She licked the side of his neck in tickling strokes, ran her hands over the huge hard expanse of his chest. When she dared to meet his eyes they appeared black with desire.
“Matthew, I need you inside me,” she whispered, her own limbs shaking now, and he moved over her so fast she gasped, ripping down his pants and her soft old pajama bottoms with one hand, the other tight around her waist. She bit his chin sharply as his fingers sought her and then slid deep, stroked her inside and out, until she was limp and panting, ready to beg him to enter her fully.
But he teased her still, bringing her almost to climax with his plundering fingers, while she clung to his neck, tasting him with the tip of her tongue, until his own breathing was ragged and harsh, and she couldn’t wait another moment.
“Please, Matthew…” she groaned, but he held himself back with determination, a small, rational part of his brain making him whisper, “Can we do this without protection?”
She smiled against his neck, her breasts crushed flat against his chest; he was sweet to think of that, and she certainly hadn’t given it consideration. His touch was too overwhelming, it blocked out any sensibility she possessed. She looked back into his eyes, reached up and wrapped one hand tightly around the incredible hardness near her right thigh.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “My period just ended, and I’m on the pill. We can most certainly do this.”
His dimples flashed for an instant before he shifted their bodies and slid fully inside with one stroke, gripping her hips hard enough to imprint images of his fingers. She wrapped her legs around him and clung for dear life as he pumped into her, until her body was singing with the intensity of the rhythm, ready to explode, and then he deliberately slowed his movements.
Matthew clamped his teeth against her right shoulder, panting too, and whispered, “Not yet,” but in the next moment he was pounding into her body again. After the third time of taking her almost there, she was crying out against his neck, and he meant to keep going, but the top of his head would surely blow off…and despite nearly seeing stars, he managed to keep the firm pace until he felt Bryce shudder, gasping his name as she came all over him.
Long minutes later he lifted his face and kissed the corner of her mouth. She managed a small smile, cradling his head against herself. And she took that moment as a benediction, a blessing, and told herself it would have to be enough.
***
Later, in her bed in the upstairs guest room, Bryce curled her legs up to her chest and tipped her face against her bent knees, fully beginning to realize how amputated she felt without Matthew beside her. When he was near, he filled her senses with desire and awe and joy…and when she was without him, she now felt so very alone.
Matthew, she thought, hugging her knees hard. Oh God, it can never be enough. Nothing less than the rest of our lives could ever be enough.
Chapter Ten
Rose Lake, Minnesota – Thursday, June 22, 1995
Bryce had yet to speak to her mother or Wade, for that matter, and one of the two, at least, would be expecting her back sometime this afternoon. Erica had been overjoyed at breakfast, as the kids ate heaping amounts of scrambled eggs and cheese, plates of peanut-butter toast, as though to make up for yesterday’s dearth. Wilder and Matthew were once again already up and gone before Bryce and the kids ate, giving Bryce time to compose herself and give Erica the news that she would like to stay a little longer. She said at least another week.
Erica grinned, said, “I hope by that you mean at least until our anniversary party next week, or even the Fourth of July!” and Evelyn and Cody whooped. Emma was a little less enthusiastic, saying only, “That’s cool, now you can come swimming with us today at the beach.” Erica piled more eggs on Bryce’s plate and added, “Honey, you can have a little vacation here. Hang out on the beach, take a few nature walks, let the kids and Matty show you around. Do you have enough clothes? Throw whatever into that hamper by the basement door there,” indicating with a spatula, and things seemed to be out of Bryce’s hands.
After breakfast Evelyn asked, “Hey, Bryce, do you need a swimsuit? I think one of mine might fit.”
Evelyn lent her a navy blue bikini bordered with a row of cheerful embroidered daisies, strapless and yet far less skimpy than anything Bryce owned at home. It fit surprisingly well, and she pulled on her jean shorts over the bottom, slung her hair up into a high knot on the top of her head. It was a glistening sunny day, the air hot and sticky, and Bryce felt as though a radiant glow was trying to push out through her chest. Her thoughts returned again and again to the night before, her stomach swirling with butterflies, her lips tipping into joyous smiles, until she caught herself and tried to damper things a little. Besides, there was one other thing she had to do, and the thought wiped her face clean of any contentment.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Bryce told Evelyn, who was waiting to drive her to the Pull Inn on the golf cart. “I have to call home quick.”
