Bare Pleasures

by Lindsay Evans

  Stella, who was a shoplifter and a girl Noelle had been getting close with in middle school. Allison McCray and the abusive father she’d shot and blamed on a robbery. Keysha Rodriguez with the lisp and serious cocaine habit. After a while, she’d stopped bringing friends home and then stopped having friends altogether. Margot was the one who’d introduced Noelle to Eric. At a party like this one. On a sunny day. It had all seemed perfect, until it wasn’t.

  Sometimes it was almost a comfort knowing Margot had gotten things so wrong.

  Other times she just wished Margot would stop meddling in her life.

  “So where is this boat taking us,” Noelle asked.

  “Somewhere nice.” Margot plucked at the hem of Noelle’s dress, smiling faintly with her red lips.

  Noelle sighed and sank even more deeply into the chair. Her pretense was starting to fall away. Last night’s dream had torn her apart while she was living it and now, in the morning, she still felt gutted. The boat ride was a distraction for the moment, but she would have to go home alone at some point to face the pain Eric’s memory had stirred up.

  She must have been frowning because Margot smoothed her cool fingers across her brow, something she’d done since Noelle was a child. When you worry, I worry, Margot always said.

  “Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked Noelle now.

  “No.” She wished there was something to take away the lingering sting of humiliation, the weight of her own weakness and inability to say no when other forces exerted pressure on her life.

  Ugh. Enough.

  Noelle shook off her unproductive thoughts. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said.

  “Good.” Margot touched her forehead again, a worried look crossing her face before it became blank once more. “There’s a bar through there.” She pointed toward the short hallway that ended in a room buzzing with conversation.

  Noelle didn’t feel like dealing with that many people. “Is there one up on deck?”

  Her sister hesitated for a moment. “Yes, there is.”

  “Okay. I’ll go up and get some fresh air.” She waved toward the hallway where every now and then people toddled by with glasses of liquor in their hands, already on their way to drunk. “This is a little much for me right now.” And now she was regretting saying yes to her sister’s invitation. She’d wanted company, but not this much of it. “I’ll see you later.” She left for the stairs.

  The dock was about a quarter of a mile away and the boat sailed steadily away from it. Miami’s skyline loomed over the water, over Noelle, glittering and decadent. With the sun on her back, Noelle sighed and leaned against the railing, loosening her shoulders once she was no longer belowdecks and subject to her sister’s pity.

  The party didn’t seem like a big one. Maybe twenty to twenty-five people. Despite the beautiful weather, most of the guests were downstairs. But maybe that was where Margot kept the good booze. The boat, probably something that belonged to her sister, wasn’t very big compared to the ones she’d seen floating past her during the many years she’d lived in Miami. It was no massive yacht. But it felt like luxury. Leather seats and benches everywhere, a pair of jet skis parked at its rear, gleaming chrome fixtures accenting its modest 120-foot length. Modest luxury, Noelle thought with a smile. Only Margot could pull that off and make it seem like nothing.

  The bar on deck was relatively quiet. It was manned by one bartender, smiling and shirtless while he flipped a martini shaker in a complicated move that seemed to impress only him. The seven people at the bar barely paid him any attention, only waited patiently for their drinks while chatting among themselves. Three women laughing over their pink-filled martini glasses and already wandering away from the bar, a couple talking intently with their heads bent together and a pair of men leaning against the bar, apparently waiting for their drinks.

  Noelle paused with her hand on the sun-warmed metal of the railing. There was something familiar about the man who made up half of the couple. His back was to her, but she knew the way he moved—he lifted his head and laughed, flashed Noelle the strong lines of his jaw, the pink curve of his lips. He leaned even more into the woman who draped her arm around his waist, pressed her cheek against his. They were the same height. Just like Noelle. Apparently, he liked his women tall.

