by Shandi Boyes
Okay, maybe they aren’t his embarrassed cheeks.
“Now that I’ve been honest and stopped wondering how many floral panties you have in your lingerie drawer—”
“Seven.”
“Huh?”
I wait for a bead of sweat to stop rolling down his cheek before saying, “Seven floral panties, half a dozen thongs, twelve boy legs, and an infinite number of lace panties. They’re my favorite.” I raise my mug to my mouth to hide my smile. “Oh, and let’s not forget those monstrosities no one wants to talk about, but hey, when you’re cramping, you don’t care what your panties look like.” I shoot my eyes to the left when smoke burns them. “Tyrone?”
“Yes, Ms. Burgess…” He stares at me like I’m holding a treat, and he’s waiting for me to throw it.
I point to the retro oven. “I think the bacon is on fire.”
“Oh, fuck… shit!”
After pulling the skillet off the hotplate, he yanks a tea towel off his hip to fan the smoke outside. When alarms start hollering, Colby charges into the kitchen with a fire extinguisher in his hands and a fretful expression on his face. Although the flames have been doused with water, he coats the extra crispy bacon with a product no amount of rinsing will remove. He’s gone and ruined breakfast—along with my appetite for the rest of eternity. I doubt anything will be appealing after seeing him in nothing but a teeny tiny towel, although I’ve never been more thirsty.
“What the fuck, Tyrone? The only time I’ve ever seen you burn bacon was when…” He stops speaking, his eyes colliding with mine after a quick scan of the premise. “Jamie…” He grits his teeth before shifting his focus back to Tyrone. “Jamie?” This one is more a growl than a word.
“Woah. Step back. It’s not what you’re thinking.” Tyrone steps back when Colby does the opposite of his demand. “She told me about her panty collection. You know what I’m like with panty collections.”
“She told you about her panty collection?” When Tyrone nods, Colby’s wide eyes snap to mine. “You told him about your panty collection?”
I shrug like my heart isn’t racing a million miles an hour. “Yeah. So?”
“So? So? You never told me about your panty collection, but you told Tyrone? Why?”
My lips twist like I’m considering a reason. I’m not. I just want it to appear that way. “I like Tyrone. He’s my friend.” I stand from my seat, taking my cocoa with me. “You are not.” Just before I exit the kitchen, I sling my head back their way. “Furthermore, his heated cheeks are really cute.”
An hour later, Tyrone knocks on my room door. “Come on, you and I have a meeting with some firewood.”
“I’m good.” I return my eyes to the book I’m reading.
“I wasn’t asking, Jamie. I was telling. Let’s go.” He jerks his head to the right. “After the mess you left me to clean, the least you can do is gather resources with me.”
I would continue with my stubborn stance if his reply didn’t hammer me with guilt. I didn’t mean to throw him into the deep end. I just couldn’t help but use him to annoy Colby. It returned some of the confidence I lost last night when I realized my emails were the only ones Colby had ignored the past two weeks.
“Fine. But if I get a splinter—”
“I’ll call you an ambulance. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Girlie shit 101.”
Tyrone guides me to the mudroom at the back of the property before handing me boots, a thick coat, a beanie, and a pair of leather gloves. Once I’m dressed, he gives me my last item for the morning. An ax. “You’re serious about the firewood?”
“You bet your ass I am.”
I whine like a teenage girl being told the internet is getting cut off. “This isn’t the experience I signed up for.”
He shoves me out the door. “Join the club, sister.”
Several clumps of wood later, I sit on top of a pile we’ve barely made a dent in before rubbing the kink in my neck.
“Feeling better?” Tyrone splits a large chunk of wood like it’s made out of Jell-O before raising his eyes to me. If my head weren’t clouded with a heap of confusion, I’d pay more attention to his thick, bulging biceps and ripped stomach not even a padded jacket can hide.
“That I have enough wood to keep warm?”
