by LL Meyer
The salesgirl announces the total quietly with a conspiratorial grin as I hand over my credit card. I wish I could give her a tip; she could have completely screwed me over by yelling the total.
But in the car, Lily’s voice is resigned as she speaks. “You just spent more than my rent on bikinis. I thought you said you weren’t supposed to bully me.”
“I thought you said you needed a little bullying.”
She meets my eyes. “If I just say thank you and be happy about it, will that encourage you to do this again?”
“Again? How many bikinis do you need?”
“Dane!” she exclaims, trying to keep a straight face. “This isn’t funny.”
“You’re right,” I say, more serious now. “It’s not funny, it’s fun.”
“Are you incapable of having a serious conversation?”
“About this? Yes. We’ll save the more serious conversation for Victoria’s Secret. ‘Cause that bill’s going to be huge.”
Laughter starts bubbling to the surface and I can’t stop it. Why does he have to be so funny? Soon I’m laughing so hard that I can barely breathe, and I can see him looking at me like I’m completely deranged.
“See?” he says, as we pull out. “It’s much easier just to be happy about it.” He hits a button and the sunroof cover retracts, letting in the unseasonably good weather we’re having. Calming down, I dig my sunglasses out of my purse and lean back in my seat while he finds something to listen to on the radio. I steal a glance at his profile, and I have to stifle an audible sigh. I’m so in love with him, I think idly.
What? Don’t you dare love him!
I feel like I’ve sucker-punched myself. The last time I was in love, I was left in a hole of despair so deep that I almost drowned.
He interrupts my alarming thoughts. “Didn’t they write this song for you?”
I focus on the music and then swat him while I laugh. It’s Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold.” I want to yell at him: Stop making me laugh! Stop making me happy! Stop making me love you!
We end up in a residential neighborhood and park on the street in front of a 1950’s era bungalow. The driveway is full; the Range Rover is already here, and so is another Mercedes that looks a lot like the one we’re in, as well as an older pickup. Jason is sitting between two guys on the front steps.
“Thank God,” Jason says as we approach. “I wasn’t sure you’d show.” He hands a clipboard to Dane.
“Have I ever not shown?” Dane retorts sarcastically.
“Hey, Pretty Girl,” Jason says.
“Hey.”
“Dad, this is Pretty Girl,” he says, introducing the guy on his left.
His dad?
“Pretty Girl?” He extends his hand to me from where they’re sitting.
I shake it. “Lily works too. Nice to meet you.”
“Paul, and same here.”
His dad (no, I guess their dad for all intents and purposes) is as dark haired as Dane with a few distinguishing lines of gray at the sides. I’d say he’s about fifty-five, and looks completely professional in a suit and tie. He’s good-looking, but I don’t see a lot of his biological son in him. Jason must look more like his mother.
“And this is Josie,” Jason says with a laugh, giving the guy on his other side a shove.
This guy’s maybe older than Jason and Dane by a few years, and the look he directs at Jason is a cross between exasperation and humor.
“It’s José,” he says, lifting his dark eyes in my direction.
“Don’t listen to him. According to Sharon in the office, his name’s Josie and that’s all we call him.”
José /Josie shakes his head with a smile. “It was a spelling mistake.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jason says. “That was three years ago –”
“If you two are done,” Dane’s voice cuts through the jovial atmosphere. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Uh, uh. Hang on,” Jason says, turning to his father, holding out his palm. “Pay up.”
I watch as his dad pulls out his wallet and puts a fifty-dollar bill in his son’s hand.
“Thank you,” Jason says, shoving the money into his pocket and then turning to Dane. “Dad didn’t believe you’d show up with a woman.”
Dane swears under his breath, glaring along the line of the three of them. When he gets to Josie, the man holds up his palms in surrender. “I had nothing to do with it, boss.”
Dane just grunts. “I’m going to start at the back.”
Jason laughs and gets up to follow him along with Josie, leaving me with his dad. “So, Lily,” he says slowly as he gets to his feet. “How long have you known my anti-social son?”
