by Lark O'Neal
“Okay,” I say. “My turn.”
“You have to do your face first.” He slaps mud over his cheeks and forehead, so I follow suit, surprised that I don’t mind if I look ridiculous.
“Turn around,” I say.
“Don’t you want to do my chest first?”
I avoid his eyes, glad to have the teasing but aware that the sparks could start flying again any second. “You can do your own.”
“Too bad. I was going to offer a trade.”
A crystal clear vision of his big hands spreading mud over my breasts nearly buckles my knees, but I don’t look up at him. “Ha ha.” He offers his back and I splat mud on his shoulder blades. His skin is smooth, the color of nutmeg. “Did you spend a lot of time at the beach when you were home? You have a good tan.”
“Not the beach,” he says, turning around. He scoops mud out of the trough and slaps it on his chest, arms. “Just doing some work for my mom around the yard. She has some mobility issues, so if my dad is out of commission, she needs help.”
“You’re a good son,” I say lightly.
“Not really,” he says, and guides me away from the trough to let others have access.
“How so?” I ask, patting the mud over my chest, under my chin.
For a minute, he’s silent, then shakes his head. “A good son would be at home, taking care of his parents.” He spreads his hands. “Here I am.”
“I totally get it. The parent thing is kind of hard.”
His hands skim the water, back and forth. His fingers are long and elegant, and the tendons shift as he moves them. It makes me think of Tyler, somehow, his artistic hands.
Is he reminding me of Tyler in some way? Is that why I’m so attracted to him? I narrow my eyes. They couldn’t be more different in terms of coloring. Tyler is blond, blue eyed, Nordic. And he’s cheerful where Tyler is brooding. But maybe it’s that sexy appeal, that thing that sizzles from the skin of certain people. Like a scent you can’t smell, but captures you all the same.
His voice breaks the spell. “How so?” he asks, echoing me.
“My mother has given me an ultimatum. Either I give up the snowboarding and figure out how to contribute to the family business, or she’s withdrawing support.”
“Family business?”
“Yeah,” I say with a snort. “Saving the world. That’s what the Bouviers do. Feed the hungry, heal the wounded, house the poor.”
He laughs. “What a rotten family.”
“I mean, it’s all good work. I’m proud of them. I just want to do what I do. I love it so much.” I narrow my eyes. “This would be a good time to not say a word, Muggle.”
He covers his mouth with his hands, eyes glittering.
“Do you have any siblings to help with your parents?” I ask.
“No. Only child. And spoiled, I admit it. How about you?”
“Two siblings, older. A sister with three kids, and a brother who is being groomed by my father to be everything he was born to be. He’s going to get married in a few months, then go to Africa for a couple of years. My sister runs a clinic for kids in the inner city.”
“Which city?”
“New York. My parents live on the upper west side.” I think of the house, five floors of an aged brownstone that’s been in the family for generations, and it shows in all the best ways. I love it more than I am willing to admit. Every wall is lined with books and paintings and drawings and little things collected on various travels over generations. “It’s a great place.”
“I’ve been there a few times. The city, not your house.”
I smile.
“You’re the baby, then?”
“Yes. I was an oops baby, five years younger than my brother.”
His eyebrows lift. “So you’re probably a little spoiled, too.”
“Probably.” I sigh. “They have supported my training for more than a decade. Paid for special schools for athletes, coaches, gear, travel.” I pause, dipping my hand into the cloudy water and watching it disappear. “I’m lucky, I know I am.”
“But you want to keep going and they want you to stop.”
“Yeah.” I bring my hand up through the water, waiting for the exact second it takes shape. It’s weird to say the truth, so I dodge by giving him a wry smile. “Imagine your parents wanted you to come home and be a science teacher, or maybe run the local volcano museum.”
He mock shudders.
“Exactly.”
“You said your parents are philanthropists.”
I nod, watching my hand skim the top of the cloudy white water.
“That’s not exactly a job.”
“Like snowboarding?” I raise a brow.
“Dude.” He grins and the mud on his face cracks around his cheeks. “I apologized!”
“I know.” I trace circles on the surface of the water, enjoying the contrast between cold air on my shoulders and hot water from my mid-belly down. “My parents have positions, you know what I mean? Like they serve on boards and all that kind of thing. But really what they do is give money away. That’s their entire job.”
I can feel him measuring me.
“Come here, little heiress, and sit next to me,” he says. “We can be the best of friends.”
I grin wryly. It’s not untrue. I like him for acknowledging it. “Their philosophy is that to whom much is given, much is required.” I slide next to him, our arms brushing under water. “And they are not thrilled with my choice of careers, I can tell you.”
“Ah ha! That’s where all that prickliness came from.”
I nod. “They want me to figure out where I want my life to go. How I’m going to give back.”
“Any ideas?”
“I want to snowboard.”
He nods. But it’s patronizing and pisses me off. “Whatev.” I stand up and get ready to storm away. He grabs my arm.
“No you don’t,” he says, “not again.”
