Bliss Brothers (Complete Series), page 51
When I was being willfully delusional, it was easier to ignore the six pack. The broad shoulders that hold a paddle as easily as a broadsword. Ha, fine. I don’t have a lot of experience with a broadsword, but something about him makes me think he’d be okay on the battlefield, if he wasn’t the sniveling youngest son of a powerful lord who never had to face anyone in battle before the first big war.
A paddle waves in front of my face, inches away, and I leap back so far I almost go off the other side of the dock. “What the hell? Safety rules! Safety rules!”
“I felt unsafe. You were doing it again,” Huck says from the kayak floating in the water next to the dock.
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.”
“Yeah. I was thinking about whether you would suck ass as a medieval knight or not.”
“Please, please tell me how you got on that train of thought.”
The heat starts in the back of my neck and wraps itself around to my cheeks, the air seeming to sizzle with it. I swallow hard. There’s nothing embarrassing about thinking of Huck naked, but I didn’t even see him naked, and like a greedy bitch, I was picturing it. Of course I was. I mean—I haven’t seen him naked all at once. I’ve seen him shirtless, and I’ve seen him pantless, but the full view eludes me.
“I was watching you paddle the kayak,” I mumble into the water.
“What was that?”
“I was watching you paddle the kayak,” I say louder, into the wind.
“What?” Huck shouts, then launches himself right out of the kayak in a combination move of such athleticism and grace that I teeter on the edge of the dock again. He’s totally abandoned the kayak, which does a stately float underneath the dock at our feet. Huck slips an arm around my waist and pulls me into the center of the dock, away from the edge, and then brushes a palm against my cheek. He gazes deeply into my eyes. Once again, I am kneeless.
“I couldn’t hear what you were saying.” His voice is low and sexy and hot damn I wish we could sprint for the boathouse. “What was that?”
“You’re a terrible jackass.”
“Shhh.” He puts a finger to my lips. “That’s not what your face said earlier. Your face said that I was a Greek god on a kayak, and I want to know what made you stare at me like that.”
“You have a nice body,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “A fucking perfect body, if you must know.”
“Hmm.” His brows knit together. “Are you sure we’re not dating?”
“I am sure we’re not dating.” My chest expands around my heart, that sensation of hope pressing so hard that my rib cage threatens to explode. “I’m really, really sure. We’re friends.”
“Would you say…that we’re friends with benefits?”
“Not really, since…we’ve only had that one time in the boathouse, and I—”
Huck leans down and kisses me.
It’s a tender, searching thing, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck and raising the heat there another thousand degrees. He’s slow, deliberate, tasting me, exploring, and I cannot breathe. If I thought my knees were gone before, now they’re gone gone and I feel my weight sink into his arms. Remind me again—what’s the point of staying upright?
He ends the kiss, and disappointment arcs through me like a black bolt of lightning. When I finally manage to force my eyes open, his are still on mine. “What about now?”
“We can’t play games like this at work.” My whisper is so full of something I have to clear my throat. “People could see.”
“Yeah,” he says. “My brothers have all done worse in the past summer, so I’m not too worried about that. This resort is supposed to be about luxury and romance.”
“I’m not here for a romance,” I say, but it sounds like a lie, even to me.
“I didn’t say anything about romance for you,” Huck says breezily. “I only asked if you thought we were friends with benefits. I’m not a huge fan of the term, by the way, I just thought it would be the easiest way to describe all this high-voltage hanging out we’ve been doing.”
“You kissed me.”
“Yes.” He looks at me like I might have lost my mind. “I’m part of this arrangement. The truth is…”
He trails off. “I hate when you trail off like that. It makes me feel like I’m in the path of an oncoming train.”
An impish smile lights up his eyes. “I apologize so sincerely.”
“Bullshit.”
“Look. I wanted to know if we were going to make out again. Now we have, so if what you want is to keep our distance, then—”
I grab a fistful of his shirt. “I don’t want to keep our distance, you…you lovely man.”
“Good save.”
“I don’t. I want—”
“Be very clear,” Huck warns. “Or we might end up back in the boathouse.”
“Yoo-hoo!” Oh, my god, who says that? Who says you-hoo still? I let go of Huck’s shirt on instinct. What guest is this and why is she being allowed to stay on Bliss property while saying stuff like yoo-hoo oh my god.
“I want to end up back in the boathouse,” I say through gritted teeth as Huck brushes by to greet her.
“I hear you.” He snaps his fingers and points at me.
I could punch him. I could kiss him.
“Morning,” he calls to the guest, then turns back over his shoulder one more time. “Can you grab that kayak, Katie?”
“Oh, sure thing.”
I’m aching from his kiss. Every inch of my skin burns with wanting more, with wanting his hands on my body, with wanting to feel his weight over me and in me and everywhere else. Even my nipples are in on the game, pressing hard against the fabric of my bra. One kiss. One kiss. I don’t think I could stand being in love with him.
