Taboo Series Book 1 & 2 Bundle

by Roxy Queen

  “Honestly” she says, holding up her hand in a bossy way. “That’s exactly who you should dump it on. He won’t care. He won’t even listen. All he’ll see is a hot piece of older-woman ass to get with and you can forget about your ex. You can work out your emotional damage on that—“she stops abruptly, reaching for her magazine in a rush and pulling it up to her eyes. “Oh crap, he’s looking at you.”

  “He is not.” I try my best to discretely peek over to the shallow end where he’s finishing up his lesson. He is looking at me and we have a brief, exhilarating stare off. “Jesus,” I mutter when he looks away.

  “I wonder what his face looks like when he comes?” Finley says out of the blue.

  “Finley!” He grabs his student under the legs and tosses him across the pool playfully. His session is over and he lifts himself out of the water. Every muscle in his back is visible when he does so. I’ll never tire of him doing that. The woman from the diving board has him cornered; I think she’s the mother of his student. Like always, she’s wearing a too-tiny bikini and keeps trying to get chummy with him. Irrational jealousy flares in my chest.

  Finley watches me watching him and says, “Think about it. For real.”

  “No.” I say it in a firm, definitive, controlled voice.

  But I am.

  Chapter 4

  “Finish your lunch,” I tell Claire and Harper. “Adult swim is over in five minutes, and then you can get back in.”

  I leave them to their sandwiches and chips and go back to my lounge chair next to Finley. I’m pretty sure the mesh seat has an imprint from my ass being planted in it every day for the last two weeks. I glance over my shoulder to make sure no one is listening. Aqua-Man is on the other side of the pool scrubbing tiles. Have you ever seen a shirtless guy with an amazing back and sculpted biceps scrub tiles? It may be the best day ever.

  We’re both watching him perform his job flawlessly. He’s truly gifted in the art of tile scrubbing and I wonder briefly what he’ll major in at college. Finley glances at me over her glasses and says, “Have you ever noticed that the birthmark on his back looks like Africa?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “It does, just look at it the next time you get close to him. Totally has the shape of Africa.”

  “I doubt I’ll get that close to him.” I want to be close. I think about it all the time. On my way to work. Getting the girls ready for swim team. Packing their lunches. I scan the parking lot for his car and feel an intense sadness when he’s not here. Then, irrationally, my stomach lurches when he walks through the gate, red backpack slung over his shoulder. Towel around his neck. I lean over to Finley and whisper. “I did have a dream about him last night.”

  “Oh! Tell me.”

  “It was very PG but also very…erotic? Can something be PG and erotic?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Okay, well, we were at his house watching movies. He had on that blue shirt; you know the one that he looks amazing in?” She nods. “One minute we’re just hanging out—the next I’m straddling him and kissing. We just kissed and kissed and made out for hours.”

  “Yum.”

  “I could feel his beard on my chin and neck.” I shiver at the memory. God, it was hot. “His breath was warm and he tasted sweet. I could feel the warmth and weight of his body.”

  “And then?” she prompts.

  “And then his hands slipped under my shirt and I woke up. Stupid freaking alarm.”

  “Ugh. Seriously, but that was a great dream.”

  It was a great dream. I’d been replaying it in my head all day on a continuous loop. Ever since Finley suggested I go for it/him, my mind has been on over-drive. Like right now, I watched him climb out of the pool and wrap a towel around his waist. He duck under the shelter and I start to panic. He does this thing where he leaves without notice and I start to freak out when I can’t find him. Obsessive much? “Shit, do you think he’s leaving?” I ask. Finley shrugs. “I’m going to go look.”

  “Knock him out, sister.”

  I slip on my flip-flops and adjust my bikini bottoms to cover my ass, while shifting the top to accentuate my cleavage. I’m too chicken to approach him for real, but I figure I may as well give him something to look at while I’m acting like a desperate loser. I cross the pool deck and realize Finley’s right; Aqua-Man is hot, but young. I suspect the things I can teach him would far outweigh any knowledge he would bring to the table on his own. Although, he’s pretty enough to make it worth my while.

