Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (18 page)

I came with a whimper instead of a bang.  My lower belly
seized up, and my pussy squeezed around him.

I hadn’t noticed if I’d gushed for that vibrator, but as I
came this fourth time, I made a mess around his cock.  And he loved it,
thrusting harder, using those tight squeezes for his own pleasure.

“God yes, you feel so good,” he muttered.  His fingers
tightened on me almost to the point of pain, and he came with a roar that put
my own mewling sounds to shame.

I looked up at him, our eyes met, and I couldn’t look away. 
Right there, on my dining room table, we had a moment.  A long one, as he
emptied himself into me.  I realized I was pressed up flush to my neighbor,
this man who’d perturbed me so in the past couple weeks.  He was inside me, as
close as another person could get, and I frickin’ liked it.

Then he collapsed on top of me.  We lay there for a long
time, our combined weight testing the table’s strength.  I was completely
drained, completely sated, and only half-conscious until he finally pulled
free.

I continued to lie there as he disappeared from view.  It
was my cabin.  My table.  I could lie naked on it if I wanted to.  I could, and
I did.

I heard him moving around, water running.  The next time he
came into my field of vision, he was dressed.  He smiled down at me as he
passed.

Then he proceeded to make me breakfast as if I wasn’t
spread-eagled on the table.

Finally, I began to feel a bit chilled and ridiculous, so I
gingerly sat up.  Oh yeah.  I was gonna feel
that
in the morning.  He
laughed at me as I slid off the table and nearly went the rest of the way down
onto the floor.  My legs were like room-temp butter, and I was having
difficulty straightening up.

Feeling crippled, I went to clean up, and then hobbled to my
ladder.  Climbing up it was interesting, and I was sure I felt his gaze on my
ass as I did so.  I managed to get dressed, and just barely resisted the urge
to collapse on my bed and not get back up.

It was the smell of coffee that finally lured me back
downstairs.  I slid down the ladder, and Gary put a cup of it in my hands. 
Looking up into his face, I felt like blushing.  I couldn’t quite believe that
morning had just happened.

How the hell did I go from hating my neighbor’s guts to
banging him almost bloody against every surface in the house?
 How?

“I didn’t know if you took cream or sugar.”

“I’ll take it any way I can get it,” I replied, cradling the
hot brew.  I dropped into a chair with a wince.

Then I watched as the bastard, my neighbor, the noisy guy
who kept getting me wet, cooked me breakfast.  He moved around the kitchen like
he knew what he was doing; not like a rich, helpless bachelor.  He cracked the
eggs with an economy of motion, and dug around to find some fruit in my fridge.

“Knife?” he asked.

I indicated the drawer to the right of the sink, and then
watched him quickly dismember a honeydew I’d been meaning to eat.  I found
myself enthralled with his strong, capable hands.  Rich men shouldn’t have
strong, capable hands.  Nor should they handle a knife with such deadly
precision.  So…was he a rich guy?

Did it matter?

I tapped my nails on the table, staring at his butt as he
cooked me some eggs.

“We’re feuding,” I informed him, trying to remind myself as
much as him.

“Oh?”  His lips quirked as he started to plate the food. 
“Is that what this is?  A feud?”

“That’s exactly what this freaking is,” I said.  “I cannot
coexist peacefully with you and your noise, and your disregard for my
property.  This lake is not big enough for the two of us.”  Sadly, the
statement lacked the kind of conviction it would have had a few days ago.

“Uh-huh.”  He set my breakfast down in front of me. 
“Ketchup?”

“Tabasco, please.  It’s on the shelf—yep.  Thank you.”  I
salted and peppered my eggs, and then liberally laced them with Tabasco,
wishing I hadn’t been quite so polite.  I’d had some small amount of manners
hammered into me, but I really didn’t want to be using up what little I had on
my neighbor.  Even if he was making a habit of feeding me.

I also really didn’t want to like him, but he made a perfect
over-easy egg.  And his bacon was to die for.  And he gave me awesome orgasms. 
Damn it.

He sat down to watch me eat.  He was staring at me, and I
wasn’t sure if it was with fascination, or because I had something in my
teeth.  He’d probably finally realized how weird I was.  He was the new
neighbor of an oddball, shut-in hermit with a foul mouth and perpetually
tangled hair.

I picked at a splinter on the table, squinting at him.  He
was treating me like we were buddies now.  Were we buddies now?  He gave me
great sex, but… I was still mad at him for his noise.  Sorta.

“Well,” he said, standing up several silent minutes later. 
“Guess I should probably get back to the hammering and the sawing.”  He winked
at me.

