And maybe more purpose outside of his daughter, my ex-friend.
“SP…” I kicked her bed. “…time to get up.”
She moaned and then shot me a death glare. “Did you just kick my bed?”
I smiled and kicked it again. “Think of me as your personal alarm clock, slightly less annoying and better looking.”
“We sure about the less-annoying part?” Her voice was heavy with sleep. She moved to a sitting position and hugged her knees to her chest. “Tell me you have perks as director. Tell me you have an espresso machine or instant coffee. I’ll chew beans, Marlo.”
“Wow, desperation looks good on you.” I ruffled her hair.
Then got slapped.
And realized that even though we were at ceasefire…
Even though I knew she was off limits for now…
I hadn’t woken up that happy in a really long time.
She would never trust me if I tried anything.
I wanted her to come to me.
I wanted her to tell me she couldn’t take this thing between us.
Most of all, I didn’t just want her to bare her heart.
I wanted her fucking soul.
And I refused to settle for the parts she gave others when I knew there were parts she kept for herself. I saw glimpses of it that morning.
And like all good addicts, I needed a bigger hit.
I flipped the switch on my Keurig and grabbed a pod, only to feel her breathing heavily behind me as if she’d just run a race.
“I’ve been suffering for a week, and you have a Keurig!” she yelled, shoving my back and then jumping onto me like a monkey ready to kill its own young.
“The hell, Ray!” I tried peeling her off, but she looked minutes away from tearing a piece of skin from my ear. “Do you always wake up like this?”
“Coffee.” Her right eye twitched.
Smirking, I held her body with my left arm and then grabbed the pod with my right hand and shoved it in the Keurig and pressed the blue button. “Almost ready. You’re welcome, princes. How else can I serve you this morning?”
Her breath hitched.
I zeroed in on her mouth.
It was as if she just now realized that she was wrapped around me, her ankles hooked, her body flush against mine.
“Y-you’re strong” was what came out of her mouth.
I leaned in and whispered, “It’s the HGH.”
“I knew it!” She slapped me on the chest.
I laughed and sat her down on her feet then handed her a black coffee. “I’m kidding. I like weights, and I eat a lot of beef jerky.”
“Beef jerky doesn’t do that.” She motioned at me with her hand and then sipped the steaming drink slowly. A smile spread across her face. “That’s all I need in life.”
I peeled my shirt over my head and went in search of a new one. I felt her eyes on me like a laser beam.
I grabbed my shower caddy and instantly felt guilt.
I was pretty sure I’d just reminded her of the elephant. Of the sex.
Of us together.
Of how good it had felt.
Shit! I was going to die for wanting to be inside her again.
It consumed me.
Holding her.
Kissing her.
I braced my hand against the wall and took a deep breath then grabbed a nearby towel. “See ya at breakfast.”
That was what I ended with.
And when I finally made it into the bathroom and pulled the curtain, I was so hard I could probably re-hammer every nail in that sad cabin with my dick and have more strength to spare.
I gripped myself just as I heard Jackson’s loud shout. “My head. I’m dying. Ray, stop yelling, damn it!”
The doors opened.
I was still gripping myself.
And then a shower started.
Ray laughed.
I looked down at the bottom of the curtain.
I saw her walk by and heard the shower behind me turn on.
“Marlo?” she called.
“Yup.” God, I was going to burn in Hell, wasn’t I?
“Can I borrow soap?”
“Doesn’t she have soap?” Jackson called.
“No!” I yelled, not wanting him to know why she didn’t have her caddy and why she needed my soap and not his.
I leaned down and grabbed some body soap and then poked my head outside the shower just as Jackson yelled. “Fuck this. It’s making my headache worse. I’m out. See you guys at breakfast. I need grease.”
The door slammed.
Just us.
The temptation to step inside…
To repeat yesterday morning...
Was so strong that my dick pulsed.
I’d had no idea what torture was.
No clue.
Until that moment.
I was ready to scratch my fingernails down the tile, to rip it to shreds with my teeth.
“Ray?” I waved the body wash midair between us, using the shower curtain to cover my raging hard-on.
She pulled the curtain back, water dripping down her face as she gripped the bottle. Our fingers grazed. “Thank you.”
I nodded.
She let out a sigh.
And I jerked the curtain back so hard it almost came off the rod.
And then I imagined her rubbing the creamy body wash all over herself.
I imagined my hands doing it for her.
I sucked in a breath when I heard her moan.
Was she?
No.
It was my very vivid imagination, wasn’t it?
“Hey, Marlo?” Her voice made it worse.
My breathing was strained. “Yeah, Ray?”
“Do you really think I have nice boobs?”
Really? Now? I gripped myself, pumped once, twice. “Yeah, Ray… I do.”
“I’m touching them,” she whispered.
Fu-u-u-ck. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“It seems fair.” Her voice sounded amused. “It may even go toward making us even…”
“Ray…” I said in warning.
