Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (22 page)

“But for some reason, he couldn’t seem to hit a thousand
pound animal,” J.D. observed.

“Hey, you try hitting something that’s only sticking a
couple inches out of the water, while being chased by a bear, and dragged through
the water, and trying not to drown,” Zack groused.  He looked a little
embarrassed, and—I recognized it from my own experiences with the feeling—sorta
like he wanted to punch something.

J.D. rolled his eyes.

“Or maybe he just made it mad,” Rory said, ignoring them
both.  “Because the bear kept coming.  He’s still after us, going about the
same speed as our canoe, and Zack’s yelling that he’s outta ammo.  So J.D.
pulls out
his
gun—”

“And we hit a bump,” J.D. said.

“We didn’t hit a bump, you idiot.  There are no
bumps
on the water.”

“There was a
bump
just another minute down the line.”

“Yeah, but we’re not there yet.  Anyway, he pulls out his
gun, and for no apparent reason—”

“It was an accident.”

“—J.D.
accidentally
shoots another hole in the bottom
of the boat.  And then
he’s
standing up, shooting at the bear over my
head as I’m paddling.  The water in the boat’s like two inches deep now, and
rising.  And Zack’s freaking out, shrieking like a little girl.”

“Those were manly shouts of encouragement,” Zack insisted, “because
you were
paddling
like a little girl.”

Rory took a deep breath.  “And that’s when we entered the
rapids.”

“There are rapids up there?” Gary whispered into my ear. 
The backs of his knuckles grazed mine, making shivers run through me despite
the heat of the fire.

“Yeah, but they’re just class one or two,” I whispered back.

“We started down the rapids with J.D. standing up facing
backward, and I’m yelling at him to sit the hell down—he usually spots for us,
makes sure we don’t hit nothin’—and he finally does, yelling about how the bear
turned around.  But it was too late.  He had failed us.”

“Heeey,” J.D. protested.

Zack sniggered.

“We slammed into a big rock, nose-first, and I mean
dead-on.  And so the whole damn front end is crunched.  And we’re still
dragging Zack.  And we’re sinking.”  Rory paused for dramatic effect.

“Oh, this is the good part,” I said.  “So tell them what you
did then.”

“So we made it the rest of the way down the rapids, but by
the time we got down, I just figured, you know what, the bear turned around, so
we’re no longer in any immediate danger.  And we’re sinking.  I mean, there’s
no helping it now; the canoe was fucked.  Zack’s already soaked.  And these two
jokers got to shoot the canoe.  The damage was done, right?”  Rory’s eyes were
twinkling.

“You didn’t,” Gary said.

“I sure as shit did.  I emptied my clip into the fucker.”

I groaned and covered my face with my hand.

“You could have at least waited until we got back to the
bottom lake,” Zack pointed out.

Rory shrugged.  “So we sorta hiked and waded and swam home, but
we did help Hel here buy a new canoe.”

There was a long silence as everyone thought long and hard
about the implications of shooting your canoe.  In that silence, Zack got up
and transferred the filet mignons from a bowl of marinade to the grill.  Fat
sizzled, and the smell of cooking meat began to fill the air.

J.D. spoke up next, his eyes glimmering as he looked from me
to Gary.  “Did you know Helly used to be a real girly girl?”

Gary’s eyes traveled from my unmade face and carelessly
pony-tailed hair, over my plaid shirt, and down my faded jeans to my sturdy
pair of hiking boots.  He shook his head.

“Yeah, she played with Barbies, the whole nine yards,” Zack
said.

“Until they burned them,” I muttered, trying to figure out
whether I should blush over playing with Barbies, when it was pretty much the
accepted thing for girls to do.

“Until we burnt ‘em,” Zack agreed.  “She got even, but she’s
had a chip on her shoulder ever since.”

“How’d you get even?” Gary asked.

“I burned their fort.”

Gary laughed.  “Of course you did.  And you were how old?”

