Lucian was like the twins and Xavier, built like a razor blade, tall, lean, hard, and rangy. If Canaan's hair was long at shoulder-length, Lucian's was something else entirely, bound low at his nape and dangling past mid-spine in a thick brown queue; Lucian had a habit of wrapping the long ponytail in his fist while he read and yanking on it absently, and I'd never once seen him with it unbound.
And then there was Xavier. Possibly my favorite brother--except for Zane, obviously. Xavier was sweet, quirky, cute, and eclectic in the extreme. He'd set up at the booth across from me, a stack of thick textbooks in front of him, his laptop beside them, and a bin of assorted robotics parts on the seat next to him, each part organized by type in little compartments. He'd read and build his robots, and then take a few minutes to talk to me, usually about whatever he was reading at the time.
Mostly I had no clue what he was going on about, but he was fascinating to listen to, being articulate to the point of eloquence, and given to using archaic turns of phrase. He could wax on easily and at length on just about any subject, literature, physics, philosophy, sociology, history...anything except pop culture, about which he was hopelessly and comically uninformed. He didn't look the part of a robot building, super-science, math-wizard uber-genius, though. He was tall and lean, and he looked the least like the rest of his brothers, with brown hair that was nearly black, and was the only Badd brother with bright green eyes. He had triple-pierced ears and an intricate series of geometric, math symbols tattooed on his forearms. His hair was cut a lot like Corin's and Bax's, short on the sides and long and wavy and loose on top. He had an air about him that said he had no idea how sexy or gorgeous he was, and even less of a clue about how endearing his eccentricity and intelligence was.
If I learned one thing over the week, it was that I could definitely understand why the Badd brothers had a reputation in this town, because they were all stupidly, absurdly, incredibly gorgeous men, each with their own unique, vibrant, potent personalities and styles. They were rough and sometimes vulgar, always entertaining, always warm and welcoming, and always sweet toward me.
No wonder the bar was as busy as it was, since at any given time there would be at least two of the delicious Badd brothers at work, one behind the bar and one on the floor, and another one, usually Xavier or Lucian, in the kitchen, with Zane, Brock, the twins, taking turns working the bar and waiting tables, with Bax usually set up in a chair by the entrance acting as a bouncer and ID-checker, since he was supposed to stay off his feet as much as possible.
The clientele was predominantly female, whether young and looking to party, or single women in their thirties on the prowl, or married women just there for the fun, good drinks, and eye-candy. The men in attendance were almost exclusively single men hoping to take advantage of the unending parade of single women--all of this meant the bar was raking in cash hand over fist from open to close.
When Zane wasn't working, we spent a lot of time hiking the trails outside Ketchikan, an activity I'd had no idea I would enjoy as much as I did. He'd pack a bunch of food in his rucksack, and we'd take the truck the brothers owned up to a trailhead--Zane had convinced his brothers to all chip in on a new Silverado 2500 that they could all share, as they rarely needed to be anywhere they couldn't walk to.
When we weren't hiking or at the bar, we were at my room in the B&B, fucking like teenagers who'd just discovered sex. And, except that one time in his bed, we always used protection. I couldn't bring myself to regret that indiscretion, though, because it was a memory seared deep into my soul. We'd created something, that morning, with each other. Crossed some boundary where union of body became union of soul. Sex after that was always emotionally intense, almost always fierce and wild, sometimes slow and gentle. I discovered that he liked it best when we started out missionary and switched to me riding him for the finish, and that I liked it best when we started out reverse cowgirl and finished doggy style, so he could let go with all the full and furious force of his powerful body. Whatever the position, though, there was always an element of vulnerability, a sense of depth between us.
And we...talked. A lot. About everything. Those day-long hikes were always spent talking to each other, taking selfies, laughing, teasing each other...I think I learned more about Zane in that week than I knew about everyone else in my life combined. And I learned about myself. He had a way of getting me to talk, getting me to open up in ways I'd never thought possible.