“What are you building over there, anyway?” I asked.

“I put a new bathroom in, and I had to plumb the kitchen.  I’m
adding a sunroom onto the south side of the living room, where the wall is
missing.”

“And why are
you
working on it?  Why not hire someone
to come in and get it done?”

“I enjoy the work,” Gary said.

And
that
didn’t particularly sound like a rich guy. 
Rich guys in these parts typically bought a parcel of land and paid
professionals to quickly build them a mansion on a hill that they could come
out and visit once or twice a summer.  They didn’t even grace the operation
with their presence until there was hot, running water.

Contrast that with Gary, who’d probably used the outhouse
(and at least once, my property) for the first week of his stay, and was doing
his own work.  He didn’t seem like a rich guy, despite the helicopter.  And
‘stocks’, my ass.

Gary was an enigma, and the mystery was driving me a little
bit nuts.

Enigma or not, this delicious, infuriating man was
disrupting my life.  Ever since he’d moved in, it had been one thing after
another.  I’d almost been eaten by a bear—if that wasn’t a sign, I didn’t know
what was.  And now there were my brothers, stirring things up.

I just wanted some time to myself, some quiet and routine to
bring me back to sanity.  At least, that’s what I was telling myself as I
watched him walk away.

Chapter
Fifteen

M
y
brothers looked guilty as sin.

I’d come to the cabin door as I heard the four-wheeler
approach.  When my brothers emerged from the trees, the first thing I noticed
was their peculiar expressions, their subdued mood.  Then, as they jumped off
the machine, I saw that they were muddy and damp up to their thighs.

“What did you do?” I asked.

None of them would meet my gaze; they looked everywhere but. 
And they were so very, ominously silent.

Oh, this was a bad sign.

“You tell her, Zack,” Rory muttered.

“No, J.D. should do it; she likes him best.”

“Tell me what?” I asked, trying not to fly off the handle. 
The four-wheeler looked fine, but…where was their fishing equipment?  Rather,
where was
my
fishing equipment?

J.D. finally manned up.  “We lost the boat,” he said.

“You
what
??!”

“We lost the boat.”

“Wait. 
My
boat?  You lost my boat?  How did you
‘lose’ my boat?!”  If they’d sunk it, I swear to God…

“Well,” Zack said, “Rory had to take a shit.  So we pulled
to the edge so he could shit in the woods, because he was too much of a ninny
to just swing his ass over the side.”

I put my hand over my eyes, imagining my brothers shitting
off the side of my $15,000 boat.

“Well, Rory was back in there pinching one off, and he yells
for us to come look at something.  So I climb up onto the shore, leaving J.D.
in charge.  And Rory’s all excited because he’s squeezed out this turd that’s
almost two feet long, longest turd of his life, he says, and he wants me to
take his picture with it, and another one for scale, and—”

“It was huge!” Rory gushed.

“—and he’s talking about breaking the Guinness World Record,
and—” Zack caught me glaring at him, and shut his mouth on the rest of that
statement.  “Next thing I know, I look over, and J.D.’s standing next to me.  I
didn’t think too much of it, cuz I figured he would have tied off the boat.”

“I
did
tie off the boat,” J.D. muttered.

“By the time we pried Rory away from his stupid turd and
went back to the boat, it was gone.”

My hands curled into fists.  I was going to kill somebody. 
My brothers had lost my boat, and not just that; they’d lost it because of a turd.

“All right,” I said.  I leaned over and picked up a walking
stick I’d propped against the cabin a month or so ago.  “Who wants to die
first?”

“Helly, we didn’t mean to,” J.D. started.  With a yelp, he
jumped out of the way of my first swing.

The other two brothers scattered across my lawn, looking
scared.

With a war cry, I gave chase.

“It was an accident!” Rory cried after I got a good crack in
against his shin.  Yeah, I meant business.

Zack held up his hands, backing rapidly away from me.  If he
thought his sad-sack expression was gonna save him, well, he had another thing
coming.  I advanced, my blood running hot as I backed him up to the edge of the
three-foot bank above the beach.

Desperately, he tried to placate me:  “We thought maybe your
neighbor would—”

“Would what?” Gary asked.  He stepped up the last of the
steps from the beach, a bag of potato chips in his hand.  His brows rose
slightly as he took in the sight of me with walking stick cocked to swing, and
my six foot brother cowering at the edge of the bank.  Then he tossed another
potato chip into his mouth.

I whacked Zack.  He flinched, and my blow glanced off his
arm.

“Ow!” he cried.

“Hold still!”  I took another swing, but he ducked under it
and scrambled away.

“What’d I miss?” Gary asked.

