Maya
I had to be out of my mind agreeing to give him a chance, but I just couldn’t tell him no. I’d been awake since 5:30 a.m. thinking over the whole thing, and when I thought about not being with him, I felt like crying and throwing up—so I needed to see this through and see if he was serious. I was going to keep my head on straight, though, and not let my heart lead me like it had before, although not with Andy—he was a special moment that I wished I could forget and delete.
Thankfully I had gotten waxed last week, otherwise I’d have been panicking about shaving everywhere and making sure I didn’t look like Chewbacca. I decided on a pair of cut-off shorts and a racerback tank—thankfully I had a strapless bra the same color, because my girls were just too big to go without one, and I’d always thought visible bra straps were kinda tacky.
Finishing off my morning routine, I went downstairs to tidy up my kitchen and drink my morning cups of coffee. I’d never been a breakfast girl, but I couldn’t go without at least 3 cups of coffee, so I finished off the pot and waited for Ren to arrive.
Bang on time at 11 a.m., he knocked on the door, and I tried my best to look like I was relaxed, but my hands were shaking as I opened the door. “Hey, baby.” He wrapped his arms around me as soon as the door opened. He stood holding me for about 10 seconds before pressing his head into my neck and taking a deep breath.
“You okay?” I asked, because I couldn’t understand how he was acting; he always seemed so confident.
“Yeah, I just needed that.” He stood back to look at me. “You got something to swim in, baby?”
I’d totally forgotten about bringing something to swim in, and it must have shown on my face, because he chuckled and shook his head slowly. “Okay, I’ll get my swimming stuff. Do I need to bring anything else?”
“Nah, I’ve got it covered—get your stuff. Is there anything that you’ll need from down here?” he asked as he gently pushed me towards the stairs.
“Um, no, I don’t think so, unless you want to look and see if there’s anything that we’ll need? There’s cold drinks in the fridge, chips in the cupboard, a cooler in the pantry, and there’s blankets that we could use in that box over there.”
“I’ve got all of that ready; you just get your stuff.”
I tried to remember what I was coming up here for, but this soft side of him had thrown me. Should I wear my new bikini, or would that be too much? I decided to have another look at it to see if it would be too slutty for the lake. I’d always found that on beaches you could get away with a more risqué bikini because there were so many people there wearing different shapes and sizes of bikinis, but at the local lake that same bikini might just be too much.
“Definitely go with that one,” Ren croaked from the doorway, scaring the ever-loving shit out of me and making me squeal and jump.
“Oh my God,” I panted, putting my hand on my chest, realizing too late that I was holding the bikini bottoms in my hand. “Sorry, it’s just we’ve always lived within close distance to the beach or countries that get majorly hot, so I only have bikinis. We can always stop on the way, and I’ll get an actual suit, if that’s better?”
“No way,” he said, shaking his head. “Put that one in a bag and let’s go.”
I did as I was told and then picked up a towel to take with me.
“I’ve got towels, baby, you don’t need to bring one,” he said, removing the towel from the bag.
Here was where one of my flaws came out—see, I’m a towel snob. When I wash them, I put in five times the softener you’re meant to, and then I dry them for twenty minutes extra just so that they’re all poofy and soft. I can’t live with hard towels that take your skin off, and I explained this to him, waiting for him to hand it all back to me and say ‘see ya.’
Ren stood and looked at me for a second before picking up my towel and touching it with both hands. “I see what you mean. Shit, I’ve never thought of that before! I had Ma doing my towels because they always felt like sandpaper when I did them, but fuck me if yours don’t feel like that cotton shit they use on babies.” He went and got another towel out, exposing another flaw to him. I’m not only a towel snob, but I’m a towel junkie—every shade and size you can think of, I’ve got, and not just one, but a full set. “Holy shit, how many towels does one person need?”
“A couple,” I mumbled, slamming the door shut, but I was too slow, and he caught it and opened it back up again. He started laughing hard behind me, so I made sure the door to my towel obsession was closed, then walked out and shouted over my shoulder, “Are you ready?”
