Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe) (31 page)

We located the canoe in a wooden shed, not far from the dock. The resort had posted a number of rules for guests using the boats, including a rule about signing in at the front desk and getting the key to unlock the padlock chaining the canoe to the wooden shelf.

Dalton didn’t like the idea of asking permission—no, sir, not one bit. He grabbed a hammer from the nearby tool wall and whacked the padlock three times.

“You’re such a fucking delinquent,” I said.

The padlock hadn’t released yet. He shot me a devious grin, looking like his vampire alter ego in the dim shed. “You get so wet for me when I’m bad.”

“No,” I lied.

“I’d stick my fingers in your panties right now, but I don’t have time to prove a point. Grab your end of that canoe and let’s get out on the lake.”

Grumbling, I grabbed the end of the canoe, which was shockingly light. How was this puny boat supposed to hold two people?

“As for your wet little panties,” he said, “I’ll check those once we’re out on the water.”

“No way.” We started walking the canoe down to the water, and I had to laugh at Dalton, because he’d obviously never canoed before. I explained to him the portage technique, with the canoe held upside down over our heads.

We clumsily got the canoe and the oars down to the water’s edge, and he was still obsessing over my panties.

He said, “You’re already in a skirt. Take your panties off and bunch them up in my pocket to make things easier.”

“Maybe I should go back to the resort and let you go for a canoe paddle by yourself. You can paddle your canoe all by your lonesome. Paddle away, my friend.”

He laughed.

I continued, “In this metaphor, the canoe is your penis.”

He waved me ahead of him. “Ride my penis. I mean my canoe.”

“It is rather phallic,” I said, climbing in carelessly—so carelessly, in fact, that one might guess I was trying to capsize the canoe immediately, on the shore, so we didn’t have to go out onto the lake. If a person guessed that, they would be correct.

To my disappointment, the canoe was more stable than it looked, and did not tip me out.

Dalton kicked off his shoes and socks, rolled his jeans up, and waded out to join me in the canoe. He hopped in easily and used one paddle to push us away from the shore.

My stomach lurched as we began to move out into the water. The motion was smooth enough, like a car ride, but unsettling—like how an elevator ride can sometimes make you feel discombobulated.

“You’ve really outdone yourself now,” I said once we were away from the shore.

He continued to paddle, the muscles of his forearms flexing and drawing my eyes to his body and its beauty. The sky was still pink, and the sun seemed to be holding still for us, stopping time as we moved out onto the placid lake.

“Outdone myself?”

I explained, “First the Airstream trailer, which was small. Then the float plane, smaller yet. Now a canoe. Dalton Deangelo, the next place I expect you to take me is the inside of a coffin. Maybe that one Drake Cheshire sleeps in on your show.”

“Cozy,” he growled.

“You’ll make me your vampire bride.”

He stopped paddling and pulled the oars into the boat.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

I laughed. “Yes, make me your vampire bride.”

“You know how that starts.”

I wrapped my hands around the wooden bench I was seated on, leaned back, and let my knees fall apart.

He moved quickly—not as quickly as an actual TV vampire, but fast enough to make me regret not donning the lifejacket currently lying on the canoe’s bottom, behind me.

The canoe rocked, but it was made for some movement. I eyed the water line along the edges.

Dalton knelt before me, reaching his hands up under my skirt to pull off my panties. He held the silky bundle to his nose and breathed in deeply.

“My vampire bride-to-be,” he growled.

There was no one around to hear us, out in the middle of a lake at sunset, but still I whispered, “The first bite is on the thigh.”

He grabbed my knees and roughly spread my legs.

“The
inner
thigh,” he said, his voice almost terrifying, combined with the lusty expression on his face.

As he lowered his face between my legs, I considered the countless times I’d watched him do this on my TV screen, and how much I’d wished those inner thighs could be mine. Now the gorgeous man of my dreams was with me, on a canoe, and licking my inner leg.

I gasped as something sharp pinched my soft flesh. He was nibbling me, pressing into my skin with his sharp eye teeth—not hard enough to break the skin, but enough pressure to get my pulse racing and my palms sweating.

