by Shaye Marlow
“I was thirteen, and I’ve never felt more humiliated in my life,” I said.
“And do you know how she got us back?” J.D. asked with a smile.
“I’m guessing she humiliated you,” Gary said.
“That she did,” Zack said. “This one took a while, though. We were really into paintball at the time, and she figured the way to humiliate us was to beat us at our own game. So she practiced, pretty much non-stop for months—”
“The most concerted effort we’d ever seen her put into anything,” J.D. agreed.
“—and she began winning. Not just winning, but winning by a landslide.”
“I spanked their asses,” I added.
Zack nodded in agreement. “She could tag us, all three of us, without us ever even seeing her. She was incredible. We were proud, but…we couldn’t exactly let our friends witness that shit, ya know?”
“So that’s where you got your aim,” Gary said.
I nodded.
“What with her aim and her tendency to get even,” Zack said, “it’s a good thing you haven’t gotten on her bad side.”
I choked a little.
Gary looked over at me with a wry grin. “Wouldn’t want her to spank my ass,” he agreed.
Zack served the steaks, and I found out they’d baked some potatoes on the grill, too.
I was about halfway through my meal when I remembered the pie. I squawked, set down my food, and hurried inside.
Suzy appeared in my peripheral vision as I bent to rescue our blueberry creation from the oven. “Helly…” she said.
I set the pie on a rack to cool, glad to see I’d only browned the crust slightly. “What?”
“Gary hasn’t taken his eyes off you once all evening,” she said.
“So?” We’d been talking. Of course he’d been looking at me.
“He watches you. And he has this look in his eyes when he’s doing it. Helly, I think that man really likes you. Like really, really likes you.”
I shrugged, not ready to read that much into it. “What about you, out there flirting with my brothers?” I asked. “What the hell is that?”
To my amazement, she blushed. “They were just telling me about hunting the bear. And I hadn’t known Zack played hockey for the Alaska Aces until he was injured last season. That was so great of Rory to give him some work. Did you know he’s taking classes this fall?”
“Suzy…these are the guys that put a frog down your shirt. The ones that launched your bike onto the highway with a catapult. The ones that—”
“I know, I know,” she said, looking flustered. “But that was over ten years ago. It seems like they’ve changed.”
I shook my head. “They really, really haven’t.”
Suzy didn’t look like she believed me, and my suspicions were confirmed when she changed the subject. “How long should we let the pie cool?”
“Let’s give it fifteen minutes,” I said, and started for the door. I’d given her my standard warning. She was fully capable of making her own decisions, and of learning her own lessons. If she wanted to flirt with my brothers—flirt with mindless mayhem and destruction, more like—that was her problem.
“Oh,” said Suzy, “They told me to ask you if you’ve got any more beer. They’re out.”
I glanced back at her. “Other than what I hid, that’s it.” She knew damn well I hid it, and she better not have told.
She nodded, and followed me back out. “No more beer,” I heard her report back.
Rory slapped his thigh and stood up. “That’s it,” he said, and then he headed into my cabin.
“What are you—” But he was already inside. “What is he doing?” I asked Zack.
Zack shrugged, looking morosely at his empty bottle.
Rory came back out holding two metal hangers and a wire snipper. I watched as he unwound and clipped and bent them, until he had two L-shaped pieces.
“What the hell are you—?”
“I’m dousing for beer,” he said. And then the idiot grabbed the two pieces by the short ends, holding the longer ones out in front of him, and he started walking slowly across my yard.
Honestly, at first I thought he’d finally lost it. ‘Dousing for beer’? Like one ‘douses’ for a good well site? Fucking ridiculous.
But then he veered toward my generator shack. At the other side of which was some freshly-turned soil. Because I’d dug a hole there. And buried my beer.
I probably didn’t give Rory enough credit. I knew he was smart; he just acted like an idiot so much of the time that I tended to forget that. My guess was he’d seen the evidence of the hole-digging, and he’d put two and two together.
