-Caleb-
“Fuck!” I said as I tried to right our course. But the canoe just kept snaking back and forth against the water, out of my control.
I could hear Hank shouting off in the distance, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the roar of the water and the sputtering of the motor.
We were headed sideways, no matter what I did, straight for a rock.
Then Jocelyn knelt up at the front of the canoe and pushed off the rock with her paddle, hard.
She righted the canoe just enough for me to get things back under control. I powered the rest of the way through the rapids with Jocelyn on alert at the front for more rocks.
My pulse slowly stuttered back to normal. By the time we pulled up next to Hank and Mom, I was ready to murder the man.
“I told you to back out and try again,” Hank said, exasperated. “Jeez, couldn’t you hear me? You could have flipped the canoe!”
A dark spew of words, most of them colorful, bubbled up inside me to tell the bastard off once and for all, but I felt Jocelyn’s nails dig into my knee again.
“We got through okay, Dad,” she pointed out. “See? Everybody’s in one piece.”
Hank looked about ready to give me a telling off, but Mom grabbed his arm. Between the two women holding us back, we ended up having a glaring contest instead of spewing the vitriol that was boiling between us.
“Try to follow instructions next time,” was Hank’s final word on the subject before turning back to his motor and starting to navigate his boat ahead.
I growled in my throat, but Jocelyn’s nails dug in harder, and I forced myself to count backward from ten. Or rather, eighteen. Because this was Jocelyn’s eighteenth birthday celebration, and I shouldn’t be the one to ruin it by getting into a knock down, drag out with Hank.
“You should have been the one doing this,” I grumbled to Jocelyn as I turned the canoe in the direction Hank had gone.
Jocelyn ducked her head. “Sorry. Dad didn’t want me to, but I guess I messed up...”
I wanted to tip her chin up, touch that smooth skin with reassurance, but instead I just stared at her. “That wasn’t a critique, Jocelyn. That was the truth. Your father was wrong.”
“It’s a critique of him,” Jocelyn said, rubbing her thumb over her nails, a nervous habit she’d had ever since I’d met her.
“He deserves critiquing,” I assured her, but that only seemed to make her more agitated. I sighed and patted her knee. “Never mind. I’ll leave it, for now.”
Jocelyn nodded and crawled back to the front of the canoe.
I closed my eyes a moment, trying not to ogle my stepsister’s perfect ass as she moved. Once she was settled, I opened the motor up full throttle and tried to catch up with Hank, but he was miles ahead of us again.
The silence that lapsed between us brought me back to our moment in the woods. I’d been thinking about it, and kicking myself, since the very second she turned her back and fled from me. I’d been a thousand kinds of stupid, misreading the entire situation. Without the danger of this boat ride to distract us, things were going to be awkward.
Still, I couldn’t forget the way her heated eyes trailed up my body. The feel of her soft, thick hair between my fingers.
I still wondered what it would be like to kiss those plump, perfect, pink lips.
My jeans started to get very uncomfortable, and I grimaced. If it hadn’t been for the lifejacket she’d been wearing, I’d have probably openly appreciated her breasts as well. They were big, and bouncy, and every man’s wet dream.
Hank took a sharp left, and I shook myself. I really had to stop fantasizing about Jocelyn. Even away at college, I’d wake up with my dick in my hand, imagining her underneath me. Fuck, I knew she’d taste so good.
“Here we are, home sweet home!” Hank called as he cut his motor, tilted it up, and slid gracefully up to a narrow, sandy beach on one side of a peninsula.
I aimed the canoe at the beach and did the same, praying that, this time, I didn’t make a jackass of myself. We hit the sand smoothly, and Jocelyn jumped right out and pulled the canoe up further, then secured it to a low-hanging branch with the lead rope.
Mom giggled while Hank maneuvered around her again to get the boat pulled halfway up on shore, tying his off as well. Then he gallantly held out his hand and helped Mom get out of the boat.
