Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance

by Shaye Marlow

  The pleasure was colossally large and loud as the last of it crashed through me, making my ears ring. Left to my own devices, I would have added to my body’s clamor by screaming down the rafters. But instead, we just sat in the middle of my bed in the darkness and near silence, shuddering.

  Gary finally rolled me back underneath him, stilling my movements with his weight. He kissed me, pressed his lips to the tender spot right in front of my ear. Then his hand slid off my face. He lifted up, his hand went down between us to hold the condom in place, and he pulled out.

  I shuddered again, feeling suddenly bereft. Cold and empty.

  He fell onto the bed beside me. I could feel his eyes on me.

  I stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. My neighbor had crawled through my window and had held me down—

  It had been unreal. He was exactly my speed, not too gentle, not too rough. He asked first, but still managed to take. And yet he gave.

  He leaned over me then, crowding the thoughts right out of my head. His finger touched my swollen lips. I licked his fingertip, and then pulled it into my mouth.

  His eyes flared.

  I held his gaze as I sucked him. I rolled the flat of my tongue over his sensitive fingertip. His muscles rippled when I scraped my teeth gently across the joint.

  He dragged his wet fingertip from my mouth, and then leaned close. His hand closed on my jaw, doing that controlling thing that I found so damn sexy. He turned my head so his lips were against my ear.

  “We did your fantasy,” he whispered. “Next time, mine.” Then he let me go, his gaze boring into mine for a breathless moment.

  I stared after him as he climbed out of bed, wondering what the hell he was talking about. My fantasy?

  He disposed of the condom, and quickly pulled his clothes on. With one last glance, he slipped out of my window, blending almost instantly into the darkness.

  Realization came slowly to my sex-addled brain. My fantasy. He’d read what I wrote. He’d read the scene I’d written of him sneaking into my bedroom window. He’d enacted a scene I wrote. Intentionally.

  I put a trembling hand over my bruised mouth.

  And it had been—beyond incredible. I’d had the most fantastic sex of my entire life, with the man who’d burned my blueberries to the ground… and with my brothers asleep downstairs.

  And he wanted to do it—do me—again! This time, it was my hand that muffled a squee of excitement.

  Chapte

  r Eleven

  The next morning, I lay in bed for a good half hour, grinning up at the ceiling. I’d imagined what had occurred between us more times than I could count, but none of it compared to the real thing. Something about his attitude, the exact same thing that had rubbed me the wrong way since he’d exploded into my life, seemed to rub me perfectly right in bed. Being with him last night had been amazing—and yes, I’d already checked my nightstand to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The 36 count box of Ultra Thin Trojan condoms was still there. I felt my loins heating, just thinking about how much fun we could have with all those condoms.

  When I finally crawled out of bed, I was actually feeling somewhat chipper. I got dressed and descended the ladder to find my brothers beginning to stir.

  Zack was sitting at the table, still swaddled in last night’s blanket, nursing a cup of coffee. He looked like I usually felt in the mornings, all dazed and ornery, his blonde hair sticking out every-which-way. He was peering at me from under it with suspicion. “You’re very cheerful this morning,” he observed.

  I grinned at him, so cheerful I thought he actually looked kinda cute sitting there, all tattooed and grumpy, with a droopy blanket. Not so cheerful I couldn’t rub it in, though. “It’s because I caught such a huge fucking fish yesterday, and it was so damn much bigger than any of yours.”

  “I thought Gary caught that fish.”

  I shrugged. Then I pranced off to the bathroom.

  The mirror reflected my crazy grin, along with more evidence that last night had been real. My hair was bedhead crossed with freshly fucked, and a couple red marks decorated my neck. My nipples were chafed pink, and my hips and thighs gave that tell-tale next-morning protest as I sat on the toilet.

  I yelped and jumped right back up, because hot urine splashed back at me. “What the fuck?” Dripping, I turned to glare down at the yellow puddle I’d made in the middle of a sheet of translucent cellophane stretched over the bowl.