“These fuckers,” I spat, “lost my boat.”

“Lost it?  What do you mean, lost it?”

Rory groaned.

“That fucker,” I said, pointing my stick at him, “took a
shit in the woods, and those fuckers,” I said, indicating the other two, “went
to check it out, and nobody thought to tie off the goddamn boat.”

Gary made a snorting noise that sounded suspiciously like it
wanted to be a laugh.  He straightened his face when I gave him my death glare. 
“So… it got swept downstream?” he asked.  “The boat, I mean.”

“That’s where boats usually go, when they’re not under
power,” I said, praying for patience.

“Shouldn’t you go get it?  Every minute you’re chasing them
around with a stick, it’s probably being swept further and further…”

I planted my fist on my hip.  “And how do you propose I do
that?” I asked.  “When I no longer have a frickin’ boat?”

“Well…I have a boat,” Gary pointed out.  He fished out
another chip.  “Or, better yet,” he said, his lips getting that devil’s curve,
“I’ve got a helicopter.  It’d probably only take a couple minutes to spot a
runaway boat from the air.”

I glared at all three of my stupid brothers, wanting to hit
them so bad I could taste it.  This was like my neighbor setting my blueberries
on fire.  Four years, and I’d never caused a wildfire.  Four years, and I’d
never lost my boat.  But them, in one day…

But for the moment, I needed to bottle my rage, and swallow
my pride long enough to accept my neighbor’s help.  If that’s what he was truly
offering.  And if it was without too many strings attached.

“You’d fly me around and help me find my boat?” I asked.  Yes,
we were now having sex, but a couple days ago, I hadn’t even wanted to
talk
to him.  Fuck buddies didn’t necessarily help each other, did they?  Is that
what we were?  I didn’t know.

“Well…yeah.”

A little of my tension left on a sigh.  “That would be
great,” I said.  “Now?”

Gary nodded, threw the last handful of chips into his mouth,
and turned to walk back to his place.

I pointed at my brothers.  “You three, stay here, and do not
touch anything.  If, when I come back, anything is burned, or shot, or smashed,
or otherwise destroyed, you are sleeping outside tonight.  Also, if we cannot
find my boat, you are sleeping outside until you leave, and I will never invite
you back.  Got it?”

They nodded.

I turned to follow Gary.

And that’s how I found myself in his helicopter.  He opened
the door for me, and I clambered awkwardly up.  I was completely unfamiliar
with the layout of the controls, but I figured I just wouldn’t touch anything,
and that wouldn’t be a problem.  I violated my own rule on the seatbelt, but
nothing exploded.

He climbed in beside me, handed me my headset, and powered
the engine up.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, his voice tinny through my
headphones.

“Yes,” I said, letting him know my mic was working.

“Ever been in one of these before?”

“No.  Plenty of small planes, though.”

He grinned.  “You get air sick at all?” he asked.

I looked over at him suspiciously.  He looked way too damn
cheerful.  Downright peppy. 
Oh, right
.  Because it wasn’t
his
boat that was missing.  And I’d had to ask him for help.  And he was doing me a
favor.

“No,” I said.

“Excellent.”  With that, we sprang upward.  He didn’t lift
off gently; he gunned it, and we shot hundreds of feet upward in just a second
or two.

I clutched at the door as it felt like I gained a hundred
pounds, and the world fell away.  The straight-up motion was eerie, and the
expanse of window was different, making me feel like I was hanging unsupported out
over the trees.  His cabin got really small beneath us, and the wind of his
blades chopped the still water along his beach.

He quit climbing abruptly, and my stomach tried to fly up my
throat.  I lifted in my seat, tugging against my belt, and I squealed with
laughter.

Gary grinned over at me, his eyes bright in the golden
evening light, and I couldn’t help but grin back.  I loved to fly, and he was
playing with me.  My brothers may have lost my boat, but we were going to get
it back.  It was a gorgeous day, and I was several hundred feet up in the air
over a vibrant green landscape.  And if I was completely honest with myself, the
company wasn’t too terrible, either.

Gary nudged us over toward the river.  A couple-minute trip
by winding trail on my four-wheeler became a couple-second dash through the sky. 
He quickly had us skimming downriver, just a couple tree-lengths above the
silty, boiling, glimmering water.

It was a beautiful evening, and I was finding it impossible
to stay mad.  I was also finding it hard to take my eyes off the pilot, despite
the view.

His eyes were busy scanning ahead of us, occasionally flickering
over the controls.  He had a stick in his right hand, and his left was busy on
some sort of lever that looked like an emergency brake.