He starts walking in the same direction as the other three. I frown. Anti-social? Dane? “Ah, only a week.” Or does he mean Jason? But I guess the answer is the same, so I don’t ask for clarification.
“Well, I’m very glad that he’s found someone he connects with.”
Okay, so we are talking about Dane. “You’ve really never seen him with a girl before?” That seems so hard for me to believe.
Paul laughs. “To be fair, I’ve never seen him with a guy either.”
What? He thought I thought he thought that he was gay?
Seeing the look on my face, he laughs harder. “Sorry, I’m just teasing you. Come on, let’s catch up or we’ll put him in a foul mood.”
They inspect the entire outside of the house. While I follow them around, I’m quickly able to gather that their dad, Paul, is a real estate agent who brokers all their deals, and Josie is the foreman of one of their crews – the crew that did this house. It’s obvious that Dane is the one who kicks asses while Jason is the one who smooths things over. They actually make a pretty good team.
But I only listen to them with half an ear, because I’m wondering about what Paul said. No girlfriends, anti-social, and foul mood. That actually sounds very familiar. It sounds a lot like me. Is my pretty boy sad?
My eyes follow him with concern now, watching more closely. Our eyes meet a few times and he smiles at me, mostly allaying my fears as the now familiar electricity zings between us.
Finally we move on to the inside of the house, and they use pieces of masking tape to show where things need to be cleaned up.
After a while, I go outside to wait for them on the front steps in the sunshine. When they come out, Josie leaves, and they discuss a list price with their dad. Once everything is settled, Dane seems to be in a much better mood. After Paul leaves, the two of them come to sit on either side of me. Jason grabs a pigtail and gives it a tug. “You weren’t too bored, were you?”
Dane takes the other one and does the same.
“Oww, you guys. And no, I wasn’t bored.”
“You hungry?” Dane asks. “’Cause Jase’s buying lunch.” He stands up and pulls me with him. “We’ll follow you,” he tells Jason.
When we’re in the car, Dane leans in and kisses me. “Thanks for coming.”
“There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” I tell him truthfully.
He rests his forehead on mine briefly and then looks at the clock on the dash. My eyes follow his. It’s 1:18. I bite my lip to try to stop myself from smiling.
“What are you smiling about, Lily?”
“Nothing. What are you smiling about, Dane?”
“I’m smiling because it’s almost 4 o’clock.”
“Oh? What’s at 4 o’clock?” I ask innocently, despite the blush I can feel creeping up my neck.
He just starts the car and pulls out of the driveway, keeping his grin to himself.
Lunch turns out to be burgers, and Jason looks at me like I’m an alien when I order one with bacon and cheese.
“What?” I demand.
Jason laughs. “You better not screw this up,” he tells Dane.
“Yes, thank you, Jase. That’s very helpful advice.”
For most of lunch they talk about the gazillion projects they’ve got going on, costs, profit margins,
and numbers. Numbers with lots of zeroes after them. I feel like a child who’s allowed to stay up past her bedtime and is secretly enjoying the adult conversation. And my initial impression that Jason doesn’t do much turns out to be false. They just have different ways of getting things done.
“You guys coming out tonight?” Jason asks as we’re leaving.
“Definitely not,” Dane says immediately, making Jason laugh.
“Well, if I don’t find a warm bed to sleep in, I’ll just go home-home. See you guys tomorrow.”
On the drive back, I ask, “What does home-home mean?”
Dane smiles. “Mom and Dad’s home. He probably thinks he’ll walk in on us doing it on the island in the kitchen.”
We both look at the clock. 2:49. My stomach flips, my earlier bravado completely gone. Along with a grin, he offers me his hand and I take it in an attempt to quell my nervous heart.
He puts the car in the garage this time.
“You want to go swimming? Or we can watch TV if you prefer.” He looks pointedly at the clock and then back to me.
