One Little Dare Read online

  “I did put some on,” she said, her eyes closing as Chad rubbed it on her back. “But remember, I jumped into the water after lunch and didn’t reapply when I got back.” She turned toward us, bending over so Chad could apply the lotion to her lower back. “Don’t stare at my stomach,” she mumbled to Seth and me, though neither of us were.

  “Naomi,” Chad admonished gently. “No one is staring.”

  Nevertheless, she grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her body after Chad had finished. “Sorry,” she said with a rueful smile. “I’m self-conscious of it.”

  “You shouldn’t be. You had twins. You look great, Naomi.”

  Naomi smiled gratefully at me. “Thanks, Liam. It’s weird, isn’t it? How much has changed but how other things stay the same? Being here, it’s like no time has passed.” She sighed, wrapping the towel more tightly. “It feels weird that he’s not here. He should be pushing one of us off the boat when we least expected it.”

  “Yeah,” Seth said and sniffed as he looked out over the water. “Dick.”

  Chad and I chuckled.

  Naomi continued. “But it doesn’t feel real yet, at the same time. Like we’ll see him tomorrow.”

  Chad nodded. “We’ll see his folks tomorrow, for the visitation.”

  “Yeah,” Naomi said softly, and we all got quiet. I knew we were all dreading the visitation. For the most part, we had all held our emotions in check but facing it full on without reprieve tomorrow would be fucking brutal.

  “Careful!” Nicole shouted from the back of the boat, causing us all to turn.

  Vince must have lost his footing for a moment, because he was hanging onto a metal bar with one hand while he tried to stand back up.

  “You okay, Vinny?” Naomi called out.

  “I’m fine,” Vince said, clearly embarrassed. “The waves rocked us is all.”

  Naomi looked at Seth and I directly, saying what we were all thinking. “He’s drunk, isn’t he?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “There aren’t any waves. We’re out here alone.” Seth set his beer down and looked at it for a moment, like he had lost his desire to consume any alcohol, even casually. “What are we going to do about it?” he said in a volume that Vince might be able to hear if he wasn’t so busy drinking more from his bottle.

  “I don’t know.” I rubbed my hand over my face. What options did we have? Tomorrow was the family visitation. Thursday, we had plans to go four-wheeling. And Friday, the funeral, would be hell on all of us. We were all going our separate ways on Saturday. Nowhere in there was an opportunity to potentially piss Vince off. Maybe we would all have to trek to San Diego to chat with him.

  “It’s dangerous,” Naomi said.

  “We know,” Seth replied. “But it’s also asking for a fight with him. If we talk to him tonight, he might just bounce and head home, skipping the visitation and the funeral altogether and being in a worse place than he’s already in.”

  “Do we need to have an intervention or something?” Chad asked. “I don’t know if any of us are qualified to do that.”

  Seth leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The issue is, is this long-term behavior? Will went to see him a couple months ago in San Diego, and he didn’t mention any concern for Vince. So, is his drinking grief-induced?”

  “I fail to see why it matters. A problem is a problem, whether it’s temporary or not. I think you guys just don’t want to deal with it,” Naomi said, an eyebrow raised.

  Chad put a hand on her leg. “Hey, chill, please.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “I know I don’t want to deal with this. Do any of you?” Seth and Chad shook their heads. “We don’t want to deal with it, but we know we have to. The problem is the timing.”

  “We might need to make a trip out to see him,” Seth mused.

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” I agreed. “It wouldn’t hurt for one us to bring it up while we’re here though. In a very non-confrontational way.”

  Naomi, Seth, and I turned to Chad. “Why are you all looking at me?”

  “Because you’re good at being non-confrontational. I should know.” Naomi raised her eyebrow, as if she dared Chad to challenge her.

  Chad sighed, resigned. “Fine. But if he gets pissed off, that’s on you guys.”

  “She’s got one!” Nicole exclaimed, interrupting our conversation. Tori stood on the deck; her feet spaced out to better ground her stance. She pulled the reel back and then let it go, and then again, fighting with whatever was on her hook.

