Forty minutes after the phone call, my army buddies arrived with both Miranda and Emma in tow. We were soon all out by the pool in our swimming costumes. Miranda looked stunning in her tiny red bikini and Emma was elegant in her more modest black one.
"Hey Jack," Miranda said, taking her first plastic glass of beer from Mitch. "How old is Stacy now?"
Stacy was a topic of conversation I would have preferred to have avoided around Emma. There was just something about her that made me uneasy; almost as if I was an open book to her. "Eighteen," I said in an off-hand tone of voice, hoping to sound disinterested.
"Does she still compete?"
Damn. "Yeah, she does. She has a competition sometime in the middle of this week. Wednesday, maybe."
Emma was lying on one of our sunloungers and turned her head my way. "She competes? What at?"
I didn't know whether not being able to see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses was a good thing or a bad one. "Gymnastics. Stace is pretty good."
"Oh? I used to compete in the gymkhana when I was her age."
Trying to deflect the conversation into other areas, I plastered on a look of interest. "Really? Did you have your own horse then?"
She smiled and it was dazzling, making a warmth spread in my chest. Jeez, she was beautiful! "Actually, I had several. Daddy owns a couple of stud farms and likes to spoil me."
Liam perched on the bottom edge of her lounger and nudged her knee, "Tell them what Daddy bought for you this week."
She scowled at him. "Stop bragging honey. It's vulgar."
He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I be bragging if it is you who got the sports car and it wasn't even your birthday?"
"I told you he likes to spoil me. I'm still his little girl to his eyes and he was in a good mood."
"Hell," I said, still not being used to just how immensely wealthy Emma's family were. "I wish my folks could afford to spoil me like that. What put him in such a good mood?"
She used one hand to pull her sunglasses down her nose a little so that she could peer over them and look me directly in the eye. She held my gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable before pushing her sunglasses back up her nose, "I have no idea."
"Fuck me!" Cooper hissed, staring past us, so I twisted my head around to see what he was staring slack jawed at.
It was like a tide of nubile teenage flesh flowing out of the house. Stacy had said that if my friends were coming over she was inviting hers, but I wasn't expecting this. The noise of their chattering, giggling and laughing was considerable but I barely heard it as the lithe, sylph-like bodies strolled into the sunlight clad in the wispiest bikinis imaginable. Slim legs; firm, toned stomachs; small breasts; flowing hair and pearl white smiles flooded the patio and bunched around the near end of the pool. There were about eight of them, but it was almost impossible to snag my eyes away from all the bare skin to be sure.
"This is my dumb-ass brother and his friends; ignore them if you can," Stacy chirped over the constant buzz of their talking.
The brat looked glorious in her tiny yellow bikini. True, she had almost no womanly curves on her child-like body, but she did move with the sensual grace that made her a natural gymnast. Her long blonde ponytail curled over her left shoulder and she squinted in the bright sunshine as she stared defiantly at me.
"Can't you and the pep squad do something indoors? We're trying to have an adult party here and could do without a bunch of vapoured kids," I told her.
"We're not kids," she reminded me. Like I needed that with all the flesh on show! "As for vapoured, I think the word you meant was vapid. However, 'cause they don't print dictionaries with centrefolds and staples, I can understand you getting it wrong."
"Fuck off, Stacy."
She grinned because it was clear her barbs were getting to me. She really did love to pit her wits against others, and usually won. The bitch. "Your verbal flexibility astounds me as always, Jack, but we have as much right to use the pool as you do; although granted your sweaty gorilla mates do need to wash off more than us." She made a show of pinching her nose and wafting a hand in front of it.
"Fine, but don't think you're getting any of our beer," I sulked. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Cooper in the act of handing a plastic cup full to a very pretty young thing with hair so blonde it was nearly white. "Hey!"
He turned to me and shrugged. "I paid my share of the money, One-shot, so if I want to give this cutie some, I will."
"Yeah, don't be such a tight ass, Jack," Miranda added.
"Don't you start Miranda, 'cause sure as shit you didn't put up any money for the keg."
"No," she admitted, "but Mitch did and we share everything, don't we honey?" He looked like he wanted to agree with me, but knew it was best not to put Miranda in a mood if he was hoping to get laid, so nodded. Traitor.
"Sod it!" I snapped and stalked over to sit beside Emma.
The gymnast team dissolved into girlish giggles, laughter and bubbling chat as they all spoke at once. It didn't help my mood to see how beautiful they all were, with slim, athletic figures that had only just crossed into adulthood. It was like a fantasy come to life. There was a couple of sweet blondes, a girl with raven hair so dark it seemed to be tinted with blue highlights, and even a delicious redhead who had a nose dappled with the cutest freckles imaginable. All this young flesh was barely contained in ribbons that pretended to be bikinis and I had to tear my eyes away.
