by Linda Kage
“What the hell?” I yelped, jumping so hard I jostled her into sliding off me.
I wasn’t sure why I tried to catch her; it wasn’t as if she would’ve fallen far—maybe six inches. But instinct had me clutching her hip to steady her, only to get a palm full of bare ass in the process.
And... Now would be a good time to pause in order to mention one other thing.
Teagan Tenning’s ass.
If anything was hotter than T’s breasts, it was her world-class ass. And her world-class ass was currently curved flush against my entire hand.
“What the fuck!” I cried a little louder this time. “Are you naked? Why in the holy hell are you—”
“Shh.” She slapped a hand against my mouth and moved her own next to my ear, so she could whisper, “My dad is only three tents away, dumbass.”
On any other occasion, being reminded of Oren Tenning’s proximity while his daughter was naked on top of me would’ve cooled and killed any erection I might’ve even considered sprouting. But fuck, his daughter was naked on top of me. Her breasts were pressing into my chest, her ass was hugging my hand, and her breath was tickling my neck as she whispered into my ear. With all that going on, my dick didn’t give a shit where her dad was. It thickened and swelled and… Oh, God… There was no way she was going to miss it digging into her thigh.
Shoving her hand off my mouth as I discreetly shifted my hips in a way that eased some space between her leg and my groin, I hissed, “Then why the hell are you naked in my sleeping bag?”
“I told you,” she hissed right back. “I’m conducting an experiment.”
“What the fuck kind of ex—”
“Shh.” She pressed her hand back to my mouth, muffling me. “Will you please just let me try something?”
She sounded about as irritated as I felt. She was probably giving me the same squinty-eyed glare I was giving her. Not that I could tell in the dark; I could barely make out the shape of her head.
I grabbed her wrist to remove her hand again, but then she did the craziest thing I swear Teagan had ever done. She used the fingers of her free hand to coast them down the side of my rib cage. The caress was so light and sensual, with the barest hint of fingernails, that I shuddered, squeezing the wrist of her hand on my mouth without remembering to remove it.
“I just want to know if touching you like this would be weird,” she murmured, her breath stirring tendrils of hair on the side of my neck. “Or would it be...something else.”
She reached the waistband of my boxer shorts, which was the only piece of clothing separating us, and I froze, waiting for her next move, a bead of anticipatory sweat slipping down my brow.
When she started back up, coasting her fingers over my side once again, I couldn’t swallow down the groan that followed. But this wasn’t fair. Her touch felt too good, her naked body was too soft and curvy, her scent too sweet. Hell, she didn’t even smell like dried, fishy river water, like she should, but something tart, and flowery, and nice. I let her skim her hand along my torso, slowly, dragging me under and into her seduction without a single rebuke.
My head fell back, exposing my throat, and I panted as our shared body heat had me straining for more.
The hand over my mouth moved, cupping my jaw before traveling down the side of my throat.
“Yes,” she cooed triumphantly. “You like that, don’t you?”
Mother fucking Christ, I did. A lot.
Then, all ten of her fingers moved over me, stroking up my chest and curling over my shoulders. For some reason, I’d never quite let go of her ass, so when I arched my hips up, fitting us together without meaning to, my betraying hand helped my equally traitorous hips along, urging her up from behind, until fuck, that hot paradise between her legs settled right against my erection.
We sucked in a simultaneous breath of surprise.
“Oh,” she said.
Yeah. Oh. I felt exactly the same, except my oh was more of an oh damn, why had I done that? I hadn’t meant to do that. Whereas hers seemed like an oh, that was a delightful surprise.
Which made me unable to regret the move, especially when she bit out a small moan and ground back against me, riding me with the sweetest dry hump I’d ever experienced.
Jesus, oh Jesus, what was happening?
“Oh my God, wow,” she whispered, moving her mouth until her breath fell against my lips. “What do you think would happen if I kissed you? Like right now?”
I didn’t answer.
But I couldn’t.
