Paper Dolls Read online

  Realisation struck me. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  He lowered his lips to my ear, the softness brushing against my lobe, causing my thighs to tremble. “Wouldn’t I?”

  He began to walk us forward. I struggled against him, a rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins, shaking off the gathered cobwebs and bubbling out into giggles. “Oh my God, Clay. I have no other clothes. My shoes. Everything will get wet.”

  “You had your chance to undress.” His deep voice, full of amusement, tickled down my neck making me shiver.

  He dragged me all the way to the lake’s edge onto a flat rock jutting out over the water. Through the surface was the rocky lake bed and several pale fish swimming about.

  He paused. I exhaled. He was just bluffing. Of course he was just bluffing. He wouldn’t really do it.

  He picked me up and my feet kicked out automatically. “No! Don’t!”

  With his laughter in my ear, I was tossed forward. I inhaled, squeezing everything shut, and waited for the water to swallow me up.

  He didn’t release me. My body jerked against his arms as he tugged me back and my legs pulled back in. He placed my trembling legs back on the rock and his arms loosened around me. It took me a second to realise that he had been bluffing.

  “You ass.” I turned and slapped his chest. It was like hitting granite. “I hate you.”

  He grabbed my wrists to stop me from hitting him again and pulled me towards him, this time face to face. One of his arms wrapped around me to trap me against him, my arms between us. My fingertips fluttered on his chest. His bare torso was so warm in contrast to the cool air that it sent shivers through me.

  “No you don’t,” he said. “You love me.” I could still see amusement in his eyes, but joining it now was a seriousness.

  I swallowed hard. “You arrogant ass. Keep telling yourself that.”

  “I will. Just until you figure it out.”

  He was too close and almost naked and his skin was too warm and he smelled too damn good, hints of cedar but it was tempered with a warm musk and some kind of spice. I couldn’t think of anything clever to say back. It wasn’t fair of him to do this to me. His brain seemed perfectly functional whenever I was near. Why couldn’t I have this same effect on him?

  My gaze moved across his face, deep-set blue eyes that always cut right through me like a white-hot blade, his lashes enviously thick and black, carved cheekbones, stubble that was constantly shading his jaw. Then finally to his mouth that was just a tad too wide and his top lip that pouted out just a touch farther than his bottom lip, the epitome of perfect imperfection and I wanted so badly to see whether they felt as good as they looked. I groaned before I could stop myself, then came a lash of embarrassment. What was wrong with me? I was groaning just looking at his mouth. God help me if he ever decided to kiss me.

  As if he heard me thinking the word kiss, his gaze dropped down to my mouth. I inhaled sharply as my lungs tightened, and my lips parted. Dammit. I knew what it must have looked like. A sign that I wanted him to kiss me.

  I didn’t.

  Not really.

  Male voices called out, ricocheting across the lake. “Woot. Kiss her! Go for it, mate!”

  Other hikers had seen us. Hikers who weren’t helping this awkward situation. I grew hot from my centre out to the edge of my skin.

  I pushed at Clay and he let go of me. I turned my head left and right trying to find the source of my embarrassment. I spotted them, a group of three boys, young, perhaps only fifteen or sixteen, moving past the lake, their black and blue shirts flashing through the tree trunks. They continued to whistle and tease before their voices faded as they moved out of range.

  Clay didn’t seem fussed like I was, that damn lazy grin of his sitting easily on his beautiful face. “Aria,” he said quietly. “I am going to kiss you.”

  I froze. My heart went from pleasant thud to stampeding beast in two seconds flat. Was this it? After twelve weeks of his friendship, after twelve weeks of seeing him almost every day, twelve weeks of this growing curiosity, eventually becoming a hot, aching tightness in my gut every time he got too close, was this where we were going?

  His smile widened.

  My chest tightened with panic. Clay always seemed to know what I was thinking. I could never seem to hide anything from him. I wasn’t safe from his probing eyes. I wasn’t safe from what I had begun to feel for him.

  “I am going to kiss you,” he repeated. “But not now.”

  I let out a breath that I hadn’t realised I had been holding. I had a reprieve. At least for now. Twisting around my relief was a bitter disappointment. One of these days I may have to admit to myself how much I wanted Clay.

  “One day I will kiss you. On the day you beg me for it. Until then…”

  “I’ll never beg.”

  “Never say never.”

  He took a step away from me, turned, and dove into the water, his beautiful body arcing like a golden bird before diving into the crystal liquid with barely a splash and disappearing from sight. While he was under I found myself holding my breath as I used to do with Salem so many years ago.

  …seven…eight…nine…

  He broke up through the surface of the water and I let that breath go, relief relaxing my body.

  “Come on in. The water’s amazing.”

  I wanted to. But it was safer on the edge. I lowered myself to sitting and pulled off my shoes, dipping my toes into the cool water. “See, I’m in.”

  Clay flicked water at me. I flinched back as the droplets hit my face. “Hey, cut that out.”

  He continued his assault. I yanked my feet out of the water and pushed myself to standing, backing up until his droplets couldn’t reach me anymore, dirt squeezing up between my toes.

