.jpg)
“Eh, we’re getting there,” I said. “I joined the Navy right out of high school and made the SEAL team not long after. Didn’t get a lot of leave time, so I haven’t seen my brothers a whole lot, until recently.”
“Did you, like, quit the SEALs, or what?”
I could tell she wasn’t sure how to ask what she really meant. “I had to retire, for family reasons.”
“Somebody got sick?”
“Sort of,” I said. “My dad died. Mom’s been gone for a good ten years, but Dad’s death was a surprise. He…ah, he left a bit of an odd will. He left us all a bit of money, but the only way we can get it is if all eight of us brothers came home. Bast—Sebastian, the guy that got married, the oldest—he was already here. He never left, but the rest of us were sort of scattered to the four corners of the earth. And Dad wanted us back together, I guess. So the stipulation in his will was that we’d get the money if we moved back to Ketchikan and help Bast run the bar. We have to stay here for a minimum of a year and put in full-time working hours at the bar.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your parents.”
I shrugged, unsure how to respond. I was still dealing with Dad’s death in some ways, and wasn’t sure how I felt most of the time. “Yeah, thanks.”
“So, tell me about the rest of your brothers.”
I glanced at her as we continued walking. She’d bolted the second she woken up this morning, and hadn’t seemed interested in sticking around for so much as a how do you do. Now she wanted to know about me and my brothers? My spidey-senses were tingling.
“Well, Sebastian is the oldest. He’s the original player of us all. He’s been working that bar since he was a teenager. I mean, we all worked the bar as kids, because it was a family business, but Sebastian just took to it naturally. When Mom died, it put a lot of the work on Bast’s shoulders. Dad…didn’t deal well with Mom’s passing. He sort of died inside, I think, and never really recovered. Bast took over pretty much everything after that.” I laughed, thinking of Bast’s many, many conquests in that bar. “The guy is the smoothest motherfucker on the planet. Tourist chicks just threw themselves at him by the boatload—literally, because of the cruise ships.”
She chuckled. “Having watched you get, like, twenty numbers just standing there in the bar tonight, I guess I can see how that might be.”
“Bast and I used to have a competition to see which one of us could collect the most digits in a night.”
“Who won?”
“Oh shit, Bast always won by a landslide.” She seemed skeptical, which made me laugh. “You haven’t really met Bast. You’ll understand when you meet him.”
“So Bast is a player, Bax is a hard-drinking brawler…”
“He’s not really a brawler, he just…he’s a football player. He’s rough by nature.” We were getting close the overlook, now, I realized. “Then there’s Brock. He’s a stunt pilot. Him and Baxter are what you call Irish twins, born within a twelve months of each other. Brock is…he’s…I dunno how to explain him. Probably the prettiest of us all and the most conservative. Brock was the straight-A student, the class president, the one who saved his money to pay for his own flight lessons.”
“I thought the other two were the twins, the ones playing on the stage?”
“Yeah, they’re the identical twins. Canaan and Corin.” I glanced at Mara. “You ever hear of a band called Bishop’s Pawn?”
She nodded. “Sure. I actually saw them play in LA once.” I saw the dime drop. “Wait, that’s them? Your brothers are Bishop’s Pawn?”
“That’s them.” I felt oddly proud that she’d heard of them. I mean, I knew the twins were talented, and that they’d made it pretty big, but when some girl you just met has heard of them, has seen them play? Kind of makes you realize exactly how famous they are.
“That’s pretty cool. They’re crazy good. They put on an amazing show. Claire and I went together; we took a long weekend in LA.” She pushed ahead of me as we reached the overlook. “Wow…now this is amazing.”
“Quite a view, huh?”
Ketchikan was spread out beneath us to our right, Gavina Island was directly across from us, and the massive bulk of the mountains sheltered us in the dark shadows of the night. There was a fence following the edge of the bluff, so we leaned against it and stared out at the cluster of lights below and the starlight on the rippling water.
