“Holy shitballs! That slide is motherfluffing tall!” Cassie shouted at an ear-piercing level, officially waking me up for the morning.
Thatch smirked and flashed his signature wink in her direction. “Hold on tight to those glorious tits when you ride down it. Okay, honey? I’d prefer if Atlantis didn’t see my wife’s nipples.” He reached out and wrapped a greedy palm around one of her breasts. “These are mine.”
She slapped his hand away and flipped him the bird. “Pretty sure these are currently baby Ace’s property.”
“We’re sharing, honey,” Thatch corrected.
Cassie placed a hand to the free hip that little Ace wasn’t occupying. “Awww, are you jealous, Daddy? You want Mommy to breastfeed you, too?”
Despite my preference to veer right the fuck off Cass and Thatch’s favorite destination of Pervy Lane, I didn’t even bother trying to stop the train of crazy, knowing full well my wife would most likely dive in front of it herself in three…two…one…
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Georgia muttered and then pointed a finger in Thatch’s face. “Do not answer that.”
He just laughed, and Cassie smiled like the Cheshire cat.
For some insane reason that probably had something to do with my wife’s persuasive good morning smile, naked body, and sex-themed bribery, we were spending the morning with the entire group—party crashers Cassie and Thatch, included—exploring the water park portion of Atlantis in the Bahamas.
It was a Mavericks’ team-building trip with a bonus of press exposure and positive marketing. At least, that was how my wife had presented it to my best friend and her boss, Wes Lancaster.
Georgia was a brilliant woman, and as such, had an amazing ability to multitask, but I had a feeling this trip was about thirty percent work and seventy percent all-expenses-paid vacation.
I had absolutely no objection to this. My wife was happy, something she was often, but never often enough in my opinion. Plus, I could see so much of her skin in her little white bikini I thought I might spontaneously combust.
It was a combination I couldn’t have cooked up in several business meetings, and I hadn’t even had to lift a finger. Yeah, I was a happy guy.
“But seriously, that slide is huge!” Cassie shouted with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at the giant display of a very fake, probably cardboard, ancient Mayan temple.
“Yeah, it’s almost as big as your husband,” Wes muttered back, much to Winnie’s and Thatch’s enjoyment. There wasn’t much Thatch liked better than being recognized for his size.
Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I heard it right when you did. He’s corrupted all of us.
“I’m not going down that thing!” Georgia yelled, planting her feet hip-wide and settling her hands on her hips.
She was so fucking adorable. And the view of her from behind in that little white bikini reminded me all too well of the moment she’d caught my attention in the first place. Hips swaying, unbelievably inappropriate singing, and so much goddamn genuineness I didn’t know what to do with it.
God, she had endeared me to my fucking core.
No, she’d said when I’d asked her out. Vehemently. The idea of a date with me had been almost repugnant, like she might throw up right there on my shoes. But luckily, she hadn’t done that. No. She had been intrigued, maybe a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place. And fuck, I had been sure if she would agree to just one date, she’d be something.
I had been wrong, though.
Because now I knew she wasn’t just something, she was everything.
“Come on, Wheorgie,” Cassie encouraged. “It’ll be like going to Pound Town with Big-dick. A little water pressure on your puss-ay, a quick jaunt through a shark tank, and a swim in the pool on the other side.”
“Sharks?” Georgia shrieked, ignoring everything else in her best friend’s pitch with an ability none of the rest of us possessed.
Winnie giggled, still new enough to be shocked by Cassie when she opened her mouth, and Wes pulled her close, happy to feel the laughter of the woman he loved roll through him.
All the while, Thatch looked on like he had everything he’d ever wanted, and as their son Ace squirmed in Cassie’s arms, I was fairly certain he did.
“You were supposed to be selling it,” I muttered through a laugh, remembering her minor—read as major—freak out over a stingray during our honeymoon in Bora Bora. I hoped, if only for the sake of the people around us, that Georgia’s ranting didn’t attain the same caliber and decibel it had there.
Thatch tapped me on the shoulder before pushing me out of the way and scooping my wife into his arms. “Hold on tight, Georgia girl.”