  “Here, let me take it,” Vince said, covering Tori’s hands with his on the pole.

  “I’ve got it,” Tori replied, gently pulling away from him.

  “I’ve done this a hundred times. I can do it.”

  “So have I, and so can I,” Tori insisted, pulling her pole away from him.

  Seth stood up to intervene, but I nudged him. If anyone could hold their own in front of Vince, I knew it was Tori. And while I would step in if necessary, I didn’t think this situation warranted any interference.

  And I was right, because Vince eventually stopped trying to take her pole and drunkenly wobbled over to the sofas in the back of the boat, looking like he had just been scolded thoroughly. All he needed was to defiantly cross his arms over his chest, and he would look like an unhappy toddler.

  “I’ve got the net,” Seth said, coming up beside Tori. “Bring him up and I’ll scoop him.”

  I watched as Tori struggled with the reel, but it was a good struggle—like she enjoyed the challenge the fish was posing her. Nicole stood beside her, cheering her on, and Seth squatted with the net in anticipation. Naomi and Chad stood beside me, watching as Tori pulled a two-foot fish out of the water. Seth scooped it and handed the net to Tori as they peered into it.

  “Holy shit!” Nicole squealed.

  “What is it? A rainbow?” Vince asked.

  “Striped bass!” Tori said, a sheen of sweat across her brow as she held it up proudly.

  “He’s a big bitch, too,” Seth said.

  “I’ve caught bigger,” Vince said, but everyone ignored him.

  Holding up my phone, I directed Tori to hold her fish for a few photos. She held its belly in one hand and its head in the other and smiled for the camera. Her hair was messy from the wind, her cheeks flushed by the effort, and her smile so wide that one couldn’t help but grin right along with her. I snapped a handful of photos and wished I’d been snapping them all this time.

  Tori leaned forward, giving me a big smacking kiss. “I should be the one giving you a congratulatory kiss,” I joked.

  “You did.” She gave me her soft, gentle smile. Yeah, there was no fucking way I’d say goodbye at the end of this week and go on my merry way, unaffected.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Nicole asked as Tori turned away and lowered herself on the deck.

  “Let him go.”

  “What?” Vince hollered. “That’s crazy! No one releases fish that size.”

  “I guess I’ll be the first one.” Tori shrugged.

  “It’s not like we have a grill back in the hotel room,” I reminded Vince.

  “Whatever,” he said, shaking his head. “Stupid.”

  “Hey, chill,” Seth said, his tone far more controlled than mine would have been, had I replied. “It’s not your fish, why do you even care?”

  “Because it’s a big one. People don’t catch and release bass that size.”

  “Sure they do,” Chad added.

  Tori put the fish back in the water and let it go, seemingly ignoring Vince’s objections.

  “Time to head back to the hotel,” Seth said more to me than anyone else.

  “Yeah, today was a fucking bust.” Vince was clearly disgruntled. He raised his stainless bottle to his mouth, but nothing poured out. I watched, as if it happened in slow motion, as he chucked the bottle across the boat in frustration. It bounced off the decking and came dangerously close to the back of Nicole’s head with a quick, �
��Look out!” by Seth before Tori thought fast and swatted it away in the water.

  “What the fuck?” Seth roared, smacking Vince square in the chest.

  The smack seemed to mentally wake Vince up. His eyes went wide and he straightened. “Shit, Nicole, I’m so sorry.”

  Nicole didn’t say anything. She just looked up at Seth, her happy mood sobered.

  “You need to get it together,” Tori said softly, causing us all to turn toward her. “You could have really hurt her.”

  “I fucking know that,” Vince said flatly. “I apologized. It’s been a long day; can we just go back to the hotel?”

  Tori and I exchanged glances and she exited the back deck of the boat to join Naomi where she sat with Nicole in the front.

  I slid behind the steering wheel and headed toward shore. Throughout the ride, Seth would glance at Vince as he sat in the seat closest to the women, as if somehow he could protect them from Vince.

