Hot Laps (12 page)

“I only have one more I really want to ask,” he said against the sensitive skin of
my neck just below my ear.

“And what’s that?”

He pulled back completely and let his hand fall from the wall to reach for his beer
he had set down on a table next to us. Then his eyes met mine again. “Can I kiss you?”

A few thoughts scrambled around in my not so smart at times brain. A few of which
I just decided to ignore but one was Charlie for God knows what reason.

This was his fault. You don’t tell a girl like me to stay away from someone and then
expect her not to fuck him senseless for the pure principal of it all.

Just when I was thinking this, I realized that Casten is really close to me again
and had set his beer down allowing his hands to be free.

So what did I do? I grabbed him by his bare shoulders and pulled those soft lips to
mine. And, oh, was his mouth soft, and his lips were warm, and the stubble on his
face was coarse and he tasted like beer mixed with mint. I’m all for this kissing
so I ran my tongue along his lower lip and his mouth opened, his tongue meeting mine.

I felt his hand snake around my back and down until it was resting securely on my
ass and pulled my body into his. He was those same hard lines I felt before, soft
skin and
oh damn
, I’ve lost focus.

Before I could really attack him like I wanted, maybe test out those recliners I noticed
in the distance, Anna interrupted us.

“Hey, asshole, where’s the hard shit?”

Casten chuckled against my lips, his eyes opening but not moving from mine, and gave
Anna a grin. “Asshole?”

Anna tipped her cup at him.

“I’m a feisty drunk. Now,” she leaned into him completely comfortable with her proximity
between us, “how about the hard shit. I don’t want to remember a goddamn thing tomorrow
except that I had a
good
fucking time.”

“Well then, follow me ladies,” he tipped his head toward the kitchen and we followed.

By Anna saying she didn’t want to remember anything, none of us were sure to remember.
That’s just how it was when you partied with Anna. And I soon found out that’s how
you partied with the Riley family, too.

I really wanted to continue with the kissing and being alone with Casten but the party
ramped up a notch and, well, I had to keep up. By the time I looked around, there
were people everywhere. You could barely move inside the house.

It started when the stove had caught on fire at some point, no doubt by Rosa. Casten
got the fire put out fairly quickly.

The carpet caught on fire, too. No one but Cole knew how and he refused to tell anyone.

I wasn’t exactly comfortable seeing it, but people were literally having sex everywhere.
Most kept it in bedrooms but there was the occasional instance where I’d walk around
the corner and see people fucking up against a wall or outside in the lounge chairs.
I saw more tits and dick at their party than I ever cared to see. It was like the
filming of some porno.

When Casten noticed, he’d yell at them to find a room, not his or his parents, but
to do it in a more private place.

I’ve been to parties before. Many parties, but nothing like this.

I’m sure Sway wouldn’t have appreciated this, but Cole and Casten had a fashion show
with her clothes. And Nathan filmed it without Casten’s knowledge. When he found out,
Cole had to separate Nathan and Casten. I didn’t really think of Casten as an aggressive
guy but certain things pissed him off and he wasn’t at all afraid to let you know
it when it happened.

They had inflatable bounce houses and couches setup outside with a stage. An actual
stage.

As they were setting up, Casten led me outside and I thought maybe this was our chance
to be alone. But no, Nathan, his friend, followed us to the field.

“What are we doing?” I held onto Casten’s arm trying not to trip on the uneven ground.

“Grape jelly.”

“What?”

I kept in step with Casten as we walked, Nathan right beside us, walking and talking,
telling me about everything they had planned for the night.

Nathan was a trip. Wavy blonde hair, brown eyes, tall and slender and talkative. He
had a story for everything and if you weren’t talking, he was. I don’t think he liked
silence. I noticed and told Casten he was wrong about his friends not being annoying.

He looked at me, still walking, and then at Nathan. “He talks in his sleep, too.”

Nathan ignored the both of us and kept talking, as if we said nothing.

“What are you doing with the jelly?”

Casten waggled his eyebrows, smiling wider than before. “You’ll see, pretty girl.”
His hand raised and brushed away from my clothes what I assumed was specks of ash
from the bonfire in the field.

