by Lulu Pratt
But instead I pull myself off him and take a second to steady myself in the shallows before climbing up onto the shore to the grass.
“We should head back home. Our parents are probably starting to worry a bit,” I say.
I don’t even bother to dry off, but just pull my clothes onto my wet body.
Zane follows suit.
The cold water sobered me up, and the one beer I did finish was hours ago, so I drive us back to my parents’ house.
Neither of us talks the whole way back home.
I’m sure that tomorrow night at the party, it’s just going to be so incredibly awkward.
***
Mom is still up when I get into the house, but she’s in her pajamas, watching something on TV. She gives me a look when I come into the room, and I’m suddenly aware that my hair’s still damp, my clothes are sticking to me, and my make-up’s probably a mess.
“What’s happened?” she asks.
I shrug. “Nothing,” I say, probably too quickly.
“Either of you find dates for tomorrow’s party?”
I shake my head. “Nah, no luck there,” I say.
“Nothing is going on with you and him?”
“Mom, please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Nothing is different between us.”
Before she can try to get any more questions in, I tell her I need to check my email, and that I need to get some sleep if I’m going to help Bev set up and then enjoy the party the next night.
I rush off to my room and close the door behind me and every inch of my body still tingles from what Zane and I did.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ZANE LEWIS
The house has never been more crowded in my entire life, at least, not that I can remember. At the same time, as I wander around my parents’ big anniversary blowout party, I feel lonely. Everyone who comes into the house or wanders out into the yard and sees me seems to want to know how the military is treating me, and whether I plan on staying in or taking my retirement.
My only comfort is overhearing the other people my age at the party, including Harper, getting the same kinds of questions I’m fielding. What their next career move is going to be, when they’re going to settle down and get married. All the usual things that older adults ask younger adults, over and over again.
In and outside a house filled with practically everyone I know outside of the army, I feel like I can’t escape.
I spot Harper edging away from a group of older people, looking around for an exit of her own. When her gaze lands on me, I grin and shrug. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. I’ve been watching her all night. In fact I’ve been watching her every time she’s anywhere near, ever since the night before.
I could not get the memory of her out of my head.
I look around, there’s only one place I know of in the whole house where none of the guests will be. My room upstairs has a bunch of even-younger kids in it, drinking sodas, eating snacks and arguing over my PlayStation. The only empty place in the whole house will be my parents’ room on the ground floor. I lick my lips. No one is going to notice if we’re gone for, like, twenty minutes or so.
I have to get Harper alone.
I move a little closer to her, and start to almost walk past her in the crowd of people wandering around the house, catching her eye with a quick gesture I learned in the army that comes in handy. Hopefully no one else notices it.
“My parents’ room,” I murmur, as I walk past her.
“Two minutes,” she says just as quickly, her voice low in my ear.
I nod quickly and hurry in the direction of my parents’ bedroom, trying to look like I’m doing some kind of urgent chore.
I feel like there’s a hot wire running through my spine from my skull to my hips as I wait for Harper to follow me. Just remembering her from the night before in the water completely naked is enough to start getting me hard. It’s all I’ve been able to think about ever since it happened.
Harper slips into the room, closing the door quickly behind her, and I’ve got my arms around her waist before I can even think about what I’m doing. My mouth is against hers. Instantly Harper’s lips open to the touch of my tongue and she responds to my every touch. I push her up against the wall to get as much contact with her body as I possibly can.
“I — I take it you’re having a frustrating night, too,” Harper says when I break away from her lips finally, dipping down to her neck.
“God, if I hear one more question about what I’m going to do, I’m going to show them some shit I learned in basic,” I tell her, and close my mouth over hers again.
“Didn’t we say we couldn’t do—” Harper breaks off with a moan, and her hands are all over me, sliding against my chest, grazing against the rock-hard ridge at the front of my pants. I groan out and my hips push against her hand.
“Not here,” I say, pulling back a little bit. Attached to my parents’ bedroom is their bathroom, and while the idea of bending Harper over my mom and dad’s bed is pretty horrifying, I think we can both get some stress relief that I know we need in the bathroom without it being too gross.
I drag her into the big bathroom and close the door behind us. I’m all over her again almost before I can think about whether or not I should be. Harper moans and the sound makes the hot tension between my hips, down along my groin, burn more intensely.
“Do you want to do this?” I nip at the spot where her pulse flutters along her jaw, and Harper’s head moves up and down.
“Yeah, it’s probably the worst possible thing to do right now but yeah,” she says, sounding breathless.
God, I love the sound of her voice, the sound of her moans, the way it’s so obvious that she’s giving into the situation almost in spite of herself.
We can’t get fully naked. If someone somehow comes into the master bedroom, we need to be able to straighten up fast. I reach underneath Harper’s dress and tug her panties down, and she lets them fall to her feet before stepping out of them.
At the same time, she’s unzipping my fly, reaching into my pants. She takes my cock out of my pants. Her hands are cool, but it might be that my cock is so hot for her. She wraps her delicate hand around it, and a shiver rushes up my spine.
