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We camped out. It felt too good to get untangled, and, anyway, we didn't have much interest in rushing back home to listen to my uncle's bitching about the hospital bill.
Birds woke us early. Steele's breath was hot on my neck, his morning wood jabbed into the back of my thigh. "I have another secret."
If he did, it wasn't about sex. I couldn't get a read on anything except his animal lust. I rolled over in the double sleeping bag and let my own good-morning stiffie jab into his, spiking his desire to the next level.
We ended up under the waterfall. The jeweled scales in Steele's various dragons glittered in the sunlight as we kissed. It wasn't long before we were trading blowjobs again.
A falcon screamed from high overhead when, relaxed and glowing, we finally splashed out of the water. Steele pointed up. "See that?"
The bird was a missile streaking across the sky. There and gone.
"Blink and you miss it," I said.
"Yeah."
The leftover doughnuts were raspberry with rainbow sprinkles. A little stale but they were calories. The coffee was cold, and the Red Bull was warm. Yet it all tasted like ambrosia every time I glanced across the picnic blanket to study Steele's sculpted nudity.
"Nobody can know," Steele said. "It's the most secret secret in the world."
"What's that?" I touched his hand, enjoying the doubled rush of desire.
"If anybody ever found out, it would be the end. The last of their kind. They'd be collected."
What were we talking about?
"It's a hike." He glanced over at my cycling shoes.
"I'll be fine. But I'm not sure I understand yet why we're hiking."
"I think maybe I have to show you."
I had nowhere to go and all week to get there. Why not? We hiked up and up. Three hours later, Steele pointed me at a red cliff wall.
"There," he said, handing me his binoculars. "You see the whitewash?"
Whitewash is a nice way of saying falcon crap. I saw the white blaze under a dark ledge and then― "Holy shit. What the fuck is that?"
"The southwestern black morph desert gyrfalcon. Supposedly an extinct subspecies in the wild. Maybe an entire extinct species, if it's separate from the true gyrfalcon." For a guy who didn't bother with school, Steele sure knew a lot of technical details.
Two huge black falcons the color of polished onyx. No. Wait. Three. The third was scruffy, not as polished, its beak opening in a begging cry that pierced the air.
"The fledgling can already fly a little," Steele said. "But it isn't ready to go too far. It still likes to beg for food from its parents."
One of which zipped off like a streak.
"Fuck," I said. "Fast."
"You said it before. Blink and it's gone." He wasn't a guy who smiled, but now he did. He couldn't help himself. I wondered how long he'd held onto that secret. How long he'd dreamed of having someone he could share it with.
"So. The last of its kind," I said. "Worth a lot of money, I assume."
"Priceless. But Brick and Chollie would put a price on it."
"Yeah. Well. They'll never hear about it from me."
"I know." Steele slipped his arm around my hips, which sent a surge of emotion into my heart. I couldn't unglue what he was feeling from what I was feeling.
Too much intensity. Too much heat.
I leaned in to kiss him at the same moment he leaned into me. How perfect sex can be when you always know the next move.
***
"WHERE THE FUCK YOU been?" Uncle Brick was still in a mood.
"I needed to get out in nature. Get my head together."
"I sold your bike."
"The fuck?"
"I had to pay off that fucking hospital."
"That was fast." I hoped he knew what it was worth. Fuck. It was Uncle Brick. Of course he knew what it was worth.
"I don't want anybody snooping around this house. Didn't want to give them any reason to bitch to the sheriff about deadbeat uninsured fuckwits owing money."
If he didn't want to come to the attention of the local authorities, maybe he should consider cutting back on the bar fights. But I knew better than to offer an opinion on that subject.
"How am I supposed to get a job without transportation?"
"You've been here ten months without getting a job with your fancy New York mountain bike."
True. Unhelpful but true.
"I'll give you a damn job."
Fuck. "That's OK, Uncle Brick. I don't believe in nepotism. I need to find something on my own merits."
