by Gemma Weir
“Your mom is so awesome.”
“My sales have been epic this month, almost double this time last year. Since she started letting me source stock we’ve really been hitting a younger market and she’s over the moon,” she tells me almost shyly.
“Cora that’s amazing, but it’s not exactly a shock, your mom’s right, you do have the eye.”
“Thanks,” she says coyly, wrinkling her nose a little embarrassed.
“I am more than happy to bask in your success, a massage is exactly what I need today.” I sigh as we spot Lux, the town’s best and only day spa, ahead of us.
“Why? Has Beau been tiring you out?” she winks.
“He’s an asshole, but I don’t want to talk about him today, he is tomorrow me’s problem. Today’s me wants to have a relaxing massage, get my nails done, then drink too many cocktails and dance until my feet hurt.”
“Oh, we’re talking about Beau, but I’ll wait till we’re a few cocktails in,” she warns with a laugh. “But first let’s get pampered.”
Miranda Millard is behind the counter, wearing a lilac-colored smock and black capri slacks, her hair pulled back into a tight bun that makes her face look a little startled. “Hi Bonnie, Cora,” she greets coolly. Miranda graduated the year before us and went away to school, only to flunk out of her freshman year and have to come back home. She already had a stick up her ass before then, now she spends all her time with her nose in the air thinking she’s better than the rest of us.
“Hi Miranda, my mama booked us in for massages, and mani-pedis,” Cora tells her politely.
“Yes, Cora you’re with Chantelle, and Bonnie we have you with David, here are your robes, if you’d like to go on through to the changing areas and get ready, your masseuses will collect you shortly.”
Cora smirks at me, “Thanks Miranda.”
“Thank you, Miranda,” I say quietly, taking the white fluffy robe she offers me, and stepping behind the desk and into the changing area.
“Jesus the state of that girl, if she thinks she’s so much better than Rockhead Point why doesn’t she just leave,” Cora rants the moment the door closes behind us.
“Shush, she’ll hear you,” I whisper yell.
“I don’t care, she’s so far up her own butt I doubt she can hear anything anyway.”
Laughing, I quickly undress, placing my cell into the little net valuable bags that are always in the robe pockets before putting the rest of my stuff into a locker and locking it, sliding the key into the bag with my cell. I don’t bother looking to see how many missed calls I have, I can already guess it’s a lot, but he can’t hunt me down when he has no idea where I am.
A few minutes later there’s a knock at the door and Chantelle, one of the therapists, pokes her head around the corner. “You ladies ready?”
“God yes,” I groan.
“Perfect, we’ll do massages separately, then do mani-pedis together. If you want to come on out, David is waiting to take you down,” she tells us.
Cora and I eagerly follow her out and I smile and wave at David who leads me off to a massage room. “Hey Bonnie, how are you?” he asks, as he opens the door to the therapy room and gestures for me to take a seat.
“I’m good thanks, David, how are you?” David moved to town almost two years ago and opened the day spa. Back then we all assumed it would fail, but great treatments and fantastic facilities has not only kept the place open, but seen it thrive. With mud baths, Swedish hot tubs, and a fire and ice room, Lux pulls in both tourists and locals alike.
“I’m awesome, I have a date later,” he smiles.
“Oh, who with? Anyone I know?”
Most people assume David’s gay, he’s very well groomed, plucks his eyebrows, and well, he owns and works in a day spa, but he’s not, he just enjoys taking care of himself and loves having his hands on women’s bodies all day. He and Cora had a bit of a friends with benefits arrangement for a few months a while back, but it petered out and now they’re just friends without the extras.
“I’ll tell you if it goes well,” he smiles. “You look tense.”
“It’s been a crazy few days,” I tell him with a weary exhale.
“Okay, so how does an aromatherapy massage sound, maybe with a few crystals to help center you?”
