One Reckless Summer (24 page)

So this
wasn’t
love. This was hot sex. Some summer companionship, that was all.

“What’s up, Tolliver? You look like you lost your best friend.”

She looked up to see Sue Ann, who now settled next to her on the cloth in a pretty summer skirt and red strappy top. She reached out and held on to Sue Ann’s hand—tight. “No—thank God I still have
you.
”

“What’s
that
mean?” Sue Ann clearly, suddenly, grasped the magnitude of the situation.

Jenny looked at her friend beneath the lit-up sky and knew it must show in her eyes, but she had to say it anyway. “I had to tell my dad. He heard about
Wayne
’s breakout and was going to drive out there. He’s not going to now, but…I think he hates me.”

Sue Ann’s face fell. “Oh Jen,” she said, “
come
here,” then pulled Jenny into a hug.

“Worse yet,” Jenny admitted, still in the embrace, “I’ve got this crazy fear in my head right now. I’m afraid…oh God…that I might actually be in love.”

“Yeah,
that’s
a newsflash—
not
,” Sue Ann said, then patted her back and hugged her some more.

When Mick came in the back door a few nights later, Jenny’s heart was in her throat. Her father had kept his promise, as she knew he would, because Walter Tolliver was a man of his word. But it still felt strange to see Mick for the first time after telling her father his secret.

Her thoughts shifted, though, when she realized he was carrying a long, narrow cylinder of cardboard. She pointed. “What’s that?”

Glancing down at it, he looked…surprisingly sheepish. “Uh…nothing important. Just…something I thought you might like.”

She narrowed her gaze on him slightly. Was she losing her mind or had Mick Brody actually brought her a present? She bit her lip to try to hold back her smile, but it didn’t work very well. “So what is it?”

He held it out to her. “Here. But if you don’t like it, that’s okay. It’s no big deal.”

In fact, she
was
a little nervous opening it. What on earth would Mick give her as a gift? She couldn’t imagine. What if she
didn’t
like it? Could she fake a reaction?

But when she took the cap off one end and pulled out a poster of some sort, she unrolled it to see—oh
wow,
a print of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night.
She gasped.

“For the wall,” he said. “That spot looks pretty blank now.”

“It’s…amazing, Mick,” she said, still studying Van Gogh’s swirling blue-and-yellow impression of the night sky.

“Not
that
amazing,” he said, trying to play it off as nothing. “I was just over in Crestview, doing laundry, and I walked past a shop window and saw this. You’ll have to get a frame—I wasn’t sure I could get one over here in the rowboat without dinging it, so I just got the print.”

“I can’t wait to hang it,” she said, her heart near to bursting. “It’s really perfect for the spot, and I love it. Thank you.”

He started seeming more like his usual self then, taking the print from her hand, setting it aside on the coffee table, and saying, “Come here, pussycat,” as he drew her into his arms.

She lifted her mouth to his for a warm, sweet kiss, and he said, “I didn’t come all the way over here just to give you a picture of the sky, though.”

“No?” she asked playfully.

“I mainly came to give you this.” Then he pulled her body tight to his to let her feel the hard erection pressing at the crux of her thighs.

“
Mmm
, that’s perfect, too,” she promised him.

“Now that I’m not gonna argue with,” he said with a sexy, arrogant glint in his eye that made her laugh softly even as she pooled with moisture below.

“
Wanna
go upstairs?” she asked. Because she could do that now. She was bold, aggressive Jenny now.

Once there, they undressed each other, and he pulled her on top of him and made her come. Then he kissed her between her legs and made her come again. After that, he entered her from behind while they lay on their sides, and he reached around to touch her until she came—wow—a third time! And by the time she reached her third orgasm, Jenny was pretty sure she’d died and gone to heaven—and yet, somehow, the
best
part for her was when
Mick
climaxed: listening to his groans, his sweet whispers, and knowing she’d taken him there.

As they lay snuggling afterward, she whispered to him, “How’s
Wayne
?” She’d decided it would be crazy to tell him her father knew—knowing her dad would honor his word, she saw no reason to upset or worry Mick. He had enough to deal with already.

“He’s…weaker lately,” he replied.

“Is there anything I can do to help? I’d be happy to come over and cook, clean, take care of
Wayne
—whatever you need.” She’d never asked before, not wanting to intrude, but she
was
“good Jenny,” after all—she could only resist offering for so long.

