by Julia Kent
As he flips me over effortlessly, Declan’s mouth crashes into mine with a roughness that I like more than I would imagine. He’s covering me, the push of tight legs and his hardness on my inner thigh, his hand under my bra now, teasing and stroking until I’m throbbing. Nudging my legs apart, he continues to sweep my mouth with his tongue, leaving me breathless and intoxicated.
And not from the wine.
A fly buzzes near my ear and rushes off. Then a second. My shirt lifts up under his controlled hands and he works the clasp of my bra, freeing my breasts.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispers as my shirt pulls up and he slides both hands over my swollen bosom, my breath catching in my throat, body completely vibrating for him.
Gently, he pulls me to the ground again until we’re on our sides, hands exploring, mouths catching and releasing, my mind a blurred tornado of arousal. His hip nudges against mine and my hands go to his jeans, dipping down the front just enough to—
His groan gives me permission.
Apparently, my touch grants him a certain leeway as well, because his hands work the button of my jeans. Normally, I would pause. Date number two (or one? I’m not sure, and math isn’t exactly on my mind right now) is a bit rushed for this, but I don’t care. It feels right. It feels so damn right.
Freeing the front of our jeans simultaneously, we both go slowly, the curve of his lips on mine changing in its slope, our warm, wet exploration delicious and inviting, unwinding slowly as if we both recognize that time and space are ours.
His torso is like warm marble peppered with a sprinkling of hair, his hitched breath as I slide down that final half-inch deeply gratifying.
Cupid’s arrow hits its mark just as he reaches my core and I gasp.
No—really. Cupid’s arrow just stung my back.
“OW!” I shout, jolting up, my hand that just brushed against his thick rod now scrabbling across my rib. My bra is loose around my chest and a deep, intense burning is centered right on a specific spot on my back.
“What? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
I climb off Declan and sit on the ground, filled with pain and insta-worry that I’ve ruined the moment.
“No, no, not you.” A freakish dread fills me as a fly buzzes in my ear again. And then one bites me on my back again.
That’s not a fly.
“Oh my GOD!” I scream. “Get it away from me!”
Declan looks at me with alarm, his face drowsy with desire and the intimacy we’d just been in the thick of. His hands shoot to his waistband, where he quickly does his button and zips up.
“I didn’t mean to push too hard or to ask you to do anything you didn’t want to,” he says in a rough voice. The look he gives me is confused and multilayered, open and closed at the same time.
I can’t process is because my entire body is throbbing. Blood and adrenaline and venom pulse through me, a blind cloud of panic descending.
Then I kind of get it.
“Not THAT!” I shriek. “THAT can come near me any time!” I point in the general direction of his unzipped jeans. “I mean the bee!” Three lazy, floating bee bodies hover over us like unmanned drones centering in on a target.
“What?” he chokes out.
“Call 911!” I scramble for my purse, which is under the backpack. Throwing items randomly in the air, I realize time is precious. At best, I have a handful of minutes.
He frowns, then his entire face changes with dawning recognition. “You’re allergic?” Something more than standard surprise fills his voice, but I can’t parse it out right now, as my body begins to swell. His phone is out with breakneck speed and he’s dialing before I can answer.
My vision starts to blur. Unadulterated terror sets in. The list of steps to contain the sting escapes me, all drowned out by the mental chant of OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD that won’t stop looping.
I lose track of time. Declan is speaking to someone and describing our location. Then he’s off the phone and I find my purse. He fishes through his back pocket, pants loose around his upper thighs, and he takes a moment to pull them up, snap, zip.
Then his hands are on me and he’s holding his wallet. Two condoms poke out.
“Seriously? Now is NOT the time,” I say. My voice is raspy and distant, like someone’s scratching a cardboard tube shoved up against my ear.
“Not that—here.” He hands me a foil packet of Benadryl, already torn open. I take the capsules and dry swallow them. I grab the tumbler of wine and, without any other option, I take a big swallow to make sure the pills go down.
“EpiPen?” he asks sharply. I recoil, even as my vision starts to pinprick.
