Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance

by Shaye Marlow

  Suzy grabbed me just before I made the stairs down to the dock. “Where are you going?” she asked. As if that weren’t completely apparent.

  “I’m leaving!”

  “Helly, you can’t drive your boat like this. You could lose your guiding license. You know that.”

  My shoulders slumped. I did know that.

  “I can take her home,” said that familiar voice from behind me. “Before she makes anyone else cry.”

  We both turned to look at Gary. I opened my mouth to give him the reaming he deserved, and Suzy slapped me right in the boob. “Ow,” I said, rubbing it.

  “That would be wonderful,” Suzy said, beaming up at him. Obviously she was among his conquests; looking at him all googly-eyed, trusting her drunken best friend to his protection, and tit-slapping me when I was about to verbally fillet him.

  Hadn’t I told her he murdered my blueberries? The man was a killer, and she was sending me alone into the dark of night with him. Just because my dog liked him? Oh wait, he was the son of a family friend, too.

  And he was hot—that was probably the real reason, right there. I wanted to tell her that hotness did not good people make, as evidenced by Brett, but she was still grinning up at Gary like an idiot. She probably wouldn’t even hear me. Or she might slap me again.

  I dropped my hand away from my boob when I realized he was watching me rub it. I grimaced.

  We haggled over whose boat we were going to take, and I finally stumped into his. He’d had to park over on the shore, too, and I grinned as I my boots left big clods of silt and mud on his shiny silver decking. I dropped into the seat in the front farthest from him.

  Suzy waved from the shore. “I’ll drop your boat off later tonight,” she called.

  I raised a hand, hoping she’d understand it meant, ‘I’m kinda miffed at you, but I love you even though you give my neighbor googly eyes. But don’t do it again. And thank you for being awesome and dropping off my boat. Hussy.’

  I think she mighta understood. Or maybe it was just my wet-cat expression. Either way, she laughed.

  Then Gary pushed us off, and moved past me to his console in the back. I was hoping his outboard wouldn’t start—even though that wish made no sense, considering we were now free-floating and starting to drift downstream—but it roared smoothly to life with a turn of his key. Key-start ignition, steering wheel, cushy seats. Fancy.

  I grunted, eyeing his steering wheel. I had a tiller myself, a handle connected directly to the engine and jet, which offered more responsive steering for going up rocky, winding creeks. But he was a newb, so he probably didn’t know that. He’d learn. Or he’d die. Either would be acceptable, but I knew which one I preferred.

  I was facing the stern to keep the wind and blowing grit out of my eyes, but I avoided making eye contact, and I didn’t speak to him. The roar of the boat motor was such that conversation would have been difficult, and I really didn’t want to talk to him anyway.

  He had a ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, but I still saw them flick to me a few times. There was a good ten minutes of roaring silence as we skimmed along.

  After I realized my initial grumpiness was unmaintainable, I found myself trying really, really hard not to think about what his naked body would feel like pressed against mine. I couldn’t seem to pry my gaze from his hand, where it wrapped around his steering wheel. I could easily imagine it gripping my hip as he drove into me. Or cupping and teasing my breast. I shuddered. God, that had been good.

  When he nosed into our little slough, there was an unfamiliar boat in the parking spot we’d been squabbling over the past week. Gary cut the engine, and we slid in beside it.

  I was looking around for some clue as to who the boat belonged to and why it was there, when three men stepped out of the shadows of the trail. The light wasn’t all it could have been, but it was enough to see they weren’t from around here. Their clothes were too nice, too light-colored, and they had hair product and tattoos and the glint of jewelry—women barely wore jewelry around here, let alone men (and don’t even get me started on hair product). One was even wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and no one around here would be caught dead in a Hawaiian shirt.

  They were big guys, and as they started down the beach toward me, they looked menacing and thuggish.

  Because I was drunk, I climbed out of the boat onto the beach anyway.

  One elbowed the other, pointing at me. I didn’t know what that meant because I didn’t speak thug.

  “That’s her,” the elbower said in English.

  “It’s me,” I sang. “And who the hell are you?”

