Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (16 page)

“Is this moose spaghetti?” Rory asked, having been the first
to fill his plate and take a big bite.

“Yup.”

Gary’s eyebrows lifted a bit.  “Did you do the hunting?” he
asked.

I shook my head.  “I’m as much a hunter as you are a
fisher.”

Rory snorted, but otherwise made no comment.

Gary filled his plate and sat down, and I was left with the
seat directly across from him—after I scrounged up one more chair and shoved my
way in between my brothers.  The fit was tight, and Zack wasn’t at all
circumspect with his elbows.  I wrestled the parmesan from him, and then dumped
a quarter-inch over the top of my meal.

“So Gar,” started Zack, “where’d you learn the carpentry?”

“My dad was a contractor,” he said.  “I did a lot of odd
jobs for him as a teen.”

My eyebrows drifted upward.  In the couple questions they’d
asked him, my brothers had found out more about Gary than I had in two weeks. 
Maybe
if you were to actually talk to him, and ask him questions
, my inner critic
sniped.  But why would I want to do that?  This was physical attraction, and
that was it.

But I still listened with interest as he told them he’d gone
into the marines straight out of high school.  “I was infantry,” Gary said.

Rory grunted.  “Deployed?”

“Four times.”

“Afghanistan?” Rory asked.

“Yes.”  Gary gave the short answer without looking up from
his food.  His shoulders seemed tense, and he had a look on his face, a hard,
slightly bitter, slightly sad expression.  It wasn’t one I’d seen on him yet, and
it pulled at me.  I found myself wanting to erase that look from his face.  In
entirely physical ways, of course.

J.D. maybe saw it, too, and he changed the subject.  “You
ever buy that old rifle you were talking about getting from Mike Effey?” he
asked, turning to look at me.  “And what was it again?”

I started to smile.  “Yeah, I did.  It’s a Weatherby Mark
V.  A real pretty one.”

Zack hooted and rubbed his hands together.  “Shooting after
dinner!”

I wasn’t going to argue with that.  It was tradition that,
during their visits every summer, they put a healthy dent in my ammo supply. 
Plus, they’d built me a shed.

“You gonna join us Gar?” Zack asked.

Gary looked at me.  “Sure,” he said.

And that’s how we wound up in my side yard with a table full
of guns.  I went and got earplugs while Zack raided my gun closet.  He brought
out the handguns first, and I helped him get them laid out while Rory and J.D.
played gopher and set up a target.  They went about fifty feet out, past the
closest couple of trees, in a direction I knew I had no neighbors.

We started with my Glock 19, a 9mm semi-automatic.  My brothers
went first, each firing a couple rounds using their own targets.  They gathered
around, ribbing each other for missed shots, obviously feeling manly with a gun
in their hands and having refused my sissy hearing protection.  I watched with
arms crossed and hearing muffled while they gave a decent showing.

Then Gary.  His hands seemed as competent curled around the
black steel of the pistol as they had been on his hammer.  And as they had been
on me last night.  His actions were quick, efficient, his fingers deft as he
loaded and slid in the clip.

Really and truly, he looked like he’d been born with a gun
in his hands.  And he made that target his bitch, firing a nice tight grouping
around the bullseye.  He was a better shot than my brothers, easy.

He reloaded for me, a task which each man had been doing for
himself.  Which meant he was either being courteous, or he didn’t think I knew
what I was doing.

He handed me the gun, muzzle-down, and I tried to ignore the
way my body ignited at the barest brush of his fingers.  “Don’t hurt yourself
now,” he said as he stepped back.

Ah
.

I held the gun out from me, handling it gingerly.  I looked
at it as if it baffled me.  “Do I have to cock it?” I asked.

My brothers snickered.

Gary didn’t know exactly what was going on, but of course he
knew that something was up.  When I just continued to give him my best dumb
blonde look—and with practice, it’d become pretty damn good—he said, “You have
to pull the slide back for the first shot.  That there on top,” he explained at
my continued apparent cluelessness.  “It’ll load a round.”

