Have Your Way With Me

by Parker, Weston

  “You made us sandwiches?” My eyebrows rose. “How very domestic of you.”

  He scoffed. “You call it domestic. I call it being prepared. Let’s agree to disagree.”

  “Sure.” I smiled and looked around, seeing a smooth, black rock nearby. It was underneath a tree, so we wouldn’t get burned to a crisp while we ate. I pointed it out to Jordan. “Let’s eat then, Mr. Prepared. A girl needs her fuel for a hike like this.”

  “Glad to see you haven’t lost your appetite.” He walked next to me to the rock, then waited for me to sit down first. After I was comfortable, he pulled out a wrapped sandwich, a tub filled with chopped-up fruit, and a pack of gummy sweets. “I brought all this just in case you haven’t.”

  My stomach grumbled as if it was acting on cue, and I patted it with my lips curving into a smile. “You remembered the gummy sweets. I can’t believe it, but I am immeasurably grateful.”

  “You can show your gratitude by coming back to the main path with me. I’m pretty sure it’s dangerous to be stumbling around out here.” He sat down next to me, just close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin.

  Goosebumps lifted the fine hairs on my arms as I soaked up his warmth. It was amazing how natural it felt being with him, even after all these years.

  “If you thought it was dangerous, why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked, turning my head to look at him while unwrapping what turned out to be a cheese and crispy bacon sandwich with double of everything.

  I let out a soft moan at how delicious it looked, and since my eyes were on his, I saw the heat in them when he heard the sound. My clit throbbed in response to that heat, my body wanting the same thing in that moment that his did.

  But it probably wasn’t a good idea to get naked right here, right now. Especially considering that we’d only just seen each other again for the first time in years this morning. If I threw myself at him the way my body wanted me to, it’d look like I was desperate and had never gotten over him.

  Which wasn’t true. I had. I really had. It was just that Jordan had been making my heart beat faster since I discovered boys didn’t have cooties and he also happened to have been the first newly cootie-less boy that the rest of my anatomy had noticed.

  Being attracted to him was practically a part of my genetic code, written into the very fiber of my being. And it didn’t care that it had been so long. It only cared about the fact that he was back.

  Jordan’s gaze broke away from mine and focused on a spot somewhere behind my shoulder, his jaw tight. “I didn’t tell you it was dangerous because you would have just challenged me to do it anyway, or told me to stick to the path while you came out here on your own. Eat up. We have to get back to the main path.”

  And there he was: my Jordan. Because no matter how long it’d been, that was always the way I would think about him. This man who still knew me so well, who was still willing to indulge my whims, even if only so he could make sure I was safe in the process, who would let me have my fun because he knew it would make me happy, but then always led me firmly back to where I should have been all along.

  He’d always kept me grounded, while I’d always encouraged him to live in the moment just for a little bit. It was the perfect balance really. It was too bad we could never actually be together. Probably.

  Shaking myself out of my thoughts at the stern expression on his face, I nodded and bit into my sandwich. It was delicious surprisingly. Or maybe not, considering that Jordan did everything he attempted well. Fucking perfectionist.

  We ate as fast as we could, drank our water, and packed all the waste back into his backpack before he led me back to the path. A couple of minutes after we got onto it, a voice called out from behind.

  “Excuse me, you two.” Jordan and I exchanged a glance when we realized we weren’t the only people on this part of the path. “Hold up a second, would you?”

  Jordan gave me a small nod before turning around to face the ranger, a polite smile lifting his lips. “What’s up? Is there a problem?”

  “Did you go off the path just now?” the red-faced ranger asked, a deep frown on his sun-weathered skin. “We received reports of a couple venturing off the designated paths. That’s against park rules. If it was you, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

  “Us?” I asked, batting my eyelashes innocently and bringing a hand to my chest. “No, we’d never do that. You must have the wrong couple.”

  Jordan didn’t correct either of us on the couple thing. He even took a step closer to me and put his hand in the small of my back. If we hadn’t been facing whatever it was we were facing for breaking their precious rules, my mind would have been having a field day conjuring up colorful descriptions of how feeling the weight of his palm on my back through the thin fabric of my top made me feel.

  Good. So damn good, was as far as it had gotten before Jordan spoke. “We know the rules, sir. It wasn’t us.”

  He still has my back. My brain flooded with relief as the realization dawned. But we weren’t out of the woods yet. “Was there anything else, sir?”

  The ranger gave us the stink eye. “You’d better be telling me the truth. No, there’s nothing else. Please stay on the paths and stay safe. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  “Thank you,” Jordan said, then grabbed my hand and tugged me in the opposite direction. “We’re staying on the fucking path from now on.”

  His voice was a low growl that sent shivers down my spine, as did the feel of his calloused hand in mine. “Sir, yes, sir. No more rule bending today.”

  “Good girl,” he muttered. I rolled my eyes and let go of his hand. The ranger was gone. There was no real reason for him to have been holding it anymore anyway. Jordan seemed to realize the same thing since he didn’t try to take it again.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring—from the designated paths, of course—and doing some more catching up. When he pulled up outside Sunshine Cottage hours later, I was almost sad to have the day ending so soon.

