by Jessie Evans
We can have three months, a summer to run wild and indulge all the crazy ways he makes me feel, and then Gabe will go back to school, and I’ll go back to being the person I was before…except with money, and options.
The thought of being able to go to school without juggling two jobs at the same time is a heady one, but there’s still one major problem—
“You said you could promise that I won’t get caught,” I say. “How will you manage that?”
“First of all, we’ll be careful,” he says, watching his finger trace swirls on my skin. “We’re both smart, so that shouldn’t be hard. We’ll take our time and plan and practice and look at a potential job from all angles. And then, if something unexpected happens, and luck isn’t on our side, I take full responsibility.”
“How?” I ask. “Say you were blackmailing me or something?”
“Blackmail could work, and they’d probably let you off easy if you testified against me.” He leans in pressing a kiss to my thigh that makes me shiver. “Or we act like it’s a hostage situation, which would be best for you. If we can manage it.”
“Either way, you’re going to jail,” I say, not understanding why that doesn’t seem like a bigger deal to him. “I mean, not even your dad can get you out of trouble if you’re caught red handed and I testify against you.”
He shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Why?” I ask again, something still not adding up. “I don’t—”
“You ask too many questions.” He kisses my thigh, higher this time, close enough to more intimate things that I lose my words. “We’re not going to get caught. You’re worrying about something that’s never going to happen.”
“You can’t know…” My words trail away as his lips reach their destination and he kisses me again.
He kisses and licks and teases his tongue in and out of where he’s already made me ache, and pretty soon I forget everything but the way he makes me feel. I forget all my questions, all my fears and worries. By the time I’ve left my body a second time and finally floated back down to earth, I’m too wrung out to ask questions, to do anything but lie heavily on the couch, catching my breath.
“Be right back, beautiful.” Gabe brushes his knuckles tenderly across my cheek before bounding to his feet.
He covers me with a brown, fake fur throw draped over the other end of the couch, before crossing the room and disappearing through a door on the other side of the office. I hear water running and let the sound lull me as I snuggle beneath the sinfully soft blanket. I know I should get dressed, but I’m too exhausted and satisfied to move a muscle.
Well…mostly satisfied.
Even after two orgasms, I’m shocked to find I still want more. I want Gabe. I want to touch him the way he’s touched me. I want him naked, his stunning body bare to me, his skin hot against mine. I want to make him feel all the amazing things he made me feel. I know I’m not as experienced as he is, but I want to at least try to give him the same peace and pleasure he’s given me.
When he comes back through the bathroom door a few minutes later, I sit up, holding the blanket around my breasts as I crook on finger in his direction. “Your turn.”
Gabe smiles and even in the dim office light I can see that increasingly familiar spark of trouble flash in his eyes. “Not tonight. I told you, tonight is about you.”
“But I feel guilty. I want to make you feel good, and, I mean, isn’t it painful if a guy gets too…you know, and then doesn’t…” I wave a hand vaguely in the air. “You know?”
Gabe chuckles. “I just ate your pussy for half an hour and you’re embarrassed to ask if my balls are going to ache if I don’t come?”
My cheeks heat as I roll my eyes. “I’m not embarrassed, I’m just…”
“Embarrassed,” he finishes, amusement in his voice. “Don’t be. And don’t feel guilty. I took care of myself in the bathroom. Wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep from taking things further if I didn’t. I think I’m in love with your pussy. It’s fucking beautiful and delicious. My favorite ever.”
“Oh,” I say, not sure how to respond. “Well…thank you.”
Gabe laughs, a real, hearty laugh that echoes through the relatively small office.
“Whatever!” I reach for my bra. “I didn’t know what to say. I’m not used to situations like this. I told you, I don’t date.”
“Good.” He crosses to the larger desk a few feet from the couch and starts up the computer. “Let’s keep it that way. This summer, it’s you and me, no other distractions.”
I narrow my eyes, watching his face in the blue light of the computer screen as I slip into my bra beneath the blanket and reach for my dress. “Does that go for you, too?”
He grins, but keeps his eyes on the screen. “Yes, Caitlin. Me, too. I want you to be my girl for the summer. Can we go steady?”
I pull my dress over my head with laugh. “Only if you give me your class ring.”
“I’ll get it when I go home later tonight, and give it to you first thing tomorrow,” he says, motioning me over with a hand. “Now, come look at this. I did some digging around after our last job and found this guy. I think you’re going to be excited about giving him what’s coming to him.”
“Why’s that,” I ask, stepping into my panties and pulling them up before padding barefoot around the desk to stand beside Gabe.
“Read the file.” He puts his arm around my waist, drawing my back to his front with an ease that feels right.
I melt into him, bringing my hand to his arm and tracing my fingers back and forth as I glance down at the screen. I’ve never had this kind of easy intimacy with a boy before—and Gabe is the last person I would have expected to make cuddling feel natural—but it feels right to be like this with him.
Even when I begin to read, and shock becomes rage and disgust, I don’t want to pull away from Gabe. I want to get closer, to put our heads together and whisper until we’ve come up with a plan to make the son of bitch who’s been making my brother’s life a living hell for the past year pay.