And then, all too soon, it was Wednesday night and I was dreading the morning in a way I'd never felt before. My flight for San Francisco left at ten, and I had to check out of the B&B by nine, since the Kingsley's had a couple arriving who wanted to check in early. I opted to check out Wednesday night, and had Zane bring the truck so I could haul my suitcases to the bar, and leave them stacked just inside the stairwell.
I'd already done an online check-in for my return flight and had the boarding pass loaded into the browser on my cell phone. I also had a change of clothes for the morning folded into my carry-on...
And I was full out panicking.
Zane was working until nine p.m., which only gave us a handful of hours left together. I was sitting in my booth near the service bar, sipping a pint of stout and nibbling on some nachos. The twins were on the floor serving tables and doing their best singing waiter impressions, getting the crowd howling along as they sang bar band favorites like "Sweet Caroline", "Free Bird", and "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor", going back and forth on the verses and singing in harmony for the chorus, all while dancing around the floor with trays full of drinks or punching in orders at the computer.
Lucian was in the kitchen with Xavier, and Zane was behind the bar, with Bax carding at the front door.
And me, alone in the booth, hopelessly watching Zane shake martinis and cosmos, pull pints, pour shots, uncork wine, and sling mixers. Wishing I didn't have to go. Wishing he'd ask me to stay. Wishing I knew what the fuck to do. Because, god, it'd be crazy if I just stayed, right? Like, I've known the guy a week. It's infatuation. And even if it was something more, I've known him a week. Seven days. Seven magical, glorious days. Six nights--and five mornings--of the most incredible sex of my entire life. One week, and I was gaga on this guy.
But I had a job back in SF, and a possible new job lined up in Seattle working with Claire, not to mention an apartment with a lease through October. My life was in San Francisco. I had friends there. I had memories there. Dad had visited me there before he got busted and sent to the federal penitentiary in Terra Haute, Indiana. Mom spent every Christmas with me in San Francisco. It was home.
Although, lately the idea of moving to Seattle sounded nice, being with Claire again, a new job, a new city....
But Ketchikan?
Fuck. Ketchikan had Zane. Ketchikan had the mountains and the hiking trails, and the cute bars and seafood places Zane and I had frequented. It also had Brock and Bax, the twins, Lucian, and Xavier. And Zane.
Did I mention Ketchikan had Zane?
But...who just upends their entire life for a guy they met a week ago?
And if Zane didn't ask me to stay, it's not like I could bust out with, "So hey, um, I was thinking I could just stay here with you in Ketchikan...forever." Yeah, that'd work.
We'd agreed on a week. We'd agreed this was practice, that we'd spend this week together, and then I'd go home and find another man to have a real relationship with, and he'd find a woman to have a real relationship with, and we'd never see each other again.
But...god, the thought of Zane with another woman in that bed, another woman with her hands on him? Gah, no. I couldn't even think about it, or I'd go crazy. Just thinking about it right now made me want to throw the salt and pepper shakers at Zane for cheating on me in my own head, or start crying, or run out of here so fast I'd leave a Mara-shaped hole in the wall, Looney Toons style.
And the thought of being with another man? That wasn't any more appealing. I tried to picture someone else kissing me, someone else s
tripping my clothes off, someone else sinking into me...and my stomach revolted and my brain insisted on replacing the mental image of the mystery man with one of Zane, as he'd kissed me, as he'd stripped me naked, as he'd sunk into me.
I was desperately trying to create some semblance of mental and emotional stability inside myself, when a body slumped into the booth opposite me. Lucian, smelling of restaurant kitchen, his hair braided, folded in half, and tied off into a thick club between his shoulder blades, wearing a black T-shirt stained and spotted and smeared with kitchen yuck. He had a bowl of stew in one hand and a pint of beer in the other.
I sniffled. "Hi, Luce."
He eyed me warily, hearing the sniffle. "Hey." He spooned some stew into his mouth and chewed, still eying me thoughtfully. "Leaving tomorrow?"
I nodded. "Yep."
"Well, speaking for at least five of us, we'll miss you. It's been nice having you around."
"It's been great meeting you all." I swirled my beer at the bottom of the glass, watched bubbles form a scrim on the surface. "But why only five of you?"
"Well, Bast isn't here, and I can't speak for Zane."
