Somehow, he had my entire luggage plus my carry-on, so all I was carrying was my purse, and he was making it look easy. I followed him, which was at least 80% a ploy to see what his butt looked like. Verdict? Goddamned incredible.
Canaan was walking beside Corin, a few paces ahead of Aerie and me, and he was also hauling all of her stuff.
Aerie leaned close, whispering in my ear. "Holy shit, T! They're even hotter in person than they looked on Skype!"
"Corin hinted at going down on me," I said, and again, this just popped out unbidden.
Aerie sputtered, covering her mouth with one hand. "Tate Kingsley! We've been here less than five minutes!"
"It just...came up," I said.
She snickered again. "Damn girl, you work quick."
At that exact moment, Canaan twisted to glance over his shoulder, winking slyly. Which, I assumed, was meant for Aerie.
I eyed her. "No faster than you, something tells me."
She shrugged demurely. "There was no mention of anyone going down," she said.
"He just winked at you, and it was a very meaningful wink."
We arrived at the parking area and Canaan tossed Aerie's luggage in the bed of their truck--a big, new, crew-cab Silverado.
"You two ladies are incredibly beautiful," Corin put in, setting my luggage beside Aerie's, and then holding the front passenger door open for me, "but you've been stone-cold foxes your whole lives. You're just...even more beautiful now than you've ever been."
I climbed in, and he hesitated before closing the door after me. "Thank you, Corin." I smiled up at him, and found it difficult to look away. "How gentlemanly of you, opening the door for me."
He leaned into the doorway, closing in on me before I could react. I smelled him, a heady male scent, and then his stubble scratched my skin as he touched his lips to my cheek, whispering. "Don't read too much into it. I'm only doing it for...personal reasons."
After getting Aerie settled in the truck, the boys got in the car, Corin behind the wheel and Canaan behind him in the passenger seat, next to Aerie.
"So," Corin asked, "where to?"
"Grandma and Grandpa's B and B," Aerie said.
At the exact same time, I said, "Your place."
Corin chuckled. "How about we split the difference and go to Badd's for a drink, and you two can get your stories straight."
Aerie leaned forward to put her lips to my ear. "What the hell are you doing?" She hissed. "You said we were staying with Grandma and Grandpa."
I twisted in place as Corin pulled out of the ferry dock parking lot and headed through town. "That was before," I hissed back.
"Before what?"
I glanced meaningfully at Corin, and then at Canaan, my eyes wide, trying to imply a whole host of meanings in that one look.
Apparently she caught them all, because she flopped back in her seat, crossing her arms under her breasts. "God, you're such a slut," she muttered under her breath.
I laughed out loud. "Um, hello, Pot? This is Kettle."
Corin guffawed, slapping the steering wheel. "God, you two haven't changed a bit, have you? Still bickering about literally everything."
"And you two are the same too, aren't you?" I sniped. "Thinking with your dicks."
"Well, it's like Robin Williams said--God gave men both a dick and brain, but only enough blood to run one at a time," Canaan shot back. "So you can't blame us, it's just basic anatomy."
"Plus, when faced with a ridiculously hot chick with insane cleavage and a wicked tight ass, what do you expect? Sainthood?" Corin slid a sly glance my way. "I was talking about you just then. Just...you know...so you know."
I snorted. "Yeah, thanks, I got that."
"Just wanted to be clear."
"Speaking of tight asses," Aerie said from the backseat, "while we're here, Tate plans to eat cheeseburgers and pie and drink beer until her ass balloons into something with its own zip code. So, don't get too attached to it being all tight and whatever."
"Oh, I don't think that'll be a problem for Cor," Canaan said. "He likes big asses. The bigger the better, he told me."
We were at a stoplight, so Corin twisted in the seat and glared at his brother. "You're such a jackass. That's not what I said."
Canaan tilted his head to one side, his expression doubtful. "I dunno, man, that's what it sounded like to me."
Corin defended himself. "Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about you girls specifically, I was talking in general."
It was my turn to laugh, now. "Which of us bickers constantly? 'Cause I don't think its just Aerie and me."
