Her keen interest in her setting had me slowing down to study the world through her eyes, seeing what she saw. I’d seen Frankfort Basin a thousand times growing up, but the air hadn’t felt crisper, smelled cleaner. Snow draping everything in innocent-white and gleaming under the sun’s rays was flat out dazzling through her lenses. That wasn’t the case prior to her arriving. Vacationing here made me take the place for granted. But, should the silence feel changed too?
Unending quiet reigned supreme for the rest of our stroll, and it was all I had for company preceding her arrival. It almost drove me crazy here, always had hence not visiting often. That it was still quiet when I had someone to talk to should’ve had me wanting to slit my wrists. Weirdly, the hush felt way too comfortable between us when considering we had just met.
It didn’t escape me that though she didn’t weigh much even with the equipment, her presence was huge, drowning out the silence. Moreover, she didn’t feel heavy in that way like most women did. Forget bantering back and forth with them, which was fun if you could find the right one to do it with. I hadn’t… until today.
Suddenly, I knew what made Deidre not like the others and there were quite a few indicators. She didn’t want anything from me. There was no pressure in her company to be anything other than a client to her who was only here to help. She hadn’t seized the chance to help herself to me. She could find pleasure in the simple things, and didn’t need to talk my motherfucking ears off. It was utterly endearing.
Although, I wished she would talk. There was so many things I wanted to know about her.
But, I respected her mission to evaluate her surroundings, so I kept quiet and analyzed her. Not many amateur hikers could complete a four-hour trek into unknown territory sans babysitter. Let’s not forget how stimulating she and her humor were, and the only reason why I was carrying her was because I offered, wasn’t demanded.
Her fighting spirit was larger than me and even kind of fascinating when she wasn’t threatening me with it.
I hadn’t come across a woman with those attributes in one package, a woman I could respect in all my thirty-two years. The first time I did and looked what happened: I was giving her a piggyback ride. And enjoying the shit out of it.
What in all the seven hells was happening to me?
I was sure that finding out would change me forever.
Chapter Four
~Deidre~
Not psycho. Sweet for a hoe. And just like that, my crush on Brocklyn rose from the ashes. I wanted to stay. This week with him was going to do one of two things; go by too slow or fly by too fast. Regardless, the bullet-sized vibrator easily mistaken as a tube of lipstick in my toiletry kit was going to get one hell of a workout.
Brocklyn’s muscles rippling under me was testing my sanity something fierce. Many, many times, I had to stop my hot and bothered lady parts from dry-humping him. A section of his vertebrae was massaging a certain place between my thighs every time he took a step. I wasn’t far from creaming my pants and touching him inappropriately while doing it.
Knotting my fingers together, to keep them from stroking his chest, was getting old. All valleys and peaks should be mapped and his pectorals were as good as unexplored terrain. To me anyway. A girl could strangle her fingers so many times before they cramped up, had to be stretched out for relief. They would unquestionably take advantage of being temporarily liberated and do what they wanted to. Molest the man.
Half the time I was staring off into the distance, it wasn’t to gawk at the landscape. No sir, it was to keep from dipping my head and nibbling on the outer shell of his ear. Maybe, I should breathe on it as a dry run to see what his feedback would be. One positive reaction and…
Don’t finish that! You’re so far gone if he threw your hot ass in the dirt, you’d think it was a good sign. Work, not get your rocks off, and he is way the fuck out of your league. I knew I should listen to me, but out of my league or not, if he said the word, I’d be getting my rocks off, on, sideways…
“We’re here, Deidre,” he interrupted right on time.
My thoughts were blocking out reality, becoming scandalous and my hands were loosening themselves on his chest. While deep in my head, I’d missed that and us getting back to the cabin standing thirty yards away.
“How do you want to do this?” he inquired casually. “We can leave the pack outside without you having to get down at all. Or, you can get down now, take the pack inside, drop it off in the front room and climb me again like I’m a jungle gym for your tour of the cabin after we eat?”