"Why wouldn't Zane miss me?"
Lucian ate a few bites before responding. "Not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
He chewed, swallowed, and washed it down with beer. "Maybe he doesn't want to have to miss you."
"Oh." I finished my beer. "Think he'll...say something?"
Lucian shrugged. "Dunno. Might, might not." He poked at the stew with his spoon. "You're better off talking to him about this than me, though."
"It's not that simple," I said.
Lucian shrugged. "Usually things are exactly that simple." He finally met my eyes, his own dark and intense and unreadable. "Simple and easy aren't the same thing, though."
At that moment, Zane slid into the booth beside me, reached out and snagged Lucian's bowl of stew and devoured half of it in three bites, then washed it down with a long pull on Lucian's beer. "You boring her with your mystic nonsense, Luce?"
Lucian just lifted a wry eyebrow. "By all means, help yourself." He took his bowl and beer back and continued eating as if nothing had happened, then eyed his brother. "What mystic nonsense?"
"Your sparsely-worded nuggets of wisdom."
"That's hardly mystic nonsense."
Zane laughed. "Sure it is."
Lucian just shook his head, and went back to eating in silence.
I found Zane's hand under the table and threaded my fingers through his. "No mysticism, just..."
"Lucian being Lucian?" Zane supplied. "Knocking apart whatever you think you know about life in a dozen words or less?"
I bobbed my head to one side. "Kind of."
"I'm convinced he's an ancient Eastern mystic disguised in the body of a sullen teenager," Zane said. "It's the only possible explanation for how he knows half the shit he does."
"I watch, and I listen, and I ask questions. I pay attention. I read." Lucian finished his stew and knocked his beer back. "It's not mysticism, it's called being a keen observer of human nature."
"Yeah, whatever, Confucius." Zane leaned back in the booth and slung his arm around me. "Get back in the kitchen, you slacker."
Lucian shook his head again, a small but genuine grin on his lips, and then flipped Zane the bird. "Shouldn't you be behind the bar?"
"Brock got bored being by himself upstairs, so he came down to relieve me."
Lucian just nodded and went back into the kitchen, whistling the theme to Kung Fu.
Zane watched him, and then grinned at me. "That kid is something else."
"How old is he?" I asked.
"Nineteen, almost twenty."
"He's not really a kid, though, is he?"
Zane shook his head. "No, you're right, he's not. But then, he never has been. Even when he was a little kid he was quiet to the point of silence. He didn't speak until he was more than two, but then he was speaking full sentences. Mom thought he might have developmental problems, but the doctor said he was physically capable of speech, fully capable mentally, and developing normally, he just...didn't want to speak for whatever reason."
"Huh. Well, he's a wise young man."
Zane laughed, nodding. "No shit. You forget he's there, and you'll be having this conversation or whatever, and then he'll just bust out with a sentence or two that's so...insightful, I guess, that it makes everyone just go, 'Huh, he's right. I'll be damned.'"
I leaned against Zane's shoulder. "Want to, um, go upstairs? Or downtown? Something?"
He eyed me. "When's your flight out, again?"
I blinked back some kind of weird, hot, salty wetness that was gathering in the corners of my eyes. Not sure what it was about, but I didn't like it very much. "Ten tomorrow morning."
"This week went by way too fast, didn't it?" His arm, slung around my shoulders, tightened. "I'm kind of just feeling one more night together in my bed. Whatcha say, babe?"
I nodded. "I'd like that."
He threaded his fingers into mine, swung his legs out of the booth, stood up, and then bent to lift me bodily out of the booth. Effortlessly, he carried me to the stairs leading up to the apartment, pausing to let me open the door for him. Before ascending the stairs, he kissed me.
Right there in full view of the entire, packed bar, eliciting a chorus of wolf whistles and cat calls from his brothers and several of the bar patrons. I laughed though the kiss, unable to keep a grin from spreading across my lips, despite my melancholy.
To his room, then.
And his bed.
Clothes came off, and he settled above me, kissing me breathless, kissing me senseless, kissing me into teary-eyed oblivion. He backed away, his thumb brushing under my eyes.
