Page 67 of Elusion

I lean back on the wall next to my prize. “I won. No thanks to you.” I pull her closer to my side, my skin craving contact with her. “Connor, you’re no joke,” I say.

He offers Cate a hand to steady herself on her way down the steps into the water. “Same, man. You play sports?”

“Lacrosse when I was younger.”

“A sport for those who can’t keep up in basketball.” Connor pushes Cate through the water, sending her gliding over to us. “Why did you stop?”

I let go of Callie to catch her.

“I wasn’t playing for the right reasons.”

He and I keep passing Cate back and forth, talking about different sports. He plays a lot of them but considering the way his face lights up at the mention of basketball, he’s discovered his passion. We trade jabs over the weaknesses of the other’s game until Cate tells us to stop being so boring.

We all bow to her, following her orders to do handstands, hold our breath, and throw her around. After a while, she kicks Callie and Connor out of the pool and sends them to the hot tub. She has me swim a few laps with her holding on to my neck, and then I spend a solid two minutes spinning her around.

When I look over at the hot tub, Callie’s climbing out. She tortures me with the water dripping off her body until she goes out into the hallway. About ten minutes later, she comes back, wearing a towel—thank God. She crouches down by the edge of the pool, and I walk over with Cate on my shoulders.

“Rinse off,” she says. “I’ll meet you in the steam room in ten minutes.”

A knee hits my face while Cate scrambles onto the side. She cannonballs into the hot tub with Connor catching her.

I climb out and catch up with Callie in the hallway, snagging her hand. “Steam room?”

She shrugs and steps into the locker room. “No one under the age of sixteen is allowed. It’s against policy.”

One of the most useful policies I’ve ever heard.

I wash off the chlorine and follow a sign hanging from the ceiling to a cross hall. A small window shows a basketball court on one side with two other doors, one markedMaintenanceandJanitorialon the other. At the end of the hall, I step into an off-white tiled room filled with steam. Two levels of seating run around three walls, and a pile of towels waits by the door.

I spread one out on the lower level and lean back to rest my elbows on the seat behind me. My lower jaw aches from Cate’s earlier assault. How anyone keeps up with her on a daily basis, I can’t imagine. Less than twenty-four hours with her, and I feel like an eighty-year-old.

All thoughts of anyone other than Callie disappear when she comes in, a towel around her waist. Watching her walking through a wall of steam has my blood pumping in all the right places.

“Hello, beautiful.”

She smiles, and off the floor, she picks up a chain connected to a metal sign that readsOut of Order. She hangs it up outside, and the lights dim before she pulls the glass door shut. What’s she up to? Next thing I know, she MacGyver’s the shit out of the door with a broom angled just right and braced against the wall. The glass has already steamed over when she jerks the handle forward and back to demonstrate her makeshift lock.

“What if there’s a fire?” I ask.

She gestures around the room. “In the case of a fire, I think we’ll be safe.”

I chuckle at her point well made and waste no time in getting from point A to point B. My lips reach their destination as my arms encircle her waist. Once again, her hands in my hair confuse my senses, exhilarating and relaxing. Her tongue slides against mine, but she breaks away far too soon—as in ever.

She squints. “Did you and Cate eat those fruit snacks after I told her no?”

All I can do is grin, because of course we ate them. They were fucking fruit snacks, and they were delicious. She sighs and guides me back to the bench with a hand on my chest. I sit on my towel as hers falls to the floor. No kids. No towel. No hesitation to pull her onto my lap. She places a knee on each side and stares down at me.

“What are you doing to me, beautiful?”

Kissing me—that’s what she’s doing. On my lips, my jaw, my neck, and then—fuck—her teeth tug at my ear. I groan and fist my hands in her hair, bringing her mouth back to mine. Her hands glide up my chest while one of mine travels down to hers. I cup her breast through the swim top, and her back arches into me. The steam on our skin makes an already-heated situation all the hotter. My hips flex to meet hers, grinding against her. And we are quickly approaching a point of no return.

I tip my head up to look at her. “Baby, you’re one hip thrust away from passing the outer realm of my restraint.”

“Yeah?” She bites my lower lip and thrusts her hips forward.

I drop my head back the rest of the way and shut my eyes as tight as possible. She continues to test my resolve. Every move she makes, I counter with a thought to avoid pinning her against the wall because every condom in my possession is in a bag in her room. But when her tongue slowly drags from the base of my neck up, I growl, losing the battle.

I can’t move.

---