33. Saturday
CHAPTER 33
SATURDAY
A s a camper, Maggie had never quite understood why it was called Field Day. First of all, as an annual Saturday Social, it was definitely Field Night, or at least Field Evening, since it started a little early to ensure that it was over before sundown. Second of all, calling it Field Day made it sound like there was baseball or maybe lawn games and a three-legged race. There was none of that. What there was, was chocolate pudding.
A lot of chocolate pudding.
And about 300 campers between the ages of 8 and 17, not to mention their counselors, running around the Blue Harbor Main Green bonking each other with flour-filled socks, engulfing their victims in clouds of white dust that settled and clung to their already pudding-sticky limbs. It was, to say the least, not the first thing you’d envision as “good, clean, all-American fun.” Although the flour and pudding were both locally sourced.
When she’d mentioned this to Becker the other day, he’d spun out a fairytale about a long-ago food fight that mysteriously broke out over dinner at Blue Harbor and Oak Ridge simultaneously, and one long-suffering counselor turning to another to say, “well, they sure are having a field day.” Then, for some reason, they’d decided to memorialize it by creating a formal event during which the children run amok for two hours on a perfectly nice late-July evening. It was summer camp Carnival.
Maggie felt a sudden blunt force impact on her upper arm followed by a light, clean scent that she usually associated with her father’s baking. She’d been flour-socked. She turned to see Jordan, dark skin setting off a cobalt blue one-piece swimsuit and yellow shorts, arms and legs already covered in splotches of white. They were holding a flour-filled sock in one hand and offering one to Maggie with the other. Maggie accepted the weapon instinctively, without considering the significant ramifications.
“Alright, let’s go, McArthur.” Jordan grabbed her by the hand, tugged her down from her observation perch on the steps of the Main Lodge, and ran with her to one of the scattered kiddie pools of pudding leftovers that Chef Chuck had been collecting all summer. Maggie had a moment to consider whether anyone was actually eating pudding at meals in light of the amount left over and whether it might not save money to cut pudding from the kitchen budget entirely, before a four-foot-tall blur scooped up a handful of the stuff and flung it at her. The blur, who Maggie had to admit looked a lot like Mia, squealed joyfully and disappeared into the fray to avoid retaliation. Maggie looked down at her tank top, which was now chocolate-covered, and back up at Jordan. Then she smiled, adjusted her grip on the flour-filled sock, scooped up a handful of pudding, and said, “You want to go, Johnson? Let’s go.”
Forty-five minutes of mortal dessert combat later, all sides retreated to their respective cabins for showers and hopefully very deep sleeps. Maggie didn’t envy whoever was assigned to detail the bus that the Oak Ridgers took back to their camp. Martha Stewart probably didn’t provide advice on getting flour-pudding paste out of the nooks and crannies between aging vinyl seat cushions.
Maggie had only seen Daniel from afar while the battle was raging, and she’d definitely been splattered and whacked more than once when she was distracted by the way his shorts rode up his thighs as he ran or the almost impossibly wide smile he flashed when a camper landed a solid hit. She also strongly suspected that he’d recruited dozens of campers to ambush her all over the green. She’d been the target of one too many sock-wielding jump scares for it to be pure chance. It had Becker’s fingerprints all over it. But, dammit, she had no proof. More than anything, she was disappointed in herself for not thinking to do the same. Disappointed in herself and also absolutely covered in chocolate goo. She looked like Augustus Gloop after he’d fallen in the chocolate river if he’d subsequently managed to make it out of the fudge room by army crawling through a bakery.
It wasn’t until all the Blue Harbor campers had trooped back to their cabins to hose down and the Oak Ridge buses were nearly loaded that she spotted Becker near the entrance to the Dining Hall, in animated conversation with Chef Chuck. He must have caught her gazing respectfully at the way the pudding had slicked back his hair (it was giving him a sort of Andy Samberg in a Mel Brooks biopic vibe), because he turned his head toward her and flashed a smug, toothy grin that confirmed her suspicions that he’d been behind the coordinated McArthur bombardment.
Your Honor, it was…upsettingly hot.