There was a thick, palpable tension in the truck, now. A silence, but not an awkward one.
It was the rife sexual tension crackling between the four of us.
We had just arrived in Ketchikan, but already things promised to become interesting.
4
Corin
* * *
I've always had an issue with my mouth running away from my brain, but around Tate? I can't seem to help myself, and I'm not talking about little slips, but majorly inappropriate innuendos.
The hell of it all was that she didn't seem to mind.
Could it really be this easy? Like, the twins just show up and shit gets real? No way. Nothing is that easy.
Tate keeps glancing at me as I drive, cutting her eyes to me, and then when I meet her eyes, she looks away. Her eyes danced, glittering amber-green, traveling from my face to my arms, examining my tats, and then dropping to my crotch, and back up again.
As for me, I have to keep my eyes on the road. Not just for safety, because I was driving, but because if I let myself look at Tate Kingsley too long, I'd pop a boner. Legit, she was that damn sexy. That romper, though? Holy shit. Skin tight, sports-car red, the V-neck plunging down to her diaphragm, leaving a good quarter of the insides of her breasts exposed. I doubted she was wearing a bra, unless it was some kind of magical thing. Granted, I don't know shit about bras, except how to take 'em off one-handed. The whole outfit was off the fucking charts, and the shorts part...holy shit. They just barely covered her ass and sitting in the truck, one knee hooked over the other, her thigh and ass were on display, wreaking havoc on my determination to control my hard-on.
Despite the sexy romper, her whole look was very natural. Honestly, I liked the minimal makeup look, it was a lot less than what they usually wore for their Insta pics--and yes, I follow them on Instagram. She was so fucking naturally gorgeous she didn't need any makeup at all.
In fact, over the last few years Instagram has been the only contact we've really had with the girls, except for the occasional email or Twitter DM.
I cut a sideways glance at her and caught her just as she tore her eyes away from my crotch. I glanced down, and realized I hadn't been entirely successful in keeping myself from getting a semi. Meaning, the front of my jeans were tenting, and she had noticed this. Her eyes were flitting around frantically, as if searching for anywhere else to look, and she was gnawing on the corner of her lower lip.
I tried to shift in my seat, but the tent remained. So, with nothing left to do to alleviate the growing pressure I tried, with as much subtlety as I possessed, to do a quick manual adjustment of the situation. When a girl has noticed your semi-erection, there's just no subtlety to be had. She noticed; she bit down on her lip so hard the plump pink flesh turned white, and her thighs tightened.
Both of which only turned me on even more, which she then noticed...
It was a vicious cycle of sexual tension.
It was less than ten minutes from the ferry dock to our bar, but I swear to god that drive felt like an hour. I was excruciatingly aware of each movement Tate made, trying desperately to keep my eyes on the road and not on her tits, which jiggled and shifted and swayed with the turns and bumps in the road. I tried not to watch her hands as they fidgeted and her teeth gnawing on her lip, which made me want to gnaw on that lip too...
I was a seething mess of raging libido by the time
we got to Badd's, and I don't think Tate was any better. It was midafternoon, so the bar was mostly empty, except for a few regulars taking up the stools on the end of the bar nearest the entrance, and a few scattered couples in the booths.
Luce was behind the bar polishing wineglasses while Brock washed them. Xavier was set up at the family booth with his laptop and robot-building gear out and two different textbooks in front of him, which he legitimately seemed to be reading simultaneously. Which, if you ask me, shouldn't be possible, but with Xavier, just about anything went. Everyone else was gone, at the moment.
Bax, following my conversation with him a couple of days ago, had taken off on Xavier's bike, tearing off after Evangeline. Zane was--as usual, these days--at home with Mara and their new baby, and Bast and Dru had taken a week off together and were who knows where, while Claire and Mara were probably working at their shared office space half a block away.
Brock and Luce both looked up at us as we walked in.
"Holy shit!" Brock tossed a rocks glass in the air and caught it. "The Kingsley twins are in the house! You guys just get in?"
"The boys just picked us up from the ferry, yes," Aerie said.
