather my hands at the bar sink. “Don’t worry, Ev, I threw the old mop out that same day.”

  “You’ve ruined mopping for me.”

  “Now you know why I never do it.” She rescued the mop from the floor and dropped the head into the bucket, holding the handle out to me. “Be strong, Ev. Get back on the horse, you can do it.”

  When Def Leppard’s sexy guitar riff sounded over the speakers a few minutes later, Mel turned the volume right up, since the bar was still empty. If ever there was an appropriate time to straddled one’s mop, this was it—Joe Elliott in my ear, telling me to “shake it up”. Mop in hand, I gyrated my hips provocatively as we both belted out the lyrics and swished our hair with glam metal flair. “Pour some sugar on meh!”

  Unable to resist the lure of the mop, and spurred on by the second chorus, Mel took her turn, wielding it like an epileptic jockey.

  Once the song was over, however, and the volume once more reduced to a dignified decibel, Melissa stowed the mop. Still out of breath, she leaned on the bar next to me. “So when does lover boy get back?”

  “Tonight, I think.”

  With a pointed look, she gestured at my crotch. “I hope you landscaped.”

  “Um, a little.” Sort of.

  “Evan!” Her look of dawning horror—having guessed rightly that my garden had been left to flourish wildly—was utterly sobering.

  “A little goes a long way,” I argued.

  “Not there, it doesn’t.” She aimed an accusing finger at my groin. “Unless you just like hairy veils.”

  I grimaced. “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “Trust me, less is more,” she advised. “And I do mean less hair, not less effort. It’s all about the Bald and the Beautiful, if you're picking up what I’m puttin’ down.”

  “I’ll just trim—”

  “Trim?! Hell, woman, take it all off!”

  “Well, I’m not sure he even wants to go that far south of the border so—”

  “Lemme stop you right there, Ev. Make no mistake, the guy’s hot for you. That much you can take as gospel. The only question is, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Pretty sure I can figure it out,” I answered, looking at my crotch. “But I’ll try not to circumcise myself.”

  “I don’t mean your hedges.” She rolled her eyes. “I hope you know what you're doing with Tristan.”

  “I really like him, Mel.”

  “I know. Shit, I’m not gonna lie, I’d even drink his bathwater.” She poured me a club soda—my usual drink—and set it down on the coaster for me. “But that whole Addams Family vibe is weird. Just weird. So be careful there.”

  I was growing tired of empty warnings. Why couldn’t she just be happy for me? “I can be the Morticia to his Gomez.”

  She gave a perverse smile, but the sound of a diesel engine as it purred to a stop outside forestalled her before she could offer another eye-rolling comment (something like “He’s more of a Cousin It than a Gomez Addams.”). She peered past my shoulder through the window. “Speak of the devil,” she said under her breath.

  My heart leapt as I followed her gaze to the window. Tristan’s black truck had pulled into the parking lot. With an excited squeal, I saluted Mel—who was shaking her head amusedly—and raced off towards the bathroom to hyperventilate into a bag while I checked my face for any smudged mascara or whatever.

  As I stared at the neurotic girl in the restroom mirror moments later, I tried not to berate her for being so gutless for hiding in here. “Just be yourself,” I told her. Are you sure about that? “On second thought…” Ugh. I pulled my hair free of its braid and fluffed it out. Then, changing my mind, I lifted the massy locks up into an untidy bun and gave a nod of finality. It seemed as good a time as any for a Yul Brenner speech. “I see pride. I see powah. I see a bad-ass mudder who don’t take no crap off of nobody!” My sorry excuse for a Jamaican accent was anything but irie.

  My bra I readjusted with a fierce stare at my reflection. But this was instantly ruined by the sound of a flushing toilet. The soundtrack to my life, perhaps? One of the stall doors, that I’d assumed to be unoccupied, opened up abruptly and out walked the cleaner lady. Muttering unintelligibly under her breath, whilst affording me a wide berth, she warily scurried from the bathroom with her cleaning caddy.

  “Good night, Gosia!” I said, snickering to myself. I sucked in a hearty lungful of confidence (and Pine-Sol fumes) and finally marched from the ladies room.

  While I’d been scaring the help, Tristan had been talking to Melissa at the bar. But out came that smoldering dimple as soon as he spotted me. He stood directly from his barstool and, once I’d reached his side, bent his head to plant a warm kiss lightly on my lips. “I wondered where you’d run off to?” His eyes glittered enigmatically.

  “She was just making sure she had no nuts in her teeth,” said Melissa, taking a handful of the peanuts from the bowl on the counter. “Those little suckers get into the most inconvenient places.”

  He considered her wryly. “And are you speaking from experience?”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “Always with the nut jokes,” I said, rolling my eyes at them.

  Shaking his head, he turned back to me. But it was still Melissa to whom he directed his next question even though it was my face caught beneath his gaze. “Tell me, Melissa,” he said with a languid grin, “is the cleaning lady Jamaican?”

  “Jamaican?” There was bemusement in her voice.

  My face blanched. No! There was no way he’d heard me all the way from the washroom.

  “No,” Mel answered. “Gosia’s from Poland.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said after a knowing pause.

  17

  The Society of Sociopaths and Loners

  I missed Florida. Missed the heavy black clouds that would roll in abruptly from the west, churning overhead as though the sky was boiling. Sometimes, if the light was just right, the reef water seemed to glare a mystic aquamarine beneath a darkening sky. The same s
torm was now brewing in Tristan’s eyes.

  It seemed I’d blinked and some unseen hand had swept in to slap the grin from Tristan’s face. One minute he’d been making arcane references about the Polish cleaning lady and then, the very next second, the storm rolled in with startling speed. I forgot all about his uncanny hearing, disquieted now by the shadows gathering over his changeable, lambent eyes. Eyes that had flown to the door in readiness. Readiness for what?

  I wasn’t kept waiting for long. With the force of a cold north wind, Nicole swept in. On her tail came Alex and Leeann, trailing like obedient spaniels. Her eyes spat venom as she passed me by.

  Whoah. I’d be sure to avoid ever being alone with that one. She’d probably drown me in the toilet if I was stupid enough to find myself in the washroom alone with her.

  Dean strutted in soon after with a handful of others, Lydia and James included. Without warning, or a backward glance at me, Tristan suddenly stalked off to join his brother. Very few words appeared to be exchanged, but one brother’s jaw was rigid with anger and the other’s mouth was curled up sardonically. James quickly stepped between them, diffusing the tension with a few back slaps and a careless smile.

  “That’s weird,” Mel said beside me.

  “What is?” Tristan’s moods?

  “Them. The Society of Sociopaths and Loners.”

  “Rude,” I admonished quietly.

  “I mean I guess it made sense to see them at the cove, they live up that way. Not that they mingled with us plebs. Well, except for you. But they never just hang out.”