  Then the woman looked up, still smiling, and caught Noelle’s eye. The woman was beautiful. Smooth skin, her natural hair worn like a crown, flawless makeup. As Noelle stared, curiosity touched the woman’s face and then a frown. Noelle’s cheeks flamed. Abruptly, she changed course, turning left instead of right to head back belowdecks. Who was the woman with him? How did he know Margot? Was that woman his?

  Noelle’s hands fumbled on the handle of the nearest door once she made it down the stairs. She pushed her way in, only to stop short at the sight of the couple on the bed, tangled together and half-dressed.

  “Sorry!”

  She backed out and stumbled into the hallway and to another door. This room was empty. It was small with only a desk and chair, and space enough for a twin bed to unfold from the wall. Noelle sank into the chair and pressed her palms to her hot cheeks and swallowed the lump in her throat. Lex was on the boat. He was on the boat with another woman. Noelle pressed her lips shut. Of course, yesterday had been too good to be true.

  It shouldn’t matter. She took a breath and then another. It didn’t matter.

  After a few minutes, she felt calm enough to leave the room. She stood up just as the door burst open. She jumped back. A woman came through the door. The same woman who’d been with Lex. She looked relieved to see Noelle.

  “Thank God you’re in here.” The woman drew an exaggerated breath of relief and sat on top of the desk.

  “Come sit.” The woman gestured toward the empty chair.

  Noelle shook her head so hard her hair slapped her cheeks. What the hell was this woman up to? “No, thank you. I don’t even know you.”

  The woman offered her hand. “You may not know who I am, but I saw you upstairs earlier. You were with Lex last night.”

  Noelle took a step back. Was this going to be somebody warning her off her man? “Look, I didn’t know he already had a girl.” That bastard.

  “What are you talking about? Don’t jump to conclusions. This is not an episode of Real Housewives or some other crazy mess.” The woman leaned over to pat the chair. “Come have a seat and we can talk like civilized people.”

  Noelle backed up again, moving steadily toward the door. She made her voice firm. “Again, no thanks.”

  A knock yanked her gaze to the door. “It’s me.” Lex’s voice came muffled through the door.

  Noelle drew in a breath to tell him to go to hell, but the woman jumped up and pulled open the door. She ushered Lex in and squeezed past him. “She’s in there,” she said to Lex and then left.

  Lex completely filled the room with his presence. The faint scent of a citrus cologne or aftershave. The alluring length of his body in boat shoes, blue slacks and a white, linen shirt. His ridiculously gorgeous face. Noelle’s heart stuttered stupidly in her chest.

  Disgusted with herself, she sidled toward the door, but Lex pressed it shut and turned to her. “Stay.”

  She opened her mouth again to curse him out but found that her heart was drumming hard in her chest with a sense of betrayal she had no right to feel. “Why?” she snapped the question anyway. “So you can tell me that your girlfriend means nothing to you? I don’t want your lies.”

  Lex’s brows knitted in confusion. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  The sound of a lock clicking home jerked Noelle’s gaze to his face as he moved toward her.

  Those words were just what she wanted to hear, never mind that what she saw up on deck was completely contrary to them.

  “You look beautiful,” Lex said. His w
hiskey-scented breath brushed Noelle’s cheek and she shivered. “I thought about you last night.”

  If she had any doubts about what he meant, the firm and possessive curve of his hand on her hip dismissed them all. She licked her lips, wanting to be reasonable and sane, but she only whimpered when his hand on her hip guided her back into the wall.

  “No,” she said, although she wasn’t sure what she was saying no to.

  “You didn’t think about me?” He stepped closer, like he was under a spell and couldn’t help himself, his eyes focused only on her.

  “I didn’t,” she lied.

  Up until she’d fallen asleep, Lex had been wrapped firmly around her every thought. Wondering why she wanted him so much, wondering if she could have him, hoping...

  He stopped a few breaths from her. “Kiss me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Kiss me. I can’t—”

  His mouth was open when she did kiss him. Warm and wet. She groaned and heard him groan too, a beautiful noise that drew her belly tight and pulled heat into her lap. It was madness. He crowded her against the wall until their hips pressed together. He was already hard. She was already wet. It felt all-too-impossibly perfect.

