Chapter 4 — The First Line Crossed #4
"This is where you hide," she said, not a question.
"Not hiding. Working."
She smiled, that slow, warm smile that started at the corners of her mouth and worked its way into her eyes.
"You're the only person I know who calls standing in a dark room with a tiny boat 'working' and actually means it.
" She stepped closer, her eyes moving over the worktable, the tools, the half-finished hull under the lamplight.
"Is this the Cairo? The one for the museum? "
The question caught me off guard. Not because she'd asked it, but because she'd asked it correctly. USS Cairo, not "that Civil War boat" or "the model thing." She knew the name.
"Yeah. How did you know that?"
She shrugged, one shoulder lifting under the thin cover-up. "You talked about it at dinner. At our house. Before I..." She paused, her cheeks coloring slightly. "Before the pantry. You said it was almost done."
I had. I'd mentioned the Cairo between trying not to come in her hand and pretending to care about potato salad, and she'd been listening while her foot was on my cock under the table.
The disconnect should have been funny. It wasn't. It was something warmer, something that settled in my chest and stayed there.
She reached for the hull, then stopped, her hand hovering. "Can I?"
"Sure. It's sturdy."
She picked it up with both hands, cradling it the way you'd hold something that mattered, and turned it under the lamplight.
Her fingers traced the curve of the bow, then the flat deck where the gun turrets would go, and the concentration on her face was so genuine I could have mistaken her for someone who built these things for a living.
"The iron plates go here?" She pointed to the tray beside the hull. "Each one by hand?"
"Each one. Rivets too. It's stupidly detailed for something nobody will see up close at the museum."
"Someone will see it." She set the hull down carefully, aligning it with the edge of the worktable like she was returning a book to its shelf. "You see it. That's the point, isn't it? You know every rivet is where it's supposed to be, even if nobody else does."
The observation landed with a precision that made my throat tight.
She was right. That was exactly the point.
The patience, the control, the private certainty that came from building something right whether anyone noticed or not.
I'd spent ten years in this room, and in ten minutes, Kiki Bishop had summarized it better than I ever had.
She pulled the spare stool closer to the worktable and sat down, her bare thigh pressing against mine where I stood, warm skin through the thin cover-up.
Not leaning into me. Not pushing. Just sitting, close enough that I could smell the chlorine in her hair and the vanilla underneath it, and looking at the models on the shelves with the quiet attention of someone who wanted to understand.
"The Monitor and the Virginia," she said, pointing to the two finished ironclads on the middle shelf.
"First battle between iron ships. Hampton Roads, 1862.
I had to do a paper on it sophomore year.
" She smiled, a little self-conscious. "Not that I remember much besides the dates.
And that they basically canceled each other out. Neither one could sink the other."
"They punched holes in each other for four hours and called it a draw," I said. "The Virginia's ram broke off. The Monitor's turret jammed. Both captains claimed victory. Standard military procedure: nobody loses, everyone gets a medal."
She laughed, low and warm, and the sound filled the small room in a way that made the models on the shelves feel less like artifacts and more like things that belonged in a space where people laughed. "You've thought about this a lot."
"I've had time."
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes moving over the worktable, the tools, the reference photos pinned to the corkboard.
One hand reached out, hesitant, and touched the edge of a photo showing the Cairo's original wreck, raised from the Yazoo River in the 1960s, the iron hull corroded but intact after a century underwater.
"This is what you do when we're not here," she said, not a question. "When it's just you and the lake and these tiny boats that nobody sees you build."
"It's what I do when I need quiet."
"Are we too loud? Outside?"
I looked at her. Really looked at her. Golden hair damp from the pool, blue eyes warm in the lamplight, that cover-up doing nothing to hide the curves underneath, and the question in her voice was so genuine it made something in my chest crack open.
"No," I said. "You're not too loud."
She held my gaze, and the room felt smaller suddenly, the space between us charged with something that had nothing to do with models or history or the party still pulsing through the walls.