Lucian was holding a wineglass up to the light, examining it for spots. "I thought you told Bax two days ago that they were already in town?" he asked, glancing at me.
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Ah, yeah. Well, I had to lie a little, to get him off his ass. He was being a surly fuck-head."
Lucian laughed. "I see."
"You can't deny he was being a douche," I said. "Two and a half weeks, and he was fucking unbearable without Eva. Someone had to do something. I told a little white lie, so what?"
Lucian twitched a shoulder, his version of a shrug. "I didn't say anything."
"You were doing that silent judge-y thing you do."
He glanced at me. "The what?"
The four of us lined up at the bar, me on the left, Tate to my right, Aerie beside her, and Cane on the end.
"You do this thing where you don't say anything, but you manage to convey a sense of superior disapproval," I said.
He just shook his head. "You're reading things into me that aren't there. I'm not a judgmental person."
"So you're fine with me telling Bax a lie to get him off his ass?"
"He was being a douche. You got him to go after her. It worked, case closed."
Brock filled pint glasses with ice and cola, and set them in front of us. I stared at the cola, and then at him. "The fuck is this soda bullshit, Brock?"
He just grinned. "We've got customers, kids, and not one of you is twenty-one yet. Can't serve you alcohol. Sorry."
"Oh, come on, Brock," Canaan protested. "We're twenty-one in less than a week."
"And I'll serve you all day every day, in..." he glanced at his watch, "six days and nine hours."
The shit of it was, I realized that when any of the older brothers ever served us alcohol, it was only ever at home upstairs, or when there was no one in the bar, never when anyone who was not family was around.
"You suck," I said.
Brock just chuckled, and then went back to washing glasses. "But...if that bottle of Johnnie Black upstairs above the fridge happened to vanish for a few hours, I probably wouldn't notice, since I'm going to be down here 'til close. You know, just saying." He shot me a wink.
Nice.
Tate spied the small laminated menu stuck between a stack of napkins and a jar of bar pretzels. "Oooh, you guys serve food here. I'm hungry." She plucked the menu up and studied it. "Damn, everything on here sounds amazing."
Brock jerked a thumb at Xavier, who was completely oblivious to everything going on. "That menu is Xavier's brainchild. The boy is a goddamned short-order wizard. Our food sales have skyrocketed through the roof since he took over the kitchen." He tossed an ice cube at Xavier, nailing him in the skull. "Hey, egghead! Tate and Aerie want some food."
Xavier rubbed his head where the ice cube had hit him, blinking at us as if realizing where he was, who he was, and what was going on. "Who?" His gaze went to the four of us, and his expression brightened. "Tate and Aerie? You guys are in town? Awesome!"
He left the booth, one of his odd little robot creations in his hand, and came over to us, giving both Tate and Aerie hugs. "Good to see you guys! How long are you in town for?"
Canaan and I exchanged glances. "I didn't know you were on hugging terms with them, Xav," I said.
"What? Oh. Tate and Aerie were in my advanced metalworking class during freshman year. They always stuck up for me when the other kids tried to start things."
He set his robot down on the bar, touched a button, and it started rattling around like a toy soldier; it was a three-legged thing, the legs made of little spikes attached to an egg-shaped body, with a little light-up LED smiley face on one side and a frowning face on the other. The three legs didn't quite provide enough stability for the thing to stay upright, so it tottered this way and that in drunken circles, always threatening to fall over but never quite doing so. It was a comical display, and even Cane and I, used to Xavier's robots, couldn't help chuckling.
Aerie clapped her hands. "OHMYGOD, that thing is the cutest! Where'd you get it, Xavier?"
He flushed a little. "Um, I made it? It's just this little thing I do in my spare time."
Brock snorted. "He's being modest. He makes and sells dozens of those per week. They're going for fifty bucks apiece, and he makes them for maybe five or ten bucks in parts. He's making a killing on them."
The robot finished its programmed circuit and went still, and Aerie pressed the button to make it start up again, giggling as it toddled around.
She glanced up at Xavier. "Seriously? You made this? That is so cool! I knew you'd do something amazing. You came up with some amazing stuff in metalworking class."
