He yanks the shirt I only recently pulled over my head and takes a second to stare at my breasts like they’re some kind of wonder of the world. “I fucking love your tits.” He palms both of them at once and sinks his face in between them, kissing them hungrily with a wet, hot mouth. I guess that’s his breakfast for today.
Lemon
It’s afternoon before we make it outside, and the white cratered moon is visible in the perfect blue sky. “Look at that.” I point, over arms that squish a folded blanket.
“Sanguine moon,” Carson says, scooping up the trailing fringe of the blanket slipping through my arms.
“Huh?” I look again at the sky. “You still know everything there is to know about anything.”
He smiles. “Doubt that.”
“Yup, you do. You did when we were kids and I’m so glad you hung on to that. You’ve done well.” Although my life is the reverse of Carson’s, I’m not jealous of him at all. He’s done what he set out to and I admire the shit out of him for it. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
He chuckles and gives me a look, one that pulses somewhere between ‘of course I did, you muppet’ to ‘I have now you’re here’. And that’s not him being arrogant, or me for that matter. It’s just that we’re slipping back into the childhood ways we had. Where his thoughts were mine and mine his.
In jest, I raise a bare foot to his backside and push him forward toward the dock.
He turns, his hands full and unable to respond with anything other than a pretend lurch toward me. It makes me jump back and squeal a little.
“Wait here.” He dumps the fishing tackle on the ground and disappears into a larch lap-clad shed next to the dock.
I hear a dull thud of wood against wood and then splashing of water. “What ya doin’ in there?”
“Do you remember this?” He calls out as he reappears in a small rowing boat which glides from behind the shed.
“No. Why should I?” I call out.
He pulls alongside the dock and leaps out, hooking a rope to a post nailed to the edge.
“It was out there, remember?” He nods with his head toward the center of the lake. “We’d try and swim out to it.”
“That’s the boat? The upturned wreck?”
“Yup.” He hoists himself up onto the dock. “Come on.”
“The pirate boat?” I scan every visible inch of the vessel as it bobs in the water.
He laughs. “Yeah. Although, there wasn’t much left of it once I’d replaced the rotten strips. But I got the color match right.” He lowers the fishing tackle and cooler onto the floor between two wooden benches.
I nod like a stupid donkey. He has got the color right. I remember that part. It’s turquoise, like the Caribbean Sea, with a band of blinding white around the middle.
“Serendipity,” I say, squinting at the writing near the front. “Is that it’s original name?”
He nods and leaps back in, keeping his balance when the boat rocks violently from side to side. “Yeah, there was a weathered plaque on it. I could barely make it out.”
“Is it safe to get in?”
He narrows his eyes from under his thick eyebrows.
“Okay. Just kidding.” I hold out my hand for him to steady me while I step in; the boat wobbles underneath my feet.
He unhooks the rope and, balancing on one foot, pushes the other against the dock so we lurch from the bank. I stare at his thigh muscles twitching as he keeps balance, and I shiver away an urge to run my hands up underneath his canvas shorts.
I roll the blanket up behind me and rest back so I can appreciate him some more. I trail my fingers in the cool water as if to ground myself from this floating dream. He sits and grabs hold of the paddles; the lapping noise as he dips them in and out of the water is relaxing. He’s even skilled at that. With just the right amount of muscle and angle on the oars, he makes easy work of it. The muscles that skim across the top of his shoulders contract where the collar of his tee meets his skin, teasing me with what I now know is below it.
As we move further away from the shore, my chest tightens. I’m not scared of the water, but I’ve never been a particularly strong swimmer. But with Carson here, I’ll be safe. Just like as a kid when my brazen attitude would get me into sticky situations and Carson would rescue me.
The sun warms my face and I shake my hair free so it trails and a slight breeze catches the wisps near my face. A relaxed positivity practically pulses from me. I haven’t felt this way in years and finally feel like my momma said when I was little. A ray of sunshine ready to brighten up anyone’s day.
I’m free and out of the safety of four walls without worry or concern. I open my mouth to tell him how wonderful this is, then close it again. It would only spoil the moment.
He paddles effortlessly until we’re smack in the middle of the lake and the 360-degree view is incredible. Trees line the horizon and the smell and sound of nature is all around. There’s a coolness in the air from being so far across the water and, resting my head back on the blanket, I look up at the blue sky above. The view reminds me we are all minute in the scheme of things. Every person in the world, no matter their importance or worth, breathing under the same sky. The President, Garth Brooks, my mom, and even my dad.
“This is why I couldn’t live in a city.”
“Me either.” He passes over a bottle of water from the cooler.
“So, what’s that over there?” I point the bottle at a patch of land that looks as if it has been cleared. “Do you share this lake with someone?”
“Nope. I’m setting up a small pod over there. The sun rises behind that spot, so fishing there in a morning is good because of the shade. It also means I can go there and don’t have to return to the house all day. I might even rent it out. But, then again. I’m happy not to have visitors mostly.” He looks at me as indication that I’m an exception to that rule.
“Sounds lovely.”
“Yeah, quite a bit of work to do, and I could do with a better landing spot. Currently, I have to wade through the water to get to it.”
