Borrowed Beauty

Chapter Twenty-One: The Tower

Olivia

I woke up bright and early Saturday morning to the raucous beeping of a piece of heavy equipment backing into the yard behind the packhouse, and incidentally, almost directly below my window. I slipped out of bed with a noisy yawn and an indulgent stretch, and patted barefoot to the window that took up the entire outer wall. Below me, I saw a flatbed truck loaded with an assortment of pressure-treated lumber, colorful jumbo-sized plastic shapes, slides, and other bits and bobs that I figured all belonged to some sort of playground equipment.

Smiling to myself, I leaned my head on the window and watched the drivers start to unload the cargo. A few days ago, when I had gone to Alpha Josiah with the suggestion to get Thomas a swing set, I’d been thinking of the inexpensive garden-variety playset you could pick up at any big-box store. I wasn’t expecting the man to put up a whole playground, but by the looks of things, that was exactly what he planned to do. The fact that he’d not only taken my advice but that he had gone to such extremes for Thomas made my chest feel warm and full.

I was still standing there when the man himself came out to talk to the workers. Josiah was dressed as casually as I’d ever seen him, in a faded t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. He was pointing in a certain direction, and I imagined he was telling the workmen to put the monkey bars over there, and the slide on the other side. I stood in my ratty pajamas, with my hair doing its morning medusa imitation, smiling like an i***t, thinking that no one could see me because the windows were reflective. But then Josiah turned and looked up at me, and I swear, he looked right at me, as if I was fully exposed to his view.

Yelping, I jumped away from the glass. Thank god, I don’t sleep naked!

I went to the bathroom to scrub my face and tame my hair and emerged fifteen minutes later looking and feeling a little more human. I pulled on a t-shirt and some cut-off jean shorts and bounced down the stairs to see what I could do to help.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the trucks had pulled away, leaving parts and pieces stacked in piles around the yard. Guys I didn’t know were already crowding around a hastily assembled worktable, pouring over a set of printed blueprints and instructions with all the seriousness of a construction crew about to tackle a highrise.

Most of the work was well beyond my humble skill level, but I made myself useful by bringing coffee and donuts from the kitchen to keep the volunteer work crew fed and happy. The men were all pack members, and most of them had been conscripted from the security team. They introduced themselves to me en masse, so I had absolutely no chance of remembering all their names, especially since they all seemed to be John, Dan, and Don. At first, they were a little flirty, until Josiah came over with a dark scowl and put his arm around my shoulders. Then the workers scattered with knowing grins, and nobody got too close or too friendly again.

By noon the pile of lumbar had miraculously started to take the shape of a proper playground. There were vinyl swings on sturdy chains that I duly tested for safety and functionality. A set of monkey bars offered endless hanging and dangling possibilities. And the pièce de résistance was a sprawling fort that contained several stations that were connected by swinging bridges. The fort could be accessed by climbing walls, cargo nets, or a very tame set of steps. There were slides galore, a fireman’s pole for sliding down, and at the very top, a small tower that connected to the tallest, twisty, curving slide.

Josiah was up in that tower, even though he was way too big for the small space. “Hey Olivia,” he called, hoisting his head and shoulders out the top, “Can you bring me those decals?” He pointed with his chin to a pile of stickers that were supposed to go over the plexiglass windows in the tower.

I scooped them up, and fully enjoyed tottering across the swinging bridge and then climbed the narrow stairway up to the tower. I stood on the top step and waved the stickers in the air. “Here they are.”

“Oh, shoot, let me just…” He tried to bend down to retrieve the stickers through the kid-sized doorway, but he found that his body was too large to fully bend over. “Um, no, let me try…” he popped back out of the top and tried to reach down the side to get the stickers, but the fake parapet was too high and did not allow his arm to extend over, and I couldn’t reach his hand from my spot on the step.

“I think you’ll have to bring them in for me.” He said, his face smiling over the top of the tower at me. “Just, you know, scooch in.”

I looked doubtfully at the small entrance. There already wasn’t enough space for Josiah to maneuver around, I didn’t think adding my plus-size ass to the party was going to help anything. But maybe, if I just sat on the edge, I could kind of just put my upper body in long enough to hand him the stickers…? I ducked my head inside and squirmed around until I was sitting in the doorway, with my upper body inside, and my legs still dangling outside. “Okay, here you go,” I said a bit breathlessly as I held up the papers. I had an ace view of his thighs, which were just a little bit hairy, and very muscular.

