by Carrie Quest
I pull her into another hug and whisper, “Not tonight, okay?” into her hair. She stiffens against me, and I know she wants to push me again and yell at me for what an ass I’ve been. I also know I deserve it, and a whole lot more. A few minutes pass and Piper finally loosens up. She takes a huge sniff and steps back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You stink,” she informs me, wrinkling her nose.
I relax a little. She’s going to let me get away with it. I want to hug her again, for being awesome enough to give me a break, but she’s definitely right about the stink. I am putrid.
“Heading for the shower right now,” I say. “See you in the morning?”
“Count on it,” she says. Her eyes tell me that she won’t be so easy to distract tomorrow, but I’ll deal with it then. Right now, I need to get clean and get some sleep.
I glance over at Natalie, who’s scrambled back up on the sofa and has the blanket wrapped around her like a toga. She blows some stray hair out of her face and she’s looking so determined to pretend that none of the last few minutes happened that I want to throw her a smart-ass remark about cherries just to see her blush again.
I’m kind of a cranky asshole when I’m tired.
The dog is still going nuts and I’m about to call him when Natalie purses her lips (which is distracting) and then lets out a shrill whistle that brings him running. He stands in front of her, panting like an idiot, and then sits before she says a word.
“Never seen him do that before.”
“Nat’s a dog whisperer,” Piper murmurs. “Wait. Where did you get a dog?”
“Death Valley,” I say without thinking, because I really don’t want to get too far into this story tonight. “Same place I got the black eye and the lip. His previous owner was kicking him around the campsite, then locked him in the car with the windows closed. So I liberated him.”
“I thought the car was locked,” Piper said. “Did you call the ranger?”
I shake my head and shrug. “Weird shit happens in the desert. Some of it happens with rocks.”
“You broke the windows.”
“Yup.” I point to my eye. “But he came back as I was leaving. He didn’t really care I stole his dog, but he was pissed about the car.”
I pick up my board and duffle before she can say anything else and nod at Natalie, who’s rubbing the dog’s ears and smiling at him.
“Sorry again for freaking you out,” I say.
And there’s that blush.
“Sorry for throwing a cat at your head,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows. “My head?”
Her eyes flit down to my dick and she’s so red now that Piper’s looking back and forth between us with a very suspicious expression.
“I’ve got bad aim,” Nat mumbles. “But it was effective.”
I laugh, which surprises me because that’s another thing that hasn’t really happened since the accident.
“What are you talking about? Did something happen to Chuckles?” Piper sinks down next to Nat on the sofa, babbling about her cat, and I grab my chance and head downstairs, checking out what the girls have done to the place as I go.
The ground floor is pretty much one huge room with a sofa, chairs, and TV at one end and a dining room table at the other. In between a little kitchen is tucked off to the side. Chuckles is in there, sitting on top of the refrigerator and licking his ass like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He probably doesn’t. Spoiled little psychopath.
“I should have drowned you years ago,” I whisper to him.
“I heard that!” Piper shouts.
Next to the kitchen is the door to the basement, which is my domain. At least, I guess it is now. I’ve never even spent the night in this place. I bought it because I had a really good season last year, and this seemed like a good investment. Plus, I didn’t want Piper living in some shitty apartment up on the Hill next to all the frat houses.
The dog comes when I whistle. He’s good like that, even though I haven’t even given a name yet or taught him to sit or anything. I wasn’t planning on keeping him when I stole him from that asshole, but he’s grown on me in the last couple of days.
Downstairs he goes apeshit sniffing all the boxes. I’ve never lived here, but I’ve been sending myself stuff for the past year. Most of it I don’t even really remember buying. Either because I was drunk (the freaky samurai helmet in the corner), though that was rare if I was training or competing, or because I was in such a rush. I’d allow myself one day off training on each trip. One day to have a drink and be a tourist and have sex. Then it was back to the routine.
Maybe now that I’m done, I’ll go back to all those places and actually see them.