Sure enough, his little dousing rods went apeshit right over the site, swinging back and forth. “I think I’ve found some!” he yelled. He tossed my mutilated hangers aside. “Hurry! Help me dig!”
Zack perked up at this. He looked confused, but he nevertheless hurried over to his brother, and the two began digging for my beer.
“What the hell are they doing?” Gary asked.
“They’re digging for beer,” I replied.
“Are they always like this?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said, casting a glance at Suzy.
I don’t know whether it was Suzy, or Gary, or J.D. who was more surprised when they pulled a box of beer out of that hole.
“Ah. Buried it this time,” J.D. said.
“Yup.” I thought about objecting to them drinking my booze, but you know what? Fuck it. I hadn’t actually held any real hope that they wouldn’t find it. And obviously I did stupid shit when drunk, so…yeah, whatever. The more they drank, the less I would. If they wanted to drink my beer, so be it. They had built me a shed.
We had my awesome, limited-edition blueberry pie, and sat around the fire telling stories long into the night. The brothers drank my entire stash, I drove Suzy back to her boat, and by the time I got back, Gary was gone.
Chapte
r Nineteen
Any sounds I might have made were masked by my brothers’ snores as I tip-toed across the floor.
Mocha looked up as I passed. If she’d had eyebrows, one of them would have been raised in a long-suffering, but not at all surprised expression. She watched me till I got to the door, and then, with a soft snort, she laid her head back on her paws.
Then I was out the door and traversing my yard in the cool silence of the night. At one in the morning, the sky was a faint greyish-blue, and I didn’t need a flashlight to see. Out on the lake, a lone loon drifted, probably wondering what the heck the crazy blonde was up to.
I wasn’t going to leave it to chance again. I was taking matters into my own hands.
I switched from a fast walk to a stealthy creep as I crossed his lawn and skirted around the helicopter. I rounded the cabin and looked up at the window I had slipped out of when I’d sabotaged his tools. It was higher than I remembered, and closed.
I stretched up on tiptoe and leaned in, grunting as I strained to push the window up. At first I thought it was locked, but then it gave an inch. Then another. I was sweating and panting by the time I got it raised almost a foot.
Then I gripped the windowsill, and hauled myself up. At least, that’s how it went in my head. In reality, I hung there, straining with all my might, grunting with exertion... and barely moved. I struggled this way and that, even scrabbling with my toes against the siding as I tried to pull myself up. Finally, after a full minute of this, I came to the shameful conclusion that I simply didn’t have the upper body strength.
Panting, I dropped back to my feet. I looked up at the damn window with frustration. Gary had made this look so damn easy, and he’d been going in the second story. Maybe if I got my foot in first…
I kicked my foot up, missed, and banged it pretty loudly against his siding. I winced and stood still a second, waiting to see if I’d woken him.
The cabin was quiet. In the stillness, a half-dozen mosquitos floated around my head, each and e
very one of them out for blood.
I kicked my foot up again, and managed to hook my heel over the sill. I was practically doing the splits on the side of his house, and I reached for the sill again. Somehow, with what felt like a superhuman effort, I managed to pull myself up until my calf slid over.
I hung there panting, my muscles shaking with exertion, glad there were no witnesses.
A sudden sharp pain stabbed at my ass.
I shrieked and jumped. My window-inserted leg kicked, and I would have fallen butt-first to the ground, but a pair of strong arms caught me.
I looked up into Gary’s grin. “Did you… pinch me?”
He shook his head.
“You…” Realization dawned. “…bit me!”
His grin grew just a little wider, and his gaze flicked up at the open window. He looked back at me, seemingly comfortable to just stand there and hold me. “What are you up to?” he asked.
“What does it look like?” I returned, rolling my eyes.
“You didn’t wear your skirt, so I’m not sure. Making a ridiculous attempt to trespass, maybe?”
“Ridiculous?” My hackles began to rise.
