Beautiful Illusions (24 page)

“I’m glad you like the sound of that.” He plucks my hand out and kisses it sweetly over the top. A smile tugs at his lips. “Get on the floor.”

“Yes, master.” God knows I’m up for Ace barking out orders tonight and me complying. I’d do anything Ace wanted as long as we could be together, as long as I ended tonight and every other night in his arms.

I kneel down on the center of the rug and he takes a seat on the floor, opposite of me, pulling something out from under the bed.

“What’s that?” I slide next to him, observing the familiar jar in his hand. “I remember those.” It’s filled to the brim with colorful marbles, mostly clear ones with swirls of blue and red in the center. It may as well be filled to the brim with my childhood. I wish I could open the lid and fall back into those haze filled days when my mother was still alive, baking special treats for my father and me in the kitchen.

“I thought we’d take it slow today. Go old school.” He wraps his arm around my waist and his cologne intoxicates me. He spills out the tiny glass spheres between us, and picks up the oversized navy beauty, clear as midnight. It’s the exact color of his gorgeous eyes. “This is the shooter.” He spreads the marbles out with his hand. “Any marble you shoot outside this ring is yours.” He traces the outer edges of the braided rug, about a three-foot circumference. “The one with the most marbles wins.”

“That’s it?” I’ve never played marbles before, and certainly it always seemed to have something more to it, but I’m all for easy. “That sounds easy enough. I like the simple things in life.” I take the shooter from him and roll it in my hands.

“You like the simple things?” He tilts in observing me as if he learned something entirely new.

“Yeah, I do. I guess you could say I’m the anti-Kennedy. She needs designer labels just to breathe, and I couldn’t care less as long as I have sunshine on my back—peace in my heart.” I reach up and run my fingers through his hair. It’s still damp from the shower and slick. “She needs security. I need love.” I swallow hard, reverting my gaze to the carpet. “So who goes first?”

His eyes are still pressing into me, heating the entire right side of my body like an inferno I’ve accidently gotten too close to. But I can’t seem to face him. I let the L word fly from my lips, and now it’s fluttering around the room like a bat getting ready to tangle itself in our hearts, things are bound to get messy, and we’ll have to cut it out—cut each other out of one another’s lives as collateral damage.

Ace picks up my hand and intertwines our fingers, soft, without pretense. “I think you deserve love, Reese. That’s exactly what I told you that first night in the lake. I want you to have it.”

Ace didn’t mention that he’d like to be the one to give it to me, so I guess love is outside the realm of possibility for us.

My eyes skirt the braided rug that sparkles with the remnants of our childhood. I lean in and shoot the oversized navy eye across the floor and take three marbles out of the ring.

“Now, there’s something I love.” I give a quick wink collecting my glass winnings.

Ace frowns into me a moment before breaking out into his killer grin. “You’re about to go down, Westfield.”

He takes the shooter and proceeds to knock a single marble out of the ring, and just barely at that. I reach over and pick it up. It’s a chalky yellow, pocked with a thousand little holes that make it lighter than air.

“Hey, this is made out of cork or something. I don’t think this counts.”

“It was in the pile.” His cheek rises seductively as he takes it from me. “All’s fair in love and marbles.” He holds my gaze this time and neither of us moves.

“I think maybe we should have outlined the rules a little better.” My throat dries up as I say it. Ace Waterman is making my panties disintegrate with nothing more than that serious gaze of his—that steady stream of innuendos that I wish meant something more.

“Sometimes it’s best to let things play out.” He places his hand over mine as he lays the shooter in my palm but he doesn’t move. Instead he warms me with his eyes, his skin over mine. “Things have a way of ending up just the way they’re supposed to.” His fingers pull from mine, achingly slow and my insides cry out to have him, right here over this bed of miniaturized rolling stones.

“Do you believe that?” It comes from me childlike, tragically innocent.

“I do.” His gaze never wavers. “I really, really do.”