“That’s sweet,” he said, “but no.” Then shook his head softly. “Taking care of somebody who’s dying is kind of…”

“Intimate?” she suggested after he trailed off.

“Yeah, maybe. But not intimate like
this
,” he said, looking down at them, naked except for the covers. “I just…think it would be hard for
Wayne
to have anybody besides me seeing him the way he is right now.”

She nodded. “I understand.” Her mother had grown selective toward the end of her life, too, about who came into her room. She’d want to be remembered living, not dying.

“But when he’s awake,” Mick went on quietly, “we’ve been…talking. A lot. About old times—and other things, too. It’s kinda nice.”

They lay quietly then, Jenny thinking Mick had sounded more at peace just now than she’d ever heard him. But it also managed to remind her how
not
at peace she and her dad remained. She hated that she’d upset him. She hated that he truly saw her in a different light now. She hated that any of it was necessary. Yet it was. They hadn’t spoken since the fireworks and it made her extra glad to see Mick tonight, to be close to him, to remind her why
she’d
done it.

He turned beneath the sheets then until they lay looking at each other, their faces close. His voice came out surprisingly soft. “Were you…with your mom when she died?”

Jenny drew in her breath and thought back over the years. “No. I knew it was almost the end, though, when my dad took me in to see her and she had a long talk with me—the kind you’d expect, about wanting me to be strong, and happy, and about how she was going to be watching me from heaven. Then they sent me to Sue Ann’s for a while. It was strange. Part of me knew she was here dying the whole time, but another part of me was willing to be distracted by Sue Ann’s mom taking us to see a movie at the Ambassador in town, playing in their swimming pool, and staying up late doing each other’s hair.”

“Do you still miss her?” he asked, faces still close.

She bit her lip, tried to compose an answer. “Yes. No. Sometimes.” She let out a sigh. “The first years were hard—I was at an age when I really needed a mom. But after I moved away, life felt more normal—it was sort of like Mom and Dad
were
just somewhere I wasn’t.”

He cast a small, sympathetic sort of smile. “I’m not sure you really answered my question, pussycat. Do you still miss her? All these years later?”

She cast a similar smile in return. “Yes,” she said again. “No,” she added. “Sometimes.” Then she reached up to touch the stubble on his cheek. “You’re afraid you’ll miss
Wayne
.”

He didn’t deny it, just looked kind of sad. “It’s strange, ’cause he hasn’t been around, you know? But I’ll just miss knowing he’s
somewhere.
He’s the only family I have.”

“How did your mom and dad die?”

“Heart attacks,” he said. “Both of them. A few years apart. They were only in their fifties, but they were both heavy smokers.”

“Sorry,” she said.

Yet Mick shook his head. “They weren’t good parents. They treated us like…things that were in the way, things that cost them money. He drank a lot, and I think now that she was probably bi-polar or schizophrenic or something. I don’t miss them. I only…miss what they could have been sometimes, miss what I wished they were.”

Jenny kissed his mouth softly, leaned her forehead against his. “Why didn’t you sell the land when you left?” She’d sort of wondered that ever since the night she’d found him there.

“Tried,” he said. “It was on the market for about a year. I thought maybe a developer would buy it, put some houses around that side of the lake. But turns out the only thing my parents left me was land too steep and rocky and hard-to-get-to for anyone to want to live on it,” he concluded with a cynical laugh.

“I’m sorry, Mick.”

“For what?”

“I just…wish you’d had a happier life.” She’d always felt sorry for herself for losing her mother so young, but she couldn’t have
imagined
then what kind of life those two boys across the lake were enduring.

“Let’s not talk anymore, pussycat,” Mick said quietly. “Just kiss me.”

An hour later, they’d made love again and Mick had gone, and Jenny stood naked, looking out the front window, able to make out the dark shadow of a rowboat moving slowly away from her across the lake. She felt like her heart was leaving
with
him.

But this isn’t love, I don’t love him. I can’t. I just can’t.
Despite what she’d told Sue Ann at the fireworks, she’d decided she was wrong, that it couldn’t be true. She’d just been overly emotional that night, after everything that had happened.

Why
can’t
you love him?
It was almost as if the question had come from somewhere other than her mind.

