Page 54 of One Last Summer
Mack stopped abruptly, hunched over the bin in his arms, and let out a belly laugh that didn’t seem to have an end. When he finally caught his breath, he cocked his head toward me, teeth grazing his upper lip as he studied my face.
“Don’t worry, Millen,” he said. “I’ll happily take second place if it means you finish first.”
23
WE BOTH DROPPED the giant boxes of relay stuff on the floor the second we were inside the boathouse. I stood there, panting, as Mack reached around me and hooked the rudimentary lock closed. The second I heard it clink shut, I reached for him, desperate to remember what it felt like to kiss him.
“Millen.” His voice was rough like sandpaper, and then his teeth were skating down the edge of my jaw, his tongue teasing the soft, sensitive skin at the nape of my neck. “I know it’s corny to say this, but I’ve been dying to be alone with you.”
“Since when, last night?” I said, running my thumb across his chin, tilting his mouth back against mine.
He chuckled, his breath warm on my skin. “Since last night, since last year, since forever.”
Since forever. His words sent my mind spinning wildly, spiraling through a sea of what-ifs and maybes.
But then I caught that mischievous glint in his eye, and it dumped an ice-cold bucket of reality on my head. This was Charming Mack talking, and nothing more. There was no point in reading into what he said, no need to make more of this than what it was: pure, white-hot lust.
“We’ve wasted a lot of time not doing this,” I teased, and I was relieved—disappointed?—to see he was just as eager as I was to get back to our regularly scheduled banter. My hands skated greedily up under his T-shirt, squeezing his ribs. “We really need to catch up.”
“Before I start ripping your clothes off,” he said, pulling away so that his eyes were flush with mine, “I want to make sure I know your boundaries here. Because we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Or if you ever want to stop, that’s always okay with me.”
“Mack, all my boundaries involve you ripping my clothes off, and then some.”
He chuckled, that slightly arrogant laugh that was still so familiar, and brought his lips back down to my shoulder, where they bloomed into a smile against my skin.
“I’d like that very much.” His voice vibrated against my skin as he continued to slowly tease my neck with his mouth, stopping only to let me yank his shirt off over his head.
Suddenly he spun us around and walked our bodies forward until I was pressed against the counter. Smiling at my involuntary yelp as my ass hit up against the edge of the smooth-as-stone wooden surface, he slid his palms down my body, pausing at the hem of my shorts. He tugged them low until I could kick them off my ankles and then hooked a finger into my cotton briefs, peeling them off me slowly, effortlessly, just like he did everything else.
And then in a move that felt like magic, he stood and lifted me up, setting me on top of the counter. I leaned back, and my head bumped up against something hard, the edge of a paddle board or a rudder or something. I didn’t care. If it meant having Mack’s mouth on my body, I’d spend the rest of my life wedged up against a canoe if I had to.
My brain jolted back to reality for a second. This is ridiculous, I thought. We are two grown adults who haven’t seen each other in years, and we’re making out in an old boathouse on top of a slab of wood, and not on, like, I dunno, a king-size bed in the middle of a luxury suite at the Four Seasons.
But the rational part of my mind sputtered to a halt the second I felt his teeth trace the edge of my nipple through my bra, and his hands under my thighs, bringing my legs to wrap around his waist.
Then I remembered: I’d had sex with Charles in a Four Seasons in Hawaii; utterly predictable, formulaic, hump-vibrator-moan-the-end sex. It wasn’t the place that made things electric, it was the person there with you. And right now, that person was hooking his fingers under my bra straps, his mouth learning my body, my neck, my breasts, my ribs, the dot of a scar above my hip bone where I had my appendix removed when I was nineteen.
Mack shifted my legs again, bringing them over his shoulders, and then he ran a finger from my belly button to the pubic hair I’d neglected to shave in months, to the most sensitive part of my body. My hands slid into his hair, soft like corn silk through my fingers. I closed my eyes and let myself fall through the darkness.
All his attention was on me, my body, my pleasure, and when my orgasm hit, it felt like diving into the moon-soaked lake, the moment of impact when warm meets cold, those long seconds of swimming through underwater darkness, and then coming up for that first gasp of air.
“Do you have condoms?” The words were choked and desperate coming out of my mouth, my voice raspy and wanting, my heart desperately trying to pound its way out of my chest.
I opened my eyes, and the world came back into focus above me.
Mack rested his cheek on my stomach, his hands lightly tracing lines up and down the backs of my thighs, which were still locked over his shoulders.
“I do,” he said, gently unhooking my legs from around him as he stood. “But please know it’s been a while.”
He gave me a puppy-dog face, all pouty lips and exaggerated sad eyes, as if I was supposed to believe that Mack had ever even uttered the words “dry spell,” much less even knew what it was.
“Oh please,” I scoffed, and he yanked a basket off of the highest shelf at the far end of the counter and pulled out a giant box of condoms. He held it close to his face, squinting to read the package.
“Not expired!” he shouted triumphantly, lifting it overhead like a trophy in what was a typical Mack move.
“Really? It’s been a while?” I repeated his words back to him, letting him know I wasn’t buying it. “You have a Costco-size box of condoms.”
“Millen, god, these aren’t for me. Do you know how many counselors get sucked into summer romances up here? I like to look out for them. I’m happy to give you the phone number of the woman I dated last fall if you want to check my references. And no, there hasn’t been anyone since.”