“That sounds amazing,” I groan. He offers me a few different choices of scented oils and I pick the one that smells like lavender. After he’s left the room, I lay down on the bed and pull the towel over me. When he comes back in, I allow myself to melt as he pushes all of the stress and tension from my muscles. By the time he’s finished I’m barely coherent, my body so relaxed I’m almost asleep.
“Take your time getting up, I’ll go grab you a water,” he whispers, leaving me a puddle of goo.
My body protests when I crawl off the bed and wrap myself in my robe again, I take the bottle of water David offers and hug him goodbye when he leads me to the nail room, where I flop down into one of the comfy chairs.
Cora appears a moment later, and both of us nap while our feet are submerged into foot spas.
An hour later we both emerge onto the sidewalk, relaxed and pampered. “Remind me to send your mama some flowers, that was exactly what I needed.”
“Oh my, it was so good, I swear Chantelle has hands the size of a Russian weight lifter, but Jesus, she knows how to get every last bit of tension out of your muscles.”
Three hours later, we’re primped and fluffed and barreling through the doors of Barney’s bar, just in time for happy hour. My outfit is sexy, my hair is down and falling in mermaid waves around my shoulders, and my makeup is mostly natural, with a heavy smoky eye that makes me feel like a femme fatale.
Having this time with Cora was exactly what I needed, and I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Glancing at her I can’t help but smile. Her fiery red hair is piled up on top of her head, tendrils escaping here and there, she’s wearing several gold chokers around her neck that sparkle and compliment her natural porcelain skin. Her simple white bandage top wraps around her breasts, strategic cut outs showing the tattoo she has across her ribs and ending just above the tight black pencil shirt that hugs her hourglass curves. She looks effortlessly hot, and if she wasn’t my best friend, I’d be forced to hate her for how beautiful she is.
“Hey Barney,” she calls when we reach the huge, polished wooden bar that curves all the way along the back wall of the building.
“Good evening, Cora, Bonnie, what can I get for you ladies tonight?” he asks. Barney’s in his sixties, the town’s secret keeper, the doler of unsolicited advice, and the owner of the best bar in town. He never seems to age and he mixes the best cocktails I’ve ever tasted.
“Can I have a caramel apple martini, please,” Cora tells him.
“I’ll have a cherry-rancher-tini, please,” I say.
“And can we have four evil angel shots please too,” Cora adds a with a wicked smirk.
“Oh my god, I’m gonna end up throwing up tonight, aren’t I?” I ask with a laugh.
“Yes,” Cora cries, throwing her hands up into the air and shaking her ass to the upbeat country music that’s coming from the house band playing in the corner.
“Girls, you be safe tonight,” Barney says with a wink, as he pours spirits into several shakers and quicky pulls together our cocktails, sliding them across the bar to us with a flourish.
“We will,” both Cora and I chorus at the same time. In any other bar we’d probably have to be careful, but this is Barney’s place and filled with locals, people who we’ve known our whole lives. This bar is the only place in town that actively discourages tourists, so it’s about the safest place for us to drink a few too many cocktails and let our hair down.
“I’ll put these on your tab,” he nods, then moves away to serve the next customer.
“A toast, to a much needed girls’ night,” Cora says, lifting one of the shot glasses up and gesturing for me to do the same.
�
��To girls’ night,” I toast, tapping my glass against hers before I throw the shot back, wincing at the burn as the liquor hits my throat. Grabbing the second shot I lift it in the air. “To stupid, controlling assholes,” I say.
Cora laughs, then taps her glass against mine. “To sexy Barnett boys,” she winks, lifting the glass to her lips and swallowing the blue liquid down in one gulp.
I down the second shot, coughing a little, then wince. “Wow, why does the second shot always burn more than the first?”
“No idea, but it’s time to spill. What the hell is going on with you and Beau?”
Sighing, I lift my cocktail up and take a long sip. “Honestly I don’t really know. We’re together, he says I’m his.”
“Beau Barnett is your boyfriend,” she sighs dreamily.
“He’s crazy, like certifiably crazy. He’s possessive and jealous and an asshole. He’s basically got me moved into his house, and he scrapped my car and bought me a new one without telling me.”
