Excitement curled her toes, which were still twined around his legs, braced against his calves. “Oh, really? And?”
“Do you like waterfalls?”
She laughed. “Duh! Isn’t it obvious?”
He grinned. “I know a place,” he said. “A special place. I’d like to show it to you.”
“Tell me,” she said. “I’m intrigued.”
“It’s hard to get to, though. Are you afraid of heights?”
“Not unreasonably so,” she told him. “But I’m no free climber.”
“There’s no free climbing involved, but it’s steep, and there’s some rock scrambling and narrow cliff trails. Only if you’re up to it. It’s not in any book or trail map. And the fact that it’s hard to get to is what makes it special.” He paused. “And private.”
Fresh excitement made her fingers tighten on his upper arms. “How do you know about it?”
“Found it when I was a kid, with my brothers. No one would bother us there.”
The velvety, caressing tone in her voice was intensely seductive. She imagined the two of them somewhere private, no one to bother them. Wildly sensual images filled her mind, making her heart race. “Sounds…nice.”
“It will be,” he assured her. “I’ll make damn sure of it. Are we on?”
“Yes,” she said.
His face lit up, and something inside her combusted at the sight. “Excellent,” he said. “Put your legs around me again. I’ll walk you back to where we left our clothes.”
Demi laughed. “Sounds dangerous. Putting my legs around you, I mean.”
“You know me,” he muttered into her ear. “I like dangerous.”
It took a long time to get back to the rocks where they had left their clothes. Not so much because of the strength of the current. Eric was immensely strong. The delay was because he kept stopping in mid-current to kiss her.
They were in a terrible state of mindless, shuddering lust by the time he pulled her into the calmer water of the pool they’d leaped into. Teetering on the verge of forgetting caution and consequences.
The laughter from above them brought them to their senses. Kids were clambering on the sides of the canyon, hooting and catcalling down at them. Teenagers. No one she knew, but there they were, watching and snickering and shouting off-color jibes.
Eric set her down, trying to tuck himself into his briefs. That was a lost cause. No underwear could contain a hard-on like that. They clambered up onto the rocks, and Eric pulled a smallish, threadbare towel out of his bag, offering it to her.
She shook her head. “You’re the one who has to make yourself presentable for work,” she said. “I can change when I get home.”
More giggling and hooting above prompted Eric to wrap the towel around his waist. He changed under it, pulling on the fresh clothes from his bag while she pulled her own over her wet underwear.
They looked at each other in a spasm of mutual shyness, then both laughed.
“Meet you after work again tomorrow?” he asked. “Same time?”
She nodded.
He reached out to take her hand. “I’ll park in front of the bookstore this time. So I don’t get Raelene all bent out of shape.”
Demi floated the whole way back, even while rock scrambling. Her body felt as light as a cloud and full of feverish energy. Bounding from stone to stone, springy and bold and sure-footed, never missing a step.
Back in the park, people noticed their clasped hands. Heads turned, but they couldn’t be bothered to take note of who was looking. They didn’t talk much, but the energy from his hand rushed up her arm and then filled her completely, charging her with giddy excitement. She was sorry when they reached his car.
Eric opened her door for her and then got into the driver’s side. “Remember to watch out for that upholstery glue,” he reminded her. “This car doesn’t usually carry passengers, so it doesn’t have company manners.”
“I’m fine with it,” she assured him.
“I call it the Monster,” he told her. “My Frankencar. I stitched it together out of a bunch of dead cars and raised it from the dead with unholy magic, so it’s got some foul zombie spooge oozing out in a few places. Or is that too much information?”
She laughed. “I think it’s awesome that you have the power to raise zombie cars from the dead. Is that an actual superpower, or just a side hobby for you?”
“More like a necessity,” he said. “I look forward to the day that I can buy a car that’s not a relic from a bygone age. Even just something that was manufactured during my own lifetime would be great.”
“Did you learn how to do that from Otis?”
