Random Acts of Fantasy (13 page)

My shirt had a big drool stain on it from Darla by the time we landed, and her shirt had dried, leaving a long, cone-shaped streak of blue dye that flowed across her soft breasts, making me hard every time I looked down. Fucking Joe. Giving her that chill pill without telling me, and then nailing her in the bathroom.

Was I jealous? Of course. Still didn’t make them members of the Mile-High Club, and I was totally claiming that honor on the plane ride home now.

Dibs.

Somehow, Darla slept through the entire flight to Miami. I guess we’d tranquilized her, though knowing what sex with her was like, the two pills plus a rocking orgasm was more than enough to make her crash for a few hours. Her breath was steady even as she leaned over me, and I liked it. A lot.

I liked Darla a lot.

Fine. I
loved
Darla.

A lot.

I shifted, my shoulder starting to ache from having her on me, and she groaned, moving across to press on Joe. Ha. He seemed surprised, earbuds plucked out of his head as she took her turn using him as a pillow. His face went from annoyed to soft and wistful. Damn.

He loved her, too.

He hadn’t been home long enough for me to really talk to him, or have conversations beyond grunts and
hey
s. And sex, but we won’t go there.

The invitation blindsided all of us, and now that our first semester was over Sam and Liam were stoked. I had to clear my head and take this sliver of time to figure out what this adventure could mean. Were we being lured into something creepy? The lucky recipient of a promoter’s largesse? Just damn fortunate?

Or—what we all hoped—were we actually talented enough to be asked to do a gig this big?

Too many unanswered questions. Eden, as a resort, had checked out. It was a real place, and the expenses were covered. I’d end up with a few hundred left over on my prepaid Visa after this was done, so the client was generous.

Way generous.

A little too generous. After having arguments with bar owners over our cash take, and whether they could take the cost of ads out of our cut, or charge us $8 for a bottle of water we’d consumed backstage, this kind of generosity pinged my radar.

Let it go, dude.

Law students aren’t a naturally trusting group.

But that’s just it.

Am I a law student or a rock star?

I thought I could be both, but now it’s looking more and more like I need to choose.

And a year ago I could tell you cold which way I’d choose.

I’ve changed. Changed more from these seven months with Darla and Joe, then by my first semester of law school, than I’d have ever imagined. Changed by love and lust and law.

Love.

There’s that word again.

A quick glance at Joe, and I saw him touching Darla’s hair, his eyes caressing her face, lingering over her shirt, playing with the fingers of one hand. He was appreciating her with sight and touch, and then—yes. He leaned down and inhaled her scent. You had to take Darla in with all five senses, because if you didn’t you missed out: the whole of her that was so much more than any one part.

So what was holding us back from being whole with her?

I ran a hand through my own hair, a little too long from my body being ignored through school. Who has time for a haircut when you hit the gate wanting to be editor of law review in two years? That shit hadn’t mattered to me those first few weeks of school and then, out of nowhere, it had. Bad.

Darla stirred and sat up as Joe’s fingertip grazed her forehead, following the line of her eyebrow. “What? Are we there? Did the plane fall? We crash?”

Joe chuckled. “Nope. You’re safe with me. With us.” He shot me an inscrutable look. We were goners.

The plane’s descent was nearly done, and Darla sat up, making herself yawn. “It’s over?”

“Close. Just the landing.”

“Mmmmm.” She curled up against Joe’s shoulder like a cat in a spot of sunshine and faded off until the wheels clicked down on the plane and we hit the Miami tarmac.

“Now we’re here. Sweet Jesus, I haven’t had something that bumpy since I killed that skunk when you were naked in my front seat,” she declared.

Loudly.

The “seatbelt on” light clicked off and the mad rush to grab carry-ons began. Darla stretched like a cat and one nipple flashed as the cotton v-neck dipped in a funny way.

Made me inhale sharply and, as if air were blood, I was suddenly hard.

The scramble off the plane took my mind off my cock and the craziness of the past few hours. I had a feeling that this was just a taste of what we were about to experience. What kind of a resort was Eden? I’d done a little searching online, and what I found made me think that Sam, Amy, and Liam were the deviants in our group.

What Darla, Joe, and I did was more the speed on Eden.

“Sex resort” was too strong a word for the place, because I’d seen articles about family reunions, pharmaceutical conventions, and sports training programs at this luxury resort. Scratch the surface, though…but maybe I was reading too much into this. Paranoia was Joe’s specialty. Not mine. And he hadn’t said a word about the island itself. 

“C’mon, guys! The driver takes us to the private puddle jumper and we only have ten minutes!” Sam shouted back to us. He, Liam, and Amy were ahead, and I left Joe to tend to Darla, who was grinning and a happy, limp noodle. Uncharacteristically quiet, too.

We got out of the connector between the gate and the plane and gathered our bearings.

With a handful of minutes with just my body and my bag to worry about, I took some deep breaths. Palm trees swayed in the wind outside, blinding sun making me smile. New England was covered in a gray blanket of dirty snow and dreary days right now.

This was more like it.

Darla and Joe appeared, both smiling like idiots, comfortable and joking. We were all a little giddy, because this was real.

Showtime.

A chauffeur, complete with the cap and suit, held a neatly printed sign that had four words on it.

Four perfect words.

Random

Acts

of

Crazy

Oh yeah.

That
was definitely more like it.

Darla waved and Sam practically sprinted halfway to him, then stopped, finding his sense of restraint. We were like little kids picked to go to Disney World, except we were getting paid to go to the resort.

We were the entertainment. Hired help. Artists. Anything but vacationers.

