Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 43
I’m hot, my skin flushed, and he hasn’t taken his hand from my hip. In fact, his other hand is on my other hip, and I’ve wrapped my arms around his neck. The song is everywhere, all through both of us. I’m not a self-conscious dancer. Music changes things. But Charlie always was, except he doesn’t feel self-conscious now. Every one of his movements is as fluid as mine. His skin is as warm as mine.
“I want you.”
I open my eyes, look into his. Moonlight, starlight—they’re both there in the depths, reflected back in the dark light of the lake.
It’s a question he’s asked me, even if it was in the form of an admission. My heart leaps into my throat, pulse thudding strong across my temples. Oh, I want him. Oh, shit, I want him. I want him so much. And still, I know that if I so much as shook my head, he would not press. Charlie Bliss is a good man, and a bad thing happened to us when we broke up. Maybe he has become more obsessed with work. Maybe he is committed to his ways. But his goodness is unchanged. So I have to answer his questions in words.
“Take me.”
11
Charlie
I’m the one who has to carry the speakers back, Leta’s phone shoved into my pocket, but I don’t care.
Take me.
The words ring in my mind like a bell, as shocking and clear as cold water.
Take me.
She still wants me, or she wanted me again. Those words we said to each other on the beach were the kind of raw you can only get with your eyes closed, and that’s what came out of it.
Take me.
I grip her hand tightly on the way up the stairs into my house. The speakers tumble from my arm into the sofa, and I listen for the shortest possible second to make sure they haven’t crashed to the floor before I go for the stairs.
Leta’s breath is in my ear as we go up to the second floor and rush down the hallway. At the end of the hall we both go opposite directions—she’s trying to lead me to her guest room, and I’m headed full-bore into my bedroom. I’m bigger. I win out. The sensation of her giving in to my momentum has me even harder than I was on the beach, which did not make for a very comfortable dash back to my house. Thank god there’s a private staircase from that section of beach. Thank god, thank god.
Leta strips her shirt over her head, eyes hungry on my body while I do the same. I shove down my shorts and watch her leap out of her own pants. I’m quicker, and before she can get to her panties I fall to my knees in front of her, hooking my fingers through the fabric.
I can hear us both breathing over the pounding thud of my heart in my ears. Leta makes a small sound—oh—as I tug the panties down. She braces herself on my shoulders and steps out of them. Do they fall to the floor, or do I throw them? The memory is lost to time, because I’m level with the sweetest pussy on the face of the planet.
I wrap my hands around her hips and pull her close, breathing in the salt scent of her. She moans when I press a kiss just above the neatly trimmed curls at the apex of her legs.
“Charlie,” she gasps. “When I said take me, I meant take me.”
One hand between her legs coaxes them to spread apart, a few inches at first and then wider. I remember her so well. I remember that she liked this. Two fingers, dragged slowly across the juices collecting at her slit, and a firm thumb against her clit. I stroke my fingers forward and Leta leans in, hand firm on my shoulder.
“Don’t tease me like this,” she breathes. “Don’t tease me…”
“I’m not teasing you. You love this. I can feel it. There’s no hiding it.”
A strangled whine.
“Look at me.”
Leta backs up, still bending forward, her hand still on my shoulder. “This is what you did,” I whisper, holding up my glistening fingers.
“It’s because I want you,” she echoes just above her breath.
I put my fingers in my mouth and lick them clean. Her eyes go wide.
“Charlie Bliss, you’re so dirty.”
“You’re so sweet. And now I’m going to fuck you.”
“Thank god,” she groans, and when I stand up she stumbles back onto the bed. I’m there in one step, lifting her so that she’s square in the center. I will not have this moment derailed by a tumble on the hard floor.
I slide one hand behind each of her knees and spread her open. The moonlight is still bright enough to see her lips part, and I let my eyes linger on hers for a moment before I look down at her.
Her breasts. Her navel. Perfection. Sheer fucking perfection, from the little tuck at her waist to the fine bones of her hips. And between her legs, a sweet pouting pussy. I move her knees another inch apart and she unfolds for me.
“Hands here.” This is how we used to be together, and there’s a moment where I think she might hesitate, but she doesn’t. Not for an instant. She only puts her hands where mine used to be. “Hold yourself open. I want to look at you.”
“Oh, god.” Leta spreads herself wider.
For once in my life, I’m not struggling to breathe. For once, I’m surrounded by plentiful fucking oxygen. My mind sharpens, clears. I can see her as she was, overlaid on how she is, and both versions are so crushingly perfect that I don’t want to move.
But I do. I use two fingers to open her just a little more.
Leta presses her head back into the comforter arching back. “It feels so good,” she whimpers. “Fuck, it feels so good.”
“To be touched like this.”
“Yes. And you’re—you’re looking—”
“Damn right, I’m looking.” She’s getting wetter, right before my eyes.
“So embarrassing,” she whispers, her legs trembling.
