Bliss Brothers (Complete Series), page 49
Katie won’t look me in the eye. “More or less.”
“Dude.”
“What?” She angles her face a little toward mine. “Also, don’t call people dude.”
“I never call people that. Just my dudes.”
“Ew.” Katie wrinkles her nose. “Did you have anything to say after that, or...?”
“If you wanted to stay at my place that badly, all you had to do was say so.”
“It’s just...” She blows an exasperated breath out through her lips. “I fucking missed you when we were in college. And now we’re so close. I mean, we’re literally out in tiny sailboats together most of the time. And I want to—” Katie brings her hands up and clenches her fists around empty air.
I get it. I get it on a level that’s so deep you’d have to rip out of my spine to find it. The same feeling—that wanting to hang on to the moments zipping by at the speed of light—hovers at the back of my mind all the time.
“We’re not wasting it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t want to look back and wish we’d spent more time...talking.”
Something unlocks and opens behind my heart. A memory, maybe—like a well-worn path. Talking seemed loaded with meaning, but out here in the dock with the wind in our hair, it’s hard to say. The breeze off the lake can change things. I think both of us have learned that. Her dad is gone. My dad is gone. My brothers are holding things together here, but all those things in the background.
“You see that?” Katie shades her eyes against the sun. “Those clouds.”
For a split second, I think she’s talking about the figurative clouds from my own brain, which would be creepy as all get out. But then I realize she’s talking about a dark line of clouds way out across Ruby Bay. The air shifts, changes. A storm’s rolling in. I thought we were about done with the summer storms, but then again, with the sun shining the way it is and the heat rising off the lake and the land...
“Let’s give them twenty minutes,” I decide. “Then we’ll call them back to shore.”
“What happens after that?”
I turn to face her and find that she’s watching me, green eyes huge and sparkling. “After that, we’ll hang out.”
6
Katie
The storm comes in fast over the bay, and luckily the guy in the boat realizes it before we have to make a scene. The wind shifted while he was out in a very fortunate direction. The last thing I wanted was to have to go out in a speedboat and pull them back in. So awkward.
Though not as awkward as I just was, talking to Huck. God. Somehow, the words never lined up in the right order, and now he thinks I’m some weirdo clinging to our formerly close high school friendship.
A hang sesh. He didn’t even make fun of me when he said it, either.
I help the family out of the boat—son first, then mom, then dad—and the mom says something to me over her shoulder as they hustle down the dock. I can already hear it—the whisper of the rain out over the water. It was sunny this morning, but you wouldn’t know it from the dark out over the water.
“Just tie it up.” Huck tosses me one of the lines, and I wrap it expertly around the nearest cleat. The dock shakes underfoot as he vaults out of the boat with the other line and bends to wrap it. My heart thuds—one two, one two, one two—even though there’s no real danger. Libby’s words ring in my ears. Nothing could possibly happen to you with Huck.
The wind whips a strand of my hair out of my ponytail holder, slashing it across my face, and I bounce on tiptoe. I’m not going to run screaming for the resort. I’m not a wuss. But as Huck finishes tying off the boat, there’s a tearing roar of thunder that booms over the entire lake and ricochets off the front of the main building.
Huck straightens, looking at the sky over my head, and his eyes widen. “—right on top of us! Let’s go.” He dashes across the dock, grabs my hand, and we run, dock shuddering beneath our feet. Why didn’t I already run? Why did I let him drag me here, like a damsel in distress?
And also…why do I like it so much?
The sound of the rain crescendos on the surface of the water, droplets coming faster and faster, and it catches up to us, flicking itself at the back of my neck and on the crown of my head. “We’re too far!” I shout. I can see us now—running hand in hand for any kind of shelter, feet crashing down to earth in slow motion, determined looks on our faces—
Huck turns his head. “Boathouse.” He gets the word out and veers to the right, picking up the pace. “Go, go, go.”
“I’m going,” I shriek, running to match his speed, fingers tight on his.
He hits the door first and turns the handle. It sticks. Of course it sticks. The rain is on top of us now, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Huck turns his body toward the door and swings out, then back with his shoulder.
He does not let go of my hand.
The two of us fly forward on his momentum into the dim entryway of the boathouse. We don’t keep the lights on during the day. The boathouse, like everything else at the Bliss Resort, is nice—all sleek mahogany and antique paddles on display on the walls—but Huck slams the door shut behind me and all I care about is the fact that we’re close.
Really close.
Inches apart in the narrow hall.
Rain lashes against the window and Huck looks out, shoulders rising and falling with every heavy breath. “We just made it.” The storm hears him and sends a bolt of lightning crackling from the sky. “Holy shit.”
We both look out at the downpour. That happened fast. Everything seems to happen fast these days.
Huck takes a long, slow breath in, and then he looks down at our hands.
We’re still holding hands. Our fingers are still entwined, and it feels as right as anything has ever felt in my entire life, holding hands with him. I don’t know why it feels like the aftershock of a cymbal crash, with the music still vibrating in the air, but it does.
This isn’t the first time Huck has held my hand. He held it before, in the cafeteria in middle school. Once, he held it all the way through a horror movie we made the mistake of seeing in high school.