“Wow, sounds terrible,” she dead pans. “Your hot as fuck boyfriend bought you a car, how awful.”
“He’s taking over my life,” I confess.
“And you don’t want him to? Are you worried? Should we be reporting him to the police?” she asks, escalating dramatically.
“God don’t get me wrong, he’s great, and the sex…” I pause.
“The sex?” she asks excitedly.
“It’s better than anything I’ve ever even fantasized about.”
“I knew it! He’s hung like a horse, isn’t he? I knew that many rumors couldn’t be wrong,” she gushes.
Rolling my eyes, I wait for her calm down before I start talking again. “He says he wants forever,” I confess.
Cora’s eyes widen for a minute. “Forever?”
“We had a run in with a couple of his exes the other night. I know he has a past, but both of them basically told me the same thing. That he’s great in bed, but that it’s never more than that. He says I’m different, but I just don’t know if he’s only telling me what he thinks I want to hear.”
“Why would he make stuff up. If all he wanted was sex, why go to all this effort to sweet talk you, it’s not like he’s hard up for offers of women ready to share his bed for a night or two,” she shrugs.
“I don’t know, but he’s manipulative. He didn’t want me to come tonight, so he played on my inexperience and tried to use sex as a weapon to get me to do what he wanted.”
“Well that’s a shitty thing to do,” she says, the smile replaced with a frown.
“Half the time I think he’s being honest, the rest of the time I’m just not sure if he’s playing with me. This morning I was sitting in his house having breakfast with all his brothers, thinking how happy I was and how maybe I could see myself going all in with him. Then today he as good as told me that he’d do whatever he has to do to get me to do what he wants.”
“Do you really think he’d let the entire town know you’re together, have your dad round to eat with his family, and move you into his home, if this was all just some elaborate game with him?” Cora asks concernedly.
“I don’t know, I don’t think so, but I don’t know him that well, and since the moment he dropped the ‘I want you bomb’, he’s just been two hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead without looking back.”
“I guess you have to figure out how much you want to be with him,” Cora says seriously. “I mean there’s definitely worse things than your boyfriend being super protective and possessive. If it were me, I’d like that, in fact, honestly, I’d love a man to dote on me and spoil me rotten.”
“I…” I trail off unsure how to explain how I feel. “He’s so… I feel like I’m making it all up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve had a crush on him since I was thirteen, and now it’s actually happening and I like him so much and the sex is unbelievable.”
“Why can I hear a but coming?” she asks.
“But, he’s my first boyfriend, my first sexual partner, my first everything. I’m worried about getting really carried away and falling head over heels in love with him.”
“But that’s a good thing. Being in love. Isn’t that what we all want?”
“Is it?” I question.
“Isn’t it? It’s what I want. I want what you have. I want a guy to lose his mind over me, to want me all the time, to become the center of his universe. Most guys won’t commit to anything more than a day in advance, and Beau is talking forever with you.”
“He sent me all these texts today, all the things he’s fantasized about doing with me, to me,” I confess, embarrassed even as the words pour from my mouth.
“Like what?” she asks, her eyes wide with anticipation.
“We both found out that…” I cringe.
“Oh my god, is it something really kinky? It’s not anything to do with feet is it? Because feet are gross.”
Laughing, I slap at her shoulder. “Eww, no it’s not feet, it’s…” I lean in to whisper into her ear. “I like to be spanked, and he realized he likes to spank me.”
“Wow, that is so hot,” Cora mouths.
“You don’t think it’s weird? I had no idea that it was something I’d like, and then he did it just messing around and…” I trail off, letting her fill in the gaps.
“It’s not weird, it’s sexy. The only guys I’ve hooked up with have only been interested in getting off. The closest I’ve gotten to fun sex was David, and that’s because we both knew it was just casual. What else did he tell you he wanted to do?”
“Just stuff,” I say, feeling heat fill my cheeks.
