Day 5, Thursday

On the fifth day of a little group sojourn to the infamous Temple, it dawned on me that this had not turned out like I'd kinda figured it would. When it had first been organized, it was all about the women in this group spending time with the men in the group who were not attached to any of the women. Make sense? See, I was kinda thinking that these guys, most of them the younger set, were not just expecting but deserving that we women would basically make ourselves available.

As in ... well ... available. As in ... well ... as in that's all they were looking for: a shag-a-thon with no consequences. I figured I'd go along with that. They deserved it, right? They rarely if ever saw much of us women. I had rather thought I might be shagging my way through each of the men at the compound with us. I thought I might be shagging pretty much constantly. I thought it was going to be like the ultimate Tupperware party - you know, where you get to try out all these samples and then decide which products you like well enough to bring them home?

Okay. That's a piss-poor analogy. I'll give you that.

But maybe you catch my drift? I thought it would be lots of partying and a shag-a-lympics. And maybe it had been for others. But it hadn't been for me.

In fact, I'd actually spent a lot of my time either alone or walking the grounds with Stephen, just chatting about stuff or looking at plants, or just relaxing and talking to Egan or Doc. It had been a wonderful retreat ... just not as I had imagined it, is all. And I for sure hadn't been expecting that Jack would show up the day before at the Mother Tree, that home on the other side of the grounds but definitely within range of Jack's spyglass.

In fact, I'd actually made fun of the others because their main squeezes had been staying over at the Mother Tree with Cort and Max from the first day.

I had thought two things about that and I never spoke up and said them at the time. First off, I thought, "well, at least Jack trusts and respects me enough to not do anything so pathetic as to come check up on me this week." Second thought? "Oh, crap, the last thing Jack's feeling right now is the desire to care that much about me." Yeah, we'd had a bit of a fight before I'd left and it lingered on inside me as this big, gnawing pit of insecurity and unease.

Ah, well, he on the other hand has nothing to worry about in this week. I've turned into such a bore. Jack must be so disappointed that the reality of this week was nowhere near his own misguided fantasizing about what I might do.

The one person I'd really come up there to spend as much time with as possible had been East. Sigh. But he was also the one who was drop-dead so damned popular that I didn't get to see him hardly at all. I was pleased for him because he was definitely enjoying the attention and getting to know all the women better. But I was still hoping that there'd be just one night we could spend in each other's company.

I hadn't expected to see him that evening. I assumed he would have had another date with another woman. But there he was, diving in the pool, swimming right up to me with that little confident smile on his face.

"Hey, there," he said, all husky and hoarse, as he swam right past me and snagged me around the waist with his arm. I let him pull me out into the deeper section of the pool. It's always an amazing feeling to me. The way a strong man can just touch me and my body makes an instant decision to enjoy the way he can control me physically. I put my head back and let him keep me afloat.

An unfortunate sense of déjà vu and something told me Jack was watching. East felt me stiffen and I tried to slip away but he just pulled me in tighter. "Put your legs around my waist and hold on tight," he whispered to me. "Just ignore everyone else."

Everyone else. God, but he just knew, didn't he? That the idea of Jack watching upset me. That it also galled me that he couldn't just trust in me that nothing horrible would happen this week.

I closed my eyes and snuggled in close as East treaded water to keep us afloat. My lips on his neck tasted that mix of chlorine and man. Nectar of the Goddess.

His arms were warm and in the dying bits of the day, it was the most delicious feeling to have a warm man to wrap around and feel the nip of impending night trying to invade whatever part of me I couldn't get next to him.

"I have always liked the way you cuddle, Ann." His mouth started making an obvious effort to get me concentrating on him. He was successful.

"Do you know what I was hoping we might do?" I was able to whisper out to him.

"Tell me and I'll make it happen."

This shiver raced through me. "I was hoping we might have tonight just for us. If you haven't got a date, I mean."

He gave me this humming noise and then kissed me. I felt him smile against my mouth as he eased out of the kiss. "That sounds like a ..."

But before he could answer, one of the women was calling out to us that we were all going to play spin the bottle.

Spin the bottle? Fuck NO! Not when I was this close to claiming East for one long uninterrupted night! I opened my mouth to politely demur and beg to be left alone ... But East spoke up first.

"Spin the bottle? Like on the cruise? Sounds the thing," he called up to her. She gave us a merry giggle and then skipped away to gather up the rest of us out there.

"You really want to play?" I asked him. "Wouldn't you rather ..."

