I trudged and Gigi skipped up the meandering stone path, sword ferns and salmon berries on either side.
Things weren’t exactly going according to plan.
The plan: give Gigi so many chores, she’d settle down on what mattered. A.k.a., us.
But no matter how many tasks I assigned her, the effort she expended only reinvigorated her. She was like a spider monkey on crack, swinging from one branch to the next, fueled by some boundless source of energy.
It was refreshing.
Where she bounced through life, I’d always dragged myself along. It made me formidable, a slow plodding giant who let nothing get in his way. Harder to knock over than a castle keep.
And I wouldn’t let anything come between us. Whether she knew it or not, I’d trudge my way towards her, around her, inside her until she had no choice to take me in as a permanent resident of her heart.
I was playing for keeps.
There were no signposts showing us the right direction, this was a path I’d established myself. Either she’d love what she found at the new vantage point, or she’d run away as fast as she could.
We stopped to rest on a mossy rock alongside the trail, and I handed her a canteen from my backpack.
Her energizer bounce was quieted a bit after skipping up the steep climb, and her voice lulled me into a relaxed mood. “You never talk about what you did before while working for Mr. Taylor.” My buddy and former co-operative, Rupert Taylor, was now Ivy’s husband. We’d been in the service together and then worked on government contracts overseas for a time. Our appearance at the club in Phoenix, where Gigi and Ivy once worked, totally changed their lives. They both accepted job offers and moved to Briarville where Rupert opened up an exclusive club in his early retirement.
“What do you want to know?” I had canned answers for what I went through when turned from soldier to spy, alongside my Rupert. No way in hell would I stain her innocence with tales of clandestine operations or battle. There were people I fought alongside who were afraid to be around me because they think I still might snap and commit violence. They’d seen me do it. What if I scared her?
It was true, I’d take anyone down in rapid fire, punch a grapefruit-sized hole through their back, when it came to protecting my princess.
“Did you ever kill anyone?” She could hardly lift her voice above a whisper.
“Yes.”
She shivered a little at my expression and seeing her fear was damnation enough, making me suffer for what I had done in the name of freedom.
Her next question caught me off guard. “Did you like it?” The misgiving was writ large on her face and her heightened color subsided.
I spoke with quiet, but grave firmness. She needed to understand I wasn’t capable of hurting her. I’d lay down my life for her. “I did what needed to be done to accomplish the mission. While there should be some satisfaction in that, some remnant glory… taking a human life is never something to take pleasure in.”
The branches overhead creaked in the wind, and the dampened sweat on my skin evaporated, leaving behind a cold chill.
She put a hand over her mouth as if she could take the words back and apologized. “I’m sorry. My teachers always said I was a chatterbox. Sometimes I just don’t know when to shut up.”
The fierceness of my anger blazed like an oven. I’d stomp my boot down, crushing the windpipe of anyone who tried to silence her.
I quelled my killer instincts by kissing her instead. First, I kissed the tip of her sun touched nose, then her eyes, and finally, her soft as bird song mouth.
It soothed me.
I whispered into her hair. “Sounds like you had a tough time in school. Must have been hard. If you have trouble sitting still in school and you’re male, it’s all wink wink, nudge nudge ‘boys will be boys.’” My hands locked against her spine. “But female students are supposed to sit still and be good girls.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Well shut my mouth.”
I looked at her quizzically.
Her jade spoked eyes widened with astonishment. “You just summed up my education far better than I ever could have. I knew early on I wasn’t going to fit that mold.”
“You act surprised when I understand you. I’m big. Don’t talk much.” I nuzzled my way up her neck to playfully bite her earlobe, and my heart skittered like a squirrel scrabbling around a tree trunk.
There was intensity in my lowered voice. “Doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
Her voice was fragile, shaking, “Noah, I never thought you were stupid.”
My lips were hard and searching against hers. “I’m teasing you, princess.”
She gasped, faking her outrage, taking my hand as I held it out to her.
“Come on,” I instructed. “We’re wasting daylight.”
As she crunched her way up the gravel trail in front of me, I took the opportunity to appreciate the miracle of her ass in shorts. Lust buzzed in my belly along with the humming insects all around. How could it be that we’d fucked like rabbits all weekend and I was hornier than ever?
And horny didn’t go well with my current state of mind which was a crazy mixture of hope and fear.
Would she like it?
At the sight of the images, would she want to run away?
I knew I couldn’t keep her out here forever. That eventually I’d have to take her to my house in town, so she had access to friends, her work. The things that made Gigi—Gigi.
I’d never fail her. I’d make her burdens, her responsibilities, my own. Laying my life down for Gigi was my most important assignment, and I’d suffer a thousand deaths to have her love for just one second.
This was not time to take things for granted. I’d located my asset (her), and it was time to protect her pussy, her mind, her heart against other hostiles.
Until I won her love, she’d have no freedom. I was on her like a tick on a dog until she cracked under pressure and accepted that any man besides me was a wrong decision. I’d assessed the risks and my analysis told me, I’d suffered damnation enough for what I’d done in war. The only way to rest easy was knowing where my little fox was at all times. Specifically, at my side, or on her knees before me.
Or riding me on top.