  Through the door, I could hear my fucking brothers roaring with laughter.

  “You sons-of-bitches!” I yelled. I was gonna get them back. It was just how I operated.

  At the same time, I knew that if this was the worst they did to me during their visit, I was getting off easy. At least it hadn’t been a cherry bomb.

  I removed the plastic and finished my business. Then I took a shower.

  I glared at them over breakfast.

  “So what’s the plan for today?” Rory asked, carefully avoiding my gaze.

  “How about we build my shed,” I suggested. I’d planned one out to cover the snowmachine in summer, and the four-wheeler in winter, and to hold non-burnable trash in one corner, with my tools and various necessities in a low loft above it. I’d had the materials freighted in last winter.

  And that was the agreement: My brothers could come visit for a week—if they built me a shed. I knew it was only day two, but I also knew my brothers. If I didn’t make them do it, they wouldn’t.

  On cue, Zack grumbled. “Couldn’t we do it tomorrow?” he asked.

  “But that’s exactly what you’re gonna say tomorrow,” I said. “How about we just get out there, get our shit together, and build me a shed. Like you said you would.”

  They finally caved, and I rounded up everything they’d need. I showed them where I wanted it, and almost immediately began to feel superfluous.

  I hung around for a couple hours, but as they started to get the frame up, I excused myself. “I gotta clean fish,” I said.

  Nobody objected, because they knew if they did, they’d be wrist-deep in fish guts, and we all knew they’d rather be pounding nails.

  I moved down to the dock and kicked open the lid to the cooler. Then I flopped the first pike out onto my cleaning table.

  As I sliced beautiful fillets, I let myself replay last night. The feel of Gary’s hands on me. The feel of him inside me. His sparkling eyes. I almost made myself want to gag, thinking about his ‘sparkling’ eyes, but there it was. I’d noticed them, I’d appreciated them.

  And most of all, I wondered when we could do that again.

  Smiling, I glanced toward his cabin. There was no movement over there that I could see, and my brothers were making enough noise that I couldn’t hear what Gary was up to.

  The fish took me a while. After I got the fillets deboned, packaged into Ziplocs, and thrown in the freezer, I rejoined the construction crew.

  I fetched them some drinks, and found nails, and held things…but mostly I supervised. Rory and Zack were the ones doing most of the work, with J.D. sort of half-assedly tagging along.

  Around noon, I went inside and cobbled together a soup. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I figured I could make them lunch. Since they were building me a shed and all.

  Last in were the egg noodles. As they disappeared into the broth, I glanced out my window to make sure my brothers were still out there. Yup, I was alone.

  I called Suzy. She picked up after a couple rings.

  “I had sex with him,” I confessed.

  “Wait, Helly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who’d you have sex with?”

  I braced myself, took a nice deep breath, and said, “With Gary.”

  “Wait, your evil neighbor Gary? The Blueberry Butcher, Gary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You had sex with him?” she asked, her voice rising.

  I cringed, knowing I was in trouble. “Yeah.”

  She squealed so loud
I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “Oh my god, oh my God, ohmigawd, tell me. Gimme the details. Nao!”

  I cringed some more. How did you tell someone a guy had crawled through your bedroom window, put a hand over your mouth, and then fucked you silly? It had been great at the time, but in the light of day…it sounded stalker-ish. And weird. Nobody climbed in second-story windows for nookie.

  “Uh…”

  “Helly J. Adderack. You will tell me what happened right now! Aren’t your brothers visiting? How did you have sex with your neighbor when your brothers are there?” She gasped. “Or did it happen before? And how was it?” she demanded.

  My shit-eating grin was so wide it hurt my face as memories from last night flashed through my head. “Amazing,” I admitted.

  More squeals. She finally caught her breath enough to ask, “How did this happen? Last time you called, you wanted to kill him. At the barbecue, you tried to run away when you saw him. And aren’t your brothers there?”

