Styx & Stones

by Carmen Jenner

“So what are you doing here?” I ask at the same time as he says, “What brings you to Waikiki?”

  “I’m here with a friend.” I tuck my hair behind my ear and shield my eyes in order to see him better.

  Dermot crouches down beside my lounger. “And where is she?”

  I give a nervous laugh and pray he hasn’t seen the bright red spots of color that flare on my cheeks. “He’s up in the room.”

  Dermot’s brows shoot up, but he schools his features and politely says, “Is he a friend friend?”

  While I know it’s none of his business, I find myself answering anyway. “My best friend, actually.”

  “Kind of a romantic destination for friends, isn’t it?”

  “Actually we’re on his honeymoon.”

  He laughs, and then his eyes grow wide when he realizes I’m not kidding. “I’m going to need you to repeat that for me.”

  “I know, it seems totally skeezy, but it’s really not. His fiancée left him at the altar, and he’s really sad right now so...”

  “So you just thought you’d tag along on his honeymoon and torment him some more?”

  “I’m hardly tormenting him,” I protest but he interrupts.

  “Trust me, if he’s seen you in that suit, then he’s definitely tormented.”

  Now it may be the sun beating down upon us, the three drinks that I’ve had, or the fact that the alcohol barely had time to leave my bloodstream before I began pumping it in again, but that actually makes me a little swoony. I know it’s a line from a married man, but it’s a man, a very handsome man, and it’s been a lifetime since anyone complimented me like this. So this bitch is gonna swoon like a whore in church at the second coming of Christ, and no one can say shit about it.

  “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Whatever you say, Miss Perry,” he says, the barest hint of a smile forming on his lips. He runs his hand along the wet, rigid indents of his abs and my eyes slowly follow the movement. “Well, it’s good to see you, but I should get washed up and ready for dinner.”

  And I’m going upstairs to take a really cold shower. “Enjoy,” I tell him.

  “Let’s do drinks while we’re here, yes? You’ll bring your friend friend who in no way wants to fuck you.”

  I gasp at the abruptness of his words. Don’t get me wrong—I swear like a damn sailor, but it’s so unexpected from Dermot, so base and primal that my head is automatically filled with visions of him shoving me onto my hands and knees in his hotel suite and taking me from behind. Jesus. I squeeze my thighs together to ward away the ache between my legs.

  “I’ll let the missus know and she can finally meet the woman who creates such beautiful bouquets for her every week.”

  “Sure, sounds great.” I plaster on a fake smile. I can’t think of anything worse than meeting his lovely wife when I’ve just fantasized about her husband coming inside me. Who the hell does that?

  With a nod, Dermot leaves and I hold my breath as I watch him go, right up until he disappears into the lobby of our building.

  Somewhat guiltily, I cast my gaze up to our balcony. Harley stands there watching me, and though I can’t be one hundred percent sure from this many stories away, he looks pissed. I give him a nervous wave and he turns and stalks back into the room. Okay. Clearly he’s not feeling any better after a shower and a nap. I want to go to him, but I know he needs time so I slide my sunglasses back into place and close my eyes.

  When I’ve had entirely too much sun, and the noise from the other vacationers makes me stabby, I gather my things, head to the bar and grab a couple of takeaway frozen margaritas, and ride the elevators back upstairs. The curtains are drawn, the AC is blasting cool air around the room, and Harley is lying on the bed completely naked.

  Holy shit. I can’t see anything other than his firm ass, long, muscled torso, and brown curls that are spread out around him as he lies face-down on the pillow, but it’s enough. He hasn’t even bothered to pull the sheet up, and as I stand there gaping at him, I gulp back half of my margarita in one go.

  My gaze slides down his length and back up, and I jump when I realize he’s staring at me. I also lose a little of my frozen margarita. “What are you doing?” he whispers.

  “Er ... I ...” I decide words are no longer my friend and I drown out any other pathetic excuse I might have had by swallowing down the rest of my margarita and consuming half of his. I set my empty cup on the counter above the bar fridge and offer him the half-drunk margarita.

  “I brought you booze,” I say cheerfully, when I’ve recovered my composure. He sits up in order to take the drink from my hand, and he’s not the only thing sitting up because his cock is awake, hard, and practically waving at me. “Oh.” I shield my eyes. I may or may not have peeked through my splayed fingers though. “You’re um ...” I point towards his groin with the other hand. “You’re ... er ... you’re—”

  “Jesus, Rose. It’s okay; you can say I’ve got wood. You should know better than anyone that it doesn’t bite.”

  “Why are you naked?”

  “I was sleeping. You know I can’t sleep with clothes on.”

  “Yes, but I’m here.”