I crawl over her and lean down next to her ears. “You love to feel ashamed like this.”
“I do,” she admits, and her voice cracks like the tail end of a sob. “I do. Please. Please let me…”
I reach down between her legs and circle her clit with two fingertips. “You want to come already?”
“I want to come all night,” she says desperately. “Please touch me.”
I do. Oh, fuck, I do.
I make Leta come on my fingers, and then I make her come with my fingers inside her, and only then do I line my crown up with her entrance and take her.
Inch. By. Inch.
I make her look at me the entire time so I can see her mouth open and close with every sound she makes it.
“Hand,” she begs, and I oblige her, my hand wrapped firmly around her jaw.
“How long have you been waiting for this?” Our faces are inches apart and she’s panting, wet and writhing beneath me, her muscles clenching on my cock in a torturous perfect rhythm.
“Since the day I left.” She forces the words through gritted teeth.
“Come.”
She does, with a cry that echoes in my ears the rest of the night.
12
Leta
Was it a mistake?
That’s the question I ask myself while I sit in the shade of the tent, sorting through the contents of the bookshelf.
“Was it a mistake?” I sing out loud, then laugh. Was what a mistake, exactly? In order to answer that question, I’d have to get specific.
So, I’ll get specific. I’ll press my legs together on my folding chair and get really specific.
I had sex with Charlie last night.
No—Charlie fucked me last night. He spread me out on that bed and he had his way with me. He made me come six separate times, until tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. Not sad tears, either. Hell, no. Tears of exhaustion from sheer pleasure. Nobody has been able to give that to me—not even a high-quality vibrator I ordered online. Not even my favorite kind of porn. Not any number of attractive men from California’s art scene. Nobody.
I still feel it, aching in my muscles today.
Was it a mistake?
No, no, no.
It was a decision. That’s how I’ll categorize it. It was a decision, not a mistake. Maybe, if I were super analytical about it, I could gather data points and use them to inform my next move. But I have never been accused of being analytical. If part of me thought that going to bed with Charlie was going to get him out of my system, that part was very, very wrong.
He’s not out of my system.
Nope.
Nope.
I take a deep breath, pull my mind out of the gutter, and go back to the task at hand.
The bookshelf, it turns out, was huge. There are a lot of books, but there’s also a pretty big collection of journals and letters and notebooks. When it comes to blank notebooks, I am set for life.
I put another stack on my lap and move through it. Book. Book. Blank notebook for the blank notebook pile—this one is red, embossed with gold. “Pretty,” I tell it before I put it on top of the pile. A journal, blue with a flower on the front. I flip through the pages quickly so I don’t get drawn in. If I let myself get drawn in by Mari’s handwriting, I’ll spend all day reading her stuff and never finish this.
It might take more than two weeks, honestly. If I’m going to sort through everything in the house—which is my intention—then it has to be done thoughtfully. Half of my thoughts are now consumed with what we did last night. With Charlie’s lips on my neck. With his hand on my jaw. With his powerful muscles working between my legs. Jesus Christ, I did not hold back. Neither did he. Heat spreads across my cheeks.
“Hey, there.”
I flip the book in my lap onto the nearest pile like it might have a collection of photos from last night in it. “H—hey, Pete.” For a tall guy, Pete can be pretty sneaky. Or else I was replaying my own memory reel of last night and didn’t hear him come out through the front door. I wipe my hands on the front of my leggings and stand up to talk to him. “How’s everything going?”
He gives me a wide smile. “Right on track. In fact, you’re good to go.”
“You’re done already?”
Pete laughs. “Oh, no. We’re not done. But if you wanted to stay the nights here, you could. As long as you set up camp in the living room. The second floor doesn’t have a total floor yet, if you know what I mean.”
I assume it means that there are pieces still missing. “I sure do.”
“Hey, Pete.”
Charlie’s voice floats up on the breeze, and we both turn to face him. My breath catches in my throat. He wears pressed shorts and a white button-down, the sleeves pushed up above his elbows. I’ve always thought he looked like royalty, with fine features and those piercing blue eyes, but the September sun on his skin does things for me.
“Hey, Mr. Bliss,” calls Pete. Mr. Bliss indeed. I’ve showered, but that Bliss still clings to my skin. “I was telling Leta here she can move back in.”
Charlie stops right outside the tent and shakes Pete’s hand. “You’re working wonders. What’s that about moving in?”
“It’s not completely finished,” Pete tells him. “We’ve still got floor work to do on the second level, so the bedrooms are out. But the living room is perfectly livable for evenings and overnights. I can have my guys cut back on those hours.”
Relief. Sweet, sweet relief. “Oh, no, don’t do that,” I cut in. “I don’t want to get in your way.”
“It’s your house,” Pete says. “You wouldn’t be in the way. It might take us a few extra days, since I’ve got guys in there until nine or ten, but—”
“No.” I catch Charlie’s eye. “I’ll stay with you, if that’s okay.”