“Wow, wait til Ma hears this,” he laughed, following me. “She has two closets filled with towels, but that’s because there were seven of us living there. Over the years, she’s never cut down on them because we’re always forgetting and stealing hers, but that right there is impressive.”
“I’m an interior designer, Ren; of course I have a lot of towels and bed linens. When you change them, you need them to match,” I grumbled.
“How many ‘bed linens’ have you got?”
“Enough,” I said, not meeting his eyes.
“Is it as impressive a collection as your towels?” He was laughing again, so I just stayed silent and looked at the floor, trying not to incriminate myself in any way. “Holy shit, I’ve gotta see that one day—are you going to do the same for us at my house?”
My heart stopped—was he saying that I was going to be living there?
Chapter Ten
Ren
S hit, fuck, I didn’t mean to say that. “I mean, when you redecorate?” I replied quickly, catching my slipup as casually as I could.
“Yeah, I’ll get a couple of sets, but the rest I’m leaving to your mom,” she said, smirking at me. “Right, I've got everything I need. Shall we?”
After we had locked up she was standing by the door of my truck with the sun shining in her eyes, making them sparkle; they were so unique and gorgeous, just like the rest of her. Moving closer to her, I bent down to take her mouth, just meaning to give her a quick kiss, but like last night, it got out of control, and before I knew it I had her legs around my waist and she was pressed up against the side of the car. My hands moved up her thighs until I got to the bottom of her shorts, and then I slid my right hand up inside them and held her left cheek; she was so smooth and soft all over and smelt like heaven—she was quickly becoming my addiction.
I finished by giving her a slow kiss, then lifted my head and waited for her to open her eyes. When she did, I almost said fuck it and took her back inside her house, but I wanted to take her to our lake and show her around the ranch if we had time, so I opened the door, put her on the seat, and buckled her in before stealing a final kiss.
On the way to the lake, we made small chitchat, holding hands, and fell into comfortable conversation like yesterday—asking questions and telling stories, getting to know each other a little bit better. I wanted to know everything about her, and it looked like she felt the same way. I still couldn’t get over how many countries she’d lived in, but it started a plan in my head for her to show me the countries and her favorite places. Hell, I’d book it now if I could find someone to cover me at the garage—and if I thought she wouldn’t freak out on me.
“Here we are,” I said as I pulled into the parking lot for the lake.
Cole was already there, along with my best friend Mace and his sister’s best friend, Ava. Those two were always together, but there was no sign of them being in a relationship, even though it was obvious that they were in love. I was glad that Ava was here, though; I figured it’d be less intimidating for Maya having another girl around. It was important to me that she loved my family and that they loved her too. I knew Ma and Cole already did, Cole especially…the little twat.
Maya
Oh my God, was he growling again? “Are you okay?”
“Shit, yeah, sorry I was just thinking about something,” he said, rubbing his forehead and still looking
like he wanted to kill someone.
“Uh, okay, shall we go and get set up?” Anything to distract him from whatever was making him look like he was about to kill someone. I opened the door of his truck, and just as I jumped down, I was knocked off my feet by a blur and landed on my back.
“Fucking hell, Dash! Cole, what the hell? He knocked Maya over,” Ren yelled, pulling hard on what appeared to be a Dalmatian, not a bear like I’d first thought. “You know better than that, bad boy.” He was telling it off like it was a bad child.
“Do you put him in the naughty corner, too?” I wheezed from my position flat out on the floor.
“Smart ass,” he said, laughing, and gently lifted me back to my feet before dusting off my back—apparently my ass got a majority of whatever muck there actually was, given how long he spent rubbing it.
“Hey, man,” Cole shouted, walking toward us with what I was now realizing was his signature grin on his face. “Stop molesting the poor girl.”
“I was dusting her off, Cole. Fuckin’ Dash knocked her off her feet when she got out of the truck,” he snapped.
“Hey, Cole.” I gave a small wave and tried not to laugh.