“How do you know? And where did you get the Benadryl?”
“My brother Andrew is highly allergic, too. Wasps, in his case.” He’s tossing my tampons and old cough drops and receipts and makeup out of my purse with military precision and laser focus until he finds the EpiPen and hands it to me.
I pop the top off, but before I inject, another bee floats over. Looking down, I see the issue: we’re near a nest of ground bees. The blanket is literally on top of them. Leave it to me to make out with Hot Guy on top of a Nest of Death.
Declan follows my gaze and realizes it, too. He reaches around me just as I tighten my grip on the pen and slam it as hard as I can into my hip, but he nudges me and my aim falters as I bring my forearm down as hard as I can so the needle goes deep in me to administer the epinephrine I need and—
I inject him in the groin.
“God DAMN!” he shouts, springing to his feet and inhaling so deeply I fear he’ll pass out. One of us has to stay conscious, and at this rate it won’t be me. A sound like rushing water fills my ears.
The Benadryl isn’t helping, and that dose of epinephrine is the only thing keeping me from anaphylactic shock as I feel my breathing speed up, but my throat starts to narrow, as if Darth Vader has me in his grip and won’t let go. Declan is limping and huffing, taking deep breaths and making grunting sounds as he comes toward me like Wolverine on the attack.
I fumble for my purse and keep trying to say “I’m sorry,” but all that comes out is a strangled whooping noise. Declan grabs the purse from me and I can see the veins in his neck bulging, can watch his pulse throb in front of me as he pulls the cap off the second EpiPen, rolls me onto my stomach, pins me in place, and pulls my jeans down to expose my ass—
“What are you doing?” I rasp.
—and then slams the needle so hard into my butt cheek that the wind is knocked out of me.
The world goes dark, then light again as he scoops me up and begins running down the path toward the cars. He’s favoring the hip near where I injected him, but still moves with remarkable speed and agility. My head feels so heavy, and my arms and legs flop, even though I know I should be surging from the EpiPen’s contents. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s overwhelm. Maybe it’s impending death.
“I’ll get you there,” Declan says. “C’mon, Shannon. Stay awake.” That’s an order, the hard grit in his voice like being barked at during basic military training, but his voice strains with fear and a gentleness that tells me I have to listen to him.
“I’m here,” I mumble. He’s running hard and I can hear his heart pounding against my ear, pressed against his sweaty shirt. We’re more than half a mile from the parking lot and I hear a horrible wheezing sound. My weight isn’t a small number, and I feel embarrassed that he’s struggling so hard to breathe through carrying me. Yet he cradles me, mumbling something as he runs. All I can sense is the tumbling of air against his lungs and ribs.
If I could just move, I could stand and walk back to the lot. I start to resist, to try to help.
Then I realize the wheezing is coming from me. Not him.
He’s moving swiftly and with great power, and my throat stops swelling. This is how the EpiPen always works, like slamming the brakes on a car going a hundred miles an hour. For me, the relief comes in waves. First, the swelling stops, but i
t doesn’t recede. It just doesn’t get worse.
That’s what has happened now. I’m so tired, though. Exhausted and depleted, and it takes everything in me to stay upright in his arms so Declan can carry me. The ground becomes bumpy and he slows down, carefully navigating down a slope on the wider part of the trail. It’s dark, and insects buzz in my ear.
“Bees?” I mumble.
“No,” he says, his panting heavy from exertion. “Flies. But the two bees that stung you—” He’s huffing through a final sprint and I can make out a red flashing light in the distance.
Two. Oh. That’s it. I’ve never been stung twice like this. My eyelids feel like quilts covering my vision, and my lips tingle and balloon out. If only I could lift an arm and give him some help. I will it to move but it doesn’t. Nothing does.
I’m sorry, I want to say. Maybe I do. It’s hard to tell.
And then I fade out completely, remembering nothing more than the steady sound of Declan’s breath as he races me to safety.
Chapter Three
“Is his penis going to fall off?”
Mom’s voice floats into my awareness as a big, bright light blinds me. Am I in heaven? Hell? Somewhere in between? If Mom’s here, that narrows this down considerably. I’m either alive or in purgatory.