I did so, jumping a little when it clicked.  I looked at him
with big eyes.  “And…does it have a safety?  Is it off?”

My brothers elbowed each other.

Gary shook his head again.  “No safety.  Just point and
shoot.”

I gave him a wide-eyed, simpering smile.  And then I spun
around and emptied the clip into the target.  It had a bit of a kick, but I
handled it.  One didn’t grow up with three brothers without toughening up.

The slide locked open, signaling that I was outta ammo.  Hooting,
Rory jogged out to retrieve my target.  He brought it back and slapped it down
on the corner of the table.

Bullseye, every single shot.

I shot Gary my triumphant look, the one that said, ‘Take
that, sucka!’

He looked at my target for a long moment, and then he looked
at me.  And if his glances all day had been hot, this one ought to have been
measured in Kelvin.  That look said ‘I wanna fuck you right where you stand’.  The
lust he communicated with that one glance made my whole body sizzle.

This wasn’t what I’d planned.  I’d kinda wanted to humiliate
him, embarrass him, laugh in his face.

Gary didn’t look embarrassed.  He looked turned on.

We went through the rest of the handguns this way.  My
brothers would shoot, and then Gary would shoot better, and then I’d put them
all to shame.  And every time that target came back with the center shot out of
it, Gary gave me that look, and I got just a little bit hotter.

Then the brothers carried the handguns inside, and came back
out with my rifles.

That’s when Gary’s eyes flickered.  I wouldn’t have noticed
this if we hadn’t been engaged in a hot bout of eye-fucking, but we were, and I
did.  His shoulders regained just a little of their tension as Zack lifted the
Remington Model 700 with scope.

They adjusted the target—I couldn’t have told you exactly
how far it was, a hundred yards maybe?—and then they repeated their performance
with the rifle.  Good shots, not great.

Then they handed the gun to Gary.  His shoulders had looked
tight, but the moment that rifle settled into his grip, it seemed like the
tension drained right out of him.  He looked ultimately comfortable with that
gun in his hands.  He knew exactly how to hold it; there was absolutely no
awkwardness, no shifting about or hesitation.

He chambered a round with powerful efficiency even as he
took up a solid stance that seemed to telegraph that he meant business.  He
lifted the rifle up to his shoulder in a smooth, practiced motion.  He looked
through the scope, his breath sighed out, and he fired.  The recoil barely
touched him, and what he
didn’t
do next was what I found most
interesting.

He didn’t then drop the rifle to chamber the next round,
fiddle with it a bit like the brothers had, and joke around as he visually confirmed
that the next had gone in.  No, instead he kept it right up to his cheek, and
his hand did this crazy-quick motion with the bolt.  He didn’t look up and he didn’t
change his stance.  He just chambered and fired, chambered and fired.  I felt
the muscles holding up my jaw loosening as he squeezed off five rounds faster
than I’ve ever seen anybody shoot a rifle.

But when they brought his target back, I saw that he had missed,
and missed, and missed again.  He’d driven five bullets two, five, eight inches
away from center-target.  The last one didn’t even hit the paper.

What the hell?
  I looked at him suspiciously,
wondering what the heck was going on.  That rifle had looked like poetry in his
hands, and he
missed
?  He didn’t strike me as a man who
missed
.

My brothers ribbed him good-naturedly and he shrugged.  He
wouldn’t meet my eyes, and then when he didn’t give me another one of his
steamy glances after I repeated my bullseye performance with the rifle, I
absolutely knew something was going on.

What was this, PTSD from having been in the marines?  The
man said he had been deployed four times, to Afghanistan.  That had to have been
hard on the soul.

My brothers moved on to my .450 Marlin, each giving the
painfully powerful rifle a go.  Gary did it again, hitting a few inches off.  Same
for the Weatherby.

I had no idea what was going on with his shooting.

But I did know one thing:  I wanted him to climb in my
window tonight.

Chapte
r Thirteen

“H
el!”

I groaned, rolling over to bury my head deeper in the pillows.

“Hel, we’re going fishing!  Wanna come?”

“Again?” I mumbled.

