The Trade(49)

Looks like he wasted an opportunity.

His loss.

I just wish it was my gain.





Pool day.

It’s what Jason keeps saying while pelvic thrusting the group, and I’m pretty sure he kissed Knox on the lips at one-point right after saying it. I didn’t quite catch the kiss, but I did see the punch to the arm after.

Jason is a little much, quirky, but fuck, he’s a good time and quick with his tongue. The sparring between he and Dottie is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. What I love most is she gives it right back to him, never backing down. They could not be more perfect for each other.

“Can you act like a grown-up?” Knox asks, sitting behind Emory on her lounger and pulling her into his chest.

“He’s incapable of such behavior,” Dottie says, fixing her sunglasses on her head.

“That’s not what you said last night,” Jason says, wiggling his eyebrows.

Dottie ignores him and focuses on her sunbathing.

Piping up from the pool, where she’s dipped under water to her shoulders, Natalie says, “Cory had never seen The Office until last night.”

“What?” Carson asks from the pool as well, where Milly is hanging on his back. “What do you mean you’ve never seen The Office?”

“Never watched it.”

“He likes documentaries,” Milly says. “He binges them on Netflix.”

“Documentaries are cool,” Carson says. “But seriously, The Office, man.”

I cool him with a tamping of my hand. “We watched season one last night.” I leave out the part where I fell asleep on Natalie. “It was good. But I agree with Natalie, it’s a rough season, so I’m looking forward to season two.”

“Season two is way better,” Emory says, while leaning back against Knox, who has his hands protectively splayed across her belly.

“That’s what I told him and made him promise not to judge the show by season one.” Natalie floats away from the edge and treads water. “I’m going to make him watch more tonight.”

“You act as if you have to threaten to pull off my toenails in order to force me to watch.”

“I’m not opposed to it,” she says with a smile. “Wouldn’t hurt the world if you lost some of those daggers.”

“What?” I sit up in my chair, smiling like a goof. I hold my foot up and say, “These are not daggers. Perfectly cut to a normal length.”

“They snagged on the carpet last night,” she counters while flicking some water at me.

“The carpet snagged on my toe, not the other way around.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I’m going to have to review the tapes but I’m telling you right now, it’s not looking in your favor.”

I laugh and shake my head. “Please, as if—”

Jason clears his throat. I look around at our friends and see their eyes trained on us, stupid-as-shit grins on all their faces as Natalie and I volley banter back and forth. And then I see the concerned look on Milly’s face.

Shit.

Leaning back, I mutter, “It was the carpet.”





“How hard is it to constantly calculate ten feet in distance in your head at all times?” Natalie asks from one side of the pool.

Carson and Milly went back to their room. Dottie and Jason went to the ocean to try some snorkeling off the shore, and Knox and Emory rented a private cabana where I believe they’re currently getting a couple’s massage. Leaving Natalie and me alone in the pool, on pool day.

“What do you mean?” I ask, reaching for my beer on the side of the pool.

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” she asks, adjusting the strap to her one-piece bathing suit.

Apparently Milly isn’t the only one with a one-piece, but these bathing suits aren’t the things girls used to wear back in the day; they’re almost more scandalous than a two-piece. Which makes me sound really old. Natalie’s is red—again—and it’s cut really fucking low in the back and really fucking high in the front. There’s no doubt in my mind that the girl waxes from how high the bikini line goes. It almost looks like an old-school Baywatch swimsuit, but a little more revealing . . . if that’s possible. And what makes the whole “ensemble” even more tempting is the way she keeps dipping under the water and then slicking her honey-colored hair back . . . that and the impossibly hard nipples that keep poking through the fabric.

I’ve kept myself close to the edge of the pool at all times so I can hide the hard-on I’ve been dealing with ever since I got in the pool.

Trying to decipher her question, I ask, “Calculating ten feet? I’m not following.”

She motions between the two of us. “Every time I move, you move, as if there’s a ten-foot wall between us and if we break that distance, you’ll disintegrate into dust.”

Or I’d be encouraged by the heat building deep within my bones to pull you in close to my chest and show you what it’s like to be held by a real man.

Laughing awkwardly, I say, “Oh, am I moving around too much for you?”

“You just seem nervous.”

Yeah, because your goddamn nipples are begging me to rip that bathing suit down and take them into my mouth.