But I was looking right in his eyes and I saw his honest reaction. He wanted to do it. And I imagined it was in many respects just something that seemed fun and naughty and risqué ... and it must have been something he had really liked in the cruise diaries because he so wanted to play that game. And, I decided that I'd pretend enthusiasm for this shitty spin the bottle game that night for no other reason than that he wanted to do it and this week was, after all, about doing things to show the Temple Boys we cared. But, then East went and gave me another inducement.

"Just promise me you'll win me, love," he whispered against my ear. His hand reached between our bodies and I felt his fingers tease me below. I gasped into his neck. "You win me and I'll do anything you want tonight. I'll be your love slave. You have no idea how much I need you to win me like this."

"Oh. God." I could feel how much he wanted. I mean, I could feel it, Diary. And before I knew it, he was swimming us slowly to the edge and then he was dragging me out after kissing me hard against the tiled side of the pool. We joined the circle and I whispered in his ear about what I was going to have him do for me that night. He whispered his own suggestions.

Christ.

I barely heard Dino change the rules on us. Unlike on the cruise when I'd been a part of a group spin the bottle, this time the men spun rather than the women. But East just grinned at me and assured me he'd win me in the spin. He leaned right into my ear. "But then you have to be my love slave tonight, right?"

Gush. Squish. Oh my God. "I will be yours to command, kind sir."

"Who says I'll be kind?" he asked me, his mouth right up at my ear.

I thought I'd melt. Could it be better?

As the spinning began, I felt this shiver and imagined it was the touch of Jack's disapproving eyes on me. It took all my willpower not to turn and look in the direction of the Mother Tree or to just get up and leave because it suddenly felt bad to me to be gathered here for an activity that I think any man would cringe to be watching a woman he loves engaged in. But then I thought, what was really so different about this from the time we did it on the cruise? Jack had no problem with my participation that night; why should this matter? Yeah, I knew the answer. No one's heart is ever logical in times like this so I didn't expect that Jack's was, either. Nor mine.

I let East nuzzle in next to me and just watched the spinning proceed. Dino got Heather ... and, oh, yeah, I knew right away it was rigged and that just got my hopes up. And then another spin matched another man up with the one woman I knew he'd been wanting to spend time with that week and I just was so sure things were going to go my way tonight.

I was barely paying attention when it happened. I looked at the bottle. It was pointing at me and I just didn't understand. I felt the breath fall out of me and I looked at East and knew my glorious night with the only one I wanted to be with had evaporated into thin air because of ...

Zack.

The bastard. We'd barely spoken. Not since I had tried to apologize to him the first night we were there at the Temple. It had been an apology for the disaster that I'd visited on him the first time we'd met, about two months earlier. He wouldn't accept my apology in the spirit it had been offered. And ever since then, I'd done my utmost to avoid him.

The feeling was obviously mutual. "Well, I don't like it any more than you do. I'll just go ahead and spin again," he said.

What a fucking jerk! It wasn't enough that everyone knew I'd been an ace bitch to him when we'd first met but he has to go and make sure they know he still thinks I'm not fit to even cop a free fuck from?

"Zack, you are such an ass. Let's go." I said it with pure venom and hopped up and stalked off. No way was he getting off that easy.

I did not miss Dino's smirk at me as I dug out the next pair of sunglasses from his silly silver bucket on my way out of the circle. "Eat shit and die," I bent down and muttered right in his ear as I tossed Doc's sunglasses to him. Dino just smiled serenely at me.

Inside the Temple, I paused and waited for Zack to catch up. I was standing right in the middle of the kitchen and for an insane moment, I remembered the first time I'd been there and how that night I had been surrounded by people who loved me.

"My night, my call," he announced and yanked on my arm, dragging me behind him into the hall until I simply refused to let it proceed that way.

"Just what the hell do you think is going on? I think I told you once before that I'm not a whore," I grated out to him.

His eyes drilled into me as he rounded to face me. "I spun. Fair and square. I get you for the night and all you have to do is act like you want to be with me."

"Fat chance. If you think I'd let you touch me now, you're such a fucking fuck."

"Yeah? Well ... fuck if I'll let you ..."

And before I knew it, he had shoved me against the wall and he was grinding his mouth into mine. I struggled. He reacted. Should I have been at all surprised that a seriously suspect former FBI agent with a huge chip on his shoulder would resort to what he did? But he had me whipped around and shoved face forward into the wall so fast that I actually realized he might have been able to teach Bud a thing or two.

I imagine they could hear me screaming at him to let me go all the way to the Mother Tree. It must have been why he shoved his hand across my mouth and then yanked me away from the wall to begin pushing me down the hall. Up the stairs. I was trying to both stay upright and fight his superior strength. Feeling like a klutz and hating how he was in control of me.