I take in a deep breath as the woodsy scent from the fireplace permeates the air with the pleasant bite of hickory. I wonder what those words mean to Ace, but I’m too much of a coward to ask. Maybe after the summer…

“We’ll be friends forever, right?” I ask while trying to shoot an entire mob of marbles out of the circle, and not one of them twitches under my command.

“That’s right.” His lips press into a line as he shoots into the exact same spot and lands six of them off the carpet without much effort. “I’ll always be in Loveless. You know where to find me if you’re ever in the mood for an affair.” His chest pumps just once.

I shoot at a clear yellow marble and land it on the line.

“It still counts,” I say, scooping it up as a win.

“You like to make your own rules, don’t you?” He shoots another half dozen off the rug, and I shake my head at the fact Ace is kicking my ass.

“Sometimes making your own rules is the only way to go.” Ace might be landing the marbles where he wants them but I’ve managed to land him where I want him, and tomorrow night, that’s exactly where he’ll be. Too bad it’s not a permanent arrangement. Too bad I’m not better at figuring out how to keep what I win.

We continue our game until I’m effectively decimated, and, as the loser, I have to scoop up all the marbles on my own, but Ace helps anyway.

“Come here.” He lands me over his lap and we stare at the fire, listening to it sing its broken song through a series of wild crackles.

“I like it like this.” I snuggle into his chest, pulling his arm over me. “In the dark—the fire the only light around. I wish we could end every night like this. You should come to Yeats, and I’ll sneak you into my dorm.”

“Do you have a fireplace?” His hand smooths up my arm, and a tingle erupts between my legs as if his fingers were there all along.

“No, but for you, I’d move off campus and get one.” I dip my hand up under his T-shirt hinting at the fact I’d like the night to end with our bodies wrapped around one another like a vine, but I’m too embarrassed to ask.

“You’d move for me?” He seems genuinely impressed.

“You’re worth a move. Of course, you’d have to bring your firewood along. There’s nothing like a wood burning fire.”

“Knew it.” His chest rumbles beneath me as he singes my neck with a kiss. “You’re just using me for my logs.”

“I guess my secret’s out. And it’s
log
as in singular.” I tickle his ribs. “I hope it doesn’t bruise your ego, too much.”

“Are you kidding?” He tightens his grip around my waist. “I’d let you use me every day of the year and twice on Sundays.”

“Just twice on Sundays?” I twist around until I can get a better glimpse of his blessed by God features. I’ve loved his gorgeous face, body and soul as soon as my hormones kicked in. “You’ve had me blushing since I was thirteen, you know that?”

His head ticks back a notch as if it were the last thing he expected me to say.

“No, I guess I didn’t.”

“Have you ever had any, you know,
special
thoughts about me?” I trace my finger over his jawline.

“Special? Is that the code for dirty? I suppose I could fess up to one or two.” He steals a kiss off my lips. “Like that time I locked you and Neva in a trashcan and rolled you downhill. That was pretty dirty.”

I give a gentle laugh. “That was disgusting.”

“Yeah, but you begged me to do it.”

“That’s because we were stupid. You should have warned us that our hair would smell like sour milk for a week.” My fingers race to the lip of his jeans, and I undo the button. “And, that’s not what I meant by dirty.”

Ace bears into me with those cobalt eyes. “I know that’s not what you meant. You want to know if I think about you at night—if my body shakes at the thought of your perfect face when I’m alone in bed.” He slips his hand up my shirt, and I take in a breath as soon as his heated flesh touches mine. “If I’ve ever relieved any tension by imagining you and I doing this.” He lands a kiss at the base of my neck, and I shudder into him. “Or this.” His hand sinks low on my waist, then lower still until his warm fingers find a home inside my thigh.

“Yes that,” I breathe into his ear. “And now, I want to play a different game.” I take a gentle bite out of his earlobe, and let it out slowly by way of my teeth.