I pull down the front of her dress and find she isn’t wearing a bra, a fact that somehow makes me even harder. It feels like there’s molten rock in the pit of my stomach, like my cock is full of liquid metal. I could come in an instant, but I don’t want to. I reach up between Harper’s legs and she’s every bit as wet, every bit as hot, as I have imagined since I saw her in her bedroom.
I slide my fingers along her folds and press into her slowly, finding her clit. Harper lets out a little cry, her hands tightening on me. We touch each other for what feels like an eternity, and she gets wetter and wetter, slickening my fingers. I’m struggling not to come in her hand as she strokes me.
“Here,” I say, pulling down my pants just enough to do what I need to. I sit on the wide ledge of my parents’ bathtub. Always prepared, I roll on a condom and pull Harper to me, and she gets what I have in mind immediately.
She smiles and parts her legs and sinks down onto me. She’s so tight, so hot and wet, wrapped around my throbbing, aching cock that I have to hold her absolutely still on top of me for about fifty beats of my heart to make sure I don’t hit my climax right away.
Harper begins to slowly rise and fall on me, her muscles flexing around my erection. I bury my face against her tits, nuzzling and licking and sucking without even really paying attention to what I’m doing. I rock my hips up to meet hers, pushing deeper and deeper inside of her as she rides me.
“God, I wish I could get you naked and bend you over my bed and just fuck you until you scream my name,” I tell Harper, grabbing at her hips, trying to push her down onto me harder and faster.
“It’s not… it’s not bad enough, screwing in your parents’ bathroom?” Harper sounds amused, and breathless, all at the same time. She kisses
me again and again, and we might as well be a million miles away from the party.
I can’t hold out for long. All at once I’m holding her tight against me, pushing up with my hips hard and fast, slamming into her as instinct takes over. Harper buries her face against my shoulder to muffle the noises she’s making. If anyone came in right now they would absolutely and immediately know what we were doing.
I feel Harper’s body flexing around me in hard, fast spasms as she comes, and that’s all it takes. My cock explodes into the condom. I groan against her neck as one jolt of pleasure after another lights up my nervous system.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HARPER POLSEN
As the waves of orgasm lessen, a noise comes from the other side of the door. Someone is in the bedroom and immediately every last trace of calm leaves my body. I tense on top of Zane and my heart pounds in my chest in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with how much he turns me on.
“Shit,” I whisper.
Zane’s hands are tight on the small of my back, and both of us stare at each other, absolutely silent, both of us even hold our breaths, waiting to see what’s going on.
I hear a woman’s laugh just beyond the closed door, and I immediately recognize it as Bev’s. I close my eyes. I want to groan at how absolutely awkward this is, how completely inappropriate, but if I do that then both Zane and I will be discovered.
“It’s not rude to leave our guests, right?” I hear Bev saying, and the flirty note in her voice is enough for me to realize exactly what she’s talking about.
“I don’t care. It’s distracting as hell to have to chat about Harold’s golf game with this threatening to rip through my fly at any minute.”
My eyes fly open at the sound of Zane’s dad speaking and saying those words, and all at once it hits both of us — Zane’s parents are talking about having a quickie.
It’s weird and hilarious and absolutely mortifying all at the same time. I cover my mouth with my hand, pressing my fingers against my lips to stifle the sound of the irresistible giggles that I just can’t keep down. I’m trying too hard to stay silent, even as the laughter bubbles up, that I’m shaking on top of Zane like a cup full of Yahtzee dice. I realize that Zane is chuckling too, as quietly as he possibly can.
By the time we can get control of ourselves, we hear his parents starting to moan in the next room. We both lose it again, barely smothering the sounds of our confused, mortified laughter against each other’s clothes.
“Oh my God, your parents are going at it not twenty feet away from us,” I whisper in Zane’s ear. He groans, lips against my neck to cover the sound.
“This is… God,” Zane murmurs.
“It’s gross,” I finish for him.
“No, just really, really weird,” he says.
I’m trying to listen enough to make sure that neither of his parents can hear us, and not listen enough to really, truly know what’s going on. It feels like it’s going on forever, but when I check my watch, thank God, after I hear Bev and Nolan leaving the next room chuckling at their quick getaway, it’s only fifteen minutes.
“We need to get out of here,” I say.
“Yeah, someone will notice,” Zane agrees.
“I wonder if anyone noticed that the host and hostess were missing. You go first. You’ve been gone for longer and you’re the darling son,” I tell him.
I get myself cleaned up after Zane leaves, and put my panties back on and straighten my dress. I wait a minute longer, and walk out of the bathroom, and then the master bedroom, as unobtrusively as I can.
There are so many people at the party that nobody has noticed that I was away, at least as far as I can tell. The break and the big climax I got out of it at least makes it easier for me to deal with all the questions about why a girl like me is still single, what I’m up to in the big city, whether or not I’m lonely out there on my own.