“Absolutely. I’ve got a whole wall open around the other side of the house, and the door was unlocked. You could have just walked in, but instead you’re…well, there aren’t really words for what you were doing. Proving gravity’s a bitch, maybe?”
Somehow, his attitude wasn’t making me as mad as it had the first days I’d known him. It made me kinda hot, actually, that sardonic curve to his mouth. As I stared at his lips, his strong jaw, his sexy dark stubble, I was struck again by that urge: Smack him or kiss him just as hard.
Before I could do something I’d probably regret, I pulled his mouth down to mine. I kept thinking maybe I’d hallucinated how perfect his mouth felt on mine, but… nope.
I lost myself in our kiss. His fingers tightened on me as I coaxed his tongue into my mouth. I pulled myself tighter against him, practically hooking one knee over his shoulder in my eagerness to get closer. The way his lips curved against mine made my heart sing.
Long moments later, I finally pulled back, found my breath, and spoke. “I wanna do your fantasy.”
“Hmm?” He blinked, obviously having difficulty changing gears.
“When you first climbed in my window, you said we’d done my fantasy, ‘next time, mine’. I want to do yours.”
His eyes started to twinkle. He set me down, and then rubbed a hand over his mouth. “What if it’s kinky and utterly depraved?”
I leaned against his chest as excitement rose in me. ‘On my wavelength’, indeed. “Even better,” I said.
“Well…” He smoothed a loose lock of my hair behind my shoulder. “…I’ve always been a bit of an exhibitionist.”
“Okay.” My heart started to pound as I thought furiously. We could do things outdoors around here, without any danger of getting caught… But, would that defeat the point?
He might have been having the same thoughts because he glanced toward the lake, and then focused back on me. “Do the Ramseys leave their picnic tables out all the time?”
“Yes…”
“Because when I saw you at that barbecue,” he said, his hand drifting downward, his thumb just barely brushing my nipple through my shirt, “all I could think of was throwing you across one of those checkered tablecloths.”
I was hanging on his words, my mind going wild with them. In my head, he tossed me across one of the tables, unheeding of the people around us. Food went flying, I got mustard in my hair, and then we really shocked Suzy.
I curled my fingers in his shirt, wanting to be there, now, and make it real. But it was fifteen minutes downstream, through the quiet dark, and we’d probably wake people up with our boat motor. Plus, it would be kinda rude to have sex on your friend’s parents’ picnic table in the middle of the night.
Most importantly, I didn’t think I could resist him for a full fifteen minutes.
A mosquito bit my cheek and I slapped it, irked that it had the nerve to try and break the moment.
“Next time,” I promised him. “Next time they have a party, let’s do something.”
“Would this be like a date, then?” he asked. His fingertips were brushing the curve of my waist now, and he had gotten closer without me even really noticing. My back pressed to his dark green siding and his mouth hovered only inches from mine.
“Better than.”
“Mmm.”
I gasped as his mouth slid on by, and he nuzzled my jaw.
“What about right now?” he asked directly into my ear. He pressed me more firmly back against his cabin. “What do you want to do right now?”
I arched my back so my breasts rubbed his chest. “You.”
“Good answer,” he murmured into my neck.
I thought so. I dug my nails into him as he scraped his teeth across my skin. One of my legs hitched around his hip of its own accord. When I strained up on tiptoe, I could just get the bulge of his erection where I most needed it.
He grabbed my butt, lifting me. Then he leaned into me harder, pinning me against the cabin. He watched my response as his hips moved, rubbing us together.
I slapped another mosquito, this one on his forehead. It fell into his neckline, and I knew I couldn’t continue with a little bug carcass right there, so I nabbed it by a skinny leg and dropped it to my right.
“Mosquito,” I said at his confused look.
He blinked, then laughed, and brushed one away from my face. I shook another off my right hand.
He leaned back from the wall, taking me with him. “My place or yours?” he asked.
