by Anne Marsh
I spot Max striding past the pool—lit up with millions of fairy lights—and frowning down at his phone. Dark hair curls haphazardly over his forehead. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, faded blue jeans and a black tuxedo jacket that’s rolled up to reveal strong, tanned forearms. It’s like he got half dressed—or half undressed—and then stopped. Or forgot. Or—most likely—just didn’t give a shit. He cares about lots of things, but clothes don’t make that list. People watch him anyhow. Some of them reach out as if to touch him, to make him stop and look, but he just keeps heading for the house.
And me.
He pauses at the foot of the stairs and grins up at me. It’s both weird and familiar at the same time. Something shifts inside of me, making me feel like glassware in a box, so close to breaking or falling out. Falling, I decide. I’m definitely falling.
“You didn’t tell me you owned a stage set,” I call down to him. The temptation to break into the port de bras of infamous swans of Swan Lake is strong but this isn’t my audience.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Max twinkles up at me. He’s even cheesier than his pool lights. “Are you coming down or shall I go up?”
“You’re a bad influence.” I have to yell to make myself heard over the music. Nevertheless, we both know my words don’t matter. I’m totally going to do it. Indeed, I toe my sandals off, toss them down to Max and whip my arms up into the familiar position. And then I’m descending, whipping through the familiar fouetté turns, my dress belling out around me. Not Odile’s full thirty-two spins, but just enough to make my heart race, my left leg burn as it bears me around and around until I reach the bottom.
He meets me there, swinging me up and off the final step. I’ve put on some weight since leaving the ballet, but he lifts me easily, flying me through the air, around and around, until I curl an arm around his neck.
“Hey, Sassafras.”
For a moment, I think he’s about to kiss me when he trots out that stupid nickname.
Not a European cheek kiss or even a friendly peck on the mouth, but a full-on kiss with lips and tongues and all my favorite parts. But then he pulls back and flicks my nose before setting me down. Friends don’t kiss.
“I’ll introduce you around,” he says. “There’s tons of people for you to meet.”
I believe him. If his living room’s full, his pool deck is a fire marshal’s nightmare. People are crammed side by side until it’s almost impossible to move, let alone dance. Or breathe. Still, a path always seems to magically open up for Max as he leads me from one knot of revelers to the next.
It’s overwhelming, frankly. He makes introductions, I nod and smile, and somehow there are always new people and faces. The volume rises steadily, the level of champagne consumption is unbelievable, and the pool is a sea of naked beautiful people bobbing up and down. Max, however, just watches it all from his tiki bar, a slightly bored expression on his face as I work my way through my third cocktail. I have no idea how I fit in here.
“How did you get permission for all this?” I mumble-shout my question, which I blame on my cocktail consumption. It’s stupidly easy to get me drunk.
“Permission?” Max winks at me.
I roll my eyes. “They can probably hear your pool party on the moon.”
I swivel on the bar stool and stare at him, waiting for him to answer. Not just to put the pressure on but because his face is absolutely gorgeous. He hasn’t shaved in at least a day, and stubble roughens his jaw. He looks strong, but in a natural way. He spends a lot of time outside, surfing and rock climbing, so his body screams I can do this rather than being a walking billboard for a gym. I slip my phone out of my bag and take a close-up of his jaw and throat.
“Afraid you’ll forget what I look like?”
“Souvenir.” I wink at him. Because, oh man, I sort of want to remember what he looks like right now. His eyes have that warm smile lurking in the back, the one that doesn’t quite reach the grumpy line of his mouth because he’s bored and doing something he doesn’t like but he feels he should. “Are you going to answer my question?”
He snags my drink, takes a sip and makes a face. “(A) Dev and Jack are my neighbors. (B) I invited them. (C) My financial generosity is directly proportional to the volume of my music, and my neighbors bring many worthy charities to my attention.”
