One Week in Maine

by Shayna Ryan

  I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself but all that did is allow some of the lake water into my mouth, and I still didn’t know where the snake was. I struggled to turn my head to look behind me, convinced that it was making a run at us.

  “Calista!” Will bellowed angrily. “Knock it off! You’re not helping here!”

  My heart hammered in my chest as I tried to collect myself and at least help him get us to shore. It wasn’t too far, and Will quickly ushered me onto the rocky edge.

  I collapsed on a patch of grass and tried to catch my breath as the adrenaline still pounded through my system. Will crouched down in front of me and smoothed my hair away from my scalp as if inspecting it. I yelped in pain when he hit a tender spot.

  “Sorry.” He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead to soothe me. “How are you feeling?” He was looking at me funny, studying me intently. It was a little bit unnerving.

  “I’m fine; at least I will be. I’m sorry Will, I didn’t mean to tip us over.”

  “No dizziness? Any tiredness?”

  I found his serious tone alarming. He was worrying me. If only he’d smile, even just a little bit then I’d know for sure that he wasn’t furious with me. I’d give anything to see him crack a smile right then, but his concerned expression never changed.

  “No, I’m fine, like I said. Who in the world would be tired after all of that?”

  “So you’re not sleepy?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’m pretty sure the end of the canoe smacked your head on its way over, so we need to be sure that you don’t have a concussion or anything.” His dark eyes peered into mine, searching for the slightest sign that I was unwell.

  Something caught my eye over his shoulder.

  “The canoe! How will we get back to shore?” It bobbed out on the lake’s gentle waves, taunting me.

  “I’m going to go get it. I want you to stay right here. Don’t move a muscle, okay? I’ll be as quick as I can.” Tenderly, he laid his palm against my face for the briefest of moments. “You scared the hell out me there, but I’m just glad you’re okay. I’ll be right back.”

  I watched him wade into the cold water once more as I shivered on the shore, still watching for the nasty snake. I saw no sign of it, and for one moment I worried about Will in the water with it. But this was Will, I reminded myself. He knew just how to handle himself out here. If he thought it was safe to go back in the water, then it was.

  Guilt crept over me as I watched him struggle to tie a rope around one of the pieces of wood that ran across the width of the canoe. As it was upside down, he had to do it under the water while bobbing afloat with his life jacket. Finally, he got it, and he held the rope and pulled the upside down canoe to shore.

  He made look easy, effortless even, as he towed the canoe in and onto the rocky shore, where he flipped it upright and parked it before coming to check on me.

  “You still doing okay?” he asked once more as he studied me carefully again.

  “I’m fine, really. Nothing more than a bump on the head and a bruised ego, I guess.” I smiled weakly at my own lame joke and Will sat down next to me.

  “So what the hell happened, anyway? One minute we’re having a great time, and the next minute you’re flailing around like crazy. What spooked you?”

  “A snake,” I admitted sheepishly as I stared at the ground. It seemed so ridiculous now, even though it had been terrifying for me at the time. “There was a snake in the water, swimming right at me. I hate snakes! I didn’t even know they could swim.”

  Will laughed, deep and honest, and the noise of it made me smile a little bit as he playfully pushed against my side with his.

  “All that fuss was over a little water snake? There aren’t any venomous snakes in Maine, Calista. What you saw was probably just a Northern water snake. They’re harmless, really, though it’s getting late in the year for them to still be active. He wouldn’t have hurt you–especially when he was in the water, and we were in the canoe.”

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to flip us over.”

  “I know you didn’t.” He moved to stand, but kissed my lips softly, just once, before he did so. “C’mon. We need to get back to the truck and get home to get a hot shower and some dry clothes. That water was pretty cold, and even a clear day the sun’s not that warm today. We need to get to the truck and get the heat going before either one of us becomes hypothermic.”

  -9-

  We didn’t speak much as we re-launched the canoe and paddled back to the parking area where the warmth of the truck awaited us. I helped Will secure the canoe on top of the truck, and by the time we were ready to go, my teeth were chattering from the cold, and Will’s lips had taken on a blue-ish hue. He was right; after our unplanned dip in the lake, we were both freezing as our bodies struggled to produce enough heat.

  He rooted around in the back of the truck cab and produced a pair of blankets.

  “Okay, I think we should both get out of our wet things and wrap up in these for the ride home. That’ll be a start, at least.”

  I eyed him skeptically. “You want me to strip down and ride home in nothing but a blanket?”

  “Yup. It’s a little unorthodox, but it sure beats riding home in our soaking wet, ice cold clothes!” To emphasize the point, he took off his life jacket and then peeled off his wet, heavy sweater. I watched him with wide eyes. Even after the ordeal we had just been through, I couldn’t keep my mind out of the gutter when I spied his rippling chest.

  “So what are you waiting for?” he teased as he unbuckled his jeans.

  “Seriously? You want me to get naked, right here, in the middle of the parking lot.”

  “I don’t think the moose will mind, and I know I sure won’t. Get a move on now, we need to get out of our wet things to warm up,” he prodded.

  As I watched him slide his jeans down over his muscular thighs, I realized that he was right, so I reluctantly joined him. Off came my top and jeans, until I was just standing there in my bra and panties.