“So when’d you learn to fly?” I asked.  He’d answered
questions for my brothers; why not me?

“A couple years ago,” he said. 

“After the military?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is it just for fun, or…?”

“I have my commercial helicopter license,” he said, nodding
back at a boat full of waving fishermen.  “I’m going to be flying for the
heli-skiing outfit upstream this winter.”

“Hmm.”  I still hadn’t figured Gary out, and what he’d just
told me didn’t exactly help.  He’d said he’d made bricks of money on stocks,
but he was planning on flying for work.  He had been in the marines, but last I
heard, infantry didn’t make enough money to buy a helicopter.  And there was
something queer about the way he handled a rifle.

“Is that it?” he asked, nodding to something ahead of us.

I leaned forward, and saw my Sea Ark washed up on the leading
edge of a sandbar.  It was more island than sandbar, with a sturdy-looking
shore and a swath of trees at least twenty feet deep running down the length of
it.  On all sides, cold and silty water drifted by.

My boat was wedged up on shore sideways, with the jet down
in the silt, and the anchor still in the boat.  And only a hundred feet or so
from it lay another boat that looked to be in similar condition.

As Gary lowered us to land on the island, I studied the
strange boat.  A feeling of recognition niggled at me, and as we got down
alongside it, I finally figured it out.  “Hey…isn’t that those thugs’ boat?”

Gary shrugged.  “I didn’t really look at their boat.”

I grinned.  “Too busy dodging their fists?”

“Something like that.”

He set us softly down onto the sand and cut the engine.  I
hopped out and jogged over to the boats.  I confirmed mine wasn’t going
anywhere—and that my fishing gear looked to be all still there—and then walked
the hundred feet over to inspect the other boat.

Nobody intentionally parked their boat with the propeller in
the sand like this one’s was.  And no one would leave a boat just lying low on
the beach without an anchor out or a rope tied.  If the water went up a few
inches, it would be swept right on downstream.

“Weird, how it looks like it just washed up here, same as
mine.”  It looked abandoned.

“Maybe one of them had a really long turd,” Gary suggested.

“Maybe.”  Unlikely.  If it even
was
their boat.  My
memory of that night was a bit hazy.  It’d been dark, and I’d been drunk.

I stood next to it for a few moments, trying to figure out
what to do.  I didn’t know where they were—heck, I didn’t want to see them
again anyway—so I couldn’t exactly deliver it to them.  Maybe the thugs actually
had
just left it here planning to come back.  They hadn’t looked like
they were from around here, so maybe they didn’t know how to tie up a boat or
treat a prop.  There was a rental company logo on the side, so maybe they’d
just left the prop down like that because they didn’t respect equipment they
didn’t own.

There was a phone number for the rental company on the
sticker.  I mulled it over a bit, and finally figured I’d secure the boat so
that it didn’t drift all the way out to the Cook Inlet.  Then I’d just swing by
here in a week or two, and if the boat was still here, I’d call that number and
let them know they needed to come retrieve their rental.  Mind made up, I threw
out the anchor.

Then I crossed back over to my own boat, which was slightly
less beached.  Gary had excavated my jet and tilted the engine up to keep it
out of the way.  It took us both horsing on the frame to shove the boat back
into the water.  It finally floated free of the sucking mud, and I hopped up on
the bow, intending to move to the back, tilt the engine down, and get started
on my way.

“Helly,” Gary said.  I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him say my
name since that first time we met, when he’d implied that I had an anger
problem.  Oh wait, no, he’d also yelled it when I’d locked myself in his cabin
and taken his saw blade.  He’d had a tone, both those times.

And he had a tone now, but it was entirely different.  His voice
wrapped around my name in a way that sent shivers along my spine.

I turned, still on my haunches on the bow, and found him
very close.  He was gripping the heavy aluminum rim of the boat, keeping me
from floating away.  His eyes and mouth were about level with, and less than a
foot from mine.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I enjoyed flying with you,” he said.

I nodded.  “Ditto.”

He smiled slowly.  “I wasn’t aware people said that
anymore.”

“What, ‘ditto’?  I do a lot of things that are probably out
of style.  My jeans came from a thrift store.  My music is—”

“Ancient,” he said.

“Classic,” I corrected.  “My vibrator’s state-of-the-art
though.”

He laughed softly.  “I did notice that.  Works real good,
too.”

“It works better when you’re holding it,” I admitted.

The corners of his eyes crinkled.  “Oh yeah?”  He lifted a
hand and touched my cheek.  His fingers were still cool from being pressed
against the cold metal, and the gentle brush of them made my breath catch.  His
green eyes were full of light, like the sun through a wine bottle.