“I’m in,” I say, even before I’ve scrolled down to the second page.
“I had a feeling you would be.” Gabe kisses my neck, humming happily against my skin. “I’ll bring dinner to your place tomorrow night and we can talk logistics after the kids are asleep. Burgers and fries acceptable?”
“Burgers and fries will make you a hero.” I turn in his arms and hook my wrists around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.
There’s no point in keeping Gabe from the kids now. They’ve already met my “date” and if Gabe and I are going to be spending the summer together, they might as well get used to me having a guy visiting the house. I’ll just make sure everyone knows our new friend Gabe will only be around until August, and warn the kids not to get too attached.
It’s not the kids you have to worry about.
I ignore the voice of doom and tilt my head, moaning as Gabe deepens our kiss. I’m not going to get attached. Gabe is fun, sexy, and a much better person than I expected him to be, but I’m not like my parents or my sister. I’m not an addict. I know when to say when. I can put the bottle down when I’ve had enough and not take another drink. I’ll be able to do the same with Gabe come August.
But until then, I intend to have a summer to remember.
Chapter Seven
Gabe
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. –Shakespeare
I’m more excited about bringing burgers over to Caitlin’s house than I’ve been about anything in longer than I can remember.
All day Sunday—while I indulge my parents, joining them for church and lunch afterward, before spending the afternoon compiling research on the aptly named Mr. Pitt—I can’t keep a smile from my face. Every once in a while I realize how ridiculous I’m being and logic does its best to drag me down into the gloom I’ve been inhabiting for the past few
months, but the idiotic euphoria is immune to logic.
By five o’clock I’m beginning to think my mother is right: a girl is the answer to everything that ails me. Getting swept up in Caitlin won’t change the facts, but if it makes me immune to the emotional side effects of my downward spiral…
Well, isn’t that almost the same thing?
The Buddha said that humans are the result of all the things we’ve thought. The mind is everything, and what we think is what we become. If that were true in the literal sense, I’d still be back in school getting my degree, not doing my best to right a few of my father’s wrongs before I break it to Mom and Dad that I won’t be returning to the university. But maybe it’s true in a different way. Maybe it’s true in the sense that the present is all there truly is. No matter how I’m shaped by my past, or long for the future, now is all I have.
And right now, seeing Caitlin again is enough to keep a smile on my face.
I leave Darby Hill early, taking the time to drive through downtown to the south side of Giffney, where Morris Brothers and Sons and Daughters and Sons—one of the oldest restaurants in South Carolina, passed down through the Morris family for four generations—stands on the outskirts of the historic district. Morris Brothers has the best burgers I’ve ever eaten, so succulent and perfectly spiced I suspect someone in the family made a deal with the devil for the recipe.
I’m sure the kids would be fine with McDonald’s, but I want to bring Caitlin the best. I want her to have the best cheeseburger while we plot our job, and I want to take her out to celebrate someplace posh as soon as we make our first deposit to her college fund. We’ll hire a babysitter, eat an amazing dinner, go to a club and dance like no one is watching, and then spend the night at a hotel, fucking like no one is listening.
It sounds like a night made in heaven.
All day, I’ve been replaying every moment of that hour we spent on the couch. She was so beautiful—not just her lovely body, or the sexy sounds she made when I made her come—but the way she gave herself to the moment, letting go and trusting I would be there to catch her. She was every bit as wild and abandoned as I’d hoped she’d be, and she’s already so deep under my skin I’d have to perform surgery to get her out.
The girl…destroys me. Just thinking about her is enough to get me hard.
By the time I get to her house with the burgers I’m pitching my fifteenth tent of the day, and am forced to sit in the car with the air conditioning blasting for several long minutes, waiting for my cock to get the message that now isn’t the time.
But soon. Definitely soon.
Maybe even tonight, after the kids have gone to bed. We can make our plans, plot out our timeline, and then fuck on top of all the evidence of Mr. Pitt’s crime. The crime he got away with, thanks to my father, a man who feels no moral conflict about going to church in the morning, then sitting down to strategize how to keep a guilty scumbag out of prison in the afternoon.
I’m not going to become a public defender the way I planned, or get to rub my father’s nose in my contempt for the way he practices law, but I can still do something to blot the stain the Alexander family has left on this town before I leave Giffney.
And the fact that I get to do it with the beautiful girl opening her front door to wave me into the house is only going to make the summer sweeter.
“Hello, beautiful.” I cross the toy-littered lawn with burgers in hand, eyes tracking up and down Caitlin’s petite form as she leans against the doorframe.
In cut-off shorts, a blue-and-white-striped tank top, and bare feet, she’s dressed more casually than last night, but looks even more tempting. She’s sexy in a laid back way that makes me want to kiss the glistening skin at her neck, grip her ass through those faded jean shorts, and kiss each one of her moon-shaped toes where the peach polish is just starting to chip around the edges.
“No way.” She stops me with a hand in the center of my chest as I lean in to kiss her. “It’s too hot. I’m not getting within two feet of another person until the sun goes down.”
I lift a brow. “I come bearing eight pounds of meat and five orders of curly fries and I don’t even get a kiss?”
