The Bikini Diaries (17 page)

lovers. So after college, I put a business plan together, used money I'd saved to hire an engineer and architect to draw up my ideas, and I started pitching it to developers and

investors. And it has... surpassed my wildest dreams."

"Where does Charles Penny come in?"

"College friend—who had an aptitude for business. I'm more the creative guy—he's the guy who makes sure we run things right. I actually approached Pete with the idea way

back when, but he already had his eye on a... simpler sort of beach life. Not that I'm

downplaying his success any—he's done very well with this business. We both wanted to

live here and work here—be beach bums in our own way for the rest of our lives. And it's worked out pretty well."

"Seems that way," she said, casting a sincere smile. "Did you tell him? Mr. Penny? About how you knew me?"

Brandon shook his head. "We've never had that kind of friendship—it's mostly about

business for us."

“Ah."

"Kiss me," he said without planning it, and he wasn't even really sure why—but like other times with her, it had just hit him once more how damn much he simply enjoyed

her company.

One kiss turned into two—hot, lingering tongue kisses that left him hungry for more.

When their mouths parted, her eyes were glassy with passion, too. "I never made out with a guy up in the sky before," she told him, looking around again at where they were.

"Not a member of the mile-high club then?"

"Well, that wasn't really the form of sky I meant, but no, if you must know."

'A shame we don't have occasion to get on a plane together," he said, then wanted to kick himself—it sounded like he was suggesting they travel together or something. Which

sounded like a thing you didn't really do outside of a relationship. Shit, what was going on with him?

But she didn't seem to hear it that way. Instead, she'd heard it exactly as he'd wanted her to. "Don't worry," she told him. "I've still got a few days before I leave and I suspect there's still plenty of new stuff we can do together here. New to me, anyway."

"I like the way you think, bunny. Want to come back over to my place for dinner tonight?

I'll cook"

"Sure," she said warmly. "But, uh... don't make anything with cucumbers please."

Wendy had found the tranquil ride across the sky elating. But men, she'd found

everything
rather elating today. One night with Brandon had made her feel... worthy, like a worthy sexual being. But two, it seemed, had made her feel simply... ready for more.

One had knocked down the walls of her sexual box, but two had made her feel like some

kind of female warrior ready to go out and conquer all the untamed new land she'd

discovered outside.

When she'd put on her bikini after lunch, she'd experienced what she could only describe as... a sense of newness. Yesterday, even if her first night with Brandon had made her

braver, she'd still felt a bit nervous donning the bikini, almost as if she were

masquerading as... well, as a woman who wore that kind of bikini. Today, though, she

was a woman who wore that kind of bikini.

Was it because of the things she'd done with Brandon—the feminine freedom she'd found

with him? Or because she'd taken charge in her big meeting this morning? Or was it—

somehow— the irony that she was fucking the CEO of Emerald Shores? She didn't know,

but she simply loved the way she looked in it and no longer wondered if she could pull if off. Today she
owned
that bikini, owned the way she
looked and felt
in that bikini—it had become a natural, sensual extension of her body, like something she was born to wear.

So by the time they landed gently back on the boat and Pete killed the engine to come

back and help them unharness, and he asked, "How'd you like it?" she didn't hold back.

Everything about the day so far had her bubbling with a self-aware confidence that grew

by the hour.

"It was
amazing.
I loved it! I felt like ... a bird or something up there."

"Sexiest bird I've ever seen then," Pete said easily without looking at her as he unsnapped something near her hip. And when his darkly tanned arm brushed her leg, a frisson of

heat skittered upward, straight to the juncture of her thighs. She glanced down at his dark hair, the sides again falling from his low pony tail, and felt his warm breath on her arm—

and couldn't help being reminded of her shower fantasy.

After which her pussy began to pulse.

Because just yesterday that had seemed... impossible. And today it somehow seemed...

well, not quite as crazy

a thought.

"So what are you two up to for the rest of the day?" Pete asked, finally rising upright to glance at both of them.

Brandon answered. "We'll probably hang out on the beach awhile. Then later we're

having dinner at my place."

Pete drew back as if in warning, then looked to Wendy. "Letting him cook? That's

dangerous territory, honey."

She looked at Brandon. "You sounded so confident, I assumed you were secretly a master chef or something."

He laughed in his cute way. "I get by okay, but the truth is—although you wouldn't know it to look at him, Pete here is pretty damn good with a grill."

She shifted her eyes to the man in question. "Is that so?"

The swarthy beach pirate only shrugged. "It's a gift."

"Why don't you join us?" she said. No hesitation. She'd blurted it out as soon as the idea had hit her.

To which Brandon flashed a look of surprise, while Pete simply smiled in what she

suspected was a long-standing silent game of one-upsmanship.

"Unless you mind," she directed toward her lover.

He only laughed. "Hell, why not? We can at least be assured of a good meal that way."

A little while later, after they'd exited the boat and Pete was busy loading the next

parasailers, Brandon took her hand and smiled into her eyes. "So... what was that about?"

She didn't have to ask what he was referring to. The invitation. To make their private

dinner less private.

The fact was, she'd been asking herself that very same question ever since the

conversation. Given the things they'd done together last night, and how gloriously

changed
the evening had left her, it did seem an odd thing to do.

She shrugged, trying to play it off as nothing, then put on a teasing smile. " Maybe I just like having two gorgeous men flirting with me at once."

As they started—hand in hand—up the busy shoreline, sprinkled with people throwing

Frisbees and kids with plastic shovels and pails, his expression turned knowing and sly.