“Seven.”

“Actually, that’s pretty much how Helly became the woman she
is today.  She kept getting back at us for the pranks that we pulled, and the
more she got back at us, the less I think she remembered she was a girl.  Only
a year or two after the Barbie incident, she was running around in the mud and
getting into trouble with us.”

“They still managed to pull pranks on me, though,” I said. 
“This one time, they ripped off my dress—the last dress that I owned—in front
of about thirty people.”

“Seriously?” Gary asked.

I nodded, then looked up at Rory.  “Why don’t you tell it.”

Rory grinned.  “Well, there’s not much to this one.  Zack
and J.D. and I had come into possession of this old riding lawnmower.  And we
also sort of ‘came into possession’ of a V8 engine.  It took some fiddling, but
we put the two together, and we decided to take our first test run at the
yearly family picnic.”

“She was a beauty,” Zack said.  “We’d painted flames down
the sides—”

“Those were
flames
?” I asked.  “I’d always thought
they were penises.”

“
Flames
down the side,” he repeated with a glare,
“and we’d installed these awesome spoilers.”

“Eye of the beholder, I guess.”  I shrugged.  I hadn’t
gotten a real good look at the thing, but the glimpse I
had
gotten gave
the impression of something that could have auditioned for a horror flick.  Or
maybe the horror had come from being suddenly near-naked in front of my whole
family.

“So we fired her up,” Rory said, reclaiming control of his
story, “and we roared through that picnic.  And, I still, to this day, could
not tell you how it happened—”

“It was the spoiler,” I muttered.  “The spoiler snagged the
skirt.”

“—but Helly’s dress came with us.  She was just standing
there wearing a purple dress, and then…she wasn’t.  And it wasn’t really a
prank.  It was an honest-to-God accident.”

“I was thirteen, and I’ve never felt more humiliated in my
life,” I said.

“And do you know how she got us back?” J.D. asked with a smile.

“I’m guessing she humiliated you,” Gary said.

“That she did,” Zack said.  “This one took a while, though. 
We were really into paintball at the time, and she figured the way to humiliate
us was to beat us at our own game.  So she practiced, pretty much non-stop for
months—”

“The most concerted effort we’d ever seen her put into
anything,” J.D. agreed.

“—and she began winning.  Not just winning, but winning by a
landslide.”

“I spanked their asses,” I added.

Zack nodded in agreement.  “She could tag us, all three of
us, without us ever even seeing her.  She was incredible.  We were proud,
but…we couldn’t exactly let our friends witness that shit, ya know?”

“So that’s where you got your aim,” Gary said.

I nodded.

“What with her aim and her tendency to get even,” Zack said,
“it’s a good thing you haven’t gotten on her bad side.”

I choked a little.

Gary looked over at me with a wry grin.  “Wouldn’t want her
to spank my ass,” he agreed.

Zack served the steaks, and I found out they’d baked some
potatoes on the grill, too.

I was about halfway through my meal when I remembered the
pie.  I squawked, set down my food, and hurried inside.

Suzy appeared in my peripheral vision as I bent to rescue
our blueberry creation from the oven.  “Helly…” she said.

I set the pie on a rack to cool, glad to see I’d only
browned the crust slightly.  “What?”

“Gary hasn’t taken his eyes off you once all evening,” she
said.

“So?”  We’d been talking.  Of course he’d been looking at
me.

“He watches you.  And he has this look in his eyes when he’s
doing it.  Helly, I think that man really likes you.  Like really, really likes
you.”

I shrugged, not ready to read that much into it.  “What
about you, out there flirting with my brothers?” I asked.  “What the hell is
that?”

To my amazement, she blushed.  “They were just telling me
about hunting the bear.  And I hadn’t known Zack played hockey for the Alaska
Aces until he was injured last season.  That was so great of Rory to give him
some work.  Did you know he’s taking classes this fall?”