“Whose penis?” I mumble. “What did you do to Dad this time?” Someone squeezes my hand and I open my eyes slowly. They feel like wet wool blankets coated with glass shards, but I open them all the way anyhow.
Amy is the one holding my hand, and she looks so scared. “Not Dad. And don’t worry.”
My mouth tastes like dry pencil shavings that have been sitting in Death Valley for a thousand years. “Where am I?”
She names a local hospital.
“Why am I here?” My mind feels like dry pencil shavings, too. I’m cold suddenly, and my legs begin to shake. I have no control over this, and soon my chin chatters.
Mom grabs a stack of blankets and starts covering me in them, in layers up and down my body. The thick, heavy warmth cocoons me.
“You were stung by a bee, honey,” Dad whispers, taking my other hand. I turn to look at him and his eyes are red-rimmed. Crying?
“Two, actually,” Mom says.
“Daddy, don’t cry,” I mumble. “I’m sorry.”
That makes Amy start to sob. “You don’t have to apologize for something you can’t control, Shannon,” she says. “And thank goodness you’re a paranoid freak,” she adds.
“It comes in handy sometimes,” I mutter, unsure what she means.
“You really scared us,” Carol says. Carol! Carol’s here, with a frightened-looking Jeffrey, who can’t seem to look at me. Geez. Why is my seven-year-old nephew here? Haven’t seen him in, what—a month? He’s getting so big, with those long eyelashes and—has he been crying?
“Hi, Jeffrey,” I croak out. He gives me an uncertain wave. I try to wave back, but a sharp stab of pain in my hand halts me.
An older female doctor with more salt than pepper in her hair strides into the room. It’s not really a room, I see—there’s just a curtain between me and another bed, where I hear two men talking in hushed voices.
The doctor looks at my chart and flips through pages, jotting notes. Her white jacket has little gold pins all over the lapel and she smells like freshly bathed dogs. Her face is tight. She looks up and realizes I’m awake.
“Shannon, that was close,” she says in a clipped British accent. “I’m Dr. Porter.” She sounds like Judi Dench playing an older female doctor in a Doctor Who episode, because there are so many tubes and bright flashing lights in the room that I feel like I’m surrounded by Daleks that have taken over the TARDIS. “Good work by you and your date, though his aim was remarkably better than yours.”
“Thank you,” says a deep, familiar male voice from behind the curtain. “I agree one hundred percent. And Shannon, I’ll never go target practicing with you. Ever.”
Huh?
“And no, Marie, all my equipment is in place and intact. She got my thigh,” the voice adds in a tone that makes it clear there is no follow-up discussion.
“Thank goodness!” Mom chirps. “Can’t have grandbabies if it falls off,” she whispers.
Maybe I’m the Dalek, because all I want to do now is scream EX-TER-MIN-ATE at her.
“I am five feet away and can hear every word,” he growls. The curtain whips back in one smooth movement and there’s Declan, alone, buttoning his jeans.
The memory floods me instantly. Wine. Hiking. Making out. Sex (almost…). Bees. EpiPen.
“I didn’t break your penis, did I?” I rasp through vocal cords that feel like painful ribbons. Because that would be the Epic Fail of Dates. I would have to become a nun if I broke a man’s penis. My name would become part of Urban Dictionary, like Lorena Bobbit. “Why’d you stop dating Jill?” “Because she tried to Shannon Jacoby me.” “No way, dude…”
“What, exactly, were you doing out there?” the doctor asks, one eyebrow arched perfectly. She sounds so disapproving and snobbish, the way only a British person can, the accent so intelligent. “And no, you broke nothing. You’re fortunate the denim on Declan’s jeans helped to reduce the injury from the injection.”
I try to hate her but don’t really have the energy. Mom’s words break through some of my angry confusion, but they leave me stunned and overwhelmed.
“No one broke anything, and I think everyone should go so I can take care of my daughter.” She looks so defeated. Where’s the sarcasm? The over-the-top exuberance and social cluelessness? The inappropriate oversharing?