“Okay!” Evelyn called as she hauled a loaded cooler out the porch door, letting it crack shut behind her. Bryce dialed the familiar number with wooden fingers, praying that Wade wouldn’t answer, that he’d be at work right now…
She blew a breath of pure relief when the machine picked up. She said, trying for nonchalance, “Hey, Wade, things up here are fine. I won’t be home now until later this month. I decided to stay a while longer and get to know my family here. Okay? You can call me,” she felt compelled to add. And the moment he did, she would make a clean break. Dammit. It wasn’t fair to him. She rattled off the number Evelyn had written on the notepad by the phone a moment earlier, then hung up.
She meant to dial Michelle next, but when the ringing phone was picked up in Oklahoma seconds later, Tammy’s familiar voice chirped, “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me,” she told Trish’s older sister.
“Bryce! Are you home? Trish has been missing the shit out of you.”
“Not exactly…I decided to stay in Minnesota a little longer. Is Trish there?”
“No, honey, she’s at work. I’ll tell her you called, okay?”
“Thanks, Tam.”
Tonight, I will call Mom tonight, she promised herself. Wade would have been the one to pick her up at the bus station anyway, not Michelle. She doubted her mother even realized it was Thursday and that the southbound bus she should have been on was even due this afternoon.
“You coming?” Evelyn called from the porch, and Bryce went.
***
The Pull Inn was bustling, just the way it had been on Tuesday when Bryce had taken the grand tour with Riley. He was currently making what Erica called “trail repairs”: fixing holes, clearing brush or fallen logs from the paths that wound throughout the campground and up into the nearby bluffs.
“We’re only technically responsible for our acreage,” Erica explained. “But Daniel always liked to keep the main trails clean, even the ones that meander off of our property.”
“Uncle Matty said to bring you to the beach,” Cody told Bryce after she’d helped Evelyn unload the coolers from the golf cart. “He said you haven’t even seen it yet.”
“He’s right, I haven’t,” Bryce told the little guy, and he was happy to grasp her hand and tug her in the direction of the lake.
“Honey, have fun, relax today,” Erica told her, and blew a kiss as they left.
Cody bounded ahead, but the trail to the beach was unmistakable; the sounds of many people splashing around in the lake reached her ears through the masses of tree trunks that the path curved through. Rose Lake appeared as a glimmering blue jewel, sparkling with sunlight and bobbing with the sleek heads of about 10 thousand kids and the adults trying to keep them in line. Bryce saw Matthew immediately, dressed in bright green swim trunks and a battered hat, nothing else. Her belly tightened, low, to see his lean, muscly torso, his huge shoulders, the perfect tapered V of his upper body and lanky arms. A whistle dangled around his neck, and she thought about how she had pressed
her lips against the exact same spot last night, had slipped her legs around his waist and held tight, had scraped her fingernails against his head and…
He looked up then, over the swarming, laughing crowd and tipped his head, giving her that effortless grin. He briefly caught the brim of his hat between the fingertips of his right hand, tipping it at her the way a cowboy in an old movie would, and then he turned back to the family who was waiting to rent a canoe, angling his clipboard so the father could sign something.
Cody was running off to join Emma and a group of other kids about the same age, and Bryce would have walked directly to Matthew’s side and surely given in to her desperate urge to bite the side of his neck and press her palm against the slim trail of dark hair that led from his navel and disappeared into the top of his trunks…
“Hey, Bryce!” Debbie was saying, shaking Bryce back to reality. Riley’s twin caught her arm in a friendly way and led her to the far side of the beach, where her umbrella stand was set up for business. She observed, “You need a towel, huh?” and proceeded to find one and pass it to Bryce. After spreading it on the sand beside Debbie’s, Bryce said, “Thanks. I didn’t even think to bring one.”
