My Best Friend's Stepmother's Niece Is Off Limits novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Boathouse Loft

After the bonfire Noor and Lark finally give in; Pru's flashlight swings up the stairs.

The bonfire burned down to orange coals by eleven, and the relatives drifted back toward the hall with their sleeping bags and their sticky fingers.

I wrapped the leftover peach galette in parchment at the dessert table and told the nearest cousin I was heading to the kitchen to clean.

Nobody looked twice.

A caterer cleaning up is the most invisible person in the world.

I washed my hands, took a tin of galette corners, and went out the side door toward the boat bay.

The Atlantic was black and quiet under a thin moon.

The boat bay smelled like old rope and varnish, and a single bulb burned over the ladder.

I climbed, and my heart kept time with each rung.

The loft was bigger than I'd expected, with a slanted ceiling and a square window over the water.

A sagging brown couch sat under a quilt.

Lark was sitting cross-legged on the quilt with her braid down and a flashlight on the floor.

"You came," she said.

"You said bring a corner piece."

I held up the tin, and she grinned.

"Peach," I said. "Brown butter crust, a little nutmeg."

"I made it this afternoon, while your aunt told the tent people how to do their jobs."

She took the tin and set it carefully on the floor.

"We'll eat it after," Lark said.

"After what?"

"You know after what."

I sat down next to her on the couch, and the springs complained.

For a minute neither of us moved.

The window showed the water and a lonely buoy light, and the sound of waves slapped against the pilings below.

"I've never done anything like this," I said.

"Climb a ladder?"

"Sneak. I'm a terrible sneaker."

"I noticed. You walked across the lawn like you were carrying a bomb."

"I was carrying a galette."

She laughed, and this time I put my hand against her cheek and felt the laugh go through her jaw.

She turned her face into my palm, and her eyelashes brushed my wrist.

"Noor," she said, very quietly.

"Yes."

"I've wanted my hands on you since the cake table."

"I wanted it before that," I said, and surprised myself.

"I saw you walk up the lawn at four o'clock, and I forgot the whipped cream."

"You did forget the whipped cream. Cass was furious."

"It was your fault."

"Then let me make it up to you," Lark said.

She kissed me, and the world went quiet.

Her hands moved over my shoulders and found the knot of my apron strings.

I helped her untie them.

The apron dropped, then her sweater and my shirt and jeans, until the cool sea air from the open window moved over our bare skin.

I pulled her closer by the waist, and she came easily, pressing her naked breasts against mine.

Her mouth was at my throat, my jaw, the place under my ear that nobody has ever found by accident.

She kissed her way down to suck my nipple into her warm mouth.

"Right there," I breathed, and Lark stayed there, patient as the tide, while her hand slid down my stomach and between my thighs.

I felt the rough quilt under my back and saw the dark beams over my head as her fingers parted my wet folds.

Her red-brown braid slid over my bare thigh as she stroked her thumb across my swollen clit, and my fingers tangled tight in her hair.

Her hands were warm and unhurried, sliding two long fingers deep into my wet pussy and curling them up against my front wall until I gasped aloud.

"Tell me what you want," Lark murmured against my breast as she fucked me with slow, deep strokes of her fingers.

"Your mouth," I panted, spreading my thighs wider on the sagging couch. "And don't take your fingers out of me."

"I'm going to need to hear you say it, Noor."

"Don't stop," I gasped as she slid down between my knees and buried her mouth against my pussy. "Fuck me just like that, Lark, don't stop."

She didn't.

The couch springs creaked, the wind pushed at the loft window, and somewhere down in the bay a halyard rang against a mast.

Lark sucked hard on my clit and drove her fingers deep in and out of my wet pussy.

I heard my own voice break on her name as my hips bucked up into her mouth.

The buoy light slid across the ceiling, once, twice.

Then my whole body snapped taut around the heat of her tongue on my clit and her fingers inside my gripping pussy.

I came hard, soaking her mouth and hand with cum while I clutched her shoulders.

When the aftershocks passed, I lay with my arm over my eyes and my chest heaving.

Lark rested her damp cheek against my stomach, her lips glistening in the moonlight.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

I started to laugh, breathless, and I couldn't stop.

"That," I said, "was the best thing that has ever happened in a boathouse."

"It's a low bar. The boathouse has mostly hosted lobster."

"Don't ruin it."

I grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her up beside me to kiss my own taste off her mouth, and rolled her flat beneath me.

I took my time, because I make pastry for a living and I know what patience tastes like.

I kissed the freckles across her shoulders and breasts, sucking her nipples until she arched off the quilt.

I trailed my tongue down her taut belly to the triangle of curls between her thighs.

I parted her dripping wet folds with my thumbs, dragged my tongue flat over her clit, and slid two fingers deep into her tight pussy.

I learned the small gasp she made when I licked her clit gently, and the louder moan she made when I sucked it hard and fucked my fingers deeper inside her.

She cried out my name once, loud in the rafters, and then, in a sudden panic, clapped both hands over her own mouth.

"Shh, shh, they'll hear."

"Who? The lobster?"

"My cousins are right under us. They sleep in the boat bay on air mattresses."

"Then you'd better bite the quilt while I make you come," I whispered against her wet pussy, driving my fingers deep and flicking my tongue fast over her swollen clit.

She stuffed a corner of the quilt between her teeth and arched hard off the couch.

Her pussy clamped down tight around my fingers, and she came in long, silent shudders that soaked my hand.

Afterward, we ate the peach galette on the floor in our underwear, with the flashlight pointing at the ceiling.

Lark fed me a corner with her fingers, and I told her the crust needed another minute in the oven.

"It's perfect," she said.

"It's good. It's not perfect."

"You're a menace."

She curled against my side, and I pulled the quilt over both of us.

"I've been in this loft a hundred times," Lark said sleepily. "It was always the place where I went to be alone."

"Not alone tonight."

"No."

She was smiling at the ceiling.

Then the smile stopped.

Down below us, the heavy door of the boat bay scraped open.

A flashlight beam swept across the bottom rung of the ladder, white and sharp.

"Hello?" Pru Aldrich's voice called up the dark. "Is somebody up there?"

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