Chapter 5 — The Count #6
We disembarked via the swim platform, Shay ahead of us, her tight little ass swaying in those denim shorts with a rhythm that made it very difficult to focus on Vince’s monologue about winterizing techniques.
The dock was still buzzing, families clustered around food tables, the younger crowd laughing by the water’s edge, and the normalcy of it should have been grounding.
It wasn’t. It was cover, and I was living so deep inside the cover now that I could barely remember what the truth was supposed to look like.
Kiki found me the moment my feet hit the dock boards. She was sitting on the railing, my blue t-shirt riding up her thighs, a coffee cup balanced on her knee, and the look she gave me contained no surprise, no jealousy, and a great deal of warm, amused approval.
“You smell like her,” she said, quiet enough that only I could hear.
I did smell like Shay: citrus, sharp perfume, and the musk of arousal no amount of boat air could disguise. Kiki's nose, like her mother's, was apparently legendary.
“Sorry,” I said, and meant it.
She laughed, low and warm, and reached out to squeeze my hand.
“Don’t be, baby. I told you. She’s yours too.
I’m good with it. In fact, I want you to.
” Her blue eyes held mine, clear and certain.
“Fifty times, remember? That’s a lot of orgasms for one woman to handle alone.
Shay can help with the math but the count is all mine.
She gets her own fifty. Guess you better eat a big breakfast.”
The casual generosity of it hit me somewhere behind my sternum and stayed there.
Kiki Bishop, golden and sweet and currently wearing my cum inside her, was sitting on a dock railing telling me it was okay that I'd almost fucked one of her lifelong best friends on her father's boat.
She leaned closer, voice low and sure. "She's not going to back off. "
"I know."
"Good." Her smile warmed. "Because I told her she shouldn't."
The world made so little sense that I could only stare at her and try not to fall in love all over again.
Across the dock, Shay had rejoined the family cluster, her arm linked through Vince’s, her head tipped back in laughter at something he’d said.
She looked like sunshine itself, bright and wild and completely at home in her father’s orbit, and when she called him “Daddy” in that normal, affectionate way, the word carried nothing but the warm familiarity of a daughter who adored her dad.
Then her eyes found mine over Vince’s shoulder, and the look she gave me wasn't daughterly. It was hungry, promising, and so clear in its intent that my cock, which had finally started to behave itself, twitched against my zipper with a loyalty that was becoming its own problem.
The bonfire. Saturday night. After the families went home.
I had agreed to chaperone it. I had accepted responsibility for keeping the younger crowd safe, contained, within bounds. I had volunteered to be the steady hand, the reliable adult, the man the families trusted.
And the woman currently giving me that look from across the dock had already decided exactly what was going to happen when the fire was lit and the trust was at its thickest.
Vince clapped my shoulder one more time, grateful and oblivious. “Saturday, then. Hollis place, six-ish for the games, bonfire after dark. Trina’s making those rum punch things that knock you on your ass if you’re not careful. You’ll help keep an eye on the late crowd?”
“The late crowd?” I repeated.
“The younger crowd. Shay’s friends. You know.
” He waved a hand toward where the six women were clustered near the water, laughing, touching, moving around each other with the easy synchronization of a unit that had been operating in perfect harmony since Memorial Day.
“They’re a good group of kids. Just need someone to make sure nobody does anything too stupid after dark. ”
The irony was so perfect it hurt. I was the thing too stupid after dark. I was the risk, the liability, the man who’d crossed one line and was seconds from crossing another, and the families trusted me to prevent exactly what I was becoming.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
Vince nodded, satisfied, and moved off toward the grill where Mark was waving a spatula like a conductor’s baton.
The dock hummed with summer-morning energy, coffee and bacon and bare feet on weathered boards, and somewhere in the mix, six women’s laughter carried across the water like something meant to be heard.
Kiki squeezed my hand one more time and slipped off the railing, joining the cluster by the water where Tatum was demonstrating something that involved wild arm movements and Penny was taking photos with her phone.
Reese caught my eye and smiled, warm and knowing.
Eden adjusted a speaker volume with that quiet efficiency.
And Shay, dark hair lifting in the breeze, turned to look at me one last time, her blue eyes holding mine across twenty feet of dock with a promise so clear it might as well have been written in fire.
The Hollis bonfire. Saturday night.
I stood on the Bishop dock with the lake breeze cooling my skin and six women’s scents still on my clothes, and understood with perfect clarity that whatever happened when those flames caught would be entirely my fault, and I was going to enjoy every fucking second of it.