“I’m squeezing them between my hands… My nipples feel really hard.”
I slammed one palm against the tile, the other pumping harder. “Yeah?”
“Mmm…” She moaned. “…my hands moved.”
Where? Where the hell did they move?
“You still there, Marlo?”
“Yes.” I bit back another curse as my dick throbbed in my hand.
“I’m touching where you kissed me. I’m trying to decide why your tongue felt so much better…”
I turned my shower to cold and cursed. “Ray… seriously… this isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t funny,” she agreed. “It’s revenge.”
I cursed under my breath.
“You can’t touch yourself while I’m touching myself,” she said in a sweet voice. “It’s cheating, Marlo.”
“Is it though?” I wondered out loud with a humorless laugh.
“Show me your hands, Marlo.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I muttered.
“Now.”
I held my hands high, so she could see over the tile barrier.
And then she moaned.
Moaned so fucking loud and sweet that my hips pumped air. Shit, she was turning me into an animal.
“Mmm… that feels so-o-o good.” She moaned again and again.
I got dizzy with the moans, with the slight breaths and then the scream as something hit the tile wall. A hand? My body wash?
And then the shower was off.
And my curtain was being jerked back.
I didn’t have time to cover myself.
And as luck would have it, my hands were still high in the air as if I was getting arrested.
Her eyes lowered, smug satisfaction crossing her face before she held out the body wash.
“Were you really…?” I took the bottle, fully aware that I looked ready to impale anything
that got too close.
She shrugged and patted me on the face. Let’s be honest… it was more of a rough slap. “Guess you’ll never know.”
I saw nothing but towel and thigh as she gave me her back and left the bathroom, and like an idiot, all it had taken was one sniff of body wash, one slight touch of my hand. Hell, maybe the air conditioning had turned on, and I was so aroused a light breeze did it.
But I spent in the shower as if I was a fucking middle schooler who had just noticed that girls make him feel nice.
“Touché,” I muttered with a smile. “Well played, Ray. Well-fucking-played.”
Is it a game now?
She’d said revenge.
And since we’d both gotten ours…
I wondered if the pieces had shifted, and if they had, did that mean they were back in my power?
You wanna play, princess?
I’m game.
FIRE BURNED IN my cheeks the entire walk back to the mess hall, and when I sat down next to Jackson and Brax, I earned two throat clears before I finally looked up. “What? You boys getting sick?”
Brax narrowed his eyes then took a bite out of his breakfast burrito, pointing it at me as he finished chewing. “It wasn’t sex but something equally as… invigorating.”
“Go for a morning swim in the chilly lake?” Jackson grinned, leaning forward.
I just rolled my eyes. “You guys are impossible. I showered. I’m here. The end.”
“By yourself.” Brax apparently had felt the need to point out.
I threw a hot-sauce packet at him then followed it with two more when he laughed as if it was funny.
I’d only halfway forgiven him.
And Jackson? Well, Jackson was just… a puzzle of angst and arrogance, wasn’t he?
“So…” Jackson slid his tray out of the way and clapped his hands on the table. “…I was thinking…”
“Always a dangerous thing when you have one remaining brain cell, but I’m listening.” I grinned.
The air behind me shifted just as the smell of lawn and cedar and something else sexy blew by me and then planted in the seat next to me.
“Marlo.” Brax grinned at him.
“Brax, look at me like that again, and I’m cutting your dick off.”
“Whoa! Someone needs to get laid.”
Marlo groaned while Jackson just shrugged and waved him off. “So, you know how you were struggling with letting go…”
The table fell silent.
Fantastic. My favorite subject, me and my inability to be a good choreographer in front of one of the best in the room.
My smile felt forced. “Um, yes.”
“Jackson…” Marlo’s voice had a warning protective edge to it.
I realized I liked it. I loved it. I loved that even after hearing his labored breathing and knowing he was enjoying the show and feeling tortured that he would jump to protect me, even when I didn’t deserve it, when he deserved my attention even less.
After last night.
Something had shifted.
And I liked it.
I really. Liked it.
Too damn much.
Jackson met my eyes. “It’s the musical.”
“What’s the musical?” I deadpanned.
“The reason you can’t connect. You don’t really know the musical well enough to connect with the character. If I was a guessing man, I’d say you’re all logic when it comes to choreography, afraid of the passion, afraid of the emotion, afraid it—”
“That’s enough, Jackson.”
“What?” Jackson shrugged. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“Be helpful over there.” Marlo nodded to the breakfast bar. “And grab your new best friend a coffee.”
“New best friend?” He frowned.
I raised my hand.
He high-fived it and shook his head. “This discussion isn’t over.”
Marlo eyed Brax.
Brax let out a low whistle, grabbed his tray, and walked off in the general direction of Jackson.
“He gets… inspired.” Marlo shook his head at his tray, his expression pensive. “I just didn’t want him saying anything that would make you uncomfortable.”