  “And you’ve seen it before.” He shrugs. “You two were getting close on the plane a few hours ago—are you really freaking out about my junk now?”

  “I’m not freaking out.”

  “You sure?” He grins, and I have to fight the urge to throw something at his head. “’Cause it kind of looks like you’re freaking out.”

  “I am not freaking out. I see penis all the time.”

  “Really?” He stands up, and I find an awful lot of interest in my phone sitting on the counter because I can see in my peripheral that it’s coming closer. “When was the last time you touched one?”

  “Not long ago,” I snap. “Would you put some clothes on please?”

  “Jesus, you’re uptight.”

  “I’m not uptight.” We’re touching now, his body leaning into mine, his erection hot as it presses against the fabric of my cover-up, and I find I didn’t even need to leave the room in order to get my suit wet.

  “You know you can touch it if you want?” Harley whispers. “Be like old times?”

  “I don’t want to touch it,” I say. Oh, but I do. I want to touch it so bad that my hand practically twitches. “Put some fucking clothes on, Harley.”

  “You know you’ve always been cute when you’re flustered.” He presses a kiss to my temple.

  I swat him away. “Shut up.”

  Harley snags the set of shorts he had on earlier from the pile of clothes on the floor and slides them on. “We’re gonna need more booze.”

  Yes, we are.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ROSE

  Age thirteen

  “Hey,” Harley says, walking through the back door instead of scaling the fence that separates our yards the way he normally would. I ignore him as my hands dig into the rich soil, sifting it through my fingers as if the small clumps of earth were grains of sand. Running out. Time is always running out. “Your mom told me about your grandma.”

  “Did she tell you I wanted to be alone?”

  “Do the parentals ever tell us anything useful?”

  I shrug. “My mom told me about the birds and the bees once; it’s how I learned that bees were tiny little flower rapists, and I made it my mission to swat the bastards every time I saw one.”

  “I knew you hated bees for a reason.” He laughs, sitting down beside me in the soft grass and picking up a seed pod. “What are we planting?”

  “Paperwhites, Grams always loved those.”

  “I remember.”

  Harley uses his hands to smooth away the top layer of soil and teases the roots before laying it in the shallow bed he created. I love that he knows how to do this without being told because he’s watched me plant bulbs from the narcissus family for years, and he paid attention, even when I thought he wasn’t. Sometimes I think he enjoys gardening as much
as I do, though he’d never admit it. I pick up a bulb, disrupt the roots and place it in the soil beside his.

  We work in silence until all the bulbs are planted and I sit back with tears in my eyes because in thirty days we’ll have flowers that my Grams would have loved, only she won’t be here to see them. “Do you think we know when we’re about to die?”

  “Jesus, Rose,” he says softly. A beat later, he stands up with his hands on his hips and in his best Peter Pan accent—which is always perfect because we’ve watched that movie more times than we’ve jumped off my parents’ balcony onto the trampoline below—he says, “I’ll never die.”

  “Yes, you will. One day we’ll all die.” I pick up the watering can and shower the bulbs so the roots have a better chance of growing. “I just hope I go first.”

  “Why?” Harley glances down at me with an eyebrow cocked and a troubled expression.

  I set the can on the grass and brush my hands off on my clothes. I don’t bother going inside to wash them, because I’ve always loved the feel of soil caking in the whorls and loops of my fingerprints. “Because I wouldn’t want to be here if you weren’t.”

  “Then we’ll die together,” he proclaims, pulling me to my feet and climbing up onto the trampoline, forcing me to go with him or lose an arm in the process. He turns us to face the empty backyard and shouts, “To die will be—”

  “An awfully big adventure,” we both finish, as he falls onto the trampoline and I fall right alongside him.

  Harley pulls me into the crook of his arm and kisses the top of my head. “I’m sorry about your grandma, Wendy.”

  I shove at his chest for calling me that stupid name, but just as I’m reminding myself to be as indifferent as Peter and as courageous as Tiger Lily, I burst into tears. Harley holds me close. I like the feel of his arms around me.

  Through wet lashes I stare up at him, and he does the most surprising thing ever—he kisses me. At first it’s nothing more than the gentle press of his lips against mine, but within seconds it changes into more. His tongue pushes into my mouth and slides against my own, coaxing as I lay there paralyzed with fear. For years I’ve dreamed about this moment. I’ve dreamed that he’d kiss me, and that it would feel like fireworks exploding. But now that the moment is here, I’m frozen.

  He places his hand on my cheek and rubs his thumb back and forth. I like the way this feels, this tender touch, so new, so different. Sparks form low in my belly, shooting off in every direction until I feel it—the fireworks every Hollywood movie ever promised me. I take his face in my hands and force his lips back to mine, but a gasp ruins it all.