And she raised her gaze from the lake to the star-sprinkled sky above and wondered if she was under so much pressure here that she really was starting to lose it, because she could have sworn she’d just heard her mother’s voice.

And that was crazy, but given how strange things suddenly felt between her and her dad, she found herself trying to imagine what her
mother
would think of her now—her actions, her feelings, her secret-keeping. She remembered so clearly those words her mother had imparted during that last big talk:
Be strong when I’m gone, and be brave enough to do what makes you happy
,
even when it’s hard.

But loving Mick Brody wouldn’t make her happy.

He was so different than her, than anything she’d known. And even if thinking about Mick had done a lot to clear Terrence from her mind, Terrence had been her first love, her first sex, her
husband,
for heaven’s sake. Distractions were nice, but it took awhile to get over that kind of loss, and didn’t she need to give herself the time and space to do that?

And Mick would leave soon, after all. He’d leave Destiny, and her life.

And maybe the truth was that knowing Mick was temporary was…well, part of what had made it easier for Jenny to embrace the affair. Because she’d lost so much in her life, much of it just lately.

She’d lost her mother, she’d lost her dad’s faith in her, she’d lost her marriage and her job and the life she’d built. Heck, after recent discussions, she wasn’t even sure she’d ever really gotten over losing Snowball as a teenager—and she’d never owned a pet since.

So she’d lost a lot. And she might be woman-hear-her-roar, but that didn’t mean she wanted to keep losing things she cared about.

And if she didn’t love Mick, she couldn’t lose him.

So she didn’t love him. That simple. She just didn’t.

Captain, I do not believe you realize the gravity of your situation.

Mr. Spock

B
eads of sweat rolled down Mick’s chest, stomach, as he dipped the oars into the water, moving across the lake. The muscles in his arms were tired—he could feel the soreness with every stroke—but at least he’d finally finished digging.

Which was good, he feared, for more reasons than one.
Wayne
was getting sicker, weaker. The pain patches weren’t lasting as long as they were supposed to anymore, and neither were the pills.

So he’d started changing the patches sooner than the instructions said. Because he didn’t like seeing his brother in pain. Because he wasn’t sure what else to do. He didn’t exactly have a doctor or nurse handy to consult. He was winging it. And now he only hoped the medication lasted.

He’d been forced, just last night, to ask
Wayne
, “What if we run out?” He hadn’t wanted to even
think
about that, but he’d counted the supply, and at the rate they were going, he’d be out of pain patches in a couple of weeks, out of
oxycodone
in three, tops.

“I know a guy you could call,”
Wayne
had said, seeming not altogether coherent—but that’s how it was lately. So
Wayne
was saying he knew where Mick could buy some illegal drugs. Great. That’s just what he needed to do next to make his list of broken laws even longer.

Just please don’t let us run out
,
please let them last.

He wasn’t sure who he was even talking to, since he wasn’t exactly a God-fearing man. And hell, it was like wishing for his brother to die—a hard thought to swallow.

Just quit thinking
,
dude, and row.
He needed her tonight, bad.
Too
bad.

And he didn’t care much anymore if it showed. He didn’t care much anymore if it seemed an awful damn lot like he was in too deep here. Being with
Wayne
, watching him deteriorate, was getting harder. He
had
to have something else to hold on to now or he’d lose his fucking mind. If he hadn’t met her, didn’t have her, he didn’t know how he’d be surviving this, what he’d do when he needed to get away for a little while. Go out into the woods and beat his fists on the ground like a caveman? Curl up in a ball like a little kid and cry? Thank God he didn’t have to find out. Thank God he had Jenny to take away the hurt for a little while.

As he rowed the little boat up onto the shore next to her dock, his cock began to harden. He felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs—coming here, anticipating her, had
him
conditioned to get excited the closer he got to her house.

He walked across the road in the dark, aware of lights on in other homes, but he’d noticed from the beginning that things were nearly as quiet on this side of the water at night as they were on his own—he’d yet to see a car pass during his comings and goings, or anyone even outside after dark. Even so, as he moved furtively up the driveway and around the back of the little yellow cottage, it still felt like he was doing something forbidden. The best damn forbidden thing he’d ever done.

He could have long since started going to the front door, but he
liked
the back door for some reason. He liked all the little details of being Jenny Tolliver’s secret lover.