Since he’s blasting music at midnight loud enough to make his Cinderella castle shake, this must be a million-dollar party. I try to act as if it’s no big deal to be that casual about money, but I suspect I need more practice.
“I want to show you something,” he says.
“Oooh—a collection of etchings?”
He winks at me. “I don’t have one of those—should I?”
“Well, a good etching collection can be an excellent investment.” Keeping a straight face is harder than I thought it would be. “Do you even know what an etching is?”
He grins at me. “Let’s go find out. You can quiz me.”
He lifts a bottle of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. The waiter doesn’t blink an eye—just reverses direction to reload. There’s probably the champagne-equivalent of a beer truck backed up to Max’s house. Maybe Veuve Clicquot makes house deliveries? Max threads his fingers through mine and I lose my train of thought.
I’ve had a little too much to drink. Not so much that I want to lie down and sleep. Not enough to make the world spin. Just enough that I feel like I’m floating and happy. That nothing really matters other than Max’s fingers mixed up with mine. I was worried about coming here, but everything seems perfect now, thank you, Dr. Cocktail.
Deep down, I know that nothing’s changed. Max is still filthy rich and his dick is still not monogamous. Or even semimonogamous. A player? Yes. Hookup king? You betcha. But I tighten my grip on his hand anyhow and follow him into the shadows beyond the pool. When we get to the edge of a steep staircase, he tugs his hand free and drops to one knee. Strong, warm fingers wrap around my foot and tug.
“You need to lose these.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls,” I say lightly.
“But I say it well.” He pulls off my sandals, tossing them to the side, and then stands up. He’s so close that his body brushes mine and I do my best to pretend that it’s just casual contact and no big deal. That my heartbeat isn’t skipping just a little faster. That my breathing’s as steady as ever. NBD, for sure.
“Come on.” He’s already barefoot as he sets off in the direction of a gorilla-sized man who looks suspiciously like private security and who is blocking a staircase on the far side of the pool. Somewhere beneath us, the ocean waits.
We climb down in the near dark, my hand in his, the other on his shoulder for balance. Broken necks aren’t sexy. I pat his shoulder, savoring the warmth of his skin seeping through the thin linen shirt. Muscles flex as he moves. There are about a hundred billion steps but each one brings us closer to the beach.
My feet sink into damp sand as we step off the staircase. Moonlight illuminates a broad strip of creamy sand studded with small rocks. OMG. Tidal pools. I run over to take a look. It’s too dark to see past the surface but I skim the top. There’s something that looks like an anemone and slippery, darting black shadows that must be fish. Or leeches. Do they have water snakes in Santa Cruz and do they spawn in the shallows?
Max strolls up behind me and Drunk Me yanks her hand out of the water (sprinkling his blue jeans with tiny wet spots), panics a little and pretends to be amazed by the scenery. Which is really pretty freaking awesome. The gnarly-looking rocks bookending the little bay seem like something out of a fantasy book. “They look like dragons.”
Max squints in the direction of the index finger I’ve stabbed at the dragon rocks. “Wrong. Clearly that’s an excellent likeness of General Grievous.”
“The Star Wars character
? Are you nuts?”
“Are you blind?” He shoves the champagne bottle into a nearby tidal pool and then strides toward the waterline. When I follow, my toes come in contact with the iciest water I’ve ever felt. Even the ice baths I used to soak my feet in after a day of dancing were warmer than this. I look down. Nope. No icebergs.
“What?” He frowns, his gaze following mine.
“I’m looking for ice cubes.”
He snorts. “It’s California. Anything’s possible.”
We trade jabs about each other’s rock-spotting abilities (he’ll never convince me in a million years that those rocks are George Lucas–worthy). Somehow we end up sitting cross-legged on the sand, just above the tide line. Max pops the champagne open, looking like a suave James Bond billionaire. No, wait. With his hair rumpled by the breeze, shirt open, back against the rock, he might be a pirate. I sort of like that.
