Swing and a Mishap

by Tara Sivec

  Shepherd curls his arm around me tighter, pulling me closer, sealing his lips to mine, and pushing his tongue past my lips at the same time. Just like the first time we kissed, as soon as his tongue brushes against mine, I feel like I’ve been sent out into orbit. Time stops, the waves are no longer crashing, and everything around us ceases to exist. It’s just the two of us on this beach, surrounded by pillows and candles. My hand grips tighter to the back of Shepherd’s neck as he tilts his head, deepening the kiss as I pull him harder against my mouth while his tongue swipes and swirls around my own and drives me out of my mind.

  I’m making out with someone on a beach after the most romantic dinner of my life. I’ve never made out with anyone on a beach, although I’ve fantasized about it plenty of times. And I’ve certainly never made out with anyone who could make my toes curl and make me forget I’m on a public beach where anyone can see us, even if it is late at night. Shepherd fulfills every fantasy I’ve ever had, and it’s a heady feeling, and one that makes me want to lose control and lose myself in him. All he has to do is touch me and I want him. Curled up against his warm, hard body, with the smell of him surrounding me, his lips claiming me and bruising me with the force of his kiss, and all the words he’s said to me tonight, every inch of me aches with need for him.

  My leg comes up and slides over his hip, the blanket falling away as I pull him closer, whimpering into his kiss when I feel how hard he is, knowing it’s for me and because of me, and I just want more. I want Shepherd to erase all the messy and replace it with nothing but the perfection of him. His smell and his taste and his touch, brushing over every scar and taking away every pain.

  My hips jerk to feel his cock rubbing against the pulsing ache, and Shepherd responds with a growl from deep in his chest, his arm tightening around me and his mouth tearing away from mine to kiss his way along my cheek and down to my neck. My hand slides up the back of his head, pressing his mouth harder against the side of my neck. He sucks on that spot right below my ear, and I see stars. Squeezing my eyes closed, I let out a choked whimper when I feel his hand grip my ass, jerking me against him to help me swivel my hips and grind myself on his hardness while he nips and sucks on my neck. That pulsing ache mixing with a delicious fiery burn makes me start panting through my needy whimpers. My head drops back to give Shepherd better access to my neck while I happily dry-hump him, not even caring we’re on a public beach.

  “Oh, hey there! You’re not my two missing swingers!”

  Until I do.

  A man’s voice from right above us in the sand is like someone just threw a bucket of ice-cold water all over both of us. Shepherd and I break apart and scramble away from each other in the pillows and blankets like two teenagers who were just caught making out by someone’s dad.

  Except it’s not someone’s dad… and hopefully will never be someone’s dad.

  “Wait just one minute,” Bodhi says, his face dropping to a clipboard he’s holding in his hand while my face is currently turning the same shade as a tomato, and I’m panting so hard I sound like I just ran a marathon. Or almost had a dry-humping orgasm from the man who is currently on the other side of the blankets from me, holding a pillow over his crotch and glaring up at the man who always looks like a homeless surfer with his shaggy blonde hair, faded and ratty T-shirts and shorts, and always smells like a mixture of pot and patchouli.

  “Are you my missing swingers?” Bodhi asks, looking back and forth between me and Shepherd. “I didn’t see your names on the list, but I’ll double check. Tess never told me you two were kinky.”

  Bodhi wags his eyebrows at both of us and winks before looking back down at his clipboard.

  “We aren’t swingers!” I finally tell Tess’s boyfriend when I remember how to use words again. “What are you even doing out here? Swingers? Does Tess know about this? Are you guys swingers?”

  I whisper that last part, my eyes widening, not even believing I’m having this conversation right now when, just seconds ago, I was blissfully unaware anyone else was on this damn beach. Bodhi just chuckles and shakes his head at me, tucking the clipboard under his arm.

  “I can barely handle Tess. No way could I manage two women. And I don’t share, nor do I really like an extra dong being in the room with me and my woman. It’s distracting. I’m the activities director for a small swingers get-together this evening. We were just about to get started with the ring toss, but we lost Rick and Janet. You guys wanna be Rick and Janet for the night?”

