Prologue
Hayden
I’m going to hell.
That’s not news; I’ve known for a while. But as I fantasize—not for the first time—about my friend and business partner’s barely legal daughter, I have no doubt purgatory has an engraved throne waiting for me.
“Come on, slow poke!” Perrie Atkins grabs my hand and flips her gaze my way, her dark, wet hair clinging to her pale, so-soft skin.
She giggles as she drags me back into the simulated ocean to wait for another wave, her dimples flashing with rosy-cheeked excitement. I can’t not notice that her pink bikini bottoms, which are held up by little bows, reveal more of her ass than they conceal.
“Again?” I pretend to grouse.
I secretly love spending time with her.
Eight years ago, when I was fresh out of college and had just bought half of a successful construction business, not so much. But at the time, my partner, Dan, was a newly single father. Business was booming, projects were at a critical point…and I was green. So I pulled a lot of babysitting duty. After watching teen angst movies, baking cookies, teaching Perrie pre-algebra, holding her while she’d cried over her first crush, and bringing her to this water park a lot, I got to know her. And I found myself enjoying the witty, intrepid kid.
Then…puberty hit. Things changed. It was fine at first. Perrie was still cute, going on about anime that confused me and K-pop music. I loved teasing her about her “favorite tunes.” How could she possibly know which song she liked most when they were sung in Korean? She got a pixie cut before her sweet sixteen and sobbed afterward. But I managed to coax a smile out of her when I called her my brunette Tinkerbelle.
Then she decided to become a cheerleader her senior year. With her eighteenth birthday looming, and the skirts suddenly skimpy, I couldn’t deny that somewhere in the last few years of s’mores, arcade games, and bad B horror movies, she had grown up.
I didn’t feel like a proud “uncle” at all. I felt like a perv for recognizing that Perrie was totally fuckable. Worse, I was dying to be the man who proved just how true that was. My fixation only seems more real because I haven’t had sex in nearly a year. She’s the only woman I want.
Yeah, I’m going to hell.
“What’s the matter? Getting old?” she taunts. “Should I sign you up for AARP?”
I’m thirty—nowhere near retirement age. To her, I probably seem ancient. That’s depressing as hell.
“What do you know? You’re barely old enough to wipe your own ass.”
“Ha! Age is just a number. Besides…” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m better and smarter than you.”
I don’t dare look at her beaded nipples poking her little bikini top. Well, not again. “Are you now?”
We play this game a lot, too. She’s adorably competitive at everything—video games, sports, trivia, crosswords, driving records, reading lists—and I love that about her. She keeps me on my toes, encourages me, and makes me strive to be better.
I already feel guilty for this blistering torch I’m carrying for her. But it’s worse this summer because it’s become absolutely clear that I don’t just want to peel off her clothes and pop her still-untouched cherry.
I’m in love with her.
Dan would crucify me if he had any idea what I was thinking about his baby girl. And I wouldn’t blame him.
I absolutely, positively cannot cross the line with Perrie. Besides the risk of blowing up the business I share with the man I consider an older brother, there’s the girl herself. She’s got a big, bright future in front of her, starting with an Ivy League university back East—on a full scholarship. Yeah, she’s that smart. She needs to leave Phoenix, see the world, meet people, experience life. And she needs to do that without me.
My head knows it. My cock hates that idea.
Even if Dan didn’t bury me alive in quick-dry cement for touching his daughter, I doubt Perrie thinks of me that way. Sure, I’ve caught her looking once or twice. Curiosity about the opposite sex is normal, and because she’s an only child, she spends her time with adults—mostly me. She’s mature beyond her years and positively hated the games high school boys played. But she’s human; she has hormones. Hell, I peeked into her room last week, thinking she was in bed with a headache…but I swear I caught her masturbating. Seeing her panting, flushed, and shuddering under her covers has plagued my sex drive since.
I keep telling myself this is all moot. She’s leaving to start her amazing new life tomorrow morning, and our outing to this water park we’ve visited together many times is our last. But the subversive part of my brain keeps insisting I still have a whole night to find a creative way—preferably without clothes—to change her mind.