The Bad Boys of Summer (43 page)

“I do. I believe you,” I said and dropped a kiss on her lips. She returned it hungrily, pulling my face down to meet hers.

After a few minutes of tender kissing, Laurel realized her phone was still recording, dangling in her left hand behind my neck, and she laughed and brought it forward. “I should probably not include the making out in the write-up.”

“I don’t know, it might be just what
Slipstream
is lacking,” I said with a wink. “Sex sells, right?”

She turned the recording off and looked up at me. “I’m going to have to go back to New York, at least for a bit, and finish this up.”

“And then what?”

Laurel smiled shyly. “And then… then I’m coming right back here. For a long while.”

“I think I might know someone who can show you around,” I said.

She kissed me again and didn’t stop until her phone was chiming, the call of an incoming message. Laurel pulled away from my mouth and looked at her phone with an annoyed grunt.

“Just one sec, it’s my partner from the magazine.” A few finger swipes later, she pulled up his message and let out a laugh with a shake of her head.

She held up the phone to me, and displayed a photo of a fit dude with short-cropped hair sitting in a cozy dark blue first class airline seat. In each hand, he held a full mimosa, and grinned at the camera behind sunglasses like he had won the lottery.

“I guess I missed my flight,” she said, stuffing the phone in her pocket. She looked up at me with lustful, curious eyes.

As I ran my hands up her thighs, I said, “Well, what’s to be done about that?”

“
S
eriously
, man, it’s still not centered!” I laughed, waving my hands from side to side. The workers on the scaffolding above the doorway to the Graveyard Club followed my directions with only a little frustration, until I hollered and put up the okay sign with both hands. “Perfect, there! Perfect. I’ll have beers waiting for you boys when you’re done.”

The workers made their notes about the location, and then carefully lowered the brand-new, but old school-looking, neon sign for the club that had just been delivered. I wiggled around the scaffolding with care and went back inside.

Things had moved fast after the story hit the presses. It became the best-selling issue of
Slipstream
in the past fifteen years, and generated a ton of new revenue for the magazine. Noah’s reputation had recovered—and then some. Shows and reporters had lined up the first few weeks, trying to get some face time with him, but he turned them all down. He had said everything he wanted to say in my story, and he only wanted to focus on the future.

Domino was upset, but she understood when I stepped down from the magazine. She called it going out on a high note, but the truth was just that I didn’t want to sneak around my scene anymore, trying to uncover its dirt—I wanted to get back to helping it thrive, supporting the local acts, and writing culture pieces. Deathshead, one of Seattle’s oldest underground magazines, was all too happy to hire me, and I intended to take over as editor one day.

I found a house in Thornwood only a short drive from Noah’s, which I only bought after I insisted it was the right thing to do for a lifelong commitment-phobe. He understood my need for freedom; it wasn’t like we were apart for long periods, anyway. Noah was spending his time on low-key things after the stress of the festival, and most of his days, he was working the Graveyard Club with Kevin, slowly edging him into the present one upgrade at a time.

Behind the bar, Kevin was drying glasses. “Get it all okay?”

“Yeah, it’s going to look fucking amazing,” I told him. “They should have it finished in an hour or so.”

“Don’t forget to ask them to hang up some of the bug zappers we got, too. That neon light is gonna pull all the skeeters to the smokers at night,” he said, gesturing to the lamps gathered under one of the tables.

“Will do,” I promised and took a drink of water from the glass on the bar.

“Babe,” came Noah’s muffled voice from the stage. “Are you busy? Can you help me out here?”

I hurried over to find him trying to hold up one of the overhead PA speakers while he simultaneously tried to maneuver a dolly that had tipped onto its side.

“Geez, tough guy, what gives!” I teased, picking up the dolly and rolling it right underneath him. Noah lowered the speaker carefully onto the platform and stood up with an exhale. He straightened his shirt and pulled me close for a kiss.

“Thanks for helping out today,” he said. “Are you sure the mag didn’t mind?”

“Nah,” I said. “This new place is way more low-key than
Slipstream
. Besides, that was the point, remember? That I
don’t
work my ass off all the time anymore?”

“So what do you call helping fix up the Graveyard Club—a vacation?” he laughed, slapping my ass playfully.

