“Gavin, are you riding with us tomorrow?” Dwayne asked.
Justin’s cousin Dwayne was a stocky ex-Marine and a member of the Dark Knights. He gave off an I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude, but his eyes told a different story, revealing the grief he carried from the loss of his younger sister to suicide several years earlier.
“Probably not,” Gavin said. He leaned against the wall, watching Cory take his shot.
“Pussy whipped?” Dwayne glanced at Justin, who shrugged. “You missed last weekend, too.”
“Sorry, dude. My girl is way hotter than you guys.” Gavin smirked.
“True that,” Justin said as he walked around the pool table assessing his next shot.
Gavin pushed from the wall and patted Dwayne’s shoulder. “This weekend is all hers.”
“He’s just jealous,” Cory said. “Dwayne’s going through a dry spell.”
Dwayne scoffed. “Dry spell my ass. I get more action than you could ever dream of.”
As the guys gave each other hell, Gavin’s mind reeled back to the prior afternoon, when he’d arrived home from work and found Harper swimming in the pond. The book she was reading for the book club lay on the dock beside her clothes, laptop, and a towel. She’d climbed up the ladder wearing a skimpy aqua bikini and a wanton look in her eyes. His sweet Harper had strutted determinedly toward him, hips swaying seductively, taut nipples pressing against the thin material of her bikini top. She’d crushed her mouth to his, devouring him like she’d been waiting all day to do it. She’d mumbled something about him reminding her of the hero in the book she was reading as she made quick work of opening his slacks. She’d dropped to her knees right there on the dock and taken his cock in her hands. Her gorgeous baby blues locked on his face as she teased the head of his shaft with her tongue. When she’d taken him to the back of her throat, the erotic sight of her loving him had nearly made him come. But he’d held out, enjoying every magnificent stroke, suck, and slick of her tongue. When she cupped his balls, giving them one perfect tug, he’d finally let go, and she’d swallowed everything he had to give. He’d swept her into his arms and carried her up to a lounge chair on the patio, where he’d stripped off her sexy little bikini bottoms and feasted on her until she’d come so many times, she’d fallen asleep in his arms.
Cory nudged Gavin. “Dude, Justin asked you a question.”
Gavin shook his head to try to clear his thoughts and said, “Shit, sorry, man. I must have zoned out.” His cock was at half-mast. He took a swig of his drink, forcing himself to think about algebra.
“I said, I picked up that client you referred me to. The Cachelles? They hired me to do the stonework for their guesthouse.” Justin’s lips curved up. “You didn’t tell me the woman was horny as a dog in heat.”
“Married?” Dwayne asked.
Justin nodded. “And hot.”
“Let me guess, you gave her what she wanted,” Cory said as he leaned over the pool table, lining up his shot. With a quick flick of his chin, his shaggy brown hair moved from in front of his eyes as he took the shot, knocking a ball into the side pocket.
“Think I’m an asshole?” Justin scoffed. “Let me rephrase that. I am an asshole, but not that big of an asshole.” He looked at Gavin and said, “A little warning would have been nice.”
“Hey, no one warned me,” Gavin said. “Serena has a field day reliving the way that woman hit on me.” The only woman he wanted to hit on him was out at Red River Beach, talking about the erotic novel he’d skimmed the other night when they were at her place. “Anyone feel like hitting Red River Beach?”
“Steph is at Red River tonight for a book club meeting,” Elliott Appleton said as he picked up Gavin’s and Cory’s empty glasses. Elliott had longish sandy-blond hair, wore wire-framed glasses, and knew every customer by name. He also had Down syndrome. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and said, “They read dirty books. Steph and Gabe blush when they read them.” Elliott’s older sister, Gabe, a vivacious, curvy redhead, owned Common Grounds.
They all laughed.
“Is Gabe in the book club?” Justin lifted his pool cue to line up his shot.
“No. She says she works too much,” Elliott said. “Are you in the book club, Gavin?”
“No. I think it’s only for chicks,” Gavin said.
Elliott said, “Then why do you want to go there? It’s too dark to swim.”
“Because his woman is there,” Dwayne explained.
Elliott nodded. “If I had a woman I’d go where she was instead of hanging out with these slackers, too.” He walked away chuckling.
Justin squinted as he took his shot and said, “Is Chloe in the book club?”
Gavin nodded. “Chloe, Daphne, Steph…”
“I’m in,” Dwayne said.
“I’m game,” Justin said with a devious grin.
“We’re in the middle of a game,” Cory complained.
“You can stay here and play with your balls,” Justin said. “We’ve got better things to do.”
“Stay here my ass.” Cory set his pool cue in the holder.
“Hey,” Gabe said as they plowed toward the front door. “Where are you guys hurrying off to?”
“Red River Beach,” Gavin said. “Crashing the book club meeting.”
“That’s very brave of you fools. Good luck with that,” she called after them.
THE BOOK CLUB meeting was even more fun than Harper had imagined. Harper sat on a blanket with Chloe, Daphne, and her new friend, Steph, a brown-eyed poet and herbal shop owner with red and purple streaks in her long dark hair. They’d cooked burgers on a portable grill and had eaten dinner as their long-distance members introduced themselves over Skype. Dixie, a gorgeous tattooed redhead, and her friend Izzy, a sassy brunette, from Maryland, and Paige, a pretty brunette with a sweet demeanor, from Upstate New York. Harper was surprised to find out that the club had hundreds of members across the United States, but many of them preferred the club’s online forums to in-person or video meetings.
They’d been chatting for quite a while, discussing the book and their lives in equal measure. Harper pulled her sweater tighter around her as a breeze swept up the beach.
“I’d love to know why you chose this book,” Paige said. “I hot pinked nearly half the book.”
“Hot pinked?” Daphne looked around the group. “Is that a sex term I don’t know about?”
Paige laughed. “No. I highlight typos and grammatical errors in hot pink on my ereader app.”
“What are you, the grammar police?” Dixie asked.
“I am. It’s a curse,” Paige said.
“It did have a lot of typos,” Steph agreed. “I should have paid more attention to the sample before choosing it. But it had more than seven hundred reviews the first week of release and I’d never even heard of the author. I figured it had to be good.”
Paige said, “I hadn’t heard of the author either. The author must have an amazing marketing team to get that many reviews that fast. Personally, I thought the hero was a little too demanding. He’s not my type of five-star hero.”