Mine for the Summer

by Larissa Vine

  Tess walked through the living room into the kitchen. Its sundeck backed onto a garden. Rain dripped from the canopy of trees. Wow, it was so quiet. It was hard to believe that she was in the city.

  On the island lay a note written in flowery cursive. It was from Granny P. The note had feeding instructions for Widget, plus the number for a vet “just in case”. Granny P went on to tell Tess to treat the house as her own and urged her to have fun.

  Tess fingered the creamy paper. Too right, she'd have fun. There had to be legions of sexy men out there somewhere. She'd probably encounter them once the rain stopped.

  She yawned. The tiredness pushed against the back of her eye sockets. Her eyelids felt like lead. Tomorrow. The fun would start tomorrow. If she didn't do something quick, her eyes would shut by themselves.

  She fetched her suitcase from the front door and wheeled it through the living room, along a small corridor and into a powder blue bedroom. A lace doily stood on the nightstand beside a bowl of dried rose petals.

  The closet hung open. Tess glanced inside. Sweet Granny P had cleared some of the hangers for her to use. The top two drawers of the chest-of-drawers were also open and empty.

  Tess unzipped her case and hung her dresses in the wardrobe next to Granny P's floral blouses. She placed her underwear into one of the drawers. She'd brought lace thongs, just in case, and a peek-a-boo bra. From the bottom of the bag, she pulled out her trusty vibrator, James Wand.

  He had a license to thrill. She'd bought him from a sex shop for £50 after her break up with Matt. James had adjustable speeds and was an eye-watering ten inches long.

  Before she'd left England, she'd debated whether to risk taking him through customs. She knew that she would have died if the customs men had called her aside and had made her unpack her suitcase in front of them. But it had been worth it. He was here now, wasn't he? She laid him into the drawer and buried him under a soft heap of her bras and panties.

  She glanced back down at her case. Damn, she'd forgotten to bring her pajamas. She stripped out of her tracksuit pants and t-shirt. Then she took off her underwire bra. It was good to get out of that after a day. But she kept on her g-string. When she hopped into bed, the springs made a creaking sound.

  On the wall by the bed hung a painting of a ship. Its tattered sails were aloft as it crossed the boiling seas. Waves reared, cresting around the deck of the boat. Tess imagined the sailors on the ship, clinging white-knuckled to the mast as they muttered prayers up to the heavens.

  She shivered. The painting was creepy. Why did Granny P have it? Perhaps she came from a long line of fishing families. Maybe she had the sea in her blood.

  Tess sighed. She pulled the quilt and crocheted blanket up to her shoulders and shut her eyes. Finally, she allowed her body what it had been craving. She surrendered herself to sleep.

  Chapter Four

  She was below deck in the cabin of a ship. She could hear the rumble of the engine. Pirates surrounded her. They watched as their captain worked her.

  Rip. He pulled at the bodice of her dress with his calloused hands.

  Rip. Now her panties.

  She stood naked in the middle of them. She knew that all of them, to a man, wanted to fuck her.

  The captain produced a string of silky flags. He wound around her chest and over her breasts, pinning her arms to the sides of her body. Then, rather than doing a second loop with the flags, he changed tack. He ran them up her back, over her shoulder and down the front of her body. He moved the flags down between her legs and over her pussy. Tess made a show of struggling and squirming. But all the time, she kept wondering, did she really want to escape?

  The rumble of the engine grew louder.

  Plunk. A splash of water fell onto her face.

  Plunk. A second splash.

  She felt a lurch of panic. They were capsizing. Water was leaking through the gaps between the planks on the desk. She gasped and her eyes flew open.

  She lay, blinking, in the morning light. She wasn't in a pirate ship. She was in Granny P's bedroom.

  A cat—Widget—stood over her on the pillow. Its ears were cocked forward. Rumbles came from the depth of its belly.

  Plunk. Another bead of drool dripped from the end of Widget's whiskers. It fell into the corner of Tess's eye.