"I think you want to have two gorgeous men do more than
flirt
with you, bunny."

She pulled up short, jerking both of them to a halt, her feet sinking into the wet sand.

"What do you mean?"

His sly look edged into a wicked grin. "You want to explore your hot little shower

fantasy. You want both of us to fuck you."

Something in her stomach curled inward at his words. "No," she said automatically, shaking her head insistently as they walked on, weaving around two attractive girls in

skimpy bikinis who sat in beach chairs at the water's edge, letting the surf wash up

around their legs. But she felt herself blush—and hoped it wouldn't appear to be anything more than an effect of the sun.

When she glanced up at him again, his eyebrows arched—he clearly doubted her protest.

And true, she
had
fantasized about being with both of them at once. And also true, she'd now invited Pete on what had, prior to that, been a "date" that would surely end in more kinky sex. But even if she'd had that flash of thought—that the idea of a menage a trois with Pete didn't seem as crazy as it had the first time it had come to mind—that was still a far cry from actually doing it.

"Look," she said, "inviting him to dinner was an impulse move. But there's a big difference between fantasizing about something and really living it. So if that's what you think I'm after here, sorry to disappoint you, but you're wrong."

To her surprise, the expression on his face didn't change a bit. "Whatever you say, bunny," he replied, but he obviously didn't believe a word of it.

Which raised the question in her mind: Did
she?
Believe herself?

Did she really just want the easy fun of having two sexy guys' attention this evening? Or did she secretly—so secretly that she couldn't even admit it to herself—really want the

harder, rougher fun of having two sexy guys' attention on her in a much more daring

way?

No,
she told herself—again, still. That
wasn't
what she wanted. Because to fuck a hot stranger—Brandon—was one thing. It was a little slutty maybe, but it wasn't
shocking.

Women slept with strangers on vacation all the time. But a woman who fucked two guys

at once? That was a woman who she didn't even know, had never met. A woman whose

needs and desires and view of the world she couldn't understand. Until now, the very idea of such an act was practically foreign to her—it was something that happened in a porn

move, not in real life.

Two
guys at once. Two guys at once.
The words kept echoing through her brain as they continued their walk up the beach, and her heart beat harder, and she began to sweat but didn't think it was from the sun any more than her blush was. Could she? Would she? No.

No, of course not.

But later, when she and Brandon were playing in the water, he was rubbing up against her from behind, and she turned in his arms to find him flashing his hottest, lustiest look, and he said, "I can't quit thinking about the moment you walked into my office this morning.

The moment I realized Walter Carlisle's assistant was the woman I've been fucking like

crazy, and how hard it turned me in a heartbeat It's got me hard as a rock again right now, bunny."

And just like everything with Brandon, it turned her nipples hard and made her pussy

surge with excitement, and it reminded her—she
wanted
to be his porn star. She loved
thrilling
him. She loved thrilling
herself.

And then new questions rose in her mind.

How far
will
you go, Wendy?

Who are you now?

WHO ARE YOU NOW?

I am beginning to feel like I'm in a carnival fun house. Nothing seems real. And yet I

barrel haphazardly forward. I catch glimpses of myself in mirrors that make me look

different than I did before... recognizable in ways,
yet
also distorted into something

new. The floors are slanted, the walls are tilted, and so I go whichever way they seem to

carry me, propelled in a new direction at every turn. It's like a Picasso painting come to

life—and suddenly it's my. life.

In the corner of the painting rests an hourglass, or maybe one of Salvador Dali's crazy

melting
clocks. Maybe I would slow down if not for that proverbial ticking clock, that

speeding hourglass. But it's almost as if I can hear the sand sifting through, quicker

and quicker.

I have only so much time here before my carriage turns back into a pumpkin, and

maybe that's
why
I am letting myself be carried so easily on this journey. He is a

fantasy come to life, I am a fantasy come to life. Don't I have to live as much of that

fantasy as I can, while I can.

I began this game in pursuit of pleasure, power,
control.
Don't I need to grab as much

of those things as possible before
the
sand empties and
the
game comes to an end?

Chapter 8

She began this third night of her wild, crazy affair with Brandon by slipping on sexy

underwear and a flirty, low-cut sheath dress that stopped midway down her thighs. She

finished the outfit with more new shoes—she'd bought them today while out shopping for

the dress—strappy platform heels that might have resembled stripper shoes if they hadn't been a springy shade of pale yellow that complemented the dress.

How convenient that shopping at Emerald Shores this week actually qualified as work.

She'd considered going back to the Beach Bazaar—to look for a dress, to see if her pretty Asian friend was there—but had decided that shopping could only count as work if she

went to new places she hadn't checked out before. So she'd found the dress at an upscale shop in Bayside Village called the Sand Dollar, and she'd picked up the shoes in the retail area where she'd shopped the first day at a cute boutique called She Sells Shoes by the

Seashore.

Now she looked in the mirror, applying makeup and running her fingers through her hair,

no longer really seeing herself. Or not the self she used to see anyway. Was she crazy or did something about her truly look different now—something in her expression, in her

eyes? Probably no one else would be able to see it if she asked them, but
she
could see it.

A new confidence, a new radiance, a new sense of her own feminine power that

somehow seeped out through her skin.

As for the question that hung over the night—because of Brandon posing it earlier—she

refused to think about it. Every time it came to mind, she forced it aside. Perhaps because she didn't want to say yes to it, but she found she didn't exactly want to say no, either.

Inherently, she didn't want to be that kind of woman—the kind who could fuck two men

at once with little consideration or worry, men she didn't know or care about. When she