  “Life starts in the deep end, angel. Don’t spend the rest of your existence just watching from the edge.”

  His words cut through me. “I have a life,” I said in self- defence. “Just because I won’t to jump in with you…” I trailed off. But I hadn’t ever jumped in, had I? I had always just watched from the side.

  I stared at Clay, swimming through the water with powerful cuts of his arms and felt a strong tug towards the glittering lake. What had started out a sliver of discontent several weeks ago had steadily grown into this…inner rebellion. The safety on the shore was beginning to feel stifling and boring. I wanted something more than safety. I wanted to jump in there with him. I wanted to brave the deep end.

  Without allowing myself a moment to second-guess myself, I ran forward and jumped. For a second I was airborne, the feeling of flying coursing through me, a feeling of weightlessness. I hit the water, so cold in contrast to the humid air that it made my lungs spasm. I gasped before I shut my mouth against the invading water that covered me completely. I felt it catch me in its warm arms and slow my descent. Under the water there was a kind of silence. A womb-like sensation of being safe and surrounded. What had I ever been scared of?

  My feet found the uneven lakebed. I kicked off and shot back up, my face breaking through the surface of the water. The warm air stung against my frigid cheeks. I inhaled and felt a rush of thankfulness that I was alive. Sometimes I forgot how good it felt just to be alive. Clay always seemed to find ways to remind me. To push me into places and feelings where I didn’t want to go at first, but then I did, and every time it felt like shooting stars under my skin.

  “I knew you had it in you.”

  I spun to face Clay, his face all grin and perfect, straight teeth. He was standing partly out of the water, his taut pecs just above the waterline, and droplets on his tanned skin. His fractured reflection underneath him was a beautiful inversion.

  I was staring.

  Of course, he had noticed me staring, a half-grin pulling up at the corner of his mouth. I looked away trying to pretend that he didn’t stun me the way he always did. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him, burning the backs of my eyes like I had been staring into a flame for too l
ong. I always had to rip my gaze away from him, but it was only ever temporary, my eyes just drawing back to him like moths.

  Clay pushed back along the surface of the lake, forcing the water out of his way, until he slowed to a stop and lay on his back just floating there. With his body partially out of the water, I could see the scattering of dark chest hair plastered to his chest, a tiny pool of water between his firm chest and those ridges of his abdominal muscles. I never used to understand women’s fascination with the male body, but now I did. There was a coiled power promised in each muscle, a seductive heat that seemed to radiate from each fibre that drew me closer, fingers itching to run along those firm lines and sharp edges. And I wanted to suck the water out from every place that it pooled.

  “Hey, what do you think that looks like?”

  I flinched at his voice. Had he caught me drooling over him?

  No, he was still floating on his back, staring directly up, his right arm now outstretched.

  “What are you looking at?” I lifted my face to the heavens. The sky was a perfect Queensland summer dark blue, a few scattered clouds ambling their way across.

  “You have to come here.”

  I waded towards him and stopped a metre away. My eyes found his torso, golden and firm and perfect, rising up out of the water like a golden island.

  “Closer.”

  I moved half a metre away from him. If I lifted my arm I could touch him.

  But it was he who touched me first. His right hand wrapped around my arm and tugged me to his side; where he was touching me felt like it was on fire. “Get on your back, like me.”

  I did as he asked. I almost sank from disappointment when he took his hand from me and lifted it up to the sky to point again.

  “That cloud. What do you see?”

  “What?”

  “In that cloud, what do you see?”

  I frowned. “A cloud.”

  He laughed. “Come on, angel. You can do better than that.”

  I sighed quietly and stared at the cloud that he was pointing at. It was misshapen and fluffy and I didn’t see a damn thing in it other than a cloud. But I know Clay wouldn’t let up if I didn’t say something. “A rabbit.”

  I felt his eyes on me, then he hummed as he studied the cloud. “A rabbit. Yeah, I can see that. There’s his ears and his teeth and his tail.”

  I frowned. I didn’t see a rabbit. Trust Clay to see things in the clouds that I couldn’t. I started to drift away from him across the water. I was going to let us drift apart but I felt his hand finding mine just under the surface of the water. His fingers pushed their way through my fingers and he tugged me so that I floated right up against him, his thick corded arm pressing right up along mine. I was too surprised to protest.

  It felt so good, just floating there with Clay, staring up to the sky and watching the cluster of condensed air that people called clouds, even though a voice inside of me warned me not to let him get too close. It was a habit now, I guessed, after three long years of being alone, moving every few months, of searching for a sister who didn’t want to be found.

  “What about that one?” He pointed to another, this time with his left hand, his right hand firmly curled into mine.

  “A…baby rabbit?”

  “There are more than rabbits in the clouds.”

  I sighed. “That’s why you’re the artist and I’m just a checkout chick.”

  “Don’t say that. What you do and who you are are two different things. Anyone who judges who you are by what you do is short-sighted.”

  “Some of us weren’t destined for big things. It is in the stars,” I said. “The stars above us, govern our conditions.”