And then he let me go for about a second while he wrestled to open a door and I slapped him so hard that my hand hurt. But he snatched me back just before I made my escape. Pulled me into this darkened room and then smacked my back right up against the door as he shoved it closed.

And from there it was all-out warfare.

Just the way we seemed to like it? I don't know, honestly I don't. What WAS it about this man that made me react this way? It was like a red flag to a bull. Er. Maybe that should be that I was like a red flag to his bull? Dunno. But the day we take it easy on each other may be the day the earth switches rotations.

One thing, though. Something happened. We were wrestling and cursing and he was groping and I was ... well, I think I might have been doing a bit of groping myself. He shoved his tongue down my throat and ... well, I might have actually sucked it in a bit deeper.

He kept his mouth firmly latched on mine just long enough. Because I caught on at the last moment. That maybe ... just maybe ... he was too proud to have accepted my knee-jerk and a bit perfunctory apology of the first night. That maybe ... and who could blame him? ... maybe I hadn't respected him enough to even notice or care that I owed him more than a simple, "I'm sorry I was such a bitch when we met. Okay then? Fine. Great. Gotta go."

Because that's really about all my apology had amounted to. I just kind of tossed it at him like it meant nothing that first night and doing it while I was really also trying to figure out if East was still around and available.

So if all that was true ... who could blame him for wanting to show me how it had felt to be treated like you were nothing but a quick screw and then toss you to the curb?

He had me plastered up against that door and he was making sure he was in full control of everything that was happening. His hands had my bikini panties down to my ankles and he was making sure I knew why.

I imagine he was as surprised as I was when I stopped fighting him. By then, he had me up off my feet. He had his hands on my thighs and was pulling my legs up around his waist. He had his mouth shoved hard over my neck and he was almost grunting in his concentrated effort to force me to submit.

And yet ... I was submitting and he was still so wrapped up in what he was doing that he didn't notice right away.

But ... he did. Eventually. Yet only after he had his hands hard at me ... one set of fingers invading me below and the other tugging my bikini top down over my breasts. Something seemed to almost jerk him to a stop and when he did, I was looking right at him and his mouth was open because he was all ready to kiss me again.

I could feel his hardness as he was grinding it against me. I moaned out to him and tried so hard to go soft and compliant. It would never seem to be something I'd be with him.

"Oh God." I whispered it to him and he took in this startled breath. In just that instant, I almost cried and he surely heard it in my voice: "God, but I'm such a bitch."

"No, no, no," he said in a rush... this hard, sincere voice and his eyes drilling into mine. "I just wanted ..."

"Forgive me," I pleaded with him. "I don't know why I react this way to you. I don't mean to be such a bitch to you."

"You're not. I know you're not. It's why it drives me crazy. Just give me this one night to see if we can be the way I know we can be. We just got off to this insane start and I ... we're neither of us ever going to be easy."

It made me laugh. I almost felt giddy. "Oh, jeez, Zack. Let's don't spoil a good thing by actually being nice to each other."

He suddenly cracked this smile at me. It was a bit of an evil smile. I felt myself get wetter and that's when I realized that I'd probably been wet since he'd first started manhandling me. Am I one sick puppy or what?

Might not know the answer to that one but I do know this. He is actually a mighty fine Crowe Brother. There. I've said it. Might be the last time I ever admit that I had a positive thought about Zack. Then again ... maybe I was plain smitten by his well-hidden charms?

I do know this. He was already trying to move to get inside me. And I was already willing to let him. All I did was gasp and cling to him. All he did was grunt obscenely and thrust up a few times and ...

"Oh, God!"

"Christ. Motherfucker."

He held my hips firmly against the door and pumped into me a few times. Going slow and very deep. Driving hard and very firmly. My fingernails raked down his back and he loved it and I know he did because he begged me to try and hurt him enough.

And just as I was beginning to realize that this night was not quite what I would have guessed in a million trillion years, he was leaning back and pulling me away from the door. I was hanging from his neck and asking him what he thought he was doing.

"That's right ... tighten down on me and keep me inside you," he whispered hoarsely against my ear. "See if you can do this ... don't let me go. I dare you."

I clamped down hard over his cock and he groaned hard. It made me chuckle against his chest but I stopped almost instantly as he started walking. "Zack ... oh God ... where ... what are you doing?"

"I want to make love to you tonight. Will you let me?" he whispered. It took my breath away and I think it was ransom for the night he would give me. And it was also what made me struggle with him instead of against him.

