Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3)

by Susan Fanetti

Setting the brush aside, he sank his fingers in her tresses instead, massaging her scalp. Moaning softly, she relaxed again, and Reese thought about what they were going home to.

  He’d called Victor, and Heath, and Elmer Grass, the mayor—which was, in Jasper Ridge, more of an honorary title than anything with power—and he’d talked to Sheriff Murphy. Natalie and her family were safe; the Cahills had put them up on the Twisted C, and they had guards on the gates. Hall and his gang had retreated onto the reservation, and the tribal police chief wasn’t cooperating with Murphy. So, for now, they were at yet another standstill, and Reese didn’t yet know why Hall had lashed out now, after a year of quiet.

  “It’s not Hall I’m scared of, really. And it’s not us. I love us. I’m scared of me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean ... I don’t know.”

  That was the one answer he couldn’t deal with. “Mac ...”

  She set a calming hand on his thigh and looked back at him. “Give me a sec. I’m going to answer.”

  He gave her the time she needed, moving his hands from her hair to stroke and knead her shoulders, letting his fingers and thumbs trace the contours of her tension.

  “I feel ... helpless at home. I don’t know what to do about my family, but I can’t just go on with my life and not try to help them. But they don’t want my help, and I don’t know how to change that. Frannie doesn’t want me at all, and Mom ... I don’t know. I guess she’s stuck between us somehow. That’s what I mean about I don’t know. So many things have to be fixed, and I don’t know how to fix anything. But if I don’t, I don’t know how to be. I think that’s what I ran from before, and I’m afraid I’ll do it again. I wish we could just stay away forever, you and me. I’ve never been happier than I’ve been since we left Idaho. Just me and you.” She turned, settling her body sideways between his legs, lifting her hand to his cheek, gazing up at him with beseeching but hopeless dark eyes. “I don’t guess we can stay away forever?”

  “No, baby. We can’t. Jasper Ridge is home. That’s where our life is. Mine, and yours, too.” He slid his hand into her hair, drew his thumb over her lovely mouth. “That’s always been true, Mac. Even when you were away. You didn’t fix anything by being gone. Not in you, and not in anybody else.”

  “I know.”

  “You know how you fix things?” When her eyebrows lifted in inquiry, he continued, “You do what you can, you understand what you can’t do, and you don’t try to do it alone. I’m here, Mac. I’ve been happier on this trip than ever, too, and it’s because of you. How you’ve been, how open and trusting you’ve been with me. I know you better, and I love you more. Let me share your load at home. I know I can’t take it all, but let me take what I can.”

  “Why? Why would you take it on?”

  “Because I love you, and that’s what love is. My load is lighter, so I have room for some of yours.” Thinking of an analogy, he grinned. “It’s like you shoving your makeup kit in my backpack because you bought too many new clothes.”

  She grinned back. “That’s your fault. You like my skirts.”

  “Indeed I do. And that little top with the cutout in the back? I love that thing. I’m happy to carry what doesn’t fit in your bags. That’s what I’m saying. Shove what you can into my bags.”

  Her grin faded, and she looked up at him with a quiet, thoughtful, serious aspect. “I love you. I don’t know what I did right to get you in my life, but I never want to lose you again.”

  “You never lost me, Mac. You can’t lose me. You can only throw me away.”

  She turned completely to him, and framed his face in her hands. “Never. Never. Never.” Between each iteration of the word, she kissed him—on the mouth, the cheek, the chin, again and again. “Never. Never. Never. Never, never, never.”

  She kissed along his jaw, took his earlobe between her lips, and whispered that single assurance over and over. As her mouth, her tongue, her whispering breath moved over his skin, Reese tipped his head back and closed his eyes. His hands rested on her shoulders, his fingers curled into the cool of her hair, and he lay back and let her love him, let himself feel it.

  Her hands, her whole body, moved with her mouth, covering him, caressing him with her silky skin, with the sinewy writhe of her arms and legs, the softness of her breasts, the firm, dark pearls of her nipples.