“Stop that!” I exclaim. “Let’s just go swimming before you turn me into a nervous wreck.”
My stuff is still in the bathroom in the hall, so I take my new bathing suits in there and get changed. I hope he won’t be too disappointed that I’m wearing the red one, but he did say swim. Checking myself out in the mirror, I’m happy with my reflection because my boobs aren’t hanging out so much that I’m uncomfortable. Uncomfortable . . . the word he used in that text. I’m still not sure what he meant. But I look fantastic, so I brush my teeth, retie my pigtails, and then bounce out the door.
I must have checked the time on my phone five times during lunch, and every time, a little shot of lust had run through me. I’d barely been able to keep my mind on work, and that’s never happened to me before. I mean obviously, I think about sex just as much as any guy, but it’s never been in such specific terms, about a woman who’s sitting right beside me. For lack of a better word, it left me unsettled and horny as hell.
And if I was buzzing with anticipation before, now, alone with her in the house, my knees feel weak. The carpet under my bare feet seems to have a direct line to my dick, probably because I can’t stand still. And the flow of air down my bare back makes me think of her fingertips. My grip on the railing intensifies until my knuckles are turning white. Relax, I chide myself.
Leaning down to rest my elbows on the banister, I try to focus on something other than her, but all I can picture is her face turned up into the warmth of the sun when I was watching her earlier from this very spot. God, she has taken me over utterly and completely.
I’m so absorbed in the memory that I don’t hear her until she’s standing beside me. Her arm brushes mine as she mirrors my stance, and goosebumps break out along my skin. Her amber eyes are alive with gold flecks, and filled with something that unnervingly looks like adoration. It’s a good thing I’m not capable of coherent thought at the moment, because I think I might have run for my life.
Her little red mouth is so close, and I almost groan as her lips part as I lean in to kiss them. She tastes amazing and I want the peaceful bliss that goes with this kiss to go on forever, but I can’t stop myself from wanting more. Pushing off the railing, I pull her close and deepen the kiss. The feeling of her body melting into me, her breasts pushed into my chest, my cock pushed into her stomach soon has me spiraling into visions of driving into her right here on the carpet. I pull back from her. I’m breathing as hard as she is, and I need to bring some order to the chaos that’s racing through me. I watch her eyes slowly open, silently questioning me. Did I do something wrong? they ask.
Instead of answering her, I reach for a pigtail. “Will you take your hair down?” I ask hoarsely, proud of myself for not phrasing it as a command.
Her bottom lip disappears for a moment as she licks her lips and then slides first one elastic off and then the other. I thread my hands in on either side of her head and ever so slowly work my fingers down and away. She must have just brushed it because it’s smooth and silky to the touch. I sink my fingers in again, but this time instead of running my hands through it, I tighten them against her scalp.
“Lil?” My voice is annoyingly strained.
Holding on to my forearms, she looks up at me through her lashes, all wonder and longing. I close my eyes against the onslaught.
“Dane?”
It takes me a second before I can look at her again.
“Forget about the time,” she murmurs.
“But we made a deal,” I finally tell her.
“I don’t want the deal,” she whispers, trying to lean in to me, but I keep her where she is. “I want you.”
God, I’m a weak-willed bastard. “Are you sure?”
A wicked grin appears on her lips. “Asked and answered, right?”
“Right,” I breathe. With nothing to hold me back, I yank her lips back to mine. And the chaos starts up again; her lips, her tongue, her moans. The need to have her consumes me.
My hands roam down, crushing her to me, while hers go around my neck, pulling me closer. The curve of her ass hits my palms. I pick her up and her legs go around my waist. The heat of her center is so very close with nothing but the thin material of our bathing suits between us as I take her down the hall to my room.
“Hang on,” I murmur as I crawl carefully onto the bed with her. When I lower some of my weight onto her, she moans. I kiss down her neck and across her chest to arrive at a bikini cup. Pulling it down, I attach myself to the nipple. Her obvious pleasure lands in my cock, which is almost painfully hard now, crushed up against my board shorts. Reaching down, I free my erection and breathe a sigh of relief. Well, relief until it comes into contact with the warm skin covering her taut stomach. Now it’s begging me to get on with it.