“So.” She tugged the hood of her sweatshirt over her head against the cool breeze riffling through her hair. “Sebastian, you, Baxter, Brock, Canaan and Corin…”
“Actually, Brock is older by a year,” I corrected. “Lucian is next after Bax, and he’s a lot different than the rest of us. He dropped out of high school when he was, like, a sophomore I think. He wanted to work the fishing boats. Dad made Lucian a deal that as long as he had his GED by the time he was eighteen, he could work the nets instead of going to school. Luce had that GED in the bag by the time he was seventeen, and the second he had it, he was gone. He got a berth on a tanker and ended up who knows where. He’s just an odd cat. He’s quiet, intense, and—how would you put it? Wise beyond his years, I guess. Just…he can be hard to get to know.”
“And then Xavier is the youngest?”
“Yep. Xavier is…he’s a genius, in the literal sense. He builds robots and studies quantum physics for fun, reads hundreds of pages in a matter of an hour…he graduated high school at sixteen, got a full ride to Stanford on academics and soccer. He’s gonna be the next Einstein or Hawking, I’m pretty sure.”
Mara twisted to lean sideways against the railing so she could look at me. “And then there’s you.”
I shrugged, unsure where she was going with this. “Then there’s me.”
She hesitated, thinking, and I stayed quiet, letting her have the time to process her thoughts. “I know I bolted last night, or this morning, or whatever.”
I nodded. “You did kind of pull a runner.”
She glanced down, picking at the wood of the railing. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of my M-O. And I—”
“What is your M-O? Just so I’m clear.”
“Sleep with someone after the bar, and leave early in the morning before they’re awake. No strings, no weirdness.”
I nodded. “Same here, for the most part. Although I’m not impartial to breakfast if she seems down with it.”
“Yeah, I don’t stay for breakfast. I rarely even stay for round two. I just—it’s not me.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. “Can we maybe hold off on the psychoanalysis for the moment?”
I rolled a shoulder. “Sure. Go ahead, I’ll shut up and listen.”
“Good plan.” She paused to think again, and then continued. “I’m in Ketchikan for a week. I haven’t taken vacation days in a long time, and Claire is only here through tomorrow afternoon, so…I’ll have some free time, I guess. And—and…I thought we could…hang out, or something.”
I eyed her curiously. “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”
“Neither am I!” she said, in a sudden outburst. “I’m, like, crazy attracted to you—I’m just not sure what to do with it. I don’t do relationships, and I’m only here for a week, so it’s not like it’s going to be…a thing, or whatever. But I would like to spend some more time with you.”
I let out a breath, turning to look out at the hometown I’d never expected to be living in again. “Huh. So, when you talk about spending time together, do you mean just sex? Or are you suggesting stuff like spending time together with our clothes on?”
She lifted both hands palms up. “I don’t know, Zane. I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing right now. But I was talking to Claire earlier, while you were collecting all those phone numbers, and she said I needed to open my mind a little bit.”
“Open your mind?”
She nodded, shoulders hunched as she leaned forward, bracing her forearms on the railing. “Like, start trying things beyond the way I normally do them. But I—I don�
��t know how. Trust is…hard, and I’m just cynical, I guess. None of the guys I’ve ever met have seemed like anyone I’d be interested in seeing more than once.”
“And I’m safe, because you’re going back home in a week, so if I turn out to be a raging douchebag, you can just catch a flight home and forget about me.”
“Exactly.” Her eyes cut to mine. “But please, feel free to not turn into a raging douchebag.”
“I’ll do my best.” I pivoted to put my butt against the railing, looking down at her. “So, yeah. I’m game. It could be fun. I mean, I’m not the relationship type any more than you are. Most of my interactions with women happen either naked, or in the pursuit of getting naked. This would be something new for me too.”
She smirked up at me. “Hey, you can probably count on getting me naked, because let’s face it, you’re just too damn good at seduction.”
“Good to know,” I said.
She straightened, then, standing beside me, still facing the view, arms crossed under her breasts. “But I would also like to try this whole…being together without the sex thing.”
I considered what she was proposing. “So basically, we’re sort of…practice dating.”
She nodded. “Exactly. Practice dating.”