Mom’s eyes are swollen and hollow at the same time, and my throat closes again, except this time not from being stung.
I look at Declan, and he’s looking back with so much concern that I close my eyes, unable to process anything.
“I was stung?” I murmur.
Mom scooches Amy over and takes my hand. Carol’s holding Jeffrey’s hand, with little Tyler perched on one hip, his eyes zeroed in on the television, which is set to Cartoon Network without sound. Jeffrey looks a lot calmer now, and he’s watching Declan with narrowed eyes, like he’s studying him.
Poor boy. His own dad never comes around, so maybe he’s just checking out the Daddy crowd. Not that Declan’s a daddy. Or is he? My head really hurts.
Amy and Declan share an inscrutable look. “Twice, honey.” She slows her speech down, her eyes watching me carefully. All her makeup is gone and the hand that grabs mine is shaking.
They’ve all been crying. How bad was I?
“Did I die?”
Declan’s face shifts to a quick expression of shock and he swallows, hard. He looks like he’s about seventeen suddenly, wide-eyed and frozen.
Dad stands up and points to him. “No. But only because of him.” Everyone turns and looks at Declan.
Steve would have smiled and taken all the credit if I’d been stung and he’d carried me out of there to an ambulance. As my brain starts to clear, I remember that Steve was there the previous time I was stung, back at UMass. That had happened on campus, and Steve had screamed like a little kid and run away, leaving me with my phone and my purse, digging furiously for the EpiPen.
He’d only come back after the paramedics arrived and I’d nearly passed out.
What Declan did was heroic in every sense of the word.
“We were half a mile—” I say. The rest of my sentence is choked off by my dry mouth.
Reading my mind, Declan grabs the pitcher of water on the tray above me and pours a glass that has a straw sticking in it. He hands it to Mom, who ministers it to me like I’m on my deathbed.
Am I?
“Early spring bees. Who knew they’d be out?” Dad says.
“That was my fault, sir,” Declan says in a low voice. Contrite, even. “I chose the picnic spot and didn’t think to clear the ground for bees’ nests.” He sounds angry. He should be. It was my fault for not telling him.
“Who would in April in
Massachusetts?” the doctor snaps. I’ve never seen Declan like this, furious at himself, sheepish and so young looking, like he thinks he deserves to be upbraided for something that was completely out of his control.
“I should have.” He looks at Mom and Dad. “My brother is highly allergic to wasps, and—” His face shuts down as he caps his emotions. My entire body aches, like someone is stabbing kitchen knives into my thighs, my butt, my neck and upper arms, but none of that pain compares to what my heart feels watching his reaction.
“No,” I croak out. “You did everything right. You didn’t know. I should have said something, but it’s never been a big issue.”
Mom snorts. “Shannon,” she says in a chiding voice. Whether it’s a “big issue” or not has been a bone of contention between us ever since I was first stung.
Then she squeezes my hand and looks between him and me. “You did everything perfectly, Declan.” She lets go of my hand and stands, grabbing him for an embrace. “You did everything perfectly, and thank you for saving my daughter’s life.”
My eyes start to water and two tears trickle down each side of my face, rolling into my ears. It itches. A tightness in my throat triggers panic in me. Too close to what I felt after the bee stings. My breathing becomes labored and the doctor checks my pulse.
“Slow breaths, Shannon,” she says in a soothing tone. “The adrenaline is still in you and it will be a while before you’re okay.”
I nod, following her instructions. Mom’s arm is thrown casually around Declan and they look like they’ve been best friends for years. It freaks me out and warms me at the same time.
Jeffrey clears his throat and opens his mouth. I see two white nubs along his gum line, the permanent teeth poking through. His nose is big and sunburnt and his cheeks have freckles on them.
“Yes?” I ask, giving him permission to speak in a crowd of scary grownups who tower over him.
It’s Declan he turns to. “Did you break your penith?”
Oh, that lisp.
Suppressed snickers fill the room. We sound like a bunch of taste testers for canned baked beans after a new product line rollout. Futt-futt-futt…