Jungle gym, huh? Was he going to carry me around the place all week too? BTW, Deidre, that’s not a good sign.
Snickering at him and my own gutter thoughts, I turned my head to meet his stare. It rapidly drew me in. In so much trouble, I had just enough good judgment left to keep a fair amount of distance between my teeth and his ear. Running my tongue along the edge of the latter was fast becoming a fantasy. Then, I’d work my way down to his…
Too far!
And not adequately close enough.
I cleared my throat, hoping the process would empty out the gutter thoughts as well. “Um, you don’t have to carry me inside or for the tour. I’m perfectly fine to walk around until I see a snake. That’s when I’ll climb you like a jungle gym. You’ve been warned.”
Personally, I preferred to stay on his back, slide around to the front, and…
“It would be my pleasure to give you a tour from my back.” Good old Brocklyn came through when my head headed in the wrong direction once more. His deep, somber baritone skimming over my sensitive, weak flesh wasn’t helping matters though. “I need you to feel safe enough to stay here with me and help me save my world.”
Right. He needed me here to work, he had not and would not say the magic words to make this workcation a winter fling. Why would he? The Devereauxs had their pick of model-like purebreds that could trace their origins back to the Mayflower. I presumed they could anyhow. My beginnings were more than humble and usually not acceptable to most of the snobs that would be in his circle.
Determined to remember my place, I forced my mind on the other matter at hand. “Let’s do this. You put me down now. I can get this pack off my back. You can take it inside because I’m sick to death of the damn thing. I’ll look around out here with both of my feet on the ground for my sat phone and gps device, then do the tour, and spare your back until I’m in real need of higher ground. That’ll work?”
He didn’t reply right away, locking my eyes to his for what felt like an eternity before ultimately, nodding his head sluggishly. Okay, it wasn’t eternity, not measly seconds either. Long enough for my lips to inch closer and me to think that he was reluctant to agree with my idea. Perhaps even disappointed. If he truly was, that made for two of us.
Swallowing my discontent, I tore my sights away from his, leaned back and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
We needed some distance from each other pronto.
He angled his head downward, his arms releasing my legs so I could slide off him. Boots in the dirt again and somewhat levelheaded when not riding on Brocklyn, I reversed to not headbutt him in the spine as I had a quick look down to unbuckle the pack’s clip at my waist.
The things that man’s spine does to me.
And the gutter thoughts were back. Shit.
Brocklyn circled around to lift the pack off for me. Damn if I didn’t feel a ton lighter and ready for a long nap right then. He transferred the pack to his back.
I mean-mugged it and removed the gun, passing it to him to stow in the pack. “I wouldn’t put that thing on if I were you. How the hell did I get used to lugging it around for hours?” I didn’t wait for him to answer because I knew how: I did what I had to do, and it was effortless to get used to something that burdened and sapped the strength out of you at the same time. The story of everyone’s life these days.
Brocklyn puckered up his brow at me.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” I uttered. Not so much.
Close up, he was a giant that cast a long shadow shielding me from the sun’s glare. His thoughtfulness and attentiveness to my wellbeing was doing crazy things to my libido. I never wanted to nor would sleep with any guy on the first day of meeting him. Brocklyn was rapidly changing my mind about that.
I was easily swayed that he was the exception to plenty of rules set by women he tempted. I was no different.
Fuck! Get it together!
I was trying, coming up short… like always. Brocklyn clipped the pack to his back. At three feet tall, it was cumbersome to tote by hand as I had learned by attempting to do it. Never again.
Swiveling his head, he scrutinized the immediate area then trained his sights on me. “I see your tracker over by the burn pit near the woods. You do not want to go over there. While I get the tracker, you should check in the opposite direction for the sat phone.”
It didn’t take a detective to correctly deduce that there was something over there he didn’t want me to see. It didn’t take a genius to conclude what that was; dead parts of no-shoulders having squatting fuckers he was going to char.
“Aye aye, captain.”
