Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (10 page)

I had thought about drawing the line at kissing—it was way
too intimate for what I had planned—but it only took him about two seconds to
change my mind.  How could I ever deprive myself of this?

His lips, his tongue, the slide and smell of him, that
perfect pressure.  He was warm over me, and heavy, pressing me to the ground,
and my body responded as if the leech incident had never happened.  I felt
myself growing wetter, and I opened my thighs, pulling him between them.  The
bulge of his fly pressed against me, making me shudder.

I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t move.  I was pinned to
the ground, and it was the best, hottest kiss I’d ever had in the whole of my
life.

Our mouths tore apart only when an airplane engine buzzed
loud and low overhead.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he half-laughed, his
hips rocking against me as if he couldn’t help himself.

“Oh shit,” I panted.  “Oh shit, I forgot.”

He leaned back enough so I could see his raised brow. 
“You’re expecting somebody?”

“My brothers,” I wheezed.  My brothers were coming to
visit. 
Today
.  How could I have forgotten?  My mind had been addled,
that’s how.  Addled by lust.

Oh, fuck.  There went my plans for seduction.  And my
brothers wouldn’t just chase that plan away.  They’d take it outside and use it
for bullet practice.  Then they’d chain it to the back of the four-wheeler and
drag it through the woods, making sure it hit every root, every devil’s club, and
every wild rosebush in a mile radius.

We could both hear the plane circling the lake, angling for
a landing.

Gary cupped my jaw—and kissed me again.  He kissed me like
he was drowning, like the rest of the world didn’t exist, like there wasn’t an
airplane full of my gun-toting siblings on final approach.  There was just me,
and him, my thighs around his hips, and my fingers tangled in his thick, silky hair.

I forgot everything else, and I kissed him back with
everything I had.  Our tongues tangled, and our breath mingled, and he was in
me so deep…

He finally drew back, and his eyes looked into mine for an
endless moment.  His beautiful eyes.

My heart thudded.

No
.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  Gary was my
evil neighbor.  My fuck buddy, at most. 
Not
a guy that made my heart
fucking
thud
.

I shoved him off me, and decided right then—I wasn’t kissing
him again.  Never, ever, no way, no sir.

Chapter
Eight

M
y
brothers’ plane cleared the trees on final descent as I was running, sopping wet
from head to toe, back to my cabin.  I slammed in through my door just after
the plane touched down in the water, flew up to my loft, and did the fastest
clothing change ever.  New shirt, pants from yesterday, comb hands through
hair—
Shit! Not while on ladder!
—sandals and out the door.

I met them on my little dock just as the plane drifted up
alongside.  I bent to secure the float to the mooring cleats.

The pilot climbed out, and the first thing I saw was his
smirk.  I had a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. 
He’d seen.

Rob Fulk was a burly red-headed gentleman in his forties who
owned and operated the local flight service.  I knew him by name, I was friendly
with him, he’d even slept on my couch once for two nights in a row when he’d
gotten weathered in.  He’d shown me pictures of his new granddaughter.

And now I’d shown him my naked white thighs.

But he didn’t say anything.  He just gave me his usual
greeting, a subtle nod with a murmured, “Helly.”  And then he opened up the doors.

My eldest brother Zack poured out, and my body was no longer
my own.  “Hel!” he cried.  He picked me up in a crushing bear hug and twirled
me around, ignoring the way the dock tipped dangerously under our combined
weight.  I couldn’t breathe and I kinda wanted to whack him, but he had my arms
pinned to my sides.  Probably a strategic move on his part.

He finally set me down, and I couldn’t help but grin up at
him.  He was a big guy with messy white-blonde hair, scars on his face, and
tattoos slathered liberally across his skin.  He had played hockey for the
Alaska Aces for several years, and my limited understanding of what he did
included skating and hurting people.  Actually sounded kinda like something I
would have been good at.  Of course, that had all changed with his knee injury
last season.  Lately, he’d been doing construction jobs with Rory.

I saw Rory start to climb out after him, and I pushed at
Zack’s arm.  “Take your bag and getcher ass up to the cabin,” I said.  “This
dock won’t hold all of us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with a salute and a devilish grin. 
He slung a duffel over his shoulder, tucked a box of groceries under his other
arm, and swaggered away.  Or maybe that was a limp.

“Little sister!”  Rory lifted me off my feet and squeezed me
till my ribs creaked.  He and Zack were about the same size—or would have been,
if Rory hadn’t let himself gain a few extra pounds.  Being hugged by him was
like being hugged by a tank.

“Ror,” I croaked.  I croaked again, a little more
desperately this time, when I was suspended there for another couple seconds.

“I’ve missed you,” Rory whispered in my ear.

“Get off me, you overgrown brute,” I growled, trying to pry
myself free.  He let go suddenly, and I almost tipped back into the water.

He rescued me at the last possible second, righting me with
an evil grin.

I kicked him.

He pushed me.

I grabbed his arm and bent his pinkie back until he yowled,
and then kicked him again.

