After I clean up, I sleep. Deeply.
And when I wake up, Mari is cooking eggs a couple of feet from my head.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
She smiles at me. A big, warm, oh my God that was good smile, and it lights me up from the inside.
“You, um, sleep well?” I raise both my eyebrows.
“So well.” One corner of her mouth pulls up wryly.
“Any particular reason?”
“I was very relaxed.”
“Me too,” I tell her.
I’m not nearly so relaxed right now, because morning, and because Mari is wearing another shirt that fits like a glove over her beautiful tits, and because I want more. Not just words and my own hand. I’m going to make those words real and bury myself inside her again.
“We’re not going to pretend that didn’t happen, right?” she says.
“No. Fuck no.”
She grins. “Good.”
I make a wrap out of my blankets and haul myself out of bed. I come up behind her as she stirs our breakfast and line my body up against hers, so there’s only a layer or two of cloth between me and her. I drop a kiss against her neck, and she shivers and wiggles back against my erection. “Mmm,” she says. “I miss that.”
“It misses you, too.”
One hand holding the blanket in place, I glide a hand up the side of her body, over her belly, to cup the sweet heavy curve of her breast, my fingers playing with her nipple as it hardens.
“Kane.” She’s breathless, her hand frozen. “Don’t stop.”
I have no intention of stopping. None at all. I toy with her nipple more, and she hums her pleasure, wriggling back against me.
But just as I’m about to turn her around and drop my blankets, there’s a sound like someone is knocking on the side of the Airstream, and we both jump a foot away from each other.
“Who the hell—?”
“You stir the eggs,” she says. “I’m dressed, you’re not, I’ll get the door.”
“I’ll get the door,” I say. “I have fifty pounds and almost a foot of height on you, we’re in the middle of nowhere, and no one knows we’re here.”
She looks like she wants to protest, but then her eyes drop to her belly, and she concedes the point with a nod.
I grab my long johns, which had been draped over the table, and pull them on. They’re still a little damp, unfortunately, but getting the hell startled out of me has done wonders for deflating my erection, so there’s that. I yank my sweats on, too.
I approach the door gingerly and peek out through the peephole.
No one’s there, but I can still hear the knocking.
“What the—?”
I open the door and look out—and burst out laughing.
“Mari. You have to see this.”
She grabs the eggs and sausages off the heat and comes to my side. There’s a beautiful red, black, and white woodpecker clinging to the side of the Airstream and tapping the aluminum as if it’s going to yield up a bounty of bugs any moment.
“Poor guy,” she says. “All the trees in the forest and you had to pick this one. Shoo! No food here!” she slides to the ground, waving her arms at him until he shakes himself, disgruntled with being interrupted at his important work, and flies off into the woods.
“Look at you,” she says, as I help her back into Bernadette. “Mmm.” She runs a hand over my bare chest, letting her thumb slide along my abs. Her hand slips down to cup the thick ridge growing under my layers of clothes. I counter by bringing my hand back to her stiff nipple, working it until she moans and lifts her mouth for a hot, sweet kiss.
“Do we have time…?” she asks, breaking away.
God, I want to say yes. But the answer’s no. “We have to get on the road if we’re going to make the appointment with the range guy.”
“Damn!” she says. She wriggles, rubbing one thigh against the other, and I almost lose my willpower—but I also love the idea of her, ready and eager, pressing her thighs together to try to quiet the clamor of—how did she describe it? Oh, right: her swollen, needy pussy.
I grin. It’s gonna be a fun day.
Mari serves us both plates of eggs and breakfast sausages, and we sit at the dinette together, eating. It feels right, and comfortable, like it has every morning since she came to Rush Creek, but with an added layer of knowing this time. And I don’t let myself think about all the things I don’t know, because I need this. Just like this. For as long as I can have it.
We spend the morning on the road, arriving just before lunchtime. The address lands us at a house that makes The Sluice Box look like a modern palace. A pit bull shepherd barks at us from inside a chain link run. The owner comes down his probably condemned front steps to meet us. He’s a refugee from Mad Max: Fury Road—clad in coveralls, a ratty white tank top, and a bandana, sporting a frayed and mangy beard.
Every protective instinct I possess is on high alert. I want to sweep Mari off her feet and carry her and the baby to my cave of safety. Which is, technically, Mari’s cave of safety, but same diff.
I hang back, though, because if she’s been all right for ten years on the road on her own, she doesn’t need me to play Neanderthal now.
“It’s over this way,” he says, and leads us to a beaten-up red Airstream oven.
Mari’s mouth gets tight and her eyes squinch up.
“You Photoshopped those photos,” she says.
He shrugs.
I’m impressed this guy has the know-how and computer equipment to pull that off. And then irritated at myself for judging his insides based on his outsides.
“You know it’s not worth eight hundred,” she says, with a shrug. “I’ll give you three hundred.”
He scoffs. He’s big, probably close to my height, and lean but not frail. Mari is tiny compared to him.
Stand down, cave boy next door, I tell myself.
“Five hundred.” He crosses his arms and glares at her.
“Three.” She glares right back. “Or I walk. You know you’re not gonna get more than that.”
She shows zero signs of fear. Her body language is big, shoulders broad, arms loose at her sides, feet planted. She looks right at him. And I watch, awed, as his eyes slide away from hers.
“Four,” he says.
She shrugs, turns away, and walks towards me. Fearless. I don’t think I could turn my back on that guy, but she doesn’t even look jumpy.
Mr. Bandana-Head scowls. “You really gonna turn around after coming all this way?”
She shrugs again, not stopping her stroll toward me. “I don’t pay money for bad product,” she says, and winks at me. Winks.
Holy shit, I like this woman.
“Three fifty,” he says staunchly, as she draws even with me.
“C’mon Kane.” She takes my hand, yanks me gently in the direction of Bernadette. “There’s a better one in Moab.”
I know for a fact that’s not true. Before we left on this trip, we scoured the Internet looking for the right range. They were few and far between, and this one’s only competitor was in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
She puts her hand on the driver’s side door handle.
“Okay!” Mr. Bandana-Head calls. “Three!”
Twenty minutes later, Mari has Venmo’d three hundred dollars to Mr. Bandana-Head, the oven is loaded in the trailer, and we’re on the road again.