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  I feel Harper’s body flexing around me in hard, fast spasms as she comes, and that’s all it takes. My cock explodes into the condom. I groan against her neck as one jolt of pleasure after another lights up my nervous system.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HARPER POLSEN

  As the waves of orgasm lessen, a noise comes from the other side of the door. Someone is in the bedroom and immediately every last trace of calm leaves my body. I tense on top of Zane and my heart pounds in my chest in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with how much he turns me on.

  “Shit,” I whisper.

  Zane’s hands are tight on the small of my back, and both of us stare at each other, absolutely silent, both of us even hold our breaths, waiting to see what’s going on.

  I hear a woman’s laugh just beyond the closed door, and I immediately recognize it as Bev’s. I close my eyes. I want to groan at how absolutely awkward this is, how completely inappropriate, but if I do that then both Zane and I will be discovered.

  “It’s not rude to leave our guests, right?” I hear Bev saying, and the flirty note in her voice is enough for me to realize exactly what she’s talking about.

  “I don’t care. It’s distracting as hell to have to chat about Harold’s golf game with this threatening to rip through my fly at any minute.”

  My eyes fly open at the sound of Zane’s dad speaking and saying those words, and all at once it hits both of us — Zane’s parents are talking about having a quickie.

  It’s weird and hilarious and absolutely mortifying all at the same time. I cover my mouth with my hand, pressing my fingers against my lips to stifle the sound of the irresistible giggles that I just can’t keep down. I’m trying too hard to stay silent, even as the laughter bubbles up, that I’m shaking on top of Zane like a cup full of Yahtzee dice. I realize that Zane is chuckling too, as quietly as he possibly can.

  By the time we can get control of ourselves, we hear his parents starting to moan in the next room. We both lose it again, barely smothering the sounds of our confused, mortified laughter against each other’s clothes.

  “Oh my God, your parents are going at it not twenty feet away from us,” I whisper in Zane’s ear. He groans, lips against my neck to cover the sound.

  “This is… God,” Zane murmurs.

  “It’s gross,” I finish for him.

  “No, just really, really weird,” he says.

  I’m trying to listen enough to make sure that neither of his parents can hear us, and not listen enough to really, truly know what’s going on. It feels like it’s going on forever, but when I check my watch, thank God, after I hear Bev and Nolan leaving the next room chuckling at their quick getaway, it’s only fifteen minutes.

  “We need to get out of here,” I say.

  “Yeah, someone will notice,” Zane agrees.

  “I wonder if anyone noticed that the host and hostess were missing. You go first. You’ve been gone for longer and you’re the darling son,” I tell him.

  I get myself cleaned up after Zane leaves, and put my panties back on and straighten my dress. I wait a minute longer, and walk out of the bathroom, and then the master bedroom, as unobtrusively as I can.

  There are so many people at the party that nobody has noticed that I was away, at least as far as I can tell. The break and the big climax I got out of it at least makes it easier for me to deal with all the questions about why a girl like me is still single, what I’m up to in the big city, whether or not I’m lonely out there on my own.

  By the time my parents and I walk back to the house, I’m exhausted. I can feel the sticky-slick feeling between my legs. My toes ache from the heels I’ve been wearing for hours, and I can barely keep my eyes open. I go up to my room barefoot, and toss my shoes into my closet, and look out through my window. The light’s off in Zane’s room, but I don’t know if that’s because he’s not there, or if it’s because he’s asleep already.

  My phone vibrates, and when I grab for it and scramble to look at the screen, I see it’s not Zane, as I half-hoped, but instead my boss.

  “Hello, Harper Polsen here,” I say.

  “Harper, glad I could catch you. Sorry, I know it’s late,” Vanessa says.

  “I just got back to my parents’ house,” I tell her. “I’m about to get into bed.”

  “So I have to ask you something, and you’re not going to like it,” Vanessa says.

  I close my eyes, sinking down to sit on the edge of my bed, knowing that if she admits ahead of time I’m not going to like it, I’m really not going to like it.

  “What’s up, Vanessa?”

  “Do you think you can come back maybe a day or two early?”

  I make a face and look up at the ceiling, shaking my head. “Why?” I know the probable reason why, but I also know I have to ask to keep the conversation moving forward.

  “Jonah Hildebrand wants to get started on the project earlier than we projected,” Vanessa explains. “And of course, since he’s a bigwig…”

  “You have to at least make a token effort,” I finish for her.

  “So, what can I tell the folks upstairs?”

  “You can tell them that I can’t possibly make it in a day early,” I say firmly. I know I’m going to get pushback, and I try to think of a good reason. Not that there’s a hot guy I just had sex with who I don’t want to go away from early, that I just can’t do it.

  “What’s going on? You know I’ve got to give them some kind of excuse,” Vanessa says.

  “My mom, she threw out her back yesterday, doing something out in the yard and she needs me here to help her while she’s bedridden,” I tell her quickly. “My dad can’t help her, he’s stuck at work himself and all that.”

  “If she’s sick, then of course you should stay,” Vanessa says.

