Drilled by K.M. Neuhold

Chapter 5

RIDGE

I wake up with a crick in my neck, the sound of birds so loud outside that it actually manages to drown out the ungodly volume of Apollo’s snoring a few feet away. Seriously, it has to be a medical condition. The man sounds like a cement mixer.

My eyes feel like sandpaper and every last one of my muscles is sore from the work I did yesterday, paired with the hard, thin mattress I slept on. Or rather, laid awake all night on.

Apollo kept up the silent treatment all afternoon and evening yesterday, eventually re-joining me and getting to work on rebuilding the stairs on the front of our cabin as well as a few others before it started to get dark. Then he quietly built a fire, and we cooked dinner side by side, without a word between us.

It kind of sucked, but it also gave me plenty of time to think, strategize, and remember all the things that made our friendship as awesome as it was back before my untimely sexual awakening ruined everything.

After all of that uncomfortable silence and time to think, I have a plan. Step one, let him keep scowling and grumbling through the morning while we bust our asses getting some work done. Step two, convince him to go explore the woods with me. He always used to be up for a good adventure and something about nature seemed to lower his guard a bit. My plan from there is just to be my charming self and hope like hell he remembers why we were so close.

I wish I could say I’m not a nervous mess, all butterflies and knots like I’m getting ready to ask the man to prom rather than make a valiant attempt to rekindle our friendship. I just don’t think I can do this forever, going to work every day and seeing all the anger he has for me in every glare. It’s too hard. I fucking miss him.

I swallow around the lump in my throat, sneaking a peek across the room at him. He looks comically large compared to the bed, his legs hanging partially off the end, the poor thing barely containing his massive frame. His chest rises and falls slowly with each deafening snore. He looks peaceful, the frown lines around his eyes and mouth all smooth for once.

It’s hard to believe it took me as long as it did to realize I was attracted to him. Sometimes I wonder if things would’ve been different if I’d figured it out sooner. I wonder if we…

I throw off my blanket and shove that dangerous line of thought out of my mind. It’s not going to do me any good to play the what-if game. Shit happened the way it happened. We are where we are.

The dirt and sweat from yesterday have my skin feeling grimy, so I suppose my first order of business today is to find out what kind of shape the showers are in.

I snatch my duffle bag off the floor near my bed and pull out a towel, my toiletry bag, and a change of clothes, and then I quietly slip out of the cabin.

It’s early enough in the morning that there’s a pleasant coolness in the air. The birds are even louder outside, joined by the rustling of the wind through the forest of trees surrounding us. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the scent of pine and dirt and sunshine. If you can get past the whole Murder Camp part of things, this is actually a pretty nice place.

There are spider webs along the top of the open doorway that leads to the showers. I shudder, darting my eyes around to check for any furry, creepy spiders actually dwelling in the webs but finding none.

“Gross,” I mutter, ducking low just in case and scurrying inside the building.

The place doesn’t look to be in bad shape at all. It’s the one building that’s made entirely of stone, which doesn’t decay anywhere near the rate that wood does. There’s moss growing around the shower taps and some weeds growing up through cracks in the floor, but aside from needing a good scrub, it doesn’t look bad at all. There’s a half-wall surrounding the communal shower stall, so I drape my towel and clothes over it, stopping to slip out of my dirty clothes and leaving them in a heap next to the wall.

I grab my shampoo out of my toiletry bag and carry it to the nearest tap, cranking it on and watching from a few inches back as it screeches loudly and starts to spurt brown, rusty water. Looks like we’re going to need to order in some piping to get the plumbing updated in here as well. I add that to my mental list and wait warily for the water issue to sort itself out. After a few seconds, the water runs clear, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.

Of course, that’s short-lived.

“Motherfucking ass fuck,” I curse as the frigid water hits my skin, causing goosebumps to rise. We’ll have to see if a water heater is within the budget. Otherwise, the kids who come to camp here are going to freeze their little asses off.

I dance around under the spray until either the water starts to warm a bit, or I just get used to it. It’s hard to tell which. Either way, it doesn’t hurt anymore as it pelts my skin, and that’s good enough for me.

I pour shampoo into my hands and lather them together, running them through my hair and all over my body. Even with the chilly water, it feels damn good to get all of the filth from yesterday off of me. I start to relax, closing my eyes as I soap my body up and scrub away all the dirt and dried sweat.

My mind drifts back to that moment yesterday. Apollo an inch from my face, his body dominating my personal space, the rage hot enough in his eyes that my oversexed imagination is easily able to pretend it was a different kind of fire that was burning.

My cock swells rapidly, lust prickling in the pit of my stomach. I know I shouldn’t, but my mind takes it upon itself to change the ending of that encounter. Instead of moving out of his way, I gather the courage to close that space between us and finally, after all these years, find out what his mouth tastes like, to learn the shape of that endearing fucking scowl with my tongue.

I groan quietly, wrapping my sudsy hand around the base of my cock and slowly stroking myself while I imagine Apollo’s hands on me, rough and urgent, his mouth hot against mine, his cock hard and thick and leaking precum like a fucking faucet because he’s so damn turned on by me that he can’t help himself.

