Free Lust - 1 by Robin Wasserman

she slid into the churning water and took a spot beside him. Even Adam, stil ful y clothed and pressed against the wal of the deck, flushed a bit and gave her an appreciative smile. Harper shot a triumphant glance at Kaia and then let herself slip deeper into the water, final y submerging herself completely. She burst through the surface, face dripping, hair glistening, and then leaned back against the edge, her slender neck in perfect position to be pummeled by the massage jets, her long, bare legs swung over Kane’s lap.
    Kaia just shook her head. “Miranda?” she asked. “How about you?”
    Miranda looked longingly at the hot tub—and, more to the point, Kane’s supine figure stretched out along its width, his head now leaned back, eyes closed once again, arms splayed out along the edge. The Greek god of cocky laziness.
    But consider her options:
    Borrowing a suit from Kaia—who towered over her by a foot and differed in several other, far more crucial, measurements as wel .
    Or the Harper approach. Except that Miranda’s underwear of choice today was baby blue with yel ow polka dots and, in fact, recently purchased from that Wal-Mart off Route 53. As would likely be immediately clear.
    Add to this the fact that, much as she was enjoying the chance to examine and memorize every tiny detail of Kane’s mostly naked body, there was no way she was going to give him the same opportunity. He was taut perfection; she was, drawing from her always at-the-ready mental list of imperfections, stomach fat and arm flab and thigh cel ulite and—wel , suffice it to say, she was amply flawed.
    “No, thanks,” she simply said to Kaia. “I think I’l just sit on the side and gawk at al this partial nudity. Teen depravity, et cetera.”
    “Yeah, I’m quite the turn-on, aren’t I?” Kane cal ed to her, eyes stil closed.
    “You know I can barely keep myself from tearing off those boxers,” Miranda cal ed out sarcastical y, pul ing off her shoes. If he only knew. She sat on the edge of the hot tub, dangling her bare legs in the steaming water, fighting the urge to lift one leg and begin lightly running her toes up and down his tantalizingly close bare skin. Instead, she flicked a foot sharply in his direction, splashing him with a torrent of hot water. “Somehow I think I’l manage to restrain myself.” Kane opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, steadily holding her gaze, wiped the drops of water off his face. He squinted at her, then shook his head and let it gently drop back down. “Do your best,” he warned her in a low voice, “but I’m irresistible—one of these days, Stevens, you’re not going to be able to stop yourself from tearing off al those clothes and jumping in.”
    “Don’t hold your breath,” Miranda said sharply, hoping that he was right, that someday she’d find the nerve.
    But today?
    Not gonna happen.
    “Hey, how’s your meeting going?” Adam pressed himself against the back wal of the deck, the only spot he’d been able to find with good reception. He cupped a hand over the mouthpiece of the cel phone, to prevent the splashing and cackling from the hot tub a few feet away from drowning out his low voice. “Is it over yet?”
    “No, we’ve stil got a ways to go,” Beth told him. “We’re going to be here for a while.”
    “That sucks.” He pictured her in the sparse newspaper office—real y a spacious former supply room that Beth had commandeered her sophomore year to serve as the headquarters of the Haven Gazette . Despite the old editions hung proudly on the bul etin board, the short row of outdated computers lining the wal , and the ever-present stack of reporter’s notebooks and old tape recorders available for loan, the room stil looked—and smel ed—like exactly what it was: a dark, dank basement cave. A flickering overhead light, a fraying couch probably infested by termites, a tiny window that looked out onto a ventilation shaft—Adam couldn’t stand to spend more