  “The pain in her back is a pain in my ass,” I quip, putting just enough annoyance into my voice. Vanessa laughs.

  “Sounds about right. Okay, I’ll let them know you can’t come in early.” I almost breathe a sigh of relief. I finish up the call and get off the phone as quickly as I can, before I feel the need to embroider my lie. It’s good enough, and I need to stick with it.

  I strip off my clothes and curl up in bed without even bothering to take a shower first. I decide I’ll deal with it in the morning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ZANE LEWIS

  “Are you going out this evening?” I look up from my phone. My mom is standing in my open doorway.

  “No, why?” I put down my phone. I’d been texting with one of my buddies on the base. There’s a betting pool now that it’s common knowledge that I’m up for reenlistment.

  “Just wondering,” Mom says.

  “After all the work today cleaning up from last night, I have no intention of driving around,” I tell her.

  “Seems kind of like a dud, this vacation of yours,” Mom comments, sitting down on my chair.

  I laugh. “As opposed to going out with whichever of my boys is in town, drinking and trying to pick up some girl?” I have to admit, that is the usual way my leave goes.

  “Is it because of the reenlistment issue, or because you’re settling down, or because you’re here for the anniversary?” Mom looks at me steadily.

  I have to wonder why she’s so worried.

  “Just don’t feel like it as much this time,” I say with a shrug.

  “I just want to make sure you’re not depressed or something,” Mom explains.

  That makes me laugh. “Depressed? No, Ma. There’s no reason for me to be depressed.” I shake my head.

  “You just seem a bit different,” Mom says.

  “Well I’m looking at one of the most important decisions of my life,” I point out.

  “As long as it’s just that and not something else. You know you can talk to us,” Mom tells me as she stands up.

  “Of course, Mom,” I say. The last thing I want right now is for her to pay too much attention to what I’m doing, or even not doing
, while I’m home.

  I have to reassure her again before she leaves to go to bed, but then I’m by myself again, texting with my friend Ryan. Apparently the betting pool at the base puts me at sixty-percent chance that I’ll reenlist.

  I get a notification for another text message, and it’s not from anyone on the base. It’s from Harper.

  Are you as bored as I am right now?

  I look across the yard and see Harper in her room, in pajamas, but I can see they fit her perfectly, and all I can think about is how we had sex the night before in my parents’ bathroom. We’re both only in town for a couple of days more before we both have to go back to our lives.

  Bored out of my mind

  She looks at me and we’re both grinning at each other. I have an idea. There’s a bunch of leftover beer from the party the night before that my parents will never miss.

  I text Harper my idea, and sneak downstairs, checking to make sure that both my parents are in bed before I head into the basement where we put the leftover beer. I know it’s probably a terrible idea to meet with Harper alone after we had sex the night before, and we both agreed we should never do it again, that it’s too weird, but I can’t resist the thought of sitting around and having a few beers with her, talking.

  I know that something’s probably going to happen, but I try to tell myself that it’s some harmless fun for both of us. After all, we’re both in our twenties, and we’re healthy and we’re single. Who are we hurting with the fooling around we did? Nobody.

  I grab a six-pack from the basement fridge and creep back up to the main floor of the house, making sure neither my mom nor my dad is up. Then I look outside. Harper is already waiting for me, sitting in the spot right in the middle between my parents’ yard and hers, where we met up the first night we were both in town. Was that really only a couple of days before? I can’t quite believe it.

  I go outside with the beers, walk across the lawn, and sit down. I open up the case and hand one to Harper, and both of us sit there quietly for a minute in silence.

  “We need to talk about what happened last night,” Harper says.

  “We probably do,” I agree, and I crack open my beer.

  “We’re not going to, are we?”

  I grin at Harper’s question and she cracks her own beer, raises it to me, and we both take our first sips.

  “No, I don’t think we should talk about it,” I tell her.

  “Why not?” Harper shifts on the grass and I can’t help but notice, even in the limited light from the porch lights, that her nipples are straining against the fabric of her tight pajama top. Suddenly all I can think about is finding out, if like the night before, that she wasn’t wearing a bra under her dress.

  “Because talking about it will make it complicated,” I reply.

  “Or it will make it less confusing,” Harper counters. I drink down about a third of my beer, and after a moment Harper does the same with hers.

  “What we’re going to do is get a little bit drunk and talk about good times, and not think about what would have happened if we got caught last night,” I tell her.

  Harper thinks about that for a minute, and raises her beer to me again. “That sounds like a pretty decent deal,” she says.

  We finish our first beers and I crack open two more beers for us, and I can start feeling, just a little bit, the start of the buzz I’m trying to get. If we get through the six-pack, I can always go back inside and get another one out of the basement fridge.

  “So, what else do we have to talk about?” I sip my beer and look at Harper and in spite of having only just said that we weren’t going to talk about the night before, it’s the only thing I can think about — her lips, her smile, the sight of her tits, the feeling of her wrapped around my cock, all of it. That and the fact that as soon as I slipped out of my parents’ room last night, the only thing on my mind was how much better it would be to have Harper fully naked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  HARPER POLSEN

  It feels like every nerve in my body is vibrating, and I can’t quite shake the little bit of tremor in my hands, the butterflies in my stomach. Why am I so nervous around Zane? He’s already seen me naked at the lake the night before we had sex, and I wasn’t nervous at all then, not until we heard his parents in the next room.