I have my own bathroom down here and someone put some towels and a bathmat in here at some point. I don’t remember buying them, so it must’ve been Piper. I go in and turn on the shower to get the water hot, then take a good look around, peeling off my rank shirt as I go.
The basement stretches the entire length of the house. Most of it is one big room, but there’s also a walk-in storage closet in the back, and the bathroom. I see a door to the outside I forgot about and halfway wish I’d come in that way and avoided seeing the girls at all, but that would’ve meant I missed Natalie in her underwear, so I can’t be too sorry.
The whole place is full of boxes, most of them still sealed shut. There are about thirty snowboards leaning against the walls. I gave this address to my sponsors, so they must’ve been sending stuff here too, and sometimes random companies send me gear, hoping I’ll wear it on camera. Boxes of brand new boots are stacked up in the corners and there’s a pile of jackets next to the bathroom door. The dog jumps into them and circles three times, then drops immediately off to sleep.
I could outfit an entire high school snowboarding team twice over with all this stuff. Maybe I’ll do that, just call Boulder High and tell them to take all of it away.
Steam starts billowing out of the bathroom door and I drop my shorts. There’s something missing here but I can’t put my finger on what. I look around again and smile at the dog, blissed out in his nest.
Then it hits me.
No furniture.
I’ve got a samurai helmet and thousands of dollars’ worth of gear, but I don’t have a bed.
I groan because the thought of an actual bed, after camping and sleeping in my car the past couple weeks, is all that kept me going during the last hours of my drive tonight. Then again, I had a bed in a nice hotel when I was in Reno visiting Adam at the hospital, and I still didn’t sleep for shit. Every time I start to drift off I picture the accident. I see Adam crash, then slide down the walls of the half-pipe, his body limp. I was too far away to hear anything, but in my dreams the crack of his head hitting the ice is loud enough to wake me, and I lie there, my heart racing, reliving it over and over again.
I sit on a pile of boxes labeled Books and peel off the brace on my knee. My costume. I kick it off my foot and flex my knee a few times. A few twinges, but it’s solid. I could start training again anytime, if I wanted to.
I close my eyes and picture Natalie kneeling on the sofa in those red cherry panties, and my dick twitches again. I keep her image in my mind as I get hard. That dark hair, all mussed up from sleeping, and the curve of her breasts under her t-shirt. She was so angry that her eyes were nearly black, and I wonder if they get dark like that when she’s turned on.
I open my eyes and stare down at the tent in front of my boxers. Yep, he’s definitely back in business.
Sadly, I’m almost too tired to do anything about it. Almost. A shower will help. Maybe if I get under the hot water and rub one out, the release will be enough to let me sleep. I put my hand in my shorts and grip my cock for a just one pull and hello, old friend. It’s been awhile, but some things your body doesn’t forget.
I’m sitting there, working up the energy to move to the shower, when I hear a little squeak.
Natalie’s standing a
t the bottom of the stairs, her face flushed and her mouth open. She’s put on a pair of yoga pants, which sucks, and she’s carrying a box of Band-Aids and a tube of antiseptic cream. She drops both of them when I look at her, and I halfway expect her to sprint back up the stairs, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she licks her lips and takes a tiny step closer to me.
Suddenly I’m not so tired anymore.
3
Natalie
Going to the basement was stupid. Nothing good ever happens to a cute girl entering a basement in the middle of the night. I’ve seen the movies—I know how it works. The minute her foot leaves the last stair, she’s attacked by a psychotic guy in a mask who tortures her with rusty dental tools. Or a zombie hand breaks through the dirt floor and grabs her ankle. Or giant spiders are lurking in the shadows, their creepy pincer things clicking away, ready to gobble her up.
Obviously walking in on a hot guy about to jerk off is nowhere near as bad as the rusty dental tool option, but it’s still embarrassing as hell. Especially when you’re going to have to see him the next morning at breakfast.