“Hey, gorgeous, you okay? Dash didn’t hurt you, did he? You still have some dirt on you by the way—here, let me help,” Cole said, reaching towards my ass. As always, before he could reach me, a huge hand connected with his head, stopping him. “Why do you always have to go for the head, bro?” he whined, rubbing at it and pouting. “I used to be smart enough for Harvard, and now I’m lucky if they’d take me at UCLA!” I noticed he’d shouted the last bit towards the gorgeous Amazonian that he’d been talking to when we arrived, who was now standing next to a seriously hot guy with tattoos. Oh my God, it was like looking at a work of art.
“YEAH?” she yelled back at him. “That may be, but they’d sure as shit let you into Juilliard—to sweep the stages and clean the toilets.” I decided there and then that she was frigging awesome. What a response. I was struggling to keep my eyes off the guy who was standing beside her, though. He must have been over six and a half feet tall with dark hair, muscles everywhere, and although his eyes were on us, every time she shifted beside him, he moved with her like they were in sync, or maybe he just didn’t want her away from him.
“Stop staring at my best friend or I swear I’ll drown him,” Ren growled in my ear, making me snap out of my perv moment. God, Amy was gonna love it here!
“Sorry, I was trying to figure out what his tattoos are.” I’m a genius! Speaking of which…I looked at Cole, who was scowling at the beautiful girl—guess he couldn’t think of a response.
“Ava,” Ren called. “Meet Maya.”
The beauty walked towards me with a graceful walk that was almost floating. If I’d had her height, I’d have been all limbs and looked like a baby giraffe learning to walk, but not Ava—she had this natural sensual grace when she walked, and it was helped by the fact she was curvy and filled the bikini she was wearing perfectly. The tattooed god—or ‘TG’ as I would now forever refer to him as in my head and to Amy, because I wasn’t stupid—followed closely behind her with his eyes on her backside. It made sense that they were together, to be honest; they’d have the most beautiful Amazonian-sized kids.
“Hey, sweetie, I’m Ava. I’m glad to finally meet the girl I’ve heard so much about,” she said, leaning in and giving me a quick hug.
“You too, Ava! It’s nice to meet you,” I replied, looking over her shoulder at Cole and Mace, who had their eyes on her ass as she bent over to give me a hug, making me giggle.
“Right,” Cole thundered, snapping out of his Ava-ass trance. “Let’s get shit set up. Ava, thanks for the 20 seconds of heaven moment where you bent over—I’m going to add it to my memory of you undressing and revealing your bikini, you rubbing lotion into yourself…” While he was saying this, he was edging away from Mace like he was going to run into the water. “And then there was the time—” Mace launched himself at Cole just as he ran to the lake and dove in, leaving Mace standing on the bank clenching and unclenching his fists.
As Cole surfaced, he shouted, “I’ve now got enough footage for eight minutes and sixteen seconds of my Ava spank bank!”
Mace, who had turned around and was taking his first step back to us, turned back and ran into the water after Cole, who gave an honest-to-God scream and started swimming away as fast as he could. Ava was shaking her head and laughing, so I joined in, unable to keep it inside anymore.
Ren
While I’d been unloading all the shit from my car and stopping my dog Dash from trying to hump a trash can, Ava had shown Maya where to get changed, and I finally got the chance to appreciate her in that bikini just as Cole limped up with Mace behind him, scowling. Cole was whining about needing his lungs pumped and showing off the cut that ‘needed stitches,’ which was a scratch, making me want to suffocate him—slowly.
That was one thing about Cole—he was a hypochondriac and a serious whiner. You got a cold, he had chronic flu; you got the flu, he got Ebola; if he bumped his leg, he needed a cast or crutches; if he grazed himself, he needed stitches; if he cut himself, needed an amputation and transfusion. It was fucking exhausting, and I had no clue how my mom hadn’t given him to a convent or something, and here he was trying his skills on Maya. Thankfully she just found him funny, which made him pout even more, and then she continued talking to Ava and Mace.