The kayak has drifted to the other side of the dock, conveniently near one of the ladders that reaches down to the water. I climb down one step at a time and hook the kayak with my toes, drawing it closer. Step one: get in. Step two: unhook the paddle from the bungee cord where Huck stored it before he came to ruin my day with sexual frustration. Step three: paddle it into the shore and drag it up on the sand so some lucky guest who is not suffering from awful sexual deprivation can use it. Those lucky bastards. They don’t know how good they have it.
Step one is when everything goes wrong.
I go to lower myself into the kayak seat and the seam of my shorts twists, somehow pressing itself up into my sensitive bits, which are already on high alert from Huck’s kiss. I’m being tortured by my own shorts and my body reacts on instinct, wriggling hard to the right.
Just hard enough to throw myself out of the kayak.
I can at least hope that the splash was dignified.
I resurface in a gasp of air to two faces staring down at me. The woman’s is all concern. And Huck has his hand over his mouth, obviously to keep himself from laughing.
“All good,” I call up to them, grabbing the kayak with one hand and waving with the other. “Totally good.”
“You sure?” Huck calls down. “Because if you need help—”
“I don’t need help.” I need you. “I’ve got it from here.”
Underneath the water, my bits have not cooled in the slightest. I push the kayak toward the shallows, kicking hard, trying to keep my knees a few inches apart. Help me out, Ruby Bay.
Ruby Bay does not help me out. Unless you count delivering swift karma to me for laughing at Huck the day he tipped his own kayak.
I know just how he felt.
Damn that beautiful man.
11
Huck
“I said I was sorry,” Katie says loudly, as if god himself is listening in. “I’ve learned my lesson. Okay?”
“Who are you talking to?”
She slinks down into the couch at my place. I, being a gallant gentleman, closed the boathouse early and brought her back to my place so she could shower all the lake water off of her. Now she’s ensconced on my sofa in a Bliss-branded fluffy robe and a towel in her hair, all of her skin clean and pink from the shower. Huge shout-out to Past Huck, who bought sea salt products and not some Old Spice bullshit for the shampoo. Now her scent is all soap and Katie, which is frankly driving me insane.
Other things are driving me insane, too, like the way I felt when she tipped into the water. If she hadn’t fallen from the kayak I’d have jumped in after her. My heart flew up into my throat on giant wings despite the five-inch drop to the surface. And then—oh, my god, the look on her face when she surfaced. That was hilarious. A giddy, hilarious joy—she’s okay followed by she richly deserves this followed by I don’t care what she deserves, I want to get her out of those wet clothes.
“I was just talking to...you know. The general presence of the universe. I want all of it to know that I’m sorry for laughing at you. Clearly I shouldn’t have.”
“I forgive you.” I settle into the couch next to her, wrap one arm around her betoweled shoulders, and press a kiss to her temple. The skin there is so delicate I can feel her pulse in my lips. This—this feels right, her in my arms, safe from dangerous kayaks.
“I wasn’t asking for your forgiveness. Just—” She waves in front of her.
“The general universe. Right.”
We sit in a silence that expands around us and somehow isn’t terrible, and I let it fall over the employee bungalow. The noise from outside filters in after a minute without voices—the slow turn of wheels on pavement, the breeze against the windows—and part of me tears raggedly in two. I missed this when I was in college. It was always noisy on campus, always noisy off campus, all hours of the day. Buses creaked to a stop outside every building I ever lived in, on the hour, on the quarter hour, all day, most of the night. Frat guys shouted at each other. I did my fair share of shouting, too.
“What’s next for you, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” answers Katie with a sigh that seems mostly contented. “Probably Netflix, unless you’re going to kick me out before the laundry’s done.”
I scoff at her. “I would never kick a lady out before her laundry was done, unless she committed a truly heinous crime.”
“Good,” she says, then huffs out a laugh and lets her head fall back against my arm. “What did you mean, though? Like later tonight?”
“Like...later in the season, when the boathouse closes. You took this to cover a gap, didn’t you?” I shake my head. “You had to. There’s no way you got a degree in finance to work in boathouses and gas stations.”
She arches an eyebrow. “When have I ever worked in a gas station?”
“It was the first thing that came to mind. Plus, you’d look cute behind the counter at one of those places.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Fluorescent lights do wonders for my skin.”
She’d look good in any light. “You applied places at the end of the year, though.”
Katie frowns, and I regret asking, but I still want to know. “Yeah. My mom’s still in town, and I thought it would be nice to see her and make some extra cash before I head out to...whatever’s next.”
“You don’t know?”
She shoots me a glare so fake it’s hilarious. “Aren’t you the one who’s always considering the options?”
“Well, yeah, but I figured you had a plan. You usually do have a plan.” Katie, as long as I’ve known her, has had a plan for everything. She picked out her entire first year of college courses before we even left for our summer orientations. She planned to major in finance, and she got her degree, and now...
Now I assumed there was more of a plan.
“I have applications in,” she admits. “I gave them a start date of mid-October. I’ve...I’ve even had a few interviews.” There’s an edge to her words that tells me that this is a partial story—a broken-off chunk of what’s really going on.