“My brothers are at my place,” I said. And then, realization came: My brothers were there. And Mr. Exhibitionist wanted to give somebody a show. “My place,” I said, giving him a little nudge with my heel as though he were a horse.
He slapped my butt in retribution—and I liked it.
He started walking.
I wiggled on him, not helping him navigate the dark at all as I explored his neck. Each of his steps jounced us together, and when I pulled in close, the friction against my nipples made me desperate.
What the hell had I been thinking, wearing pants? This couple-hundred-foot walk was interminable when he was holding me like this, the hateful barrier of our clothing separating us. I moved on him with growing impatience, rubbing myself up and down his length.
He stumbled, braced us against a tree, and took my mouth again. I could feel him throbbing through the thin material of his sleep pants, and the thrust of his tongue had become demanding. I met his demands with some of my own, pulling myself up until I had the higher ground. The heat between us spiked; if I’d worn glasses, they would have steamed.
He added a new dimension to my pleasure when his hands slid up my thighs until his fingers curved into the dent between. I shuddered as he squeezed my cheeks, opening me to the rub of his fingertips.
I was thinking we wouldn’t make it back to my cabin—and dammit to hell, the mosquitos could take what they wanted!—when the loon’s long, lonely cry pierced the urgent, fumbling quiet. We pulled apart, our breaths shuddering in the same space.
“Go,” I whispered.
He made it up the steps from the beach all right, but then tripped and almost slammed me into my front door. Mocha growled from the other side.
Gary pushed it open, still carrying me, whispering, “It’s okay. It’s me, girl.”
Mocha quieted right down, leaving me slightly irked.
Inside, my brothers’ symphony of snores was going strong. Everyone looked to be just how I’d left them. I glimpsed Zack’s feet sticking out past the end of the couch, and Rory was sleeping sitting up, splayed out across one end. J.D. was probably curled up on the other cushion like a cat.
Gary closed the door, whirled us around until my back was pressed against it, and then let me slide to my feet. Head hanging low, he braced his hands to either side of me. “Take your pant
s. Off,” he ordered, his voice guttural.
I grinned. “Can I hear a ‘please’?”
He lifted his head slightly, fixing me with one dark eye. “You can hear a ‘now’.”
I wanted to smile at his bossy tone, but instead I gave him a dose of my blonde. “But, my brothers…they might catch us,” I said breathily. I inched my sleep pants down, trying my damnedest to look demure.
He’d leaned back to watch me, and his breath went ragged as my thighs slid into view in the dim light. My attempt at demure was completely lost on him because he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze off my legs.
I let the pants drop, and then hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my underwear—the cutest pair I owned that hadn’t been riddled with bullet holes. They slid down and away, and I leaned back against the door, naked from the hips down.
I got caught up once more in just looking at him. The inky hair that was starting to curl against his neck, the breadth of his shoulders… I even liked the man’s ears. I wanted to nibble on them, test his response when I dipped my tongue inside. Would he growl at me, or moan, or get squeamish?
He touched my mouth. He brushed a single fingertip over the bow in the center, and tripped it over my full lower lip. I let my lips part, but he ignored the invitation, instead tracing slowly further down. Over my chin, and softly below it in a way that made goosebumps ripple. I made a little noise as my hands curled into fists against the cool metal of my door.
I swallowed as he traced down my throat. My heaving breaths became painfully obvious when each one pressed my breastbone against his fingers. My breasts were already tingling, and I wished like hell he’d deviate to the left or right just a few inches.
But he didn’t. Instead, he produced more goosebumps as he drifted down my belly through the shirt.
I pushed up on my toes in an effort to get him to his goal faster. I was shaking with anticipation, and I was so worried he was going to hesitate at the last moment, to tease me, that when he actually touched me, I gasped. I grabbed for his shoulders, needing something to hold onto as his fingers slid deep between my legs.
A moan wrenched from my lips. His fingers made me throb as they smoothed past my clit and dipped into me. I widened my stance, giving him more room, wanting as much of him as I could get.