  “It was nice to spend some time with you again.” I’ve missed you, even if I didn’t know it until now. “Sorry again that you got roped into babysitting.”

  Lightning fast, he grabbed my wrist when I turned to get out of the Jeep. When I met his eyes, those forest greens were blazing with intensity. “You know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to. I didn’t get roped into anything. It was nice to spend time with you, too.”

  I cocked my head, studying him until I decided that he was being sincere. “If that’s true, it would be nice if we could spend some more time together sometime. I don’t know anyone out here except for Kole. I would love it if you could show me around some more.”

  Jordan hesitated, but then a slow smile spread across his lips. “Sure, yeah. I could do that. Give me your phone.”

  I reached into my purse and pulled it out, handing it over. “Are you giving me your number?”

  He nodded, tapped on my keypad, and gave my phone back. “There. Now you officially have two people on the island you can call if you need anything.”

  “Thank you. I’ll send you a message later so you have mine too.”

  There was an awkward pause. Then he opened his arms as wide as he could in the confines of his Jeep and pulled me into a hug. It was tight and comforting and I loved it just as much as I always had.

  Jordan was an amazing hugger. I practically melted into his embrace.

  When he eventually released me, there was another awkward moment where we both paused with our faces so close together that our cheeks almost touched. My heart lurched and my palms got all sweaty.

  This felt like that second just before a kiss, that magical, frozen moment in time when both parties knew what was about to happen and toes almost started curling in anticipation. If I turned my head only a fraction, my lips would be so close to his that we’d be breathing the same air.

  But I couldn’t because this couldn’t happen. It wasn’t the right time or th
e right place, broad daylight in front of my house. Kole could drive past at any time, or someone could tell him what they’d seen.

  No. It was way too risky. If anything was going to happen between us again, it couldn’t happen like this.

  Jordan realized it too, muttering a curse under his breath before he drew all the way back. “I’ll call you sometime, okay? We’ll hang out, go exploring.”

  “Deal.” I smiled and nearly offered him a handshake, but that would have been too weird. I got out of the Jeep with a final wave of my fingers instead, fighting against every molecule in my body to keep heading inside instead of going back and kissing the living daylights out of that damn kissable man.

  Chapter 9

  Jordan

  Mauli’s off-key singing was the first thing I heard when I got to the pineapple farm the morning after taking Elyse to see the volcanoes. In as good a mood as I was, even his singing didn’t seem so bad.

  Hell, I even almost joined in. A smile crept up on my lips as I imagined his reaction if I was to start singing the old Hawaiian classic with him.

  I knew all the words. I just didn’t regularly sing outside the shower. Mauli loved it, though. He wasn’t the best singer in the world, but he might have been the most enthusiastic.

  “Hey, man,” he said when he saw me watching him slinging a full bag over his shoulder. A slight frown appeared between his eyebrows before they lifted. “Wait a second. You’re smiling. First thing in the morning. What are you so happy about?”

  “You’re singing first thing in the morning. What are you so happy about?” I turned the tables back on him because there was no way I was telling him the truth.

  The truth being that my best friend’s little sister was still the most captivating girl who had ever graced the earth with her presence and spending the day with her had been the most fun I’d had in ages. In spite of our run-in with the ranger.

  Fuck, maybe even because of it.

  Elyse got my blood pumping in a way nothing and no one else did. Not even combat because that was a different kind of adrenaline rush. The one I got from spending time with Elyse lacked that edge of fear and anxiety, not for myself but for the guys around me.

  It was a heady damn cocktail that she injected into my bloodstream, and I’d had enough of it to be riding the high into the next day. I toned down my grin, though. Mauli was right. My happiness was way too obvious for comfort.

  “The old throwing the question back at me, huh?” He dropped his chin and put his fists on his considerable hips. “Fine, I’ll go first anyway. There’s a luau tomorrow night and I’m getting warmed up.”

  That made sense. Mauli belonged to an a capella group who often spontaneously broke into song at parties. “I’m assuming your boys are going to be there?”

  “Of course.” He scoffed, but he couldn’t hide the amusement in his eyes. “But so are a whole bunch of women that we can spend the night serenading. Alana is going to be there and you know how much she appreciates a good voice. I’ve gotta get mine ready.”

  “Alana, huh?” I arched an eyebrow. “I thought you were done chasing after her.”

  Alana had been Mauli’s crush since the first time I’d met him at a luau when I’d had some time off. As far as I knew, nothing had ever happened between them but Mauli was convinced that she was his soul mate. For a night anyway.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I was done with chasing her, but then I heard she broke up with the douche, so I’ve forgiven her.”

  A chuckle rumbled through my chest. “Good luck with that, man. You’re going to need it. Alana isn’t going to make it easy for you.”

  “If she doesn’t want all this,” he ran his hands up and down his sides and gyrated his jiggly hips, “then someone else will. There are plenty of ladies attending tomorrow night. You should come.”

  “Who’s all invited?” I asked, thinking back to the last one I’d attended. There had been so many tourists, it had felt like one of the resorts had been throwing it, not the locals.