Because it was a trick question.
I couldn’t say yes, you see. Then I’d be admitting I was cognizant enough to realize this was Teagan naked on top of me, touching me and talking about kissing. Teagan, the little girl I’d grown up with and spent most of my childhood trying to avoid. No way in a rational, thinking moment would I agree to kiss Teagan. At least, I didn’t think I would. But, fuck, I wanted to taste her right now. I didn’t care if she was most likely off-limits or not.
I wanted her.
I needed her.
She was Teagan. She had a way a breathing life into everyone around her. And I needed that after feeling broken and lifeless for so long.
“You gotta answer me, baby,” she coaxed, cupping my cheeks in her hands, making my entire body strain for more of that contact everywhere. “I’m not doing anything until I have your full permission.”
Damn, her mouth was like right there. Erase two inches and we’d already be kissing the fuck out of each other.
“Yes or no?” she murmured, running her fingers up from my cheeks and into my hair, which made me catch my breath and want to start spouting yes in every language I knew.
Until suddenly, she paused when her fingers encountered the scar hidden at the edge of my hairline. I could damn near feel her confused frown as she investigated the puckered surface.
I knew she knew what the two-inch wound was. At least, she should be familiar with the mark, since she’d been the one to give it to me when she was seven.
The girl hated being taunted, a lesson I’d learned at thirteen when she’d hit me with a gardening spade after I’d made fun of her hair when she’d cut it herself, butchering the blonde locks all to hell. I knew she hadn’t meant to hurt me as badly as she had when she’d cried harder than I did afterward. Then she’d held my hand all the way to the hospital and even into the ER room, where I’d gotten six stitches.
She continued dabbing at the scar another second before she gasped and went strangely still on top of me. Then she whispered, “JB?”
That’s when I remembered it hadn’t been my name she’d said when she’d first crawled into my tent.
2
JB
Ah, shit.
She’d come here to seduce Luke. Not me.
While I’d been grinding against her, wanting her, she’d been touching him, wanting him. I was such an idiot.
Mortification cloaked me like a rash. I refused to admit I felt rejected, or hurt, or upset about this, or even mildly jealous of my own brother, because then I’d have to admit I’d liked what she’d been doing, that I’d wanted her to keep doing it. But I hadn’t.
Had I?
God, yes. Yes, I had.
“Get off,” I rasped, needing her to stop sitting on my hard-on more than I needed my next breath, because no matter what I was feeling, it wasn’t a positive emotion, and I wasn’t going to stop feeling it until she was far, far away.
She must’ve agreed because she immediately scrambled off, cursing and kneeing me all over the place to escape.
Once she was out of my sleeping bag and on the opposite side of the tent, I sat up, listening to the rustle of clothing that she was no doubt putting back on, and I allowed the gravity of the situation to descend fully.
One, which was the worst if you asked me, Teagan now knew she could turn me on in zero seconds flat. I would probably never live that fact down in her book.
Two, I now knew she had a thing for Luke,
which at any other time would’ve given me a one-up on her, to heckle her mercilessly…if it weren’t for number one.
And three... “What the fuck were you thinking?” I hissed. “Your parents are three tents away! Hell, my parents, everyone and their goddamn parents are all around us, and you decided that, what...this would be the ideal time to get kinky with my brother?”
She huffed out an annoyed breath. “Oh, will you stop? You make it sound like I ran off all willy-nilly and did a stupid thing without even thinking it through.”
“Well, didn’t you?” I demanded. “Because, really, what the hell did you think to accomplish here?”
“I told you,” she muttered petulantly. “I was just trying something.” With another sniff, she mumbled the next part so lowly I couldn’t quite hear her and probably didn’t want to, because the part I could understand after that was damaging enough. “This is why I chose Luke. Not you. At least he wouldn’t give me a goddamn lecture afterward like some eighty-year-old grandpa who’s too old and wise and responsible to even attempt trying something that might end up being remotely fun.”