  If I gather the balls to do it.

  I’m recreating my dream and the way his wide, hard shoulders felt under my hands when I turn the corner of the shelter. My thoughts become a fast reality when I slam into Carter, palms out.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say in a rush. I pull my hands away from his wet, hard chest but his hands grip my shoulders, holding me in place.

  “You okay?”

  Yesssss.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He lets go of my shoulders. His eyes drop to my chest before flicking up to my eyes. Gray.

  “Your eyes are gray.”

  “Uh, yeah.” A little smile settles on his lips. “Yours are blue.”

  I laugh stupidly because I’m stupid. Completely, totally stupid. “True.”

  Awkward silence and nerves (is it hot in here?) fills the space between us and like a cartoon, a light bulb flashes in my brain and I say, “So, the girls’ mother wanted to see about swim lessons. Do you have any openings?”

  “Sure, yeah, hold on.” Carter walks into the guard room, that towel hung low around his hips. He emerges with a piece of paper and a pen pressed between his lips and no towel. With the towel gone I can’t help but check out his stomach. Hard, but not overly built, a tiny bit of baby fat covering his abs. I attempt to keep my eyes off the scattering of hair between his belly button and his red trunks. I try, but fail. He wears his trunks low, nearly hanging off his hips, and when he bends or stretches his arms over his head I can see the pale, untanned skin below.

  Happy trail indeed. Just seeing it makes me happy. Did boys have hair like that when I was his age? Not sure I ever noticed.

  He looks up from his paper. “I can fit them in tomorrow at noon or at five. My shift is in between then.”

  “Noon would be great. I’ll tell their mom. She wants them to work on their strokes, for the meets and stuff.”

  “Sure,” he says. “They’re both doing really well in practice, but the meets can be intimidating so a little extra help may be a good idea.”

  “You’re on the swim team, right?”

  I know he is. Aqua-Man really should reconsider his privacy settings, because I can’t help but stalk his Facebook account. Alone in my apartment it only took a few minutes, and a couple of strokes on my key board to find out everything I needed to know. He’s not only on the summer league swim team, but the high school one as well. His team just won the state championship, just like the soccer team he captained for. He’s a two-sport state champion. He plays water-polo and basketball for fun. I shouldn’t be surprised. He looks like a two-sport state champion. Everything about him looks like he’s a winner. Competitive. He’s going to Duke in the fall and yes, his status is listed as ‘single’.

  “I’ve been on the swim team here since I was four. This is the last year I’m eligible.” He folds the paper and shoves it in the pocket of his red shorts.

  “So you know your stuff.” I roll my eyes at myself.

  He laughs and stretches his hands to the edge of the door, giving me a peek of that white, virgin skin. “Something like that.”

  “I’ll have them ready at noon, okay?”

  “Great. See you then.”

  I turn and walk off, only looking back once I rounded the edge of the pool. Yep, he’s watching me. The groundwork has been laid.

  Chapter 5

  The rest of the week I’m consumed by two things: work and Aqua-Man. Lucky for me, they fall together. Except when they don’t. One morning, we arr
ived with a full day of supplies and he never appeared. I realized quickly enough it was his day off. Another afternoon we’d just unloaded our bags when a giant thunderstorm rolled in. He and the other guards called the kid out of the water and we opted to go home. Well, the kids opted to go home. I would have been happy sitting under the shelter, pretending to read a book. I officially had a favorite past time, Carter Watching.

  “He’s staring at you again,” Finley says. She squeezes a glob of white sunscreen into her palm and spreads it all over her toned legs.

  “To be fair, he’s probably watching you lube yourself up.”

  I agree, though. I also think he’s watching me. I think he watches when I pull my car in the parking lot. And when I haul in the pool bag and both girls. I’m pretty sure he’s looking when I take off my sundress and reveal which suit I’m wearing. Today’s is black with tiny cherries scattered across the fabric.

  “Did he just adjust himself?”

