Page 45 of The Lovers
And maybe she wants the same thing.
We launch out in unison, our strides easily syncing as our feet scrape the rocky sand. We have a straight shot to the yurt, maybe twenty to thirty yards, when I hear a war cry come from the left—the direction the other players had scattered when the game commenced—and I look over my shoulder to see Coco breaking out into a sprint with Jenni and Heather behind her. They look defeated, which tells me it’s down to the last two teams.
Piper and Millie vs. Kit and me.
“I’m surprised—Coco—didn’t—hand it to…Jenni,” Kit says, between gulps of air.
“This could be part of her plan,” I add, and then gasp for oxygen.
“Plan?” She exhales the word.
“To win her back.”
“I don’t know if that’s in her cards.” She’s breathing heavy from the run, but when she says it all nonchalant, basically a throwaway, I’m caught off guard. The idea that the cards could predict Coco’s future for real without any reason to question them makes me wonder if she puts the same stock in that reading of ours from all those years ago.
But I don’t get a chance to obsess over the thought.
Coco is closing in from the left, and straight ahead Piper and Millie shoot out from a space between two tents with Natalie close behind. Piper has broken out ahead of Millie, her long, athletic form eating up the ground toward the yurt. We’re closer, but not as fast. And she knows it. Her eyes jolt around the scene as she’s moving, assessing. Her smirk is an evil challenge.
The professional thing to do here is slow down. Let them take it home. The bride is on that team. She’s the client, this is her show. But then I hear Kit’s husky voice in my head,I triple-dog dare you, and my competitive streak flares up with renewed heat.
I reach for Kit’s hand as the muscles in my calves fire to launch me the last few paces to the yurt. With one hand I hit the wall before I twist into her body and she holds me up against her.
Our breath mingles in the air between us.
Her hair has come out of her braid in wild tendrils to dance around her face.
She lets her cheek fall against my forehead, exhaling a long, winded sigh. After a few seconds heaving air into her lungs, herbreasts rising and falling against my body, our hands still bound, fitting between us against our abs, she begins to laugh.
Bright, hearty, and intoxicating.
The reverberation vibrating everywhere her body touches mine. When I pull back to meet her eyes, there’s no mistaking that the pupils are dilated, and just for a second I let myself believe it’s because of me.
Chapter Seventeen
Kit
We left the bachelorette party to the rest of the night’s festivities, taking our spoils and their congratulations with pleased grins of success. Most of them were good sports, at least, which made the whole thing heaps more fun. The only one noticeably grouchy was Piper, whose dagger glare and sharpcongratspunctuated with an angry period was the picture of a sore fucking loser in more than one way.
It shouldn’t have made me giddy, but it did.
We hugged our Sexy Times bags all the way back on the party bus like teenagers with contraband we were afraid would be confiscated by the teacher as soon as we got to school. Every couple of minutes one of us would chuckle, clutch the bag, sometimes even share why.
“Mission Sexy Times,” I said. Side-eye. “What was Coco talking about?”
Julia got immediately shifty at the mention of Coco and her insinuation. “No idea.”
“She winked at you when she said it.”
“That’s her knee-jerk expression.”
I couldn’t argue with that, even if I did think there was more to this than sheer innuendo.
“The panties are, in fact, crotchless,” Julia said, as light cut across her face from the moon through the window.
“And red.”
“Mine are burgundy.”