  “No!” Shepherd and I both shout at the same time.

  “Suit yourselves.” Bodhi just shrugs, turns, and starts walking away toward where I now see a group of about twenty people at least ten cottages down, sitting around a fire on the beach.

  When he’s gone and it’s just Shepherd and me again, we both look at each other for a few seconds and then start laughing. He stands up from the blankets and walks over to me, holding out his hand and helping me up.

  “I’ll walk you out to your golf cart.”

  I hate that the night is ending, but it is really late, and I have to be at the Dip and Twist early in the morning. As Shepherd laces his fingers through mine and holds my hand as he walks me through the sand, grabbing one of the vases of purple roses as we go with a promise to bring as many as I want back to my cottage tomorrow, I’m just happy knowing this is only the first of many more dates to come.

  Once Shepherd secures the vase of flowers on the floor of my cart, we spend a few minutes standing in his driveway, kissing goodbye. He finally pulls back, puts me behind the wheel, straps my seatbelt around me, and gives me one last peck on the cheek before standing back up.

  “Drive safe and text me when you get home. Enjoy the roses.” He smiles at me, taking a step back and sliding his hands in his front pockets as I start the golf cart.

  “I will. And I’ll also look up what purple means.”

  “You do that,” Shepherd winks at me as I start backing out, wondering if my heart will ever stop fluttering every time I’m around him.

  Twenty minutes later when I’m home, I’ve texted Shepherd that I’m safe, and I’m curled up in bed wearing just one of my Hawks T-shirts with his name on the back, I grab my phone from where I have it plugged in on my nightstand, pulling up Google.

  My breath hitches when the results pop up within seconds, my eyes fill with tears, and I feel exactly like I did the minute I turned around on the beach earlier and saw everything Shepherd had done for me. Like I can’t believe it’s actually real.

  Because according to Google, the purple rose means “love at first sight.” And Shepherd didn’t just give me a small handful of purple roses. He filled the beach with every purple rose he could possibly buy. Because a man who loves glitter and knows how to use a glue gun, who spends hours on Pinterest while also commandeering the help of his mother and sisters for our date, would know exactly what the purple rose meant.

  CHAPTER 12

  Shepherd

  “Make sure you cover all the bases.”

  “He needs to take things slow and not overwhelm her.”

  “My dude had thousands of roses flown to the island on a private jet, one to represent every day he never took his shot with her. He basically just took a shit on caring about that. I say full speed ahead, bruh.”

  “Fine, so the roses were pretty cool, but still. He needs to slow it down a bit. She’s been through a lot, and I’m just saying. She’s a nice, small-town girl. She’s not a baseball groupie ho. He needs to have some respect.”

  “Have some respect for that ass, am I right? Ow, fucking hell, Pal!”

  “That’s my future sister-in-law you’re talking about. Next time, I’ll punch you in the throat instead of the arm. He needs to take a step back and court her like a proper gentleman.”

  “Like you courted her sister in that maintenance shed on the back nine at the golf course? Is that what we’re calling it now? That was some loud, aggressive courting. You almost courted her right through
the shed wall. You even courted her panties clean off of her. Did you ever find those babies?”

  “We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about him. And he needs to remember she’s a mom.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “You just have to be… gentler.”

  “No, you don’t. Wren’s a total MILF. Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets.”

  “Don’t ever say that in front of me again,” I finally speak, looking up from the pumpkin pancakes I’ve been shoveling in my mouth across the booth from Palmer and Bodhi at The Barge while they discussed my life without me.

  “Can I say it when you’re not in front of me?” Bodhi asks, pointing his fork at me with pancake pieces stuck to the end and syrup dripping down onto his plate.

  “Um… sure.”

  “Right on.” He smiles, shoving his fork in his mouth and then talking around a mouthful of pancake. “I’m so glad Tess and Birdie are finally letting us be friends with you. Sorry about the sweatshirt burning. I tried to hide all the lighters from Tess, but she’s a goddamn ninja with those things. I think she sews them in her bras. It looked like a really nice sweatshirt too. Palmer will buy you a new one that’s less flammable.”