My skirt stretched loosely over his head, and I didn’t dare pull the fabric up to look, for fear of causing him to stop. He applied suction to my inner thigh, and it was absolutely the greatest thing that had ever happened to my inner thigh. I thought I couldn’t get more excited, and then he moved to the other side, breathing his steamy breath on my pussy along the way. As he sunk his teeth into the other thigh, then sucked at my flesh, my whole body started to hum, my skin electric.

He released my skin and nudged his way back to the center, the stubble of his chin poking, but not painful. He didn’t lick me just yet. He held very still, breathing in and out of his mouth, nearly touching, but not touching.

I pulled up my skirt, worried for a second that he didn’t have enough oxygen. He raised an eyebrow in my direction, then opened his mouth wide and dove at me, as though consuming a peach whole. Lips and tongue and pleasure. I rolled my head back and gazed up at the pink sky, and at the highest point—midnight blue with stars.

His tongue moved tirelessly, sweeping pleasure over and over my clit.

He brought me to the edge of coming, then moved back to my thighs, biting and sucking.

The horizon around us turned red.

He pulled his face away and I looked down into his eyes.

His beautiful eyes were dark now, almost black in the light.

He straightened up, on his knees. With a quick turn of his hands, his jeans were unfastened and dropped. His cock rose up stiffly from his dark curls and sinewy muscles. The tip gleamed.

Before I could reach for him, he plunged inside me half-way. My skirt bunched up in the frenzy and the hem tried to follow his cock inside me. He pulled the skirt away and plunged deeper, his powerful thrusts sliding me back on my wooden bench seat.

He noticed my shifting body and growled something about me not getting away so easily. He grabbed me around my lower back and slid me toward him, burying his sword to the hilt.

His hands moved to the back of my neck, and he pulled me in for a powerful kiss, his tongue and cock trying to touch tips inside me.

As he thrust rhythmically, his cock getting even harder and pulsing in warning, I started to climax. The canoe rocked, the water splashing around us. I gasped and looked around for the life jackets, making mental note of their locations.

He thrust deeper and deeper, rocking every inch of me with desire.

The pressure increased, the desire to come, and there was no stopping now. I held on tight to the edge of the seat as he drove himself into me, harder and harder, faster and faster.

I tried to hold my breath, in anticipation of being dunked in the water, but the shortage of oxygen only made me come harder, letting out an animal groan to match his as he unleashed inside me.

The stars were so bright, but they paled next to the fireworks. I blinked in disbelief as my body shook with pleasure, my skin sizzling with steam. The fireworks were noiseless, and they disappeared.
Just a hallucination.
Bright lights flaring to the beat of our hearts.

He kissed me roughly, drove into me a final time, and stayed.

We held each other tightly as the canoe stopped rocking and settled once more, everything still on the glass-smooth lake. Frogs and crickets hummed with activity on the nearby shore. A breeze ruffled the left-hand side of my hair, and then came around to the right, like magic.

Dalton slowly withdrew, gasping with sensitivity when my muscles clutched at him on the way out.

He nodded down and quietly did up his jeans. The sun had set, and locating my underwear was difficult in the thin blue light, but he finally found them bunched in his back pocket.

“Careful,” he said as I wriggled around to put my panties back on.

My jaw dropped in mock disgust. “You’re telling
me
to be careful? Me? Um, excuse me. You’re the one out here in the middle of a lake, drilling me like you’re a greedy mining corporation and I’m a mountain full of diamonds.”

“Yes, but I was moving front to back. You can rock a canoe safely from stern to, um, the other part.”

“You mean starboard?”

“No, this is starboard.” He jerked his body to rock the canoe to one side. The midnight blue water around us splashed a warning.

I raised a finger. “Don’t.”

He rocked the boat again. “Starboard.”

This time, the canoe rocked far enough to the side that a wave of lake water splashed over the edge to pool at our feet.

I gasped and lifted my feet.

CHAPTER 29

I’ll never know why I was so concerned about getting my blue sneakers wet. They weren’t suede, after all.