“Suzy…these are the guys that put a frog down your shirt. 
The ones that launched your bike onto the highway with a catapult.  The ones
that—”

“I know, I know,” she said, looking flustered.  “But that
was over ten years ago.  It seems like they’ve changed.”

I shook my head.  “They really, really haven’t.”

Suzy didn’t look like she believed me, and my suspicions
were confirmed when she changed the subject.  “How long should we let the pie
cool?”

“Let’s give it fifteen minutes,” I said, and started for the
door.  I’d given her my standard warning.  She was fully capable of making her
own decisions, and of learning her own lessons.  If she wanted to flirt with my
brothers—flirt with mindless mayhem and destruction, more like—that was her
problem.

“Oh,” said Suzy, “They told me to ask you if you’ve got any
more beer.  They’re out.”

I glanced back at her.  “Other than what I hid, that’s it.” 
She knew damn well I hid it, and she better not have told.

She nodded, and followed me back out.  “No more beer,” I
heard her report back.

Rory slapped his thigh and stood up.  “That’s it,” he said,
and then he headed into my cabin.

“What are you—”  But he was already inside.  “What is he
doing?” I asked Zack.

Zack shrugged, looking morosely at his empty bottle.

Rory came back out holding two metal hangers and a wire
snipper.  I watched as he unwound and clipped and bent them, until he had two
L-shaped pieces.

“What the hell are you—?”

“I’m dousing for beer,” he said.  And then the idiot grabbed
the two pieces by the short ends, holding the longer ones out in front of him,
and he started walking slowly across my yard.

Honestly, at first I thought he’d finally lost it.  ‘Dousing
for beer’?  Like one ‘douses’ for a good well site?  Fucking ridiculous.

But then he veered toward my generator shack.  At the other
side of which was some freshly-turned soil.  Because I’d dug a hole there.  And
buried my beer.

I probably didn’t give Rory enough credit.  I knew he was
smart; he just acted like an idiot so much of the time that I tended to forget that. 
My guess was he’d seen the evidence of the hole-digging, and he’d put two and
two together.

Sure enough, his little dousing rods went apeshit right over
the site, swinging back and forth.  “I think I’ve found some!” he yelled.  He
tossed my mutilated hangers aside.  “Hurry!  Help me dig!”

Zack perked up at this.  He looked confused, but he
nevertheless hurried over to his brother, and the two began digging for my
beer.

“What the hell are they doing?” Gary asked.

“They’re digging for beer,” I replied.

“Are they always like this?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said, casting a glance at Suzy.

I don’t know whether it was Suzy, or Gary, or J.D. who was
more surprised when they pulled a box of beer out of that hole.

“Ah.  Buried it this time,” J.D. said.

“Yup.”  I thought about objecting to them drinking my booze,
but you know what? 
Fuck it.
  I hadn’t actually held any
real
hope that they wouldn’t find it.  And obviously I did stupid shit when drunk,
so…yeah, whatever.  The more they drank, the less I would.  If they wanted to
drink my beer, so be it.  They
had
built me a shed.

We had my awesome, limited-edition blueberry pie, and sat
around the fire telling stories long into the night.  The brothers drank my
entire stash, I drove Suzy back to her boat, and by the time I got back, Gary
was gone.

Chapte
r Nineteen

A
ny
sounds I might have made were masked by my brothers’ snores as I tip-toed
across the floor.

Mocha looked up as I passed.  If she’d had eyebrows, one of
them would have been raised in a long-suffering, but not at all surprised
expression.  She watched me till I got to the door, and then, with a soft
snort, she laid her head back on her paws.

Then I was out the door and traversing my yard in the cool
silence of the night.  At one in the morning, the sky was a faint greyish-blue,
and I didn’t need a flashlight to see.  Out on the lake, a lone loon drifted,
probably wondering what the heck the crazy blonde was up to.

I wasn’t going to leave it to chance again.  I was taking
matters into my own hands.