  “Take off everything,” Will prompted. “We don’t want anything wet against your skin because it’ll just keep sapping the heat right out of you.”

  He had beaten me to it and he stood there, gloriously naked in the afternoon’s light with only the blanket slung over his shoulders to cover him. I averted my eyes as I stepped out of my panties and unhooked my bra until I too was completely naked.

  “It’s tempting not to give you this.” He held up the other blanket. “But I’m afraid you’ll be too much of a distraction like that while I’m driving, and we need to get home.” He stepped closer to hand me the blanket so I could wrap myself up, greedily drinking in my naked form with his eyes. He may have been cold to the touch, but one part of him was quickly coming to life again, and he pressed his hardness against the front of my thigh as he wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.

  “I can think of ways to warm up,” I offered naughtily as I trailed one finger lightly down his sculpted chest.

  “I do like that idea, very much so, but your lips are blue and I can feel you shivering. I’m probably not much better off. We’ll have time for that later. Besides, we don’t have any protection.”

  “Don’t we?” I grinned slyly as I reached into my wet jeans pocket and pulled out a sealed condom packet.

  His eyes widened in surprise and I could tell that he was internally struggling with his decision. Yes, I was cold and shivering, and I couldn’t wait to get into a hot shower, but it had waited this long and another few minutes wouldn’t kill me. The truck and its heater were at our disposal as soon as we were ready to leave, and I had a feeling that I could find more heat in Will’s arms than in any vehicle or shower.

  With a grunt, he snatched the condom away from me with one hand while pulling me closer with the other. Our blankets fell away when his insistent lips sought mine, aggressive and demanding. He pulled me into a chilly embrace as he struggled to put the condom on himself.

>   A small, primal snarl escaped him as he whipped me around to face the tailgate of the truck, and I responded instinctually to his unspoken demands by leaning over it and parting my legs slightly. I let out a gasp of pain mixed with pleasure when he unexpectedly leaned down and gave my ass a nip with his teeth before straightening up and cramming his length into me. While I was certainly compliant to a little quickie right there and then, he wasn’t asking, he was taking, and I didn’t mind a bit.

  Everything fell away as he took me from behind in the cool afternoon light. My cold and discomfort waned as he drove into me, time and time again. There was nothing but the feel of his hardness deep within me and his animalistic grunts as he claimed me there, in the parking lot by the lake. My hips rocked in time with his pounding as I closed my eyes and lost myself in the sensations of him.

  He grabbed my shoulders and held me down with one final growl before he pushed me flat down and collapsed on top of me, spent. I lay beneath him, flat against the truck tailgate, wild eyed and breathless. That had been unlike anything I had ever experienced before, even with him. It had been primal and dark, a base need expressed.

  “We need to get some warmth,” he breathed low in my ear before he stood again.

  Once he was off of me, I slowly pushed myself upright and turned to look at him. He looked a little better than before, with more color in him, but something fiery burned in his eyes that wasn’t there before as he handed me my blanket again.

  “I want you again when we get home and warmed up. I want to do that properly later.”

  I didn’t answer him as I accepted my blanket from him. I was game for more sex later on, that was for sure, but whatever had just passed between us had rocked me to my core. It had been over too quickly for me to orgasm, but that didn’t mean that the experience hadn’t touched me somehow.

  It had been fast and dirty and animalistic, but still somehow emotionally charged. It had felt like it wasn’t an act of sex, but rather an act of Will claiming me, marking me as his, like some great Alpha claiming a mate. Somewhere along the line today we had moved from two people using each other as a convenient escape to one claiming the other as his and his alone. Things had shifted, somewhere along the way. I didn’t know how to feel about that.

  His mood was different, too. He was somber and quiet on our ride home, as I was I. We both felt the shift, I knew it. But neither one of us knew what to say about it.

  “Uh-oh, we’ve got company,” he commented when he saw a cruiser heading our way on the opposite side of the road with its lights on, just outside of town.

  “What?” This wasn’t a great time to get pulled over. We were both still soaked to the bone and naked underneath our blankets.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just Mitch. He won’t be much of a bother, though I’m sure he’ll have a good laugh at our expense. I bet he’s just flashing his lights to say hi.” He signaled and pulled over to the side of the road just in case, then took a moment to rearrange his blanket so his lap was well covered. I pulled my blanket tighter around myself.

  Will rolled his window down as a middle aged, grossly overweight policeman approached his side.

  “This guy’s a buddy of mine,” he explained out of the side of his mouth. “Hey, Mitch.”

  “Will! I–” The officer fell silent when he spied Will’s naked torso and me, wrapped up tightly in my blanket. He was clearly flustered for a moment, then he broke into a good round of chuckling and shook his head.

  “Hello, Miss,” he smiled at me before averting his eyes again.

  “Hi,” I replied weakly.

  “So you’re it, huh? I got a complaint about a couple of folks going at in broad daylight down by the lake. I never in a million years imagined it’d be you, Will!”