  “The brothers are here,” I said. I hesitated. “Well…promise not to tell anyone?” I knew full well I was talking to the gossip-monger of the century. But she was also my friend, and I knew she wouldn’t blather about my personal life—as long as I specifically told her not to.

  “Cross my heart,” she said. “Now tell me!”

  “We’ve been feuding, sorta,” I started.

  “You told me you sabotaged his saw,” she said, and I could hear her smile.

  “Yeah. But there’s more. The next day, I was sunning on my dock, and he splashed me with his jet ski. So…I might have crashed the jet ski, and then I might have pushed him in.”

  “Crashed—wait, you pushed him in? To the lake?!”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “Wait. That was the day before the barbecue, right? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “I’m getting to that part. So, he chased me, and he tackled me on my lawn—” I glanced out to make sure my brothers were still busy on the shed, and not in earshot.

  “He tackled you?!” Suzy sounded as aghast as I’d been when Gary had ‘claimed’ my land.

  “And he gave me an orgasm,” I finished.

  The silence on the other end was long, and loud. “He gave you an orgasm. On your lawn.”

  “Yeah. There was some grinding, and he had his mouth on me, and…. Then, the morning of the barbecue, he might have trespassed and almost kissed me, and made me breakfast, and dumped water on me, and read my stories.”

  “Tress—made you—he read your stories?” Suzy sounded breathless with excitement.

  “Anyway, you’ve seen how freaking hot he is. So after the barbecue I decided I still didn’t like him, I didn’t want to talk to him, but I wanted to fuck him.”

  Suzy was making these little laughing noises, which made me smile.

  “So I went over to his place and threw five gallons of water on him.”

  She still seemingly had nothing to say.

  I sighed. “It made sense at the time, I swear. After I threw the water on him, he picked me up and threw me in the lake. And then he jumped in after me, and there might have been almost-sex in the lake, and then—my brothers flew in.”

  “In the lake?” Suzy asked. She took a deep breath, and then said, “Tell me how you managed to have sex with him with your brothers there.”

  I cringed a little. What Gary had done sounded semi-reasonable in the dead of night, but it seemed so angsty-teenager in the light of day. And to admit it to my friend over the phone?

  Ah well, I’d already told her about all the other crazy shit I’d done. “He climbed in my bedroom window,” I admitted.

  She was silent a long moment, probably trying to digest everything I’d just told her. Suzy knew I wasn’t exactly conventional—she wasn’t either—but I still found it difficult revealing details that betrayed the extent of my neurosis. Maybe it was just me not being the best with people, but I’d always had the niggling worry that she was finally going to decide ‘This bitch is crazy!’ and wash her hands of me. Not that I thought she was the type of person to do that. It was complicated. I was complicated. Obviously. Just look at my sex life. Or usual lack thereof.

  “Helly, let me get this straight,” Suzy said. “This is a man that chases you down to give you orgasms, jumps into a lake after you to—to—”

  “Finger me,” I supplied, shutting off the heat on the soup. The noodles were done.

  “And he crawls in your second-story window to give you amazing sex.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Helly, you’re not gonna wanna hear this, but…he sounds perfect for you.”

  I yelped as I burned myself on the pot.

  “I mean, how many men would understand your method of seduction by five gallon bucket? How many would dare climb in your window, with your three crazy brothers downstairs? How many would climb in a window, period?”

  I’d been stunned speechless by her original statement, but she was starting to make a certain sort of sense. How many men would grab me and kiss the hell out of me when I was holding a dead fish and a sharp knife, and was covered from neck to knees with slime?

  How many would tolerate the damage I’d done? I’d broken into his cabin and cut the cord to his saw; trespassing and vandalism, right there. And then I’d crashed his jet ski. He could have called the police, but instead, he’d played my game.

  “I’ve never seen you go for a nice, normal guy. Not once. Some guy says hello, nice to meet you, and you yawn and walk away. If he’s persistent, you might use him for sex—”

  “Or his mechanical skills,” I muttered.