Screwing the poles of two fishing rods together, he hands one over to me and picks out some hooks, showing how to thread the line and fix a hook. “You’re still not squeamish, are you?”
I curl my lips. “Nah. Why?”
Carefully, he peels the lid from a tub of live bait. Worms and grubs wriggle in it.
“Phew.” I swipe my hand in front of my nose as the earthy decay rushes up my nostrils. “It stinks.”
I reach in and gingerly pick out a grub, following Carson’s lead, I push its squirming body onto a barbed hook. His fingers aren’t as nimble as mine, so despite his experience, I manage to thread it before he does.
“Now what?”
He flicks his line into the water and when he’s happy that the float bobs where he wants it, he clamps the rod into a holder on the side of the boat and comes behind me, the shift in weight making the boat wobble. I widen my stance and squeal. He steadies me with a strong warm grip around my waist. And slides a hand up my arm. “It’s all about flicking your wrist.”
I lift my eyebrows at him over my shoulder.
Softly, he draws my elbow back. “Okay. Now flick.”
The hook lands about a foot in front of me, barely in the water.
I turn to him and frown.
“Try it yourself.” He lifts his hands up and away.
“I will,” I say with a playful defiance. I reel the line back in and lift my arms like he showed me, flicking the rod toward the water with more effort.
The float lands so close to his he chuckles. “You’re a natural.” Which makes me smile. The odd praise goes a long way.
“Now what?”
He unclips the other stand and I place the rod in it.
“Now we wait.”
I’ve an idea this is what fishing is mostly about. Waiting. And I’m not sure if I have the patience for it. But we’ll see.
I sit and lean into the w
ater to wash my hands.
He folds his bench seat away and snuggles onto the floor, pulling me down next to him. He pushes off his Toms and wriggles his bare toes in the breeze and I do the same, letting mine curl around his. It feels like we can touch anywhere at any time. Like when we were younger and it didn’t mean anything more than just a connection. A way of saying ‘hi’ or ‘I’m here for you’, without words.
Eventually, Carson lifts onto his elbow and leans on his side, slinking a finger under my tee, or should I say his tee, and my skin pebbles under his touch.
“I like that.” I close my eyes on the feeling.
“This?” He circles his rough finger around the sensitive skin near my belly button.
I hum my approval.
“When did you get this?” he asks, skimming his finger across the gold bar.
“A while ago, when I started at the Green Parrot.” It’s easy to tell him when, not so much why. I knew Blue would hate it, and it gave me another opportunity to poke at the grizzly bear. At that point, I lived my life thinking of things to provoke him.
“Did it hurt?”
I blink open one eye. “A little. Why? You thinking of gettin’ one?”
“Um… no. But I like it on you.” He rubs over it again, sending a shiver across my stomach. “Did you know you can stimulate your vagus nerve through your belly button?”
I raise my head to look at him with a questioning expression.
“It’s like the superhighway of nerves that link directly to your brain.”
“If you stimulated it, would it give me an orgasm?”
He laughs. “No. More likely make you wanna pee.”
“Well, forget about that and just concentrate on my clit,” I joke.
He nearly chokes on his spluttering laugh, sitting up so I have to pat him on the back.
When his breathing is under control, he turns to me with that knowing look, like he used to when I said something crude as a teenager. I don’t know where that part of me comes from, really.
“You’re just the same, ain’t you?”
I nod. “In some ways, but not all.” I roll onto my side and try yanking his bicep so he’ll lay back down. At first he resists, just because he can, then he rests on his back and I draw my fingers over his thick eyebrows, flattening down the hairs and tracing the bridge of his forehead.
Carson was always measured in his approach to life. Whereas I would have more of a fuck-it attitude. He’d weigh up the pros and cons and deliberate forever over any darn thing. But I like and respect that now and wish I’d paid more attention to those ways in my own life. It obviously makes for better long-term decisions. And maybe if I had been that way, I would have appreciated him more. He said he always had a crush on me, and I should have done something about that. For some reason, I didn’t, and I don’t remember why. I love that we have rekindled that special relationship we had back then.
“This reminds me of coming here when we were kids. Nowhere to be other than here. Foolin’ around until we’d been out way too long.”
“Yeah.” He opens his eyes, blinking his eyelids against the harsh sun.
I place a hand behind my neck to support the weight of my head. “Your dad used to get heavy with you when you came here, didn’t he?”
His eyes darken and his jaw sets tight.
“I don’t mean to upset you, Carson, but we never spoke about it back then. Well, you would say that your dad got mad or whatever, but you never said much more.”
He merely grunts and I should know to back off, but I don’t. “How do you feel about that now?”
“Fine,” he shunts out. “He did what he thought was best for me. Becoming a police officer ain’t a walk in the park. He thought I should toughen up. That was his way of showing it.”
“Suppose you’ve got to be tough to get through all the training and put yourself out there in the community you grew up in.”
“Yep.” He agrees, somewhat curtly.
“But he seemed overly strict all the same.”
Carson side eyes me and I know what that look means. I was raised at the other end of the discipline spectrum.