  I sank down in my seat, willing myself to disappear. Someone had not only seen our quick, heated moment down by the lake but even called the police about it. I wasn’t some crazy exhibitionist, so why had I allowed it to happen like that? Because Will had that affect on me, I realized. Because even though I knew that it was risky and wrong to have sex in broad daylight in the middle of a parking lot, albeit a deserted one, my yearning for Will had overcome my common sense.

  “Yeah, um, sorry about that, Mitch. Guess we weren’t really thinking!”

  “Well, I’m not too worried about. In fact, you just saved me a trip down there. I’m actually glad to find out it was you and not a couple of underage teenagers. But next time, save it for the Inn, okay? Tell you what–I’m just gonna go back to the station and put in the report that the involved parties had cleared out by the time I got there. That sound about right to you?”

  “Sure does, Mitch. I sure would appreciate that. Who called it in, by the way?”

  Oh, I hadn’t considered that. If it was embarrassing for me to be caught in that compromising position by a stranger, I can only imagine how embarrassing the whole thing was for Will. This was his home, and these were his people.

  “Ah, Will, you know I can’t tell you that. But rest assured that they didn’t realize it was you. I think we’ll just leave this our little secret.”

  “Again, much appreciated, Mitch.”

  “You two run along now. Looks like you’ve been skinny dipping, though what would posses you to do such a thing this time of year is beyond me! Have a little more sense next time, eh, Will?”

  “Sure thing, Mitch. Again, I really appreciate your discretion about this.”

  “I’ll see you around.” He turned his eyes to me just briefly and he touched the brim of his hat. “You have a good one now, Miss.”

  “Thanks.”

  We watched him climb back into his cruiser and make a three-point turn to head back into town before Will started the truck up again.

  It took me a moment to catch on, but he was laughing, that dog.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “You. Me. Everything. You’re sure shaking things up here, Calista, in case you didn’t notice. I never would have done a thing like that, before…before you came along. You just have that affect on me, I guess.”

  His improved mood was infectious. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  He reached over and grabbed my hand to bring it up to his lips for a quick kiss. “A good thing, for sure. Definitely a good thing.”

  “That’s not the type of thing I would usually do, either. I’m sorry that I got you into trouble.”

  “No, no trouble at all. Though it sounds like somebody got an eyeful! I kind of wish I knew who, though it’s probably best that I don’t. And you didn’t get me into trouble, I did it myself.”

  “Yeah, but I encouraged you.”

  He took his eyes off the road just long enough to shoot me a seriously smoldering look that made me ready to have him all over again.

  “You listen to me, and listen good. No encouragement was needed. I might have given it a go even without the condom, I wanted you so badly.” As he spoke, I saw the telltale rising of a fresh erection moving the blanket in his lap.

  “And I might have let you,” I whispered. What did this man do to me? I wasn’t a reckless or irresponsible person. But if we had been without any condoms, and he suggested it, I might have allowed it, as long as he promised to pull out in time. I wanted him so badly, every time he wanted me, that I might have let my libido drown out my good sense.

  “Is that so?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. His eyes darted along the side of the road ahead of me, and I knew just what he was thinking. “We’re too close to town. We’ll have to wait until we get back to the Inn.”

  A wicked thought crossed my mind. “Maybe, but that doesn’t rule out everything.” With a sly smile I leaned across the seat and began rearranging his blanket.

  “Calista, what are you–” His questioned trailed off to a moan of ecstasy as my lips wrapped around him. I licked and nibbled, sucked and slid as Will placed one hand on my head and encouraged me to keep going.

  “You’re going to get us
in more trouble, you know–the town center’s just ahead.”

  “I’d better cover up, then.” I pulled my blanket over head as I continued to service him.

  By the time we got back to the Inn, his breath was coming in ragged bursts and my body ached for him.

  “Let’s get inside, fast.” He pushed my head away roughly and wrapped himself up in his blanket again. I was happy to do the same, and we sprinted into the Inn and straight up the stairs.

  When we reached the top of the stairs, he was upon me. He pushed me against the wall and made a trail of hot, steamy kisses down my neck and across the top of my breasts before lowering his lips to my right nipple. I writhed with pleasure as he sucked and teased it to a rock hard point. One hand ran down my hip before nestling at my inner center as two of his fingers slid into me.

  “You’re ready again,” he whispered in awe.

  “So are you,” I mused, toying with his hardness.

  Without another word withdrew from me, then grabbed me with both hands and carried me down the hall facing him, with my legs wrapped around him. I could feel the tip of him pushing, seeking, yearning against my wetness as we moved, and it was all I could to resist guiding him into me. He was right there, just on the edge, and I shifted my weight in his arms so he was slipping against the most sensitive part of me.

  “Jesus, Calista,” he breathed against my neck when he felt himself sliding against my clitoris.

  I could only whimper in reply as his firmness slid and tickled against me, setting me on fire.

  Still holding onto me, still sliding against me where it counted most, he stumbled into his room and rooted around in his drawer for a condom. Once he found one, he hurried to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  It took the water a moment to heat up, but we entertained ourselves while we waited. He held me with one hand but the other traced lazy lines up and down my thigh while he continued his rhythm against me, slowly increasing it as I desperately clutched him and fought against my desire to feel him bare inside of me.