Hot Summer Lust (4 page)

Her little coos of pleasure begin to fade and she lies there wi
th her eyes closed. Her
breasts rise and fall with her breath.

It’s a while before she moves. But then her eyes open and she sits
up. She looks peaceful. Happy
.
Holy hell.
She is simply the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.
In all my twenty-four years I have
never
seen anything or anyone so entirely … addictive.

Who the fuck
is
she?

I have to find out.

She gets up and wades into the pond, splashing herself
. She cups a handful of water and gently washes her candy-pink, swollen
little pussy. I’m instantly hard again, goddamn it.

I think about calling out to her but it might scare her off
. Of
course it would.
She might think I’m a
pervert or a stalker or something.
I take a step back and zip up my jeans.

She looks up, like my movement has alerted her.

Shit.

She sees me.

A look of panic crosses her face and I want to tell her not to be afraid of me but she’s already pulling her dress over her head.

Just like that, she disappears.

I run over to the fence, like a goddamn idiot.
She’s gone, you fool.
Then something occurs to me:
could it be
? The girl in the ancient pick-up truck, this morning, at the mailbox.
White-blond, cute as fuck.

It’s her.

So I walk out to the
mailbox. The walk gives me time to regroup but I still feel weirdly frantic, like I
need
to see her again.
I take out the rolled-up piece of paper. Something about the handwritten flyer sort of bowls me over, I have no idea why. The whimsical handwriting, the gentle flair.

Sadie Faraday, consider yourself hired.

I take my phone out of my pocket and start dialing the number,
but then I hit the end button before the call goes through. If she knows it’
s me who’s calling, once I tell her the address, she might be embarrassed.
She might refuse, knowing that
I’ve seen what I’ve seen.

That wet, golden skin. That hair. Those big, bouncy breasts with
cherry-pink nipples. The way she touched them, rubbing her hands across her own body.

I need to go to her, to convince her that there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I need to tell her how beautiful she is.

I’ll sing her a song. She’ll never refuse me if she knows who I am.

I google-earth the address, confirming what I already know.

Then I wait
. I try to work on the
song but I’m too distracted. I drink a beer. I sleep for an hour but I’m
too hard
. I do something I haven’t done – besides this afternoon by the pond – for a long time. I don’t need to rely on my own hands when there are so many others reaching for me. But I need relief. It comes but doesn’t last.

Her cooing gasps as she writhed and came.

I wait until the hot night is thick with the sound of cicadas and the moon is high.

I walk until I reach the dilapidated little house she lives in, where I sit down on a bench. And I start to play.

I can’t sleep.
I hear Frannie’s soft, even breath as she sleeps in t
he bed next to mine.
I hadn’t told her, even though usually I tell Frannie everything. Frannie knows practically every thought I’ve ever had. But not this one. This one’s too embarrassing.
Too scandalous.

How could I have
done
that?

Outside the window, the moon glows full, shining its blue light onto the walls of our bedroom.

He’d seen me.

He’d
seen me do what I’d done. He
heard
me moan and cry out.
He
watched me pleasure myself. Naked. Aroused and abandoned.
He
watched me touch my breasts and dip my own fingers into my aching, slippery core.

Who
was
he?

His eyes, so riveted. His dark, wild hair
with its tips bleached reddish-gold by the sun. His tanned face and wide, sculpted shoulders.
His taut stomach and the way his jeans hung so low on his hips.

God.

My shame begins to soften around the edges, into something else entirely. Remembering the way he stared across the short distance, I feel
that low, sweet ache began to build again. Ju
st the thought of that look makes
me squirm under my sheets. I
quietly kick the sheet off. It’s so hot tonight. I wish
I could take off my cotton nightgown and lay naked in the moonlight.
I want
to touch myself again. I feel the low pulse begin again, between my legs. That sweet heat that throbs lightly
.
Something in me awakened today. Some urge that wants
to be fed. Like a caged wild animal, buried deep.

At first I almost think I’m imagining it, then: a gentle strumming sound, floating in from outside the window.

I look over at Frannie but she’s curled up, facing the far wall, fast asleep. I wonder if I should wake her.
It’s not the first time one of my sisters was serenaded.

I can’t resist. I go to the window and look out.

I stare for a few seconds, disbelieving.

It’s him.

He’s sitting on the old bench under the oak tree, strumming his guitar. The night is so bright I can see the dark tan of his skin against the white of his t-shirt. The fabric is tight over the muscles of his arms as he plays softly
.
The room I share with Frannie is on the first floor and looks out onto our porch.
My mother’s and sisters’ rooms are upstairs and at the other side of the house, so this soft, gentle strum is unlikely to wake them.

I hope.

I don’t want them to see him, or hear him. I want to keep him all to myself.

I’m completely fascinated
by the sight of him.
His dark hair curls
down the back of his neck and around his ears. H
is neck is strong-looking, corded and brown.
His arms are gently muscled.
I’ve seen him without a shirt.
The memory of that broad, t
anned, sweat-glistened chest has seared itself seared into my memory.

It’s been a long time since I talked to a man, or even
looked
at a man.
I can’t help drinking in the sight
.
His shirt sort of clings to him in the hot night. I can see the sculpted shape of his toned shoulders, the hard ripples of his defined abs.