“Ooh,” I said. “We should probably take a real one of those soon. I’m getting a little travel thirsty.”

Noah’s eyes lit up. “You too, huh? I bitched about every tour, but man… it always gave me something to look forward to.”

“Well… maybe we should plan one,” I said.

“Maybe we should!” he said, hands on his hips.

“Why are you saying that all defiantly? I’m agreeing with you,” I laughed, poking him in the ribs.

“I don’t know. You get my blood all boiled up.” He pulled me close by the waist and kissed me deeply until Kevin began cat-calling us from behind the bar.

“Back to work, you fuckin’ horn dogs!” Kevin laughed. “If I don’t get any, neither do you!”

Noah and I laughed as we parted, and I hopped off the stage to go check on the sign workers. They were still on track, and the sign already improved the curb appeal of the club. I gave them a thumbs up and returned inside, but the room was empty.

“Hey, Noah, I had this idea,” I said as I came around the corner to the back room.

I found Noah and Kevin huddled up near the sink, looking down at something Noah was holding in his hand. Something small, and something glittery. It was only a split second before they realized I was in the room, and Noah scrambled to shove his hands in his pockets while Kevin made a surprised noise and waved his towel around.

They stared at me like deer caught in headlights, not even bothering to try and explain their strange behavior. I looked to one, and then the other, my smile growing as I waited and waited for one of them to try and cover.

“You guys are…
really
bad at this,” I laughed.

Noah’s face twisted in a playful glare. Kevin started huffing and walked past me, slapping me a few times with the towel. “Hey, why don’t you mind your own business?”

Noah followed him, walking up close to me. He leaned down and in heated whisper said, “Yeah, why don’t you mind your own business, babe?”

“Why don’t you make me?”

Noah smiled and gave an evil little laugh before he dropped a kiss on my forehead and moved past me into the bar.

As I watched him go with a smile, I wondered if he realized it didn’t take an investigative journalist to figure out what a ring box in the pocket of a pair of jeans looks like.

C
larice

At first, the idea of a week at a secluded resort in Bali with my girlfriends sounded like just the thing I needed to get me out of my funk. Of course, I should have realized that there was more to their plan than just a regular trip. But who could have guessed what they had up their sleeves?

A sex club?? Excuse me, hedonistic resort… like there’s much difference…

This wasn’t what I signed up for, and I definitely don’t feel ready for it.

So maybe that’s why, when I ended up meeting the gorgeous British owner, I was so open to his absolutely outrageous proposal…

H
arrison

Running my father’s resort in Bali has a lot of perks, not the least of which is the easy and immediate access to a bevy of beautiful and sexually explorative women. However, the fact that it’s about as far away as I can get from my parents is almost equally important to me.

My father and I have never seen eye to eye, and I know I’ve always been a disappointment to him. He’s been trying to use my huge inheritance as a bargaining chip for years, trying to bend me to his will.

But it’s not like I don’t already have a lot of money, so I thought I could just continue to avoid the issue forever.

And then I sent that bloody, drunken email…

“
U
gh
… Bloody Christ.”

The words dropped out of Harrison’s mouth before he was aware of anything else except the pain. A cloudy hangover headache tumbled around his skull, pulsing, making his brain feel three times too big and about ten degrees too hot. He groaned and rolled over. The soothing cool of satin sheets beneath his bare, hot skin was a welcome sensation.

He kept his eyes clenched shut and tried to trick himself back to sleep, but it was no use; once he was awake, it was over, especially after he had drank as hard as he had the night before. Harrison sighed and opened his eyes. On the ceiling, reflections from the ocean water outside danced lightly, dim ribbons that would get brighter with the morning sun.

He heard a gentle moan next to him and turned to see his bed companion, still hard asleep against the white smooth pillow. She was gorgeous, thin, her skin a flawless golden tan. As shiny as her hair was, she probably never did it herself, she was too rich and dainty for that. As he watched the gentle rise and fall of her bare back and bony shoulders, Harrison thought with a half-smile:
What was she called again? Tiffany? Theresa? Ah, well.
She had been fun enough the night before, eager and willing to suck his cock and spend the whole night fucking and drinking.

Not that it was hard for him to find those qualities, of course. That was the whole reason he even stayed on this island.