J.D. laughed from inside the plane, kicking his brother from
the back seat.  “Go, you wuss.  Outta the way.”

J.D. was the runt of the litter.  Where the others were each
a couple inches over six foot—both damn near a full foot taller than me—J.D.
topped out at a slender 5’9”.  He swung out of the plane and landed with deadly
grace.

The thing about J.D. was, being the youngest and the
smallest, he’d still thought he ought to be able to kick his brothers’ asses. 
So he learned karate.  Now he was a third or eighth or twenty-second—yeah, I
wasn’t sure,
bad
sister!
—level black belt.  Not to mention the
wrestling, and Muay Thai, and whatever the newest fighting trend was.

The other two might shoot my plan and drag it at the end of
a chain, but J.D.?  He’d beat it to death with his bare hands.  And maybe his
feet.

J.D. wrapped me up in a tight hug, though he alone seemed to
understand I didn’t appreciate being crushed.  Then he nudged me to the side,
scooped up the remaining bags, and ran after his brothers.  “I call the couch!”
he shouted.

The hostile takeover had begun.

I stood there for a few moments, staring after them.  Then,
like an idiot, I glanced toward the neighbor’s cabin.  Gary was there, standing
on his porch, still soaked to his armpits.  Our eyes met.

Rob had seen, but somehow—
somehow
—my brothers had
missed the heated embrace on my neighbor’s lawn.

U
pon
entering my cabin, I was immediately hit by the riot of noise and motion.  J.D.
was unpacking an Xbox, Zack was digging around in my tiny fridge, and Rory…

“He cupped her quivering breasts.  ‘Yes,’ she cried.  ‘Yes,
yes!  Take me now, Alfred.  I want your huge, throbbing cock!’”

“Ah!” I yelled.  I crossed the cabin in a flash, and tried
to shoulder Rory away from my computer.  “I did
not
write that!”

He laughed, picking up the laptop and easily evading my
grasping hands.  He adopted a ridiculous falsetto.  “Put it in my mouth! 
Please, Alfred, I want every inch of your huge sausage.  I want to guzzle
gallons of your cum!  I need your hot splooge like I need air!”

“Put that down!” I yelled.  “I haven’t backed up my files
and you’re gonna break it!”  I should have secured the damn thing with a
passcode before they came.  I usually did, and I would have, but then I’d gotten
busy with my neighbor instead.

And now Rory was spouting shoddy drivel and passing it off
as my writing.

His hero’s voice was low, over-sexed.  “That’s right, suck
my big dick, Tasha,” he said.  “And Amie, lick my balls.  Yes, just like that. 
Mmm, twins.”

J.D. was laughing.  He threw a pillow at his brother. 
“You’re an idiot,” he said.

“Where’s the beer?” Zack demanded.  He was rummaging in the
boxes they’d piled on the table, looking frenzied.  “Did we forget the beer?”

“Give.  It.  Back,” I growled at Rory, giving him my crazy
eyes.

They worked.  He suddenly handed the laptop to me.

I took it with a sigh, and turned to set it gently back
where it belonged.

Rory shot up my ladder to the loft.  “I wonder if there’s a
vibrator up here,” he said.

“Goddammit!”  I dumped the laptop on my desk and chased him
upstairs.

He was bent over, pulling open the drawer of my nightstand. 
“Aha!  What have we—”

I head-butted him.  We crashed into the far wall.

Before he could recover, I grabbed his nuts, and then squeezed. 
He slid down the wall and folded onto his knees until we were almost at the
same eye level.  When I was sure I had his attention, I hissed, “Repeat after
me.”

Rory nodded.

“This is Helly’s bedroom.”

He repeated.

“The loft is Helly’s personal space.  I will respect Helly’s
personal space.  I will not go into Helly’s personal space, for any reason.  I
will stay the fuck downstairs.”

“Does she have you by the balls again?” Zack yelled from the
kitchen.

Rory squeaked an affirmative.  I heard J.D. laughing, and
then that distinctive Xbox logo sound as he fired it up.

“Sucks, dude.  Shoulda stayed downstairs,” Zack said.

“Do you understand?” I asked.

He nodded.

I released him.  “Go.”

Rory fled.  “It’s pink!” he announced as he slid down the
ladder.  “And it had those little bunny ears!”

Fuuuuck
.  I dragged my hand down my face.

“That’s sick, man, looking at your sister’s jackrabbit,”
J.D. said.  It sounded like he was scrolling through a menu.

“Aha!” Zack crowed.  “Crisis averted!  Ladies and gentlemen,
the beer.  Has been.  Found!”  I heard a beer fizz, and the sound of a cap
landing on my floor.

I strode across my loft, slid down my ladder like Rory had,
and crossed to Zack, who was just lifting a long-neck to his lips.  I stole it
from his hands, tipped it up to my mouth, and chugged.  And chugged.  And
chugged.