  “—but then he’s outta your life forever,” Suzy said.

  “Now this guy, this Gary, he’s living next door so there’s no real way you can ditch him, and he’s not nice, and you had a water fight, and he climbed in your window, and you had sex!” Damn, her voice was getting high again.

  Suzy continued. “I think this guy may be on your wavelength, which is…well…have you considered keeping him?”

  “What?! No! I hate him!”

  “No you don’t, quit being a dweeb. Ooooohhh, I’m so excited for you. Don’t fuck this up, Helly. This guy’s the one!”

  Where the hell had this conversation gone?

  “I…gotta go,” I said. “Lunch is done.”

  After lunch, J.D. sidled up to me. “So Helly, you wanna learn a move or two?”

  “Right now?” I asked, looking up at Zack and Rory climbing around on the growing structure. I loved it when J.D. showed me his self-defense tricks—which he did pretty much as often as I saw him—but I really wanted that shed, and if me ‘working’ alongside my brothers was what got it done, then…

  “Oh go ahead,” Zack growled from where he was sticking up behind a wobbling rafter. “You two are pretty well useless when it comes to building anyway. We’ve got this.”

  Practically clapping with excitement, J.D. tugged me over onto my patch of grass. My crazy younger brother loved to fight. And he loved to share his favorite hobby with others. Usually more gently with me, than with the others. Usually.

  “What do you wanna learn first?” he asked.

  “I have no effing clue,” I said. “Show me something.”

  He’d already shown me how to throw a punch, and a kick. He observed me doing each of these, and then he tweaked my form. I did a few more, and then we reviewed where and what to punch and kick. Then I got to try a few on him, which was my favorite part.

  The truth was, if you hadn’t guessed yet, I had an angry streak about a mile wide. So I really got into it, attacking him like he’d been aggravating me for weeks. The nice thing about J.D. was, I couldn’t break him; no matter what I threw at him, he’d block it, or dodge it, or bounce it off his rock-hard abs.

  And then he’d turn it into a lesson. “You see what I did there?” he’d ask. Then I’d get the chance to try and brain him again, so he could show me what to do when someone tried to hit me like that. Or someti
mes, instead, he’d point out that I passed up several vulnerable areas, and lost precious moments going for an out-of-the-way target.

  We moved into escaping holds. He pretended to be my attacker, and grabbed my wrist. “Now you could opt to pull some girly move, and just twist your wrist around and out of it—” he showed me how to do that “—or you could turn your body just a bit, and strike my forearm. There’s a pressure point in there that’ll make my arm go numb.” He very helpfully pointed right to it.

  I struck his arm, and his hand fell away. He laughed as he shook it out. “Yep, exactly like that.”

  “Kick his ass, Helly!” Zack yelled from the roof.

  “What are you guys up to?” a familiar voice asked.

  Chapte

  r Twelve

  I spun around, and there he was, taking the last step up from the beach. His green eyes were on me, causing me to flush with awareness.

  I’d been under him last night. I’d been on top of him. I’d had him inside me. And as I watched his body move, all of those muscles in graceful concert, I wanted nothing more than to have him again.

  Gary was also making me nervous as hell. He’d been careful not to tip my brothers off last night, but now, in the light of day? Would he expect to act like we were an item? Were we?

  “Teaching Helly how to fight,” J.D. said. He bounced on the balls of his feet, as always ready for more.

  “We were working on getting out of holds,” I said, hoping Gary wouldn’t notice how breathless I sounded, or that he’d attribute it to the workout.

  “We were gonna do a headlock next. Wanna watch?” J.D. asked.

  The way Gary was looking at me made me shiver. “Sure,” he said.

  J.D. moved in behind me and hooked an arm around my throat. He pulled back with authority, but not quite hard enough to cut off my air. Used to his manhandling, I stayed loose and waited for the lesson.