“You’ll get one,” she says, grinning up at me. “You’ll just have to wait for it.”
“I don’t like to wait.” I lean in again. This time she lets me get close enough to smell the soap and sweat mixing on her skin—a scent that makes my mouth water for a taste of her—before spinning away seconds before our lips touch.
“Come on,” she says, laughter in her voice as she disappears into the house, clearly enjoying torturing me. “We’re going to eat in the backyard. At least we’ll have a breeze out there.”
I follow her inside, where I’m assaulted by the smell of too many warm bodies occupying too small a space. The house didn’t smell bad last night—just a little sour and damp, with overtones of garlic—but today’s high was fifteen degrees warmer than yesterday’s. The first summer heat wave is kicking off with highs in the low nineties and one hundred percent humidity, ensuring my family spent the day inside Darby Hill, where central air and heat were installed forty years ago.
I can’t imagine anyone living through a South Carolina summer without air conditioning, but apparently Caitlin and her family intend to try.
“You do have air conditioning,” I say, glancing around the house, looking for a thermostat. “This house isn’t that old.”
“We have it, we just can’t afford to turn it on,” she says, kicking toys out of her path as she makes her way through the living room and into the kitchen. She snags a pitcher of tea from the fridge and sets it on the counter before beginning to fill a blue plastic tray with glasses. “Sorry for the mess. I’ve been working with Ray on a project for school and Sean and Emmie didn’t clean up the toys like I asked.”
“I couldn’t care less about the mess,” I say. “But it’s fucking miserable in here.”
She turns back to me with a falsely sympathetic look. “Oh, poor baby. Don’t worry; you won’t melt. You’re not that sweet.”
“But you are.” I grin as I reach out, snagging her ponytail and giving it a tug as I push her against the refrigerator, dropping my lips to the sweat-slick skin of her throat. “In fact, I think you’re already melting.” I kiss up her neck toward her ear, growling when she pushes me away.
“I’m serious, psycho,” she says with a laugh. “No body heat in my vicinity until it’s dark, and at least ten degrees cooler.”
“Turn on the air conditioning,” I say, hungry for another taste of her. “I’ll pay for it.”
She wags her finger back and forth with a smile. “None of that. I don’t want you paying for things. I want to be an empowered lady thief.”
“You’re in a good mood,” I say, loving how much more relaxed she seems today. “Impending crime agrees with you.”
“Revenge agrees with me.” She casts a glance down the hall leading toward the back of the house before turning back to me. “You won’t believe all the things I found out about Mr. Pitt today. I called my friend Jenny who works part time in the office at the junior high. At first she didn’t have much to say, but then I told her how many times I’ve been called in for meetings since Danny’s been in Pitt’s class and she starting spilling her guts. Everyone hates this guy. Everyone. I can’t believe he still has a job.”
I frown. “You shouldn’t have talked to anyone. We don’t want this woman remembering you asked questions about Pitt. Once the police start investigating, it could lead them your way.”
Caitlin shakes her head as she fetches ice from the freezer and plunks it into the glasses. “No seriously, everyone hates him, Gabe. There will be dozens of suspects, and I was careful. I never asked Jenny any direct questions, just led her around to talking about what I wanted to talk about.”
She finishes with the ice and starts grabbing silverware from a drawer overflowing with no less than a hundred mismatched utensils, a chaotic collection that woul
d give my mother nightmares.
“Besides,” she continues, “Jenny’s a friend. She wouldn’t rat me out, even if she thought I had something to do with the robbery. Which she wouldn’t, because she knows I won’t even sneak into a movie without paying.”
I swipe sweat from my forehead, wishing I’d known I was going to be eating dinner in the seventh level of hell before I decided to wear jeans. “All right, but next time, no talking to friends, or anyone else. We keep this between you and me. If we don’t talk to anyone but each other, then we know no one will talk to the police.”
“All right. Makes sense.” She shoves a roll of napkins my way before scooping up the tray. “Speaking of you and me, the kids are pretty keyed up about me having a boyfriend. It’s crazy. I didn’t expect it to be that big of a deal, but I guess our lives are just that boring.”
“You told them I was your boyfriend?” I ask, stupidly pleased.
“Just for the summer,” she says, leading the way down the hall and through what looks like a combination play room/mud room, where trunks full of blocks and stuffed animals war for space with an overflowing coat rack next to a mountain of muddy shoes. “I told them you’re going back to college, so it’s not serious.”
“Who said I was going back to college?”
She pauses, glancing back at me. “Aren’t you?”
“Doubtful,” I say. “But I do have other unbreakable plans.”
She nods, a shadow crossing her face for a moment before she smiles even more brightly than before. “Right, so I told them it was only for the summer, but Sean and Ray are already talking about where you’re going to drive them in your fancy car, and Danny has decided you’re the Anti-Christ.”
I move ahead of her, holding the back door open. “And why’s that?”
“He says you make eye contact like a psychopath,” she says, with a shrug as she ducks under my arm. “I told him that’s the kind of eye contact I like, and to shut up and be nice, but I’m not sure he’s going to be civil. Just so you’re warned.”