Trouble (Orsen Brothers #1) (15 page)

Chapter 4

W
e drive along the road in silence; the soft hum of the Bonneville’s engine serves as our only distraction. I wrap my arms tighter around his chiseled chest and take in his scent. He’s intoxicating, in more ways than one, and I find myself wanting him more than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone. 

A few minutes later, we pull into an isolated parking lot that overlooks the dark Pacific Ocean. Macon parks and helps me off the bike after him. I stretch my arms, following him across the cracked slab of concrete, toward the water. It’s a chilly night and I’m only wearing a light sweater. I wrap my arms around my chest and stick my hands in my pockets to warm them, and my fingers brush against something plastic inside.

I frown and glance up at Macon. He’s walking a few feet ahead of me, so I pull out the object and inspect it, and my suspicions are immediately confirmed. It’s a condom, most likely planted by Olivia when I wasn’t looking. I smile at the gesture and roll my eyes.

Macon stops walking, briefly, and turns to look at me. “Are you cold?”

I start to shake my head, but he removes his jacket before I can and hangs it over my shoulders. I smile at him and slide my small arms through each sleeve. “You’re sweet,” I whisper.

He pauses there, with his hands hovering just above my waist. For a fleeting moment, I think he might kiss me again, but it passes and he continues toward the sand.

“This is my favorite place in the city,” he says, spreading his arms. I linger back, taking him in. His muscles ripple against his tight white t-shirt as he stretches. He’s beautiful. There’s really no denying it.

I follow him through a patch of matted grass and weeds that separate us from the shore. Our feet sink further into the sand with every step we take, but I don’t mid. I reach down to remove my flats and carry them in my hands the rest of the way. Macon’s jacket weighs me down some, but it smells like him, and I don’t want to remove it.

We collapse a few feet away from the water, which rolls in heavy waves onto the shore.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a kid.” I say, scooping a handful of sand into my palm and allowing it to sift through my fingers. “Whenever my mom was being mean, or neurotic, I’d bring a notepad and some crayons, or colored pencils, or whatever, and I’d just draw.”

I can feel Macon staring at me but I don’t return his gaze; it’s nice—being admired by someone. “Do you still have them?”

“The drawings,” he continues with a nod.

“Oh,” I say, turning my attention back to the sea, “no, I don’t think so.”

He reaches for my hand and I realize, when it’s too late, that I’m still holding onto the condom. He takes it before I can stop him and holds it up in the moonlight for better inspection.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I start, feeling my cheeks burn red. Macon laughs out loud and raises a brow.

“Sure.” He winks at me and flashes me a smile. I’m horrified—completely incapable of crafting a response, but he doesn’t let me off the hook that easily.

He leans into me and I can feel his breath against my neck. “You were going to seduce me, weren’t you?”

His tone is laced with flattery. I roll my eyes and snatch the small piece of plastic from his grasp. “No,” I retort, steadying my voice, “I just found it in my pocket, that’s all. I think one of my friends must have planted it there as a joke or something.”

Macon chuckles and holds up his hands, gesturing non-judgment. I roll my eyes at him. He snakes an arm around me and pulls me to his chest. I relax, allowing my form to mold to his.

“So don’t take this the wrong way…”

I sit up a little straighter and swallow hard. This is always how it starts off. I bite down on my bottom lip and brace for disappointment.

“You don’t really seem very much like your friends. The two you were with back at the club, anyway.”

I hesitate. I should be more offended by the statement than I am, but I can’t find it in myself to be. Not now anyway.

“What do you mean?”

Macon thinks it over. “I don’t know,” he says, expelling a long stream of air from his lungs. “It’s just, they seemed one way and you’re this…” He waves a hand over my small frame. “Entire other way.”

I know what he’s getting at, of course. It’s the age old question, the same one everyone ends up asking eventually—In what world do a bubbling romantic, a pessimist, and an introvert co-exist in harmony?

I settle on an easy response to feed his curiosity. “I guess…I don’t know. We’ve just known each other our entire lives. We’re more like sisters than friends.”

Macon nods. “That makes sense.”

He jumps to his feet and pulls off his shirt, tossing it to the ground. Before I can fully register what’s happening, he removes the rest of his clothing too. I stare at him like a deer in headlights, completely taken off guard. He’s just as beautiful in the nude as he is clothed, but I expected as much. I watch as he dives into the water in one leap and disappears beneath it.

A few seconds later, he comes up for air, all smiles, and gestures toward me on the shore.

“Come in,” he says with a wave, ‘the water is great!”

I bite down on my bottom lip until I think I can taste iron. There’s no one else on the beach this late at night; it’s just him and I. But that doesn’t do much to calm my nerves.

“I don’t know!” I call out to him, shaking my head, “I’ve never skinny dipped before.”

It’s an embarrassing thing for a girl who was born and raised in California to admit, but it’s the truth.

“So?” Macon calls back, stretching his arms in the air, “what are you so afraid of?”

Fuck it.

I’m sick of being called a wimp. I stand up and begin to remove my clothing with shaking hands. My blouse hits the sand first, then my skirt, followed by my underwear and bra. I can feel Macon staring at me and I blush, covering my private parts as best as I can manage in a forced act of modesty.

“Hurry,” he yells out to me. I glance up at him, watching as his head bobs back beneath the dark current. I seize the moment and run into the water beside him. It’s the perfect temperature—not too warm or cold, and I’m struck by how different it feels to swim naked than in a swimsuit.

There’s something freeing about it.

I feel something brush against my stomach and jump, but it’s only Macon. He comes up for air and floats towards me, reaching to pull my naked form against his. Our bodies mingle—a clash of pale, freckled skin and tattoos. He touches every part of me in the water and I return the gesture, memorizing every caveat of his body for later.