  “Perhaps…but men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Aria, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”

  I lashed out and righted myself, blinking rapidly as I heard a memory of Salem’s voice, speaking those exact words to me, her young voice reverberating and quivering with emotion.

  “What’s wrong?” Clay righted himself too, but he did it smoothly, barely making a splash, while the ripples were still widening from my clumsy efforts.

  “You just quoted Shakespeare.”

  “So did you. King Lear.”

  “And you quoted Julius Caesar.”

  He grinned. “You know Shakespeare?”

  “Know Shakespeare.” Salem and I used to read out his plays. We could assign each other roles and recite our lines in fake British accents, and run and jump around the garden play-fighting with sticks as our swords. I sighed dramatically. “I don’t just know Shakespeare, he and I have a relationship.”

  “Well, this is awkward. Because I have a relationship with the old Bard.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. And I’m a year older than you so my relationship has been going on longer. Mine trumps yours.”

  “Length of time does not equal a depth of connection. My connection with Shakespeare is deeper. I love Shakespeare. Mine trumps yours.”

  “You might think you love Shakespeare but you couldn’t possibly love Shakespeare more than me.”

  “I bet I do.”

  “I bet you don’t.” His eyes twinkled. “Let’s play a game.”

  The very thing I lost which forced me on this…confusing and utterly unadvisable date in the first place. “Gee, I didn’t see that coming.”

  “I’ll have to work on being more surprising, then. So are you in? Or are you chicken.”

  “I’m not chicken.”

  “So you’re in.”

  “I haven’t heard this game yet.”

  “We’ll do Shakespeare quotes. Whoever guesses wrong first, loses, and the other wins.”

  “Wins what?”

  “Same as always.”

  A request from the other. I shuffled, nervous as hell. “What will you pick if you win?”

  “Ladies choose their prize first.”

  “Fine. If I win, you get to be my chauffeur. Drive me wherever I want.”

  “You already have a car.”

  “I have a tin box with an engine of a lawn mower held together with rust. When I win−”

  “If you win.”

  “Fine. If I win you’ll be my driver.”

  “For a week.”

  “For a month.”

  “Fine.” A smile began to crawl across his face. “When I win you owe me…our first kiss.”

  “A kiss?”

  “So it’s settled.” He grinned as if he already won. “I’ll be kind. I’ll even let you go first.”

  “I…” I had to swallow to unstick my throat. He wanted a kiss? “I didn’t agree to the game yet.”

  “Afraid you’ll lose?”

  “I won’t lose this game.” I found a section of the lake where I could actually feel the bottom and raised myself up as tall as I could. “I’m not going to lose.” My chin was only barely out of the water, but I felt more stable.

  “Put your money where your mouth is.”

  “I’ll start.” I just knew this was a bad idea. What did they say? Pride comes before the fall… “Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done.”

  He gave me a look. “Really? Aren’t you even going to make this hard for me?”

  “You haven’t even answered yet.”

  “Macbeth.” He smirked at me, knowing that he got it right.

  I shrugged, pretending like I didn’t care, while inside my heart began thudding just a little faster. Maybe he did know what he was doing?

  “My turn,” he said, his voice resounding with gravity. “Doubt thou the stars are fire;

  Doubt that the sun doth move;

  Doubt truth to be a liar;

  But never doubt I love.”

  My skin prickled as he spoke, each word of his spoken with passion. “The answer is Hamlet. You’re good. But you’re not as good as me.”

  “You haven’t won.”

  “Yet. Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we o
ft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

  “Measure for Measure.”

  I sank slightly back in the water. “You’re good,” I conceded.

  He grinned. “I know.”

  I swallowed. “It’s your turn.”

  “Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.” He spoke his line with effort and reverence, as if he were really Romeo, his lips trembling as said the word ne’er. His gaze ripped through me and I felt naked, the temperature of the water seeming to drop, making me shiver, and yet at the same time, my insides began to glow like embers.

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t tell me that one has you stumped.”

  “No,” I growled, cursing myself for losing my brain over a silly quote. It had just seemed so real. It had seemed like he was speaking to me. “Romeo and Juliet.”

  He smiled. “Correct.”

  I was silent as I considered my next move. Finally I spoke, “Why, this is very midsummer madness.”

  He only paused for a second before he spoke, a small smile teasing his full lips. “Most people would naturally assume that this quote comes from Midsummer Night’s Dream because of the reference to midsummer.”

  Dammit. That was what I had been hoping. “But you think you know better?” I tried to bluff.

  “But I know better.”

  “You still haven’t answered.”

  “This line is from Twelfth Night, spoken by…Olivia, actually.”

  I shrugged, growing more and more uneasy at the ease at which he seemed to be recognising my quotes. He was good. He was very good.

  I pushed these thoughts aside. But I was better. I knew Shakespeare’s lines like they were the very breaths of my life, the very words of my soul. “Your go.”

  He spoke again, his eyes never leaving mine, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

  My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

  The more I have, for both are infinite.”

  I swallowed as the thick, ropy knot tightened in my throat. “Stop doing that,” I said, my voice barely squeezing out.

  “Doing what?”

  “Choosing those kinds of quotes.”

  “What kind of quotes?”