Chapter Four
Not unless you ask me to? Chuck snores from his bed while I stir the pasta sauce so hard it splashes onto the seventies-style brown-and-beige backsplash. I wipe it off the wall with my finger and lick it clean. The sauce is decent, but with Amy on my mind as I lick my own finger, my thoughts are anything but.
I set the burner to low and brace myself on the counter. Cursing under my breath, I slide my hand into my jeans, running my palm over my cock. I’d spent the entire week like this when we were sixteen. Dick tucked into the waistband of my shorts. Waking up in a puddle of my own come every morning. Wanting so badly to touch her. To touch myself.
But jacking off in a cabin full of ten-year-olds wasn’t exactly in the cards.
I squeeze my shaft and my nerves buzz, melting my joints and hardening the heat in my fist. The heel of my palm grazes my head and I shift my hips involuntarily, sending ripples of want straight to my balls.
I lock my fingers around my shaft and work my fist from base to tip.
She has no idea the effect she has on me.
My thumb swipes over the sensitive nerves on my head, grazing along the slit and finding my own lube. I slide my thumb down the underside of my cock.
The effect she’s always had on me. Her laugh. Her tenacity. Her perfect fucking tits.
I flick open the button at my waist and circle my thumb and index finger just above my balls. My dick pulses in my hand and I pump my fist up, gliding through the trail of lube. I press down. Up. My breath catches and my hips thrust my cock forward, wanting it to be sheathed. Looking for warmth and wetness and begging for release.
“God dammit.” I push myself from the counter and turn off the burner. I can’t have dinner with her like this. Not when I’m fisting myself to her image and dripping my need for her all over my pants. I’ve been on edge for weeks, needing what I couldn’t have up here, and seeing her today... Fuck.
I undo my fly on the way to the shower, pumping my fist hard without the constraints of my jeans. I don’t bother to wait for the water to heat before I step under its spray. The body wash is there. Right there. But that would mean taking my hand off my junk, would make me miss precious seconds of this bliss. And thoughts of her, all slippery and smooth, are all I need. My hand glides along the length of my dick, squeezing the base, rotating on the head—taking me to a place where my hips thrust in time with my fist and I name my fingers Amy.
I rest my elbow against the tile and my head falls onto my forearm. I stop my frantic pumping and cradle my sack, kneading it in my hand, needlessly building and delaying the release I’m so desperate for as I replay the image of her ass in those shorts. Her boobs squeezed over her crossed arms. The way her eyes flashed and her hips shifted when I touched her hand.
A drop of pre-come marks my forearm and I give my balls one last squeeze before I wrap the head of my dick in my calloused palm and twist, working the lube over my most sensitive nerve endings. My breath comes ragged and my hand takes over for my brain, twisting, sliding, and squeezing until all I can see is her and all I can feel is the pleasure she brings.
My fist slows and I know I’m close. I pump up. Down. And pleasure shoots from me with her name on my lips. Ropes of come hit my chest and paint the shower walls. I thrust into my fist until I’m dry.
I lean against the wall to catch my breath. One by one, my fingers uncurl and I reach for the body wash through a haze of satisfaction and knot of heartache, soaping myself up and washing off my walls. Her walls. Rinsing away my want and desire and carnal fucking need for the woman I’ve never been able to forget.
* * *
She lifts a forkful of pasta to her lips. “This is delicious. Did you make the sauce?”
I use a piece of garlic toast to collect the remaining sauce from my plate. “If by making it, you mean cooking the meat and opening the jar, then yes. Yes, I did.”
“And here I hoped that living alone in the forest somehow turned you into a gourmet chef. I could have used that kind of side effect.”
“You could teach yourself to cook, if you want to. You’ll get to place food orders for the house along with the orders for the camp kitchen, so you can really order whatever you want. And you’ll definitely have enough time to pick up a new skill or two, but you do get to eat at the dining hall when there’s a camp in session, so it might not be your best choice of hobby.”
She takes a sip of beer. “Is there really enough downtime to actually get good at a hobby?”
I pry my eyes away from the way her lips circle the bottle. “It depends. You’re in for a full couple of months with summer camp running, but the rest of the year can go from busy to dead and back real fast depending on how many rentals we get from school groups and stuff.”
She puts her fork on her plate and pushes it away, even though it’s still half-full. Chuck’s nails click across the floor and he drops his head into her lap. “No human food for you, buddy.” She scratches the lucky bastard’s head. “Chuck, right?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah. That’s him.”
Her fingers glide through his fur. “A bit of an odd name for him, don’t you think?”
“Not really.”
“But this guy is such a dog. I mean, nose up my shorts earlier. Chin on the goods now. I’d have called him Goofy, or something.”
I take a swig of beer like it’s in any way strong enough to stop the attention my dick is giving to the thought of having my own chin anywhere near Amy’s goods, her hand working through my hair. “He was called Bruiser at the shelter, but it, I don’t know, felt less ridiculous to have a conversation with a Chuck than with a Bruiser.”
“You talk to him?”
“Like I said.” I miss the table and catch the bottle halfway to my lap. “It gets lonely up here.”
She plays with Chuck’s ears. “So you keep saying.”
I eye her plate. “You sure you’re done?”
Amy glances at her plate. “Oh, yeah. I’m stuffed. Do you want the rest?”
I shake my head and she pushes her plate farther out of Chuck’s way. He wanders off and flops onto his bed. “So, what hobby did you pick up if it wasn’t cooking?” she asks.
I lean back in my chair. “Guitar.”