"Ain't nobody going to give my fucking son or my fucking nephew a job on their own merits. Shit, boy. You ain't figured that out yet?"
I went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, considered the contents. Generic beer and more generic beer. I grabbed one and brought back a can for my uncle.
When his hand touched mine, he didn't send any feelings over. That confirmed what I already suspected. I couldn't get the entire contents of somebody's entire skull. I wasn't a classic mind-reader. All I could pick up were thoughts and emotions related to the sex urge.
"I can't work for you, Uncle Brick. My father fought his whole life so I wouldn't have to be a career criminal." Shit. I should have picked my words more carefully. Comparing my uncle and my father, even indirectly, was never a good idea. My uncle didn't consider what he did any more criminal than running a red light. He didn't sell or cook drugs and that, as far as he was concerned, made him a fine upstanding patriotic American.
"In case you ain't got around to noticing, your father ain't been around much to offer his input into our little situation. The money he sent ran out. It wasn't that much to begin with."
When my father got arrested, the federal court froze his accounts. After he was convicted, they seized everything. Civil forfeiture. It doesn't take long for the government to make your money disappear. There were so many mega-millionaire and billionaire kids in New York I never thought of myself as particularly affluent, but I knew I'd grown up rich by rural Arizona standards.
My father must have suspected what was coming. My first year's tuition at Bennington had already been paid well in advance. I had no idea how I'd be paying for subsequent years. Fuck. I'd just get a loan like every other kid in America, right?
Yeah, sure. I was a great credit risk, wasn't I?
I wouldn't give Uncle Brick the black gyrfalcon, but I should probably give him something. He took me in so I could finish high school, something none of my friends back home were eager to do. "If I take a job for you, I want more than a smile and a pat on the ass."
"Ten percent of net."
"Ten percent of gross."
"Net. You're in no position to negotiate, boy."
I put down the empty bottle. "Actually, I think I am. I think maybe I'm going to walk away from this offer. Very kind of you and all, but I think I'm going to be on my way to Vermont now."
"Without a bike? Without money?"
"Some trucker will give me a ride out of town."
"Yeah, he'll give you a ride, all right." Uncle Brick looked at my mouth. "I've never said anything about who you are, nephew, but it doesn't make me stupid."
"Never said you were stupid, uncle."
"There's a club outside Scottsdale. My boys aren't allowed through the door. Something about the way they look doesn't fit in with the fucking ambiance." He tried, and notably failed, to make a faux limp-wristed gesture, presumably meant as either an insult to me or the guy who'd barred the MC from the club. "But you..." He narrowed his eyes at me. "You have class. I'll give you that much. You might be gay as a jay but you do have class."
"No," I said. "No fucking way. I'm not delivering anything to some fucking club in fucking Scottsdale."
"Yes. Way. Or you're out of this house and you're banned from any further contact with Furio Scorpio. That includes your fuck buddy. You'll never see him again."
Uncle Brick was guessing. He couldn't know, not for sure, what Steele and I were beginning to feel for each other. But he'd guessed right. Being a redneck alcoholic didn't make him an idiot. Keeping his criminal ass out of jail took some people skills.
Shit.
I wasn't ready to quit Steele. We should probably stay very far apart from each other for a large number of very good reasons. But, fuck it, I needed more.
"Tomorrow night," Uncle Brick said. "Nothing to it. You exchange the package for the cash."
"What's in the package?"
"Something small. I strongly suggest you don't open it."
"No," I said. "No drugs."
"You know better than that. We don't sell drugs here."
I folded my arms over my chest and waited.
"You'll wish you didn't know."
Still waiting.
"Three albino cave pygmy rattlesnakes. They've been in cold storage. Hibernating. They wake up nice and slow, but you don't want to waste much time either. Get out there, make the delivery, and get gone."
Shit. He was right. I wished I didn't know.