In the shoulder-deep water, I’m knocked off balance and slide into his chest, my entire side, and then my breasts. My thighs tangle with his, and wild electric sparks sizzle across my skin, across his, and it feels crazy, and then he’s bending down to kiss me, that beautiful, lush mouth folding into mine. I have to arch backward and that presses our bellies and chests into contact, and against my lower belly, I feel his erection until he moves it away slightly, his hand on my neck, his mouth as sweet and delicious as honey, soft as pillows, the best mouth—
I push away, alarmed. “We—I…uh.”
His lids are heavy. “Exactly.”
“I think I need to get out of the water now. I’m starting to feel dizzy.”
He smiles.
“I mean from the heat.”
His thumb brushes my lower lip.
“From the water,” I insist.
“I know.” He stands, holds out that big hand, and I find myself taking it. “We have to catch the bus back pretty soon anyway.”
Chapter FOUR
The combination of flying, plus the massage, plus the long soak in hot mineral water turns me to mush. After a shower and more food, we make our way to the bus. I’m half comatose, and he has said little, either, as if by donning our coats and hats, we’ve become different people.
He gestures for me to take the window, and I don’t argue. We fall into our seats as we did on the way here, and I look out at the fading light. “The sun is disappearing again, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It was only up for three hours.”
“It will keep us company on the way back. You can see the landscape a little.”
His phone pings and he slides his thumb over the face. A couple of text bubbles show in the screen, and I look away.
“The volcano is restless,” he says.
“Really? Like how restless?”
He gives me a grin, wiggling his eyebrows. “Very. Like any second she could go.”
“What will happen if it does?”
“Not really sure. This
one can do any number of things—ash clouds or Stromboli. The big concern is that this volcano has a twin that historically often blows in conjunction within a short period, and it tends to be more violent. We’d rather that did not happen.”
“What’s most likely?”
He shrugs. “We don’t predict this stuff very well. There are some things they do when they’re going to go. But sometimes they don’t. This one has been swelling.” His hands expand.
“So, a literal explosion.”
He nods, looking happy.
“I hope I get out of here before that happens.”
He leans in, hesitates, picks up my hand. “I hope you don’t.”
A wave of wishing moves in me, a wish for a different kind of experience of these things. I wish I knew how to flirt. I look at his mouth again, and a soft spray of sparks dances across my own lips. I want to kiss him again, very badly.
Instead, I think of the upcoming tour and competition schedule, the training, the things I have to do if I’m going to stay on track for the Olympics in South Korea. I look out the window to the harsh, cold landscape. Gabe settles back, still holding my hand, and starts to sing softly, tapping out a rhythm on my wrist. It’s a made up song, with words that make no sense, and I glance at him, thinking he is actually a good guy. Like the real thing.
Crap.
A sense of time shifting, life and energy and a thousand things I’m only half aware of, comes over me, almost a literal sway. I’ve been madly in love with a bad boy for a decade or more. A good guy scares me so much I have to take a breath.
“Has anything bad ever happened to you?” My tone is more derisive than I intend, but it’s too late to take it back.
He gives me a quizzical glance. “You going all mean girl on me now?”
“No.” I scowl right back at him. His thumb moves on my wrist, very lightly. I feel it all the way to the soles of my feet and start to pull away, but he holds on. “You just seem so—I don’t know.”
“Happy?”
It sounds stupid when he says it like that, but that is what I mean. Who is that straightforward, that upbeat?
The bus starts to move as he waits for my answer, but I can’t really think of a way to backtrack.
He leans back, pulls off his hat and runs his fingers through his curls. Glossy, soft, almost black. I have to bend my fingers into my palm to stop myself from brushing them back from his temples.
“Of course things have happened to me,” he says at last, and I see that shadow of sadness on his mouth again. I wonder if he’s thinking of his father, of doing things for his parents, which is also the most next-door-neighbor-nice-guy motive of all time.
I hear my thoughts with a little ping of surprise. When did I become so cynical? So bitchy?
“Nothing big, though,” he continues. “Does that disqualify me?”
“From what?”
“From—” he opens his palm against mine, pressing his fingers and all his skin against all my fingers and palm. The electric sizzle starts to prickle again, as if we’re completing a circuit, plugging in to each other “—whatever this might be.”
“Is this a thing?”
He holds my gaze for what seems like a long time. Long enough that I find myself lost in the depth of his eyes, seeing the barely visible line between his iris and his pupil. The extravagant lashes sweep lower, half-covering his expression as he looks at my mouth. His voice is husky and soft when he says, “I think it might be something.”
“I’ve only known you five hours.”
A shrug. “I knew in the first five minutes.”
“Knew what? That you wanted to have sex with me?”
“That,” he agrees, and slides his fingers over my palm. “But more. Maybe we’re meant to be.” He says it lightly, but with some genuine depth behind it, and I feel the words, the weight of them, somewhere in my gut. Tyler, telling me about Jess, about how he’d fallen so head over heels in love with her at first sight.
“Oh, don’t give me the soulmates thing.”
“You don’t believe?”
“I don’t not believe. It’s just…it seems so sad, really.”
“Sad? Why sad?”
“What if you miss your soulmate? What if you cross the street at the wrong moment, or she got killed in a car accident when she was 10 and you’re doomed to live alone forever?”