All those other times, it felt like…friendship.
Now it feels like something else.
He looks into my eyes. “You haven’t let go,” he comments, as if he’s commenting on the luck we had getting away from the storm before lightning came down to smite us.
That same buzzy, numb feeling flies straight back into my lips like my body has been waiting for this moment specifically out of all the other possible moments. “No. I haven’t let go.”
His face is so close to mine that I can see every droplet of rain that he hasn’t yet wiped away. I can see the cut cheekbones, and the lines of his jaw that are so like his brothers, yet uniquely him. I raise my free hand and trace a path through one of those droplets, my fingertip on fire. I’m surprised it doesn’t hiss as the water evaporates.
“I wanted you to stay with me, the other day.” I can hardly force my voice above a whisper. “I know we normally joke around, and there’s…there’s never been anything else between us, but I missed you.” It’s a different world outside, with the rain coming down in gray sheets and the rest of the planet shut out behind the boathouse door. Maybe that’s what gives me the courage to unmoor myself from the nervous dread in the pit of my stomach.
Huck’s jaw works. “Is this another one of your jokes, Lennon?”
I can’t speak. I shake my head no.
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
Huck still hasn’t let go of my hand. If anything, he’s holding on tighter. His gray eyes are filled with questions and lightning, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s asked me one that I haven’t answered.
I swallow down the tight anticipation in my throat and will my voice to work. “I don’t know if I want to be friends anymore.”
A flicker of a smile, a flare of heat in his eyes. “What else do you want to be, other than friends?”
“I wanted to be in your bed the other day.”
“You were in my bed the other day.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t.”
Another boom of thunder, another flash of lightning. It hits close enough to smell the ignited air, but it’s not the lightning that makes my heart pound. It’s not the lightning that makes my heart rattle in my chest like the booster engines of a rocket. It’s not lightning that makes my toes tingle and my lips sing.
It’s Huck, standing close, the rainwater and cologne scent of him in every ragged breath I take.
“There’s a line,” he says, and now it’s his turn to trail off into nothing and infuriate me. “There’s a line, Katie, and if we—” He runs a hand through his hair dislodging some of the water droplets hidden there.
“This is a boathouse, and there are no lines here,” I say, stupidly. I don’t want to talk about lines and boundaries and what happens next. What happens next will be what was always going to happen. He was always going to come back to Bliss, and I was always going to leave. Who knows? This could be it. This could be the thunderstorm that washes away the rest of the summer and when it clears we’ll find ourselves in the middle of fall. Hot embarrassment rushes to my cheeks, so forceful it feels like they must be bulging out. At the very least, they must be a ridiculous red color, clown like. “You know what?” I tug my hand away from his. “Forget I said anything. I—”
The instant our hands lose contact, Huck moves. And now it’s not his hand in mine, it’s his body on mine, backing me up against the wall. His eyes pin mine for one long second, another hitching breath, and then his hand comes up around the back of my face and he pulls me in for a kiss.
A hard, desperate kiss that I feel down to the tips of my toes. My shoes squelch against the floor as I rise to meet him, to taste more of him, to press myself more firmly into his arms. I’m in uncharted territory, I’m here without map, and it turns out to be so delicious I can’t stop exploring, can’t stop, won’t stop.
I don’t pull back until I’ve climbed up his body and wrapped my legs around his waist. How did we end up like this, with my back against the wall, arms around his neck?
His gaze is a question.
The answer is more.
7
Huck
There’s a moment, when Katie has her legs around my waist and her fingers in my hair and her eyes on mine, when I think—we could stop. We could stop right now, and we could keep this nice friendship that we’ve had for so many years.
I do not want to fuck that up.
The thought rings loud at my core, a blaring alarm, and my brain throws everything it has at me. It’s a rapid-fire montage of memories and feelings. Katie, head bent over her paper lunch bag, alone in a sea of people in a cafeteria. Katie, fingers tight around my bicep at the junior prom, muttering through clenched teeth that they’re going to think we’re a couple, and Jenson is never going to notice me. That fucking Jensen Loftis, a running back on the football team who, by the way, never really amounted to anything. They could have been Loftis and Lennon, but they never were, just like we never were. Katie, calling me from the first dorm room event at college, voice breathless with nerves. I wish you were here, she’d said. But I’m kind of glad you’re not. The second part of that, I know now, was a lie.
And so many other times. So many times, I stood at her house and put my hand just below the back of her neck while she cried. I pictured myself having to do this at her wedding, when her dad wouldn’t be there to walk her down the aisle.
But she looks down at me with a rosy glow in her cheeks that I can feel more than I can see. “Huck,” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
“Please.”
She doesn’t have to ask me twice.
I sweep her down from the wall and carry her into the main room of the boathouse. If I’d thought this would ever happen, I’d have planned out the details a little better. The nautical theme isn’t the sexiest, and there’s no bed in here—it’s only meant as a stopping place for us to check people in and out and help them find life jackets. This is the smallest part of the building. We keep the boats in the main part, floating at their indoor docks, and that leaves me with one overstuffed sofa.
