the finer details were gone. He remembered obvious things: long dark hair, hazel eyes, a big smile like Sergei’s. A port wine birthmark on her neck. But when he tried to see her face, a vision of Becca got in the way. All grown up but somehow just as innocent.
He looked at his crotch, let out a mirthless laugh. Thinking about Sveti and Ivana was a great way to wilt an inconvenient boner.
Useful discovery: if she kept the walkway boards perpendicular to her naked toes, she could stay on her feet without toppling onto sharp rocks and thorny, bug-and-snake-infested foliage. This was good.
Sobering reflection: she could miss the turn-off to the A-frame, and keep going in an endless loop around the island until she croaked of exposure, or got eaten for a midnight snack. That was bad.
Becca’s imperfect solution was to hug the edge of the path and follow the edge of the boards with her toes, which compelled her to go at a slow, limping pace. She clung to her outrage, and somehow that kept her from sliding into screaming panic.
A bump on the ends of her abused toes made her howl, even while tears of gratitude popped into her eyes. The turn-off.
She groped for the handrail, and went up the stairs. Thin branches tickled and slapped, cobwebs broke across her face, winged things fluttered against her hair. She swatted them away as she felt her way across the deck and the picture window until she found the door. She turned on every light in her dash for the closest bathroom.
Forty minutes or so under a pounding stream of hot water took off the edge of the cold, but it didn’t wash away the touch of his hands, his lips. So that was a whole body orgasm. She’d read about them in romances. The sensation had scared her, it was so intense.
How pathetic. To be taken by surprise by a real orgasm at the advanced age of thirty. And worse was the way his crude remark made her feel after. Blow me. Let’s see if you’re any good.
Trust Becca to get a massive crush on an overgrown frat boy. Whose name she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
Frantic rummaging in the closets yielded up another terry-cloth bathrobe. Becca swathed herself and wandered through Sloane’s house. The place was like the lobby of a ski resort. Big beams, flagstones, cedar paneling, huge fireplace, squishy couches upholstered in ugly plaid wool. A mirror hung on the wall. She stared at her pale face, her smudged mascara. She felt different. Her obsessive thoughts of Justin and Kaia weren’t having their usual effect.
On the contrary. The penis-chomping debacle, nasty though it had been, was simply not as interesting as what had just happened to her. God knows, Mr. Big next door beat Justin hands down when it came to doggish lewdness. The big difference being that Mr. Big’s doggish lewdness had been directed right at Becca’s own self.
And there was no doubt that his interest had been real. There was no faking an erection like that.
Wow, she’d come close to doing the deed with a complete stranger. Her face flamed, remembering his final suggestion. She’d had an image of herself, trying so hard to please, the way she’d tried to please Justin. Failing. Having him judge her, for how clumsy and clueless she was.
She saw Justin, complaining in his hospital bed, looking pale and martyred and self-righteous. Kaia, in her collar and head brace, a pitying smirk on her pretty face.
So what are you going to do? Curl up and die? Sometimes Becca wanted to smack herself.
She pried one of the long fireplace matches out of the box. Some helpful soul had already laid a fire, and it licked to life, newspaper and kindling catching flame. No moping allowed. Doing something useful was her trusted strategy for mood management, so she marched over to the cardboard boxes that sat on the table and started ripping them open.
The boxes were filled with catered foodstuffs that had been delivered to her office that day, as part of her wedding prep. Her boss and colleagues had urged her to take it all with her to Frakes Island in lieu of groceries. Nobody wanted perishables lying around in the office all week. She and Justin were supposed to have tasted the wines together, to choose what would accompany the various courses of their wedding feast. This was to have taken place on their romantic weekend getaway, this very weekend. She’d planned it all out to the last succulent detail.
Before the penis-chomping incident.
The catered food consisted of yummy dishes, mostly Italian, that could be eaten cold or popped into an oven and browned, for quick fortifying nibbles between erotic interludes in bed. Cured and roasted meats, sun-dried tomatoes, grilled and gratinéed vegetables, spring salads, cheeses, fruits, crackers and breads. Coffee beans, cream, a grinder. And here was the kicker—five eight-inch wedding cake candidates. Butter Lemon Cloud, Rum Caramel Pecan, Black Cherry Wickedness, Mocha Mousse, and her own personal favorite, Grand Marnier Triple Fudge Angel’s Fall.
No one could accuse her of not being passionate about sweets.
She toyed with the idea of setting up a Justin effigy and lobbing cakes at its head, but the truth was, she was constitutionally incapable of throwing away a delicious cake. Bringing up her sister and brother on a cocktail waitress’s pay made her loath to waste food even now, years later. She shoved the pastry boxes into the fridge with barely controlled violence.
The last box held the wedding notebook. She’d brought it along with the intention of burning it, to purge her system and make her feel better about herself. That was a lot to hope for, but a girl could try.
She leafed through the thing, marveling at her capacity for self-deception. The quilted heart cover alone, with precious cross stitching that read Becca & Justin, April 18, should have tipped her off that the relationship was doomed. Just looking at it put her in a sugar coma.
She ripped off the cover, flung it into the fire.
The carefully organized sections inside—gah. Check out the questions that had kept her up at night. Should she order personalized breath mints with names and the date printed on each one? Should she go with the individual toothpick boxes for each place setting? Was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons too “done” for the string quartet in the garden?
She ripped handfuls of pages out, threw them on the fire. They made lots of puffs and sparks and insignificant mini-whooshes before scorching and curling up like pathetic dying bugs. She did not feel any great rush of liberating, cathartic power. Surprise, surprise.
She needed Mr. Big and his clever hands for that.
Perish the thought. She would not be talked to like that. Oaf. So much for adventure. That encounter had not been super therapeutic for her self-esteem.
One more thing to burn. The padded envelope of sexy lingerie that she’d ordered off the Internet. Shameful evidence of how pathetically eager to please she’d been. Trying to lure Justin by sheer effort.
She tore it open, and stared at the pieces with hot, unfriendly eyes. The virginal cream bustier with the not-so-virginal matching thong. The demure apricot chiffon babydoll chemise, the matching panties, the crotch of which was two thick satin ribbon strips that could be nudged to either side of the labia, leaving the way clear for, well, ahem, anything. At the time, it had struck her as a sophisticated secret to share with her fiancé, just for him. Now it struck her as desperate.
Which was exactly how she’d felt, writhing in that man’s arms.
Maybe it wasn’t so great to have shocked her dormant sexual awareness into life at this
