Page 57 of Some Like It Hott

I’m neck deep in the hot springs, the night velvet dark around me, and the voice is Natalie’s.

“Mind if I come in?” she asks.

“No.”

I don’t want to stare at her, but it’s impossible to look away as she sheds her robe, treating me to a full-length view of her in that goddamned bikini. She’s perfect: smooth, curvy, generous. I want to lick every bare inch, then remove the small cloth triangles that hide the rest of her and lick there, too.

Maybe my eyes say what I’m thinking because something hot flickers behind her gaze before her eyes shutter and she slides down into the water beside me. Not too close. A safe distance away. But close enough that my chest tightens and my cock thickens and want turns from a vague, abstract thing to a deep tug on my spine.

“I looked for you earlier…” she says.

“I went out for food.”

I was mad enough to spit nails when I closed the door behind me after my introduction to Natalie’s mother. Natalie didn’t deserve the way her mom had casually torn her down. No one does, but especially not Natalie, not after what she’d done for me. For my family.

For what felt like the twentieth time, I needed to get the hell out of my room, or I would burst through the wall like the Incredible Hulk, this time all rage. So I went for a run, showered, grabbed dinner, and came down here for a soak.

Natalie shifts, sending ripples through the water that tease my over-alert nerve endings. “I wanted to thank you,” she says quietly. “For standing up for me.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” It comes out gruffer than I intend.

“Well, it was—really nice.” She bites her lip, shyly. “No one has ever done that for me.”

“Then they’re fools.” The words spill out before I can help myself. “Like I was at first.”

That makes her smile. “I converted you, huh?”

“Maybe.”

Her smile gets bigger, and I lose my words. I trail my fingertips along the surface of the water and don’t let myself stare at her the way I desperately want to.

“Your mom—” I begin.

She makes a sharp noise.

“What did she say to you? In your room?”

“You heard us?”

“Not the words. Only that you were talking.”

Natalie raises her eyebrows, but we both choose to skate over the implication: that her walls are thin enough for plenty of sounds to carry.

“She wanted to let me know that a doctor I worked for a few years back is willing to write me a letter of recommendation if I apply to schools.”

“Schools?”

“Nursing administration, a bunch of other possibilities. It’s part of my Get Serious About a Career plan.”

I’m unable to imagine Natalie behind a desk, doing soul-numbing paperwork, all the wild joy bound up in her blood and bones instead of out there in the world. “Why would you want to do nursing administration?”

“There are a bunch of other things, too, not only that—they’re medical field jobs with great ratios for how much it costs to get the degree versus how much you can make, and they all have good earning and advancement potential—what?”

I’m staring at her.

She bites her lip.

“Is that what you want?”

---