AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I get it.”
“Yeah, but I’m not waiting for ‘lunch’ with you. You’re calling me the very second you get home, and then we’re going for coffee. Immediately. No excuses.”
“I will,” I said truthfully. “I promise.”
“Good enough bitch,” Bella swore. “Now go give this guy a goodbye that’ll make him want to say hello again.”
“Roger that,” I smiled and hung up.
I set my phone back on the glass coffee table with a ‘clack’, then sank ass-first into the couch. I stared upward, to where twin ceiling fans spun lazily between two big skylights.
Tomorrow…
Shit, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay with the guys, stay in the desert. Last night had been a magical reunion; upon returning from LA, we’d found Brody already here, cooking us dinner. Gearing up for a cozy little second-to-last-night stay-in, where we ate and drank and laughed into the wee hours of the morning.
I’d spent the night in each of their rooms, making love to them one after another. Screwing Mason first, and then Corey, and then falling asleep in Brody’s bed, not long after he’d spent himself between my trembling thighs. It felt somehow fitting, spending time with them one-on-one. Cultivating and enjoying the individual connections we’d made. Because as amazing as it was taking them all at once, it was equally incredible to be focused on one guy at a time. To be staring through his eyes, deep into his soul, as we took each other on the most intimate and personal of all possible levels… as one man and one woman.
Today was my last day here, and I was uncharacteristically alone. The guys had all gone out to pick up lunch, and to perform some other secret errand they weren’t telling me about. I knew from their smiles it would be one hell of a surprise. Some last big wonderful finale, on our final night together.
All those things and more ran through my mind, as I lay there daydreaming about my three beautiful boyfriends. Trying not to think about what life would be like when I finally had to leave this fantasy behind… and go back to the reality of being all alone in New York.
Forty-Six
LAUREN
We were traveling east, as far as I could tell. East and up.
“Almost there,” said Brody, clinging to the roll-bar of the rented Jeep. “Just another half mile or so.”
It was slow going, even for the four-wheel dr
ive, knobby-tired monster. An almost entirely uphill climb over dust, rock, and steep terrain. More than once I thought we would tip, and even screamed out loud. The guys had laughed on all but one of those occasions, where I’d seen them grab the ‘oh shit’ handles themselves, the smiles wiped quickly from their grinning faces.
Eventually the ground leveled out, and our vehicle crested the final rise. Corey brought the Jeep to a grinding halt… right in front of a large green tent, and an open stone-ringed campfire.
My eyes widened. So did my smile. “We’re camping?”
“Well, with limited electricity provided by solar batteries and a cooler full of ice cold drinks, I guess it would be more like ‘glamping’,” said Brody. “But yes. That.”
A string of lights ran from the tent to a central pole, jutting up from a small picnic table near the fire. But other than a few folding camp chairs, that was the extent of it. A tiny desert oasis, high up in the middle of absolute nowhere.
“Wow…”
I hopped from the Jeep and breathed the word, staring out over the far-flung horizon. The view from the ridge was incredible. All the way to the west the sun was still setting, melting against the landscape in a spectacular orange glow. To the east — back in the direction of home — everything was inky blue darkness. Turning even blacker, minute by minute.
“This cool?” Corey asked, stepping beside me. He slid a heavy arm over my shoulder and I leaned into him.
“Very cool,” I sighed happily. Then, with my best smile: “the coolest.”
I’d never been much for camping. The few jaunts we’d made to upstate New York had been pretty rough, probably because my dad always considered himself a great outdoorsman. The canvas tents he pulled out of the attic smelled like mold, and probably dated back to his own childhood, in the eighties. We ate from cans, heated up over the fire. Instead of providing air mattresses, my sister and I had been made to sleep on the ground.
But this… this was different. Already I could hear a compressor going. I saw the soft comforters and warm blankets we’d slept on all week, stripped from our beds and laid out over air mattresses so thick I knew my tender ass would never have to touch the ground. Maybe.
Brody sidled up on my other side, slipping an arm around my waist.
“The house is amazing and everything,” he said, “but this is tradition. We always spend our last night up here, spread out under the stars.”
“So you drive all the way up here to get drunk?” I teased.