  When we made it back, Nicole was the first one off, followed quickly by Naomi and Tori. Vince got off after and headed toward the bathrooms, while Chad stayed back to help me secure the boat to the trailer. Seth jumped out of the truck after parking it and pinned me with a serious look. “Naomi is right, we’ve got to talk to him sooner than later. Because that shit?” He pointed out at the water. “Cannot happen again.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “Fuck.” I dragged a hand down my face. I wished I had experience with confronting someone with behavior like this, but the last time I’d been around someone who had a substance abuse problem had been my dad.

  “Maybe after the funeral on Friday, we’ll go out for dinner. Have a chat.”

  “He might stomp off,” Chad said.

  I nodded, agreeing. “But I think that’s a risk we have to take. His behavior is only going to escalate.”

  “I nearly punched him in the face,” Seth said, and I could see the rage still simmering within him. “If he’d hurt Nicole…”

  “I know.” I put my arm around his shoulders. “But he didn’t. She’s probably shaken up, though, so you should take her back to the hotel.”

  “Vince rode with me,” Seth said.

  “We’ll take him back,” Chad offered. “Naomi might talk to him a bit.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I nodded. “He might stomp off during dinner on Friday, but he can’t very well tuck and roll out of a moving vehicle on the highway.”

  “I would have agreed with you if I hadn’t just witnessed his complete lack of thinking with his actions,” Seth said. “See you guys tomorrow.”

  19

  The ride back to the hotel was quiet. I could tell Liam was preoccupied but it wouldn’t take a psychologist to figure out what was troubling him.

  I was sure Vince nearly hitting Nicole had been an accident. But it put a damper on an otherwise perfect day, knowing just how bad it could have been. Lounging with Liam on his boat had been gloriously relaxing. Indulgent, really. I kept reminding myself that I went to Vegas for a bachelorette party and had landed myself a sort of husband in the process. I liked Liam’s friends so much that they felt like mine, despite only knowing them for a few days.

  Liam and I made it inside the hotel room. He sighed, the motion loosening the tension that had lived in his shoulders for the ride. During the car ride, he hadn’t brought up what Vince did except to thank me for my quick action. Instead, we’d talked about what to do for dinner (room service), the plan for tomorrow that he insisted I shouldn’t feel obligated to attend (the visitation), and what the day after visitation entailed (riding UTVs out in the desert).

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked gently as he washed his hands at the sink just outside the bathroom door.

  “Honestly, I’d rather not.” He met my gaze in the mirror.

  “Okay,” I said, easily. “We don’t have to.”

  Those five simple words seemed to have a relaxing effect on him. His gaze dropped down to his hands and he blew out a breath. He walked into the bathroom and turned the nozzle in the shower on. I watched as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “I think I just need a shower and I’ll be good as new.”

  “All right,” I said, but I didn’t think a shower would ease the tightness in his shoulders. “Do you want company?”

  His eyes whipped back up to stare at me in the mirror. I held my breath for four full heartbeats. There was that stare, the one that had arrested me the first night we met. Liam around his friends was carefree, friendly. Liam, when it was just us, was more. Oh, so much more. Broody. Dark. There was danger there too—but the delicious kind, the kind that made you ache in places you couldn’t relieve unless you were undressed.

  Warmth bloomed between my legs, radiating up my chest, as steam from the shower spilled out of the bathroom.

  “Yes.”

  Oh, that one-word answer was enough to make me want to collapse in a needy puddle at his feet. But he didn’t let me fall; scooping me up and carrying me—fully dressed—directly into the shower.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me, not worrying about the clothes that separated us. My mouth fused to his, my fingers dragging across his scalp. His hold sent dozens of sensations throughout my body and I craved to give him the same kind of feelings.

  The water was deliciously hot, pounding powerfully over us. It only served to stoke the fire that had begun burning in me when I had first met Liam. This was an inferno, and I couldn’t wait to burn with it.

  His mouth moved down the column of my throat as his hands slid under my tank top. His knuckles grazed over my stomach, behind my back, and his fingers dipped into the waist of my shorts as he played with the strap of my thong.