“Salmon this time.  If you don’t come, we’ll just borrow
your boat, no problem.”

I didn’t want to fish for salmon.  Helping idiots fish for
salmon was what I did for a living, so helping these three idiots do the same
didn’t appeal to me at all.  The only reason I could see for going with them
was to protect my boat.

But it just wasn’t enough to pry me out of bed.

“You staying then?”

I groaned again.

A couple minutes later, the door shut with a bang.  I heard
my four-wheeler fire up—the idea of three grown men on it amused me—and then
the engine sounds faded away into the woods.

Leaving me in peace.  I sighed and snuggled into my pillows,
drifting back to sleep with a smile at the idea of a day without my crazy
siblings.

I didn’t get up until 10 that morning.  I experienced a
momentary pang of regret that Gary hadn’t visited me last night, but it didn’t
keep my mood down for long.

Free of my brothers, alone for the first time in three days,
I felt like dancing.

I plunked my wireless speaker on the bathroom counter, and
turned my Sing-Along list up high.  It was populated with hits from the sixties
all the way through to today, anything that was catchy and upbeat and
ultimately singable.

First up:  I Kissed a Girl.

I stomped around the bathroom, wagging my hips, singing
about cherry chapstick.  My shirt came off first.  It was kinda hard to get the
pants off to the beat, but I did my best.  I turned on the water and climbed
in, glad I’d turned the music high enough to hear over the spray.

Still wiggling, I began to soap up.

I squealed on the opening guitar riff of Fat Bottomed Girls,
grinning from ear to ear.

I was just belting out the hook, which was the only part I
really knew, when something touched me.  I squealed and jumped, almost
porpoising out of the shower.

That something wrapped around my arm, keeping me upright
until I stopped flailing.  I looked down, blinking through the soap suds
sliding into my eyes, to find a big, strong hand.  Even through stinging tears,
perhaps especially through them, I knew that hand.

A cool breeze finally announced a disturbance in the shower
curtain, and another big, strong hand slid along my other arm.  Then a big,
strong body brushed against the back of me.  I gasped, blinking stupidly at my
tile wall.

Fat Bottomed Girls did its ending drum roll, and I was left
in silence with the rushing water, and my pounding heart.  The silence was
incredibly loud.

Trust Gary to fill it.  “Is this what happens when I give
you orgasms?” he asked.

I didn’t have a witty comeback; honestly, I couldn’t even
speak.  The feel of his naked body against my back was short-circuiting my
brain.

His hands drifted along my wrists, encircling them
momentarily.

The move brought me right back to the night before last,
when he’d pinned them next to my head.  I swayed back toward him, and our wet
skin melded.  He already had an erection, and it rode along the upper slopes of
my ass.  He ground it against me, and I pushed back against him as images of a
hot, fast fuck popped like soap bubbles in my brain.

I was getting ready to turn around and jump him when I heard
it.

The opening lyrics of Unchained Melody.

I groaned, and he laughed, and I knew he recognized that
song too.  The song from Ghost, from the classic scene where Patrick Swayze and
Demi Moore stroked and shaped a hunk of clay that bore a striking resemblance
to a dong.  Arguably the most romantic scene in a movie, ever.  He’d been
behind her, kissing her neck, his fingers sliding through hers as he got her
dirty.

Just exactly the way Gary’s were suddenly sliding through
mine.

I groaned again.  “Are we really gonna do this?”

His lips were against my neck.  “Why not?”

“Because that was romance, and this…”  I lost the rest of my
sentence as he moved both of our hands to my breasts.

“This?” he asked.  Our hands plumped and squeezed and stroked
me.  He left my hands there while his slipped across my soapy skin.  My belly,
my sides, my upper thighs.  He was touching me softly, exploring me. 
Enchanting me.

The melody soared.  The shower steamed.

I panted.  “This…”  What the hell had I even been saying? 
Something about romance and how this was…not?  He was scrambling my thought
processes.

His nose or lips touched my ear.  “Mmm,” he said.  “I like
the smell of your shampoo.  But.”  He dragged me back under the spray.  The
water sluiced over my head, driving the suds before it.

