Reckless Youth: Reckless - The Smoky Mountain Trio Read online

  He swiveled his head in my direction, his eyes wide as he stared at me in the dark. Because I was nervous, I continued to babble.

  “It’s okay if you are. I mean, a lot of people are. It’s cool if you are and if you like other boys. It doesn’t change how I feel about you or anything.”

  I stopped to take a breath and he started to laugh. In fact, he nearly doubled over laughing like I’d said the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life. My feistiness got the best of me, along with my embarrassment, so I shoved him hard on his shoulder. He fell to his side with a grunt-snort.

  “You jerk. I was trying to be a good friend. Geesh.”

  When he finally finished laughing, he sat back up and hiccupped. And then there was silence.

  I waited, quietly fuming over his audacity to laugh at me when I was trying to be serious and hopefully open the door for him to come out. My wait continued until he finally spoke.

  “I don’t think I’m gay. Maybe bisexual. I don’t really know ‘cause I’ve never kissed a boy. But sometimes…I want to.”

  His admission to kissing – alluding to the fact that he had kissed a girl – threw me for a loop and I gasped.

  “What? Does that mean you’ve kissed a girl? Who? How dare you keep something like that from me! I’m supposed to be your best friend.”

  The tone of my voice was teasing, but inside I was a tad bit hurt that I didn’t know about this development until now.

  Sage lifted a shoulder nonchalantly. “Happened a few weeks ago at Wendy Conner’s birthday party, the one you couldn’t go to ‘cause you were in Atlanta for that dance thing. It was one of those Truth or Dare games. I chose the dare.”

  When I gave him the look that said, “And?” he wiggled his eyebrows and continued.

  He smiled but spoke with indifference. “And I slipped her the tongue.”

  “Sage Hendricks, you little devil,” I teased, but my eyes dropped to his parted mouth. It made me wonder what it felt like to kiss him.

  In fact, the previous school year, my friend Chloe casually inquired about whether I’d kissed either Cam or Sage yet or slept with them. I was appalled at the time that she’d even think that of me or of us. They were my friends, and let’s face it, I was fourteen and didn’t have those desires at that point in my life.

  But now, not even a half year later, sitting here in the dark summer evening talking about such things, had me considering Sage with a different perspective. I was seeing him for the first time as a cute boy who had experienced French kissing other girls.

  And it made me jealous.

  Tossing the thought away, I asked him the next question on my mind.

  “Would you ever want to kiss me? Or Cam?”

  The answer I received wasn’t anything I had expected. But certainly, changed things in the years to come.

  “Maybe.”

  Chapter 3

  The summer between our Junior and Senior year was one of the best, and the worst summers, I’d ever known. It had brought friction, jealousy, and desire into our friendship.

  And made me long for things that I knew were impossible.

  While things changed ever-so-slightly as we entered our sophomore year in high school, those two remained my constants. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t see them, speak with one of them or spend time with them in some capacity.

  That fall, if Cam was off at football practice, I was studying with Sage – who, for the record, was the world’s worst studier. He hadn’t been diagnosed, but I was fairly certain he had ADHD or ADD because that boy would never sit still. Not for a single minute.

  He was always tapping a pen, drumming his fingernails on the table or playing video games instead of focusing on his homework. It always made me curious about what was going on inside that mind of his and what made him tick.

  And when Sage was working a shift at the grocery store or writing music on his guitar, I could be found hanging with Cam. We’d kick the soccer ball out in the backyard, watch movies or go for horseback rides along the many trails on our property. And if I was busy with dance, the boys could likely be found at Cam’s house playing video games.

  When the three of us had downtime and were all together, we were at my house on the farm, swimming in the river or hiking in the woods near my property. It was an idyllic childhood that swiftly and without warning blended into young adulthood; fraught with new and turbulent feelings.

  And no matter how innocent our bond was, no one could seem to comprehend how the three of us could be as close as we were and not be more than just friends.