When he stepped up on the stoop, the inside door was wide open and through the old screen door he saw her walking toward him in the light echoing from the living room. And—
damn
—she wore only a flimsy, see-through pink bra and some kind of stretchy, lacy underwear that looked like tiny little shorts. Her hair was stacked up on her head in a messy, sexy knot. “Did you see me coming?” he asked, voice low from the instant lust coursing through him.

A pretty half smile lit her face. “No—it’s just that the A/C’s out, so I’m hot.”

Stepping inside, he gave her a bold once-over, from the nipples he could see clearly through her bra down to her silky thighs. “You can say
that
again, pussycat,” he murmured.

And she laughed, a soft, pretty trilling sound that moved all through him.

He reacted instinctually, lifting one hand to the side of her breast, stroking his thumb across that prettily beaded peak as he leaned in to kiss her. The way she looked tonight wasn’t inspiring him to go slow. “Have you been walking around like this all day?” he couldn’t help asking with a soft grin. It seemed like a waste to have a woman looking this sexual without anyone enjoying it.

She shook her head lightly, sighing from the kiss, the touch. “It just went out about an hour ago,” she said, her voice dreamy, sultry, as she peered up into his eyes. “I didn’t want to call my dad this late.”

“Not that I want you to burn up, honey—but I’m kinda glad you didn’t. I’d have hated to show up and not be able to come in.”

She bit her lip, her face flushing with pleasure as he used both thumbs to stroke both nipples now. “Me, too.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to give you
this
,” he said, low, then stepped closer, pressing his erection to her.

He kissed her again, this time lifting his hands to cup her face, and her palms rose to his chest. And then…some sort of weird practicality bit at him. He wasn’t the type to rescue damsels in distress, but something made him say, “I could look at the A/C if you want. I’m pretty good with that sort of thing—worked for a heating-and-cooling guy for about six months when I first moved away.

“Thing is, though,” even
more
practical concerns forced him to add, “I can’t stay long tonight, so…afraid it’s either that…or
this
.” He backed her against a counter with his hips. “You choose.”

She gave him a take-mercy-on-me smile. “So you either heat me up or cool me down?”

“Pretty much.”

She bit her lip, looking semi-orgasmic already, then said, “Who needs air-conditioning anyway? Kiss me.”

Thank God. Sweet relief rushed through his veins as he sank his mouth back to hers and curled his hands over her round ass. She arched against him, letting him feel how bad she wanted it tonight, and that only made his zipper strain tighter, made him want to get to her faster. So instead of bothering with the bed or the couch, he lifted her up onto the kitchen counter and stepped between her parted legs.

Damn, she looked good sweaty, and as he kissed her neck, her throat, her chest, he tasted the salt on her skin. When she yanked his T-shirt off and wrapped her legs around him, their flesh stuck together, and even with windows lifted wide at both sides of the galley-style kitchen, more than one kind of heat consumed him. “Wait a minute,” he said.

“Huh?” she breathed, but he was already extracting himself from her shapely legs to turn around and open the doors on the fridge behind him, wide.

Cool air blasted out, from both the refrigerator and the freezer, and Jenny and Mick both let out a long, “
Ahhhh
.” And while he was there, he reached in the ice bin and drew out a cube.

Turning back to her, he held the ice cube to her throat, listened to her feminine gasp at the cold sensation, then watched her close her eyes in pleasure and relief. He moved it slowly down, over her chest, between her breasts—then he pushed it into one cup of that flimsy bra, moving it over and around her pointed nipple. She made a startled sound at first, but it eased into a low, sultry moan. Their gazes met, and she looked wild as she ran both hands back through his hair.

Their eyes never parted as he withdrew the cube from the cup of her bra, then slipped it in the opposite side. She gasped again at the fresh sensation and he watched her nipple become harder and harder through the now-wet fabric. Her sexy sighs drove him to bend and suckle her other nipple through the damp bra, nibbling and biting, just a little—his need tonight less than gentle.

The ice cube was melting rapidly, so Mick soon tossed the remains in the sink and reached back into the freezer for another, which he glided slowly down her bare stomach, both of them watching the wet trail it left on her skin.

When he reached the v-shaped edge of her panties, just below her navel, he didn’t hesitate to keep going, to slide the ice into the stretchy fabric and straight down between her legs. Another pretty gasp escaped her, followed by a few slightly strangled-sounding moans that made him a little crazy. She was biting her lower lip, whimpering hotly, watching his hand move inside her underwear, and his whole body burned with raw lust from touching her around the ice cube, stroking his fingertips through the folds, even wetter than usual right now from the ice.