This is the kind of conversation that belongs at the end of the season, when everybody’s packing up to go home. Back to their jobs. Back to their real lives. The air around us feels suddenly brittle. I’ve been kidding myself. It was easy, because September has been so warm, but that’s only window dressing. It’ll be like every other September. It will barrel straight into October, and then we’ll be forced into winter…
And then, and then, and then.
I can’t picture it here without her.
I can’t picture her here in the snow.
I can’t picture myself anywhere, except in this moment.
“Where did you interview?”
“Firms in the city,” Katie says. “Multiple cities, actually. New York. Seattle. Chicago. I figured I’d see what came of it all, and then decide based on the offers.”
“You’ve got offers?”
She has not once, not once, mentioned this, in all our time on the docks.
“A few.” It’s a whisper so quiet it could float away on the breeze.
I tighten my grip around her shoulders, pulling her close. “Are you going to tell me where, or is it a big secret?”
“One in New York. One in Seattle. And one in LA.”
Cold dread, like a disgusting winter breeze, sneaks between the sofa and my back and settles in. I can feel that same cold on my breath, in my lungs, freezing everything out. Two of those places are across the country.
And why should it make a difference? We’re not dating. She’s said it a million times, and it’s the sensible thing to think and the sensible thing to say. We’re not dating. We’re only going to be here for a matter of weeks and then it’s time for me to commit to this life or find another one. That half of me that loves the breeze and the sound of slow traffic and the water—that half of me knows where he belongs.
“And you’re going to be here,” she says. “No matter where I go.”
She says it like that’s what she needs to be true, and in a horrible sickening instant I know where this is all going to end up.
I’ve known it all along.
There’s no avoiding it, is there? No. So the only thing to do is be in this moment.
“Are you warm?”
“Yes.” Katie raises her head off my arm. “I’m a little hot. I was thinking of taking off the robe.”
I know as well as she does that she’s not wearing anything underneath.
I clear my throat, all that cold dread burned to a crisp. “Could you do me a favor, as one friend to another?”
“What’s that?”
“Stand up when you do it.”
12
Katie
“Huck, no. I thought we decided—”
The rain loves us. The rain has heard our pleas and answered. When it rains, we can’t take the boats out—we can’t let people out on the water in any of the watercraft. Liabilities, and all that. The moment the first droplets fell, Huck pulled me into the boathouse by the hand, and now…
Well.
He put both of my hands on the check-in counter, stepped up behind me, and kissed the back of my neck. He’s still kissing the small square that’s normally covered by my ponytail. It’s shocking, how much of an effect his kiss has. I can feel myself, damp between the legs. I’m going to ruin my shorts if I’m not careful.
And I am not careful.
I am so far from careful.
The rain beats against the roof of the boathouse in a driving cadence. It’s better than music. Better than the new Pilot Five song that’s been on repeat on the radio all summer. I have the fleeting thought that they should add the sound of rain to that song, but it flickers out like static. Huck’s hands glide down over my hips, pulling me back several inches so that our bodies connect. He’s solid behind me, feet planted, and I feel like a live wire stretched between my palms on the solid wood of the counter and my feet on the solid wood of the floor. I could conduct electricity. I could writhe against it like a fire dancer.
Hot. It would be hot.
“Sorry, what was that?” Every word out of his mouth sings through me on a frequency that’s low enough to run along every nerve. I’ve never been aware of Huck’s voice in quite this way before. It must have changed, over the years. I’ve known him for too long for it not to have.
It’s not just him. It’s me. Now that we’re here, now that we’re doing this, I’m attuned to him like a moth to an electric light. And I don’t care what happens when I get to the lightbulb. Not right now.
He pauses, but I want him to kiss me again. I want more of it, and I can’t help it.
“We decided that last time was the last time.”
The last time, after I undid the belt of my bathrobe and let it fall open, then let it slide to the floor, revealing all of me. Then I reached up and uncoiled the second towel from my hair, letting it fall in all its wet glory down over my shoulders. I watched him get hard. Maybe he thought I was the only one putting on a show, but trust me, I was not.
His breath is hot against the back of my neck. “If you want to stop, say the word.”
I heard the way he didn’t answer when I asked him where he’d be. That pause was enough to know that Huck might waffle, he might consider all the options, but he’s never going to leave Bliss. Why would he? Honestly, given the chance, I’d join my family business in a heartbeat. Only I don’t have a family business to join. If I want that, I’ll have to start one for myself, and I won’t be starting one in my career as a financial adviser for a Fortune 500 company. They’re all Fortune 500 companies. They all want me. And I want it to be summer at Bliss forever.
I want this moment to be going on forever.
Huck moves one hand up toward my chest, tracing a lazy line underneath each breast, and all the thoughts short out again. Useless, stupid thoughts. Who needs to think when he’s touching me like this?
The token resistance I’ve been putting up—and it really is token resistance, given that I haven’t yet moved my hands from the countertop—chips and shatters.
“No,” I breathe, giving in again. “The third time could be the charm.”
It’s not going to be the charm. I know that. He knows it. And we’re going to do this anyway.