Pretty girl?

I liked that. I liked it a lot.

My eyes caught his in the light. I felt warm and cozy all over, my hand in his. I
don’t think I’d ever held hands with someone, aside from Anna.

It felt nice.

When we got closer, I saw Noah out there leaned against a U-Haul truck.

With his arms crossed over his chest, Noah grinned wide and gestured with a tip of
his head inside. “They gave us two free boxes!”

Casten looked at the boxes and then to Noah, straight faced. “Did you tip Kevin for
getting them so quickly?”

“Yeah.”

Casten and Noah lifted boxes and started carrying them to the pool a hundred feet
away, so Nathan and I did the same.

I did find out about that jelly.

Within ten minutes we stood beside the pool with hundreds of boxes of grape jelly.
The boys contemplated how exactly it was going to work considering it was still filled
with water.

“You’re going to put jelly in the pool?” I asked, not entirely surprised.

“That’s the plan.”

“Won’t your parents kill you for that?”

Casten looked up to the sky, as if he had to think about it. “Last time I threw a
party I landed a car in this pool. I think jelly is a lot safer.”

Noah scratched his head. “There’s roughly thirty-four-thousand gallons of water in
there … that’s like nearly four million ounces so,” he looked at the jar in his hand,
“that would be like three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand jars of jelly. Give or take.”

Casten and I looked at each other, drinks in hand, too drunk to add any of that up.
It’s not like I would ever been able to add like that any other time either. Sober
or not.

“How should we do it?” Nathan put his arm around me and Casten, leaning forward between
us. “Drain the pool?”

Casten immediately shook his head stepping away from Nathan and pointing to the water,
and then regarding Nathan again. “No way. Have you ever drained a pool before?”

“No.”

“We’re not doing it.” Casten seemed adamant and I was beginning to understand that
if Casten told his friends no, they listened. He wasn’t into peer pressure.

“Okay,” Nathan seemed annoyed with Casten, but his voice evened out. “Well, what do
we do then?”

“What if you just pour it in there with the water?” I suggested, timidly holding my
drink at my lips and talking around the red Solo cup. “It’d be like a smoothie.”

Just then Anna came outside in her bra and underwear ready to swim. “Are you putting
that shit in the pool?”

“Yeah.” Casten, Noah and Nathan said together, watching Anna twirl around to the music
from the band in the field.

Anna’s eyes went wide. “I wanna be the first in!”

Cole came outside next. Gone was his hat and shorts leaving him in black boxer shorts.
“We doing this shit or what?”

I had a feeling this had been planned for a while since all these guys knew about
it. And where would this many jelly jars be purchased just before a party? It was
definitely planned.

Cole stopped beside Anna and looked at us. With a beer lazily at his side, a lit cigarette
hung from his lips.

Casten reached up and took the cigarette out of his mouth. “You look ridiculous,”
he seemed aggravated with Cole. “Stop that shit. And put that fucking camera away!”

Cole ignored him and wrapped his arm around Anna but did set the camera down on the
ground. “Just dump the jelly in the water.”

“Yeah,” Rosa came stumbling out of the house, dancing with floaties on her arms. “Pour
that shit in!”

So we did.

Naturally they didn’t have the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand jars so they dumped
what they had.

Five hundred jars of grape jelly.

I will say that swimming in your bra and underwear in jelly is rather strange and
I wished it was strawberry. I wasn’t a big fan of grape.

There were a few problems with grape jelly in a swimming pool. It was like quicksand,
thick and dense. If you went under, as a lot of us did by accident when we decided
to play chicken, you couldn’t get back up without assistance.

After a few people needed CPR, we all got out.

Have you ever seen that movie
Poltergeist
when Carol Anne is rescued and she comes out in the slimy after birth looking shit?

That’s what it reminded me of when you looked around at all of us covered in jelly.

Most ridiculous shit I’ve ever seen.

“We didn’t exactly think that through.” Noah said to Casten, trying to get grape jelly
out of his ear.

Casten didn’t say anything but smiled at me and licked some off my cheek.