A tide of pain rushed through his head and Harrison groaned again, finally in too much pain to ignore it. He stumbled naked out of bed and into the penthouse suite bathroom. The woman’s toiletries and extensive make-up supplies were scattered like chaotic stars across the black marble countertop, and among it all Harrison found a white bottle of ibuprofen. He quickly downed as many as he safely could, then closed the bathroom door to trap in the steam for the piping hot shower he was about to take.

He hadn’t been under the steaming stream a few minutes before he saw a flesh-colored silhouette moving behind the frosted glass of the shower doors. One popped open, and the sleepy head of what’s-her-name popped in. Her eyes were still tired and droopy, ringed black from the makeup she hadn’t bothered to take off the night before. There was a lazy, lustful smile on her full lips as she looked Harrison’s naked body up and down.

His cock wasted no time springing to life. “Morning, love. See something you like?” He stroked himself twice as he smiled meaningfully at her.

The young woman licked her lips, needing no more invitation than that. “Mmm, something I like a lot.”

“The water’s just right,” said Harrison, reaching out a wet hand to brush along her breast and erect nipple.

The headache very quickly became a secondary priority. Besides, didn’t orgasms help them? He was sure he had read that somewhere, and used it on a woman once or twice before as well. That at least made him a charitable sod, if a sod regardless.

The woman slipped into the shower with him, pressing her naked flesh up against Harrison’s. Her skin was still warm from the bedsheets, and Harrison slipped his hands all along it as she breathed heavily against his neck. He attacked her mouth with a ravenous kiss just as his hands reached up to squeeze both of her big, beautiful breasts. Her responding touch felt like magic as they skimmed over the lines of his muscular chest and arms. His cock, rubbing up against her wet, tight belly, was so hard it hurt.

But she knew exactly what he wanted. She pulled away from his mouth and kissed her way down his neck, chest, and abs, slowly dropping to her knees on the shower floor. Without any ceremony, she wrapped her hot lips around the pulsing head of his nine-inch cock and swallowed half of it down her throat. Harrison exhaled audibly and tangled both his hands in her hair.

“Fuck yes, baby,” he rasped. She hummed around his shaft in response.

When Harrison looked down, he saw the delicious view of her beautiful mouth stuffed with his cock, as well as her own delicate hand flitting between her legs, getting herself off at the same time. It was almost too much. She was far, far dirtier than he remembered from the night before, but he wasn’t about to complain. Instead, he figured he would find out just how dirty she was.

Tightening the grasp he had on her hair, Harrison began to fuck her face, holding her head tightly in his hands as he pushed his hips towards her. She only seemed to get more turned on by this, whimpering against the skin of his cock, sucking harder against it with every back-stroke.

He wasn’t going to last long at this rate. She was just too damn good at what she was doing.

“I never want to take my cock out of your throat,” he told her in a breathy groan.

She sounded like she was getting close to her own orgasm, and his dirty talk only seemed to make it worse. One hand on her clit, the other wrapped around his legs and ass to hold herself steady, she took him as deep as she could before starting to gag. Only then did she pull back slightly, her saliva lubricating everything as it spilled over the head of his cock and around the edge of her lips.

That was it. Her talented mouth pushed him to the brink, and he came with a hard growl. Yanking his rigid cock out of her mouth at the last second, he watched in orgasmic bliss as it spurted all over her face and tits. The woman’s orgasm followed his immediately, manicured nails gripping painfully into his leg as she shuddered. Harrison put his cock head back into her moaning mouth just a bit as she did, and smiled when she greedily sucked at it, waves of ecstasy still shaking her beautiful body.

“You’re something else, you know that?” he said to her. “Better clean yourself up.”

She sighed with a contented smile, and took his offered hand to stand up in the shower stream and rinse his cum off of her skin. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, pressing her body into his. “How about we don’t leave the room today?” she said in a throaty voice. “I can make you cum as many times as you can get there.”

Harrison did his best not to sigh and roll his eyes. They always wanted him to stay, no matter how many times he told them the night before that he wouldn’t. He really
did
try to be the least-douchiest version of himself possible, up front and honest about his expectations. But even at this resort, a place set aside for uninhibited and unattached hedonism, he still found the same trappings of the regular world: people who didn’t want to listen when they didn’t like what they heard.