I should never have gone down there, but after I got up to my room (and pulled on my pants, which I would never be removing again as long as Ben Easton was in the house) I totally panicked. I’d just assaulted my landlord with the feline equivalent of Hannibal Lector.
My mind flashed on him standing there, all tall and tanned with his cargo shorts falling low on his hips. His dark blue shirt matched his eyes to perfection, and it would also probably hide the bloodstains. Ugh.
What if Ben kicked me out? Piper was leaving for the entire summer and I didn’t have a legal lease or anything. Our agreement was totally casual. He’d be within his rights to dump my stuff on the front porch and change the locks. It’s not like he needed the money.
He had to be pissed. Those scratches were deep, and I knew from experience that Chuckles-related injuries rarely healed quickly. I swear the monster dipped his claws in some kind of liquid germ solution before inserting them in human flesh.
I couldn’t get kicked out. I had no place else to go and no money in my savings account. My parents would never give me enough for a security deposit on a new place. They’d force me to come home for the summer and find a physics internship. I knew it. That meant no writing class and no time to work on getting published.
Not an option.
I’d come this far. I wasn’t going to give up now. I had to make peace with Ben Easton. A normal person would have waited until morning and apologized, but my stressed out (and possibly still tipsy) brain convinced me that bringing him Band-Aids and antiseptic ointment at two in the morning was an ace idea.
(Spoiler: It wasn’t.)
So here I am. Frozen at the bottom of the stairs with no idea what to do next.
Mistake #1: I should have knocked. I know it. But in my defense, it’s only been, like, five minutes since he came down here. I thought he’d be unpacking or something. Not sitting here all hot and shirtless and staring at the intriguingly large hard-on that’s about to bust out of his black boxer briefs.
Mistake #2: Now that I’m here, I should be Usain Bolting my ass up the stairs before he notices me. Instead, I’m stuck in place, my mouth hanging open, perving out at the sight of his naked torso. Because wow. I’ve never written poetry, but I bet if I wrote an ode to Ben Easton’s abs it would win the frickin’ Pulitzer.
And that’s not even mentioning the rest of him.
Like his shoulders, which are broad and strong and make me want to duck under his arm and hide from the world.
And his pecs, which are sculpted like whoa but nowhere near skirting the border of bodybuilder-manboob territory.
And his arms, which are lean and roped with so many muscles that he could hold himself up over me for hours while I writhe underneath him.
And his skin, which is tan and smooth and probably tastes like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. I don’t even like piña coladas, but I still want to lick every single square inch of him while he writhes under me.
And the V of muscle over his hips that points directly to the long, straight, very hard line tenting up his underwear.
That’s currently the part drawing most of my attention.
He sits there on a pile of boxes, leaning back against the wall, one hand clenched on his thigh and the other splayed out on his stomach. His head’s bent down, so I can’t see his face, but he holds himself like he’s weary. Like he’s on the edge of complete exhaustion. I remember the way his face tensed when he saw Piper coming down the stairs, and the way he blinked hard when she mentioned Adam’s name. How he’d hobbled toward his door as soon as she let him go. He’d looked so vulnerable.
Now he just looks sexy as hell. The fingers of the hand on his stomach twitch and my breath hitches. Holy rollers. Then his hand disappears into the waistband of his briefs and he gives himself one long, slow pump, and I can’t help but make a little noise. In my head it’s a moan of longing, but it comes out more like a squeak because I’m smooth like that.
Ben looks up, his eyes meet mine, and he lets me see him, really see him, with no mask. He looks so sad that I take a step toward him, and then another, because when there’s a person sitting in front of you in that kind of pain, you want to help. To offer comfort. Solace.
Maybe a naked full-body hug.
I’m across the room before I have time to think, and he’s right there, mine to reach out and touch. So I do. I run one finger lightly over the line of his cheekbone, feeling the slight prickle where he hasn’t shaved, and then move up to gently ghost over the puffiness under his injured eye. He leans into my hand a little and sighs, his warm breath hitting my inner wrist, which is apparently directly connected to every nerve in my body because a pulse of hot energy rushes through me. I moan, and the sound startles me enough to drop my hand and take a few steps back. What the hell am I doing?