“Nah, I picked that up when I was younger, up at GodsAcre,” Eric said. “Old Jeremiah had this thing about the apocalypse being right around the corner, so we needed to be ready to make machines run again after the big electromagnetic pulse wiped out the power grid and gutted civilization as we know it. So he favored really old cars. The ones made before they started putting computers in everything. That’s my Monster. Made to roam the blasted wasteland after the Great Fall, scavenging for food scraps and fuel.”
Demi gave him a sidewise look, not quite sure what response was appropriate after an admission like that. “Wow,” she said quietly. “Dark.”
“Yeah, that’s Jeremiah for you,” Eric said. “He was all kinds of dark.”
“Did you believe it? At the time, I mean?”
Eric hesitated for a long moment. “I guess I did,” he admitted. “I was living inside that reality, and I didn’t have anything else to compare it to. And Jeremiah was extremely convincing. Besides, the way things are going, it could still end up just like he said.”
“It could, at that,” she agreed. “It must have been so strange for you and your brothers afterwards. The outside world. I mean, above and beyond the fire.”
“We didn’t notice much of anything for a while.” Eric kept his eyes straight ahead. “Our world was gone. Such as it was. It was messed up, yes, but it was all we knew.”
“It was just the three of you who survived?”
“Four, if you count Fiona. We smuggled her out about a week before.”
That pricked her ears up. “Who was Fiona? Smuggled? How?”
“She was another GodsAcre kid,” he said. “At the end, right before the fire, the whole place had gone crazy. Fiona was only fifteen, but Jeremiah gave permission to this slimeball pedophile Kimball to marry her. He was twenty-five years older than her. She tried to run away, and she got dragged back and publicly flogged. It pissed us all off, but Anton went totally batshit. I suspect he had a thing for her, though he’d never admit it.”
“That’s terrible,” she whispered.
“We busted her out right before her wedding day. Or to be precise, Anton busted her out. Mace and I just did as we were told. Stole money from the treasury, got her a bus ticket to her aunt in California. Mace and I covered for them while Anton and Fiona hiked cross country down to town. He got her to the station and onto the bus. So yeah, Fiona definitely counts as a GodsAcre survivor. Which makes four of us.”
Demi blew out a slow, shaky sigh. “That’s an incredible story,” she said. “I never heard about her.”
“Yeah, I guess nobody did,” Eric admitted. “Why would they? The three of us were the only ones alive who knew about her, and we didn’t tell anyone. She was well away from it all, and we were glad for her. We didn’t want her to have to talk to the cops and the journalists and all the rest. God, what a fucking zoo that all was.”
“Did you guys get into trouble at GodsAcre? For helping her escape, I mean?”
Eric was silent for an unnerving interval. “Yes,” he said.
His tone made her stomach go heavy with dread. “Oh, no,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. Never mind, Eric. Don’t tell me if I’m intruding—”
“Kimball flogged all of us for what we did,” Eric said. “But he turned Anton’s back into hamburger. He almost killed him. Jeremiah
didn’t even try to stop him.”
“Oh God, Eric. I’m so sorry.”
“Didn’t mean to be a downer.” His voice was grim. “But if you start poking around in my past, you’ll turn up some bad shit. There’s a lot of it.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t asked.”
“I don’t mind you knowing,” he said. “But I’m trying to move forward. That’s all in the past. Dead and gone. It can’t hurt me now.”
“What about your brothers? Are they doing the same thing? Moving on, I mean?”
“Yeah, they’re okay. Mace is crushing it in the Marines. Force Recon. He loves it in the military, way more than I did. Anton is actually turning into a sort of celebrity in Las Vegas. He’s a DJ now, mixing tracks, producing albums. Doing the rounds of the big dance clubs. People go nuts for his stuff.”
“I can just imagine what Otis thinks of that, knowing him,” Demi said.
“Yeah, you got it. Otis understands the military, but Anton’s DJ gig, and my tech project, that stuff leaves him bewildered. It seems frivolous and decadent to him. He and Jeremiah would have been in perfect agreement on that score, though I’d never say that to Otis’s face. It would bug the shit out of him.”
He parked farther from her house than last time. The porch lights blazed.
“Give me your number,” he said. “I can’t call or text you from Otis’s, because there’s no cell service out there. But I want your number for when I’m in town.”