  “Why do I have to replace the sweatshirt? It wasn’t my girlfriend who torched it,” Palmer complains.

  “Who drove the getaway golf cart? It certainly wasn’t me who has an obnoxious blue cart with flames painted on the side, spinning rims, and a full lighting and sound system,” Bodhi reminds him.

  Palmer looks over at me with a small grimace.

  “Yeah, that was me. But you need to understand just how persuasive Birdie can be. I am powerless when she takes her shirt off. If it makes you feel any better, I definitely did not let them stop at the liquor store on the way home to buy a celebratory bottle of vodka. Right home to bed for all of them to think about what they’d done.”

  When I got a text from Palmer this morning asking if I wanted to grab breakfast with him and Bodhi, I couldn’t have been happier. Nick has been busy with the season, and we haven’t had time to do much more than exchange a couple of texts since I got here. I thought it would be great to finally make some new, close friends, and it was an added bonus they were already a part of Wren and Owen’s lives and could give me some much-needed advice on how to move forward with her. I realized my mistake as soon as I sat down, placed my order, and haven’t been able to say one word since then. So much unsolicited advice has been given that now I’m second-guessing everything I’ve done and said to Wren since I got here.

  Did I overwhelm her? Have I been coming on too strong?

  I check my phone on the table for the tenth time since I sat down and tried to tune out the two men across from me, but there still isn’t a reply to the text I sent Wren this morning when I woke up. Just a simple, Good morning, beautiful. Have a good day at work. Text me if you need anything. Maybe she hasn’t needed anything and she thinks she doesn’t need to reply until she does.

  Or maybe she looked up what the purple rose means and blocked your ass because you freaked her the fuck out—goddamn Pinterest.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Golden Girls, sitting around gossiping over lattes.”

  When we hear Murphy’s sarcastic voice, we all look up from our coffees we’re sipping to find him standing right next to our booth. Well, Bodhi looks up from his plastic cup of chocolate milk with a lid and a straw.

  “Which Golden Girl are you?” Bodhi asks him.

  “I am neither golden nor a girl.” Murphy crosses his arms and glares at him.

  Bodhi just leans forward in the booth, resting his elbows on the table, taking a loud, slurping drink of his chocolate milk before he replies. “Yeah, but there are four Golden Girls. There’s only three of us,” Bodhi reminds him. “You’re definitely Sofia. Old and mean, barking at everyone to get off his lawn.”

  “People need to stay the fuck off my lawn,” Murphy mutters while Bodhi continues.

  “I’m clearly Blanche, Palmer is Rose, and Shepherd is Dorothy.”

  “I am not Rose,” Palmer complains. “You’re Rose. You are definitely the naïve, gentle soul, and I’m Blanche, fun-loving and spontaneous.”

  “You don’t have the balls to be Blanche. Take it back!”

  “How in the hell did any of you dipshits actually find women?” Murphy interrupts the two men arguing across from me.

  “It’s a goddamn miracle, Murph,” Bodhi tells him with a serious nod before slurping more of his chocolate milk through the straw.

  Murphy doesn’t even say goodbye. He just walks away from us with a bunch of muttered curses under his breath, grabbing a bag of takeout food from the lunch counter next to the register then disappearing out the glass front door.

  “All right, can we get back to what we were talking about before the Golden Girl interruption, Rose?” Palmer asks Bodhi with a smirk.

  “Fuck off, I’m not Rose. And I think my dude just needs to go with the flow and be in the moment. Do what feels right,” Bodhi says with a nod in my direction as I wipe my mouth off with a napkin and sit back in the booth. “I mean, I asked Tess to marry me last night, so YOLO!”

  “What the fuck?” Palmer shouts, giving an apologetic wave and smile to the other patrons eating breakfast at the diner before lowering his voice. “You? Marriage? Is that even legal? I feel like several states and countries would have put you on some sort of list by now.”