Her surprised yelp made Lexi, standing close at Winnie’s side, reach up to cover her ears. “Thatch!” Georgia yelled as his monster legs ate up the hot concrete between us and the stairs to the slide. “Put me down, you ogre!” she kept on, pulling the eyes of several families and wanderers around us. “I said I wasn’t doing it, and that’s final.”
It was all fun and games until it wasn’t. My eyes got round as I watched my friend’s hand connect with the perfect flesh of my wife’s ass.
“Hey!” I snapped as the completely floored words, “Excuse me?” left Georgia’s mouth.
“Dude, not cool,” Wes chided, and the sound of his new, relationship-involved thinking almost made me smile again.
“Relax,” Thatch placated. “I’m a father now.”
“So…what?” Winnie asked with a laugh. “You think that means you can spank whomever you want?”
“Absolutely,” he responded.
“You can spank me,” Cassie offered magnanimously at the same time.
“Thatch.” His eyes came to me slowly, and he lifted his hands away from her legs in a show of surrender. “Put her down.”
He bent forward instantly, dropping her to her feet in less than a second. When she swayed from the sudden change, every set of hands in our group reached out to steady her. But it was mine that met the warm hum of her skin as my mouth found her ear. “You okay?”
“Why?” she asked. Confused by her words, I had to pull back to look her in the eyes.
“Why are we friends with them?” she clarified adorably, huffing the wild hair out of her face and pulling it into a temporary ponytail with hands at the back of her neck.
Normally, I would have agreed with her, wondered and whined with the best of them. But today, all I could do was smile.
Because for the past few months, having Thatch, Cassie, Wes, and Winnie as our friends had proved invaluable to a man desperate to distract his wife from the one thing that seemed to weigh down her eyes and her heart with every breath she took.
Since before Thatch and Cassie’s unexpected conception, my Benny and I had been trying to do the same thing. We had been trying to make a little baby of our own.
And trust me, I’d fully given trying my most valiant effort, but while orgasms seemed to abound, they were the only thing. No babies to fill our house and distract me from Walter and Stan and their moony eyes, and no signs that we’d ever get there.
The more she stressed, the more I did. Georgia was all I would ever need, but the way she wanted a little combination of the two of us burned in me too. I wanted it for me, and I wanted it for her. I wanted it for us.
Thankfully, every time Thatch bought another set of binoculars or Cassie found a new, creative, and sometimes, even painful, way to prank her ogre of a husband, my wife had another reason to smile.
It was unconventional, but we each had unique things to contribute to the group, and Cassie and Thatch, the freaking lunatics, weren’t any different.
“Because Thatch makes us money and Cassie does your eyeliner,” I finally answered with a smirk.
She narrowed her eyes. I knew exactly what it meant. “No, never again,” I responded immediately with a shake of my head. “I tried doing your makeup once, and you saw how that turned out!”
“You just need practice,” she argued, and I laughed.
“Maybe you just need to practice on yourself, Benny.”
“It’s not the same!” she retorted with a stomp of her adorable little foot. “My cat eyes get all out of whack when I close one eye to try to do them.”
I raised a confused eyebrow. “What the fuck is a cat eye?”
“Um, excuse me,” Wes butted in without actually meaning his words. “Are you sliding or not?”
“Yes,” I answered at the same time Georgia said, “No.”
“There’s a whole seven or eight inches of plexiglass tube between you and the sharks, Benny.”
“No,” she refused again.
“Okay, well…” Wes muttered. “We’re gonna head up without you guys. See you after.”
“I’ll get pictures on the bridge as you come down!” Cassie offered, shifting Ace to her other arm, kissing Thatch on the lips with a whole fuckload of tongue, and then heading that way.
Georgie, Georgie, Georgie…
“Fun or torture?” I asked with a smile, pulling her toward me with spread hands on her hips.
She rolled her eyes. “Fun. Obviously.”
“Pool or ocean?”
Now she was looking at me like I was stupid. “Pool, obviously,” I answered myself, and she nodded.