  “Mac,” he groaned as her body skimmed lower on his, and she she nipped lightly at his left nipple.

  “Shhh,” the sound breezed over his skin and made gooseflesh rise. “I want you to feel how much I love you.”

  She loved him completely, her mouth and hands and body touching all of him, giving every part of him its due, and Reese let her, let his hands stay loose in her hair and let her go where she wanted, do what she wanted. She eased her body downward again, kissing him everywhere, drawing curlicue patterns over his belly, around to his side, over his hip. Her hands pushed between him and the mattress and took hold of his ass like she meant to lift him up and feed on him.

  Outside, Big Ben struck the hour; Reese heard it but couldn’t focus enough to count the chimes. It was dark, and late, only scant hours before this fantasy oasis from their lives was over. They had to bring some of this good peace, this easy comfort, this perfect trust, home with them.

  His fingers tightened in her hair. “Baby. Mac, hey.”

  As she looked up, her hand circled his cock. He’d been hard since he’d brushed her hair, and after all this time under her lithe, loving body, his cock wept with need. His arousal thrumming in his ears, Reese almost let the question go until later. Maybe he should. Maybe this was the wrong time, a terrible time.

  But he couldn’t. “Marry me.”

  Though she hadn’t been moving, she went still. Her lips shone wet in the light from the sconce beside the bed, and her cheeks glowed rosy. She didn’t answer. Or move. He didn’t think she was breathing.

  “Mac.” He needed an answer. Fuck, any answer would be better than silence. Even I don’t know would be better.

  “You still want that?” she finally asked.

  “I do. Did you ever want it?” He’d wondered that many times in the past ten—almost eleven, now—years. Had she ever wanted to marry him? Had she said yes only because she didn’t know what she wanted?

  “You trust me that much?”

  She hadn’t answered his question, but he didn’t press it. He answered hers instead. “I trust you not to say yes this time unless you’re sure it’s what you want.”

  “I was sure last time, too.”

  “Were you?”

  She nodded.

  “Then don’t say yes unless you trust me to carry some of your weight. Say yes if you’ll share your burden when you need to, and take on some of mine when I need it. Say yes if you believe together we can face anything and keep standing. Say yes if you trust me to be there when you need me, and I can trust you be there for me. Say yes if you trust me. Say yes if you love me. Say yes if you know that anywhere we’re together, that’s home.”

  Sprawling naked on a bed in a London hotel, the London Eye shining through the window, with Mac sprawled naked between his legs, holding his now semi-hard cock, Reese thought he’d made the best proposal he knew how to make. Far better than the first one, to which she’d squealed yes before he’d gotten to the question mark.

  Now, her eyes filled and let loose tears, a single track on either side of her nose. They glinted in the lamplight, and Reese took a deep, slow, heartbroken breath, and tried to prepare for her answer.

  But she said, “Yes.”

  “Mac?”

  “Yes. I trust you. I love you. I want to share everything with you. I’m so sorry I hurt you and left you waiting. I’m sorry I didn’t see the truth before. Anywhere I’m with you is home. Yes, I want to marry you.”

  He grinned and began to sit up, intending to grab her and pull her to him, to kiss her until she couldn’t breathe, but before he could, she put her mouth around his cock and
sucked, drawing him back to rigid fullness at once, and Reese fell back with a grunt.

  After so much stimulation, and now with his emotions yawing, he was near his peak within a couple of minutes. It didn’t hurt that Mac was damn good at this—she could take him deep, and keep her teeth out of the way, she used her tongue and lips and hands and breath all together, going fast and hard, then soft and slow, teasing and promising, driving him close, then holding him off, until it was Reese writhing and grunting. He let go of her head and grabbed at the headboard. It was solid and gave him nothing to hold onto, until he reached high and hooked his hands over the top.

  “Oh shit, baby,” he grated, “I’m goin’—” the orgasm took over every part of him, and he erupted. Mac stayed on, gentling her touch as she swallowed.