My breath catches in my throat, my whole body trembling with so much fucking want that I’m afraid it might consume me, burn me to the ground like a raging inferno. I work my hand faster.

I tilt my head back and open my eyes just a fraction, and that’s when everything goes to hell.

My heart jumps into my throat, and I let go of my cock with a loud yelp, leaping back out of the shower spray in an effort to put some distance between myself and the biggest fucking spider I’ve seen in my entire life. This fucking thing probably has a driver’s license, its own address, maybe a 401K. It’s a goddamn beast. I’m pretty sure it was an extra in the movie Eight Legged Freaks, and I’m not too proud to admit that the sounds that echo from my mouth at this moment are nothing short of ultrasonic.

I shriek and stumble over my own feet, flailing my arms wildly for purchase, the slick, stone floor not doing a damn thing to help and certainly not cushioning my fall as I crash hard with a pained groan.

Thunderous footfalls are my first warning that I’m not alone.

APOLLO

A high-pitched scream isn’t my ideal alarm clock. I was barely conscious when my body jolted out of bed, not even giving my brain time to wake up before I found myself tearing out of the cabin in the direction of the horrified screams.

I half-expected to barge into the showers to find Ridge cornered by the murderous mother of the boy who died here, complete with a machete and a hockey mask.

Instead, I find him dripping wet, in a heap on the floor, screaming like he’s having a bad acid trip. My heart jolts, concern washing over me.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, dropping to the floor next to him, barely wincing when the cold water starts to pelt me and soak my clothes. “Can you stand? What happened?”

He closes his eyes and points at the wall. It takes me a minute to even see what has him so freaked out. Of course, I should have known. I roll my eyes, my heart rate returning to normal and my worry melting into irritation as I get to my feet and take a step forward.

There’s a decent-size barn spider chilling on the wall near the tap. I grunt and use my palm to crush it and then stick my hand under the running water to rinse it off.

Ridge gets carefully to his feet, and now that he’s not in mortal danger from a non-venomous spider, I realize that he’s naked. I mean, of course he’s naked, he’s in the shower, but his cheeks are flushed and his dick is swinging half-hard between his thick thighs, the hair there dark from the water, suds settled in his pubic hair.

My cock starts to harden, drawing my attention to the fact that the boxer briefs I slept in are soaked through from the shower, the white fabric completely see-through. Ridge’s eyes drop to the growing bulge, the spot where every vein of my cock is clearly visible, pressing against my underwear.

I could almost swear that his cock twitches and stands a little straighter, but I’m trying really fucking hard not to get a good look.

The air seems to crackle around us, both of us breathing heavily, the sound of the water splattering against the stone floors echoing all around us and giving the illusion that nothing exists outside of this room. The water is icy, but somehow, I feel hot all over, nearly overwhelmed by the urge to reach out and touch Ridge.

“Pol,” he says in a deep-throated whisper, snapping me out of whatever bizarre trance came over me.

“I’m going to make coffee,” I grunt, shouldering past him and hauling ass out of the building.

I shiver as the cool morning breeze hits my wet skin. But even that isn’t cold enough to convince my erection to get lost. I jog back to the cabin, stubbornly refusing to look back over my shoulder at the showers.

What the fuck even was that? Did Ridge give himself a concussion when he fell? Was he just being a typical straight dude, traumatized by the sight of another man’s half-hard dick? For whatever reason, this thought conjures the memory of the night before the wedding, when he fell on me and my body reacted. I remember the way he kept staring at the front of my jeans, a look of shock on his face. Shock and something else I couldn’t place. Was it disgust? Was that why he didn’t marry my sister? Was he so freaked out that I got an erection when he was lying on top of me, drunk off his ass, that he decided he couldn’t marry into the family?

I try to make sense of it while I strip out of my wet boxers, put on fresh, and then finish getting dressed. But even after a quick trip into the woods to take a piss and the time it takes to make a fire and boil water for coffee, I still can’t get any of it worked out.

He eventually joins me, fully dressed this time. His wet hair is slicked back, and there’s a surprisingly relaxed smile on his lips, a lightness in his walk as he makes his way over to the fire and plops his ass down on one of the logs.

“I’m going to be bruised all to hell tomorrow. Stone floors are a terrible idea in a shower,” he says conversationally.

I ignore him, pouring the hot water over my instant coffee.

Ridge does the same, a playful smile dancing on his lips like he’s thinking of something funny.

“Hey, did you hear about the zoo that only had one animal in it?” he asks, and I grunt, taking a sip of my bitter coffee. “It was a Shih Tzu,” he quips and then starts to cackle to himself.

My lips twitch against my will. Not at the dumbass joke, but at his damn infectious laugh. Fuck, I forgot that about him, his stupid fucking puns that only he ever found amusing. The fondness that wraps itself around my insides makes me grind my teeth. I run my free hand through my beard, swig back some more of my coffee, and get to my feet.

“We should really get to work.”