Her hand found mine on the worktable, fingers threading through mine, warm skin against warm skin, and she didn't say anything. Didn't need to.
The lonely room didn't feel lonely anymore. It felt like a door I'd kept locked had been opened by someone who'd knocked first, waited for an answer, and walked in like she belonged there.
She kissed me first. One hand on my cheek, fingers warm against my skin, her mouth finding mine with a certainty that felt nothing like the pantry, nothing like hidden urgency or the risk of getting caught.
This was slow. Deliberate. Her lips soft against mine, her tongue tracing the seam of my mouth like she was memorizing the shape of it, and when I kissed her back, I did it because I wanted to, because pretending had become its own kind of lie, and I was tired of living inside it.
The stool scraped against the floor as I stood, pulling her up with me, one hand at the small of her back where the thin cover-up had ridden up enough that my palm found warm, bare skin.
She made a sound against my mouth, half sigh, half moan, and her body pressed into mine with a weight and a warmth that turned my spine to liquid.
I broke the kiss, breath ragged, and her blue eyes held mine in the lamplight, pupils wide and dark and completely certain.
"I want to make love to you, Luke," she said, her voice steady, warm, carrying no shadows.
"Not in a pantry where someone might walk in.
Not with my hand down your shorts while my family eats ribs twenty feet away.
Here. In your bed. Where I can see all of you and you can see all of me, and nobody interrupts, and we take our time.
" She touched my chest, her palm flat against my sternum, and I could feel my heartbeat under her hand, fast and hard and completely hers.
"I'm not a child. I'm twenty-one years old.
I've wanted you since before I knew what wanting was, and now I know exactly what it's, and it's you. It's always been you."
"Kiki." Her name came out rough, half warning, half plea. "Your family. The trust. I've known you for years,"
"I know. And you never looked at me that way.
Not once. Not until I came back this summer grown, twenty-one, and made it impossible for you not to.
" Her hand slid up to my jaw, fingers tracing the line of my stubble.
"This isn't a crush. It's not a game. It's not something you're taking from me.
It's something I'm choosing, with my eyes wide open, knowing exactly who you're and how old you're and what it means that everyone outside thinks you're the safe one.
" She smiled, that golden Bishop smile that contained absolutely zero innocence.
"I don't want safe, Luke. I want you. The real you.
The one who builds tiny boats in a dark room and pretends he doesn't want me even when his cock is hard in my hand. "
The truth of it landed like something physical. She was right. She'd been right since the first day of summer, maybe longer, and every objection I had left sounded hollow even to me.
"Someone could find out," I said, the last defense, weak as water. "Your parents. The families. Everything we've built here,"
"Let me worry about that." Her fingers found the collar of my polo, tugging gently. "Right now, I'm worrying about getting you out of this shirt and into a bed that's big enough for both of us. Everything else can wait until morning."
I kissed her. Hard. One hand cupping the back of her head, fingers threading through damp golden hair, and she made that sound again, deeper this time, her body arching into mine like she'd been waiting for it.
Her cover-up came off somewhere between the model room and the hallway, a whisper of fabric hitting the floor, and then it was just the white bikini, glowing pale against her golden skin under the dim hallway light.
My bedroom was dark except for the blue glow from the pool filtering through the curtains, painting the walls in thin stripes that moved with the water outside. I closed the door behind us, and the click of the latch felt like crossing a border.
She reached for the hem of my polo, pulling it up and over my head with hands that didn't shake, and when her palms found my chest, her breath caught.
"God, Luke. You're so..." She didn't finish.
Didn't need to. Her hands traced the lines of muscle across my shoulders, down my arms, over my stomach, mapping me like territory she'd been studying from a distance and was finally allowed to touch.
I reached behind her, fingers finding the tie of her bikini top, and she lifted her arms without being asked, letting the fabric fall away. Her breasts spilled into my hands, full and heavy and warm, nipples hard against my palms, and the sound she made when I touched her turned my knees to water.
"Kiki." Her name again, rougher this time, reverent in a way that surprised me. "You're so fucking beautiful."