I wish I could get closer to him.

I wish I could
touch
him.
To feel how hard those bicep
s are.
To play those textures under my fingerti
ps, all that corded, sinewy hardness.

He looks
up.
He sees
me watching him.
His strumming slows.

Only the thin veil of the screen at the window separates us.

“Hey,” he says, still strumming gently.
He’s cool and unassumingly
confident and I can feel that masculine arrogance settle into me like a warm, stealthy physical force.

“Frannie’s asleep,” I say quietly.

He continues to strum quietly as he speaks. “Who’s Frannie?”

“My sister. That’s who they usually sing to.”

He laughs quietly at this. “Well,
I’m not here to sing to Frannie.”

I don’t reply to this, but my heart skips a beat.

“Come outside and sit with me.”

It’s a crazy
suggestion. At first I can
’t even think of a reply.

“I want to talk to you about something,” he says
.
His accent is just the faintest bit different. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but he sounds … sophisticated
. Like he’s
picked up on some unknowable wide-world influences
. His voice is deep and
has a
rasp to it.
A dark, graveled edge that reminds me of something I can’t immediately place and makes the tiny hairs on my arms stand up a little. Not with fear, but something else. Longing, maybe. Wild curiosity.

“I can’t.”

He strums
again, soft and slow. “Why not?”

“I’m … not supposed to.”

To this, he smiles. Not a full smile, just a barely-there half-smile that touches his eyes. A million butterflies erupt
in flight inside my stomach.
The brief flash of his teeth looks
white against the dark-bronze tan of his face. His
male beauty stuns me, and makes me momentarily forget everything else but those lips.
His hotness is
romantic and extreme in the moonlight.
Intense and addictive. Strangely, my mouth waters.

“You always follow the rules,” he drawls as a statement, not a question, like he’s amused by this.

“Sometimes,” I say
. It’s true, I usually
do. You can get detention for a week if you don’t follow every instruction
the nuns give. I do
n’t even want to think of how many Hail Marys I’d have to recite if they knew what I’d done today. Or what I’m thinking about now.

Then I remember: I’m done with all that. I’m a free woman now.

And this – this
man
– makes me want to break
all
the rules. That cool, cocky jaunt to his manner and the way his dark hair curls in thick locks the way only a man’s hair could – it makes me want to do …
something reckless. It makes
me want to do what
he
tells me to do.

“I just want to talk to you. About somethin’ important.”

Through that slight tone of sophistication, there it is: a hometown drawl. Something about the way he drops his g like hot molasses makes me think about his mouth, the way his tongue might feel, the way his lips might
taste.
It makes
that throb between my legs do a little kick-start. I feel myself clenching in places I didn’t even know I had muscles.

“What’s your name?” he says.

I hesitate
.
I’m not sure why.
Giving him this will create a small intimacy between us, the beginnings of a
familiarity that’s almost unbearably enticing. It scares me a little how much I want to give him, already. “Sadie.”

“Sadie,” he repeats, as though he likes the sound of it.
“I’m Eli
as.
Elias Hayes.
”

“Elias
,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
Another slow flicker of a smile, anothe
r strum. He’s watching me like he’s waiting
for a reaction of some kind. I’m not sure what he’s expecting, but my curiosity is piqued.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Come out here and I’ll tell yo
u.
No one’ll mind if you come on out and talk to your new neighbor for a minute or two, will they?”

“New neighbor?”

“I just bought the property next door.”

“Oh.”
This surprises me, even though it shouldn’t. After al
l, he was
there
.

Watching me.

I try to put the memory of my own crazy,
naked
behavior
out of my mind by distracting myself with this new information.
He seems young to be buying his own farm. Especially one that’s over a
thousand acres. Ours is only four hundred. Which is why we have trouble making a living it out of it.

Anyway, I guess it’s true. No harm in talking.

I know, though – I
know
– that talking won’t be enough. Not with him. I can already tell that he’s too alluring to resist. His draw is like that coolness of the water on a hot
summer day. I can
tell just by looking at him – the bronzed skin of his arms that are hair-roughened and warm-looking, his black hair with its dark strands flicking down the back of his sweat-damp neck – that he’ll
smell good. Like hay a
nd heat and lust. Already, I know it.

I’m good at resisting temptation,
though.
I can handle talking.

At least I can try
.

The front door’s locked, and my mother keeps the key on her key chain, which is probably in the pocket of her dress, in her room.
Carefully, as quiet as I can, I raise the screen. I gl
ance over and see that Frannie’s still fast asleep. So I crawl through the window and walk barefoot across the porch, down our front steps to where he’s sitting
under the oak tree. It’s only then that I realize
my sleeveless white cotton nightie is short, and maybe a little sheer, in the bright moonlight. I probably should’ve put something else on.

He’s watching me.

I can see the color of his eyes clearly across the short distance as I draw closer.

Devil-blue.

I feel each heartbeat.
I’m bridging the divide
.
My body feels heavy and light and the same time. Heavy with ripe femininity, light with anticipation. The glow that began today at the pond is
deeper now. A hunger. A heat. Settling into
my heart, my thighs, my belly.
My mouth.