And when the crew got there and realized what Eden really was, we would realize how appropriate our band name was.

Darla

A limo? A real, actual limo? I knew we needed to go from the big jet plane to something the guys kept calling a “puddle jumper,” which I hoped was a joke, because a plane too small to jump a puddle made no sense at all.

Neither did having sex in an airplane bathroom or picking up a naked dude on the highway, but whatever…

The limo ride was short. Real short. Like, we could have walked to the plane in five minutes short. It seated eight, and there were the six of us and a single woman who looked more nervous than me. 

Not possible.

We made eye contact and I gave her as friendly a grin as I could without looking like Pennywise the Clown. “Hi,” we said simultaneously, then laughed. She looked a lot like Amy, with long, brown hair and an intellectual air that made me think she might be a librarian, too.

“I’m Darla,” I said.

“Leila. Leila Connors.” She dipped her eyes down and then caught mine again. “And you’re on the island because...?”

“Rock band.”

Her eyes took in our group, lingering just long enough on Liam to make me wonder.

“And you?” I asked.

“Romance novelist.”

Amy sat up like someone had stroked her spine with a broomstick from ass to neck. “You write romances? Contemporary or historical? Or some subniche? Maybe I’ve read you!”

Leila paled a little, and she seemed completely nonplussed by the questions. The limo halted and suddenly the doors opened before we could hear her answer.

Blinding sun hit us as we scrambled out to shouts over the sound of jet engines coming in and out of a melody of supersonic proportions. I think we spent more time loading our crap into the trunk and getting it back out than we did actually riding in the limo. Opening the door, though, I kind of understood.

The air felt like a blast furnace being opened.

“It’s hot!” I shouted, the road of airplane engines deafening. At least my hands and earlobes had come back, along with my mind. Note to self: never, ever eat any pill given to me by Joe or Trevor. I was Alice in Wonderland for a while there. Alice in Wonderland caught in an episode of
Girls
.

“It’s Miami!” Amy called back, laughing.

Someone other than us weighed and loaded our luggage, and a small group of five people, including Leila, experienced the same procedure. Then a woman I assumed to be the pilot came on over.

“I’m Joely,” she announced, reaching over to shake each of our hands. She looked to be just a few years older than us, and her eyes were awfully familiar, ’cause they looked just like mine. The rest of us was different—her hair was long and wavy, and she had a tight, compact athlete’s body, where mine looked like the landscape of a woman who happily taste tests chocolate truffles for a living.

Joely wore khaki shorts and a black polo shirt without a logo on it. “How long is the flight?” Trevor asked, eying a tiny little plane that looked like you could shrink it right down and tuck it in your pocket.

“Two hours.”

I groaned. Couldn’t help it. Joely laughed, an open, friendly sound that put me at ease. Or maybe the remainder of the drugs Joe and Trevor shoved in me did that. Hard to tell the difference.

“It’ll fly by.” Our turn to groan, a collective sound of fun and excitement.

Liam took a step closer to Joely, the wind whipping his hair around that strong, cocky face, the sunshine enhancing his golden-boy features. He put a (over) friendly hand on Joely’s shoulder. “I’m sure the time passes well in the hands of our capable pilot.” He looked like he wouldn’t mind joining the Mile-High Club with her.

Joely’s friendliness cooled considerably as she moved away from his touch and went officious. Liam didn’t need to be told twice.

“Now comes the unpleasant part,” she said. “Need to know your weight.”

“Our weight?”

She hooked a thumb toward the plane. “There’s a weight limit for the trips. I can generally handle six passengers plus luggage, but we always double check. Water landings are no fun if they’re unplanned.”

My shakes returned. Joe picked up on it immediately and put an arm around my waist. “It’ll be fine,” he murmured. Trevor added his hand on my hip and I relaxed.

A little.

People began reciting their weights to Joely, and all the numbers began with a one. Shit.

Mine didn’t.

I was about to make us crash, or be left here like the fat girl excluded for her weight, and no one wants to be
that
person. I wasn’t worried about the actual fact of my weight. It’s a number. Numbers are things—they aren’t biased, and they don’t carry morals or shame or worry. They just
are
.

Unfortunately, in the real world, numbers attached to the mass of my body carried way, way more than just a measurement value.

Joely was professional, jotting down the weights, and when she came to me I said my number. Not a blink. Not a comment from anyone. Not a single damn—

“Holy cow!” a voice shouted behind me.

A huge lump filled my throat, because that voice was one I knew.

And it emphasized the word “cow.”

Joe’s arm tensed, and I looked up to see his jaw clenched so hard he could snap a steel rod between his teeth.

“One-twelve,” that voice said sweetly to Joely, who hadn’t asked her. Joely didn’t even look up from her clipboard. She scratched a few numbers and then turned away, walking over to and motioning to the other group. She explained they were next, and she was taking our group first.

Then she trotted back to us and tapped Trevor, Amy, Sam, and Liam on the shoulders. “Go ahead,” she said. Those green eyes were mad.

Pissed, even. I knew that look.

Joe looked at Trevor, then behind me, then nervously at me, holding back. Trevor stayed put.

“It’s okay. I can handle myself,” I whispered. “Suzy Nutjob can’t do anything to me I can’t do back.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Joe said. But I slapped his ass playfully and he gave me a warped grin.

Trevor stayed put.

“She’s nuts, Darla. Cuckoo. Whacko.”

“I am right behind you, Trevor Connor. I can hear every word.” We both turned around to see Suzy standing there with her phone in hand, typing away with two thumbs, refusing eye contact.