God, my mind was a sewer of semen.
Gigi trotted towards me, down the hill, where I lagged behind, bringing the scent of wildflowers with her. She didn’t care where she grew, but her very presence made things bloom. “How much further?” she asked.
I snatched her hand, held it in mine and wanted to know, “Why? You all tuckered out?”
To the contrary, she was friendly, smiling, bantering with me in a relaxed manner. “Not a chance, slim.”
I’d woo her every day.
Win her over.
Whatever it took.
The bottle of water chilled my hand and I held the opening to her lips. It wouldn’t do for her to be dehydrated or get heat stroke. The breeze lifted her hair, and it reminded me of how I’d wound it in my hand last night, holding her mouth open to receive me. She was such a good girl.
Good girls deserved presents, and I only hoped the one awaiting her was worthy. I’d never run a covert operation that made cold terror grip me in its icy embrace so strong as I felt, trying to court my love into believing my promises to never let her go.
Please, God. Let it work. Make her believe me. Make her see that our love was the most amazing thing on earth.
My expression stilled and grew more serious. “Here we are.” Fear knotted inside me.
“Wow!” She skipped three full circles around the wooden gazebo, before coming to a stop in front of me. “This is so bitchin’. Does anyone else know it’s here?”
“Nope. This is my land. People know not to trespass.”
Not to mention the fence surrounding my property was twelve feet high, built to keep out the mountain lions, native to The Lost Coast.
Ever since meeting Gigi a year ago, there had been a lot of frustration to work out.
Wood carving was one way to do that.
And in the process of building a fence, each post carved by me with a rendering of her likeness, I’d worked out a thing or two.
Realized it wasn’t better to avoid love than to love and lose it. I’d been on a constant alert for danger for more years than I could count, but out here, nothing but sky, trees and this wide-open meadow where Gigi cavorted, I was at peace. She’d pulled me into her forcefield from day one, and never failed to amaze me. Every day there was something new that made me want her even more than the day before.
“Aren’t you even curious to know what’s in here? It took me a good long while to build it.” I patted the blue velvet covered bench, the fanciest fucking bear box I’d ever seen, fit for my princess.
“Ooh, yes. Show me!” She air clapped her hands together and jostling from foot to foot.
I move the numbers on the lock tumbler, and pulled it out of its hinge. “You want to open it?”
Without hesitation the words spilled from her lips and it was one of the things I loved most about her. Sure, she shot off her mouth so much she must eat bullets for breakfast. But when she was living in the moment, like right now, there was a child-like energy about her: innocent, absent of malice. “Do bear’s shit in the woods? Of course!” She had no idea how her slim waist which flared into nimbly rounded hips made me want to pick her up and set her atop my cock. “But first, I want to take a spin on this porch swing!” She tucked herself into the rattan chair I’d hung from the beams, cradled by the scooped seat where I’d tossed a few pillows. “It’s like I’m floating.” Her mouth was a smiling rosy flower. I’d be the one who never failed to bring ear to ear grins like this to her lips.
She kicked her feet to rock herself and I dug in the trunk inside the velvet upholstered small cabinet, loving how she exclaimed with every item revealed from within the cooler. I’d brought it here with my solar powered four-wheeler while she slept, the engine too quiet to wake her. I’d built the box big enough to hold the ice chest and pulled out a bottle of champagne covered in silver glitter, setting it on the coffee table.
“Noah, are those what I think they are?” She pointed to the etchings in the posts holding up the gazebo.
“Probably.” I told her, the very thought of her displeasure shattered me. “Do you like them?”
Her eyes glowed with enjoyment. “I’ve never been a muse before. It makes me feel naked.” She shuddered a bit in the swing and water splashed over rocks in the nearby creek.
I was an animal.
It was impossible to have a normal conversation with her without these nefarious thoughts cross my mind. If she knew, she’d be disgusted.
Or would she?
“I only had my imagination to go by when I made them, like I said, a poor substitute for the real thing.” Not even Michelangelo himself could capture her likeness.
She moved too fast.
I knew one thing that made her go still.
There would be time for that later.
“That one there.” She held an outstretched arm to point at the center pole, covered in her images. “Why am I wearing wings?”
How could I resist her bundle of restless energy? I knew there was something special about her from the very beginning. “It’s how I see you. A fairy. A diminutive thing with magical powers, always in flight.”
I felt an eager affection coming from her and my heart swelled with a feeling I had thought long dead.
“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she breathed, her gaze as soft as a caress.
“We were always moving when I was little, from base to base. Eventually it felt like if I stayed in one place too long, I’d be trapped. After a while, I didn’t bother to unpack everything after we moved. It wasn’t long until we were off to the next base.”
A pain squeezed my heart imagining her craving something solid, the kind of upbringing other kids took for granted. The normalcy of a home-cooked meal, or belonging to a cadre of kids that knew each other since kindergarten. “I’ve never felt so at peace as when I’m with you, Noah.”
I wondered whether I could see into her very soul. “With me.” My voice was thick and unsteady. “In Briarville where you belong.”
I didn’t say “forever.”
But I pictured it so hard, I wondered if she could get a glimpse of what I imagined.
Me pursuing her for the rest of my life.