"You were in advanced metalworking your freshman year?" I asked.
Xavier shrugged. "I got into it in middle school, and my teacher from the middle school transferred to the high school for my freshman year, so he let me into the advanced class, since he knew I was good enough for it."
I then turned to Tate and Aerie. "And you guys stuck up for him?"
Tate tossed a peanut from the jar on the bar into her mouth. "We've known Xav since he was a baby. He's the sweetest kid ever, he didn't deserve to be bullied the way he was, and we weren't about to let that happen if we could help it. So, yeah, we used our status as the cool kids to shut down the bullying."
Canaan leaned forward to meet my gaze. "Did you know Xavier was bullied in high school? I didn't."
I shook my head. "News to me." I glanced at Xavier. "How come you never said anything to us? We would have gladly kicked some asses."
Xavier rolled his eyes. "You guys were completely oblivious to anything and everything that didn't concern girls and your band." He leaned between Tate and Aerie to snag a handful of peanuts. "Besides, it was just the way things were. If you guys, or Luce, or Bast, or any of you started stomping around like ogres, kicking the ass of everyone who bullied me, the whole damn town would have black eyes and bloody noses."
"You make it sound like everyone bullied you," I said.
Xavier outright laughed at this. "News flash, Cor: I kind of stick out, and always have. I was talking by eight months, and reading by two, but didn't walk until I was well past one. I taught myself basic algebra in third grade out of Bast's textbook while he was working for Dad. I memorized The Iliad in English in eighth grade, and in the original Greek in tenth. I also taught myself to read and write in Latin in tenth grade, and by ninth grade I was corresponding with an advanced mathematics professor from MIT so I could get access to equations that actually challenged me.
"I'm not normal. I can do all that, read and write and speak fluently in classical Greek and Latin, do advanced math that ninety percent of the world can't do, but dealing with people? Forget about it. I don't know what to say, or how to act. I still miss basic social cues all the time. I copied you t
wo--" he gestured at Canaan and me, here, "--in the way you dress and your haircut so I'd stand out less in terms of appearance. I even got these tattoos because I thought yours were cool. But I'm still hopelessly clueless. And that's after living on my own down in Cali, learning to take care of myself. In high school? I was so caught up in teaching myself things even the teachers didn't know that I'd forget to shower, forget to eat. Getting bullied was...god, it was inevitable. Especially in a tiny little town like this, where the only way in or out is by boat or seaplane. I'd stand out growing up anywhere, but here?" He waved a hand.
"Tate and Aerie were literally the only people who ever stuck up for me. And I never told anyone about it because it was just my burden to bear. You couldn't be there to protect me all the time, so I figured I might as well just get used to dealing with it on my own."
I shook my head. "That makes me feel like a shitty brother."
"I made it. I'm fine." He patted me on the shoulder. "I hid it so you wouldn't know. All of you." He laughed. "Funny thing is, since we've all moved back to Ketchikan, I've had similar conversations with just about everyone. I guess I was pretty successful at hiding it, huh?"
I glanced at the girls. "Well, thank you for sticking up for him back then."
Aerie waved a hand dismissively. "No one deserves to be bullied, but especially not sweet kids like Xavier."
"Plus," Tate said, "He always helped us with our math homework."
Xavier laughed. "By helped, you mean I did it for you."
Tate shrugged. "You were the only reason we passed tenth-grade math. Honestly, Mrs. Hendersen couldn't figure out why we'd do so bad on tests, but our homework was always perfect."
"She had to have suspected," Aerie said. "It just doesn't make any sense. It seems so obvious."
"Without solid proof, though, what could she do about it?" Tate said. "He would talk us through the answers so we could write them down ourselves, so the handwriting was always ours."
Xavier shook his head, chuckling. "You guys really did suck at math." He glanced at Tate and then Aerie in turn. "So. You guys want some food, huh?"
"YES!" Tate and Aerie shouted simultaneously.
Xavier laughed. "Wow, okay. So what do you want?"
Badd Luck Page 6