With a floppy hand salute that would enrage a soldier, I went in the other direction toward the other woods on my right, his left. No way in hell did I want to get even a sneak peek of the contents in the burn pit with ashy-gray bricks encircling its formation. A few feet into my search, the sunlight sparkled off something near a bush in the corner of my left eye. Investigating the object would take me away from the burn pit, so I went that way happily.
I came upon the shiny, black casing of the GPS thank you very much to the sun. Bending over to retrieve the tracker, I heard the damn thing still demanding I reroute at an almost inaudible decibel. Obviously, it was going dead, the battery not lasting eight hours as the lying salesman promised. When the tracker died, I would bury it. In my opinion, me and it were sworn enemies and it deserved to be returned to whence it came. Hell.
As I stood up with the tracker in hand, Brocklyn’s shadow fell of me. He stretched out one arm with the sat phone at one end of it, a one-sided smirk on the other. “I believe this belongs to you. Next time you go for a run, take it with you please so if you’re headed into way more danger than you left, I don’t have to yell for you to come back. I can just call. Easier on my throat and my body.”
Lord, his body. I took the phone, careful not to make skin to skin contact. Who knew what liberties my fingers would take?
Tilting the phone toward his chest, I promised him, “Next time I go for a run, it’ll be up your backside and you’ll still be yelling not calling.”
Chuckling, he swiveled, putting his back to the cabin and reversing in that direction. “As long as it’s not my front, Deidre. Your feet have no respect for the treasures God gave me.” Which was a truckload of them.
“Duly noted,” was what I said. “You have no idea what I want to do to your God-given treasures,” was my body’s input as I tracked him up a single step onto the short front porch.
The creaking some of the ‘bowing here and missing pieces there’ wooden planks emanated under our boots was so alarming as he approached the door with all eyes on me I damn near scurried up his front right then. Checking myself, I got really, really close to him should I need something to grab, to stop my fall into the abyss below. He couldn’t have cared less about the noise that amounted to a distress signal from the porch in my belief. He simply snickered his sculpted from a ‘one-of-a-kind mold the sculptor broke afterwards’ ass off at my crowding him.
When he turned around to open the door, I scrambled in behind him, orbiting his bulk to block his path and give him an ‘are you nuts’ look. “Oh my God, how did you not run for your life too after that all that groaning from the porch? If it falls with me on it and I survive, I’m suing you, Brocklyn… for a lot of money.” I bulged my eyes out of my head to add weight to ‘lot’, which really meant ‘all’, unless he had other assets he was willingly to part with.
Continuing sniggering at my fraidy-cat ass, he glimpsed over his shoulder to shove the door shut then rove his eyes down my body as if weighing me up.
“I’m working my way around to fixing the porch, Deidre, and it’ll likely fall with me on it way before it does with you. I outweigh you by a…” Once again, those caramel-colored spheres in his head blazed a route down the length of my body, setting every inch of me on fire that time, but I don’t think he meant to. “…well, I outweigh you by a whole cabin. You’re so little you don’t have anything to worry about weight-wise. Come on. I need to feed you. We still have a tour to do and you have to set up the electronics. I’d tell you I’d help, but I’d probably tear something up.”
Motioning with his head, he looped around me, proceeding to the kitchen connected to the front room by an archway. In one corner of the living room, a flight of log stairs rose up to the second level on my left. Though I had gravitated with Brocklyn’s movements, I was unable to follow yet, had a full body shiver to get through after his double, thorough inspections of me.
Jesus, nothing like that man’s sights trained on me.
The good lord knew I had been in the scope of many men. None of their inspections of me ever had this effect on me. Shiver over, I probed the room Brocklyn somewhat deserted me in, a larger living space than the cabin’s external appearance gave away with a running antler theme.
A massive elk’s head with a lethal set of horns lorded over the opened wood-burning fireplace. The section of wall it occupied, its mantel and raised hearth were constructed of stacks of gray stones creating little ledges. I’d climb the hell out of them like a spider monkey, but only as a drastic measure. One sky blue recliner with handmade crochet blanket folded neatly over the backrest and small oak pedestal table were situated close to the fireplace. Framed photos, some black and white, some colored adorned the mantel and walls of various people spanning generations.