  Once she kissed him, he took control. He slid warm fingers into her hair and around the vulnerable curve of her head, held her at the perfect angle for his kisses, for the wet and firm roll of his tongue as he explored her mouth. She groaned again and pressed into him, her center tingling, wanting to open up and receive every inch of him.

  What was wrong with her? She never did things like this.

  But this was the fulfilled promise in every look they’d shared the day before. The heat in his gaze, the sizzle of awareness along her skin, the pebbling of her breasts when they begged for his touch, his mouth. Frantic. Sweet. Hard. Noelle gripped his wide shoulders, pulling him close as they kissed, as his hips rolled against hers, as she grew wetter. It was the dizzying and mindless want all the books and movies of her adolescence had promised—this needing someone to touch a part of her, any part of her, until she would do something stupid just to have it. Now she could understand why girls got knocked up in backseats, why Juliet forgave Romeo everything, why Olivia couldn’t stay away from Fitz.

  Lex gripped her thighs, her hips, and she opened her legs instinctively. He fell between them, knocking her back into the wall. Her skirt rode up and he pressed hard against her, the only barrier between them a few thin layers of cloth.

  She rocked her hips, rubbing her aching clit against him through her panties, through his jeans, while their mouths slid together, a wet and urgent sound of connection in the room, and her nipples grew tight and aching against his chest. He fumbled between them, his fingers touching her through the thin cloth of her thong and then slipping between the cloth and her...

  “Lex!”

  Noelle’s hitching moan would’ve embarrassed her if Lex hadn’t made an equally loud noise, his mouth sliding off hers to pant hotly in her throat.

  “Is this for me?” He traced the moistness of her desire, a finger circling her clit. “Are you wet like this for me?”

  “Yes!” She was shameless in her want, opening her thighs wider for him to stop teasing at the edges of her sex and—

  “Oh!”

  He firmly stroked her clit and she sobbed out loud. Nails raking his shoulders through his shirt. Legs wrapped around his hips, grinding into the firm pressure of his fingers, the wall knocking with her motions. He was hard against her hand, so hard, so good, and she wanted him inside her, she wanted him now. Lex groaned her name, softly bit the slope of her neck and she felt every press of his teeth in the throbbing between her legs, in the tightening of her nipples.

  The door handle rattled. Again and again. The sound wormed into Noelle’s consciousness. When she realized what it was, she gasped and flinched back from Lex. Her eyes flew open—when had she closed them?—and she remembered the couple in the other room, the tangle they made on the bed when she’d burst in. And the memory of them dominoed, made her remember the reason she had burst in on them in the first place. She flushed with embarrassment and pushed away from Lex, dropped her feet to the floor. Her legs trembled so much she almost fell, but Lex held her up.

  “What...?” His mouth was wet, his lashes low over his dazed eyes. The front of his pants was obscene with the proof of his desire. Noelle took a single step into him and then slid away along the wall, wanting to drop to her knees but also wanting to run away.

  “I—I can’t...” She shoved her dress down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “This is not something I do.”

  The more she talked, the more Lex’s eyes seemed to clear. He cursed and turned away from her, adjusting himself.

  “I’m going to—” And she slid back the lock, gasping when she stumbled into a couple pressed together in the hallway, just seconds away from what she and Lex had been doing. With her legs still trembling, she blushed and turned around. She needed a drink. But she found a bathroom first, washed her hands, splashed water on her face. The bar was looking more and more like the place she needed to be.

  At the bar on the lower deck, the atmosphere was much more social, distracting her from the still-throbbing heartbeat between her legs. The whole room buzzed with conversation, groups shifting to reconfigure themselves even as she walked in. The bar was busy. The bartender, a woman in a tight corset that spilled her breasts out and up for anyone who cared to look, flirted with everyone she poured a drink for, man or woman, and kept up a constant chatter. The room was loud and lively, the perfect place for her to get lost in.