  Tess sat up and wiped it from her face. Then she studied Widget. She was black with white socks on all of her feet. Around her neck frothed a tuxedo of white fur. She was tiny too, so small that Tess wondered whether she'd been the runt of the litter. Considering her size, she had a surprisingly deep purr.

  "So you want breakfast, do you?" Tess asked, as she got out of bed.

  She walked toward the kitchen in her g-string. Widget followed. She kept winding around Tess's legs in figures-of-eight, and Tess was scared that she was going to trip her up.

  Tess reached the kitchen. She found some cat biscuits in the cupboard. As she emptied them into a bowl, Widget let out a series of insistent meows. Tess laid the bowl onto the tiles. Widget head-butted her out of the way and started to choke back the food. Tess watched her, smiling. So this was Widget, her friend for the summer.

  From behind Tess, someone cleared their throat. She gave a start and swiveled around. Her pulse jack-hammered. She tried to scream but couldn't. The sound was stuck in her throat.

  She stood face-to-face with a man. A tall man. He was in his thirties with dark, cropped hair. He wore a suit, which somehow made him even more sinister.

  They stood staring at one another, both seemingly paralyzed. Tess snapped to her senses first. Her hand flew up and covered her breasts.

  "Get out," she yelled. "You … you pervert."

  The man took a step toward her.

  Tess edged a step back.

  The man stepped forward again.

  Again, she stumbled back.

  He was speaking to her. A torrent of unintelligible words fell from his lips. Her pulse ratcheted even higher. She knew what would happen. She'd already fast-forwarded the video clip of the next few seconds of her life. She'd seen how the action would play out frame by horrible frame. Not only had she seen it but she'd felt it with every shred of her psyche.

  He would kept advancing ever forward and she would retreat ever back until he had her pinned against the kitchen counter. Trapped.

  Step.

  Retreat.

  Step.

  All too soon, it had come to pass. Tess felt the edge of the counter top pressing against her back. The man continued to speak. His words had a weird rhythm, a cadence. Through the jumble of the sounds, she caught something about a cat.

  Her pulse spiked. A cat? Not only was he dangerous and sex-crazed, he was also a nutter. He was going to hack her into pieces. When Granny P returned, she would find that her kitchen had been turned into a shrine to Tess's body parts. There would be Tupperware containers of Tess lined up along the counter.

  The scream that Tess had been working on came out of her mouth.

  "Arggh!" she screamed.

  "Will you listen to me, you crazy woman?" the man yelled back at her. "I'm the neighbor."

  Tess was about to scream again. Then she froze. The meaning of what he'd said began to trickle through her nerve endings to her brain.

  In a single, fluid movement, the man peeled off his suit jacket and put it over her shoulders, so that it covered her breasts.

  "I'm the neighbor." He had a southern Irish accent. "I live in the other half of the duplex. You're here to look after Widget, right?"

  Dumbstruck, Tess nodded.

  "I thought you were flying in tomorrow," the man continued. "Hey, you're trembling. I'm sorry."

  "Just go," Tess muttered.

  "I didn't mean to—"

  "Please. Go."

  The man opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. He nodded at Tess before turning. Several seconds later, Tess heard the front door click as it closed.

  She hurried through the house to the front door and bolted it from
the inside. She leaned, shaking, against the wall of the living room. Around her, the colors started to fade. The blue of the walls became less saturated as the adrenaline seeped out of her.

  Holy fuck.

  What had happened? She had made such an idiot of herself. She thought about the man. She was surprised that he was Irish. He was so dark that she'd guessed that he was Mediterranean, Italian perhaps. He was handsome, too. Model handsome. Like the rugged man in the shaving ads. She thought about his thumb rings. She loved thumb rings. She found them kinky.

  And there had been a moment, just before she'd yelled at him, when they'd been standing together seemingly frozen. His eyes had been locked on her g-string and she'd known right then that he'd wanted her to screw her senseless like the pirates had in her dream.