When my hand brushes against his hardening girth, he sucks in a deep breath and groans.

“Fuck.”

His voice is warm, his mouth wet from the water. My head pounds; I can feel the last of my resolves slipping quickly away from me. He flicks his tongue over his full lips and reaches out to stop me from taking things further. I frown, meeting eyes with him.

“What is it?” I whisper, dejected, “why not?”

I’m struck by the realization that I sound like a child who has just denied a snack before dinner and I blush.

Macon shakes his head. “I want this, trust me, I do,” he says, brushing a wet strand of my hair behind my ear. “its just…there ain’t any harm in take things slow, you know?”

Slow.

The word echoes in the back of my head long after it’s spoken.

It’s a concept I’m all too familiar with.

Chapter 5

I
dig my feet into the sand and stretch into it. We’re on the shore again, although this time only partially dressed, with him in his briefs and me in his t-shirt.

“What were you doing there?” I blurt out.

Macon turns to look at me and frowns.

I shake my head and wipe my hand over the drops of water on my legs. “At the club, I mean. It doesn’t really seem like your kind of scene, if you don’t mind me saying.”

He chuckles. “Oh, right,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, “I was there on a date, the place was her idea, but…she kind of never showed up.”

I try not to make my disbelief too apparent, but it must be, because Macon takes one look at me and laughs. “It’s okay,” he says, cracking his knuckles, “I’m kind of happy with the direction my night is taken.”

I smile at him, briefly, before turning my gaze back to the water. He reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. We sit in comfortable silence for a long time, listening to the waves as they hit the sand. I never realized how nice this was—basking in silence with someone you just met. It seems foreign, unnatural even, but there’s beauty to be found in it.

He reaches for his jeans and pulls a half opened pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one. He offers one to me but I shake my head.

“Nights like this remind me of why I love this city.” He flicks the ash hanging from the end of his smoke. “I didn’t like it at first, but it grew on me.”

“Yeah,” I whisper, chancing a glance at him, “It kind of has a way of doing that.”

It takes me a moment to realize that he’s just revealed something to me about himself without even trying.

“Where are you from?” I question, watching as smoke wavers from between his full lips.

He turns to look at me and it takes him a second to remember what he said.

“Oklahoma. Bumfuck nowhere, basically.” He waves his hand in the air and glosses over it. “I could tell you the name of the city but you wouldn’t know it.”

He nudges his shoulder against mine.  “What about you? Are you from LA?”

I nod. “Born and raised.”

I can feel him staring at me; dissecting me with glances.  “Why’d you become a wedding photographer?”

We’re playing twenty questions now. I run a wet hand through my hair to untangle it and glance at the mirage of bruises that cover his abdomen. “Why did you become a boxer?”

He shrugs and finishes off his cigarette, clearing his lungs. “I don’t know. Because I’m good at it, I guess.”

“I’m not.” I laugh, but it comes out sounding sad. I wave a hand in the air. “Good at it. Wedding photography, I mean.”

Macon frowns, not entirely following. “I’m sure you’re just being hard on yourself…”

I shake my head. “No,” I say, laughing, “my last shoot didn’t have a single usable photograph. The brides—it was a same sex wedding—were pissed. I felt so bad I didn’t make them pay me.”

He swallows, unsure of what to say, and I watch as his Adams apple bobs in his throat.

“Well why do you do it?”

The question catches me off guard.

“If you don’t think you’re good at it, I mean. Why not do something else?”

Because it’s not that easy,
I want to say, but I don’t.

“I don’t know.” I shrug, biting down on my bottom lip. “I went to school for it. My parent’s were always in my ear, telling me what a pointless degree it was. But I was adamant. I just don’t want to prove them right, you know?”

Macon nods. I can tell by the look in his eyes that there’s something else he wants to say, but he doesn’t. I reach out to run my fingers over the tattoos on his back. He flinches and jerks away from me.

“Sorry,” he says, regaining his posture, “just a habit.”

I nod and change the subject, pointing to a small dark symbol tattooed on his right shoulder. “What does this symbolize?”

“It’s Hebrew,” he says, “It’s supposed to symbolize strength.”

I trace my finger over it. “I love it,” I whisper, “I love all of your tattoos, actually. I’ve never been a big fan of them, but yours all well-worn.”

Well-worn. Like a pair of shoes or something. I cringe at my use of words but Macon flashes me that signature crooked grin, all dimples. I suck in a sharp breath as he leans into me; he’s so close that I can feel his breath against my face.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” he warns.

And he does.

I swallow down the lump in my throat as he lowers his mouth to mine. His grin dissipates as he dissolves into me, reaching up to cup my face. It’s absolutely electric, the way his lips move against mine. I think, in a haze, that I could get lost in him. He explores the curve of my mouth like a seasoned pro, and I wonder, fleetingly, how many other women he has kissed like this.

I moan into him as he laces his large arms around my body and pulls me on top of him in the sand. He presses his tongue against my lips, as though to ask for entrance into my mouth, and I abide. Our bodies are still slightly wet and sticky from the salt water, but it only serves to add to the effect.

When he finally pulls away from me, breathless, the look in his eyes tells me that he’s trying to gauge my reaction. He wants to take things further, and I do too. I kiss my way along the sharp curve of his jaw, down his neck, over the tattoos on his hefty shoulders, but he removes himself from the moment and sits up, holding me slightly at a distance.

I watch in slight frustration as he runs a hand over the dark stubble on his jaw. “What’s wrong?” I whisper, reaching for his hand.

He stares at me for a long time without speaking, then, he pulls me to his chest and presses a firm kiss against my temple, brushing my hair out of my face. “What’s the rush?”