by Larissa Vine
April snuck a glance at Rory, as he stared out the dusty window. His face was set in concentration as he navigated the SUV around switchbacks and turns. With a jolt, she realized how good-looking he was. Why haven’t I noticed that before? she thought. His cheekbones were high, the profile of his jaw was sublime. He had a straight, chiseled nose.
And what did he think of her, she wondered. Did he consider her even vaguely pretty? With the smallest of movements, so that he wouldn’t notice, she eased her sun visor down from the roof and peeked at herself in the mirror.
She nearly cursed out loud. Dear God. Her standards had slipped. Talking about letting herself go. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup, and her eyes looked puny without their usual layers of mascara. She had no Pouting Vixen lipstick on her lips. Worse still, her eyebrows had started to grow in.
She felt Rory’s gaze on her. Quickly, she pushed the sun visor back up.
“You look good,” he said. “Nice and natural.”
She stared at him suspiciously, waiting for him to crack a joke. But he didn’t. No man had ever told her that he liked her just the way she was.
****
Twenty minutes later, they came to a line of cars parked along the side of the road. Rory stopped the Range Rover at the back of the line and everyone got out with their towels. They’d already changed into their swimming gear before they’d left the campground.
April followed the others across the rocks. The heat burned through the soles of her flip-flops. The sun beat down onto her shoulders like it was trying to press her into the core of the earth. She was glad she’d put on suntan lotion.
They came to a canyon, and April stopped and stared down at the swimming hole.
People were swimming, clearly to escape the heat of the afternoon. More people sat around the sides and dipped their feet into the water, which was so clear that April could see the mottled colors of the boulders at the bottom.
She watched Rory and the others clamber down the rocks toward the pool. Rory led the way, moving effortlessly with a catlike grace. When he reached the swimming hole, he stopped and pulled his t-shirt over his head, so that he was down to his swim shorts. April’s breath hitched in her throat.
Of course, she’d known that he was muscular. But not this, never this. She’d never expected such perfection. His body was glorious. He was ripped with muscle on top of muscle and the definition was incredible. She drank in his pecs, then feasted on his six pack. Then his thighs and his quads. Even though he’d clearly been working out a lot, probably every night, his limbs were long, not cumbersome or bulky. His skin was tanned tawny from the sun.
April used her hand to fan herself. She had to get a grip. She knew that if she joined him now, she wouldn’t be able to act naturally around him—not now that she’d realized he was such a hottie.
Needing time to steady herself, she wandered off along the canyon. The water from the swimming hole dropped in a sheet of water into a smaller swimming hole below. This one was empty without gaggles of families or shrieking children. The water looked so inviting.
April stripped down to her American Apparel swimsuit. It was the first time she’d worn it, and for a second she stood, mesmerized, by the sparkle of the gold lame. Then, just for fun, she put up the hood.
She climbed down the rocks, took a breath, then jumped into the pool. The soles of her feet slammed against the water. She sank down beneath the icy surface then rose up, gasping for air.
Boy, it was cold. But it was refreshing, too. She swam down to the bottom to see if she could make it, then turned to swim back up again. Only she couldn’t move. Her foot was lodged between the boulders.
Desperately, she wriggled her foot. It wouldn’t budge. She crouched down and tried to shift the rocks with her hands. Her lungs began to ache. Water burned through her nostrils.
Why wasn’t it moving? Shift. Please shift. Frantically, she tore at the rock with her fingernails. She could feel the weight of the water pushing against her eyeballs.
Splashes.
Echoes.
Drawn out underwater sounds.
Her lungs were about to burst. It felt like the world was narrowing down, telescoping smaller and smaller.
A pair of hands grabbed her leg, then wrapped around her torso. Someone was pulling her up, up, up. She rose to the surface, gasping, then choked back a lungful of air. Rory swam her to the side. He got out and hauled her onto the rocks.
“April, are you okay?” His voice was hoarse and urgent. “Say something… Please!”
He pulled her against his dripping body. Then, to her shock, he started to kiss the life out of her.
Chapter Fourteen
Rory never meant to kiss her. No, that was a lie. He’d been wanting to kiss her ever since he’d seen in that ridiculous corset. But he’d never imagined that he would do it so publicly. He’d screamed her name before he’d jumped in to rescue her and had clearly alerted everyone. Because now, as he was kissing her and trying to transfer energy back into her weakened body, he heard cheering and clapping from the top of the canyon. Someone even whooped.
He broke off the kiss and looked up. About twenty people stood at the top of the canyon—grannies, boys with snotty noses, a girl in a Dora swimsuit. Rory pulled April against him again.
“Keep going,” he murmured. “We’ve got an audience. This’ll be good for your brand.”
She drew back and stuck her tongue out at him causing everyone on the boulders to laugh. Then he saw that her swimsuit had a hood on it. A hood! And he was laughing too as he stared into her eyes. And at that moment, he realized that in some indefinable way, things between them changed.
Chapter Fifteen
April wondered if everyone in the Range Rover felt like her—all twitchy and hyper. She wondered if the colors around them seemed brighter. Certainly, everyone seemed to be in a manic mood as they cruised to Tofino to get supplies. Rory had the stereo on and was blasting dubstep. Miranda and Dan were nodding along in the back. The sun grew hotter by the second. Trees flashed by in saturated shades of green.