I switched from a fast walk to a stealthy creep as I crossed
his lawn and skirted around the helicopter.  I rounded the cabin and looked up
at the window I had slipped out of when I’d sabotaged his tools.  It was higher
than I remembered, and closed.

I stretched up on tiptoe and leaned in, grunting as I
strained to push the window up.  At first I thought it was locked, but then it
gave an inch.  Then another.  I was sweating and panting by the time I got it
raised almost a foot.

Then I gripped the windowsill, and hauled myself up.  At
least, that’s how it went in my head.  In reality, I hung there, straining with
all my might, grunting with exertion... and barely moved.  I struggled this way
and that, even scrabbling with my toes against the siding as I tried to pull
myself up.  Finally, after a full minute of this, I came to the shameful
conclusion that I simply didn’t have the upper body strength.

Panting, I dropped back to my feet.  I looked up at the damn
window with frustration.  Gary had made this look so damn easy, and he’d been
going in the
second story
.  Maybe if I got my foot in first…

I kicked my foot up, missed, and banged it pretty loudly
against his siding.  I winced and stood still a second, waiting to see if I’d
woken him.

The cabin was quiet.  In the stillness, a half-dozen
mosquitos floated around my head, each and every one of them out for blood.

I kicked my foot up again, and managed to hook my heel over
the sill.  I was practically doing the splits on the side of his house, and I
reached for the sill again.  Somehow, with what felt like a superhuman effort,
I managed to pull myself up until my calf slid over.

I hung there panting, my muscles shaking with exertion, glad
there were no witnesses.

A sudden sharp pain stabbed at my ass.

I shrieked and jumped.  My window-inserted leg kicked, and I
would have fallen butt-first to the ground, but a pair of strong arms caught
me.

I looked up into Gary’s grin.  “Did you… pinch me?”

He shook his head.

“You…”  Realization dawned.  “…bit me!”

His grin grew just a little wider, and his gaze flicked up
at the open window.  He looked back at me, seemingly comfortable to just stand
there and hold me.  “What are you up to?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” I returned, rolling my eyes.

“You didn’t wear your skirt, so I’m not sure.  Making a
ridiculous attempt to trespass, maybe?”

“Ridiculous?”  My hackles began to rise.

“Absolutely.  I’ve got a whole wall open around the other
side of the house, and the door was unlocked.  You could have just walked in,
but instead you’re…well, there aren’t really words for what you were doing. 
Proving gravity’s a bitch, maybe?”

Somehow, his attitude wasn’t making me as mad as it had the
first days I’d known him.  It made me kinda hot, actually, that sardonic curve
to his mouth.  As I stared at his lips, his strong jaw, his sexy dark stubble,
I was struck again by that urge:  Smack him or kiss him just as hard.

Before I could do something I’d probably regret, I pulled
his mouth down to mine.  I kept thinking maybe I’d hallucinated how perfect his
mouth felt on mine, but… nope.

I lost myself in our kiss.  His fingers tightened on me as I
coaxed his tongue into my mouth.  I pulled myself tighter against him,
practically hooking one knee over his shoulder in my eagerness to get closer. 
The way his lips curved against mine made my heart sing.

Long moments later, I finally pulled back, found my breath,
and spoke.  “I wanna do your fantasy.”

“Hmm?”  He blinked, obviously having difficulty changing
gears.

“When you first climbed in my window, you said we’d done my
fantasy, ‘next time, mine’.  I want to do yours.”

His eyes started to twinkle.  He set me down, and then
rubbed a hand over his mouth.  “What if it’s kinky and utterly depraved?”

I leaned against his chest as excitement rose in me.  ‘On my
wavelength’, indeed.  “Even better,” I said.

“Well…”  He smoothed a loose lock of my hair behind my
shoulder.  “…I’ve always been a bit of an exhibitionist.”

“Okay.”  My heart started to pound as I thought furiously. 
We could do things outdoors around here, without any danger of getting caught… 
But, would that defeat the point?