"Hey, none of that," he murmured.
Ask me to stay, ask me to stay, ask me to stay--the plea rang through my mind, but didn't pass my lips. I wouldn't beg, couldn't.
"This has just...it's been the most amazing week of my life," I whispered.
He slid into me, bare, his erection hot and hard inside me. "It has been for me, too."
I wrapped my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, and I kissed him as we began moving together in perfect synchronicity. Our hips met, our tongues tangled, our breaths mated, and I couldn't help another tear from sliding down my cheek. Zane didn't wipe that one away, even though he saw it. His eyes locked on mine as we moved together. He didn't shush me as I began moaning, a sound lost somewhere between a groan of rapture and a sob of sorrow.
His eyes reflected his own deep well of intense emotion, none of which he expressed verbally. He showed me, though, in the desperate fervor of his thrusting, in the tremble of his lips as he held off his climax, in the clench of his jaw and lowering of his brow, in the rippling of his arms on either side of my face like solid iron-hard bars of flesh and muscle.
I pressed my face into his shoulder and ground up against him, whimpering.
We came together, his face buried between my breasts, his hair soft against my cheek. I let a few tears drip into his hair as I came, clinging to him, shuddering beneath him, still silently begging him to ask me to stay.
He never did.
Not before we fell asleep.
Not when we woke in the small dark hours of the morning to make love again, bare once more.
Not when my alarm went off at seven-thirty, and we found each other one last time, skin sliding against skin, breathing shuddering in the new light of dawn. We didn't speak a word as we reached climax together faster than we ever had, coming more desperately than ever before, eyes locked, knowing it was the last time.
My heartbeat pounded in my chest as I rested on Zane's shoulder--stay--stay--stay--stay--the beat of my heart said.
But I couldn't.
My life wasn't here.
Zane wasn't mine.
How can I upend my entire life for a man I've known a week? It would be the height of foolishness, no matter how intensely I may feel
. Emotions change, feelings change, desires change. This was temporary, a fleeting thing created in the vacuum of a vacation. It wasn't real. It wasn't meant to be.
Minutes passed, and the digital red numerals on Zane's alarm clock ticked over from 7:30 to 7:45, and then to 8:00.
Finally, I knew I had to go or risk losing my tenuous grip on my stupid, ridiculous, nonsensical emotions.
I had to go.
I forced myself to move, to roll away from Zane. I tugged on Zane's T-shirt and brought my carry-on bag across the hall to the bathroom, took a quick shower and dressed in clean clothes. Brushed my teeth, combed through my hair and bound it up still damp in a tight bun at back of my head.
When I emerged, it was twenty after eight and Zane was dressed in white gym shorts, a blue SEALs hoodie, and a white ball cap bearing the outline of an assault rifle with the letters HK in red. He had the truck keys in one hand, and two paper cups of coffee in the other.
"I've got your bags loaded into the truck," he said, handing me the coffee.
"Okay," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
The drive to the airport was quiet.
He accompanied me to the security checkpoint, and then handed me my carry-on.
"So." He sipped his coffee, his dark brown eyes opaque and unreadable to me, now. "This is it."
I nodded, hating the sudden, painful awkwardness between us. "Guess so."
One tense moment, then another. It was 8:50 a.m., and I still had to go through security and find my gate. But how could I leave without any kind of goodbye? This wasn't goodbye; this was an awkward, tense, uncomfortable parting.
"Zane, I--"
He kissed me. Hard, intense, one hand on the back of my head, his huge hard body pressed against mine. His tongue swept my mouth again and again, and I delved into the kiss, drowned in it, reveled in it, hoped hoped hoped it meant he'd--
He pulled away, stumbling backward a step. "Bye, Mara."
I blinked hard. "See ya, Zane."
Fucking awkward. Fucking painful. Fucking stupid.
I went through security and stopped on the other side, turning back. Zane was still standing where I'd left him, one hand on the back of his neck, brows drawn, shoulders rising and falling heavily, his jaw tensing and releasing. He forced a smile when I turned back, waved at me, and then abruptly pivoted on his heel and left the airport, almost angrily.
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