“I am forever getting you wet,” he said, his voice all deep
and rumbly as his lips tracked across my shoulder.

I opened my mouth to deny it, but then his lips and teeth met
my neck.  I panted, tilting my head to give him better access as he did things
to me that were probably going to leave a mark.  My nipples stabbed into my
palms, and sharp echoes of pleasure burned their way straight to my pussy.

His voice stroked into my ear again.  “Are you planning on
breaking me over the edge of the tub?” he asked.

My brain spun.  I had no idea what he was talking about. 
Break him?  Why would I do that?  I wanted all his upright parts upright.  I
wanted to climb him like a fireman’s pole.  Why would I…?

Oh.  Suddenly I remembered my shower scene.  The one I’d
written when he’d been terrorizing me with his noise.  The one that had morphed
into a violent fight and ended with a green-eyed devil lying dead, broken over
the edge of the tub.

My lips curved.  Served him right for reading my stuff. 
“Does that thought excite you?” I asked.

He laughed softly against my ear.  “After your shooting
yesterday?  Strangely, yes.”  He bit me, making me shudder in his arms.  My
mind was filled with thoughts of praying mantises and mate-eating spiders, and
somehow, it worked.

I moaned, every part of me hot and throbbing.  I was close,
just from the combination of playing with my own nipples and him teasing his
way up and down my neck while his voice growled in my ear.  And now his hands
were wandering downward.

Pour Some Sugar On Me.

“You like the old stuff, don’t you?”

“Huh?”  His voice was doing wonderful things to me, but
trying to understand what he was saying was throwing off my Wa.  I wanted him
to stop working up to it and get to the main event.

“Quit talking and
Pour.  Some.  Sugar on me!
” I
demanded with the chorus.  I wiggled my butt against him, rubbing his cock.

He spun me around and pushed me against the cool, slick tile
wall.  The slope of the tub’s edge kept me off balance, and I would have slid
into a puddle in the bottom without his hot, hard body pinning me in place.  My
moans went up in volume as my hands slid down his firm sides.  I grabbed his
ass, dragging him even closer, grinding his erection into my belly.

He grabbed my chin, just exactly like he had that night. 
And he kissed me.  It was amazing.  Wonderful.  All-consuming.  The song, the
steam, the hot and cold…

His lips clashed with mine, slick and then velvety as I
opened for him.  He thrust his tongue into my mouth as if he owned it.  He did
it with a groan, as if he was enjoying himself just as much as I was.  I loved
that sound, loved the knowledge of what I did to him, loved sucking him, and
digging my nails into his skin.

His chest hair abraded my nipples, and my pussy gushed with
need.  I slid a leg up the outside of his and hooked it around his thigh,
trying to get closer.  He caught it in his big, strong hand, and tore his mouth
away.

“There’s no grab bar in here for you to sit on,” he panted,
his hips nudging against me.

“Then pick me up, you slacker.  Or do me from behind, I
don’t care.”  I yanked his head back down to mine, muffling his sexy laugh with
my lips.

He lifted me up into his arms.  I just about burst with
excitement as I felt his thick cock nudge between my folds.  He started to
press up into me—and then he paused.

“Fuck,” he gasped, pulling his lips from mine.  “I forgot a
condom.”

“Goddammit,” I said, clawing at him, feeling almost frantic
with need.  “I don’t care!  Just—pull out or something.”

He groaned, peering up at me through the steamy spray as his
hands tightened on my ass.  “You sure?” he asked.

“Yes.  Yes!” I cried.

He slammed me down on him, and he was the most wonderful
thing I’d ever felt.  He filled me, stretched me, tested my confines even as he
ground against my clit.  And without the condom, he felt about ten times
better, sliding perfectly into me.  I threw my head back and he buried his face
against my breasts as he lifted me a few inches, and brought me back down.  He
was nipping me, kissing and sucking on anything he could reach, supporting all
of my weight as he fucked me.