Ben closes his eyes for a second, and when he looks at me again the vulnerability is gone. The corner of his mouth quirks up, and he rakes his eyes slowly up and down my body. I blush all over because I know he’s picturing my cherry panties, which are now soaked. He takes his hand out of his briefs and puts it next to his hip, ready to push himself up off the boxes and stand. But I can’t think about that, can’t look up to see what his eyes are saying, can’t tear my gaze away from the tip of his dick, which is now jutting out of his waistband and has apparently hypnotized me. Maybe the Ben’s Babes are right. It is magical.
The shower’s been running this whole time and steam begins to billow out of the bathroom. The air is warm and humid and maybe that’s what’s making his tip look so wet. Or maybe he’s so turned on he’s starting to leak, and if I bent down and twirled my tongue around him I’d taste it, salty and earthy and hot. My mouth waters and I lick my lips, needing to feel something against them before I lose my mind. The sight makes Ben growl deep in his throat and I take a step back toward him.
My brain is scrambled from the last of the tequila and the steam and the sheer physical perfection of Ben Easton’s body. He’s sad and hot and hard and I don’t know if I want to hug him or fuck him.
Okay, that’s a lie.
It’s been a year.
I want to ride him like a pony. But I’d totally cuddle him and listen to his tales of woe after we did it a couple times.
He clears his throat, and I force myself to look back at his face in case he’s about to tell me off for interrupting his solo session. But when our eyes meet, he doesn’t look mad. His mouth stretches into a lazy grin, and he winces a little, then brings a finger up to touch the black line on his bottom lip where someone split it open. I bite back another moan because I know violence is not the answer and I can hippie it up as well as the next Boulder girl, but there is something shit hot about a guy with a split lip. I want to drop butterfly kisses along the cut and then suck that finger into my mouth. I want to swirl my tongue around it until all he can think about is my mouth on h
is dick. Until he’s groaning and swearing and begging, and I finally give in and lick my way down his chest.
His hair’s a little too long and it falls over his eyes when he breaks our gaze and looks back down at his hard-on. The humidity’s making the dark golden ends curl up and I clench my fists, so I don’t run over and push it out of his eyes, then yank it until his mouth meets mine. I feel out of control. I’ve never had a physical reaction this intense to anyone, not even the time I looked up on the subway in New York and saw the guy who plays Captain America reading on his phone.
Then again, I’ve never walked in on Ben Easton—a guy hot enough to have his own tribe of fangirls—with a raging boner. It’s a night of firsts all around.
When he looks at me again, his gaze is molten. He stands up smoothly and my breath hitches because if he closes the distance between us, I have no idea what I’m going to do. I swore to Piper less than five hours ago that there would be no guys this summer, and there’s no way fucking Ben in the shower would be a good idea. I don’t care what the internet fangirls have to say about Ben’s mad tongue skills.
Okay, that’s another lie.
I care a lot.
I have to focus. There are way too many reasons this would be a bad idea. He’s Piper’s brother. He’s my landlord and he’ll be my roommate this summer if he’s sticking around. I have a firm rule about never sleeping with someone unless I know their middle name. He has a hashtag about his (magical) penis.
Four very good reasons why I should trot up the stairs and forget this ever happened. Still, if he walks toward me, I don’t think I’ll have the strength to run away.
But he doesn’t come over. He just stands there a minute, then tilts his head toward the bathroom and raises his eyebrows, a silent invitation to join him.
I close my eyes and I can see it all: Him peeling my shirt off and running his tongue around my nipple, teasing me until I beg him to suck it into his mouth. The water streaming down his smooth chest as I drop to my knees in front of him. Him lifting me back up and pressing my back against the wall. My legs wrapping around his waist. The look on his face as he slides into me.