“Afraid that’s not going to work for me, love,” he said. “I’ve told you, today isn’t my day off.”

She gave him an exaggerated, pouty frown that some bloke at some point had found attractive, he was sure, but one that did nothing to change his own feelings about her. The little girl act got old quickly. He didn’t have time for it. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” She nuzzled her face into the side of his.

“I’m sure,” he said with a gentle smile. “Maybe I’ll catch up with you later tonight.” He was lying, but he was good at it, so she only grinned happily and kissed him in response.

He made quick work of the shower after that, getting the smell of sweat and her pussy off his skin. After he stepped out, he carefully picked through the maelstrom of fabric and bedding that was the penthouse suite to find the clothing he had come in with the night before: board shorts, undershirt, button-up, boxer-briefs, sandals.

Through the haze of his memory, he did recall that the night had been wild, but apparently it had been wilder than he remembered, judging by the state of the room. He tried to recall exactly what bar he had met the woman in, and whether it had been he or she who decided they should start hitting the Sambuca. There seemed to be too many bras floating around the room, and in different sizes. Harrison hoped he remembered what
that
was all about later, because there certainly wasn’t another set of un-bound tits in the room. At least one partner had snuck off before the morning.

She stood in the bathroom doorway in a silk kimono, the robe half-open to tease her luscious body, watching him get dressed. “Maybe dinner?” she tried, as he pulled the second of his sandals on.

Harrison looked over and gave her a half-smile. “We’ll see about that. I’ve got quite a bit on my plate today with work, but thank you again for the smashing evening.” He stood and gave her a peck on the cheek, laying one hand gently on her hip. Before she could turn it into a real embrace, he pulled away and left the penthouse. It wasn’t until the door closed behind him that he finally let out the sigh he’d been holding back.

She was probably going to be trouble, whatever her name was. He should have known better than to drink Sambuca. He always did stupid shit whenever he drank Sambuca. For starters, his finely-tuned ability to detect crazy pussy flew right out the window, and he wound up in the suite of women who would crush his whole vibe for however many days they were supposed to be at the resort.

He decided he would bribe the rest of the staff to make sure he never went for the Sambuca again, no matter what. It would be worth the small fortune it would cost him.

Truthfully, though, he was sure some of them would probably do it simply for the pleasure of denying him something and potentially watching him beg for it. All without the fear of later reprisal for holding it back.

Harrison made his way down the hotel hallway towards the north bank of lifts. It was early enough that most of the guests were still sleeping off their own wild nights and creeping hangovers. In fact, this time of day was probably the quietest the resort ever got. All he could hear was the gentle roar of the ocean tide coming from the open windows at the end of the hallway, and the soft voiceless Muzak playing from hidden speakers overhead. The curtains fluttered in the sea breeze, and suddenly all he could think about was grabbing coffee and getting out in to the fresh ocean air, a certain cure for what was left of his headache.

The lift chimed and he stepped inside the empty car to head down to the first floor lobby. Leaning against the gold bannister, he pulled his phone from his pocket. The battery was nearly dead, but he pulled up his emails anyway, to make sure there were no second-tier emergency alerts from maintenance. After a few spam messages, and more than a few messages from women, he spotted one that made his heart stop.

F
rom
: George Moore

Re: the Future

Harrison,

Your mother and I are very pleased to hear your news, though I do wish this had been done over a more personal mode of communication. I’ve decided to put off the acquisition meetings and stop by the resort instead to have a sit down about your new plans. We will see you in a few days.

H
arrison blinked
, and read the email again. He waited patiently for something to wake him up from his nightmare, but nothing did.

“Um, terribly sorry, can you repeat that?” he said to his phone, as if it would reply. What was his father talking about? What plans, what news? His father hadn’t visited Bali in five years, and that was exactly the way Harrison liked it.

Panicking he pulled up the “sent” emails from his folder. Waiting there at the top of the feed was the original email his father had been replying to, titled “the Future”. A black dread filled Harrison’s gut as he opened it up and slowly recognized his own stupid Sambuca-poisoned words:

F
ather
, I’ve decided you were right, and I want to run the family business in the proper manner you desire. Tell mother I have found my future wife, and she has shown me the kind of future I want. After the wedding, you and I can sit down and talk about the future of the resort.

Harrison