Chapter 6 Sam
SAM
Dolly Mae Redford is wearing the hell out of that tiny pink bikini.
It’s a damn good thing I’ve already got a decade of experience under my belt of ignoring her because she’s showing more of her smooth skin than I’ve ever seen.
She usually wears the kind that look like shorts and a sports bra, sometimes even with a big T-shirt over it.
I don’t know when she started buying bikinis with cheeky bottoms that look like underwear.
Surely, Duke isn’t okay with this.
My best friend is distracted by some of the other girls here.
Of course, he hasn’t even noticed his sister’s clothing choice.
He’s over by the grill, wearing American flag swim shorts and holding a Miller Lite in one hand with the grill tongs in his other.
He’s surrounded by three girls, and I only recognize one of them.
He’s always been a ladies’ man, but lately, he’s taken it up a notch.
He laughs, draping his arm over one of them.
Dolly’s laughter floats over to me. I turn to study her again, adjusting my Ray-Bans so that no one can see the way my eyes travel over her frame.
Her waist is slim and tanned, flowing into wide hips and an ass that is begging to be spanked.
Her butt jiggles with every step she takes.
Her breasts are small and perky, her nipples poking through the thin fabric.
I force myself to look away, feeling the blood rush down to my dick.
Don’t fucking look, idiot. You’ve spent years not looking.
I lift the margarita I just made for myself and down the whole thing in one gulp. It’s strong, which is just what I need. The higher my blood alcohol level gets, the higher my chances of fucking up and making a move on my best friend’s little sister.
This lake weekend was a mistake.
Inviting Dolly was an even bigger mistake.
A few hours later, my self-control is weakened, and my eyes trail back over to her.
She’s chatting with a guy I’ve never seen before, over near the hot tub.
I’m lounging on one of the pool chairs, trying not to stare at her.
My friends Jesse and Grady are sitting with me.
Grady has been stringing on his guitar for the past twenty minutes, and everyone has been drinking for hours in the sun.
I don’t know why we had to invite all these people.
I watch Dolly lean into the guy, giggling and laying a hand on his forearm. His face beams like he just won the Texas Powerball. My entire body tenses up. I feel like someone has cast a spell over my limbs and I can’t move them.
“So, man, you’re, like, a big-time rancher now, huh?” Jesse says. “That’s badass.”
Jesse has never been the brightest. He’s a fun guy, but he often says things that are offensive, like commenting that my grandfather’s recent death has made me rich as fuck.
“Yeah. Guess I’m a big-timer now.” I get up from the chair. “I need another drink.” The liquor is swirling around in my stomach, affecting my balance and ability to make logical decisions.
I find myself near the margarita-making table, dipping the rim in sugar and pouring two extra tequila shots into my drink.
I make another one with barely a drop of liquor in a new cup.
I crush watermelon into them both. I garnish the drinks with lime and watermelon wedges before turning around to see Dolly and the guy still flirting, but now his hand is cupped around her waist.
Yeah, fuck no. Duke would want me to interrupt them.
I make a beeline for them, abandoning my resolve to ignore her. The sun is glistening on her tan skin as I approach.
“Here, try this one.” I thrust the margarita in front of her face. “It’s watermelon.”
The guy gives me a once-over, glaring daggers at me. He’s at least six inches shorter than me, and he has a thick beard. He doesn’t release her. She sips on the sugary rim of the cup.
“Mmm. That’s good. What’s in it?” Her eyes are glazed over. She tilts her head back and shades her eyes from the sun.
“Watermelon, agave, tequila, lime juice, and a little bit of sparkling water.”
“Here, try this.” She holds the cup out to the guy.
“Hey, Sam! Catch.”
I turn around to see who’s saying my name, debating whether or not I should bump into the guy hanging all over Dolly and force him to spill the drink on himself.
Jesse is holding up a football, pulling back his arm to throw it to me.
I hold a hand up, preparing to catch it.
The ball soars through the air, but at the last minute, I drop my arm and let it slam into the guy behind me.
The dickhead part of me doesn’t feel a shred of remorse when I turn around and see him red-faced and covered in a pink watermelon margarita. The color in his cheeks deepens as he steps away from Dolly, lifting his arms. My muscles relax.
“What the fuck was that?” he spits out.
“My bad. I missed.” I lift my cup to my lips, slowly sipping from the rim.