Behind the setting-for-one at the hearth was more furniture in the center of the room. If I was correct, a couch, loveseat, overstuffed lounge chair and tables were covered in dust cloths under an A-line low ceiling with widely-spaced bulky trusses. Suspended from the highest beam was a humongous wagon wheel chandelier with not crystals but, you guessed it, antlers protruding out the top. Cylindrical bulbs were imbedded in the pointed tips. I trusted the lights fixtures weren’t just for decoration as I ambled to the kitchen’s archway. The daylight pouring into the home courtesy of the clean windows wouldn’t last forever.
Brocklyn had positioned himself behind a log island wide enough to accommodate three leather-cushioned stools below the elongated lip of a camo-overlaid countertop. A woman would’ve chosen something in marble don’t care how much of a country girl she was. Or, so I assumed. Girl or not, you had to really love this place to deck it out in camo. I didn’t have to examine anymore rooms to know this place was steeped in love.
Brocklyn materialized on the farthest side of the island, coatless—don’t go there—towering over deep sinks and washing his hands. Sexy and clean was a lethal combination all its own. Those qualities slayed any chances I had for resisting him. Reckoning it was better to know that now than too late later, I gaged this room too, to keep from ogling him in a white tee stretched to it limits around a wet dream-inspiring physique.
You shouldn’t have went there. No drooling dammit.
Stuffing the phone and tracker in my parka’s pockets and drying the corners of my mouth with a sly swipe of my tongue, the last thing we needed was awkwardness arising from my eyeballing and slobbering over him. Needing to switch that train of thought already off its tracks, I mulled over where the power supply came from for the small stainless fridge at the back wall. Next to it, low and hung dark wood cabinets split up the middle to make room for a window with bird’s eye view of the snow-covered wild. Last but not least, an electric compact stove brought up the other end before a back door cro
pped up.
The faucet turning off and paper towels crackling from Brocklyn drying his hands almost stole my attention. Almost. “So, how do you like the place so far, Deidre?”
The cabin wasn’t what I expected. Okay, I knew it would be decrepit outside and hosting squatters inside when he affirmed the place had been ‘unoccupied’ for years. Businessman speak for a hot ass mess. Been there in an old cabin with reptiles that had moved in without forking over cash. Done that screaming then hauling ass. Supposedly burned the t-shirt, never to repeat a mountain-trip with an ex-boyfriend doubling as cyber-criminal that went all the way left with the quickness. That burned t-shirt must’ve been smoldering all this damn time.
A few details weren’t present like exe and cyber-criminal. Although, Brocklyn was a criminal according to the law, but the main point still stood. I didn’t want to be trying to break the sound barrier while hurtling away from any reptile ever again.
“Your place is gorgeous in here,” I threw out there as my contribution to small talk after posting up in the archway with one shoulder on the wall. Now, it was time to get to the business. “What I don’t see is vents for central heat. AC is not a concern obviously with this weather, but I don’t want to freeze my ass off either. And I’m going to need at least one electrical plug liked we talked about a few days ago. Moving your fridge and stove to get to a plug every time I need one is going to cost extra.”
In my peripheral, Brocklyn rotated, making tracks to the fridge in the far corner. “You should know each room has two plugs. We try to keep only one in use at a time unless it can’t be helped. It’s better not to overload and overwork the jenny. It runs out of gas, we run out of power. Running to the store on a whim is not in our wheelhouse right now.”
I’d have made him explain how the hell was I supposed to work under those conditions, but he walked through a bright beam penetrating a window pane. His profile lit up like the fourth of July. Clearly, the sun was determined to show me things best left unseen today. Like his jawline so chiseled it could cut glass, Roman nose topping deluxe, pink cupid-bow lips and a five o’clock shadow made for walking fingers over. My resolve not to stare expired, and he became my sole focus.
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