I bare the other breast and look down at her. Both of her nipples are puckered and deliciously pink sitting atop the mounds of flesh, pushed up by the bathing suit. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
As she smiles, I notice that her lips are the same color as her nipples, and suddenly I’m wondering if she matches all over. I pull back and before she knows what’s happening I have her bottoms off and I’m pushing her open.
“Dane!”
I groan. A mix of the same shades of pink, swollen and dripping, meets my gaze.
She’s trying to close her legs, but I push her back open. “Don’t hide from me,” I admonish.
A blush of mortification is all over her chest and neck, and I duck my head to feel the heat of her skin under my lips. The idea that she’s shy just adds fuel to the fire as I kiss my way across her collarbone.
Her hands come to life, running down my back, tracing the muscles, leaving a trail of sensation in their wake. She giggles a little when she finds my shorts half off my ass, but then surprises me by digging her nails gently into the cheeks.
“I want to touch you this time,” she informs me.
I kiss my way up her neck and whisper, “Next time.”
Instead of shutting her down, it has her trying to wiggle out from under me. “Where you going?”
“I want to touch you. Lie on your back.”
I’m about to argue, but then I catch sight of her eager expression. My chest swells; more than anything I want her to feel good, so I do as I’m told.
Once I’m on my back, I watch her. She’s not sure what to look at first, her eyes darting all over the place. I pull the shorts off and that makes up her mind.
Tentatively, she reaches out to touch me. She starts at the base and ghosts her fingertips softly to the tip, making my breath stall in my chest. Jesus. I encourage her to wrap her hand around me. She can’t quite reach around the width, and she’s being way too gentle. I grip myself with her, squeezing to show her how I like it and then I move us up and then down. My eyes sink shut as I take her up and down one more time and then let go.
She hesitates for a second, but then tries on
her own. How can just her hand make me feel this good? After a few times, she whispers, “Like that?”
“Mmmhmmm,” is all I can come up with, but then I jump when I feel her tongue on the tip. I chuckle and meet her wide eyes.
“No?” she asks.
“You surprised me, that’s all.”
Her hand starts up again and I groan. I have to still her. “Too much excitement for him leads to disappointment for us,” I joke. “Come here.” I coax her to straddle me and she looks down at my cock sticking out from between her legs and then up my chest to my face.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” I tell her.
She smiles as she reaches around herself to undo the clasp of her bikini top and lets it fall to the floor.
Even though I know I’m only going to get one shot at this today, because she’s going to be too sore to take me twice, I want her now. She’s gorgeous – eyes glazed, mouth glossy and swollen from kissing, hair messed up, breasts heavy and free, and she’s more than ready – I can feel how wet she is, sitting with me between her legs.
I know I should make her come first in case she doesn’t when I fuck her, but I feel like a six-year-old with a new toy that has to be played with NOW.
I reach over to the bedside table for a condom and when I turn back, her face is lit up with nervous want. I rip the foil open and she moves back onto my thighs to give me access. She watches with rapt attention as I roll it on.
I take her hand and bring her forward again and then pull her down to my chest. Reaching behind her, I line myself up and urge her back. It’s still tight, so, so, tight, but she gets the first few inches in with less pressure than I used last night.
“You ready?” I whisper.
She nods but I don’t think she actually knows what I’m going to do. I wrap my hands around her upper arms and push her halfway up into a sitting position and watch as I literally impale her, pushing into her from below. She moans all the way down, and I forcibly bite my lip to keep from making the same noise. Why being sheathed inside of this girl is so different from others, I have no idea. But I swear that everything is magnified by ten – the heat, the stranglehold she’s got on me, the urge to pound into her. We’re both breathing hard, and I’ve still got my hands wrapped around her biceps, holding her up.