  That changed the summer I turned seventeen. I finally noticed what all the other girls in our class saw when they looked at either Cam or Sage. Especially after their growth spurts that year.

  “What are you waiting for? Are you chicken?” Sage’s voice rang out from the river below me where he kicked and circled in the water like a barracuda in wait.

  I was standing on the high river bank, my feet sunk low in the mossy, cool grass, hanging on to the rope for dear life. The strong, twisted fibers of the swing rope were tethered to the large tree limb overlooking the river bank on the edge of my parents’ property.

  The boys dragged the old, tattered rope from my barn a few weeks earlier and today was the first time we’d had an opportunity to use it. Having two older brothers to pick on me in all manner of ways and being best friends with Cam and Sage my entire life, there were very few things I was actually scared of or that terrified me.

  Snakes? Nope.

  Frogs and insects? Not even.

  Gunshots and hunting rifles? No fear.

  But heights? No thank you, ma’am.

  I’d kept my fear of heights successfully hidden from Cam and Sage for years. When we’d gone to the carnival a few years earlier and while they went on all the tall, looping rides, I feigned a headache and stuck to the carrousel. The only person that knew about my stomach-clenching fear was my momma.

  My palms were clammy as I held tightly to the rope, fist-over-fist, as I slowly shuffled to the lip of the overhang. Sage waved from down below, smiling that smile he reserved for me and Cam and no one else, giving me the encouragement I needed to jump.

  “Come on, London! Get your ass down here now.”

  I swallowed the boulder that stuck in my throat, panic lodged deep in my belly. My willowy figure trembled in trepidation as I took a few steps backwards, only to find something blocking my way.

  Startling, I jolted and let go of the rope, which through the laws of physics and gravity swung like a pendulum out over the river. The solid mass behind me wrapped an arm around my waist, reaching with his other arm to grab the rope as it made its return journey toward us.

  “I’ve gotchya, London,” Cam’s deep voice whispered in my ear as my hand landed on the thick, sinewy arm that held me close. “We can do it together if you want.”

  I stood immobilized and unable to move, my body firing off strange signals to my brain for the first time ever. A different and new kind of energy sizzled and heated between us. Maybe it was a combination of my fear, his sweet gesture, or the warm masculine scent of Cam that seemed to envelop me, but I was caught in an electrifying thought.

  It wasn’t just comfort I felt in his arms. Against Cam’s chest.

  It was the beginnings of desire and it shook me to the core. My breasts heaved in a heavy inhale, my brain muddled from the dizzying effects of his voice and his broad, naked chest pressed against my back. My tummy did somersaults, and I felt tingles in the V between my legs where I’d never felt them before around Cam.

  Leaning my bikini-clad body against his towering mass, I relaxed. Cameron was my rock. He was my protector. If there was anyone I trusted with my life outside of my family to have my back, it was Cameron Lucas.

  His tall frame had bulked up and filled out over the last year as he left boyhood on the cusp of manhood. His broad shoulders and lean, trim waist were a sight to behold. Cam’s blond hair was always a t
ousled mess that was made only worse by the way he constantly worried his fingers through it. The girls at school giggled and blushed when he’d walk by in the hallways, casting his ‘come hither’ gaze at them, at the same time he’d lazily run his hand through his shaggy do.

  And then there were Cam’s eyes. When his eyes connected with you, it was near impossible to look away. His deep-set blue eyes could melt you on the spot with their warmth and character. They held a deep well of compassion and reverence for such a big boy. Most of the time Cam was all business; raised to take life seriously, just like his father, a retired Air Force officer.

  His arm tightened around my belly, making it difficult to breathe.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  In that moment, I wasn’t sure what he meant. All I could feel was the way his fingers splayed across my stomach, his pinky grazing the top of my bikini bottoms, and the solid muscle of his thigh pressed against my bare legs.

  I nodded uncertainly. “I think I am.”