I crossed my arms. “And how would you know what he was about to say?”
His smile was sad. “Because I sense it in every breath you take.”
“Excuse me?”
“Jackson was going to say, ‘afraid of the emotion, afraid it will never be the same again — once you let go.’”
“Oh, really?” I was skeptical.
With an arrogant flip of my hand, I motioned Jackson back over.
He sat and exhaled. “All right, so what I was so clearly trying to explain before he got all protective and weird, is that you’re afraid you won’t be the same again, like the emotional toll won’t just tax you but change you. You’re afraid you won’t be you again.”
Marlo stood, put his hand on my shoulder, and smiled. “And I rest my case.”
“What?” Jackson frowned. “What case? What did you say to her?”
Tremors raced through my body and became full shakes as I stared straight ahead, my posture perfect, eyes unblinking.
“Don’t be a robot, Ray. Even robots learn to feel. It’s science.” Jackson kissed the top of my head and ran off leaving me more determined to own the choreography, to teach the crap out of it.
To gain the trust of my students.
To be the best.
I grabbed my breakfast burrito, shoved it into my mouth, and dropped my tray off, then walked with purposeful steps out of the mess hall.
“Walk hard, SP, walk hard.” Marlo winked at me as I passed.
And my stomach fell. My heart skipped.
And I knew.
There was so much danger in letting myself feel.
In letting go.
Yes, I would be changed.
Altered.
And the parts I had saved just for me, the parts of my heart I’d had to protect growing up in a family where love was just a topic never an action — they would fall at his feet.
And then what?
He’d make a choice.
And when in my life had anyone ever chosen me?
I CHECKED IN on every class. Brax’s class was easily doing the best; the brains behind the scriptwriting were already pouring over all the lines along with the music. The set crew was excited about the way they could frame in the dance scenes with a lot of people while still using part of the audience as the actual audience during some of the dances to give it an inclusive effect.
The first two weeks were always chaos at camp.
We had to decide what musical the campers would do since the counselors had to join them on the final production, organize within our different classes, and then we had auditions.
Saturday.
Followed by a party on the beach where we had races across the lake to our nemesis, hip-hop camp.
They thought we were rich kids with nothing better to do.
And most of them hadn’t even studied dance — let alone hip hop — long enough to know anything beyond how to crump. It was filled with white kids who wanted to dance without having to put their hands over their head and clap.
And instructors who probably hated their lives trying to teach high schoolers with no rhythm how to magically find it in two months.
I shook my head at my clipboard and eyed her name.
Ray.
May as well say, “Laser beam. Use extreme caution.”
I tapped my pencil against the board and then slowly walked toward the dance studio. The music was blaring as it was most days. The windows were pulled open, the curtains waving in the breeze.
She wasn’t dancing.
Her class had been dismissed for at least two hours.
She was lying on her back staring up at the ceiling, balancing a pencil on her forehead.
I frowned and made my way into the studio then knocked on the door. “Solving
world hunger?”
“World peace, actually,” she said in a dry tone without moving.
I dropped my clipboard onto the nearest chair and joined her on the floor. I laid my hands at my sides and stared up at the boring white ceiling as the smell of cedar and campfire filtered into the room.
It was a mixture of outdoors.
Of life.
Adventure.
I inhaled and closed my eyes.
“How do you do that?” she asked in a small voice.
“What?” I turned my head.
Her shoulders were hunched by her ears, her face tense. “Just… exhale and exist. How do you relax, shut your brain off?”
“Turn your other organs on?” I offered with a smug smile.
“Very funny.”
I smirked and moved my hand and lightly tapped two fingers across her chest. “I meant this…” Tap, tap. My fingers grazed her collarbone then lowered. Her skin felt like velvet, and even through her flimsy staff shirt, I felt her heat. I felt her heartbeat, and I wanted. “…your heart. Get your head out of the gutter, SP.”
“Fine.” She squeezed her eyes shut as the music started again the song from the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack.
“Good choice.” I cleared my throat as the driving, throbbing beat of the main title took on its own presence in the room. “One of my favorites.”
“I saw it three times,” she confessed. “Twice in London, once in New York.”
“Must have been nice,” I said as politely as I could. I’d seen it once, and I’d sat in the balcony and been so stunned that my jaw had come unhinged two minutes in.
She had probably been in a box seat.
Or backstage shaking hands with the actors and actresses.
“The first time,” she began, “was so I wouldn’t be angry with my parents for missing my high school graduation.”
A thousand knives dug into my chest. Rage poured over me as I clenched my teeth. “Well, that’s bullshit.”
“They forgot.”
“Your graduation?”
“It was my fault. I didn’t sync my calendar with theirs.”
I bit my tongue to keep from calling them names that were very deserving.
“The second time was a date, college. I was so excited. It was our third date, and he was… charming. Another theater major. He left halfway through because he was personally offended over their casting choice.”
Summer Seduction Page 4