Debbie, who was blessed with very large breasts and clad in a shiny pink bikini, plopped unceremoniously onto her own towel and indicated the other with her left elbow. She slipped sunglasses from the top of her head to her face, then tipped her chin up into the brilliant sun and opened a white bottle of sunblock.
“This is such a great job in the summer,” Debbie said, smiling at her. Bryce slipped off her shorts and lowered herself to the striped towel, laying back and closing her eyes against the glare. The sun was a warm caress all along her limbs, her belly. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d been allowed the luxury of just basking in it, taking a moment for herself in a place that was this lovely. Breathing deeply, she acknowledged, “You’re lucky.”
“So, has my brother been pestering the shit out of you?” Debbie asked her.
Bryce cracked one eye and peeked over at Debbie; she was applying a fresh coat of sunblock, rubbing her plump, freckled arms vigorously. Bryce replied, “No, he’s been really nice, actually.”
“He’s got a little bit of crush on you,” Debbie informed her. “He’d kill me for saying that.”
Bryce giggled a little. “It must be nice to have a brother and sister. I don’t have any, but I always wanted one.”
“Oh, it sucks sometimes, believe me. When we were little, Erica used to boss the shit out of us, and Riley and me fought like crazy. And his friends were the worst. Him and Matty have been best friends since we were all little. They used to tease me so bad because I went through a chubby phase in fifth grade.”
“They did?” The more Debbie spoke, the more she reminded Bryce of Stacy back home, and she felt a small, sharp pang for her friends, wishing that they could be beside her on this beach with its sand like granulated sugar and the sound of the lake lapping the shore. “That’s so mean. I can’t imagine Matthew being mean.”
Debbie giggled then. “He went through it just like all of them. But that was when he was still short…he didn’t get big until like the end of eighth grade, so I could still take him and Riley both. And they both had the squeakiest voices! Ah, the good old days.”
Bryce found herself aching for more. She wanted Debbie to tell her every last story about him, the way he had looked and acted, what kind of music and sports he liked and television he watched…but she knew it would seem strange for her to ask too much about her half-uncle.
“Hey there, lovely ladies,” someone said, and Bryce opened her eyes again, nearly blinding herself, and slowly made out a shirtless guy in swim trunks splattered with blue polka dots. She raised a hand to her forehead to see if she recognized him from the funeral as Debbie said, “Nice shorts, Nate.”
He bent at the waist and admired his thighs, then gave the girls a grin and strongly reminded Bryce of someone for a moment.
“Yeah, I know. I actually didn’t come over here to get ribbed, Debs, just to get introduced to your friend. Nate Ryan,” he added, and bent to offer his hand to Bryce.
She sat up and shook his hand, scraping loose strands of hair from her neck with the other. Nate was tanned as a leather jacket, with black hair, a black goatee and a firm grip. Debbie said belatedly, “Nate, this is Bryce Mitchell, Erica and Wilder’s niece.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Nate went on, holding her hand just a second longer than necessary. Over his right shoulder Bryce could see Matthew at the boat rental shack, talking animatedly with a different family, using both hands, one still clutching the clipboard, to gesture as he spoke. Her heart kindled and glowed just watching him across the beach.
“You, too,” she told Nate, casually drawing her hand away.
Debbie said with affectionate sarcasm, “We’re having a conversation here, Nate,” and he shook his head in simulated exasperation and said, “Fine then, I’ll see you two around. Bryce, great to meet you. Will you be in Rose Lake for the whole summer?”
“Maybe,” she replied, going for noncommital.
As Nate walked away, Debbie informed her, “There are more Ryans in town than any other family. Nate was a year younger than me in school, and his brother Bailey a year older. Their uncle used to date Rae Taylor, who just moved back to town this week. She looks exactly how I want to look at 40.”
“She is pretty, isn’t she?” Bryce mused, picturing the small woman with the yellow sundress and golden-hazel eyes, the color of a tiger’s.