  They came closer, fanning out and moving toward me with a casual slowness that I would have found suspicious if I’d been sober. But I wasn’t, and every time I blinked, it seemed like they teleported a foot or two. Which I found kinda funny.

  “You shot down our drone,” the one in the middle said.

  I frowned. Ah yes, I guess I had shot down a drone. I cast a glance back at Gary. I’d thought it was his. But I guess it had been theirs. So the way I saw it, I had two choices: I could apologize, or I could get belligerent.

  I took a step toward them. “You were spying on me,” I accused.

  The one in the middle shrugged, looking unrepentant. He had an expression on his face that I instantly hated, one that said he knew I was a buzzed blonde, and he very much wanted to take advantage of that.

  He raked his gaze down over me. “You looked real good in a bikini,” he said. They closed in another step, pushing past the edge of my casual-acquaintance bubble. “But now we’re missing a drone. How are you gonna make that up to us? Hmm?”

  He was leering, I realized. They were all leering. This had somehow turned into a bad situation.

  The one to my right reached for me, and Gary caught his wrist. I hadn’t realized he’d come up behind me, and I don’t think they’d really noticed him at all.

  But now the one with a captured wrist peered up under the brim of Gary’s ball cap. His dark eyes narrowed. “Hey,” he said, “you’re—”

  As he was speaking, he reached for Gary. Gary took exception to this, and drove the heel of his hand up into the guy’s face. The thug toppled.

  The other two leaped forward, knocking me aside as they rushed past. I spun as I fell, and wound up doing a butt-plant in the sand. The spinning made me dizzy as hell, but I’d landed facing Gary and the thugs.

  He was beating them up. My vision kept oozing sideways, but I was able to gather that much. Gary was just a blur of movement with quick, hard jabs of his hands and elbows. I heard grunts. Thuds. In just moments, Gary was the last man standing. At his feet, the men groaned.

  He bent over them, starting to pat them down. He came up with a gun, and this was the part my alcohol-soaked brain couldn’t quite comprehend. Like some magic trick, the dark metal sort of clicked and slid apart in his hands. Then he tossed the parts away and repeated the performance on the next guy’s gun, and the next.

  I shook my head, sure I was seeing things. It didn’t surprise me that they all had guns, but what Gary had done with them… Guns didn’t just fall apart, and they certainly didn’t fall apart in the hands of some millionaire city-slicker. ‘Cuz that’s what Gary was. Right?

  He looked up and saw me sitting in the sand, and his lips twitched. “You think you can drive a four-wheeler in your condition?” he asked.

  I scoffed. I wasn’t that drunk. “Sure,” I said, crawling to my feet. I brushed off my damp ass and eyed the thugs. Gary’d only had a few moments with them, but they only looked half-conscious at best.

  “Why don’t you go ahead on up to the cabin,” Gary suggested. “I wanna have a talk with these three.”

  I met his eyes. “I thought the drone was yours.”

  This time he outright smiled at me. “I thought as much.” He jerked his chin toward the four-wheeler. “Go. We’ll have a talk about you shooting my property later.”

  I grunted, and managed to swing
a leg up over the seat. When had putting the four-wheeler in gear gotten so complicated? I got it rolling in the right direction, and steered it carefully up along the trail.

  I’d made it maybe halfway to my place when realization hit me. My thumb slipped off the gas, and the four-wheeler puttered to a halt on the darkening trail.

  My neighbor, Gary, had just taken down three armed men. With his bare hands. In seconds.

  I was seriously, seriously beginning to doubt he was a school teacher.

  A flash of movement caught my eye, and I looked up to see Mocha streaking up the trail toward me, a big doggie smile on her face. “Heya girl,” I said. She butted her head against my leg, and I leaned down to pet her.

  That’s how I found out how surprisingly comfortable it was resting my cheek against the gas cap. I didn’t really decide to take a nap. My eyes just sort of drifted shut, and things went dark for what felt like just a moment before a concerned voice woke me.

  “You okay? Helly?”

  I sat up, looking around bleary-eyed. Gary was jogging along the trail toward me, though he slowed when I straightened.