"Let them enjoy themselves, Jack," Emma said, soothingly. "It's not long since we were that young and a beer was the ultimate way to show how grown up we were."
"Emmie," Tank-boy chuckled, "One-shot ain't ever grown up."
I couldn't help but smile at that. "This, coming from you? Thanks, Liam." I sighed and leant back against the small, three brick high border to one of mom's flowerbeds. "It's just that the beer will not go as far with eight others drinking it."
"And that's a problem?" Emma asked, removing her sunglasses with a look of concern.
"Huh? No," I replied, a little too quickly.
"One-shot gets rather possessive about his beer," Cooper told them, dropping his bulk beside me. "He's an alcoholic."
"What?!" I gasped. "No I'm fuckin' not! I just like a drink, that's all. What's wrong with that?"
"Nuthin', man, nuthin'!" Cooper hastily said, holding up a placating hand defensively.
Not liking the direction of the conversation, I drained my glass and got up to refill it. Stacy's mates were clustered all over the patio, each holding their large plastic glass of beer as if it were gold. I pushed between the redhead and the ash blonde to get to the keg.
"Calm down a bit, One-shot," Mitch suggested from nearby.
I sagged a little and nodded; I was being unreasonable but it was a common reaction when I crossed paths with the brat and old habits die hard. I twisted the tap and let the beer fill my glass as I shot a sideways glance at Stacy. The brat was ignoring me and chatting to Kimberly who looked amazing in her tiny pale blue string swimsuit. My eyes roamed over her small breasts, not as tiny as Stacy's but still small for a girl her age, and I was sure I could see a nipple between the netting of her bra's cup. That stirred me and I dropped my gaze lower to examine her bikini bottoms. They too were woven with a mesh that allowed the briefest glimpses of the flesh beneath and, like my kid sister, she also seemed to be completely shaven. It was probably something to do with the skin-tight leotards they wore when they competed that would have looked strange with even a small mat of pussy hair bulging them out.
A sweet, bubbly giggle and a snickered laugh to my right made me glance at the redhead and her pal. They were pointing at me and obviously amused. Even as I tracked my eyes to where they pointed, the other girls turned to stare, and everybody saw the beer overflowing my glass and splashing down onto the ground.
"Hey, One-shot!" Liam shouted. "Go easy, would ya?"
I scowled and flipped off the tap, lifting my glass and sucking some of the frothing nectar to stop it spilling. Kimberly slid to my side. "Hey, Jack," she purred.
"Uh, hey," I returned. What was it with this girl that seemed to short circuit my power of speech? I honestly did try to make eye contact, but I missed by at least a foot. She didn't appear to mind, and possibly even stuck her little titties out a bit more for my inspection.
"Why do your friends call you One-shot?"
There was no way I was going to answer that and for a small second I was relieved when the brat intervened. Yeah, stupid of me, I know. Her voice dripped with venom as she flashed me a beautiful smile while she played to her audience. "Oh, go easy on him, would you? He's already standing up and drinking; if you make him use up brain power to talk as well, he'll fall over."
All the girls giggled, but the redhead was in the middle of a gulp of beer and it came blasting out in a spray as she nearly choked with laughter.
"Way to go Amber. Very classy," Kim congratulated her. The girl looked mortified and her face pinked up as she smoothed the back of her hand over her lips to brush off the beer.
"So?" the sex kitten said, turning her attention back to me. "Why do they call you One-shot?"
"Tell 'em Jack, I dare you!" Liam hooted.
Kim seemed to take a little pity on my obvious discomfort because she turned to our reed thin joker and folded her arms over her small breasts. "How about we start with why they call you Tank-boy?"
"That's easy," Stacy sniped before he could answer. "He has the brain power of a goldfish."
To his credit, Liam thought that was as funny as the girls did. Unfortunately, it didn't distract Kim. "So, tell me why," she persisted, batting her eyelids at me as she did so. Before I could even open my mouth, the brat chirped up again.
"Are you serious? He still thinks that it's an amazing coincidence that Mom and Dad named him Jack when that is what everybody else calls him too!"
"Drop dead!" I fired back amid all the laughing. Stacy just screwed up her face and stuck her tongue out at me.
Cooper was the only one who didn't join in; he had be sliced by Stacy's sharp tongue once too often to take pleasure in her doing it to others. Foolishly, he even tried to defend me from her. "Why don't you lay off him?"