  “I’m sure he did. It’s constant,” I say. And while it should be gross, for some reason it isn’t. Nothing about him is repulsive the way it should be for a man or even a kid his age. Everything about him has been cast in a glow of light and sunshine and all things glorious. It’s like Carter walks around with a halo over his head, leaving him in an ethereal glow. This glow calls and beacons me. Taunts me. He’s all I think about, fanaticize about and sadly for Finley, all I talk about. As the summer days pass, Finley and I settle into an easy rhythm. We talk about him and what he’s like away from the pool and if he’s ever had sex and of course he’s had sex, but was it good sex? We watch him perform the mundane tasks of his job, and never before has cleaning up or yelling at kids or sitting in a chair high above the pool been so fascinating. Or titillating.

  Increasingly, I realize I’m not the only one focused on him. Other women, moms and teenaged girls, slyly watch as he performs his job. Their eyes track his every move. Every whistle blown by his lips. Every direction he yells from his chair. In the water kids hang from his limbs, begging him to play volleyball or Sharks and Minnows. Everyone wants to be with him.

  It only makes me want him more.

  There’s one thing Aqua-Man does better than everyone else. He’s the master of the diving board. When he’s up there, it’s like the rest of the pool ceases to exist.

  “Dear sweet baby Jesus. How can one man-boy be so hot?” This comes from Finley, who has been with Ryan for years, but still can’t help her infatuation with Carter. I shake my head and hold my breath as he nears the edge of the diving board. He turns so his back faces the water and hangs his heels over the edge. Two little bounces before one big, deep one, and he flies through the air, somersaulting with ease. He lands with an enormous splash.

  “That was a-mazing.”

  “Truly,” she agrees, giving him two thumbs up while he’s still submerged. “I give it a 9.5.”

  He pulls himself out of the water, two strong arms grasping the ladder rails. Water slides off his body, streaming from his head. It’s more than an average girl can take. We stare, hiding only behind the dark, plastic lenses of our sunglasses. He waits at the bottom of the high dive, hands resting on the metal rungs.

  “Have you noticed his wing-span?” I ask Finley.

  “His arms are just…epic.”

  Epic. The perfect word. Perfect, long and muscular. I want to run my hands down them, feeling every curve. I want to lick the dip between his bicep and tricep. I want him to throw me over his shoulder and do dirty, dirty things.

  “Oh man,” Finley says, undoubtedly thinking the same inappropriate thoughts.

  “Can you imagine?”

  From my periphery, I see her nod, neither of us willing to take our eyes off of him. At the edge of the board he pauses and glances over his shoulder. Peacocking a little. He knows he’s being watched and he likes it. With a quick, deep bounce he sails through the air, twisting sideways, and landing in the water with ease.

  “I want to hump him,” I declare. I mean it now. I’m not even pretending

  anymore.

  “I know, right?” Finley agrees, taking a sip of her drink. “Last night when Ryan and I were doing it, I imagined it was him.”

  My jaw drops. “You did not.”

  “Yes, I did. And I don’t feel bad about it. I know he thinks about Angelina Jolie when we screw. I deserve a fantasy. It was fantastic, too. Hottest sex we’ve had in months.”

  “Wow.”

  She taps her finger to her chin, thoughtfully. “I should send him a card.”

  “Ruthie,” Claire stands in front of my chair, blocking my view, but her eyes are red so I try to focus on her and not the diving performance.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I left my mermaid in the car.”

  “Oh, no problem sweetie, I’ll go get her.” I stand and walk past Finley, “Be back in a minute.”

  I run out to the car barefoot and find the mermaid squished in the backseat. The black asphalt pavement burns like hot coals and I race back to the shelter, hopping from one foot to the other.

  “Hot, hot, hot,” I chant, once I’m inside the shelter, bouncing gingerly on the balls of my feet. I look up and see him leaning against the wrought iron fence, water rolling down his neck, over his chest and down, down below.

  “Hey,” he says, lifting a towel from the fence. “You okay?