He laughs at me like I’m an idiot. I am, but I’d rather him not spell it out for me. “That you worked out some of your funk. It’s not a boxing bag or jumping out of a plane, but no matter how you get them, your body gobbles up every hit of adrenaline it gets like its crack and you’re an addict.”
Although I’m exhausted, there’s some truth in his comment. I do feel better now than I did when waking this morning. “Yeah. I’m feeling better.”
“Good.” He splits another chunk of wood before tossing it into the pieces we worked through the past hour. “Now, you might be willing to listen.” I attempt to interrupt him, but he keeps talking like he hasn’t seen my arms wailing in the air. “Colby didn’t back away from you because he wanted to. I forced him to.”
“Huh?” That was not what I was anticipating for him to say.
“We had words, I expressed that maybe you weren’t who he thought you were, so he backed away to prove a point. I was wrong. I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”
Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever had a man be so upfront before. It’s unusual, but something I could get used to.
“The thing is… Colby is stubborn. Even with me telling him I made a mistake, he won’t back down. That’s why I need you to step up to the plate.” I recoil back like he threw the towel he cleaned his face with into mine. “I know I’m asking a lot, but he needs someone like you in his life. You got through to him like no one ever has.”
“That’s because he wanted something from me…” I swallow my words when Tyrone glares at me. I’ve never felt lucky to be a woman until now because if his glare is anything to go by, my vagina saved me from sporting a new bruise.
“Even if that were true, isn’t that the way friendship works? Everybody wants something. Fun. Commitment. Understanding. That’s why we seek mates our entire life because we crave something we can’t give ourselves.”
“That may be the case with relationships, but it isn’t what Colby and I had.”
There he goes with his glare again.
“We weren’t friends. We were just…” I pause, having no clue how to explain what we had. It was crazy and unreal and some of the best weeks of my life.
“You were more than friends.”
I shake my head, denying the accusation in Tyrone’s tone. “We never stepped over the line.” Physically. Emotionally is a whole other story.
Tyrone stops to stand in front of me. “I never said you did, but you don’t need sexual contact to have a soul connection with someone. That’s why it’s called soulmates because it isn’t embodied.”
“We’re not soulmates.” I raise my confused eyes to his. “Are we?”
Relieved he appears to be getting through to me, the panic on his face switches to hope. “I don’t know, but you’ll never find out if you stay on the path you’re walking.”
Even if everything he’s saying is true, real life doesn’t work like this. “I just came out of a relationship, Tyrone. I can’t trust my feelings right now.”
He cocks a dark brow on his ridiculously handsome face. “Can you trust a friend?”
I think about his question for a moment before nodding.
“Then you have nothing to worry about. Friendship is the only thing that holds everything together when you think it’s falling apart.” He crouches down in front of me, his eyes more gentle than his large height and frame should be able to pull off. “He’s scared, Jamie. I thought it was because of the hand he’s been dealt, but only now am I realizing he’s more scared of losing you than anything.”
Chapter 20
Colby
Tyrone freezes halfway into the living room, seemingly surprised to see me. “Hey, is the forecast good?” He nudges his head
to the rafting planner in my hand before dumping a pile of recently cut wood into the fireplace.
I lift my chin. “Yeah, the waves are long and unpredictable, but we have more experience rafters in our group than novices, so I say everything will be okay. Claudia and Dallas are preparing the van. We’ll head to the river in around an hour.”
“Sounds good. I’ll get cleaned up, then go assist them…” His words trail off when Jamie enters the living room clutching a second pile of wood. “Thanks, just set them at the side. We’ll add them when needed.” When she does as instructed, he gives her a smile that has me wanting to stab him in the throat. “We’re about to head down to the river for some rafting. Are you up for it?”
Although her head doesn’t swivel my way, I can feel her eyes on me. I’m anticipating for her to say no, so you can imagine my surprise when she says, “Yeah. Why not?”