  There were too many clothes between his body and mine. I lifted his soaking wet shirt and tried to drag it up his chest, but it got stuck from the weight of it. Laughing, I gave up and let him finish what I’d started. He whipped it off over his head, sending it to land in a loud splat on the tile. I managed to get my tank top off, but when I struggled with my bra, I laughed again.

  Liam spun me around, my back facing him. My hands found the cold tile and I braced myself against it, closing my eyes as he brushed my hair away from my shoulder and dropped his mouth to my skin. The dueling temperatures of cold tile, hot water, and his warm mouth made me tingly all over. It felt like we’d been building up to this moment ever since the first time we had locked gazes in the hotel bar.

  One by one, he undid the hooks on my bra, and I dropped my hands to let the straps slide completely off my body.

  His arms snaked around my middle, pulling me tight to him, his chest pressing into my back as his hands teased my nipples, squeezed my breasts, and his mouth nibbled the sensitive skin where my jaw met my neck.

  Tossing my head back to rest on his shoulder, I surrendered to his hands and his mouth while my hips ground with his like a dance that was far too indecent for any club.

  I rolled my head so that I could kiss his neck. Kissing turned to licking and that turned to Liam spinning me around so that we faced one another. He gazed down appreciatively and drew one finger from my navel to my chin, lifting it inch by inch until my mouth was his.

  And that was precisely how I felt: his.

  He pressed a hot kiss to my mouth and dragged the back of his fingers over my cheeks in a movement that was so tender it landed on my heart like he had pressed a bruise.

  His fingers found the button on my shorts and unsnapped them. His followed shortly thereafter, both pairs pooled at our feet.

  He was a fucking perfect male specimen. From his broad, muscled shoulders to thighs that looked like he could squat with a truck on his shoulders, to the lines of his abs and back up to the face that looked at me like I was oxygen and he couldn’t breathe—I was breathless myself.

  It was so serious—the way he stared at me. Like he could reach inside of me and find an emotion I didn’t know I possessed and use it to his advantage, but there was that trust in knowing that he wouldn’t. He
looked at me in a way that whispered of danger but screamed of hunger. I knew intimately I had never been looked at with such desire, with such reverence. If the world ended tomorrow, at least I knew what it was like to be looked at so longingly.

  Liam dipped and lifted me so my legs wrapped around his waist. With one hand, he turned off the shower and then opened the glass door, carrying me out of the bathroom all the way to the bed.

  He laid me on the white comforter, and I pushed myself up so I could see him better.

  “I feel like you’re giving me a standing ovation already,” I said, eyeing his dick meaningfully.

  He grinned, striking me right in the heart. “I haven’t even given you cause to applaud yet.” He leaned over me, braced above me. “But don’t worry. It’s coming.”

  I let out a low whistle, grateful for his humor—I needed a moment of levity. Just about any woman would want to be looked at the way Liam looked at me, but I wasn’t ready for it. “Your mouth can say some wicked things, right when I least expect it,” I told him.

  “Yeah, well, wait until you experience the wicked things this mouth can do.”

  He was already doing wicked things without even touching me. I’d never been more impatient in my life—and my impatience was legendary.

  And it was as if he knew just how legendary it was, because he took his sweet time kissing my mouth, then my neck, then my breasts, my abs, and the hypersensitive skin below my belly button. He spent a long time there, much to my angst.

  He tipped his face up so that his eyes locked with mine and his tongue slid just underneath the waist band of my thong. His hands grasped my hips, holding me firmly in place as his tongue traced my seam, over and under the thong. I couldn’t buckle like my body wanted. I couldn’t bring him closer. I was powerless. I was insanely turned on.

  He dragged his nose over me, then his mouth, over and over until I tipped my head back and moaned his name in impatience.

  I felt him slide my thong to the side and his mouth pressed a kiss right to my center.

  I couldn’t bear it. I grabbed his hands, still pinning my hips, and tore them away so I could move freely, wildly. His hands slid under my ass, lifting me and bringing his mouth, his tongue, more firmly inside of me. I squirmed, I made noises that sounded foreign to me, and relinquished any control I thought I had.