He smiles again. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“How, then?”
“We make agreements to find each other. Like where and when. That’s why we end up doing those strange things we can’t explain.”
“No.” I shake my head, and take my hand back, rubbing away the arousal in my palm against my leg. “I’m in Iceland to find my friend, and he’s here because he thought he was soulmates with a girl who found her soulmate in New Zealand.”
Calmly, Gabe says, “So now he’s looking for the real one.”
I look at him. It’s weirdly comforting. And disturbing. Because if there are soulmates, then what have I been doing all this time, loving Tyler?
It’s depressing. I look out the window. The landscape is so vast, all severe black rock covered with snow. A lone red house stands on the volcanic fields beneath an empty sky, far from everything. “Who lives like that?” I say, pointing.
“Somebody who likes it,” he returns easily, and again I feel slightly ashamed of myself. More than a little off balance.
“It would be so lonely.”
“I agree. Also cold.”
The water of the bay shines a soft grayish purple. The house recedes and there’s only snow and rocks. Lava fields, I realize. That’s why they are so black. “But what if Jess really was my friend’s soulmate and she just doesn’t get it, or he just screwed up too much—because he really kind of did—and he’s left alone?”
He shrugs. “I don’t think that happens.”
I close my eyes, stirred up and anxious and restless and—
“Kaitlin,” he says next to me.
I open my eyes, and he’s leaning close, and when I see him bending over me I know that this is what I want, his hand sliding under my hair to my neck, his mouth coming down on mine, gentle and hot and engulfing. Helplessly, I give myself up to it, to the suckling deliciousness, his tongue elegantly asking admission to my mouth and drawing mine out in return in a long, lazy, exploratory dance.
He smells like the hot springs and snow and morning. Every single cell in my body surges toward him. I raise my hands to his head, to his hair, and the cool curls loop around my fingers. Under my palm is the arc of his cheekbone, and it’s weirdly intimate and thrilling to touch him like that, to taste his hot, lush lips. He knows how to kiss, how to angle his head and pull me closer, to vary the pressure and the depth of his thrusts. He strokes my hair, touches my ear, my neck.
He lifts his head infinitesimally, brushing his nose over the end of mine and smiles, then bends in and kisses me again, deeper, more thoroughly. We settle into our corner and kiss.
And kiss.
And kiss.
That’s all. Just kiss. All the way back to Reykjavik. It is one of the most delicious, erotic, arousing, fantastic hours of my life. I forget about my mother’s ultimatum and the quest to find Tyler, and I’m lost in Gabe’s sexy mouth, his hungry tongue. I slide my hands under his coat and touch his ribs and back. He moves his hand to my waist, but nothing else, even though my breasts are so hot they’re practically glowing and I want to squeeze my legs together to tone down that hungry pulsing that starts up about five minutes in. He leans in, and pulls me close, and I feel the hard thrust of his erection, but he doesn’t try anything, ask anything.
We just kiss. Suck and plunge, swirl and pull. Kiss and kiss and kiss. I would keep kissing him for a hundred hours more.
But soon enough, the bus lumbers into the station and we part. Gabe draws a circle on my palm, silently, and the sensation zaps through me, settling low between my legs.
As everyone else gets off, we sit whe
re we are. I trace the angle of his knuckles, touch the veins on his hands.
I don’t know what’s going to happen now, if I should invite him to my hotel, or tell him I’ll see him later. Or what.
“I don’t do this,” I say aloud.
“What? Make out on a bus?” He links our index fingers, brushes his thumb over the tip of my finger. “Do you like trains better? Trains can be good. But not airplanes.”
“Ugh.” I think of cramped seats and armrests. “No way.”
He leans into me. “Don’t go without telling me that you’re leaving, okay?”
It’s not what I’m expecting. “You wouldn’t want to…you know, come with me?”
His smile is both wicked and regretful. “I want to. But we’re not going that route, are we?”
“What route?”
“A one night stand on the road.”
“I’ve never had a one night stand in my life!”
“Me, either,” he says, and lifts his mouth on one side.
I look at him. “Really? I thought all guys did that.”
“Not me.”
It makes me nervous. He makes me nervous. And yet, my body is aroused and alive, ready to flutter into flames. I feel it in my throat and my breasts and in the very wet and ready softness between my legs, a softness that would be very happy to welcome him. “Maybe we both need to be corrupted, then. I mean, I’m only here for a couple of days.”
“Maybe.” He wiggles a brow. “Then again, I have influence with the local volcanoes.”
“Oh, don’t even say that!” I slap his arm. “I really need to find Tyler and get back to training pronto.”
He gives an exaggerated, slow shrug. “Volcanos do what they do.” He pulls out his phone again and there is another long series of texts. He grins, flashing white teeth between those lush lips, and shows me. “Already in motion. Looks like she’s going to blow.”
I laugh and punch his arm. “Get off the bus, dude. We’re the last ones.”
He stands and gestures for me to go in front of him, and as I walk down the aisle, I suddenly feel bereft that I’m leaving his company. What if I never find him again? What if I get to the hotel and Tyler is right there and I leave tomorrow and I never see Gabe again?