He’d been tormenting her all week with his upsetting hotness. It was even worse than his unreasonable charmingness and his bafflingly genuine niceness. Sure, he wasn’t tormenting her on purpose (please refer to the bafflingly genuine niceness), but torment was torment. It was like she’d been sentenced to eternal thirst, and he was just the innocently mouthwatering Underworld pool that Hades had forbidden her to drink from. She didn’t blame the pool. It wasn’t the pool’s fault. God, she’d been spending too much time with a literature major.
Maggie imagined the shower she was going to take to get all of this chocolate goop off of her. It would have to be very long and very cold.
Or…maybe it wouldn’t.
Maggie watched as Chef Chuck headed back toward the kitchen, probably to finish breakfast prep, and Daniel headed back to his truck, which he’d left in the Blue Harbor parking lot when he’d driven over early to help set up. Before she’d consciously made the decision, she moved to intercept.
“Becker.” Daniel stopped and turned when he heard his name. Maggie was a few steps behind him and kept walking until she was close enough to speak without being overheard.
“McArthur. Looking sharp.” He gave her a once-over, taking in what had clearly been his handiwork, albeit by proxy of twenty or so small children.
“Thank you.” Maggie spared a glance to make sure no one was left on the Green to see her next move. Reaching out, Maggie cupped Daniel’s jaw with her right hand and said, in a low voice, “You’ve got a little something…” She swiped a smudge of chocolate from the corner of his mouth with her thumb. It was possible that she brushed his lower lip somewhat more sensuously than was strictly necessary, and if she traced his jawline with the tips of her fingers as she drew her hand away, well, he had some flour there that needed dusting off. Maggie considered seductively licking the pudding from her thumb, but she knew where that pudding had been, so she thought better of it and wiped her hand on her already ruined tank top.
It had been weeks since she’d touched him that way, and she could see from the expression on his face that he’d felt every day of it as much as she had.
“You look like you could use a shower. I was just about to take one myself.”
“Were you?” Becker’s eyebrows raised an extra notch. “What a coincidence.”
“Serendipity. Care to join?”
He hesitated for a moment, and she felt him pull himself together and level her with a steadier gaze. “Are you sure?”
Maggie smiled. She’d been sure before, but if she hadn’t been, his question would have put any lingering uncertainty to rest. “I have some constraints we can discuss while the water’s heating up. I know how you enjoy constraints.”
“Well, in that case…” Daniel turned, setting off toward the cottage with the dorky swagger of an Olympic power walker, and Maggie laughed as she jogged to catch up in the fading light.
They toed their sticky shoes off on the porch and navigated carefully toward the bathroom at the back of the cottage, trying to avoid chocolate-coating any furniture. Parton, who had, at Becker’s suggestion, been placed under temporary house arrest while the Main Green was covered in chocolate to prevent a return trip to the vet, was sleeping on the couch. As they passed, he opened one drowsy eye just long enough to confirm that they weren’t devious bandits masked in Maggie and Daniel’s scents and went back to dozing.
It took a couple of minutes for the water to warm up. This was clearly a full-on clothes-in-the-shower situation, so they waited, almost nose to nose in the no-man’s-land middle of the en suite, trying not to be-pudding anything unnecessarily. Daniel’s body was tense and awkward, like he was resisting a magnetic pull. He hadn’t touched her yet.
“You said something about constraints?” He didn’t quite manage to sound casual.
“Yes. Your garden variety vaginal intercourse is off the table.” Daniel was quiet for long enough that Maggie felt the need to follow up. “Does that work for you Becker?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” A dangerously lop-sided smile broke across his serious expression. “I just thought there might be more.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow. “There certainly can be,” she said, turning to open the glass door and step, fully-clothed, into the shower. “Stay there.”
She could feel his gaze on her as she ducked her head under the warm spray and rinsed the chocolate and flour mixture from her hair. Well, rinsed was probably not the right term. She had a lot of hair and there was a lot of gunk, so she did two full shampoos and one round of conditioner before she was sure she’d gotten it all out. Just like a woman bathing under a tropical waterfall in a sexy cologne ad.