They stopped in Tofino and bought basa fillets for the barbecue. Then they filled up Dan’s growlers at the microbrewery. In the same manic mood, they headed back to the campsite where Rory began to build a fire while Dan and Miranda set about marinating the fish.
April went over to check on her sleeping bag. It was dry, so she laid it back in the tent. She wondered whether she and Rory would be sharing a tent that night. Twice on the drive back, he’d brushed against her, and they exchanged so many glances, it was getting ridiculous.
Something’s going to happen, she thought and hugged herself with excitement.
****
After dinner, April stood with Rory over the fire. “Where have Miranda and Dan gone?” she asked.
He grinned, his teeth flashing in the fire light. “Probably somewhere to make out.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked.
“Sure,” Rory said. “But what about the bears?”
April waved a dismissive hand. Since she’d dodged death, she no longer cared about the bears. She felt invincible.
He reached for her hand. She felt a jolt as he took it. Then he led her along the path through the trees and onto the cliff. She gasped. The sky was littered with thousands of stars and it was so clear she could even see the veil of the Milky Way.
Rory turned to her. “I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve never known weather like this. You must be a good weather charm.”
He leaned in and kissed her. The kiss was different from the one in at the swimming hole, which had been fierce, a knee-jerk reaction against the threat of death. This kiss was slower and more sensual. He parted her lips with his tongue and slid it into her mouth. A tingle went through April’s body, traveling to the tips of her toes.
Still kissing her, he slipped her top over her head. She pressed herself against his chest. Her nipples were hard and ached to be sucked.
Expertly, he unhooked her bra, which fell to the ground. He stared at her tits and gave a low groan of admiration before cupping one breast in his hand. She arched toward him. He took her nipple between his forefinger and thumb and gave it a tweak.
Suck it, she thought. Please, please suck it.
As if reading her mind, he leaned down, popped her nipple into his mouth, and teased it out between his teeth. She felt like she was going to come right there and then.
He took off his hoodie and laid it on the ferns, spreading it out like a blanket. She lay down on it and watched him pull down his shorts, then his boxer shorts. His cock twanged out, free from the material. It reached all the way up to his belly button. Her eyes widened. She’d never seen a cock so big before, or so thick. Is it even going to fit? The throbbing mushroom-head glistened with pre-cum. Clearly, he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
Reaching out, she held his cock at the base. Then she rose to her knees and put her tongue onto the shaft. Rory’s cock quivered. She licked up the shaft toward the top, stopping at the rim of the head before dragging her tongue across the tip. He tasted nice and salty. She clamped her lips around the head and swirled his tongue over it. Rory began to moan and pump into her mouth. He was so big and went so deep, she struggled not to gag.
He pushed her away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t want to come, not yet. I need to be inside you.” His voice was thick with urgency.
He pulled her panties down her legs and off over her ankles. She smelled his testosterone mixed with the scent of salt from the ocean and the smoke on his skin. Above her, the stars seemed to throb.
Suddenly, doubt gripped her. Should she be doing this? She hadn’t known him for long. But already her treacherous body was taking over, and she found herself lying down and spreading her legs. He grabbed the insides of her thighs so hard she knew there’d be bruises.
“Wait,” she gasped. “Do you have a condom?”
Rory picked up his shorts from the ground and pulled a condom out of back pocket. He turned away to put on the condom, then lay on top of her and started kissing her again. His erection pressed against her leg and she felt the glorious crush of his body. She was so turned on she could barely breathe. Cream slid down her thighs.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. Sincerity rang through his voice. The crash of the waves matched her exhales of breath.
His hands moved between her legs, and he eased one finger inside her. She let out a ragged breath. He took the finger out, then inserted two fingers. He began thrusting them in and out of her fast.
The smell of the ferns. The thick brine in the air. The stars continued to pulse like crazy.
“You’re beautiful… I’ve never met someone like you…” Rory’s breath fanned her neck as he murmured fragments of sentences to her.
They were like refrains or incantations, like wisps of prayers. And they were all that made sense, she thought. Because right now, the world had lost its meaning and the only thing that mattered, that meant anything, was him and her.
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he ordered
She lifted her legs and clamped them around the sides of his muscular body. He pushed his cock into her, and she cried out. He filled her completely; he was so big and thick. With measured thrusts, he began to pump inside her.
The pumping grew harder, faster. His cock went right up to the hilt.
Slap, slap. She heard his balls slap against her, registered the slap of skin on skin. She threw her head back, and he leaned down and kissed the column of her throat before squeezing her nipples with the rough pads of his thumbs.
Still, she could hear the waves crashing. They seemed to be speeding up like breath. Inside her, her own wave was forming. But it was only small, so small she didn’t have to worry about it yet.
Rory tapped her clit. She mewled. The wave inside her grew bigger. He tapped her clit again, then kneaded the hell out of the little bud. Spasms shot up her. She clenched the muscles of her pussy and gripped his cock. It was all too much—his hand on her clit, the relentless pumping.