“Great.” Tyrone leads Jamie toward her room with his arm wrapped around her shoulders in a super chummy way. “Change into something synthetic and tight. It dries quickly and makes maneuverability easier.”
When she leaves the room, it’s the fight of my life not to get up into Tyrone’s face and demand an explanation for their coziness. The only reason I stay put is because I fucked up earlier by showing Tyrone my hand. If I had acted unaffected by his rile, he wouldn’t be eyeing me with suspicion like he knew I wasted the last two hours searching for his signed non-fraternized policy in my office. In case you’re wondering, I never found it.
“Jamie helped you gather firewood?”
What? I said I wouldn’t get up in his face. No one said anything about not grilling him.
“Yeah.” Tyrone restacks the pamphlets on the coffee table, incapable of sitting still. “She’s got more oomph than I realized. She must be wearing her superpower panties today.” His eyes pop up to mine when I growl. “What? I thought you said you had no interest in her like that?”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I want you to. She’s engaged, man, that’s already stepping over the line, not to mention the fact she’s our client.” I’m such a fucking liar. This has nothing to do with our business ventures. I’m two seconds from ripping him a new asshole simply at the thought of him liking Jamie as more than a friend.
“She was engaged. She’s not anymore.”
I take a step back, shocked, but try to play it cool. “Still, that’s all types of fucked up. Do you really want to be the rebound guy?”
He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “Have you seen her? I’ll be any guy she wants me to be. The rebound guy. The cry-on-her-shoulder guy. The let’s-fuck-him-out-of-your-system guy.”
I scrub my jaw, tracing its tick. “While you were out there working out all the ways you’re hoping…” more like fucking dreaming “… to ease her through her heartbreak, did you find out who bruised her?”
The smug expression on his face clears away in an instant. When he shakes his head, my jaw tightens. “So you don’t really care about Jamie at all. You just want to get into her panties.” I’m not asking a question, I’m telling him how it is. “I haven’t asked much of you the past two years, Tyrone, but I’m going to need you to follow this demand. You need to step back from Jamie. If you can’t do it for me, do it for the IOU you owe me.”
The shock on his face morphs onto mine when he shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Colby, I can’t. She may be worth more than my outstanding IOU.”
Before I can demand how, where, and why, Jamie returns to the living room. She’s dressed as Tyrone requested—it’s ten times tighter than even my deviant mind could have predicted. One of my superpowers is being able to imagine what women look like naked when they’re still dressed. Jamie’s visual was mighty enticing, hence why it was so hard to keep myself in check the past few weeks, but there must have been a flaw with my powers that day because as she stands before me now, she’s even more tempting.
Jamie’s cross-runner gym pants hug every one of curves, and the crop top she’s wearing as a bra showcases her tits in the same painstaking detail her drenched shirt did yesterday. It’s clothing most women wear to the gym, but since it’s Jamie, a woman I shouldn’t be looking at the way I am, it feels wrong but in a totally right I-want-to-fuck-her-brains-out way.
“What?” Her nervous eyes bounce between Tyrone and me. “Is it not right? I don’t have much synthetic clothing.” She swallows harshly before pivoting on her heels and heading in the opposite direction. “I’ll get changed into something else.”
“No! It’s fine. You look great.” Tyrone bridges the gap between them, all eager and shit. “You might get a little nippy. It’s cooler up this way than LA.” After banding his arm around her waist, he directs her toward his room. That frustrates me more than him having his hands on her for the second time in under five minutes. I don’t want them alone anywhere—much less in the room he swears he creates magic in. “I have a spare long-sleeve shirt I usually wear when rafting. It will swim on you, but if we tuck it into your panties, it should be okay.”
I stare at the hallway they walked through for several long minutes, shocked as fuck. Our IOU has been dangling between us since we started The Drop Zone. Usually, Tyrone performs like a dog begging for a treat when it’s up for negotiation. Its importance is immense for him, yet he’s willing to give it up for Jamie, a woman he’s only just met. If that isn’t enough to cause a heart stutter, I’m so hard from taking in Jamie’s tight body up close, if my pants were to catch a breeze, I’d sail to the Antarctic without breaking into a sweat.
