Crocodile Dan D Read online

“Actually I get the newest model iPhones before they’re even released.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have taken you for a techie.”

  “My buddy works at Apple so they give a few out to certain target markets to test. Maybe they figure it needs to be simple enough for a guy like me to be able to handle. If I can figure it out anyone can.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re smarter than you’re giving yourself credit for. I have to ask though. What does the next iPhone look like?”

  “You want to see?”

  “You have it with you?”

  “I have to test it out right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to see it.”

  “Okay, but it’s really important you don’t tell anyone you saw it or disclose any of the functionality of it. It could get me, and my friend in a lot of trouble. I had to sign a bunch of long and fancy paperwork given to me by some attorneys in suits that cost more than this combie in order for me to be a part of the testing program.”

  “My lips are sealed,” I say.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay. I’m taking a big risk here, but here we go.”

  He reaches into the console on the side panel of his door. He keeps the future release of an iPhone in there? The one people would give an arm and a leg for and he’s got it stashed in that little door pocket that most people cram maps and fast food wrappers into?

  He removes his hand from the door panel and bring it across his body and over the top of the center console separating his seat from mine.

  “You can fit it in your hand?”

  “Yeah, their latest technology. It’s revolutionary and groundbreaking.”

  “I mean you’ve got big hands, but still. This I’ve got to see.”

  I think back to when he had those hands wrapped around my waist and how easily he maneuvered me, lifting me, carrying me and setting me down. His hands are definitely the biggest and strongest I’ve ever seen, or felt, but still. An iPhone that fits into his mitts?

  “Hold out your hands,” he says.

  I do, placing them right under his.

  “Closer. I don’t want us to accidentally fumble the exchange.”

  “Okay,” I say bringing my hands right up and underneath his.

  “Sure you’re not going to tell anyone.”

  “I’m sure. The tension is killing me.”

  “Okay. Here…it…is!” he says.

  His hand opens and the phone drops into mine.

  My eyes dart across it but I see the word…Nokia?

  “This is one of those old brick phones!”

  “You didn’t really think did ya?”

  “Uhhh!” I pretend throwing the phone out the window.

  “Hey! I need to call my mom with that phone.”

  “Sorry, it’s gone now.”

  The van comes screeching to a halt and suddenly we’re on the shoulder of the road heading in reverse.

  He looks over his shoulder to steer and then looks at me.

  I hold up the phone.

  “You bugger!”

  “Got ya back!” I say.

  He looks angry, but quickly cracks a smile.

  “Got me at my own game.”

  He reaches for the phone, but I pull it back. His hand then darts down for that area of my thigh just above my knee. He squeezes it causing me to laugh uncontrollably, but it also sends a feeling up my inner thigh and right to my privates. That was unexpected.

  “Hey!” I say.

  For the next few hours we listen to songs, tease each other, play “I Spy” and just enjoy the afternoon.

  The afternoon turns to evening which turns to night.

  The sunset was amazing and I can only imagine how the sunrises will be seeing that we’re on the East Coast.

  I imagine what it would be like waking up in his arms in a tent watching the waves roll in at Byron Bay.

  Hopefully I won’t have to imagine.

  Just after midnight we pull into the hippyish little surf community. Even in the dark it looks like paradise.

  My first thought is I never want to leave.

  I’m not just talking about here. I’m talking about him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ruby

  I’ve had one heck of a day and I should be running on fumes, but somehow I’ve got energy.

  We’ve not been in town an hour and we already have our tent set up and are making friends amongst a group of artists who are sitting around a bonfire playing acoustic guitar under the moonlight reflecting off the bay.

  If this isn’t paradise I don’t know what is.

  This is the life I had imagined with a certain someone else. Someone who apparently thought we were just on a trial run, or was it he was having a trial run with my bestie? Ex-bestie.

  Either way I wasn’t put on this earth to be someone’s trial run. I’m here to give my all to someone and someone to give their all to me. Nothing less. Is that too much to ask? I certainly don’t think so.

  I want to love fully and feel that full and complete love in return. That will never happen without honesty, attraction, and a bit of excitement thrown in.

  I’m definitely attracted to Dan, and he seems to be honest so far, and he’s got the excitement part covered in spades.

  But then he ups the ante a little too far.

  “Anyone up for some four x?”