His skin is glistening from the drink all over his torso, eyes creased with rage.
“You could just jump in the pool to rinse off,” Dolly suggests.
“Yeah, man, jump in the pool,” I agree, nodding.
He seems to remember that she’s standing right there, observing his reaction. His face changes in an instant, morphing into a forced smile. “Yeah, I guess I’ll do that. You want another drink?”
She nods, smiling sweetly. “Sure.”
With another cold glance at me, he walks away. I try to hold in the satisfied smirk, but it stretches across my lips. Dolly’s warm fingers collide with mine as she steals my margarita.
“Mmm. Yours is better. I didn’t know you were a bartender, Seymour.”
I look down, watching her with rapt fascination as she licks her pouty pink lips clean from the watermelon and sugar.
“Only on special occasions.”
“What makes today so special?”
“Hard to be depressed when you’re at the lake with your friends on a nice day, sis.”
She sticks her chin out. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?”
“What would you prefer, ‘princess?’” I can’t hold back my grin.
She rolls her eyes. “Soo creative.”
“You act like a little princess,” I mutter.
“I do not,” she protests. “Quit trying to cock-block me.”
I narrow my gaze at her. I rest my hand on the wood pillar behind her, leaning down over her and lowering my voice. “Just watching out for you, Baby Red.”
She leans closer, peering up at me with big doe eyes. I can smell the coconut suntan lotion on her skin and count each individual freckle on her nose. My skin is tingling. I must be getting a sunburn.
“Hey, Seymour! You ready to take the boat out?”
I look down, suddenly aware of how close we are. I inhale one more dose of her before stepping back and turning to look over my shoulder.
“Yeah, we can go now.”
Grady and Jesse start heading toward the small boat docked down by the water. It’s only supposed to hold eight, but there are fourteen people here.
The annoying prick who I ran off earlier steps up to her, holding out a fresh margarita. “Here you go, beautiful. I put in extra watermelon.”
I grab it from him before Dolly has a chance to. “Just wanna make sure he’s not trying anything funny.” I gulp down half of it. It’s strong as hell.
“What the fuck is your problem, man?” His face is turning red again.
I shrug, handing the cup to Dolly. “She’s my best friend’s little sister, which makes her my responsibility when he’s off getting his dick wet.”
She rolls her eyes at me.
I watched Duke disappear into the house with two girls ten minutes ago.
I move over to the margarita station to make myself a fresh drink and a much weaker one for Dolly before heading down to the boat.
It’s about ten years old, but it’s been well maintained.
My grandfather and I used to come out to the lake to go fishing on it every year for my birthday.
I’m dreading it more this year than ever before.
I shove the memories aside and survey the group of ten who decided to join.
“All right, we’re technically only supposed to have eight passengers, so a couple of you girls might need to find a lap.”
I toss Grady the keys because he’s the only one who hasn’t been drinking.
I prefer to drive my own boat, but with the way I’ve been pounding margaritas today, that can’t happen.
I climb on after Grady, taking the seat beside him in the other captain’s chair.
I set Dolly’s new drink in the cupholder.
Duke appears from the back door of the house, jogging toward us.
“Don’t leave without me, fuckers!” he calls out before grabbing a couple of beers from the cooler.
As everyone files on, Duke and Dolly are the last ones. He takes the only remaining seat behind the captain’s chairs Grady and I are occupying.
“Find a lap, Dolls—preferably a girl’s,” Duke says.
The prick who was flirting with her earlier gestures for her to sit on his lap. “You can sit here.”
Yeah, absolutely the fuck not.
I reach out, grabbing her wrist as she passes by me, tugging on her arm until she collapses into me with a soft gasp. Her drink splashes onto my arm.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to learn how to drive the boat?” My lips press up against her ear.
Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders, brushing against the top of my thighs. She said it once, like, three years ago, but I guess I’ve never forgotten.
“Keep your hands to yourself, Seymour,” Duke jokes, clearly intoxicated by the way his words are slurring.
She nods. “Yeah, I want to learn.”
She adjusts herself, twisting her body so that she’s facing toward the steering wheel and control buttons. Her round ass presses up against my groin, and immediate regret floods through my veins as the blood rushes down.
Mayday, mayday. Bad fucking idea.
The split-second decision I made to prevent her from sitting on that jerk’s lap didn’t warrant enough time for me to think through the consequences of pulling her onto mine. My lower back begins to sweat.