What the fuck? I’d be pissed if my cock hadn’t been on hiatus the past few weeks. I know he works. He’s just favored the solo route the past month—much to the dismay of every female jumper I’ve had.
I’m stunned for the second time when a pair of nails rake my torso. “What do you think? Claudia hooked us up with some merchandise.” Barbie Number One twirls on the spot, showcasing an outfit oddly similar to the one Jamie was just sporting. It has more material in the top half, and The Drop Zone’s logo is stitched in the waistband and across her left breast, but it has my cock lowering its mast.
“Thought we’d represent our favorite company.” She all but shoves her breasts into my face when she wiggles her cleavage to amplify the logo that’s so stretched over the mounds on her chest, it’s barely legible.
“You look great, but I’d hate for you to catch a cold.” I pinch the zipper pull tab that’s dangling precariously in Silicon Valley before yanking it up until she represents a One-Button Barb. “There you go, much better.” When her lower lip drops into a pout, I tap her backside with my clipboard, playing the role I’m paid to play. “Now, how about we go get you all wet?”
She giggles a laugh I’ve heard a million times in my short twenty-four years.
Today is the first time it’s made me nauseous.
“Dig your blades low, the current is heavier beneath the surface. We need to cartwheel this boulder.”
When my crew does as requested, and we spin around to bounce off the boulder instead of impacting it head-on, I raise my eyes to Tyrone’s raft. They’re leading our second flotilla for the day. I’m seeking guidance, but I’m also eager to see if Jamie is still enjoying herself. She didn’t stop smiling on our first run, even with the rapids being a little hairier than anticipated.
She’s still smiling—at Tyrone. He’s been glued to her side all day, and it’s frustrating me more than Jamie’s request to ride with him this time around. I’m both the scout and organizer of this activity, so I could have said no, but for another reason I’ve yet to work out, I didn’t. I’ve spent my entire life in the fast lane, but this is one trip I don’t want to rush as I’ll most likely hate the outcome.
Just like in the bedroom, women aren’t done after one round. They could be covered head to toe in cum, but they’ll continue seeking their next orgasm until the person handing them out has exhausted all avenues.
The same can be said for hits of adrenaline. Tyrone served her
one, so now she’ll be craving another from him, and another, and another until they run out of activities that don’t require a condom.
I hate that more than anything.
My eyes stray from Jamie when I spot a flurry of blue in the corner of my eye. The ghost boat we send down the rapids unmanned is wrapped around a smaller boulder downstream. Its hang-up can only mean one thing—classifications have changed.
“Brace. We could have a smoker on our hands.” A smoker is an extremely violent rapid that should only be run with extreme caution.
We get hit with a wave breaking back on itself a mere second before “Swimmer!” is sounded from the boat in front of us. A swimmer means someone has gone overboard. I scan the whitewater, seeking the blue oar and helmet our rafters are required to wear. With conditions volatile, it takes several scans to find them, and when I do, my heart is in my throat. I’d recognize those wild curls anywhere, much less the beautiful face they curtain.
Jamie’s head bobs out of the water for a mere second before she’s dragged under by the current for the second time. In her panic, she tried to stand, which caused either the undercurrent or a concealed object to wipe her feet out from beneath her. While Tyrone alerts the safety boats downstream that we have a man overboard, I snap off my life vest, then dive into the water. I’m a strong swimmer, but the feeling of being tossed around in a washing machine hits me when I spear through the surface of the rapids. With the snow on the mountain caps melting in today’s warmer conditions, the water rushing downstream is extra volatile—and fucking freezing.
Thanks to the safety beacon flashing on Jamie’s life vest, I locate her remarkedly quick. After curling my arm around her waist, I swim us to the surface before adopting the position we teach all rafters before letting them anywhere near the rapids.