“Kinky stuff?” she whisper shouts.
“A little kinky.”
“Oh wow, Beau Barnett is kinky, that is so freaking hot,” Cora says, fanning herself with her hand. “He suggested all the kinky, dirty stuff just to stop you coming out tonight?”
“I’m not sure, we haven’t really talked about any of it before, and well he spent last night trying to sex me into agreeing to stay in with him tonight and when that didn’t work, he send me all those texts.”
“Sorry hun, but if that had been me, I’d have cancelled on you in a heartbeat,” she laughs.
Laughing, I finish the last of my cocktail and place the empty glass back down. “I want it all to be true,” I confess softy. “I want him, I want the forever. But I just don’t know enough about guys and relationship to know if I’m being played or not.”
“You deserve it all, sweetie, and for what it’s worth I don’t think he’s playing you. You’re not a pushover and you’re too strong a person to let him consume you. I think he’s in love with you, so just enjoy falling in love for the first time, and trust that sometimes dreams really do come true.”
20
Beau
From the booth I’m sitting in, hidden in the corner, I watch as she walks in through the door. I’d expected the red dress she’d taunted me with, but the outfit she’s wearing stops my breath in my lungs. Her legs are bare, the skin smooth and tempting. Her skirt is gold and shiny and so fucking tiny it’s almost indecent. But my eyes almost fall out of my head when my gaze lands on the black top. It’s like a second skin, hugging her curves as it wraps over the swell of her tits, dipping into a v and giving the world a glimpse of cleavage. Thin straps are hooked over her shoulders and the top is entirely backless, the fabric dipping beneath the waist of her skirt and revealing her entire back, her skin smooth and creamy and tempting.
Her hair is loose, but it does nothing to distract from the fact that she’s half naked with far too much of her beautiful skin on display for anyone to see. Anger and lust swirl together in a myriad of emotions that makes my dick hard, and my fingers form into fists at exactly the same time. I’m rising from my seat before I even realize I’m moving, until Penn’s huge hand lands on my shoulder, pushing me back down, a stern expression on his face. “Calm down, you know storming over there isn’t going to help matters right now,�
� he says reasonably.
If it was his woman dressed like that without him, I seriously doubt he’d be so fucking calm.
A feral growl escapes from my lips, but I sink back down, hidden once again from her view. I can’t hear what she’s saying to her friend, but I watch as she downs first one shot, then another, smiling and laughing in a way I’ve never seen before.
The girls grab their martini glasses from the bar and make their way to a small table almost directly opposite us, giving us a clear view of them. Thankfully it’s almost impossible to see into the booths we’re sitting at, which is why we chose to sit here in the first place.
All six of my brothers are with me, some of them would have been here anyway, but after seeing how pissed I was when she left me hanging earlier, they all decided I needed to be supervised if I was coming down here.
A normal guy would just let his woman enjoy her girls’ night, but when it comes to Bonnie, I’m not a normal guy. She provokes a reaction in me a thousand times more powerful than I’ve ever experienced before, and I’m not even attempting to fight it. Bonnie Williams is mine, completely and utterly mine, and what kind of a man would I be if I didn’t protect what belongs to me.
I watch as the girls chat, wishing I could hear what they were talking about. Bonnie’s expression changes from happy, to concerned, to embarrassed, rolling through a series of emotions that make me hope to know her so well that one day I can tell what she’s thinking from across the room. The band starts to play a set, and Bonnie and Cora finish their drinks and quickly move to the dance floor. My girl sways her hips to the music, her ass moving in a sensual grind that makes my hard dick even harder.
A waitress brings us another round of beers, and for a while I just watch Bonnie dance, content knowing that I can keep an eye on her without her knowing I’m here. She’s pissed at me, but I’m not sure why and I don’t like how it’s making me feel. The texts we were sending back and forth turned her on. My baby girl has a dirty mind. I wouldn’t really call myself strictly vanilla, but I’ve never been with anyone I was interested in exploring my kinkier side with, before her.