By the time my parents and I walk back to the house, I’m exhausted. I can feel the sticky-slick feeling between my legs. My toes ache from the heels I’ve been wearing for hours, and I can barely keep my eyes open. I go up to my room barefoot, and toss my shoes into my closet, and look out through my window. The light’s off in Zane’s room, but I don’t know if that’s because he’s not there, or if it’s because he’s asleep already.
My phone vibrates, and when I grab for it and scramble to look at the screen, I see it’s not Zane, as I half-hoped, but instead my boss.
“Hello, Harper Polsen here,” I say.
“Harper, glad I could catch you. Sorry, I know it’s late,” Vanessa says.
“I just got back to my parents’ house,” I tell her. “I’m about to get into bed.”
“So I have to ask you something, and you’re not going to like it,” Vanessa says.
I close my eyes, sinking down to sit on the edge of my bed, knowing that if she admits ahead of time I’m not going to like it, I’m really not going to like it.
“What’s up, Vanessa?”
“Do you think you can come back maybe a day or two early?”
I make a face and look up at the ceiling, shaking my head. “Why?” I know the probable reason why, but I also know I have to ask to keep the conversation moving forward.
“Jonah Hildebrand wants to get started on the project earlier than we projected,” Vanessa explains. “And of course, since he’s a bigwig…”
“You have to at least make a token effort,” I finish for her.
“So, what can I tell the folks upstairs?”
“You can tell them that I can’t possibly make it in a day early,” I say firmly. I know I’m going to get pushback, and I try to think of a good reason. Not that there’s a hot guy I just had sex with who I don’t want to go away from early, that I just can’t do it.
“What’s going on? You know I’ve got to give them some kind of excuse,” Vanessa says.
“My mom, she threw out her back yesterday, doing something out in the yard and she needs me here to help her while she’s bedridden,” I tell her quickly. “My dad can’t help her, he’s stuck at work himself and all that.”
“If she’s sick, then of course you should stay,” Vanessa says.
“The pain in her back is a pain in my ass,” I quip, putting just enough annoyance into my voice. Vanessa laughs.
“Sounds about right. Okay, I’ll let them know you can’t come in early.” I almost breathe a sigh of relief. I finish up the call and get off the phone as quickly as I can, before I feel the need to embroider my lie. It’s good enough, and I need to stick with it.
I strip off my clothes and curl up in bed without even bothering to take a shower first. I decide I’ll deal with it in the morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ZANE LEWIS
“Are you going out this evening?” I look up from my phone. My mom is standing in my open doorway.
“No, why?” I put down my phone. I’d been texting with one of my buddies on the base. There’s a betting pool now that it’s common knowledge that I’m up for reenlistment.
“Just wondering,” Mom says.
“After all the work today cleaning up from last night, I have no intention of driving around,” I tell her.
“Seems kind of like a dud, this vacation of yours,” Mom comments, sitting down on my chair.
I laugh. “As opposed to going out with whichever of my boys is in town, drinking and trying to pick up some girl?” I have to admit, that is the usual way my leave goes.
“Is it because of the reenlistment issue, or because you’re settling down, or because you’re here for the anniversary?” Mom looks at me steadily.
I have to wonder why she’s so worried.
“Just don’t feel like it as much this time,” I say with a shrug.
“I just want to make sure you’re not depressed or something,” Mom explains.
That makes me laugh. “Depressed? No, Ma. There’s no reason for me to be depressed.” I shake my head.
“You just seem a
bit different,” Mom says.
“Well I’m looking at one of the most important decisions of my life,” I point out.
“As long as it’s just that and not something else. You know you can talk to us,” Mom tells me as she stands up.
“Of course, Mom,” I say. The last thing I want right now is for her to pay too much attention to what I’m doing, or even not doing, while I’m home.
I have to reassure her again before she leaves to go to bed, but then I’m by myself again, texting with my friend Ryan. Apparently the betting pool at the base puts me at sixty-percent chance that I’ll reenlist.
I get a notification for another text message, and it’s not from anyone on the base. It’s from Harper.
Are you as bored as I am right now?
I look across the yard and see Harper in her room, in pajamas, but I can see they fit her perfectly, and all I can think about is how we had sex the night before in my parents’ bathroom. We’re both only in town for a couple of days more before we both have to go back to our lives.
Bored out of my mind
She looks at me and we’re both grinning at each other. I have an idea. There’s a bunch of leftover beer from the party the night before that my parents will never miss.
I text Harper my idea, and sneak downstairs, checking to make sure that both my parents are in bed before I head into the basement where we put the leftover beer. I know it’s probably a terrible idea to meet with Harper alone after we had sex the night before, and we both agreed we should never do it again, that it’s too weird, but I can’t resist the thought of sitting around and having a few beers with her, talking.
I know that something’s probably going to happen, but I try to tell myself that it’s some harmless fun for both of us. After all, we’re both in our twenties, and we’re healthy and we’re single. Who are we hurting with the fooling around we did? Nobody.