I swiveled my hips, making him stagger, and I dragged his
head back by his hair, kissing him without mercy.  Our teeth clashed as I tried
to pull him even deeper into me.  The muscles in his arms and shoulders were
flexing hard, lifting me.  He slammed me down on his cock.  I clawed at him. 
He growled into my mouth.

That’s when he stumbled.  Or slipped, I’m not sure which. 
We unbalanced, and for a second I thought we were gonna slam into the tile
wall.  But no, we did one better.  We tipped toward the curtain.

We plummeted, and the shower curtain screeched, and I
grabbed for a towel to try and slow our descent.  The towel pulled free, and
with a loud squeak, we hit the floor.

And somehow—I have no idea how—I was unhurt.  And laughing.

He growled again, and lifted his head, and his eyes were
doing their sparkling thing.  “I take it you’re okay?”

“Oh yes,” I said, strangely unperturbed by having my wet
back pressed to the cool linoleum.  My head and shoulder were jammed against
the wall, and I was lying about a foot away from a toilet my brothers had been
aiming at for a few days now.

But I was happy as a clam.  Because my brothers weren’t
here, my music was still playing, and somehow—
somehow
—Gary was still
inside me.

He did some maneuvering and lifted me.  He edged us forward
and laid me back down on the plush pink rug in front of my sink.  “Okay?” he
asked.  I nodded.

Then he lifted my hips and drove into me.  His grip stung,
and he was in me so deep, he stole my breath away.  I moaned.  Gasped.  Arched
my back and pulled my legs out of his way.  His balls pressed against my
clenching asshole as he delved even further into me.

Yeah, we were on the bathroom floor, and it was ridiculous, and
unsanitary, and it was fucking
great
.

Awash in pleasure, I tried to find something to hold onto.  I
tugged on the surviving towel.  It fell.  I clawed at the sink cabinets.  They
rattled with Gary’s thrusts.  My shoulder blades slid across the rug, edging
back onto the cool floor.  I pushed my hands over my head, trying to brace
myself, but it was no use.  He drove me before him.

I felt myself melting before his strong thrusts, softening
under him.  My vision was growing hazy.

“Oh, fuck,” I said softly.  The toes I had jammed against
the rim of the counter were going numb.  My belly quivered.

“Fuck?” he panted.

“Fuck,” I agreed.  I made a low keening sound as all of the
sensations echoing through my body seemed to find the same wavelength.  The
shock of my orgasm hit me like a high, pure note, jolting me on Gary’s driving
cock.

“Fuck!” I cried.  My legs kicked.

Gary laughed as he caught them, leaning over me, watching
avidly as I fell apart under him.  I heaved and bucked, and the poor cabinet
door creaked as I did my level best to tear it from its hinges.  My foot caught
against the toilet seat, making it slam.  Something rattled as it fell over.

My eyes rolled back in my head as I was caught on a long,
womb-clenching, back-arching spasm.  Gary groaned, grinding his cock into me. 
I locked my legs around him, taking him with me.

“Fuck, yes,” he gasped.  At the last possible second, he
remembered he was supposed to pull out.  He pulled back, prying himself free of
my legs, and his cum spurted across my belly.  I could feel his cock jerking
and throbbing against my clit, felt each heavy surge of his release.

I moaned, shuddered with the last tremors of orgasm, and
went still under him.  My hand released its death grip on the cabinet door and flopped
next to my head.

He groaned, and then fell across me, unheeding of the mess
he smeared between us.  He was big and warm, his skin wet.  He was also fucking
heavy, but at the moment I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I lay there throbbing all over, just trying to catch my
breath, feeling his heart thump its fast rhythm against mine.  I moaned again
as my brain came back online.  “You’re…trespassing again,” I gasped.

“Yeah,” he agreed.  “Want breakfast?”

“Maybe…in a while.  I’m not sure I can…walk.”

He lifted his head to grin at me, and damn if it wasn’t the
most charming expression I’d ever seen.  His damp hair was curling against his
forehead, his white teeth flashing in the naturally-lit room, his eyes
crinkling with mirth.  Damn his gorgeous eyes.

I’d just had sex with the devil again, I realized.

And… he’d poured his sugar on me.