  “I thought you were driving home,” he said, his voice warm with bottled laughter.

  The four-wheeler was still running. And in gear, I noticed with a thread of embarrassment. “I got distracted,” I said.

  “Scoot forward a bit,” he said, stopping so he was standing next to my boot.

  “I can drive,” I grumbled.

  “Uh-huh. You just fell asleep while driving. You are drunk. Now scoot forward; I’ll drive you home.”

  I scooted. Stupid alcohol, making me all agreeable and shit. I made a note to blame it later.

  He swung up to straddle the seat behind me. My nipples hardened, and my breath came a little bit shorter. I couldn’t help it. The man was hot, and now I knew he was dangerous, which only made him hotter. I was sitting between his legs, and then his arms came up to either side of me, caging me in.

  “So you talked to them?” I asked, trying to keep my mind off the feel of the man behind me.

  His breath was warm against my hair as he answered. “Yes. They won’t bother you again.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I could barely think past… him.

  He didn’t intentionally crowd me, but as we moved down the trail, bouncing over roots, his thighs brushed mine. The spots where we occasionally touched felt overly warm and hypersensitive, the air between us charged. The vibrations of the engine weren’t helping at all, and I actually felt like whimpering as we rocked over a big rut. Heat radiated from his solid body, beckoning mine.

  I finally leaned back against him with a sigh, giving in to it. I was drunk, right? I was allowed to have no self-control. I turned my head until my cheek pressed against his neck, and just breathed him in. He smelled like shaving cream or aftershave today, a spicy male scent that had my head doing a lazy spin.

  The heat was growing, and sexy thoughts started to flash through my head. I was finally starting to admit it to myself; I wanted him. At this point, though, my pride was such that I wouldn’t throw myself at him. But if he went after me….

  We were alone, riding back to my cabin, where I had a bed. And I was drunk, and easy, and I realized I really, really wanted him to take advantage of that.

  By the time he steered us into my little drive, I was breathless with anticipation. He killed the engine, and then swung down from behind me.

  Pussy throbbing, feeling his eyes on me, I dismounted.

  He followed me to the stairs. As I pushed through the door, he started up after me.

  This is it, I thought, turning to look at him.

  Gary was very close. Standing on that top step, he was a dark presence filling my doorway. His eyes were enigmatic, the planes of his face utterly masculine in the shadow of his hat. I got caught up in admiring his strong jaw, the generous curve of lips I hadn’t yet tasted. My gaze drifted lower. I wanted to shove his jacket off his solid shoulders, peel that T-shirt off him like a candy wrapper.

  One of his arms lifted, bracing him against the doorframe. Something about that move, the way he crowded me, made me tighten with aching, breathless desire. Helpless against it, wanting him to take me now, I swayed toward him.

  “Good night,” he said. And then he pulled the door shut in my face.

  I was still blinking into the darkness when he rapped on it. My heart jumped in my chest. Had he changed his mind? I reached for the knob.

  “Lock this,” I heard.

  Well… fuck.

  Chapte

  r Seven

  I’d had four days to stew. That’s not all I did, of course. I went to work each morning, I got another story sent off, I had dinner with Suzy, and I even sent my brothers a grocery list.

  But I found myself glancing frequently out my window toward the neighbor’s cabin. I wondered what he did for a living. I wondered where he’d learned to fight. But most of all, I wondered where on earth this overpowering attraction to him had come from.

  I couldn’t even write the steamy scenes he’d so inspired. Instead, on this sunny day off, in the last hours I had to myself before my brothers crashed into my life, I sat there at my desk, staring across the lake at his stupid cabin.

  For the last four days, I’d thought about retaliation for the water glass incident. I’d planned about a dozen different ways of getting him back. But I knew, after him letting himself into my house and watching him manhandle my attackers, that it was a bad idea. The man was dangerous, and it seemed like neither of us had brakes. The situation would surely escalate, like in those mob movies. People would die, and someone would find a bloody moose’s head on their sheets.