Something about water splashing into the vessel—the vessel that was supposed to keep the water on the outside—made me freak out.

I lifted my feet and leaned back, forgetting that I wasn’t sitting on a chair, but on a bench, with no back. Once I’d tipped the point of no return, I was going down. I landed on my back in the hull of the boat.

I wasn’t hurt so much as I was shocked, and the wind knocked out of me. Wheezing, I struggled to get over the shock and catch my breath.

Dalton chose this moment to be heroic, which, in this instance, involved standing up. He was, unfortunately, well to the starboard side of the boat, and I think you can figure out the rest.

Everything flipped, and keeping my blue sneakers dry was no longer a concern.

Into the cold water we plunged.

I surfaced in the dark, gasping for air and flailing around for something to hold me up. The bright yellow life jacket bobbed up right beside me. I grabbed the jacket and clutched it tightly to my chest as I got my bearings.

“Dalton?”

Only frogs answered.

I told myself not to panic, but you can imagine how well that worked.

“Dalton!” I yelled.

From the darkness came his reply. “On a scale of one to ten, how upset are you?”

“I don’t know.” I kicked my feet and twirled myself around in the water until I spotted him, treading water with one hand on the overturned canoe. “This water is warmer than I expected.”

“It’s a nice night for a swim.”

“Dalton… I don’t mean to alarm you, but where the FUCK IS THE DOCK?!”

“Right behind you,” he said calmly.

“Oh.” I looked, and saw lights on by the dock.

He explained, “I turned the lights on at the shed, remember. I’ve had my eye on it the whole time. You don’t think I’d take you out on a lake at sunset with no exit strategy, do you?”

I splashed a wave of water his way. “You’re a disaster.”

Even in the dark, I could tell he was smirking as he replied, “No,
you’re
the disaster. My life wasn’t like this before I met you, Peaches Monroe.”

Grumbling a few choice words, I joined him at the canoe and helped him right the thing.

If you’ve been on a canoe a time or two, you’ll know that getting back in after you’ve been capsized is not the easiest operation. In fact, if it ever happens to you, I recommend getting in a time machine, going back in time, and warning yourself against renting a canoe.

After no small amount of humiliation getting my body back into the canoe, Dalton shot himself in like a trained dolphin at Sea World, and we were paddling back to shore.

We got the canoe and everything put away, then walked back up the hill, which was much steeper and longer than when we walked down or came up in the golf cart.

Back at the resort, Dalton stopped by the front desk and notified the woman working there that we’d
accidentally
broken the canoe’s padlock, but to charge the repair to his room.

The woman looked at me, sopping wet and doing the Dripping Walk of Shame, then over at Dalton, equally waterlogged. Without a doubt, she knew exactly what had happened, more or less.

“The hot tub is open until midnight,” she said cheerily. “Please note that there is no lifeguard on duty.”

He gave her a wink, then strode over to me and wrapped his soggy arm across my soggy shoulders.

“What do you say, dear? A little hot tub party?”

“Sure! But if you don’t mind, I’ll just pop by the room to get my swimsuit this time.”

We proceeded to our room, my wet shoes making those squippy-squippy noises that only wet shoes can.

~

Lucky for us, we’d left our phones and wallets back in the hotel room, so nothing was drenched in the lake except my pride and last shreds of dignity.

I checked my messages while I got into my bathing suit and a robe. I had the usual assortment of messages from Shayla, not about anything in particular, plus one from Mitchell. He was pretending to be just saying hi, but betraying his excitement about his upcoming visit to Washington State.

Mitchell:
What’s up, Peach-a-bootylicious? We have to hang out soon! I should plan a road trip.

Me:
Dalton told me about the surprise! I know you’re coming up to help with the wedding!

Mitchell:
What wedding?

Me:
Don’t make me beg!

Mitchell:
The secret’s out? What do you know?

Me:
That you’re coming up!

Mitchell:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! I’m so excited! Can you tell?

Me:
Dalton is trying to get my phone from me. We went for a canoe paddle and he tipped me over. He’s a disaster!

Mitchell:
You love him!