“Great, thanks!” He was already peeling the decals off the backing and pressing them onto the plexiglass squares, which made them look like stained glass windows, and created a magical, rainbow play of light inside the small tower. It was clear to see that he was very, very pleased with himself, and his work. He didn’t even notice that he was dropping bits of sticky paper on my hair. I admired him, admiring his work for a second before deciding to extricate myself from the tower.

Except, I couldn’t.

“Oh s**t,” I muttered, as I tried to twist around, but in so doing, I lost my footing on the little child-size stair that I was perched on.

Above me, Josiah tucked his chin to his chest so he could look down at me. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m stuck!” I grumbled, feeling my face burn hot with shame. Leave it to the fat girl to get stuck in the kids’ playground equipment. I immediately had visions of all those hot guys in tool belts trying to remove me from the play fort. I would never live this down.

“No way!” Josiah wiggled around, to get a better look at my predicament. “Well that’s okay, just come the rest of the way inside, and then you can go down the slide.”

“Okay,” it sounded doable. “Can you like, move over so I can get in?”

There really wasn’t any room for him to move aside, so he spread his legs wide, giving me room to crawl in underneath him. I squeezed the rest of the way inside on my hands and knees, but when I turned myself around, I was very up-close and personal with Josiah’s crotch. “Um…”

“No problem,” Josiah said lightly, “I’ll help you stand up, then we can kind of…”

Standing up didn’t make things any better. My back was pressed against the plastic wall of the tower, and my front was flush up against Josiah’s chest. I could feel his heartbeat, and I knew he wasn’t nearly as calm and collected as he was trying to act. He grinned down at me, that goofy, boyish, crooked smile. “Well, this is awkward.”

“We can do this,” I said, between gritted teeth, “we just need to rotate around so that I’m near the slide.”

“Sure,” he agreed, but he made no move to pivot us. Instead, his hands slid down my sides and rested on my hips, and his head bent toward mine.

I mean what are you supposed to do, when you are stuck inside a plastic tower? If my hands happened to find their way to the small of his back and worked their way under the hem of his tee, well, that was completely accidental, due to the terribly confined space. It had nothing to do with my almost fanatical craving for skin-to-skin contact. And if I was breathless, it was probably from claustrophobia. And if my n*****s were rock hard against his chest…

Well, I didn’t have an explanation for that one.

He kissed me again, slowly, sensuously rubbing his lips against mine before he nipped my lower lip. I completely forgot where we were, or that we were embarrassingly stuck, as I pushed up on my tiptoes to kiss him back. It seemed like time slowed to a stop as his tongue wandered, and his lips plundered. He wedged his hand behind my ass and pulled me closer as if we weren’t already melting into each other, and I felt the ridge in his shorts growing against my lower belly.

“Josiah?” I recognized the sound of Vero’s voice, calling rather shrilly from below us.

He pulled away from my mouth, and I saw his blue eyes were almost black. With a groan, he lifted himself back up to look over the top of the tower. “Yeah?”

“Are you almost finished? I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, give me just a minute.” He lowered himself back down, inadvertently sliding his body against mine again.

He breathed out a sigh and stroked my cheek. “We are definitely not finished,” he growled, his voice thick with promise. However, he reached around me, anchored my body against his, and turned us slowly so that my feet were near the opening to the twisty slide. He then turned me around so that I was facing outward, and then supported me so that I could lower my legs out of the tower and finally sit on the slide and push myself out.

The world spun around crazily as I slid down the corkscrew and landed at the bottom, still sitting at the edge of the slide. I was flushed and more than a little dazed until Josiah came down the slide after me. He tried to stop himself, but his body was too big, and his momentum was too much. He plowed into me and sent us both sprawling into the newly spread layer of woodchips.

Untangling myself, I plucked a couple of woodchips out of my hair before I looked up into the stern, unamused face of Veronica Salvador. Josiah was still sprawled on his back next to me looking hella surprised to be laying there.

I couldn’t help myself, I burst out laughing.