  I look around the campfire and count the people. There are two other girls so I’m guessing he’s talking about me, them and him?

  Am I missing something here or have I just been tricked into jumping out of a relationship with one jerk and into a soon to be very short-term adventure with another? That’s definitely going to be the case if he’s trying for a ménage à trois plus one more.

  “I’m in,” one of the girls says with a smile.

  “For sure,” another girl says.

  I knew Dan was attractive, but I didn’t realize he was that attractive. It’s not a particularly attractive trait to me anyways to do such a thing. Not at all.

  “Great. I’ll be right back,” he says.

  I start thinking of ways how I’m going to slide out before he gets back, but he’s back before I even have time to properly plan my escape.

  He’s carrying a big brown bag and he pulls out a bottle of beer, pops off the cap, and hands it to me.

  It would have been the perfect ending to a long day, but not anymore. No amount of social lubrication is going to convince me to try something that involves multiple sex partners. Not now. Not ever.

  I reach for it anyways, not wanting to be a Debbie Downer, figuring it will make the perfect excuse to slide out to the restroom and escape in about half an hour.

  “I think you’re going to like it, especially if you’ve never tried it before,” he says.

  I want to get up and slap him, but instead I just stare into those hazel eyes of his. Those same eyes that mesmerized me before are now getting my thousand-yard battlefield stare. The one where you’ve been in the thick of battle and are ready to go again. At least that’s what the war movies my dad used to watch led me to believe about this mythical stare.

  He plays it off like it’s nothing handing out the other beers.

  I look at the bottle and take a swig. I need to calm down.

  It tastes pretty good. As I remove it from my lips I turn the bottle to look at the label.

  Suddenly I spit out the beer and start laughing uncontrollably.

  Beer comes out my nose and I begin coughing and wheezing.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, consoling me.

  It takes me at least a full minute to even be able to speak. Someone hands me a paper towel and I try and tidy up my face.

  Thank god it’s dark out.

  “Oh my god. When you asked who was up for a four x I thought you meant something else.”

  “What else would…I…mean?” he says, suddenly realizing what was on my mind. “You dirty little girl!”

  “You’ve
never four x’ed before?” one of the girls asks.

  “You never forget your first time,” the other girl says.

  “I certainly won’t now!” I say.

  I hold my beer up to my face and point at the label. XXXX.

  Over the course of the night I learn it’s Australia’s most popular beer, and not some kind of kinky sexual fantasy.

  I’m glad I didn’t huff and puff off like I initially thought, or even slide out as had been my backup plan.

  I don’t know why I’m so uptight, or even why I hadn’t left until a couple more beers.

  It’s because of him.

  I just can’t get the idea of him out of my head.

  I like nothing more than to read a good book and I’ve read plenty of damsel in distress novellas before, but I never ever in a million years considered any of them to be something that could actually happen.

  I mean, that’s why a book costs money right? You pay for the fantasy.

  But I got the fantasy. The real live thing.

  And I’m not about to let it go.

  Especially when it has a sexy accent, a hot body, and is more mature than any guy I’ve ever met. Even my uncles aren’t anywhere near this mature. They buy their favorite football player’s jerseys off the internet for big games and then wears them in public. And they have the other man’s name across the back.

  But this guy doesn’t even wear shirts half the time. And by the build of him he looks like he’s an athlete himself. Not even a former athlete, but a professional right now.

  How did he get enough money to travel like this after all? Aren’t most guys his age working somewhere? Have to be somewhere in the morning?

  The night continues and as the temperature drops and the alcohol flows I somehow find myself cuddled up in his arms underneath a blanket next to the fire.

  Eventually everyone has retreated to their tents and it’s just the two of us.

  “This is really incredible,” I say.

  “You’re incredible. Your skin. The way it looks in this light. The reflection of the moon off the water makes you look even more like an angel than you already are.”

  I close my eyes and breath in and smile before breathing it out and letting my body melt even further into his protective human comfy seat.

  But when I open my eyes the moonlight is gone, replaced with his face just inches from mine.

  My eyes close again but this time I’m not the one kissing him for keeping me alive with the air in my lungs to inhale in the smell and experience the joy of moments just like these.

  It’s him that’s ready to take my breath away.

  And he does as he kisses me softly and instantly I know I’m a goner.