Katie drops her head to my neck while I cross the room and plants one kiss, then another, and then another down to the curve of my shoulder. If I thought I was rock hard from seeing her in that damn slip, I was seriously mistaken. There is no more blood left in my brain. There is no more blood left in my entire body. I’m working on animal instinct now, and that instinct leads me to lay her down on the sofa and kneel beside her.
Our hands both go for her shorts at the same time and I stifle the urge to say great minds like a complete dumbass. I stop her, moving her hands gently out of the way, because I want to do this. I want to do this more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything in my entire life.
I tug her shorts down over her hips, down over her legs, and experience a shattering clarity.
I have always wanted this.
I’ve always wanted this in a way that’s wedged itself behind my rib cage and stuck there forever. No amount of casual sex in college was enough to dislodge it. This might be the only way. But my breath stops at the sight of her panties resting delicately across her hips.
Lightning illuminates all the curves of her body—the Bliss Brothers t-shirt riding up over the soft curve of her belly, the shadow falling beneath the slope of her waist to her hip—and I can’t tear myself away from the black panties. I brush my fingertips over them—silky as fuck—and hook one finger underneath the waistband. Katie shifts underneath me, the shirt riding up a little more, and I look up at her for one last blessing.
“Take them off,” she groans. “Please, just take them off. God, Huck, I didn’t think I’d have to beg.”
Beg breaks something inside of me. The rest of my tentativeness shatters like a vase on concrete, and I use both hands to pull them away. As soon as they’re out of my hand, they’re out of my mind, and all that’s left is Katie.
She arches back on the sofa underneath me, biting her lip, and I can see in her eyes a desperate longing that’s like an arrow slipped neatly through my ribs. My shorts hit the floor. I have no memory of undoing my belt.
The storm throws raindrops against the metal roof of the boathouse, the noise ratcheting up another level, and I climb onto the sofa. It’s too narrow, really, but I wedge my knee between the back of the couch and Katie. Jesus, it’s fucking delicious. This is what it would have been like if we’d ever once kissed in high school. If we’d ever once parked somewhere and flung ourselves into the backseat of my car. Almost.
Katie’s hands scrabble at my shirt and she yanks me down for another kiss. She tastes like mint and hope and, somehow, absurdly, of home, and I want to drink in that taste all day.
My body has other ideas.
Her body has other ideas.
She spreads her legs for me, rocking her hips to get herself into the right position for my hardness to meet the slick, wet core of her.
I’m lost.
I have actually lost my body, all except my cock, which Katie takes in inch by inch by making her own rhythm. Except it’s not just her rhythm. It’s the boats, rocking out on the water. It’s the hull smashing against the dock outside in a thud thud thud that I can sense even if I can’t really hear it. It’s my kayak paddle on the surface. It’s relentless. It takes me all the way in and under, and I come up just long enough to see her face.
Bliss.
Bliss on a woman’s face, and there’s a good sex pun in there somewhere but I’m not in any position to make it. I can only get my hand underneath her so I can lift her up, opening her for me another fraction of an inch, and pump hard into a pleasure that might kill me. It might actually stop my heart and steal the breath from my lungs and kill me, it’s so intense and focused and mine, mine, mine.
“Oh, fuck,” she says into my ear as the storm reaches a fever pitch outside. “Oh, fuck. I’m—”
“Up. Up, up.” I pull out long enough to turn her over, to plant both of her hands on the arm of the sofa, and thrust back in. There’s no way she’s going to come underneath me with my hands anywhere but her clit. I snake my hand around her waist to the front, stroking her clit with two fingers, and she bucks back against me, the rhythm turning as wild as the lake outside. She tightens, clenches, moans—a sound that vibrates through her entire body and through mine, too. I slam back into my self in time for my balls to tighten. One last hitch of breath and then my orgasm crashes over me. I can’t ignore it, I can’t do anything but thrust hard into her and ride it to the end, every muscle engaged, every muscle screaming for more of her. But I’ll die, if I take anymore. I’ve already taken so much.
We’re frozen together like that, her ass pressed against my hips, for a long time.
The rain stops.
The world spins.
Eventually, Katie wriggles her hips from side to side, which has the effect of stealing even more blood from my brain and injecting it directly into my cock. I pull out before it gets awkward and sit down heavily on the sofa.
We’re going to have to clean the sofa now. Maybe even this afternoon. Can’t have guests in here, now that I’ve fucked my best friend in the boathouse. Right?
Katie tumbles backward into me and stretches out, her breath still fast and shallow. I wrap my arms around her from behind.
It feels so good, the aftermath.
It feels so good now.
I want to stay in this moment, right here, and never leave. I could easily commit to a lifetime at Bliss if this is what it’s going to be.
“So,” I say, the words coming completely unbidden. “Was that what you meant by hanging out?”
Katie laughs, the blades of her shoulders shaking against my chest. “Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“It really was.”
I pull her in closer, because I was wrong before. I thought the world was the same as it ever was, but now I can see that the entire planet has shifted on its axis. “Jesus, Lennon,” I say into her hair. “What am I going to do with you?”