  I have to laugh at what Palmer says. I haven’t known Bodhi very long, but you don’t have to know him long to realize he is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Just so laid back and happy all the time without one single care or responsibility in the world, never satisfied doing the same thing or being in the same place all the time, and someone who never, ever wants to be tied down. He’s a free spirit, and the fact that he’s been here on Summersweet Island for so long and in what seems to be a very committed relationship with Tess is just mind-boggling to everyone who knows him.

  Palmer told me when Bodhi excused himself to go to the bathroom right when I got here that it’s only a matter of time before something starts calling to Bodhi from far, far away, enticing him and bringing back that constant need to see it all, go everywhere, and experience everything. It made me a little sad for badass, fire-starting Tess, but then I remembered she probably knows many ways to kill a man like Bodhi and make it look like a surfing accident, so she’ll probably be fine. And anyway, I have my own shit to worry about.

  Like whether or not all the dirty, dirty thoughts I’ve had about Wren since she whimpered into my mouth and rubbed that sexy-as-hell body all over me on the beach last night are appropriate thoughts to have about someone’s mother. Is it proper etiquette to think about how it would have only taken a few more rough jerks of my cock between her sweet thighs before I could finally know what she sounds like when she comes? Was it wrong to go inside my cottage after she drove away, close and lock my door behind me, and then pull my dick out of my pants right in the entryway? My balls were so fucking heavy with the need to come after that make-out session with Wren that I couldn’t take one more step without getting some relief. It was probably definitely a no-no to stand there slumped against the door in the pitch dark of my house with my head thrown back and my eyes squeezed closed while I relived every single second of that kiss.

  Her ass gripped tightly in my palm while I helped her move that sweet pussy against my cock.

  Her breathy pants of need while I sucked and nibbled on the side of her neck.

  How I could feel even through my dress pants that she was hot and wet just for me.

  I spit in my hand and shuttled my palm up and down my cock at the speed of light, bucking my hips and coming in my fist so hard I roared Wren’s name, and then I almost passed out in front of the fucking door.

  Having a hard-on under a table filled with pumpkin pancakes just seems very sacrilegious to the whole pumpkin spice movement, and now I have all the shame. />
  “You seriously asked Tess to marry you last night?” Palmer asks, pulling me out of my dirty thoughts about someone’s mother!

  “Yep,” Bodhi replies, setting his fork down and pushing his empty plate closer to the edge of the table for the waitress to take.

  “What did she say?” I ask, knowing Tess well enough to know she probably punched him when he asked, but I don’t see a black eye or any sign of swelling in his nose.

  “She said, ‘No. Fuck off,’” Bodhi replies with a smile, crossing his arms in front of him like it’s no big deal his marriage proposal was turned down, but I just laugh, because that definitely sounds like Tess.

  “Okay, then what happened? You seem very relaxed,” Palmer contemplates, turning in the booth to look at Bodhi and study his face.

  “I don’t know man. She put her mouth back on my dick, and I went back to watching a Riverdale marathon.” He shrugs. “It was right at the good part where Cheryl watches that video and finds out—”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Palmer complains loudly, covering his ears and shaking his head back and forth. “I’m not to that part yet. Don’t spoil it for me, you asshole!”

  My laughter at how ridiculous these two are just continues until I start choking and I have to take a drink of my water the waitress just refilled when she stopped by to clear our plates.

  “You seriously asked Tess to marry you while she was giving you a blowjob?” Palmer asks in disgust, dropping his hands from his ears to shake his head at Bodhi. He has every right to be disgusted. Palmer just proposed to Birdie on national television in the most romantic way possible for the whole world to see, and Bodhi couldn’t even turn Riverdale off. It’s just hysterical and so Bodhi.

  “It was a very deep experience, and I’m not just talking about in Tess’s throat, ba-dum-tiss.” Bodhi snorts after using his fingers like drumsticks on the table. “Anyway, she said no, but it’s cool. I don’t know if I’d really be good at having a wife anyway. Don’t you have to like, remember where you left them and remember to come back? I still don’t know where I left those rad Oakley sunglasses that shaman in Tibet gave me, but you know, I just found another pair someone left on the beach, so that was totally lit.”