The Lake House Had One Bed Left for Our Parents' Wedding Week, So I Shared It With My Soon-to-Be Stepbrother novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Everything Okay in There?

On the creaking floor of the back room she tells Jack to get in the bed, and by midnight his hand has her coming into the quilt until his mother knocks.

The floor creaked every time Jack breathed.

It was eleven at night, and the house was full of sleeping relatives.

He was lying on a bundle of couch cushions six feet from my bed, trying to be silent.

He wasn't.

Each time he shifted, the old boards groaned.

"You're lying very loud," I said to the ceiling.

"I'm lying very still."

"You're keeping my father's whole side of the family awake."

"They're drunk on Marlene's punch. They'd sleep through a parade."

"Then you're keeping me awake."

The boards groaned again.

I stared at the water stain over the bed and thought about Marlene's warm voice and cold fingers.

Watch him, she'd said.

I was watching.

He had changed in the bathroom and come back in gray sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that said MUSKEGON HIGH ATHLETICS.

I had watched that too.

"Get in the bed," I said.

The floor went quiet.

"Is that what you want?"

"What I want is to sleep. Get in. You stay on your side, and nobody tells my father."

"Done."

He lay down on the far edge of the mattress and turned his back to me.

I turned mine to him.

The quilt smelled like cedar and old summers, and the mattress tilted toward the middle.

Every time either of us moved we slid an inch closer.

We lay back to back.

"Kate."

"What."

"I'm going to say something, and you can tell me to roll over."

My heart began to pound.

"Say it."

"I've been thinking about your wrist since six o'clock."

I didn't tell him to roll over.

I turned instead, slowly, until I was facing his back, and the bed tipped me against him.

He was warm through the thin shirt, and he went still all along his spine.

"Turn around," I said.

He turned.

It was too dark to see more than the edge of his jaw and the shine of his eyes, and that made it worse.

He didn't touch me.

He just looked at me from eight inches away, and I felt it everywhere.

"Say it again," I said. "The part about my wrist."

"I thought about how small it was in my hand," he said quietly. "And that you didn't pull away."

I kissed him.

It wasn't careful.

I got a fistful of his shirt and dragged his mouth down onto mine.

He made a low sound in his chest and kissed me back.

His hand slid into my hair.

His mouth was hot and slow and sure, and he kissed me like he had all night, which he didn't.

When I pushed my tongue against his, he groaned into my mouth.

"Quiet," I whispered. "There's a cousin on the other side of this wall."

"Then you be quiet."

His hand found the hem of my old Gophers T-shirt, and his palm flattened against my bare ribs.

I wasn't wearing a bra.

He stopped.

"Kate."

"I know."

"You're not wearing anything under this."

"No."

"Good," he said, and slid his hand up and cupped my breast.

My back arched off the mattress.

His thumb circled my nipple until it was hard, and he watched my mouth open.

"Look at that," he said, his voice dark and low. "Look how you respond to me. I barely touched you."

"Then touch me."

I shoved my hand under his shirt and found his stomach, hard and warm, with a line of hair below the navel that ran down into his waistband.

He sucked in a breath when my fingers dragged over it.

"Careful," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to be a good man in your father's house."

"You're doing terribly," I said, and he laughed against my neck.

Then he kissed me there, under my ear, and I stopped being funny.

His hand moved down over my stomach and found the edge of my underwear.

"Tell me to stop," he murmured.

"Don't you dare."

His fingers slid under the cotton.

I was so wet that he groaned, low and rough, right in my ear.

"God, Kate. Listen to that."

He moved his fingers through me, slow and slick, and found my clit and circled it once.

My hips jerked into his hand.

"There," I whispered. "Right there."

"I know."

"Don't stop."

"I'm not going to stop. You're doing so well. Just like that, let me feel you."

Nobody had ever talked to me like that, calm and steady and certain.

I grabbed a corner of the quilt and shoved it between my teeth.

He slid one finger inside me, and then two, and curled them up.

His thumb kept up the same tight circle on my clit.

"That's it," he said. "Look at you. You're so tight around my hand."

I was making little broken noises into the quilt.

My knees fell open.

My free hand clamped on his forearm, and I felt the muscle flexing under my fingers every time he moved.

"Jack," I said around the cotton. "Jack, I'm going to."

"Go on. I've got you."

It hit me hard and all at once, a long clenching wave that went through my belly and down my thighs.

I bit down on the quilt and came against his hand with my whole body shaking.

He kept going until I stopped twitching.

He kissed my temple and said, "Beautiful," and I felt it more than anything else he'd done.

Then somebody knocked on the door.

Two soft raps.

We froze.

"Everything okay in there?" Judy called through the wood.

Jack slid his hand out of my underwear and pulled my T-shirt down in one smooth motion.

"We're fine, Mom," he said, and his voice was perfectly normal. "Kate was cold. I was about to find her another blanket."

"The linen closet is at the end of the hall."

"Got it."

A pause.

"Night, you two," said Judy.

The floorboards in the hall creaked away.

I put my forehead against his chest and shook with silent laughter.

He held me with one arm while his whole chest shook too.

"Your mother," I whispered.

"I know."

"Your mother knocked."

"She knocks when we're quiet. It's a skill."

I slid my hand down his stomach toward his waistband, and he caught my wrist.

It was the same wrist.

"Not tonight," he said. "Not with your father forty feet below us and my mother in the hall."

"That's a terrible reason."

"It's a good reason. I wanted it to be better than this."

He pressed my hand flat against his chest, where his heart was going hard and fast.

"I walk to the boathouse at six," he said. "The sun's up, the house is asleep, and it's got a loft nobody has climbed in thirty years."

"Is that an invitation?"

"I'm going alone," said Jack. "If somebody happened to follow me, I wouldn't call the police."

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