She moved against him in jagged motions; she reached up overhead to grab on to the cabinets for balance. She looked more brazen and out-of-control than he’d ever seen her, and it only fueled him, turning his need more urgent.

“Lift your ass,” he directed, voice low, but he had to help—because of her position on the counter—before he could pull down those sexy-as-sin panties and let them drop to the floor. Abandoning the ice again, he stepped between her legs and looked at her there and told her between hot, hungry breaths, “You’re so beautiful, baby.”

Her breath came just as ragged as his while, together, they fought past his belt and zipper until his cock burst free—and he couldn’t wait another second before driving it into her moisture.

But a low, soft moan left him as he entered, and once there, he had to close his eyes. And maybe it was the open freezer door behind him, but despite the heat, a chill tingled down his spine. “So tight,” he whispered to her. Warm. Safe. The best place he could imagine being in the whole damn world.

He held her at the edge of the counter and plunged into her, deep, slow, hard. He gazed into her eyes and drowned in the heat there. He bent to tongue her nipple, still covered with that teasing, transparent fabric, then bit it lightly, making her sob, making her flesh contract around him. After which he yanked down the cups of the bra so he could really
get
to her, really
feel
the turgid flesh tighten further in his mouth.

She arched into him, the agony of hot pleasure etched on her face—as he kissed both her breasts, as he gathered her body in his arms, as he thrust as deeply into her as he possibly could. And then the rhythm of her movements settled into something familiar—it was the way she moved when she was going to come.

He nibbled her shoulders, held her close, let her grind,
growled
his own pleasure. He whispered, “I want you to come
so
hard, baby—
so
hard.”

Her jaw went slack and her lips looked swollen, her cheeks still pink from heat or sex or a combination of both. Tiny moans echoed from her. Then, “Please, more, almost.”

“I’ll give you all you want, pussycat,” he whispered in her ear. “Everything I’ve got.”

And then her breath caught, once, twice, and her body jerked slightly, a low sob leaving her as she moved against him, harder, harder—and he loved holding her while she came, loved feeling the orgasm vibrate through her body until it was all gone and they balanced there against the counter, embracing, bodies interlocked.

He kissed her then, and picked her up, still inside her. He thought of laying her across the kitchen table, but it was too damn hot over there, so he finally reclined her across the linoleum floor in front of the fridge, the cool air still pouring out, making the night better.

He knelt between her legs, pulling her torso up into his lap as she stretched naked but for the bra framing her breasts, and then he pounded into her.
God
,
yes
. That’s what he needed tonight, to give it to her hard, to spill
himself
inside her. She cried out at each deep stroke, and for a moment he felt like he was in a dream, because this couldn’t be little Jenny Tolliver, writhing on a kitchen floor, looking dirty and hot for him, taking his every rough thrust. But then she was saying his name—“Mick! Oh God, Mick!” her eyes shut, her arms stretched over her head in abandon, and sure enough, that was his sweet Jenny’s voice, and he used two fingertips, rubbing them above where he entered her, rubbing until her breath caught again, until she was sobbing and moaning and coming again, her body convulsing around him.

“Aw…aw, God,” he groaned, because that was all it took—he was coming, too, bursting inside her, driving deep, using his hands to pull her body tighter to his, shutting his eyes, getting lost, lost in the release, the consuming pleasure. Jesus God,
yes.

And then they were quiet, still. He could hear crickets outside again, could feel the oppressive heat again battling the cool air at his back from the fridge. He could peer down on her again and see how amazing she looked lying there.

Slowly, he withdrew, and they both sighed at the disconnection, and he eased down next to her on the floor. They lay side by side, and he took in her body again, naked and wet and beautiful, as he slid one hand onto her hip. “That was
so
damn hot, honey. In the good way, I mean,” he added with a grin, thinking of the warmth saturating the air.

The reminder of the heat made her glance up at the open window above their heads, and the look of ecstasy on her face turned to concern. “What if someone heard us?”

Maybe he should be worried, given his situation, but instead, he could only laugh. “Destiny,” he said, “where no one has sex with the windows open.”

Her eyes widened in distress and she pressed her palms to his chest. “Seriously—what if someone heard us?”