  The moment was a blur, held on by short snippets of time. The brief kiss he placed on top of my head. The feeling of jumping, falling and then flying into the unknown.

  Something foreign took up residence in my bloodstream, spinning me like a top upside down as he held me against him as we fell together toward the water below.

  “I’ve got you,” he repeated gently against my ear. “I’ll never let you go.”

  Chapter 4

  Once Cam and I had landed in a splashing, laughing, joyous heap in the depths of the river, with Sage swimming over to us, splashing us even more, we climbed the steep embankment and swam for hours on end. Until the sun began to dip just past the tops of the tall, weeping willows that lined the river bank and dusk was quick to follow.

  Sage had to get home before his father did in order to do his chores and begin dinner, otherwise, a punishment was sure to follow. Cam, however, seemed to linger, in no particular hurry to leave. As the day progressed into late afternoon, the crazy, tingly feeling had intensified and dropped low in my belly; they climbed up my spine any time he touched me – however playfully or unintentional he meant them to be.

  It was this strange and familiar, yet unfamiliar, dance we did with one another. We’d horseplay around, joking and splashing one another, our bodies magnetized, pulling closer together in proximity. As if being drawn toward each other in a strong undertow. But the minute our limbs touched or brushed underneath the water, Cam would push away as if he’d been bitten by a water snake.

  Yet as the day drew on and the afternoon sun began to drop over the top of the tall Willow trees along the embankment, the innocence of our friendship seemed to dip and drown into the murk of the river. Every touch dawned a new realization that there was something happening between us. A sensual tension began to emerge – whether a lustful look, bite of a lip, or flick of a tongue.

  I was both petrified, but curiously excited, and didn’t know how to escape the odd sensation growing within my body, taking over like the vining weeds against the water’s edge.

  I wasn’t Cam’s first kiss, but he was mine.

  Just like that perfect summer day, and the hot July sun glistening off the river that weaved its way along the boundary of my parents’ property; the moment leading up to my first kiss was everything that love poems and sonnets are written of.

  And then as if in slow motion, like a gravitational pull too strong to keep us apart, wrapping its invisible hold around us, drawing our bodies closer and closer together; keeping only a modicum of space between us. We stood toe to toe, talking about nothing in particular until we got around to the inevitable question that only best friends ask one another in times like these.

  Who did we have a crush on?

  I watched Cam as he dunked his head backward, the sun sparkling off the water droplets over his broad shoulders. As he stood again, he swiped the hair out of his eyes, slicking it away from his handsome face, the formerly round and chubby cheeks now carved out to accentuate a chiseled jawline of a man.

  I copied his move, dipping backward, coming up sputtering water out of my mouth and licking it away off my lips. When I opened my eyes, I found him staring at me in a fascinated, yet lustful gaze.

  “Do you still have a thing for Baylor Reynolds?” he asked with reservation.

  Baylor and I had barely dated our freshman year and he hadn’t even tried to kiss me. He took me to a dance because our mothers were part of the church bazaar committee and thought we’d make a good couple. Baylor was only doing his mother a favor however, because we later found out it was Johnny Fellows that he really liked. And Lord have mercy, was that something for town gossip.

  I guffawed incredulously. “Are you kidding me? He smelled like pickled beets. No way.”

  Cam tipped his head back, roaring with laughter, his grin wide and beautiful when his gaze returned to mine.

  “Then who do you like?”

  Feeling all sorts of uncomfortable, I shrugged a shoulder. Curiously I watched his eyes roam over the skin of my shoulder blade, then drop to the tops of my breasts that were like buoys above the water, and then returning to meet mine.

  I shivered gloriously, goose pimples forming over my flesh. Just from the tracking of his gaze.

  “Are you cold, London?”

  No, I’m too warm with you so close.

