Page 17 of One Reckless Summer

As she fists her hips, her make-up freshened and a shimmering pink lipstick applied to the lips that were around my cock, our eyes find each other.

My fingers twitch as I start her way, remembering how her hair felt clutched between them.

A few other staff are gathered around as everyone does the expected mingling after the meeting.

The main hall is used for activities and meals, and I pick up from the group standing around me that the mounted boars’ heads and stuffed black bear in the corner might not be PC. I don’t care right now.

They’re talking, but I’m processing none of it. My eyes are locked on her as she scans the room, looking unsure, her gaze flickering over me with an impish smile, and I walk away from the other counselors without a goodbye.

“About last night,” I start, barely able to form words, remembering how I had the hardest orgasm of my life hours ago in her mouth.

“That’s a movie isn’t it? ‘About last night’…” She clicks her front teeth together, nipping at her manicured fingernail, and Jesus, I want that smile with me for the rest of my life. “Anyway, it’s fine. We both knew it was no strings. I was a little…” She tugs her lips to the side, squishing up her face. “Not myself. I would have never done that without tequila and blow job shots.”

My heart sinks. Is she trying to tell me in a polite way that without her beer goggles on, she would have never been interested in me?

Of course she isn’t, you ugly motherfucker. She’s so far above your paygrade, you couldn’t touch her if you were standing on a twelve-foot ladder.

No strings.

I suddenly hate that fucking expression. Yes there are fucking strings. The strings are, I don’t ever want to see you with another man. That no fraternization policy goes double for you, little sister.

There’s an unreadable squint in her left eye, and my palpitations kick up a notch. I have to keep things professional. She’s not just a counselor, she’s gonna be working with Hailey.

I’m frozen, mute, hands in my pockets, dick hard, brain shutting down…

Then, she fucking saves me, poking at my chest, her eyelashes fluttering, a little glitter catching the light on her cheeks as she says, “Did you know you were going to be my boss?”

“No.” I finally form words, then clarify. “Not until I spotted the Camp WanderLust t-shirt in your bag.”

She nods, chewing the corner of her mouth, tapping the toes of her floral-patterned hiking boots. “So, where do you want me?”

I grunt as my cock finds a new inch it didn’t have before. I want to tell her I want her everywhere. Right here, right now. In my office. Under the stars. In her cabin.

And that teasing sparkle in her wide, eat-me-alive-eyes tells me she knows what she’s doing to me.

I grind my molars and growl through clenched teeth, “I need to introduce you to someone.”

“This is Hailey,” I tell Summer as we come into the activity room, and the way her face lights up almost makes me crumble. “She’s the young girl we hired you for, as a speech therapist.”

Her hands clasp in front of her mouth.

Hailey turns at the sound of her name, the finger painting she’s up to her elbows in forgotten, and raises her hand in a quick salute, leaving a stripe of purple and yellow paint on her forehead.

“Where you been, Papa Pwice?” Hailey squishes up her nose. “You said you would paint wif me.”

Hailey called me just Price for the first year after we met, which was fine by me. Then she started putting the ‘papa’ in front. Someday, maybe she’ll drop the ‘Price’ but whatever works for her. She’s not had the easiest path in her six short years, so I promised myself above all else, I won’t do anything that makes it harder.

The salute is something my dad and I used to do when I was a kid before he disappeared, leaving me and my brother with my mom, who had no business raising kids.

Weird how the past comes back to the present, even when you wish it wouldn’t. Hailey clasps her paint-covered hands together like she’s saying a prayer, an excited sparkle in her eyes as she says, “I made it to the top of da rope today wif Miss Wiley!” she bursts out with her cute as fuck little lisp, then turns to Summer. “Who are you?”

“This is Summer,” I say, her name as sweet as honey on my tongue.

Miss Wiley is Monica Wiley, my accountant and assistant, and the closest thing I have to a mother and a stand-in grandmother to Hailey. I begged her and paid her a boat load of cash to come with us this summer as a ‘counselor’, but really I just needed a friendly face and someone I trusted besides Ted to help me with Hailey.

“Thummer…” Hailey squints and nods. “I wike your name.”

“Thanks,” Summer smiles on a soft laugh. “I like yours too.”

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