“So do I.” He gives it in a heated kiss, and my thighs tremble.

Swear to God, I’m one breath away from detonating right here in his arms.

“But”—he pulls his hand from under my shirt and my stomach quivers as he grazes it—“I think if we hold out until tomorrow, it’ll be that much more amazing.”

I let out an unexpected groan of disappointment, and he breathes a laugh into my hair.

“Now you know how guys feel most of the time.” He runs his fingers over my ribs.

“Okay, but after that, I want to be with you every single night.”

“Just at night?” He brushes my neck with his lips. “Summer’s pretty damn short. I think maybe we should utilize a few waking hours, too.”

“I like the way you think.” My entire body sizzles at the thought of loving Ace in the afternoon. “I’ll tell Kennedy I’m going on a camping trip with friends, and maybe we can spend the night. I’ll let her break the news to my dad when he notices I’m not around.”

“Camping with friends.” He lets out a breath as he rests his chin on my head. “I think we should do it. We should head over to Forbidden Falls and stay for a week.”

My body seizes. A week alone with Ace would be paradise. I look up at him as the light of the fire glows over his features in crimson waves.

“You’re brilliant you know that?”

He shakes his head. “If I was brilliant I would have said
two
weeks.”

If I were brilliant I would have said forever.

“Forbidden Falls,” I whisper, nestled in his strong arms.

“Forbidden Falls,” he breathes it like an erotic poem right into my ear.

Ace and I are going to make a memory, create an entire series of moments that hopefully neither one of us will ever forget.

I know I won’t.

The sun rides high over Loveless on this, the fated Fourth of July in which I gift Ace my virginity. I’ve been up with the sun, nervous and excited, and scanning my brain for reasons to abort the effort, but, happily, I can’t think of a single one.

Outside the entire mountain vibrates with the sound of children laughing. The scent of barbeque is thick in the air by three-thirty.

I stared at that envelope labeled “special recipes” for the better half of the day. My thoughts were laced with the memory of lying in Ace’s arms all night and the promise of spending the entire next week with him alone in that tent of his. I can’t bring myself to open my mother’s letter and risk hearing something that might change my perspective on my special time with Ace. All I could think about was what if she says something outrageous like wait until your wedding night? I’ve always had a place in my heart that wants to please my mother, both my parents, and that goes double for Dad ever since Mom passed away. But, mostly, I’m afraid Mom’s letter will say wait until you say I love you and mean it. I pet the letter and debate for another small eternity whether or not to open it, but by five o’clock I abandon the effort and get ready for Dad’s big company bash at the McCarthy’s. The entire lake is invited, so I already know I’ll be seeing Ace there.

I pay careful attention to my hair and makeup until I accidentally make myself look like a cupie doll with bowtie lips, eyes that are overdone like a drag queen. I scrub it all off in haste and throw my hair into a ponytail. I settle on the string bikini that has the U.S. flag imprinted on it and pull on a pair of my favorite cut offs before examining myself in the mirror—simple yet hot. I’m hoping to have Ace’s blood pumping in all the right places long before we ever get to the falls tonight. My duffle bag is packed and ready to go in the corner. The only thing left to do is endure a few hours of family fun.

I bounce my way downstairs and follow the trail of voices to the living room where, to my surprise, I find Dad talking to Warren. But that only mildly shocks me in comparison to the gaping hole I see in the dining room. The table is notably missing, and my heart sinks like a stone. I go over and walk into the bare spot like it really didn’t matter, but it feels like a betrayal, like we dug my mother up and found the coffin empty.

“You guys ready to party?” I try to muster all the enthusiasm I can but it comes out barely audible. I hate that the final piece of my mother has been yanked from me today of all days. I wanted to remember this day for all of the erotic pleasure tonight would offer, and now I’ve burned the image of this bare room into my mind, my mother’s treasure extracted, obvious as a missing tooth.