I drank until there was none left, then plopped down on my
couch and grabbed a controller.  “Diablo III,” I growled, and then motioned at
Zack to gimme another.  I’d need it to cope with their visit.  The trick was to
be just tipsy enough that I’d roll with their punches, but not drunk enough
that I told them about my crush on the neighbor.

And in the meantime, I was gonna thrash demons with a really
big mace.

W
e
woke up late the next morning.  I actually woke up on top of a mound of
snoring, farting human flesh, my nose pressed into a hairy thigh.  Truth be
told, I almost screamed when the first thing I saw, and smelled, was my
brother’s package.

Gagging, I dragged myself into a sitting position and
surveyed the wreckage.  Beer bottles littered the floor along with brightly-colored
candy wrappers.  Someone had brought sunflower seeds and had tried to spit the
shells into a bowl, but most appeared to have missed.  My furniture had been
rearranged, my favorite lamp was lying on the floor at a drunken angle, and my
whole living room smelled like potato chips and ass.

Day one, I thought with a sigh.

Then I noticed Rory wasn’t part of the pileup of bodies I’d
been sandwiched in.  I looked around, wondering if he could be in the
bathroom.  Maybe he stumbled outside to pee…?

I finally became aware that some of the snoring I was
hearing came from above.

“You son-of-a-bitch!”  I clambered up the ladder and kicked
his ass outta my bed.  It was his favorite trick, stealing my bed, and I had no
idea how he continually got away with it.

After the commotion upstairs, my other two brothers were
awake, and I struggled to get my ritual morning bathroom time.

By the time we were all showered, dressed, and fed, it was
noon.  According to my normal plan for my days off, I should have already gotten
at least two thousand words done and had my second cup of coffee.  Instead, I
was nursing a headache along with my first cup, and wondering what shenanigans
my brothers were going to get up to during their visit.  Would my cabin survive
it?

“Let’s go fishing!” Zack exclaimed.

I groaned.

“What?  It’s a gorgeous, sunny Thursday, and there are a
bunch of pike out there eating baby rainbow trout as we speak.  We should go
kill them,” he concluded.

The problem with fishing was that they did not clean fish. 
I
cleaned fish.  So yeah, fishing was fun, but it always resulted in slimy,
bloody work.  That was fine when it was just me, but with all three of my
brothers along multiplying the slimy, bloody work… Yeah.

“What, fish from the shore?” Rory asked.  His tongue stuck
out the side of his mouth as he tinkered with something on the table, something
with little wires sticking out of it.  He’d always liked blowing stuff up, and
then he’d been a weapons guy in his couple years in the army.  I really hoped
he hadn’t brought explosives into my cabin.

“Or from the canoe,” Zack said.

“Hel’s only got the one canoe,” J.D. pointed out.  He was dressed
all in black as per his usual, black T and loose black pants.  It made him look
sleek and dangerous, like a panther lounging on my second-hand couch.

He also made a good point.  My canoe only had two seats, and
we’d sometimes stretched it to a third person sitting on a cooler in the
middle.  But four adults, three of them grown men?  Completely out of the
question.

“Well…” Zack glanced out the window.  “I see two canoes out
there.”

“That’s the neighbor’s,” I informed him.  I watched Rory
over the rim of my mug, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing.

Zack shrugged.  “We could ask to borrow it.”

“No!”  My chair legs squeaked as I leapt to my feet,
betraying my vehement reaction to that idea.  I didn’t want my brothers
anywhere near the neighbor, and I
especially
didn’t want them
communicating.  It seemed like a recipe for disaster; like throwing gasoline on
a fire, like waving a red flag in front of a bull, like using a plug-in
vibrator in the bathtub.

Zack stared at me, his stupid blue eyes starting to gleam.

I wanted to say more, wanted to tell them my neighbor was a
dick, wanted to tell them he’d killed my blueberries and littered on my beach
and almost shot my dog, and he was a devil with green eyes, and I didn’t want
to owe him any favors, and I most definitely didn’t want to borrow his dirty
canoe.  But I didn’t say those things.  Instead, I clamped my mouth shut.

Zack had always been able to read me.  I’d just said the one
word, but with my eyes, and with my tone and volume and posture, I’d said far too
much.

“I think,” Zack drawled, “the lady doth protest too much.”

“I wonder why she doth,” Rory said, looking up from his work
to peer out across the lake.  The neighbor’s helicopter sat, shiny and
expensive on his now scarred and overgrown lawn, the cherry-red toy almost as
big as the cabin itself.  “I don’t remember your neighbors having a helicopter,”
he said.

I shifted, wishing desperately for cover.  I knew my face
was an open book, and I didn’t want to talk about the neighbor, not even to say
I had a new one, because I’d give myself away.  They’d figure out how
attractive I found him, how he’d touched me, and how we’d nearly done the deed
on my lawn.  They’d
know
.

Zack’s eyes narrowed.  “She’s keeping something from us,” he
said.

My heart was racing as I returned his gaze.

Then I did it.  I made The Mistake.

I bolted.  I raced to the bathroom and locked myself inside. 
Panting, feeling my crazy rising, I backed up across the thick pink rug.