  Chapter Five

  Tess went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. She drank it down, and then she wandered around the house, picking up ornaments and putting them down again. She felt restless and couldn't settle.

  At last she gave up. She went back to the bedroom, marched over to the chest-of-drawers and took out James Wand. She switched him on to check that he was still working and that he hadn't been damaged during the flight. He made a high-pitched whining noise like the sound of an electric razor. Tess's breath quickened. She turned him off again.

  She was just about to lie down with him on the bed when she realized that she was wearing the man's suit jacket. It had a silky lining, and it smelt of his citrus aftershave.

  The doorbell chimed. Tess could guess who it was. She bet it was the man who'd returned to collect his jacket.

  "Coming," she called.

  She grabbed a dress from the closet and slid it on over her g-string. Then she rushed down the hall and peeled back the door.

  Sure enough, on the doorstep, stood the man, looking slightly sheepish.

  "Blast," Tess said. "I left your jacket in the bedroom."

  Her first impressions of him had been right, she realized. He had a dark, sinister beauty. He was the sort of man whom she'd avoid in a parking lot at night. The sort of man that her mother would have warned her about, which made him even hotter.

  Tess felt her nipples harden. She glanced down. Oh God. They stuck out through the cotton gauze of her dress like beads. The man was looking at them, too. When she caught him staring, he flushed and pretended to take a sudden interest in the doormat.

  "I'm sorry about earlier," he addressed the doormat. "Like I said, I didn't mean to startle you. I came to feed Widget. Patty's a rock star for her age, she really is. But I like to help out, you know. I change the washers on her tap, do a grocery run to Safeway, that kind of thing. You're here for the summer, right? Patty said that your name's Teresa."

  "It's Tess," Tess replied.

  The man looked up from the mat and smiled at her. The insides of Tess's stomach turned to liquid. Damn, his smile was attractive. Too attractive, she thought.

  "I'm Conner," he said. "Conner Ryan. Don't hesitate to knock if there's anything you need."

  As he put emphasis on the word, his dark eyes teased.

  Tess felt a blush spread up her neck.

  "Okay," she said. "Okay, I will. If there's anything I need."

  Conner shot her such a predatory look that she blushed even harder.

  "I'll just get your jacket," she muttered.

  She turned and fled down the corridor.

  All the way to the bedroom, she kept telling herself off. How could she have? How could she have said that to him? She'd stressed the word “need” so much that she'd practically sung it at him. How could she have been so brazen?

  She reached her bedroom. Conner's jacket lay on the bed next to James Wand. Tess was just about to pick it up when she heard footsteps behind her. Her heart thumped in her ribcage. She turned around. It was Conner.

  "Sorry for following you," he said. He didn't sound sorry at all.

  "That's okay," Tess said.

  She realized that she'd wanted him to follow her.

  She met his gaze. His eyes were the darkest that she'd ever seen. They were so dark that the irises were the same color as the pupils. They felt like holes that were sucking her in, and she wanted to fall into them, she really did. She wanted to drown in Conner.

  "Come here," Conner said softly. "You've got something in your hair."

  Tess took a step forward. He reached out toward her curls.

  Later that evening, when she thought back on the event, she wondered whether she'd really had had something in her hair or not. She never found out. Because the next thing she knew, he was kissing her.

  He parted her lips with his tongue and slipped his tongue inside her mouth. He tasted fresh like toothpaste. His tongue began to explore the roof of her mouth before it took a leisurely trip toward her tonsils. Tess kissed him back hard. She felt dizzy with longing. She'd forgotten that a mere kiss could be so powerful.

  They seemed to end the kiss together. It was as if they both came up for air at the same time. Tess looked down. She grinned. She could see the shape of Conner's erection pressing through the material of his trousers.

  He pointed at James Wand on the bed. "Was that what you were doing before I arrived?"

  She flushed. "He's called James Wand."

  Conner let out a bark of laughter. "James Wand, eh? So you think he's better than I will be?"

  "He might be," she said innocently.

  Conner frowned. "We'll see about that."

  Tess's breath quickened.