He might have been having the same thoughts because he
glanced toward the lake, and then focused back on me.  “Do the Ramseys leave
their picnic tables out all the time?”

“Yes…”

“Because when I saw you at that barbecue,” he said, his hand
drifting downward, his thumb just barely brushing my nipple through my shirt,
“all I could think of was throwing you across one of those checkered
tablecloths.”

I was hanging on his words, my mind going wild with them. 
In my head, he tossed me across one of the tables, unheeding of the people
around us.  Food went flying, I got mustard in my hair, and then we
really
shocked Suzy.

I curled my fingers in his shirt, wanting to be there, now,
and make it real.  But it was fifteen minutes downstream, through the quiet
dark, and we’d probably wake people up with our boat motor.  Plus, it would be
kinda rude to have sex on your friend’s parents’ picnic table in the middle of
the night.

Most importantly, I didn’t think I could resist him for a
full fifteen minutes.

A mosquito bit my cheek and I slapped it, irked that it had
the nerve to try and break the moment.

“Next time,” I promised him.  “Next time they have a party,
let’s do something.”

“Would this be like a date, then?” he asked.  His fingertips
were brushing the curve of my waist now, and he had gotten closer without me
even really noticing.  My back pressed to his dark green siding and his mouth
hovered only inches from mine.

“Better than.”

“Mmm.”

I gasped as his mouth slid on by, and he nuzzled my jaw.

“What about right now?” he asked directly into my ear.  He
pressed me more firmly back against his cabin.  “What do you want to do right
now?”

I arched my back so my breasts rubbed his chest.  “You.”

“Good answer,” he murmured into my neck.

I thought so.  I dug my nails into him as he scraped his
teeth across my skin.  One of my legs hitched around his hip of its own
accord.  When I strained up on tiptoe, I could just get the bulge of his
erection where I most needed it.

He grabbed my butt, lifting me.  Then he leaned into me
harder, pinning me against the cabin.  He watched my response as his hips
moved, rubbing us together.

I slapped another mosquito, this one on his forehead.  It
fell into his neckline, and I knew I couldn’t continue with a little bug
carcass
right there
, so I nabbed it by a skinny leg and dropped it to my
right.

“Mosquito,” I said at his confused look.

He blinked, then laughed, and brushed one away from my face. 
I shook another off my right hand.

He leaned back from the wall, taking me with him.  “My place
or yours?” he asked.

“My brothers are at my place,” I said.  And then,
realization came: 
My brothers were there
.  And Mr. Exhibitionist wanted
to give somebody a show.  “My place,” I said, giving him a little nudge with my
heel as though he were a horse.

He slapped my butt in retribution—and I liked it.

He started walking.

I wiggled on him, not helping him navigate the dark at all
as I explored his neck.  Each of his steps jounced us together, and when I
pulled in close, the friction against my nipples made me desperate.

What the hell had I been thinking, wearing pants?  This
couple-hundred-foot walk was interminable when he was holding me like this, the
hateful barrier of our clothing separating us.  I moved on him with growing
impatience, rubbing myself up and down his length.

He stumbled, braced us against a tree, and took my mouth
again.  I could feel him throbbing through the thin material of his sleep
pants, and the thrust of his tongue had become demanding.  I met his demands
with some of my own, pulling myself up until I had the higher ground.  The heat
between us spiked; if I’d worn glasses, they would have steamed.

He added a new dimension to my pleasure when his hands slid
up my thighs until his fingers curved into the dent between.  I shuddered as he
squeezed my cheeks, opening me to the rub of his fingertips.

I was thinking we wouldn’t make it back to my cabin—and
dammit
to hell
, the mosquitos could take what they wanted!—when the loon’s long,
lonely cry pierced the urgent, fumbling quiet.  We pulled apart, our breaths
shuddering in the same space.

“Go,” I whispered.

