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Take Me Down
Lauren Hawkeye
MILLS & BOON
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Evie may feel like she doesn’t measure up to her prettier, younger sister, but she still knows what she wants—Lucas, her cousin’s sexy roommate. She’s dreamed about being with him for a long time, and on the sweltering night of her sister’s wedding, it’s clear he shares her lust. Now Evie is determined to take what she desires—even if it’s just for one night….
Book one of Lauren Hawkeye’s Erotic Me series.
Contents
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The day that my sister got married was also the hottest day of the year.
The valley in which I made my home, that tiny crevice that lay at the foot of the Three Sisters Mountains, was normally well sheltered from all but the strongest of the elements. Today however, for the nuptials of my sister, the sun had come out to play, to shower them with the golden light of celebration.
The fact that we of the valley didn’t normally experience such heat made it nearly unbearable. Every mouthful of air that I took scorched my lungs and seared every cell in my body on its way through my being. When the sun, that blazing ball of fire, finally, finally dipped behind the proud peaks of the Sisters in late evening it brought little relief. It had done its job well, turning the breath of the valley to the consistency of warm syrup, and its inhabitants to mush.
I couldn’t sleep.
Sweat dripped down my body, every pore oozing salt water to pool between my legs and drip off the tips of my nipples. It caused the thin cotton of my sleep shirt to cling uncomfortably to my fevered skin. Most nights I would have had no qualms about peeling off the restricting fabric that was suffocating my skin, no worries about stretching out naked on the wilted sheets of my bed with the rickety floor fan an inch from my face. But I had been obliged to open my home to relatives, to friends, to friends of friends, to whoever had congregated for Suzanne’s wedding. And I didn’t much relish the thought of running around naked when I might run into my ancient aunt Mary sans her dentures and carefully coiffed wig.
With a heavy sigh I flopped over onto my right side from my left, tugging at the restraining cloth that covered my body. I closed my eyes, squeezed them so tightly together that I saw stars, then opened them again. I painted a picture in my head, the proverbial sheep leaping over a white picket fence, but they melted away into a marbled swirl of black and white in my mind’s eye.
It was no use. Sleep was determined not to come my way.
Frustrated, I rolled up from my bed. Propriety demanded that I cover my sheer nightgown with a robe, lest I inadvertently flash the aforementioned aunt Mary, or my cousin Eric, or my Grandpa Jim. My whole system rebelled at the thought of even one more layer of warmth. I was just going to get a glass of water, I reasoned. I would be quick. Mary and Grandpa Jim were more than likely snoring away in a champagne-induced dreamland, after all, and I doubted that Eric was even back yet from whatever bar he’d stumbled to after the wedding festivities had finally wound to a close.
I should be safe. And I was thirsty. Thirstier than I could ever remember being.
The hall was dark, the hardwood sticky with varnish heated from the warmth of the summer day. My bare feet made slapping sounds, quiet as I tried to be on the way to the kitchen, and the noise melded with the snorts and snores of my guests in a strange symphony. The tiny kitchen, though, was quiet, the hum of the ancient avocado refrigerator the only thing breaking through the thick silence. I had an odd mental picture, an image of the heat and quiet sucking me in, swallowing me whole, and so I moved as quickly as I could toward the fridge, where I knew the pitcher of cold, filtered water, my saving grace, rested.
Cool air bathed me as I opened the door. Refreshed me. I breathed deeply, soaking in the sensation of icy fingers playing over my skin. I briefly contemplated just climbing in, curling up amongst the pickle jars and bottles of ketchup in an effort to prolong the relief, but the happiness dissipated when I noticed that my Brita filter, the cool jug that should have been full of refreshingly chilly water, was nowhere to be seen.
A tendril of unnatural and probably uncalled-for rage snaked through my system. Where the hell was the jug? Even knowing that the heat had made me overly cantankerous, that it wasn’t really that big of a deal, I felt a tantrum threatening. Wasn’t it enough that I was sharing my tiny home for a seemingly never-ending slice of time? I had to have the entire rhythm of my life disturbed, too?
No longer caring who I woke, I slammed the fridge door shut. Glowering at the ancient and offending appliance, I felt prickles at the backs of my eyes, poky ones that surely signaled an impending flood. Mortified at the lightning-quick change, I sniffed, determined not to actually cry over something as simple and as stupid as a missing jug of water.
At least the tears drowned the anger.
I knew that if I took the time to stop and to poke at my feelings, I’d find that my reaction wasn’t based on the missing water at all, that the missing jug had been the tip of the iceberg at the end of a long, emotional day. The pinnacle of my misery. The response to the mixed feelings that I was experiencing over Suzanne’s marriage.
I loved my sister, and I was happy for her. Happy that she’d found the love of her life. However, the newest event in the perfect life of Suzanne only served to reinforce the feelings of inadequacy that had circulated throughout my being for as long as I could remember. The fact that she was younger than me and had, as Auntie Mary had ever so helpfully pointed out, “beaten me to the altar” only rubbed a steady stream of salt into an already-tender wound.
Not that it was a race. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to get married, either…or at least not until I met that special someone. It was more that the huge change in my sister’s life made me question the state of mine, and though in reality I knew that her own life was far from perfect, I still felt that, in comparison, my own was wanting.
I shook my head to clear it of the nasty, festering images. That was all beside the point. My problem right now, at that moment, was that I was overheated, dehydrated from the glasses of wine that I’d sipped throughout the evening, and I wanted a damn glass of cold water.
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