  I adjust my bikini top, which for all I know has shifted down to my waist after all that jiggling. “I burned my feet out there.”

  “Want me to look at them?”

  My eyes flash to his hands and my face heats as much as my feet.

  “We’ve got some burn cream in the First Aid kit.” I look up and see his confused expression, because I’ve gone silent thinking about him touching me. “Ruthie?”

  I blink twice, regaining my senses. “I think I’m okay, but thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  We stare at one another and I hold the mermaid up by its red hair. “Claire forgot her toy.”

  He shakes his head and droplets of water scatter over the pavement and across my chest. “She’s cute.” He coughs. “Claire, that is. She’s cute.”

  “She really is,” I agree. Then I catch his eye and blurt, “I saw you on the board.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “But you knew that.”

  A smile breaks on his face. Confident and sexy. His teeth are pretty and white against his tan. “You coming to watch the girls swim tonight?”

  “I promised them I would. First meet and all. They’re very excited.”

  “They’ll do great.”

  I spy Claire looking for me across the pool. “I should take these to her. Maybe I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Maybe.”

  Chapter 6

  I do see him that night. The swim meet is packed and I’m forced to walk half a mile from my car just to get to the pool. People and kids roam everywhere, like animals in a zoo.

  I make it in time to see the girls’ events, cheering while Harper barely crosses the finish line in a not-so-elegant dog paddle. It’s okay though because it’s her first swim meet and any success counts. She struggles the whole way down the lane, her head bobbing in and out of the water. I can tell she loves it since she flashes the crowed a wide grin with every stroke. Carter kneels at the end of her lane, encouraging her stroke by stroke. He lifts her out of the water by her arms and gives her a big hug when she finally makes it to the end.

  Is it wrong that I’m jealous of that hug? Well, I am. I’m jealous.

  The heats go from youngest to oldest and by the time the teenage boys hit the deck a current ripples through the crowd. People start to chatter when Carter’s age group is announced and I hear his name on the lips of the crowd. Carter Hightower. All-American. It’s in that moment I realize that it’s not only me and the other moms that notice him. Everyone notices him. Carter Hightower, genetically superior eighteen-year-old grabs the attention of the young and old, male and female. Even Betsy, my
boss, elbows me and says, “You’ll want to watch this.”

  “Oh really?” I reply, playing dumb. Obviously I want to watch him all the time, but I only realize why when he takes the block.

  Before the start, Carter ducks behind the timers and coaches, stepping out of his board shorts. My breath catches when he mounts the starting block in a blue and gold Speedo. The other boys wear our team colors of red and black but this has the letters SM on the hip and I realize it must be his school suit. It’s so low in the front, so very, very low, that I feel myself blush. When he turns to speak to one of the coaches I see his high school mascot across this backside.

  A cougar.

  No shit.

  He gently tugs at his swim cap, until it’s covering his ears and stretches his arms and legs. My eyes are glued to his every move and my heart pounds with every twist and turn, as he warms up his body.

  Have mercy.

  Over the megaphone the referee says, “On your mark,” and Carter bends forward, arching his arms to his toes. I nearly drool seeing his shoulders tense and ready.

  “Do you see Carter? In lane three?” Betsy asks.

  “Uh, yeah, I see him.”

  “He’s amazing. Make sure you keep an eye on him.”

  As if I could do anything else.

  The gun fires and they’re off. Carter dives in the water, his fingers, head, and shoulders submerging one by one. His feet disappear last and he reemerges half-way down the lane.

  I should have realized with all those muscles, with that body, that he’s an absolute powerhouse. An absolute force in the water, overtaking every other swimmer he competes against. The Butterfly is his stroke and I appreciate the beauty in his form, the way his arms transform into literal wings, propelling him through the water. Something else happens to me though, something ignites under my skin and I can barely contain my arousal at his physicality. Too soon it’s over and he touches the wall first, the other boys following seconds later.

  Betsy grabs my arm in excitement and says, “Did you see that? We’re so lucky he’s on our team.”