If Jocelyn was going to be my partner for this trip, well, I was glad. She knew the score. Mom seemed happy to be utterly useless.
I froze and looked at Jocelyn, who was grabbing gear and marching up a small incline to offload it somewhere I couldn’t see through the trees. Were we supposed to be partners this trip? Was I going to be stuck in a boat with her for ten days?!
My balls were not going to be blue. They were going to turn black and fall off.
“Caleb, help your sister,” Hank chuckled as he kissed Mom on the shoreline.
A nasty retort about him not doing jack shit just about bubbled out of my mouth, but then Jocelyn grabbed two sleeping bags, and I got to watch her ass wiggle as she deftly dodged a tree root to go back up the path. It was enough of a distraction to calm me down.
I jumped out of the canoe and started grabbing cots and tents, the loosely tied stuff on top of our heavier gear. Once we’d cleared that, Jocelyn reached for one handle of a cooler, and I reached for the other.
“Jacey, why don’t you help your stepmother over here with the pillows and seat cushions? Caleb and I can get the coolers,” Hank said.
Jocelyn hunched a little, but nodded and went to help Mom. I balled both fists around the cooler handle to stop myself from decking Hank. It was clear father and daughter had developed a routine that he was breaking for some reason. Maybe to show off what a good father he was to Mom.
In any case, he was treating Jocelyn like an infant, and it was pissing me off.
“Lift with your knees,” Hank grunted as he heaved up his end of the cooler.
I lifted mine, and we walked the cooler up the incline and into the trees.
Our campsite, it turned out, was a real fishermen’s hideaway. There was a nice, big, flat area with a makeshift picnic table of sorts made of stumps, branches, and boards to one side. Other, smaller flat areas dotted a trail that disappeared further up the hill.
“We’ve even got a pot here,” Hank said proudly. When we set the cooler down, however, he frowned at a framework at one side of the picnic table. “Damn moose hunters been messing up my campsite again...”
“Moose hunters?” I echoed.
“Yeah. They hunt in the winter and mess up all the work I did maintaining the campsite over the summer so they can build crap like this to hang up the moose carcasses. I’ll fix it in a minute. Let’s get unpacked first.” Hank set his side of the cooler down and began trudging back down the hill. “You coming? Three more coolers to go!”
I scowled and followed him back to the boats.
Jocelyn, as it turned out, had removed her lifejacket. I didn’t know whether to thank or curse God that she’d sweated underneath it, plastering her light blue shirt against her chest.
“Mind the rope!” Hank barked, but it was too late. I tripped over the tie out and nearly landed flat on my face.
Hank sighed and clapped me on the shoulder as I got myself upright. “Son, I know the view’s spectacular, but you need to pay attention and be careful around here. It’s at least three hours to the nearest hospital.”
The view? He wasn’t—
No. Hank was pointing at an eagle’s nest just past Jocelyn’s shoulder. There was a bald eagle sitting in it and one perched further up the tree.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“Majestic creatures,” Hank agreed. “But they’ll be there all week. We want to get camp set up so we can have a little something to eat and then go fishing.”
I nodded and proceeded to help Hank with the last three coolers.
Before long, Hank and I had a large tarp up over the campsite, held up by strategically placed dead trees that Hank had hammered into the ground at some point like towering fence posts. There was also an A-line tarp over our gear.
While Hank encouraged the “womenfolk” to start putting up their tents, Hank and I erected the cook tent.
I could hear Mom giggling in the background, which told me she was being absolutely useless in getting the tent she would be sharing with Hank together. Once Hank and I finished with the cook tent, I saw it was just as I thought.
Mom was sitting between whippy tent poles, trying to bend them into place, but she’d fed them wrong in the first place, so nothing was happening. Hank just smiled indulgently and went to help her.
I went to find my own tent to put up a few feet away from theirs, only to see Jacey’s was already standing across from mine, and she was kneeling on the ground, assembling mine, now.