  He stepped in closer, our chests brushing against each other. I could feel the tips of my breasts harden and pebble against the Lycra of my bikini. Cam raised both hands to touch my exposed shoulders and arms, then dragged them down and back up again. He did this several times and I reveled in the exquisite feel of his rough palms on my virgin skin.

  “If not Baylor, who then? Who do you like?”

  Before this, I’d never even thought about an attraction to a boy. I’d never had reason to allow my affections to deepen toward anyone and couldn’t even date until I was seventeen. Even if there had been someone that caught my eye, how could they ever measure up to the two boys in my life?

  The gentle, humid breeze swept over us, clinging to our wet skin and permeating the air with the sweet, lilac scent of summertime. That is the way I’ll always remember my first kiss with Cameron. It’ll be etched in my soul and memory for as long as I live.

  With a gentle sweep of his hand, he brushed a wayward hair from my eye and tucked it neatly behind my ear, the warmth of my blush rolling over my neck and face.

  His breath was warm as he leaned in a fraction of an inch closer. Cam’s eyes latched on to my lips, as he dragged the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. It stirred something inside my belly. My momma always said I had cupid lips, but I always found them to be too big and too plump. But in that moment, the way he looked at me – like he wanted to devour me - and stroked my lip, I couldn’t have been happier.

  Cam’s other hand drifted to my waist, as his fingers curled into the feminine curve of my body, sending a rippling shockwave down to my toes.

  “I like you…” I said in a heated whisper that was carried out into the summer air, as I closed my eyes and lowered my head to avoid the rejection that was sure to come.

  It wasn’t unusual that I had feelings for Cam. Why wouldn’t I? I’d spent over twelve years of my life with him, day after day, summer after summer. I rarely did anything without him and Sage.

  Sage.

  That thought had my shoulders stiffening under the weight of Cam’s presence. The mere idea that something was about to occur between Cam and me, leaving Sage out and unaware, made me feel guilt-ridden. Because it wasn’t just Cam and me. Part of us would always include Sage, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Or deny my feelings for them both.

  As if he recognized this, the corner of Cam’s mouth crooked up. “And you like Sage, too.”

  I nodded, appreciative of his acknowledgment and acceptance of me and my feelings toward the three of us.

  “It’s okay to like both of us,” he reassured, continuing a light brush across my cheek. “We’re okay with that
.”

  My forehead furrowed. “Have you guys talked about this?”

  I didn’t have to explain what I meant. Cam knew what this was. The he, me, him and us. Our friendship and connection. The way our hearts blended together, each a different color and size, creating one beautiful masterpiece.

  Cam cupped my cheeks and his sky-blue eyes, dark now with something deeper, and answered honestly.

  “Not really. But I know Sage likes you, too.”

  My gasp was stolen when Cam’s smile disappeared, and his lips touched mine.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Until I felt like I was melting into the depths of the river, being swept away with the current from the delicious feel of Cam’s mouth against mine. He tasted like watermelon and sunlight.

  Cam’s kiss was like the campfires he would start when we camped together in the Smoky Mountains. It started with the tiniest of sparks, the kindling crackling and snapping to life, which soon builds to a deafening roar. Exactly what was going on inside my head as his lips brushed over mine, pulling me deeper and deeper.

  My mouth opened on its own accord, as I tilted my head to the side to provide him better access. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was supposed to do, but Cam’s experience and all-consuming method took away my uncertainty and bashfulness and formed it into a ball of need.

  My belly clenched in response to the movement of his tongue inside my mouth. The mixture of surprise and lust that laced through my veins, paralyzing me with pleasure. My lips moved in response to his, opening and breathing in his essence.

  The sudden rush of wet warmth that flooded between my legs, the ache of something I’d never felt before, emboldened me as I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him in closer. His masculine rumble gave me a glowing gratification over my decision.

  Never having kissed or been with a boy in this manner, I wasn’t ready for the jolt of pleasure that came when he pressed his hardened length against the V of my legs, my bikini bottoms and his swim trunks the only barriers between us.