Her words cut straight into me, because they sounded too similar to some of the things Sonya had rambled before she’d given me my ring back and taken off for good. I drew in a deep breath, trying not to think about that, even as it replayed in vivid Technicolor through my head. “You have no passion. No soul. All you ever worry about is doing what’s responsible and right. You’re like a robot. Well, I want a flesh and blood man.”
Memories wrapped around my chest like vines, tangling and tightening until it felt as if I was suffocating, while next to me, Teagan raged on.
“What the hell are you doing in Luke’s tent, anyway?”
This, I could at least respond to. “I’m not in Luke’s tent. Luke’s tent is red.”
“I know. That’s why I crawled into this tent. Because it’s fucking red, dumbass.”
“Stop calling me a dumbass. I know what tent I’m in. I’m in mine, and it’s goddamn blue. Now leave me alone and go rub your tits on Luke… Since that’s who you wanted all along.”
Except that wasn’t what I wanted her to do, not at all, because the idea of her doing to Luke what she’d just done to me made my heart pound, my equilibrium go wonky, and my amygdala trigger like crazy until I experienced vivid visions of doing my own brother bodily harm. And oh hell, I think I sounded as jealous and petulant in my head as I suddenly felt.
What in God’s name was happening to me?
This was Teagan. Teagan!
“Maybe you need to go back to kindergarten and relearn your colors, bud, because the tent we’re in doesn’t get any redder than this.”
Before I knew what she was about, she flashed her phone on and held it next to the canvas wall to prove to me that the color of the tent was a bright, startling crimson that in no way could ever be mistaken for blue.
My mouth fell open. I shook my head in denial. “What the hell?” Grasping Teagan’s wrist, I forced her to move the phone around so I could determine it was also Luke’s sleeping bag, and duffle, and unopened, party-size bag of peanut M&M’s surrounding me. “Why am I in Luke’s tent?”
“Good question, dumbass.”
I shot Teagan a scowl, only to gulp when I realized this was the first time I’d seen her face since I’d felt up her ass and breasts and ground my dick between her legs. For some reason, she looked different. Her lips were plusher and her eyes a little darker and bigger—the pupils still dilated with arousal. Her hair wasn’t fixed at all but still stringy and crunchy as if all she’d done since getting it wet in the river was maybe run her fingers through it a few times and let it air dry. She looked hot as hell with no makeup on, just the tops of her cheeks a little sunburned. Made a guy want to grab handfuls of that tangled blonde mess and haul her plush mouth in for the kiss of a lifetime.
And here came the wood again, growing hard and ready. Stupid pecker. Didn’t it realize this was Teagan I was looking at, the aggravating little brat who’d just called me a dumbass three times in the past five minutes? The hot-as-hell woman who wanted my brother, not me?
Apparently not, because it just kept growing and aching until my idiot heart joined in, thumping out a hard tattoo on the inside of my rib cage.
Sympathy flashed in Teagan’s eyes as she met my gaze before she flicked her phone off, plunging us back into darkness. “You were pretty tanked when you stood up from supper and announced you were going to bed. You probably just crawled into the wrong tent.”
“I wasn’t that far gone,” I argued, mostly just for the sake of not agreeing with her, because yeah, I’d been pretty far gone.
But I’d just needed something a little extra to get me through the day. The family had wanted me to be happy, so I’d downed some liquid giddy to help with that, except it’d only left me feeling more depressed, not happier.
“Yeah,” Teagan murmured softly, sympathetically. “You really were. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever seen you that drunk before. Poor Zoey worried all afternoon about you falling out of your canoe and drowning.”
Well shit, no wonder why Mom had asked me to stay the night. I hadn’t meant to worry her. Or anyone.
Warm fingers grazed my arm. “You’re still not over the breakup with Sonya, are you?”
The fact that I wanted to punch something every time someone asked me that probably meant, no, I wasn’t over the breakup.