“Go on,” he muttered. “Come. I want you to cream all over my cock.”
It was the permission she needed. She let go, and the wave inside her broke. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she howled up at the stars.
Rory began to move faster, then faster still. He called out and made animal sounds. With a cry, he found his own release, and after stiffening, he collapsed on top of her. She imagined his spunk pumping into her and filling her body.
For a while, they lay entwined. It was hard to work out where his body ended and where hers began. Their sweat intermingled, and when they breathed, it felt like they were breathing as one.
Finally, Rory broke the silence. “Was that okay?” he asked, stroking her cheek.
She shrugged. “Yeah, it was okay, I guess.”
“What?” His voice was like a thunder crack.
“It was more than okay,” April continued. “It was bloody amazing.”
A grin broke across his handsome face.
“I guess we should get back to camp,” April said. “Miranda and Dan must be worried about us. They probably think we’ve been eaten by bears.”
But when they got back to pitch, it was empty. April guessed that Miranda and Dan had gone to bed. She and Rory went to their tent and crawled inside it. Rory managed to zip their sleeping bags together. They wriggled out of their clothes and slithered into the womb of goose down.
April felt something nudge at her leg. Her eyebrows shot up toward her hairline. “Are you serious?” she hissed. “What, again?”
His cock pushed against her for the second time. She frowned. Surely, tent sex was the yuckiest, most unromantic thing on the planet. But as she was saying this, already her hand was delving down. Her thumb and forefinger spanned the impressive girth of his cock.
Chapter Sixteen
Raised voices … heated conversation. April snapped out of sleep and into consciousness. Some kind of commotion was happening outside the tent. She shivered in the half-dawn light, then turned to cuddle Rory’s warm body. But he was gone.
The voices outside stopped and were replaced by silence, which somehow felt much more ominous. She slid out of the sleeping bags, grabbed her clothes from the floor, and wriggled into them. Her neck felt stiff; she must have slept in a weird position. She felt sore inside from where Rory had stretched her—not that she minded that.
After unzipping her tent, she stepped, shivering, into the forest. Her eyes sprang wide. The other tent had been taken down and the ground sheet lay rolled up beside it. Miranda, in her pajamas and a fleece jacket, pulled tent pegs out of the ground.
April stepped into her sandals and stumbled up to Miranda, wiping crusts of sleep out of the corners of her eyes. “What’s happening?” she asked.
Miranda yanked another peg out of the soil. Her nails were filthy. She tossed the peg into a bag. “We’re leaving,” she snapped.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t spend another second with that asshole.”
April’s eyes bulged. Miranda never swore. In all the years that April had known her, the worse thing that Miranda had ever said was “bloody.”
“What happened?” April asked.
She realized Miranda’s face was blotchy from crying. But there was an icy rage about her, which April had never seen before.
“Last night,” Miranda said. “Dan and I went to see the ranger. She was giving a talk on old growth trees or something like that. So we were walking through the forest to get to the ranger’s booth when Dan said he had something to tell me, which he needed to get off his chest. I don’t know, maybe what happened in the swimming holes had made him reevaluate everything. He told me … after we met, the son of a bitch slept with someone else.” She hurled another tent peg into the bag.
“He said that he was drunk,” she went on, “and that it didn’t mean anyt
hing. Apparently, he’s been regretting it ever since. Regretting it. My heart bleeds for him, the prick.”
“When you met in London, did you sleep together?”
Miranda shook her head.
“So he wasn’t really unfaithful to you,” April said. “Your relationship didn’t really start until this holiday.”
Two circles of color appeared high on Miranda’s cheeks. “But remember how we met?” she spat. “Remember the Juliet balcony? The summer night? He acted like we’d been destined to meet. . He said that he’d never met anyone like me before. Straight up, April. Word for word, that’s what he said. But it was a lie. Because why else would he have screwed someone else? He lied to me, and I don’t think I can ever trust him again.” Her bottom lip quivered.
April crouched down and put her arm around Miranda’s shoulders. “Shh,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”
“Will it?” Miranda’s eyes filled with tears. “Rory’s going to drive us to the airport once we’ve finishing packing. Don’t look so shocked. You never really wanted to go on this holiday, anyway.”
April felt like she was spinning, falling. “But I like Rory,” she whispered.
Miranda gave a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, for a holiday fling. But for more than that? Oh, come on. He’s totally not your type.”
But maybe my type has changed, April thought. But she couldn’t bear to say this out loud for fear of Miranda mocking her.
“You can’t trust him,” Miranda said. “If Dan’s a scumbag, then so is Rory. They’re best mates.”
April thought about for a second. Miranda was wrong, she realized. Rory was the most honest man that she’d ever met. “I want to stay,” she said.
“Don’t leave me,” Miranda wailed. “I’m a mess. I can’t possibly fly all that way home on my own. Please, I need you.”
April opened her mouth to protest then Rory’s words rang in her head. All you think about is yourself. You need to stop being so selfish. The speech she’d been planning dried up on her lips, and she closed her mouth again. Rory was right. She had to stop thinking about herself and her own needs and wants. Miranda was her best friend, and she needed her. Right now, that was all that mattered.
