After All(88)

In unison, both Emmett and I turn around.

There's nothing but trees and sand and yellow flowers and brush and rocks and …

A raccoon pokes his head around a ponderosa pine and looks at us.

At me.

That masked fucker looks me dead in the eye.

We don't spend any time figuring out if this is the desert-dwelling cousin of Cyril Sneer or not.

Emmett grabs my hand and looks at me. "Run."

We both start running down the hill, leaving the raccoon in a cloud of dust.



* * *



The drive back to the cabin after dinner is quiet. Jackie is the designated driver, so she's concentrating on the directions from Siri. Will wasn't sure how to handle my mother while Emmett and I were gone, so he had a lot of wine and is now snoring lightly in the front seat.

Emmett and I are tangled together in the backseat.

But we're not tired in the slightest.

In fact, I can't remember the last time I felt so alive, that every cell inside me was pumped and ready to go.

By the time the car pulls up beside the cabin, Emmett and are running inside to grab another bottle of wine and some towels and then start heading down to the beach.

"Oh, so now you want to do the night swim," Jackie says warily as she and Will head inside the cabin.

"Clothing optional!" I yell at her as I start to pull my dress off over my head.

I know it's dark out and we're slightly visible in the cabin's porch light, but I honestly don't care that I'm going in naked or not. Both Emmett and I have stripped completely nude by the time our feet hit the water and we splash into the lake.

"Ahhhh!' I cry out, laughing. The water is a bit colder at night and it's bracing in the warm night air.

Emmett splashes beside me, grabbing my hand and pulling him to me. "Come here you gorgeous sea creature you."

"It's a lake, Emmett," I tell him, kissing him on the tip of his nose. "I'm a lake creature."

"The Ogopogo?"

I nod, giggling. "That seems about right."

"Have you ever seen the Ogopogo?" he asks, wrapping his arms around my neck. I wrap my legs around his waist, feeling his cock jut between us.

"Is talking about the Ogopogo turning you on?" I ask him slyly. "Because that's a weird fetish if I've ever heard one."

Every deep, dark lake has a legend about it. Loch Ness has the Loch Ness Monster. Lake Okanagan has the Ogopogo. They both look roughly the same, have the same amount of (feeble) evidence to support their existence and there's a lot of people who truly believe in them.


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"I've heard there's a million-dollar reward for hard evidence," he tells me.

I reach down and grab his cock. "I've got some hard evidence right here."

He bursts out laughing, even as I feel him grow hotter and larger in my hand. "I'm just thinking, with your luck with animals, perhaps we could use you as bait."

I bite my lip and grin at him, his beautiful wet face dimly lit by the cabin lights behind us, the dark lake stretching out as far as the eye can see. "Oh. I'm Ogopogo bait now, am I?"

"Stop saying Ogopogo. The word is ceasing to lose all meaning."

"You started it."

He grins and twirls around so we're moving faster and faster in a circle, the water splashing around us.

Above us, the sky and the stars dance.

The water gets deeper.

I'm about to tell him I'm getting dizzy when something brushes against my ass.

"Ahhhh!' I scream.

"What is it?"

"Something touched me!"

We both exchange a look.

I yell out, "Ogopogo!" while he starts laughing and together we start swimming until we're closer to shore.

"I think the solution is to never let you go," he says, burying his head in my neck. "Never let you out of my sight. Stay with me forever."

As simple as his words sound, they mean the world.

"I would be okay with that."

He pulls back and looks at me with all intensity. "Yeah?"

And then I realize he still hasn't heard what he needs to hear. What I need him to hear.

I put my hand at his cheek, feeling his wet skin, his rough stubble, and gaze deeply into his eyes until all he sees is me. All he sees is the real me. All he sees is my heart.

"Emmett," I whisper to him. "I love you."

It takes a moment for my words to reach him, like they get lost in time, or are swallowed by the lake. But then, slowly, the biggest, most breathtaking smile stretches across his face.

"I love you," I tell him again, his smile making me whole.

And I tell him again and again.