But I was over Sonya. I hadn’t cried or even been devastated when she’d left, which spooked me the most and had me thinking maybe she’d been right; I had no humanity, no passion. I’d been willing to marry her; shouldn’t I have felt something at her departure? Had I always been this broken inside?
I didn’t want her to be right, I didn’t want to face the fact that I was a human robot. I didn’t want to think about her or my goddamn, hopeless soul at all, so my anger immediately shot through the roof the moment anyone even dared to mention the entire dreaded subject.
Growling, “I’m just fine, thank you very much,” I jerked my arm free from Teagan and sniffed moodily. “I went on a date just a few weeks ago, in fact. So—”
“Really? Wow, it must not have been a very remarkable date then, because I never heard about it.”
That only made me scowl harder. “Well maybe you’re not privy to everything that happens in my life.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. As close as our families are, I doubt there’s anything we don’t know about each other.”
Wrong. I hadn’t known how awesome her tits could feel against my chest until tonight or how tight, and warm, and smooth her ass would be in my hands.
But thinking of that brought up the whole mistaken identity thing and the fact that I’d only gotten to learn those things because I’d been too drunk to crawl into my own damn tent.
“Why don’t you go bother Luke already,” I mumbled. He was the one she wanted anyway. Not me. No one wanted a heartless robot like me.
“Wow,” she murmured in quiet rebuke. “Okay, then. Fine. You’re in a crap mood. I get that. And I take full responsibility for it, since I’m the one who woke you in the first place from your drunken coma and riled the beast. So I’ll just leave you alone now to stew in your own pity party. Hope you don’t choke on all that misery you’re gulping.”
She moved to the tent opening and unzipped it, provoking me further. “I’m sure I’ll find Luke in your blue tent since you stole his. I mean, wasn’t that just so sweet and considerate of him not to wake you and kick you out of his sleeping bag? Just like Luke, always rolling with change, adjusting accordingly without complaint or—”
“Good night, T.”
I didn’t mean to interrupt her so harshly, but she’d succeeded in nailing me with a direct hit, because Luke was the funny, charming, easygoing one. He’d ended up with all the vivacity and spirit I lacked. He was a fucking paragon of passion. And apparently he was the one she wanted.
“Yeah,” she murmured awkwardly as i
f she were beginning to realize she’d gone too far. “Night, J.” The brief impression of fingers fluttered over my sleeping bag, barely grazing my knee as she added, “Sorry I woke you,” although I knew she really meant she was sorry for upsetting me.
Fucking Teagan. She’d always been such a feisty fighter, giving just as hard as she got. But the moment she realized she’d actually hurt someone, she turned into a freaking marshmallow. She could beat herself up for her mistakes like no one I knew. It hurt more to watch her go into self-blame mode than whatever she’d done to hurt me in the first place, which was one reason why I’d always ended up forcing Luke to let her play with us, after all, when we were kids. Life was better when Teagan was sassy and happy.
So my first instinct was to stop her and fix this, coax her back into being the only girl who had no qualms about calling me a dumbass, and the only girl who probably never actually meant it.
But that broken, hopeless part of me that had taken control lately kept me mute. And so, I let her go. She zipped the tent closed behind her with a finality that caused a lump to form in my throat.
Her absence immediately consumed the space around me with a heaviness that told me there was no way I’d be falling back to sleep any time soon. I’d spend the rest of the night wondering what was happening over in my blue tent.
Oh, God.
I recalled her tumbling on top of me, her breasts bouncing against my chest, her ass slipping into my hands, her scent in my nose. The sorrow and compassion in her tone when she’d tried to get me to open up. The way every molecule in my body had focused on her every moment we’d been together.
Damn, what was wrong with me? She was Teagan.
And I’d just sent her to my brother.
With a groan, I flopped back down onto my—er, Luke’s—sleeping bag, cursing when my sunburn scraped against abrasive cloth. My head pounded from the hangover I had, and my mouth was still dry as fuck.