She tilts her head. “How come?”
“I liked the noise. It took a while to get used to the quiet up here. And, well, it’s a useful campfire skill.”
“Nobody ever played guitar when we were campers.”
“Nope. But those camp directors also didn’t have YouTube and all the tutorial videos they could ask for.”
She stalls with her drink halfway to her lips. “Don’t tell me you’ve infected camp with Wi-Fi.”
“Just in the house. Not like we let the kids keep their phones, anyway. They have to check them in when they get here, and we give them back when they leave.”
Her lips curve. “I’m sure that goes over really well.”
“Oh, no. It goes terribly. But all it takes is one kid jumping into the lake with their smuggled phone still hidden in their pocket for all the potential rebels to hang their heads and hand over their gadgets.” I roll my bottle between my palms. “I’m surprised you hadn’t figured the Wi-Fi thing out, though. Not a phone addict like other city folk?”
She shrugs. “I’m not a city girl anymore.”
I nod slowly and take her in. Stretchy hoody zipped to just under her breasts. Hair pulled into a ponytail, still damp from her swim. Her ass-hugging leggings tucked under the table. She looks completely camp, except for her shoulders, pulled high against her neck. “Why did you take this job, Amy?”
“I needed a new job. This one came up. I got it.” She shrugs. Freezes when she realizes her shoulders are already near her ears, and pulls them back down to their proper place.
“What were you doing before?”
She leans her elbows on the table. Her breasts are probably squeezed together, creating a valley in their softness. My palms itch and I use all my strength to keep looking at her face. “I worked in event planning. Weddings,” she says.
“Fred hired you based off that? With no camp experience? Shit.” I drag my hand down my face. “That didn’t come out right. You always picked things up fast, so I’m sure you’ll do a great job, but I guess I thought you at least had a background in, I don’t know, education? Parks services? The fact that you’ve never worked with kids, or at a camp, it’s kind of—”
“I’ve worked at a camp.” Her voice is quiet, but it cuts me off entirely. She looks at her hands. “I was a counselor each summer during college.”
I fight through the vice around my throat. “But not here.”
She looks up. “No. Not here.”
My dinner turns in my gut. All those summers I’d waited for her, when I thought she’d grown out of camp, she hadn’t. She’d just grown out of this camp and everyone in it.
I force down a gulp of beer. “What was it like? Your other camp.”
Amy rolls the corner of the beer label under her thumb. “There were horses. A pool. It was kind of the opposite of this place.”
“I’ve always thought this camp was pretty much perfect,” I say.
“Yet you’re leaving.” Her lips clamp together. “Why?”
My mind zeroes in on what I’ve been missing—on what I always believed I’d never be able to have up here. “It’s complicated.”
She holds eye contact. “It always is.”
I clear my throat to fill the silence and get up to clear the table. She joins me, reaching for the spatula I keep near the sink and scraping the plates into the compost with a technique honed on Kitchen Patrol.
“You know,” I say. “I thought those were called scrapers for years. I didn’t learn the word spatula until I tried to buy one for myself, when I moved here. The store clerk thought I was as dumb as they come.”
She smiles. “Well, they do say you can either be pretty or smart, so...”
I grin. “Do you believe that?”
Amy piles the plates in the sink. “In general? Of course not.” She turns and drags her gaze from my toes to my eyes. “Verdict’s still out on you, though.”
I roll my shoulders, pulling my shirt tight against my chest. Her eyes drop to my body and her lower lip dips between her teeth while her eyes linger on the front of my jeans. She crosses her legs and toys with her zipper pull while silence stretches over us. And I’ve had enough silence up here. “Amy?”
She blinks and raises her eyes to mine. Her skin is flushed and the soft outlines of her teeth remain on her lip.
“You don’t believe that I liked you when we were kids. Fine. But believe me when I say that right now, you’re beyond pretty. And you’d be smart to believe me.”
She makes a move to stand upright, but her legs clench tighter together instead. Her leggings cling to every ripple of her thighs as she contracts and relaxes the muscles. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she finally says. But it’s like her words have been dragged over stones. They’re raw and exposed. She clears her throat. “Which means we may have a bit of a situation here.”
I lean against the dining room table. The space between us is thick with things undone. “Do tell.”
“Well, you’re starved for attention. All kinds, you say.” She licks her lips. “And so am I.”
My jeans tighten with thoughts of giving Amy the attention she needs. I thread my fingers over my crotch. “Is this where you ask me to lick your thigh?”
Her eyes flash. “If I’m going to be as starved for,” she raises her fingers in air quotes “‘social interaction’ when I take over, well, I’d like to propose a deal.”
My mouth goes dry. “What kind of deal?”
She takes a deep breath. “The kind where we pretend we don’t know each other.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because,” she says. “I’d like to spend the next week or so bingeing on you. You know. Stocking up on the essentials so I don’t starve, so to speak. And,” she nods toward the bulge under my hands, “it looks like you wouldn’t mind breaking whatever fast you have going on. But I don’t want to fuck the guy who broke my heart.”
My stomach clenches and sends acid to my throat, but my traitorous cock throbs its agreement. I unclasp my fingers and cover the space between us in two steps. I hold out my hand to shake on it and pull her close when our palms meet. “Then you have a deal,” I whisper. “Tomorrow, we start fresh. As strangers. Because damn, Amy, I want you.” I spread my hand over the curve of her ass and pull her against me. She whimpers when I drag my hard-on across her stomach. “But I don’t want to fuck the girl who broke my heart, either.”