  “It’s open to all, but it won’t be overrun by horny honeymooners this time. It’s not close to any of the hotels. Was that why you asked?”

  I lifted my hand and tipped it from side to side. “One of the reasons, yeah. The other is that if I come, I may bring my friend’s sister along. She’s new in town, might enjoy a real luau.”

  A knowing gleam came into his chocolate-brown eyes as he put two and two together. “This is the girl you were talking about the other day, isn’t it? Your old flame?”

  “There’s no flame.” Except there was. There really, really was. It had burned so fucking hot between us all day that it had taken everything in me to keep my hands, lips, and dick to myself. “She’s a friend. That’s all.”

  “Sure, sure.” Mauli chuckled. “Just a friend. Because platonic friendships between men and women are absolutely possible.”

  “They are,” I growled, getting annoyed with his prodding. I’d never been the type to share too many details of my personal life and Mauli knew me well enough not to dig—usually—but as with everything when Elyse was concerned, this seemed to be different. “You’d better not say anything to her if I do bring her, by the way.”

  Mauli lifted his hands and pretended to zip his lips, twisted his fingers to show he was locking them, and tossed the key into the pineapple field. “You have nothing to worry about with me, bro. I wouldn’t break it to your old fling that you couldn’t shut up about her the other day.”

  My eyes narrowed on a glare and he put his hands up, surrendering with a smirk playing on his lips. “Chill. I won’t say anything.”

  “Good,” I said, then went to change into my uniform.

  As I joined him out in the field, he acted like he was busy with work but I could see there was something else on his mind. He waited until I had half a bag before mildly saying, “Tell me about this girl. Your friend’s sister, huh?” He whistled low under his breath. “Does he know she’s an old flame of yours?”

  “Stop calling her that,” I said. “It wasn’t like that. She’s not some random old flame. She’s just a girl that I used to talk to when I was younger.”

  A girl I’d talked to for hours, more than I’d talked to anyone except maybe her brother since. Everything came easy with Elyse, even words that usually wouldn’t find their way anywhere near my mouth.

  When I’d been acting like a macho teen who had it all together, it had been her to hear all about my fucked-up childhood. She knew about my parents’ divorce and how both of them had decided to sign me off to an aunt who’d never wanted children just so they could go gallivanting God knew where, doing God knew what.

  Aunt Bess had only taken me in because she’d known there was no one else willing to take me. Not even Kole knew the whole story, but Elyse did.

  Despite the act I’d been putting on back then, she’d gotten me to open up and be vulnerable in front of her. She was also the only woman I’d ever spent hours talking to on the phone, but I didn’t tell Mauli any of that.

  He shook his head at me though, clearly not believing that all she’d been was some girl I used to talk to. Then again, I had told him she’d been a fling, so I guessed I’d had it coming anyway. I was still going to try to downplay it, though. I had to if Mauli really might meet her.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Black hair, blue eyes,” I said curtly. He’d meet her tomorrow night anyway, if she agreed to come. There was no use trying to avoid telling him what she looked like.

  Mauli whistled again. “Sounds pretty.”

  Pretty was the understatement of the century, but so was off-fucking-limits. “Yeah, I guess. I’ve never really looked at her that way.”

  His eyes rolled to the sky as he released an exasperated sigh. “How long are you going to keep this act up, Jordy? I’m not buying what you’re selling, so you might as well let it go. Tell me about her. I’m interested. You said she was new in town. How’s she finding the island so far
?”

  “Fine,” I said, bending over to carry on doing my goddamned job.

  Mauli didn’t stop asking questions until I shot him a glare that he knew meant it was time to leave it alone. Elyse had been only mine—only my secret, I meant—for so long that I didn’t know how to talk to anyone about her even if I’d wanted to.

  Which I didn’t, so case closed.

  He took the hint and stopped asking me anything after that, instead reverting back to telling me about everyone who would be at the luau. He talked more about Alana but eventually lapsed into silence as we worked.

  Collecting pineapples was slow and methodical. There was a calm rhythm to it that allowed me to really relax. No one was in danger of getting hurt around me, no one was missing their wives or their kids, and most importantly, no one was about to shoot or bomb the fuck out of me.

  It was a real quiet kind of life that I led now, living alone and working most shifts with only Mauli by my side. Compared to the thousands of men and women who used to work alongside me, it might have been lonely if I hadn’t preferred it that way.

  I’d had enough of that life, though. Of constantly being surrounded by people, by danger, of having to travel for months on end at the drop of a hat, often not knowing where I was going to end up myself.

  When my honorable discharge had come, it had been a blessing. A gift I had been only too grateful to receive.

  My thoughts flashed back to Elyse. Would she be happy settling for this quiet kind of life? I wasn’t planning on making her a permanent part of mine, but I wondered if she’d be leaving the island to go back to California soon.

  The thought that she might bothered me. I’d only just gotten her back and I wasn’t ready to let her go again. Not so soon. Except that you haven’t gotten her back.

  I breathed out a quiet sigh and started singing Mauli’s song from earlier in my head to keep from thinking about her. At the end of my shift, I still hadn’t really been successful in eliminating thoughts of her altogether though.