  I scramble to one end of the trampoline. Harley scrambles to the other and my mom laughs her light, tinkling laugh. “Don’t stop on account of me, darlings.”

  Mortified, I bury my face in my hands and feel Harley’s weight shift off the trampoline. Dirt is smeared on his cheeks from my fingertips, and it makes me smile because they look like a brand. “That’s okay, Evelyn. I have to go practice drills anyway. I’m trying out for the team on Monday.”

  “You are?” I’m not sure why, but there’s a hard edge to my voice when I ask this question. Harley used to play in the pee wee league in elementary school, but he hurt his knee at nine years old and Rochelle forced him to give it up. He hasn’t talked about it since, though I know he must miss it. I guess it’s not really a surprise that he’d go back now that he’s older, it’s just that he usually talks to me about these things.

  “Yeah. You’ll come watch, right?”

  I nod, but don’t say another word. I don’t want him to go back to playing football. It’s a dangerous sport at the best of times, not to mention for younger players who take multiple hits to the head. I don’t say any of this, because as Harley watches my reaction, I know he doesn’t like what he sees, which I guess is why he hasn’t told me before now.

  “I’ll see you later?”

  “Yeah, later,” I agree, and watch him turn and walk up the steps toward my mom.

  Mom grasps Harley’s shoulder, stopping him before he can walk by. “Oh, honey, you have a little something there on your cheek.”

  She’s talking about my muddy fingerprints on his face. To my abject horror, Mom licks her fingertips and starts cleaning his face with her spit. “Mom, no!”

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  MORE BY CARMEN JENNER

  Welcome to Sugartown (Sugartown Series #1)

  Enjoy Your Stay (Sugartown Series #2)

  Greetings from Sugartown (Sugartown Series #3)

  Now Leaving Sugartown (Sugartown Series #4)

  Sugartown: The Collection

  REVELRY (Taint #1)

  CLOSER (Taint #2)

  KICK (Savage Saints MC #1)

  TANK (Savage Saints MC #2)

  Finding North

  Toward the Sound of Chaos

  The Way Back Home

  Harley & Rose

  Puck Love

  Cake

  In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part I (Gods & Monsters Series)

  In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part II (Gods & Monsters Series)

  Bittersweet (Co-write with Lauren K. McKellar)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carmen Jenner is a USA Today and international bestselling author.

  A hardcore red lipstick addict and a romantic at heart, Carmen strives to give her characters the HEA they deserve, but not before ruining their lives completely first ... because what's a happily ever after without a little torture?

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To my darling non-husband Ben, thank you for loving me, for supporting me through all of the crazy this life throws our way, and for doing all the hard stuff—not just when I’m away at signings, but every single day. So much of me goes into my books, but there is so much of you in them too; from all the incredible work you put into my covers and teasers, to the way you let me talk your ear off while I plot every detail. You’re even gracious enough to let me share tiny parts of our lives inside these pages, like our adventures in SF and Big Sur. I love you. I couldn’t do any of this without you, but more importantly, I couldn’t breathe without you. Cabin 70 will always be our Disneyland.

  Ava Rose and Ari Danger, I love you more than the sun, and more than the stars, and more than the moon, and more than Mars, and way more than ... chickens! You guys make our lives complete. Don’t ever change.

  To my gorgeous family, I love you.

  To my beautiful beta readers: Kristina Zolnar, Ali Hymer, and Anne Dawson. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I appreciate you all so much. I’m truly honored that you read for me time and again, but more than that, I’m blessed to call all three of you my friends.

  Kristina, I can’t tell you what it means to have had you reading this while you were enduring your own personal hell at the hands of this illness. My heart broke for you. I can never thank you enough.

  Lauren from Creating Ink, thank you for being a super awesome editor who just gets it. I’m forever grateful, and I’m so honored to call you my friend and now boss. I will always want to steal your babies.

  To the ridiculously talented Ben from Tall Story Designs, I’m totally convinced you’re a cyborg. Your eye for detail is ridiculous. So is my love for you. ;)

  And finally, THANK YOU to the r
eaders! I hope you loved Styx & Stones as much as I do. It’s okay if you hate me a little bit too. I know how much this one hurt, because it ruined me also. For years this story has taken up space in my head. The second we met Styx in Harley & Rose I knew he’d had one hell of a ride, and I feel privileged that I had the chance to write his story without anyone else dictating how they thought it should go. Sometimes we don’t always get the Happily Ever After we were expecting, and sometimes it manifests in different ways than we thought it would. I hope this book reminds you to hug your loved ones, to tell the people in your life what they mean to you, and to live each day to the fullest, the way Styx did.

  Thank you for all your love and support. It means the world to me!