  Margot sat in the middle of the white-leather L-shaped couch, a cocktail in hand while equally gorgeous people formed a circle around her, laughing with her at her dry jokes, adding their own opinions about the things she talked about. Once Noelle walked into the room, she knew Margot saw her. Her sister didn’t get up, didn’t stop her conversation, but her eyes flickered toward Noelle and then away.

  She leaned against the bar and waited for the woman to notice her. “A mimosa, please.”

  Something stronger would’ve helped to soothe her nerves, but getting drunk wasn’t a situation she ever stepped willingly into. She’d rather burn with the memory of what she and Lex had almost done than lose her cool in front of strangers.

  The bartender nodded, tossed her a smile. “Of course, beautiful. Let me just finish up here.” She mixed up some fancy concoction that looked too strong for Noelle, collected the resulting twenty-dollar tip with a wide smile and then, while making someone else’s drink, moved closer to Noelle. “Your choice of champagne?”

  “Whatever you have. I’m not picky.”

  “Whatever the lady says.” She slid the finished drink to another woman, who then leaned over to slide a fifty between her lifted breasts. Moments later, a mimosa landed in front of Noelle.

  “Thank you,” a deep voice behind her rumbled and then a masculine hand dropped a twenty on the bar.

  “Thank you, sir,” the bartender said with another flirtatious dip of her eyebrows. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Not at all,” Lex said. “But thank you for offering.”

  Noelle was frozen on the spot. She felt Lex’s heat behind her, his breath at her ear.

  “Why did you leave?” he asked.

  Another man squeezed in at the crowded bar, trying to get access to the sexy bartender, and Noelle grabbed her drink and moved out of his way just as Lex took her arm in a gentle grip and led her away from the bar altogether.

  “I don’t think you have the right to ask me any questions,” she said.

  The sound of conversation around them felt oddly like a shield, like everyone around them was so involved in their own business that they didn’t have time to pay attention to them. Tired of not having that conversation, she allowed him to le
ad her to a relatively quiet corner of the room. On both sides of the wide room, large windows showed their journey across the water, the sunlight and the passing landscape. At the edge of the long sofa, Lex gestured to a square of space and squeezed himself and Noelle in next to a group of five people in deep conversation about a movie being filmed not far from where they lived in Bal Harbour. Noelle easily tuned them out.

  “If I don’t have the right to ask you any questions, then will you at least tell me what I did wrong?” His voice dipped low. “You felt so good...”

  Noelle ignored the instant surge of lust that bolted between her thighs. “I think you have enough people to talk to, don’t you?” It was stupid to feel jealous over a man whose name she hadn’t known twenty-four hours before.

  “These people?” He looked up, managing to gesture toward them with an eyebrow while his attention was firmly focused on her.

  “And the woman you were with.”

  Now he frowned like she was speaking a foreign language. “You mean Adisa?”

  “Is that the woman’s name?”

  “That’s my sister’s name.”

  “Sister?”

  “Yes.”

  She fought another flush of embarrassment. If this woman was really his sister... “Well, it looked to me like she’s more than that.”

  “She’s my twin sister if that makes a difference of degrees.”

  Noelle squirmed under his amused regard. She felt ridiculously exposed, her insecurities on full display for him to see. “It—”

  “Oh good, you two got the chance to talk.”

  The sister in question waded out of the group of people to appear at their side. Noelle clenched her jaw to stop herself from blushing and looking away when Adisa frankly met her gaze. The evidence of the talk she and Lex had had still clung, wet and viscous, to her panties.

  She was, as Noelle paid proper attention to her, eerily similar to Lex. The same deep-gold skin, curving mouth and regal cheekbones. Even that look of restrained amusement that Noelle had thought was Lex’s alone. They were like two gorgeous peas in a pod.