He made it up the steps from the beach all right, but then
tripped and almost slammed me into my front door.  Mocha growled from the other
side.

Gary pushed it open, still carrying me, whispering, “It’s
okay.  It’s me, girl.”

Mocha quieted right down, leaving me slightly irked.

Inside, my brothers’ symphony of snores was going strong. 
Everyone looked to be just how I’d left them.  I glimpsed Zack’s feet sticking
out past the end of the couch, and Rory was sleeping sitting up, splayed out
across one end.  J.D. was probably curled up on the other cushion like a cat.

Gary closed the door, whirled us around until my back was pressed
against it, and then let me slide to my feet.  Head hanging low, he braced his
hands to either side of me.  “Take your pants.  Off,” he ordered, his voice
guttural.

I grinned.  “Can I hear a ‘please’?”

He lifted his head slightly, fixing me with one dark eye. 
“You can hear a ‘now’.”

I wanted to smile at his bossy tone, but instead I gave him
a dose of my blonde.  “But, my brothers…they might catch us,” I said
breathily.  I inched my sleep pants down, trying my damnedest to look demure.

He’d leaned back to watch me, and his breath went ragged as
my thighs slid into view in the dim light.  My attempt at demure was completely
lost on him because he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze off my legs.

I let the pants drop, and then hooked my thumbs into the
waistband of my underwear—the cutest pair I owned that hadn’t been riddled with
bullet holes.  They slid down and away, and I leaned back against the door,
naked from the hips down.

I got caught up once more in just looking at him.  The inky
hair that was starting to curl against his neck, the breadth of his shoulders…
I even liked the man’s
ears
.  I wanted to nibble on them, test his
response when I dipped my tongue inside.  Would he growl at me, or moan, or get
squeamish?

He touched my mouth.  He brushed a single fingertip over the
bow in the center, and tripped it over my full lower lip.  I let my lips part,
but he ignored the invitation, instead tracing slowly further down.  Over my
chin, and softly below it in a way that made goosebumps ripple.  I made a
little noise as my hands curled into fists against the cool metal of my door.

I swallowed as he traced down my throat.  My heaving breaths
became painfully obvious when each one pressed my breastbone against his
fingers.  My breasts were already tingling, and I wished like hell he’d deviate
to the left or right just a few inches.

But he didn’t.  Instead, he produced more goosebumps as he
drifted down my belly through the shirt.

I pushed up on my toes in an effort to get him to his goal
faster.  I was shaking with anticipation, and I was so worried he was going to
hesitate at the last moment, to tease me, that when he actually touched me, I
gasped.  I grabbed for his shoulders, needing something to hold onto as his
fingers slid deep between my legs.

A moan wrenched from my lips.  His fingers made me throb as
they smoothed past my clit and dipped into me.  I widened my stance, giving him
more room, wanting as much of him as I could get.

He gave it to me.  I shuddered as he pushed two fingers into
my aching center.  He moved them in long, sure strokes as the heel of his hand
pressed against me.

I tilted my chin up, staring into his eyes, breathing his
breath.  The moment stretched as the fire he was stroking into me spread to my
limbs.  I tilted my head back further as the tide of pleasure swept me along on
its rhythmic, rising swell.

“I love watching you,” he rasped.  “You’re so damn sexy when
you—”

I moaned, my lids fluttering as it felt like he added
another finger.  He was stretching me just to the sweet edge of pain.

“Yes, when you do that.”  His free hand brushed across my
overheated cheek.  “The pink color of your blush, the way you forget how to
talk.”  He was smiling down at me, but he still had three fingers wedged into
my sopping pussy.

My brain didn’t even try to handle all the inputs.  I just
locked my knees and tried to keep my eyes open.

Sweet Jesus—it was his thumb now, circling my clit.  Not
quite touching, just nudging me ever upward.  The pleasure was becoming a
riptide, increasing in pace, dragging me toward the end of the line.  I could
feel the heat rising, my muscles trembling.