“Too bad about her divorce. I guess the asshole was cheating on her, and then ended up getting their condo for himself.”
“Ouch.”
“He wasn’t from around here,” Debbie continued, as though this statement explained it all. “Everyone thought she would end up marrying Jeremy Ryan, but then she moved away to Chicago to go to Northwestern and met her ex-husband.”
Bryce considered a moment, then decided, What the hell. She said, “I think her older brother used to date my mom back when.”
Debbie sounded genuinely surprised. “Bar, Jr.? No kidding?”
“Yeah. But I’m only speculating.”
“Could be. Bar is married to Nate’s aunt Leslie, and they have four kids. But I think they started dating after high school. What’s your mom’s name again?”
“Michelle. She moved away from here before I was born.” Bryce was oddly comforted to realize that Debbie didn’t have this information; probably it was no big deal around here, not after all this time.
“I only know a little, from Erica,” Debbie admitted. “She told me that your mom and Daniel had some sort of falling out years ago, but that no one really knew what it was about, even Wilder.”
Bryce pressed her fingertips to her eyes for a moment, causing blood-red circles to momentarily bloom behind her eyelids, then said, “Honestly, Debbie, I don’t even know, and she’s my mother.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, our mother said once that she wished she had married a traveling circus performer named Kirk, who she met back in the sixties. She said all these years she could have been traveling from town to town and riding horses bareback instead of raising three ungrateful children, or some shit,” Debbie snorted, and both girls laughed.
“Wilder’ll want to talk to you,” Debbie went on. “Erica said he talks about Michelle a lot, always wanted to try and visit her, but she never wanted him to come. You’re from Oklahoma, right?”
Bryce nodded and said, “Yeah, the shittiest part of it, too. I’d never seen a real lake before this week.”
“Oh, honey, have the kids take you out on a canoe! Or Matty. He knows every little nook and cranny,” Debbie said, and Bryce smiled to herself.
“Speaking of the devil,” she added, and Bryce opened her eyes to see Matthew headed their way now, and her heart sent blood backpedaling furiously through her body. She lifted herself to her elbows and it took nearly all of her willpower to keep a huge,
dopey grin from her face. A little one, that was all right…that wouldn’t look strange. He didn’t take his eyes from her as walked over and then dropped to a crouch near their bare toes, lightly hooked his left hand around his right wrist, balanced his forearms on his bent knees, his huge, sand-dusted shoulders catching the sun and throwing it back in little sparks. His clipboard dangled from his right hand, refracting red light onto the ground at his feet.
“Thought I better come say hey,” he said to them, tearing his gaze from Bryce to include Debbie in the equation. His own lips seemed unable to keep from smiling. Debbie huffed and said, “Sternhagen, go and get over yourself already!”
Matthew laughed then, tipping his head back and letting his army hat fall onto the sand behind him. “Deb, whad’dya mean?”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh and flipped to her belly. With the absence of her observing eyes, Matthew let his own slide over Bryce, lingered on her belly and then lower, met her hot gaze and winked. She shook her head at him, teasing, and then fast as a flicker of heat lightning, he stroked the inside of her ankle with the tip of his finger. Bryce let her own gaze run over his bare chest, bare feet and the vee of his bent legs, felt her cheeks and lips and nipples blaze with desire. Grinning, he said, “You two should come and rent a canoe later, or something.”
From her belly, voice muffled, Debbie returned, “Yeah, maybe.”
“See you later,” he said, and forced himself to get up and head back across the beach. Bryce watched him walk away with her blood humming; he looked back once as he resettled his floppy-brimmed hat over his dark hair, and she thought she would die waiting for tonight and a second alone. Halfway across the beach, Nate Ryan lobbed a volleyball at him, which he caught with his free hand, and Nate yelled, “Sterno, you up for a game?”
“Maybe in an hour or so,” Matthew called back, but about a half dozen other people joined Nate at the net, and the morning passed in a haze of laughter and sunlight, which Bryce stored jealously away, for the time very soon, far too soon, when she wouldn’t have it anymore.
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