“Speaking of,” says Charlie. “There’s something I need to check on back at the house.”
“Let me just…” I step out of the tent and tug at the sides to close it up.
“I’ve got it. You two head out. We’ll get back to work.” Pete steps forward and takes the tent side from my hands.
“Thank you so much,” I tell him. Charlie’s already making his way down the sidewalk, and I run to catch up, my sandals flip-flopping on the ground.
“Is it urgent?” I say when I get level with him.
He slides an arm around my waist. “You were there last night, weren’t you? That wasn’t a body double?”
Heat. From the top of my head to the tips of my toes. “Yeah. I was there. I was really, really there.”
“We need to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.” He’s so dead serious about it that the meaning of the words doesn’t sink in for a full several heartbeats.
“Oh. Oh. Then let’s walk faster.” I break out of his arm and run ahead. “Faster, Charlie. Let’s. Go.”
13
Charlie
I balance the laptop on my lap, poring over everything. Again.
This is my new least favorite thing to be doing. No—not new. It was already my least favorite thing, having an unsolvable problem. Now I’ve been over the information so many times that I’ve lost perspective, and I can feel it.
It’s fucking frustrating.
The dishwasher clicks shut in the kitchen, and Leta’s footsteps approach. She leans over the back of the sofa and loops her arms easily around my neck. God, it feels just like it used to. That might be a siren song, something dangerous as hell. Might be? It is. It’s dangerous. But I want it anyway. Sleeping with her has only made me want it more.
“Are you doing some sleuthing?” she murmurs into my ear.
“I’m trying.”
In a few weeks, all the pre-set transfers are going to be made from account to account, both inside and outside the resort. All kinds of payments are going to be made. Payroll deposits. Insurance premiums. Everything. I’d shut all of it down—I have that capability, in the event of a true emergency—but starting all over would disrupt everything. There are people relying on their paychecks. Even if I stopped it all right now I’m not sure that would be fast enough to replace it with a paper system.
I don’t want to do that.
“Show me.”
“Are you sure about that?” I turn into Leta’s scent. She always smells fresh, and the scent of her skin never gets old. There’s also the small matter that she does not know anything about financial system of this scale, unless she’s been studying in secret. “It’s very boring. And complicated.”
“Show me anyway.”
“Okay.”
I bring up the simplest file I can—a graphic schematic of the way the resort’s finances are set up and all the links between them. Everything should be here, but it’s not. There is no explanation for how these numbers keep shifting, changing.
“This is it.” I’ve been running all of this through a specialized program built for this purpose. “Here’s the money coming in. Here’s the money going out.” My temples throb. “Someone is stealing from the resort. They have to be. And somehow they’ve managed to automate it.” I have the sick, sinking feeling that it was my dad. Or one of my brothers. I don’t know which would be worse.
“Someone in your family, then,” Leta says softly.
“I don’t know who else.”
The books don’t balance. They just don’t balance.
“What’s this, over here?” Leta points to a greyed-out area represented with several little boxes.
“That’s where the resort finances interact with the trust.”
“So money comes in and out of there.”
“It only goes in. The trust doesn’t pay out.”
Leta draws in a short breath. “Are you sure about that?”
Something shimmers at the back of my mind. “Actually, no. I’m not.”
“There’s your answer, then.”
I laugh out loud. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“How do you know it’s not the answer?”
“I guess I don’t,” I admit, feeling like a fucking idiot.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Charlie, but how do you not know? You know pretty much everything about this.”
I rub at my forehead. “Because in order to review all the details of the trust, all the members have to be present.”
“Okay, so call a meeting with your brothers. They’re all here, aren’t they?”
“Not Asher.”
What if it’s Asher?
“Anyway, the amounts don’t match. They just don’t match up. I’ve been trying to reconcile them for weeks. Months. Somewhere, we’re bleeding money, and I can't figure out why, or where it’s going. There’s no way to even calculate…” I shake my head. “I thought it was the same amount each time, but it’s based on something else. And I can’t figure it out.”
Leta is silent for a long moment.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. I’ve added them up a hundred times. The amount that’s missing doesn’t match any of our regular payments or investments.”
“Maybe this is stupid.”
“The finances?”
“No, what I’m about to tell you.”
“Go on.”
Leta laughs. “It is stupid, but I have this app on my phone.”
“An app that can fix this?”
No, it’s this app that rounds up to the nearest dollar and then puts it into a savings account. And then, I guess, you’re supposed to invest it, but I’ve never invested it, because I never know what kinds of companies to invest in.”
My head explodes. I mean, it just explodes. I’m pretty sure my entire consciousness winks out, then comes back online.
“Are you suggesting…” What the hell is she suggesting? “Are you suggesting that someone’s doing a rounding thing and investing the money? No, that can’t be right. That can’t be how the number is generated. We’re losing money, not rounding up and saving it.”
So much for that flash of inspiration.
“What about the opposite?” Leta asks.
Oh, my god. Rounding down.
I’ll be damned.