His party pounds away up above us, but down here? Down here there’s nothing but us and the ocean and all that dark stretching away.
“Let’s play a game. Truth or dare.” I grab the bottle from him and chug. My palate may be as broken as my man picker because I’m having a hard time telling the difference between Max’s expensive stuff and the three-dollar-a-bottle crap I stockpile for New Year’s. Or maybe I just need more practice?
He repossesses the bottle before I can practice too much. “Tell me the rules.”
“Well, since there’s just the two of us, we’ll take turns. You have to choose between answering any question I ask truthfully and performing a dare of my choice. If you fail, you have to pay a forfeit and drink. Ladies first?”
Naturally, he deliberately misunderstands me and grins. “Truth or dare, Maple?”
“Thank you for being a gentleman.” I blow him a kiss. “Truth.”
I’m way too tipsy for dares.
“What’s the shortest amount of time you’ve known someone before having sex with him or her?”
“Four days.” I don’t even have to think about it. “He was a Czech dancer I met on tour. My company was only in Prague for a week. We pas de deuxed on stage and then we did some private dancing.”
“No drunken one-night stands? No hookups with a stranger or hot, tanned strangers on a beach holiday?”
I drink. Yeah. Not going there. “Your turn, hotshot. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.” He stretches his arms out along the rock. I’d be worried about crabs or other sea creepy-crawlies, but he’s completely relaxed.
“Oral sex or penis-in-vagina—you get one for the rest of your life, but the other is forever off-limits. Which do you pledge your undying love to?”
He frowns. “Am I giving or receiving?”
“Receiving.”
“Do I get Sundays off for good behavior?”
I wink at him. “No exceptions. No cheat days. Pick one.”
Now the corners of his mouth turn down. “Let’s try them both right now so I can be sure of my answer, ’kay?”
I extend the bottle. “Are you refusing to answer the question?”
He leans forward and lets me press the mouth of the bottle to his lips. “Sex with a partner always wins. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.” There’s a bead of champagne caught on the corner of his mouth.
He winks at me. “Has anyone ever caught you having sex? And how turned on did that make you?”
I’ve had sex before. I’ve had vanilla sex, dirty sex, all kinds of sex. But nearly getting busted? That definitely gets me going.
“Yes.”
“That’s it?” His hands cover mine so I can’t repossess the bottle. “Three letters don’t merit thousand-dollar champagne.”
Jesus help me.
“Are you kidding? Shouldn’t we at least pour it in a glass?”
He winks and catches my wrists, guiding the bottle to my lips. “Have a drink and tell me all about the time you got busted having sex.”
The alcohol is crisp and tart, but now I feel like I’m drinking liquid gold. His thumb brushes a bead of leftover champagne from my lower lip at the same moment I try to lick it away, and my tongue tastes Max instead. Now would be a great time for divine intervention, but instead I yank my head back and start babbling.
“We were in the bed of his truck in a state park. We were too broke to afford a hotel room and I thought doing it under the stars would be more romantic anyhow, so we loaded up the truck and drove a couple hours north of San Francisco.” Now that I’m working on my new-and-improved man picker, I have to wonder that Tim had money for gas but not for the hotel room. “We’d piled the blankets and pillows from my bed in the truck bed, and Tim—my boyfriend—pulled over at this spot where you could see the ocean. We made out with an oceanfront view and all these stars overhead. I kept telling him to hurry because we’d passed a sign miles ago that said the park closed at sunset and so I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be there.”
The truck bed had had ridges and weird, mysterious dips. I’d had the faintest shadows of bruises for days and practicing lifts with my dance partner had sucked because his hands inevitably found every sore spot on my body. Max didn’t need to know that, though, so I continued.
“He’d just got my panties off and his penis in when we heard gravel crunching.”
“And?”
“The park had indeed closed hours before and we were busted.”