  “When are you heading back?” I ask.

  I can feel the beer starting to put a dent in my nerves, and it just makes me eager to drink more. Mom and Dad had both gone to bed by the time I texted Zane, and the idea of sitting around, drinking beers in the darkness, was certainly way more attractive than sitting in my room thinking about whether or not I should make an early trip back to New York City.

  “My flight leaves Monday morning, I think,” Zane says.

  “Yeah, I have to drive back either late Sunday or early-early Monday,” I tell him, making a face. “They want me in the office as soon as I can get there.”

  “Big dealings,” Zane observes, drinking down a little more of his beer.

  “Yeah, they actually want to get an early start on the project but… I sort of told them I couldn’t leave early.”

  “You did?” Zane raises an eyebrow at that.

  “Yeah, I’m not ready to be back to work just yet,” I admit with a little grin. I take a few gulps of my second beer.

  “We do have that fancy dinner your parents are supposed to host,” Zane agrees.

  “Wouldn’t want to miss that!” I giggle, and drink down the last of my beer.

  We keep talking, joking around and both of us go onto our third beer. By now I have to pee, and I tell Zane to wait for me while I go inside for a minute.

  I get in and out of the house as quickly as I can, managing not to slam anything in spite of the fact that the door to the bathroom seems determined to spring right out of my hands.

  “I think we need to talk about what happened last night,” Zane says.

  “I thought you were against talking about it,” I say.

  “I changed my mind,” Zane tells me.

  “Okay, so since it’s your idea now, you tell me what you want to say about it,” I settle back into my spot, and Zane hands me another beer. He’s already started on his fourth, as he apparently went in to get another six-pack and get rid of the empties while I was in the house.

  “We’re just having fun, right? I don’t think either of us really thought about anything other than what we were doing last night,” Zane says.

  “I definitely wasn’t,” I admit.

  “So we’re just… doing what hot people do sometimes,” Zane continues. I have to snicker a bit at that.

  “What hot people do sometimes?” I shake my head.

  “Fooling around,” Zane replies.

  “And that’s all there is to it? That we’re fooling around?” Something about that doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not like I’m some prude, obviously, I’m not, if I was able to enjoy having sex with Zane the night before with no real reason for it but both of us being stressed out by the party.

  “Well what do you want from it? I mean, it’s not like we’ve got time to like, see if there’s a relationship to have, and besides we’re both going back to different places in a couple of days.”

  I have to admit that he’s right. “I guess I don’t want things to get weird between us,” I say.

  “They won’t,” Zane tells me.

  “You’re sure about that? Because I could see it getting weird as hell that we had sex.” I drink a little more beer, and maybe it’s from being a bit buzzed or maybe it’s from being around Zane in the dark, and remembering what we did the night before, but I can feel myself tingling all over. I have to admit that even though we both said we’d never do it again, that it was too weird, there is nothing I want more than to have his hands on me.

  “As long as no one else knows about it, we should be fine,” Zane points out.

  “So is it a secret because you’d be ashamed to be with me, or because we’v
e… I don’t know… like, known each other since we were babies and our parents are close?” I set down my beer as I ask the question. Maybe this late-night chat wasn’t such a good idea.

  “I would not be ashamed of that,” Zane tells me, looking me directly in the eyes.

  “No?” I hold his gaze for a long moment.

  “Please. You’re hot, you’re smart, and you’re doing really well for yourself in New York. If anything you should be ashamed of hooking up with me.” Zane takes a sip of his beer and looks up at the sky for a moment.

  I think about that and shake my head.

  “This is exactly why we shouldn’t have even started talking about this,” I say.

  For a long moment, we just look at each other.

  And then Zane does it again — he leans in and kisses me. I respond without thinking, parting my lips and running my hand through his hair. Instead of him kissing me, I’m kissing him, not even paying attention to the beer that slipped from my hands or the one that was in his hands.

  “Instead of talking about it, let’s do something about it,” Zane murmurs, and I can’t possibly agree more. I slide the tip of my tongue against his lips and he opens his mouth and then he’s pinning me to the ground, kissing me hungrily while my insides burst with tingles of excitement.

  I let my hands wander over him, exploring the lines of his back, sliding down his chest in the front. I can feel the ridge of his hardening cock against my hip, and the only thing I want is to get his clothes off and feel him inside me again. But we’re in the little space between where his parents’ house meets my parents’ house and I know better than to think we can have sex there.

  Even knowing that, though, I give into how hot and heavy things are between us. I let Zane pull up the front of my pajama top. When his mouth claims one of my breasts I wrap my legs around his waist and rub against that hard, hot ridge at the front of his pants. It’s almost like we’re trapped like that, like we can’t stop even if we wanted to, and I know neither of us wants to, just like the night before.