“So, is there a ratio or something for how much time we spend dating and how much time we spend naked?”
“Um, good question. I don’t know. Maybe we just see how things go?” She eyed me with a teasing grin. “But you can’t spend every single waking moment trying to get into my pants, or this won’t work.”
“No?” I edged closer to her. “Why not?”
Her fingers fluttered like restless birds, and eventually settled on my chest, playing with the folds in the fabric. “Because you’re too good at it, and I’m not very good at resisting. We’re supposed to be trying something new, after all.”
“Well, I could argue that since neither of us typically sleep with the same person more than once, if we spend this week fucking like newlyweds we would be trying something new.”
She glared at me. “Goddammit, Zane.”
“What?” I laughed.
“That’s exactly the type of logic we’re supposed to be avoiding, mister.”
“It is? Why?”
“Because the whole point of this experiment is to see what it’s like having a relationship with someone outside of sex.”
“Oh.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Oh.”
I consulted my watch. “Well, it has been at least twelve hours since we last had sex, so…maybe we could start the whole clothes-on part of this practice dating tomorrow morning?”
Mara laughed, her head tipping back, her laughter ringing out through the forest. “You’re something else, Zane.”
I slipped sideways, wedging myself between the fence and her body.
“You can’t even make it through one conversation without trying to slip me your dick,” she said.
“I’m not trying to slip you anything,” I said, “I’m trying to get you to take your shirt off and give me a blow job.”
She blinked up at me. “You want me to take my shirt off and suck your dick?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“For real?”
I shrugged. “Ever since the first time I saw you smile I’ve been fantasizing about the way your mouth would look wrapped around my cock. So yeah, for real.”
She stared at me for a moment, just breathing and looking at me. “Okay.”
“Wait, what?”
She slid my jacket off my shoulders and placed it on the ground, leather to the dirt, inside facing up. “I said, okay.”
“Really?”
She nodded, and peeled her hoodie off, and then her T-shirt, and then unhooked her bra, setting the clothing in a pile to one side. And holy motherfuck, my cock went ramrod stiff in my jeans. There are few things more inherently erotic than a woman topless, outside, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and a sultry grin. Something about it is just…fucking hot as hell. I’d suggested it as a joke—mostly—not really expecting her to agree, but there she was, bare from the waist up, nipples hardening in the chill of the September night air.
She knelt on my jacket in front of me and reached for my belt. Unbuckled it, then unbuttoned my jeans and slowly tugged the zipper down. My cock was straining, about to pop out the top of my boxer briefs. She slid my jeans down around my ankles, and then reached up to snag the waistband of my underwear.
She paused, glancing up at me. “If I have to be topless, I think it’s only fair that you do too.”
I peeled my shirt off and tossed it with hers, then let my hands fall to my sides, waiting for her to make the next move. She grazed her palms over my abs, tracing the ridges between the blocks of muscle. I was glad, then, for the nice little weight room Bast had put together in the storeroom beneath the bar; I’d put in a lot of time down there, benching, squatting, and doing weighted crunches, and it looked like my hard work was paying off, judging by the way her hands ran appreciatively over my body. She hooked her fingers into my underwear again, and this time she didn’t pause. She tugged them away from my body to let my erection spring free, and then she dragged them down. I was naked, right out in the open on the Rainbird Trail overlook, Ketchikan below us, stars above us, with the most gorgeous woman I’d ever laid eyes on kneeling in front of me.
Mara wrapped one hand around my shaft and slid it up, then down. Again, slowly. I groaned, aching at the feel of her hand on me.
“Groaning already, Zane?” she teased. “I’m just getting started.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but then she bent and put her mouth on me, and I could only groan again; any wisecracks I might have had were blasted out of my head by the pure bliss of Mara’s mouth. She caressed me at the root and slid her lips around me, gliding lower and lower, swallowing as I pushed into her throat, and then she backed away, her fist fluttering at my base.
“Jesus, Mara.”
“Mmmm-hmmm?” Holy hell, that moan, that hum, the way she sounded like she knew exactly how incredible she was making me feel.