“Thanks, Jocelyn,” I said quietly, coming up behind her.
She jumped, then blushed. “Well, you know, you were getting all that other stuff done with Dad.”
I peeked through the screen of Jocelyn’s tent. “You’ve even got your cot up and your sleeping bag ready.”
Jocelyn nodded. “I even unpacked a little. But don’t unpack too much. I mean, we put tarps down inside the tents, but the floor can still get a little wet from ground water.”
“Good to know,” I said. I scrubbed my hand over the back of my neck. “Listen, Jocelyn, about what happened back at the landing...”
“What happened back at the landing?” Mom asked helpfully, popping her head over the brush between my tent and hers.
Shit.
“We had an argument,” Jocelyn replied quickly. “When I went to bring him his bag.”
Mom frowned. “Caleb. Jacey was doing something nice for you, and you got into an argument?”
“Are you trying to ruin this trip?” Hank pitched in, his head also coming into view.
I ground my teeth. I was pretty sure my dentist was going to need a microscope to find any enamel by the time we got home. “No. I didn’t realize the bags were switched, so I was yelling at her for—”
“—almost catching him naked,” Jocelyn finished quickly. “Luckily, he hadn’t started changing yet.”
“Oh. Well, you still shouldn’t have yelled,” Mom admonished me.
I looked at Jocelyn. “You’re right. I shouldn't have yelled.”
Jocelyn ducked her head and cleared her throat. “Anyway, do you still need help with your tent?”
Oh, I needed help with a tent alright, but not the one we were assembling. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, Jocelyn.”
“You’re welcome.” Jocelyn ducked into her tent and zipped the second flap closed, this one opaque so I couldn’t see in.
“I wish you two would just get along,” Mom sighed.
“You’re going to have to,” Hank said. “You’re sharing a boat for ten days.”
I knew it. That motherfucker.
-Jacey-My father started a fire, and soon we were roasting weenies on sticks. Jeanie and my father took one of the makeshift stump-and-board benches near the fire, so Caleb and I were forced side-by-side on the other.Caleb was roasting his own weenie, and so was I, but my father had stuck two weenies on one stick and had his arms around Jeanie, teaching her to roast as though he were teaching her to golf. Jeanie giggled the whole time.“Enjoying your birthday trip so far?” Caleb asked in a low tone as he slowly turned his weenie over the fire. They’d come cold, nearly frozen, from the cook tent cooler, so waiting for them to sizzle and split was a bit of a chore.I set my jaw and didn’t answer him. I didn’t have to. Caleb knew that this was my worst birthday since I’d turned fifteen and foolishly confessed I had a crush on him.Caleb gently bumped my shoulder with his. “I am sorry about before, Jocelyn.”“Hmph,” I answered noncommittally.He leaned closer to my ear. “And I’m sorry a
-Caleb-Jocelyn’s lips were just as soft and plump and perfect as I’d expected. The lifejackets were awkward as fuck, but I still managed to put a hand at the nape of her neck and keep her lips pressed to mine.I felt it when the shock left her body and she melted into me. I flicked my tongue over her lips, asking for entry.Jocelyn parted her lips with a little gasp, and I took the invitation and slid my tongue into her mouth.Fuck, she tasted good. Like honey.I got rock hard as I imagined what she tasted like other places as well.My tongue massaged against hers, encouraging her. When she very tentatively tangled her tongue with mine, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she didn’t have a lot of experience with boys.She was probably a virgin.The thought had me groaning and pulling my lips away. While my dick twitched eagerly at the idea of being her first lover, my brain finally caught up and convinced me this was wrong.“Caleb?” Jocelyn breathed, her chest rising and falling i