  I’m his.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ruby

  He scoops me up in his arms and carries me down to the beach. We’re still making out along the way, but still he’s a sure-footed as a Billy goat up in the mountains.

  I smell the saltwater in the air mixed with the scent of him. I’ve never smelled someone like him before. It’s not the kind of scent you can bottle up and sell at the mall. It’s something that’s earned naturally. He literally smells like excitement. It’s like the smell of fear from an adrenaline rushing sport like surfing big waves and mixed it with the smell of the droplets that spray when that wave crashes and then added in something woodsy and masculine just to top it off.

  I imagine it’s from a life of living like this. Traveling around in a van, sleeping nowhere and anywhere at the same time.

  And then it hits me. He’s the smell of freedom.

  The smell of not having a nine-to-five. The scent of no commitments. That crispness of the wind guiding you forward, but in a direction that neither you nor anyone else knows.

  He’s more than just a person, as silly as that sounds. He’s an emotion and he makes you feel that emotion. That excitement. That motivation to believe in yourself and know you can do anything you want.

  And right now I believe there’s no-one in the world who’s as motivated to feel exactly what he’s been teasing me with in those swim trunks of his all day than me.

  A few minutes later we’re down on the beach in an area tucked back and secluded.

  He kneels down and lays the blanket out on the sand still cradling me with his other arm and balancing me across his knees.

  “Are you cold?” he asks.

  “Not when I’m with you.”

  “Good. Because I want to make you feel even hotter.”

  “I want that.”

  He lays me out on the blanket and I look up at the clear night sky in wonderment at how amazing this day has been. This day which I wanted to end as quickly as possible when it first started, and now I don’t want it to ever end…and so far it hasn’t. Not even close.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with what I want to do to you?”

  “Well I figure if you were going to do something that could hurt me you would have already done it,” I say.

  “No jokes. Not now.”

  “I just wanted to have a little f—.”

  “When I’m in I’m all the way in,” he says cutting me off in mid sentence with his intensity.

  He’s often so laid back, but I do see a serious side in him and I like it…a lot.

  “And I don’t want you to make a decision when you’ve had too many. I want to make sure you’re sure before we go any further.”

  “Thank you for thinking of me and giving me the power and the choice. If more guys were like you we’d have a lot less problems in the world, especially on college campuses where I read all kinds of bad things happening.”

  “You have to be in control. You have to have just as much power. This is a two-way street to both give and receive. That’s the only way we can both joy it to the fullest.”

  “I agree.”

  “But tonight it’s a one way street. This is all about you, but in being so it will be all about me too. There’s nothing more I want than to please you right now, because it’s going to please me even more.”

  A slight moan escapes my lips. These aren’t lines. This is real. He’s real and it’s sending my desires too high too fast.

  “When I watch you writhe and squirm with pleasure begging me to stop because it’s too intense but also begging me to continue because it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced in your entire life and you never will. Not from anyone other than me that is.”

  “I want that.”

  “You want it, but can you handle the responsibility that comes with it. To know that once you get a taste there will be no other man that will ever satisfy you like I can, nor would you ever even consider anyone else but me.”

  “I’m ready to try and find out.”

  “There is no try. Believe me. You’ll be ruined forever so if you decide to say yes, just know that if this somehow turns into a vacation memory you’ll never find another memory or man who can give you what I’m about to give you.”

  His confidence and bluntness have me dripping wet. Like wring me out and watch the water pour wet.

  Wetter than my boyfriend ever made me. The same guy who made me wait for sex and then under-delivered each and every time, but still I stayed with him. This guy is the complete opposite and from his body language he’s not even going to start with sex…at least not the traditional kind.

  His head is moving further down south. To that area where my ex always said, “Pussies and purses are pockets for parasites.” What a misogynistic jerk.

  But the only kind of jerk that’s hear now is the jerk that’s present in my leg as he slides his hands across my thighs and looks down at my pussy like it’s a prize that he’ll worship and cherish like no other.

  “I want it. I want you. I don’t want to try. I want to give into you entirely. To trust you completely. To let you show me things I don’t know and teach me things I’m not even aware of.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean and what I need to do.”

  “Do
it. Do it to me.”

  “You ready for me to do things with my tongue that if I told you now you wouldn’t even think were possible?”