Mace wasn’t looking happy, so I made a mental note to talk to him later to find out what was going on. We’d been best friends since we were five and had gone through a shitload together, but where Ava was concerned, Mace didn’t tell me anything, and I wondered if perhaps that was what the problem was.
After a while, we all sat down talking, and Maya was sitting between my legs and leaning against my chest as I rested my chin on her head. I loved the natural closeness and familiarity that we already had.
“Jesus, shit,” Cole yelled from beside us, making us all jump and turn to see Dash humping his side as he tried fighting him off. “Get him off me. I’m getting molested by a fuckin’ Dalmatian! Call the pound, fuckin’ call an exterminator and a priest!” The last word faded at the end as Cole ran back towards the lake with Dash hot on his heels, by which point even Mace had tears running down his face, he was laughing so hard. Just as we calmed down, he yelled out, “I need the afternoon after pill! And the priest—I want the priest; I feel so dirty and used,” and started scrubbing himself in the water while Dash looked at him from the bank, wagging his tail.
I’d been given Dash by my brothers and sister two years ago, and Cole had come up with the name because he’d said he looked like Morse code with dots all over him so to be a smartass he came up with Dash. Unfortunately, my dog had taken to his name immediately, so I couldn’t change it. Fortunately, he now wound Cole up constantly. My dog never humped anyone besides Cole, and I swear he did it with a doggy grin on his face that wasn’t one of humping satisfaction—more of evil humor.
“Maya, you’ve got to come with me to Sheeve’s on Friday,” Ava said, breaking through my thoughts. What the fuck, why would Maya go there? “It’s a club that plays all sorts of music, and it’s so much fun.”
After ten minutes of discussion, with Mace and I biting our tongues so we didn’t look like unreasonable assholes, it was decided that the girls were hitting Sheeve’s, leaving both Mace and I looking like we’d just swallowed acid at the prospect.
We spent the rest of the day having fun in the water and enjoying the sun. I had the bonus of having a wet Maya rubbing against me as often as I could get it to happen, as well as laughing whenever Dash decided to show his affection to his date—Cole.
We were just setting up the fire to cook dinner when Mace growled, “What the fuck?”
Following where he was looking, I saw Ava speaking to a guy by the water and laughing. Looking back at Mace, I saw he looked more pissed and tense than I’d ever seen him, which made no sense to me because although they’d
been sitting together today, they’d never touched each other, and if anything she’d seemed quieter around him than when he wasn’t around. I wasn’t sure what was going on between them, but I knew that they had a rocky past because of some stuff that Mace had let out when he was drunk, which wasn’t very often. There was no doubting that there were feelings between them, so why they never acted on them, I’d never know. I didn’t even think that it was because they worried about Gia, Mace’s sister, because she was the queen of trying to set them up, but for some reason they refused to give into it.
“’Sup, man?” I watched the tic in his jaw become more pronounced, and the muscles and veins in his arms started to bulge.
“Is she fucking doing this on purpose?” he ground out.
“Who, Ava? Seriously, Mace, you need to calm down before you pop something. What’s going on with you two? You watch her the whole time, but when she sits or gets too close to you, you move away. You’ve been quiet and miserable for weeks, and I really wanna know if you’re okay and what’s going on, man.”
I hated seeing him like this. When we were kids, he’d been the happiest and easiest guy; he’d laughed his ass off at everything, joined in all of the parties, had been confident and the best guy to be around. His dad was an asshole who had abandoned him and his sister and had left them with their alcoholic mom, who was the biggest bitch I’d ever come across in my life to date, and that was saying something. He’d joined the military out of high school and spent six years doing whatever it was that he did. A year before he’d left the military, we’d gotten news that he’d been badly injured and was being medevacked to a hospital thirty minutes away; for days, he’d been in and out of surgery. Gia and Ava had been total wrecks, and I remember walking in and seeing her whispering to him and stroking his head before I turned around and walked out again, leaving them to it, but when he’d woken up, she had come out of his room in tears and left.
Providence Series Books 1-4 Page 7