He was still watching her when she finally wiped the water from her eyes. He hadn’t undressed, hadn’t moved, except for the one hand he was now using to massage himself through his shorts.
Maggie wasn’t much of a performer (though she wondered now whether Becker might be), but this seemed to be working for him, so she proceeded to scrub at the residue clinging to her clavicle and upper arms as if he weren’t there. Or, she proceeded to try to do that. He was there, of course, and the simple fact of being watched, or perhaps the anticipation of what was to come, made her skin prickle significantly more than it usually did when peppered by the shower’s underwhelmingly pressurized spray. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t unpleasant either.
After she rubbed away the last of a pudding splotch on the nylon running shorts now plastered to her thighs, she slipped the fabric over her hips and onto the tile floor. Then she wriggled, with balletic grace, out of her soaking sports bra. Bending to pick up the shorts (and very aware of the angle Becker was getting on her wet-white-cotton-covered ass), she bundled the wet clothes and set them down on one corner of the shower’s built-in bench.
Finally, she opened the glass door in a silent invitation for Daniel to join her.
He just stood there, watching her, touching himself almost indolently.
“Becker, get in here.”
“You said stay.” His tone sparked with mischief.
Maggie rolled her eyes.
* * *
When Daniel finally stepped in, his body blocked the stream from the shower head completely. The bathroom air was heavy with warm steam, but Maggie shivered. He resisted the urge to reach out and engulf her in a bear hug. She was in charge here.
Since he’d managed to stay largely out of the fray and had significantly less hair in which pudding could become enmeshed, the spray alone did a reasonable job of de-gunking him. Maggie watched as he washed, and he found he enjoyed having an audience. Her face was impassive, but it belied the appreciation in her electric green eyes.
“I feel at a disadvantage,” she said as soon as he was clean, glancing casually down her own bare torso.
“I promise you’re not.” His voice cracked on the word “promise,” as if to corroborate the statement.
She looked like the cat who got the cream. “Come here. Arms up.”
He complied, and with a single movement she had his tank up, and over his head. The barest skim of her fingertips against his bare torso made him shudder. She seemed to notice, because she smiled a wicked smile and took a step away from him as she tossed his shirt onto the growing pile of discarded clothes. He followed, like she was some sort of magnet. As he did, he stepped out of the path of the shower’s spray. Maggie gasped at the burn of the hot water against her stomach.
He took the opportunity to rake his gaze over her body. It was more beautiful even than he’d remembered (and he’d remembered it a few times recently), lithe and glistening in the shower spray. He was momentarily mesmerized by the rivulets running down her chest. He tracked one all the way from her clavicle, down her sternum, and over her flat stomach to slip under the fabric covering the curls between her thighs. Daniel’s body was aching now, his fingers itching to touch?—
Maggie cleared her throat meaningfully. He looked up, and found her attention caught on his own hips. He was half hard, and his shorts hung low, weighted down by the water they’d absorbed. The look on her face told him that he wasn’t going to like where she was taking this.
Or, rather, he was going to like it a lot. His fingers clenched, involuntarily.
“You need something to do with your hands?” She asked.
“Please.” He was too desperate to care how needy he sounded. He thought he might die if he didn’t touch her soon.
“Alright. Make yourself come.” The words held more obscene promise than he’d thought a single sentence could bear.
Daniel groaned as he freed his hardening erection from the waistband of his shorts, the sound a rough mix of torture and relief. Maggie’s gaze on him felt almost tangible. It was too much, and still nowhere near enough. He stroked himself, slowly, carefully, keeping his eyes on Maggie’s face. It was affecting her, watching him. And he liked it. He brushed a thumb over his sensitive head and made himself moan. She swallowed hard. The muscles in her stomach visibly tensed.
The skin on Daniel’s arms pebbled even though the bathroom was by now nearly a sauna. It wasn’t the cold. It was the thrill, like a freefall. Giving over control, giving Maggie whatever she wanted. There was something about the way she looked at him in those moments. Like she could really see him.
* * *
Maggie reached for the white underwear stretched across her hips, now completely soaked through and nearly transparent, and slid a hand into the waistband. She’d meant to wait, but Jesus. Even her endurance had its limits.