  He patted the edge of the bed. She sat down on the quilt. He knelt in front of her, lifted up her bare foot and nibbled the arch. Tess's nipples hardened. Wow, this was hot. No one had ever kissed the instep of her foot before.

  "James Wand can't do that," he said. "I bet it can't do this either."

  He put her big toe into his mouth and started to suck it, mouth fucking it. A groan fell from Tess's lips. Conner was way better than James Wand.

  Conner took her toe out of his mouth.

  "You like that, don't you?" His voice was like gravel. "I'm going to eat you out. I'm going to lick all of the cream out of your pussy."

  Tess felt like she was going to faint.

  Conner popped his index finger into his mouth. He took his finger out and touched the inside of her leg, just above her kneecap. Tess’s heart hammered. It seemed like all of the nerve endings in her body had become focused on just that one spot.

  With agonizing slowness, he traced the wet digit up the inside of her leg, climbing higher and higher toward her thigh. His finger left a tingly trail of coldness. It came to the top of her thigh. With a moan, she spread her legs wider. She felt like grabbing his hand and shoving his finger inside her. One finger. Two fingers. No, the whole hand. She imagined rocking against it and feeling the scrape of his knuckles.

  Conner touched the inside of her thigh. "I love this part of you. It feels like silk."

  She blushed.

  He took hold of the hem of her dress. In one motion, he pushed her dress up her legs.

  "Christ," he said, breathing heavily. "You're not wearing any panties."

  Tess bet that he was staring at her engorged pussy.

  He stood up. His erection pressed even harder against his trousers. It was like the supporting pole of a tent. God, he was big, Tess thought. He was going to stretch her real good. Through his shirt, she eyed the outline of his powerful chest.

  "Get onto the bed," Conner said. "I want you on your hands and knees."

  The submissive side of Tess, the girlish side, liked the fact that he was giving orders.

  She climbed onto the bed and positioned herself on all fours on the quilt. Conner walked behind her. He lifted up the bottom of her dress and hitched it over her hips. She was naked from the waist down, exposed. He blew on her slit. Tess made a mewling sound.

  "We're going to play a game," he said. "I'm going to spell out a word on you with my tongue. Letter by letter on your pussy."

  "And if
I get a letter wrong, you'll slap me?" she said.

  She heard the catch of Conner's breath.

  She felt his tongue touch her sex. Her heart thudded. She wanted him to lick her, to give the soft, hesitant little licks of a kitten.

  Instead, he moved his tongue down her pussy in a straight line. Tess's breath wavered.

  "Was it an I?" she asked.

  "Very good," Conner murmured.

  Tess stayed on her hands and knees, waiting for him to lick her again. Go on, she thought. Do it. Why wasn't he licking her? He should be licking her. But his timing was immaculate. He held off, letting her desperation spiral.

  Juice dribbled from her and ran down the inside of her leg. She'd never been so wet. She was so full of cream that when he fucked her, she was sure that his dick would slide straight in.

  Holy hell. Conner's tongue was on her again.

  He stopped. "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "What letter was it?"

  "Oh." Tess was so geed up that she'd forgotten about the game. "Was it an … L?"

  Slap. Conner’s hand made contact with the cheek of her ass. She flinched. The slap was firm, but it wasn't brutal. Her skin sang.

  He touched the spot where he'd spanked her and caressed it to make it better.

  "Try again," he said.

  "An A?" Tess braced herself for the slap.

  Slap. Fire exploded across Tess's other bum cheek. She knew the routine. Now for the caress. Sure enough, it came.

  "Try again," he ordered.

  Tess had no idea what the letter was. She was going to have to go through the whole blooming alphabet, possibly all twenty-six letters of it. Maybe she should start with the vowels. The word probably had to be at least one more vowel.

  She heard the bleep of an incoming text message. It must have come from Conner's phone. Her blood turned cold. Suddenly, she was back in La Grenouille again staring at Matt's phone and seeing that photograph, the one that had blown her life apart.