And if you dare tell anyone that I got mushy with Zack Grant, I'll never talk to you again. 

But here's the thing. He carried me to his bed and I kept him snuggly inside me the whole way. He lowered us both down to the mattress and we were both clinging to the other. He whispered some incredibly sweet things to me and I responded with some unexpectedly tender sentiments that I don't think either of us knew we had inside us for the other.

But it made us slow down. For a short while. It was maybe only a few minutes, I think, but in that time, we touched. He was still buried deep inside me, but he stopped moving in and out ... instead, his mind seemed occupied with simply running his hands down over my body in this steady, intense way he had of looking like he was cataloging parts of me to see how he'd proceed with the whole of me.

At some point, I shifted around and he slid out of me as I rolled him to his back. I was kissing his hand at first and trying to get him to read my mind. He let me proceed as I wanted and just nestled back into a pillow. It felt like a challenge had been issued to me. I rather like challenges, as you know. I like to see if I can meet them.

"Mmm. I bet I know just what you'd like if I was one of your naiads," I said to him. He shook his head at me and started to say something but I simply dove for his groin and rather crudely started working on that section of him.

"Mo ... ther ... fuck ... er ... oh ... yeah," he groaned out to me.

Something just told me he would like that bit ... and I rather liked his bits, truth be told. He tasted good and he smelled like man and he felt ah so nice. And I so liked the way he couldn't stand it and started pumping up into me.

And somewhere in this, I got a bit lost and didn't even realize how I'd not been paying attention to much but seeing if I could make him feel so good ... but in this one insightful movement, he was yanking on my hips and turning my body around and ...

"You don't wanna be a naiad tonight," I heard him mutter just as his mouth latched on to the skin at the side of my knee. "Let me show you why."

"Zack?" I muttered it out after sliding my mouth from his cock. I felt him pushing up on my hips and looked down to find that he'd maneuvered me so I was now over his body and my knees were straddling his head and ...

Our eyes met as he lifted his head. Gave me this curt smile. "If you were a naiad, I'd have made it so you only cared about my pleasure. But that won't do for either of us, will it? Because I sure as hell want you to have pleasure tonight. I wanna be the one giving it to you. I told you, Ann. I want to make love to you tonight."

I think I felt his words as the heavy flutter that shook through my abdomen. My eyes closed hard when I felt him breathe against my wetness. I was holding his cock and pumping it slowly and simply got lost ... just for this moment. A moment. When everything seemed to start whirling around me.

"Lick me," he said and he started licking me.

"Oh, God." And I licked him.

And you know what else? I followed his lead the whole way. When he kissed, I kissed. When he explored, I explored. When he sucked, I sucked. When he drank me up, I drank him down. When he came, I came. When he called out to me, I called out to him.

We fell away from each other and then he turned so he could come down to where I was and cuddle with me.

Cuddle. Me and Zack. Who wouldda believed it, eh?

I almost left him a little while later, but he asked me to stay the night. He saw the hesitation but didn't do anything but wait. When I said yes, he covered me with a blanket and said he was going to raid the kitchen for some drinks and snacks. I was dozing when he came back and he didn't wake me. I don't think he'd been back long when I came to with a start. He was sitting up against the headboard and just watching me sleep, his fingers wrapped in some of the stray tendrils of my hair.

When he realized I was awake, he leaned over the side of the bed and returned with a glass of cold Chardonnay for me. I sat up and took if from him. I hadn't even known he'd realized what I'd been drinking that week. He said there were a lot of things he'd noticed about me that week.

I started laughing when he ticked them off on his fingers. Eight things. And only three of them could in any way, shape or form be considered flattering. I told him I was some relieved to know he was still the same ass he'd always been. Hmmm. Which actually started a rather heated session between us when he rolled over and patted his rear and told me to kiss his ass. Yeah. You can imagine what kind of kiss I gave that ass, eh? I think he'll have my teeth marks around for at least a few more days.

Then again, after he got finished with me, I was glad not to have to face the prospect of having to walk back to my room until the next morning.

Nah, I know. I am purposely being flip about this night with Zack. It's all I think I'm capable of, in some ways. It's a love/hate thing with us, I suppose. It just ... well, it's just hard to explain how I could come up there to the Temple and be surrounded by all these men who were so very sweet to me and ...

And who is the one man with whom I end up spending real, uninterrupted quality time? Zack. That's right. In the end, Zack was the only man I spent an entire night with while at the Temple that week.

Oh what a night. Nothing seemed to go the way I would have thought. Why'd it take something like this to make me see the light? But then it felt so right and who's to say, really, if it was wrong or right?