Daniel watched as she moved against herself beneath the cotton. His breathing was getting heavier, each moan sounded torn from his throat. When she slid a finger inside herself and hummed in satisfaction his erection twitched in his grip. She almost laughed. What a gratifying example of cause and effect. That she could move him without a touch made it feel like they were connected by some unseen force. Sexual quantum entanglement. Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
“I want to see,” he said.
She met his gaze then, and it was like liquid desire. She took a breath to steady herself.
He wanted this badly—to watch her come. Because of him. And she could let him, choose to let him, see. The same way he let her. He always let her see.
“Please.”
Maybe it was the way he said it, voice thick, lashes weighing heavy on his open face.
“I think we’ve played this game before.”
“You want to make a deal, McArthur?” Incredulity dragged over the gravel in his voice.
“Quid pro quo,” she said, shrugging as much as she could, which was not much, since she still had one hand tucked into her underwear and the other braced against the shower wall.
Daniel somewhat inelegantly extricated himself from his remaining clothing and deposited his shorts onto the shower bench. His erection bobbed, neglected, while he waited for her to do the same.
And she did. A deal was a deal. She let the waterlogged white cotton drop to the floor, then bent to pick it up and toss it onto the now-complete corner pile. What she did not need was a trip to the ER where she’d have to explain to the receptionist that she’d slipped on her own underwear in the shower.
When she straightened, she raised her left leg, setting her foot firmly onto the bench, and angled herself so that the hot water prickled against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. She thought she had never been so utterly exposed.
Daniel groaned, and the sound shot straight to her core. Her stomach clenched. Every nerve in her body thrilled. His eyes burned like the sun, so intense that she could no longer look directly at them. She dropped her gaze and caught, instead, the way he gripped at his erection, the tension in his fingers betraying the effort it took to keep his hand still. The sight nearly sent her toppling over the edge.
So she touched herself, imagining his hand, his mouth, watching him do the same, the muscles in his stomach straining, chest rising and falling faster and faster. All she could hear now was the rush of the water and her own breath, heavy and staccato, as the electricity gathered in her veins. Her entire body was alive with potential. Then Daniel flipped the switch.
“Maggie, please.”
A current jolted through her, radiating outward from the places she touched, branching and arcing, racing from nerve to nerve. She gasped at its strength and squeezed her eyes shut against the unbearable, essential pleasure of it. She heard Daniel’s answering gasp, and she meant to open her eyes to watch him fall apart — she loved to watch him fall apart — but she was helpless to do anything but keep herself upright as the electricity rioted through her until, finally, the chaos subsided. She sank languidly down onto the slick bench as the last of the sparks dissipated and opened her eyes to find Daniel half slumped against the wall beside the shower head, watching her, riveted.
“Can I kiss you?” asked Daniel, sounding only a little unsteady.
Maggie, still spent, just nodded.
He moved carefully, ducking in front of the spray and lowering himself onto the bench beside her before twisting to find her mouth. At first, his lips brushed hers so lightly that the sensation was barely distinguishable from the whisper of his breath over her skin. Then he began to explore, tracing the outline of her mouth with his tongue, nipping at the indentation in the center of her upper lip, as if it was all new terrain and he the cartographer. Maggie let him take his survey.
Daniel licked at the seam of her lips, and she opened for him. And as he deepened the kiss, she felt his hands find her waist and pull her toward him so that somehow she was straddling Daniel’s lap, knees resting on the slick tile of the bench, calves nestled against his thighs.
And all the while he recorded the mountains and valleys of her, and the world around her faded away into the white noise of rushing water. All that remained was the roughness of his tongue, her chest pressed solidly to his, their hearts beating against one another in the steamy nothing.
She felt almost drunk.
When, after minutes or hours, she surfaced, her eyes again found his. But something had shifted in their depths. Where there had been lust, chemistry, something powerful but ordinary, there was now something unfamiliar and strange. Something like alchemy.
And it threatened to overwhelm her.
So she closed her eyes against it, whatever it was, and lost herself instead in the intoxicating nothing.