  I wouldn’t put it past my diabolically good-looking neighbor to climb in through my second-story window to consummate some devious plot. Actually, most of my fantasies of him crawling in my window like Edward Cullen—a sex scene I’d written before he’d broken in and read my stuff, dammit—didn’t involve the kind of moisture that came out of a glass. And, unlike Edward the sparkly vamp, my fantasy lover wasn’t hesitant and full of teenage angst. No, he had pitch black hair and a sexy dent in his chin, and he jumped on my supine form, pinning me to the mattress, and latched directly onto my neck.

  I gasped, hand rising to cover a phantom hickey. See?!! This was why I couldn’t write, couldn’t think, couldn’t do much of anything, really. Pent-up sexual frustration at its worst. My pussy’d been burning for days.

  Because of him. I gnawed on my lip, still staring across the water.

  What was he doing over there? I’d heard hammering noises, had been hearing them all day. The faint rasp of a saw…. I closed my eyes, imagining him sprawled in a sunbeam swirling with motes of sawdust, lying back on his elbows on an unfinished floor in nothing but an old pair of Carhartts.

  This situation couldn’t continue. I was obsessed; absolutely, irrevocably in lust with my evil neighbor.

  So what were my options?

  1: I could kill him. It was an option I’d already explored at length. I had a foolproof plan for body disposal, but he was rich, and I knew he had friends. People would investigate, and I was the only suspect—they’d probably find blood spatters, powder burns on my fingers, footprints, and my gun. I’d watched CSI; I knew how this worked.

  And then there was my conscience, the potential jail time, and the fact that I’d be robbing the world of a gorgeous specimen of masculinity. Albeit a loud one.

  2: I could ignore him. Yeah, that wasn’t working, not at all.

  The only choice left to me was, 3: Have sex with him. Hopefully over, and over, and over again, wild, sweaty, screaming monkey sex that put the ramblings of my sex-starved mind and shaking, feverish, key-stabbing fingers to shame. Dirty, dirty shame up against a wall, on some stairs, in the mud, in a canoe, in a frickin’ tree if we could manage it.

  I shuddered, trying to find a more comfortable position in my chair. The problem was, there wasn’t one that didn’t apply pressure—but not n
early enough!—to my raging lady-boner.

  So, sex. But how should I go about it? Having been born and raised in Alaska, and having spent the last four years of my life in the woods, I was socially awkward. I knew it, probably everyone I met knew it. So, option 3A: I could put on makeup and stick out my chest and made small talk and try to flirt like a normal person… but I’d probably just look and sound ridiculous.

  Option 3B: Just walk over there, and grab him. Yeah, that seemed more my style. It would take guts, though. And I probably shouldn’t bring my gun.

  But what would I say? ‘We should fuck’? ‘Hey neighbor, I was feeling horny and decided to drop by with some cream…’ or ‘Your cock felt delicious against me. I want it inside me. Now.’

  I cringed a little, knowing those words would never actually pass my lips. My heroine’s, sure. But mine? Way, way too forward.

  How about the simpler ‘Let’s be fuck buddies’? See, that felt pretty good. Fuck buddies, I could do. I’d just tell him not to talk to me unless he was growling dirty nothings in my ear. No conversation outside of sex. I didn’t want to talk to him; I just wanted his body.

  It could work, I thought. I could be an adult about this. Whether he could remained to be seen, but really, as long as he could stay hard, and keep his mouth shut, we’d be in business.

  It could work. I pushed back from my desk, mulling over the logistics. I was gonna go over there, but…

  What to wear? My clothes were all ratty and baggy and stained, except for my fisherwoman getup, but I certainly wasn’t wearing that.

  I had one casual flowy skirt that Suzy had given me and that I hardly ever wore because it was impractical. Mosquitos would bite the hell out of my legs in that skirt, and I just knew one day I’d get it caught in my generator belts. But it seemed like a good choice for seduction. And nothing underneath, I decided. All of my underwear were ugly, and bare would make for quicker access.

  Speaking of bare…should I shave? Shit. He’d been rubbing up against me the other day and he hadn’t complained. But he hadn’t been down close to my legs. I didn’t have a lot in the way of body hair, and what little I had was blonde, but if you looked really, really close… Ugh.