At least he’s not the one getting to feel her ass on his lap.
Grady is sitting beside us, and he’s the only one who could catch on to the way Dolly’s cheeks are flushed pink. Duke is behind us and can’t see below our shoulders because of the chair blocking his view.
Depending on what kind of mood he’s in, there’s a fifty percent chance he’ll let me keep my dick if he finds out it got hard from the feel of his sister’s ass. All the Redford brothers tend to throw punches first and ask questions later.
I reach up, twisting my ball cap backward so it doesn’t fly off in the wind. Grady shifts into reverse and starts backing out of the slip. I pick up the drink I made her and pour it into the one she’s holding.
Coconut suntan lotion infiltrates my senses. I lift up my margarita, taking a long, slow drink.
I can do this. I can survive this. It’s platonic. She’s like a sister to me. She’s always been like a sister to me.
Ha.
“Where do you wanna go?” Grady asks, picking up the speed of the boat as we get out onto the main body of the lake.
“Let’s go to the cliffs,” Duke calls out over the wind.
Damn it. The cliffs are thirty minutes away.
Grady nods, pushing down on the accelerator.
The boat shoots off. Dolly wobbles from the sudden movement, her weight shifting back against me.
I reach up a hand to steady her, my fingers brushing over the bare skin of her tanned stomach.
She wiggles her bum, either trying to steady herself or cause me to go into cardiac arrest.
My dick doesn’t remember our agreement about ignoring Dolly Redford and pretending we have a platonic relationship.
Blood doesn’t just trickle; it races down to my groin.
I squeeze her waist, closing my eyes as I feel myself harden.
I can’t do shit about it. The boat is speeding across the water, and even if I try to push her off, the only place she can go is onto the lap of another guy.
Then her body won’t be concealing the situation I have going on in my pants.
Think of your life. You value your life. You’re too young to die.
There’s no way she doesn’t feel it. If she were mortified by it, she’d jump off me and slap me in the face. She doesn’t say anything. I watch as she lifts her drink up to her lips and sips on the rim. Her hips shift again, causing a delicious scrape of friction.
Fucking hell. I’m in so much trouble.
Grady slows the boat as we approach a no-wake zone under a bridge.
The hand I have on her waist travels down to the side of her hip so I can stop her from moving again and torturing me.
Every tiny stroke is pushing me toward an edge that I can’t go over with her, especially on a crowded boat with her brother sitting two feet behind us.
I brush the tips of my fingers over the silky smooth skin of her hip before my fingers dig in, desperately attempting to keep her still. She’s wearing one of those bikinis that ties on the side. With one tug, it could come undone, and she’d be exposed to me. My chest tightens.
Stop touching her. Stop thinking about how perfectly her hips fit into your hands. Stop thinking about grabbing them and taking up this position behind her.
She shifts her hips again, and I think I might actually come inside my swim trunks if she does it again.
“Stop moving,” I growl into her ear, squeezing her hip even tighter.
“We’re on a boat,” she breathes, twisting so that she can say it up against my ear over the wind blowing past us.
She’s so petite. Her body fits perfectly on mine.
I squeeze her hip harder, pulling her down onto me. “I’m gonna have to tie you down if you don’t cut it out.”
“How would tying me down help the boat stop moving?”
Hearing her say it makes me picture it. I’ve been a roper my whole life. I could tie knots in my sleep that she’d never get out of. The image of her tied up, at my mercy, isn’t helping me calm down at all.
A wake from another boat slaps against the helm of ours, causing her to go airborne for a split second before slamming back down onto my erection.
The brush against my fully hard dick causes me to release an unsteady exhale as I talk myself off the cliff of the first orgasm I’ll have had in months.
I shut my eyes, praying for mercy. I cannot finish right now.
“I mean it, Baby Red. Stop moving before he kills me with his bare hands,” I grit out, directly into her ear so Duke doesn’t hear.
“It’s the waves!” she hisses into my ear.
Our eyes meet for the first time since we got on the boat. Hers are a swirling gray storm of desire.
I’m at war within myself. If she wiggles her ass right now, I’m done for. At the same time, I’m painfully hard and desperate for her to grind against me.
You just need to get laid. That’s what you need. You don’t want Duke’s little sister. This is a biological response. It’s not about her.