  The second it stopped, while he still twitched and clenched, while he still fought for breath and sense, she launched herself upward, straddled him, and dropped herself onto his still-hard cock. He was so overstimulated it hurt, and he shouted out a sound like a bark as her searing hot, slick pussy enveloped him.

  “Don’t go soft,” she demanded in a whisper and kissed him.

  At first, he thought he just might die, as her hips jerked back and forth, while his cock was still achingly stunned by the force of his climax, but by the third or forth surge of her body around his, pleasure overtook pain, and he filled full again. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back—he needed to breathe, and he wanted a tit. When he got one, sucked that perfect dark pearl into his mouth, she arched back, a curve as taut as a newly strung bow, and he hooked his hands over the backs of her shoulders and took everything she offered. She pushed her tits together so he could feast on both, back and forth, drawing swollen nipples between his teeth, until she went into the beautiful, rigid, quaking clench of her orgasm.

  He wasn’t anywhere close to coming this time, and he owed her a little blissful agony, so while she quivered in the throes of her finish, he grabbed her and flipped them both, dropping her crossways on the mattress, rising to his knees, hooking her legs over his arms, and began to drive himself hard and fast, as much as he could take, as much as she could take. Her hands flailed all over, clawing at his thighs, flying over her head to scrabble at the covers, dragging through her hair.

  “Reese! Oh God, oh fuck!”

  “I’m close, baby,” he grunted, feeling another one massing at the base of his gut. “Can you go again?”

  With a frantic nod, she slammed a hand between her legs and went at her clit.

  “Fuck, I love to see that. Fuck!” He found more to give her, drove harder, finally dropped her legs and landed on his elbows over her, and they came together, red-faced and howling.

  Reese pulled out and dropped to his back beside her. Mac rolled at once and wound herself up in his limbs. Once his brain could catch a gear again, he laughed.

  “What’s funny?” She kissed his sweaty chest.

  “I don’t think that’s an engagement story we can tell people. ‘How did you propose? Well, she had ahold of my dick ...’”

  “Are you kidding?” She lifted her head and grinned at him. “I’m gonna put it in the announcements!”

  They laughed, and she settled on his chest again. Reese threw out a hand, found the edge of the cover, and pulled it over them, and Mac sighed and snuggled even closer. It was the best damn feeling, to have her like this, calm and trusting and his.

  “Thank you.”

  He kissed her forehead. “For what?”

  “Waiting for me.”

  “Always, baby. Always.”

  PART FIVE

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reese wasn’t very good on airplanes. Takeoffs and landings made him woozy, and he had about three hours in his seat before he fidgeted like a sinner in church, as Miss Henkemeyer, the high school librarian, used to say. At Heathrow for their return trip, Gigi had thrown herself on the mercy of the ticketing agent and wrangled them a slight upgrade in their seat assignments. They now had seats at the front row of the economy section, and on the side rather than the cattle-chute section in the middle.

  The lavatory was right in front of them, which was convenient but meant there were always people loitering there, looming over them. Still, it was preferable to their seats on the way to Spain. Reese could be one of those loiterers, standing when he needed to, and when he wasn’t, he could stretch his long legs out a little.

  Air travel didn’t bother Gigi at all. She was small enough that she always had enough leg room, and even if the people on either side of her were armrest hogs, as Reese was, she didn’t feel overly squeezed. She could fold her legs up onto the seat in various configurations, too. And she hardly ever got nauseated for any reason. For her, long trips were good excuses to sleep, read, watch movies, or just zone out and not think.

  She tried to do as she had on the way to Spain: ascertain that Reese was as okay as he could be, and then curl up and sleep through most of the flight. But that had been a redeye, traveling east over the Atlantic through the dark of night. This flight was one of endless noon. There was more bustle throughout the cabin, bright sun and brisk activity, and commotion in her mind as well. Reese, too, was even more fidgety with more room to do it in. He stood and sat and stood again. He paced the aisle. He sat and sighed and raked his hands through his hair.