“Your mouth feels like…” I searched for a way to express it, but she felt so warm and wet and soft and her hand was stroking and pumping slowly and it was too hard to think, too erotic to form coherent thoughts.
“Hmmm?” That hum again, encouraging me to keep talking.
“Feels like I never want you to stop. I don’t even want to come, I just want to feel this.”
“Mmmm-hmmm?” She hummed, and cupped her other hand under my balls, squeezing gently as her fist slid along my shaft.
“God, yeah.” I forced my eyes open and looked down to watch her.
She tilted away from my body and sank to sit on her feet, the angle now allowing her to look up at me through her eyelashes as she drove her mouth on me, pushing closer to my torso, taking more and more of me. Fuck, like this I could watch her mouth take me, watch my cock slide between her lips. My cock was thick enough that her mouth was forced open into a wide O, her jaw extended, and I felt her tongue fluttering along my shaft.
She let go of my cock then, her palms brushing over my belly, grazing around my hips to clutch my ass.
God, oh god, oh god. Just her mouth, then her hair in loose golden waves around her shoulders to tickle my thighs, her hands cupping my ass, fingernails digging in fiercely as she moved her mouth back and forth along my cock. She’d swallow as she took me in and swirl her tongue around the head as she backed away, then she’d pause with just the head of my cock in her mouth and give me a series of short suckling little bobs, and then she’d plunge her mouth back down.
She was playing with me, I realized, feeling me tense as the orgasm rose up inside me, and that was when she’d pause and slow down, letting me back away from the edge. And then she’d start over.
She played me to the edge again and again, always pausing and shifting or slowing so I’d lose the edge of the orgasm, and then start over. Again and again, unti
l my balls were throbbing and I was growling in need. How long had she been doing this? Four minutes? Five? I’d never had a blow job last this long. If I’m having sex, I can pull back a lot, keep going for fucking ever. But if a girl was going down on me, the point was to come hard and fast, right? So I’d let it happen as it happened, let her decide when I came. But this? Jesus, this? It was unlike anything I’d ever felt. The pleasure of her mouth for so damn long, fuck, it was enough to make me wonder if I’d died and gone to heaven.
And then, just when I thought she was about to stop playing and bring me to climax, she backed away and let me pop free of her mouth with a loud smack. Before I could ask what she was doing, though, she had both hands around my cock and was…massaging it, I guess you could call it. Way more than just merely stroking it. This was…god, I don’t know. My shaft was slick with her spit, so her fists slipped up and down with slick ease, and she was squeezing and twisting on each upstroke, each downstroke, plunging both hands in unison and then separately. When she felt my skin starting to dry out, she formed a cup around the head with her hand and bent over, and I felt warm and wet saliva drip onto me. She spread it around, and now her strokes were speeding up, the tight squeezing massaging touch going faster and faster, until my hips began to move and my cock started to throb and my balls were aching.
“Fuck…fuck, Mara!”
“You’re close?” she murmured, staring up at me with that sultry, erotic thrill in her eyes, a lazy, hungry look that said she knew exactly what she was doing to me and that I’d repay her in kind.
“Mara, honey, when I finally come, it’s going to be—oh shit.”
She’d forced me off my train of thought by taking me into her mouth unexpectedly, both hands plunging up and down my shaft, her lips suctioning around the tip of my cock.
For the most part, my hands had stayed by my sides, letting her do this her way. But now…I had to touch her. I rested my hands on her shoulders, caressing everywhere I could touch.
I was edging closer to orgasm now, abs tightening, thighs shaking, hips flexing, and she wasn’t stopping this time, bobbing shallowly on my cock while sucking hard, fists gliding at the same slow pace. There wasn’t any stopping it this time. I started to groan uncontrollably, uttering curses under my breath, whispering her name. She reached up and moved my hands from her shoulders to her head, encouraging me to bury my fingers in her hair, which I did, eagerly. The sounds I was making at this point were…well, I sounded like a damn caveman, if you want the truth—unh, unh, oh god, ohhhhh, ohfuckohfuckohfuck…like that. Nonstop. Loudly.