“Yeah, all right, it was the complete opposite for me. My mom didn’t give a shit what I was up to, most of the time.” When she did, she was completely over the top, gushing over me, like I was her prized calf. But other times she barely acknowledged my existence. I didn’t know which way was up most days. So, I kinda gave up on having any expectations and settled down to merely sharing a house with her. Doing whatever I needed to, to keep social services away from the door, including making up stories about her being at work or too ill to buy groceries or some other shit. I think most people in town knew what was going on, but they helped keep the charade going. I worked from the age of fourteen and was independent enough to make it work.
“Where’s she at now?”
“Colorado. Her last boyfriend was a ski instructor. He made out he owned a resort, so she moved up there with him. Turned out he was a seasonal instructor and when he bled her last divorce settlement dry, he dumped her. She’s working as a cabin maid until she can either afford to move on or snag another guy. Probably the latter.”
Carson makes a small noise with his lips. “You see her much?”
I blow a breath over my lips. “Last time was at my wedding. She gave me some advice about marriage and then left the next day with… let me think now.” I place a sarcastic finger to the dip at the side of my mouth. “The next big NASCAR driver I think he said he was. Always some loser or another, promising a dream and delivering a heavy dose of reality.”
“Shame. You’d think she’d see through them by now.”
“I think she knows from the start but plays along with their sham. She always says, ‘it was fun while it lasted.’” I mimic the broad Texan accent my mom has. I’ve stopped analyzing or caring about what my momma gets up to. She has never been there for me. Well, not since Dad left. “It’s up to her. She’s an adult.”
I can tell by Carson’s face that he doesn’t quite agree with that last statement. And he’s right. When I was a child, my momma should have been there for me. But she wasn’t and I’m not gonna blame her for anything in my life or dwell on it either. She thought she was doing the right thing, initially, trying to find someone to replace my dad. But she got lost along the way somewhere. I’m on the way up and I don’t intend to fall back to that dark pit I’ve been rolling around in this year with talk of my mom.
“Suppose when it’s your turn to be a mom, you know what not to do.”
Open mouthed I gawk at him. “And you. Sigmund Freud.”
He chuckles and flicks my belly button bar. “I think you’d make a good mom.”
My heart twists. It seems he doesn’t know I lost a baby, after all. “Yeah. I doubt that,” I say casually.
“No, you would,” he insists. “You’d be fun and caring.”
“Maybe you need to reserve that judgment until you get to know me better.”
His eyes latch onto mine, piercing through into my morbid mind. “I know you better than you think.”
“You know the child I was,” I say, then bite on my lip at how dismissive that remark sounds. His only response is to lift his eyebrows in that sultry, knowing way of his.
I let a few beats skip by before asking, “What happened to us back then? I remember spending most of our spare time together. And those summers we came here were the most cherished of those memories.” Cherished. There’s that word again. It comes to mind whenever I’m with Carson. “And then poof.” I flick my fingers wide, almost seeing the fairy dust scatter. “We just didn’t seem to be together anymore.”
Carson’s mouth twitches ever so slightly and I spot a flash of pain which stabs at my heart. I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and twisting my head to look down on him. “Carson, you should say how you feel. You know how I am, I’ll keep asking these awkward questions until you do. It’s just the way I am.”
&
nbsp; He shakes his head with a smile. “I know you will.” He presses a soft kiss on my lips and at the same time evades any further discussion on how he feels about our past. And I had best let him. I should take these hints more seriously instead of pushing and pushing until he snaps. The consequences of that are never pretty.
“Ooh. What’s that?” My rod handle twitches. A sign from the universe that I’ve said as much as I can get away with.
Without a word, Carson kneels up alongside me. “Here.” He pushes me up and with an arm wrapped around my thighs he keeps me steady. “Now reel it in.”
“What?”
“You’ve caught a big ‘un. Look there.” He points with a muscle-strained hand at a fish thrashing about in the water several meters away. “Reel it in.”
“I don’t know if I can hold it,” I say in a panic.
“Of course you can. You’ve got it, Lemon.”
My heart skips joyfully at his confidence in my abilities and I concentrate hard on reeling in the fish.
“Told you,” he shouts as he leans over the side to haul the fish onto the boat. “Here.” He thrusts the slimy, wriggling fish into my hands, then unhooks it from the line. “Hold it at arms-length. It looks even bigger that way.” He shuffles to the end of the boat and takes a photo of me with his phone. “Smile. You’ve only gone and hooked the biggest fish in this damn lake.”
Oh, this man. Building me up brick by brick. He’s everything I’m not; measured in his thoughts and calm in his actions. The yin to my yang. The shade to my fiery heat.
I just hope I can live up to his expectations because it would kill me to hurt him now.
Fourteen
Carson
“So, what d’ya wanna do today?” I’m finally showing off my specialty dish this morning. Pancakes. Yesterday’s effort was dumped in the trash.
“Oh. You free again?” Lemon leans over the edge of the counter and her tits push up under her fists. My mind drifts. Although, to be fair, it doesn’t take much when she’s around. It’s like I’m making up for lost time or something. Ten years since my first wet dream about her and I honestly can’t get enough.
Broken in Love (Studs in Stetsons Book 2) Page 12