-Jacey-Caleb had kissed me.The thought rolled around and around in my mind.Caleb had kissed me.Caleb had kissed me!Sure, the events that followed after had momentarily washed the desire and confusion from me, but now that I was alone on my cot, there was nothing to do but think about his firm, inquisitive lips on mine.He’d also put his tongue in my mouth, which had caused a burst of sensations I hadn’t even known I was capable of.The heat ratcheted up when I remembered I’d also given him a hard-on. Me!Even though the temperature had fallen overnight, and I should be happily cocooned in my sleeping bag, I couldn’t stand the heat. I was laying on top of my sleeping bag now, remembering the kiss that had started this fire in me.I sawed my legs together, the heat going exactly where I didn’t want it. It was delicious, but our parents were ten feet from my tent. There was a shorter distance between my tent and Caleb’s. I couldn’t give myself sweet relief.Frustrated, I sat up on t
-Caleb-“Caleb, we need to slow down,” Jocelyn said after about a minute.We were wearing life jackets, because Jocelyn insisted again. I could still see camp from where we were, so I shook my head. “No can do. If I squint one eye, I could probably see your father flipping me the bird.”“He... okay, he might actually do that... but there are rocks out in the middle of the lake here in some places, too, you know!” Jocelyn yelled over the sound of the motor.“We’ll be fine,” I grunted, maneuvering the canoe around a corner.Jocelyn gripped the sides of the canoe, her eyes wide with fear. “Caleb—”“Weren&rs
-Jacey-It was freezing, so cold that Caleb’s warm hand on my numb, wet cheek actually stung. That was not, however, the place where most of the warmth in my body was bubbling up from. My heart beat a ba-thump ba-thump when he touched me, and his words touched a broken place in my soul.I blinked, pretending my tears were just the rain that kept pouring on us. Or at least I could have if the rain hadn’t, inconveniently, chosen just that moment to stop.Caleb rubbed the tears under my eyes with his thumb, not saying a word. Even though we were both shivering so hard our teeth were chattering, he was still trying to take care of me.“Please tell me you’re not being so nice to me just to get into my pants,” I mumbled, wincing at the pounding in
-Jacey-I waited while Caleb took our silverware and the empty can down to the lake, praying he didn’t get lost on the way back. The sun was just starting to dip down from its peak outside the window, and I knew my father and Jeanie probably wouldn’t even be worried about our absence until sunset.The silence without Caleb was maddening. It made me even more nervous about whether or not he was okay out there. He was wandering around in boxers, for God’s sake.I didn’t know what time it was, but after a while, I decided it was taking too long. I stood up from the bed and started towards the door.It opened just as I was reaching for the knob, and there was Caleb with two spoons in his hand, and nothing else but his boxers.
-Jacey-Caleb finally let me go to sleep after checking to make sure my pupils were evenly dilated. Since I’d been lucid in the hours following my head injury, Caleb had reluctantly decided my concussion, if I had one, wasn’t that bad, and he’d continue to monitor me throughout my sleep.My nearly-naked monitor was, however, snoring softly when I woke up. I bit my lip, holding back a laugh.The moonlight was shining through the window, and I could see a million stars. I placed my hand on Caleb’s cheek, and he blinked awake.“You okay?” he asked muzzily. Then his gaze sharpened. “Ah, shit, I fell asleep!”“Well, Dr. Killeen, I guess you’re going to have to redo your r
-Caleb-I woke slowly, wondering if last night had been a dream. Then I saw Jocelyn, naked, sprawled across my chest, her braid half-undone, breathing deeply in sleep.“Hey, baby,” I whispered too softly to wake her. She needed her rest.Her thigh was pressed between mine, rubbing against my already ready dick. Between morning wood and having this gorgeous creature enveloping my senses, I was harder than I’d ever been in my life. I was so hard it hurt.Careful not to disturb her, I started giving myself some much-needed relief, fisting my hand up and down my shaft. When she woke up, we’d probably fuck again, but I needed release now.I bit my lip against any sounds as I imagined it was Jocelyn’s