Max groans. “You’re a terrible storyteller. You’re leaving out all the important bits, like whether the good park ranger saw your boyfriend fucking you and if he took his sweet time walking over to your truck. Maybe he ran the light down your bodies so that you knew that he’d seen you. Work with me here.”
I get the idea. The sound of Max’s voice, hungry, rough, curious, makes me wet. Remembering the hot, shaky thrill of that stranger approaching the truck as I tried frantically to shove Tim off and pretend that we were just doing some perfectly innocent stargazing? That makes me wetter and I suspect Max knows it.
“The park ranger turned out to be a girl.”
“That’s a good story twist.” His knees brush mine and I’m on fire. I feel like I need to touch someone—touch him—and yet we’re on the beach. An only semiprivate beach with a party raging away overhead.
“Truth or dare?” I gasp out. Do I want to do this? Can I do this?
“Dare.”
“What’s the sexiest part of a woman’s body?”
“That’s a question,” he protests. “Not an action item.”
“So picky,” I tease. Although if I’m going to tease... “Let me help you out here. Why don’t you show me? Mouth?” I run my fingertips over my bottom lip. “Boobs? Ass? Somewhere else?”
My hand moves lower.
Yes, I touch myself there, too.
“Do I have to choose?” His voice is rough, as if he’s on fire, too, when his hand covers mine on the slope of my boob.
“Dare.” It’s a challenge, so when he holds the bottle to my mouth, I lick the rim. I don’t look away. I don’t want to stop. He feels... God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way. I don’t remember all of the details of all of the nights I’ve shared in my life but I remember the worst—and the best. This night on the sand? This is a circle-the-date night, a red letter, marquee kind of evening.
He’s whispering things, dirty dares I only half hear but I know what he wants. It’s what I want. Pleasure. A connection.
Kiss my neck for thirty seconds, he says.
And then when it’s my turn to dare him again, I whisper Kiss my nipples for thirty more.
Thirty is my new favorite number because half a minute is all it takes this man to make me feel everything I’ve ever thought and it’s so much better, so much more real than I ever imagined. It can’t just be the dark and the beach. It can’t just be the dirty, secret fantasies that we trade back
and forth.
Suck my finger and pretend you’re going down on your guy for thirty seconds, he says.
And I do it. I can tell our thirty seconds are growing longer, and our bodies more reluctant to move apart when one of us calls time.
Dare me, Max.
Drink champagne from me. I dare you.
I can’t tell if I’ve said that out loud, or if it’s even my turn. Someone had emptied the champagne bottle, though, so that last dare was off the table. We’d drunk it all. No—I had. He had? I only really know that I’m sweetly dizzy, the world making a slow-motion twirl around me as if I’m riding a merry-go-round. I should ride something. Someone...
Max makes a rough sound when I straddle his lap and slide my hands up his neck. I don’t know why I haven’t touched his hair before. “Be my horse?”
He blinks at me. I think I’ve finally surprised him. “You’re into pony play?”
“God, no.” That’s me giggling. “I mean, if that’s what works for other people, great, but I don’t think I could do that.”
“Okay.” Does his mouth brush mine? I’m not sure. “Then explain it to me.”
So I do. My voice gets dreamier and dreamier as I talk. I tell him about how the world’s spinning as if we’re on a carousel ride. He shifts beneath me and somehow I’m riding him. I’m tipsy, falling over the edge into sleepy drunk, but I know what I’m doing and, oh God, I want this guy. My not-friend friend. My Max.
“Sex on the beach?”
“Is that too vanilla for you?” I rise up on my knees so I’m looking down at him. “I know you like variety.”
I’m dying for him. On fire. My body’s like melted wax from the champagne and from him and I need him to do something about it. Somehow I’m on top of him, spread-eagle, and his amazing wonder dick is right there so I wiggle to say hello. And because it feels good.
“Jesus.” He pants something, leaning back on the sand. I think it might be my name. “You may be overestimating my need for kink.”
“I love your penis. Do you think I can come on you?”