  This trip was more than a difficult flight. It was more than the end of a wonderful vacation, more than a return to the mundane troubles of regular life. This was Gigi’s second homecoming within eight months. It was a return to the same life of family troubles and uncertainties she’d run from, now, twice. And it was a return to new troubles, in her world and in Reese’s. In their world.

  It was also the beginning of her second chance for a life with Reese. When her worries and fears about what awaited them in Jasper Ridge threatened to take over her thinking, Gigi forced her mind to focus on that: he’d proposed again. He trusted her enough to give her that chance. And she saw now what she’d sensed but had been too afraid to believe: anything else she faced in her life, she could overcome, or resolve, or improve because he was standing with her.

  Not rescuing her. Not taking over for her.

  Supporting her.

  It didn’t mean she was weak. It meant she was stronger.

  Reese stood before her, hunched a little at the shoulders, leaning against the wall separating economy from business class. Chewing on his bottom lip, a subtle frown creasing his brow, he looked out the window at the vast sameness of the ocean and sky. Though he’d tried to be cool about the news that the Jack had been ransacked, in quiet moments, his guard fell and the worry took him over.

  She reached out and caught his hand. “Hey. Come sit.”

  As if dragged back from a distance, he blinked and saw her. “Hey. Huh?”

  “Come sit.”

  His free hand dragged through his hair—he’d been doing that so much he looked a little like he’d taken an electric shock—and he took his seat. Gigi wrapped her arms around his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. “Talk it out with me.”

  He’d said those words to her so many times. Whenever she was stressed or scared or confused. She didn’t know if she’d ever before had reason, or recognized that she had reason, to say them to him.

  He kissed her head and rested his cheek on her crown. “I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling I can’t shake.”

  “You’re worried about the Jack?”

  “Yeah, but ... honest to God, I don’t care about the damage. I’m insured. It can all be replaced, and my insurance will cover the downtime, too. I’m pissed it happened, and I want Hall to get his, but that’s not what I’m worried about. It just ... I don’t know. It feels like that was just the start. He made a mess and ran back home? Does that sound like Hall to you?”

  Gigi had known Evan Hall all her life. He was ten years older and had never been a friend, but she knew him well because every resident of her reservation knew him well. He and the Warr
iors made a lot of noise there, generally doing all they could to disrupt tribal workings they deemed collaborative or conciliatory with the world beyond. Those who rejected the larger world were the minority on the Sawtooth Jasper Reservation, by a margin of about three to one. Hall compensated for that disadvantage with violence and commotion.

  For her part, Gigi thought the idea of being isolationist on a reservation that was ‘granted’ to the tribe by the federal government was deeply ironic and self-defeating. Yes, it was considered Native land, and to a large degree a sovereign state, with its own law and order, and it was the only place where tribal rules held any sway. But they had this sovereign space only because white men who’d called them friends stood with them against the government. It wasn’t their space because they’d won it or claimed it or bought it—not that her people ever would have believed land could be owned. It was theirs because it had been ‘granted’ to them by people who did believe land could be owned.

  Moreover, the Shoshone people had been wanderers. The tiny Sawtooth Jasper Reservation could hardly be more than a trap for people who’d walked far and wide, following the herds and the seasons.

  Evan Hall and his ilk wanted to claim supreme sovereignty over a space they held only by the grace of the very people they despised, and the very idea of which denied their people their most elemental ways of being. There was little to be proud of—but it was the only thing they had.

  To Reese’s point, though, it was unlike Hall to make a small mess when he could make a large one, or to make an empty threat. The only power he really had was the fear he instilled in others. Breaking up some chairs and bottles was a preamble to something more.

  “He’s going to hurt Natalie.”

  Reese’s head moved on hers in a nod. “And anybody who gets in his way.”

  “But she’s at the Cahills’, with her family. He can’t fight them. You said the men on the ranch were armed and guarding the gate.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn. It sounds like a siege.”