Thankfully the sprinklers came on at midnight and most everyone decided to run through
his parent’s beautiful landscaping and river-rock beds to clean off.

After that, if anyone had some sort of party foul, they were pushed inside the afterbirth
as it was now being called.

I stood there, not exactly wanting to run through the sprinklers and licking jelly
off my forearm when Casten looked at me, holding concern, and then at the jelly on
his skin. He gave me the weirdest look right then.

“I’ll be right back,” he turned then and jogged inside the house.

Nathan came up to me, handing me a vanilla Monster energy drink and a bottle of whip
cream vodka. “He won’t admit it to anyone, especially us, but the dude’s got issues
with shit on his skin. Freaks him out if it’s sticky.”

“Good to know.”

I made a mental note to test this theory later.

After four shots of vodka and half the energy drink, Casten returned wearing a new
pair of shorts and sparkly clean skin.

“Better?”

“Come on,” he took me by my sticky hand and led me to the outdoor shower to clean
off.

The band started up after that, rocking Casten’s favorite music idol. Strange enough
it was Kenny Chesney who he idolized but he did enjoy some Steve Miller, too.

He asked me to dance with him when they played “True Fine Love.”

Casten was unlike anyone I’ve ever met in my life.

I was convinced by one in the morning that he was my soul-mate.

And though I wanted desperately to give this engine builder’s piston a good workout,
it didn’t come to that. We kissed a lot, mostly while dancing but I was having so
much fun that, for once, sex wasn’t on my mind.

Having a good fucking time was.

Everywhere I looked, people were doing the same.

Just past the bounce house that had about twenty bags of packing peanuts inside of
it was Rosa, passed out in a lounge chair, still covered in jelly and wearing her
floaties.

Anna and Cole were nowhere in sight and Nathan and Noah were setting off fireworks.

As people began to pass out and the night’s sky was lit by the bonfire and fireworks
bursting ever so often, Casten and I danced in the same field he apparently set on
fire a few years back.

“Were your parents pissed?”

Casten laughed, his lips at my ear swaying to a slower song. “Yeah, they were pretty
pissed.”

“You think they’ll be mad about this?”

“Oh yeah,” his laugh shook my chest with his. “I may need a place to stay. You got
a place?”

“I live with a butthole.” My hands moved over his bare chest, the light hair dusting
his hand feeling oh so nice. “You could take his room if you want.”

He watched my hands moving over him and then looked up at me with his chin bent forward,
only his eyes on mine. “Sounds good.”

I was about to ask him why he was staring at me like he wanted to ask a question when
his right hand that was on my waist moved slowly up to my neck and tilted my head.

Trailing his lips from my ear, over my jaw and then to my own, soft pillow lips moving
with mine his kiss was sweet. Slow at first, then building with passion. He tasted
like vanilla, so sweet, so tasty. I love kissing, I do. But it’s a slow agony when
it comes to Casten Riley because he makes me want so much more.

I think he knew and his right hand, the one that was gripping my waist slipped a little
further south and we still swayed to the music in our own private shadow of the bonfire.
More importantly, his hands found their way around to the waistband at the front of
my jeans.

Dip it low, baby, dip it low!

And he did.

Good boy. Good fucking boy!

I hadn’t been touched like that down there since eighth grade biology when Caleb Rushing
told me he wanted to conduct his own experiment and finger fucked me into a state
of bliss I didn’t know existed at the young age of thirteen.

At first, Casten’s touch was soft, his eyes watching mine to see where I would allow
him to take this. Then, slowly, when he knew I wasn’t about to stop him, he gave me
one of his fingers, and then another.

Let me tell you, he had talented hands.

“Do you know what a dynamometer is, Hayden?” he whispered in my ear, holding me tight
against the front of his body. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, wanting to
wrap my legs around him too. Looking over his shoulder, no one was paying any mind
to us.

Then I kissed the side of his neck and watched as his shoulders slumped, slightly
bending into me.

“No,” I squeaked out, holding on for dear life. Pulling back, I blinked at him and
then it dawned on me exactly what he was doing.