“Of course. Give me yours, too. I’ll plug in my number, you plug in yours.”
They entered the numbers, passed phones back and stared at each other, smiling. Reluctant to break the connection. It felt so good.
“I have to run,” he said regretfully. “I want to kiss you again so bad, it hurts. But that would be pushing our luck. Besides, when I get going I just can’t stop.”
She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. “Thanks for telling me…you know. About your past,” she said awkwardly. “So…tomorrow, then. ‘Night.”
It felt silly to just sit there holding his hand, but when she tugged it, he wouldn’t let go. Suddenly that alchemy that had overcome her in the river rose up again like a wave of warm excitement, wafting her upwards. She didn’t even need the catalyst of a kiss to get the reaction going. Her feverish memory filled in the blanks. Every detail of those wild, breathless kisses. The pounding water, his massive chest, the quick strong throb of his heart when she gripped his cock, squeezing and stroking the long, stiff, hot—
Stop. This. Now.
But Eric bent over her hand, pulling it up to his lips and began to kiss it.
The slow, wonderfully deliberate touch of his lips to her skin stirred her deeply. Everything connected to everything, and all of it was excited by him. Shivers ran along the surface of her skin. Delicious mini-orgasms. A growing, keening ache of anticipation.
After a few minutes of getting her hand kissed she was red and shaking, about to come right there. Her body shimmered with intense awareness.
“Eric,” she whispered.
He kissed her knuckles one by one. So tenderly. “Yeah?”
“You’re pushing our luck. Big time.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I want to push it into a whole new dimension.” He moved on to her fingertips, suckling them tenderly.
“You’ll be late to your shift.” Her voice was quivering.
Eric sighed sharply and pressed her fingers against his cheek. Hot, and velvety. Strong, jutting bones. The scratchy rasp of new beard. “Tomorrow, then,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Tomorrow.”
And still she sat there. Unable to move.
“If you stay in this car, I’m going to start ravishing your hands again.” There was a hint of laughter in his voice.
That finally got her out of the car. Eric just sat there, resting his elbow on the open window, making no move to go. “I can’t leave here until you’re safely inside,” he told her.
Aw. How gallant and old-fashioned. She was so charmed, it took all the willpower she had to turn her back on his outrageously gorgeous smile and walk away.
Feeling intensely observed with every step.
Mom and Dad were waiting for her in the dining room. Her giddy high subsided as soon as she saw their faces. Both had that tense, puckered look that she had come to dread. Granddad Shaw, her mom’s father, was also there, but to his credit, he didn’t have the disapproval pucker on his seamed face. He just looked worried.
“Finally.” Dad’s voice was heavy and cold. “You’re home.”
Demi glanced at the antique clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s only five minutes to eight.”
“Where were you?” her mother asked.
“I was hot, after a shift at the Bakery Café,” she said. “I went down to the park and took a dip at Circle Falls.”
“With Eric Trask,” her father said, eyeing her clinging T-shirt with distaste.
She forced herself to count down slowly from ten, adjusting her tone before answering. “I don’t want to be rude or disrespectful, but that’s none of your business.”
“Raelene called,” her mother said. “She told me you’d gone off with that boy.”
“He’s a man, Mom. Twenty-four years old. He’s not a criminal. He works really hard. Holds down three jobs. He barely sleeps. He’s launching his own business.”
Her father let out a derisive snort. “Hah. I’d like to see that happen.”
“So would I,” Demi said. “It would be great, and he deserves a break. What is it with you guys? What do you have against him?”
Her father slammed down his hand on the table. “He’s dangerous!” he roared. “He was brought up in a madhouse—”
“That’s not his fault!”
“It doesn’t matter,” her mother said earnestly. “Honey, listen. Just because it’s not his fault doesn’t make it not true, or not dangerous. Damage is damage. I hate to say it, because Otis is our friend, and it was generous and brave of him to take them in. But those boys are ticking bombs just waiting to go off. Sooner or later it’ll happen, and I don’t want you anywhere near him when it does.”
“Eric is not a ticking bomb. You are all prejudiced against him, for no good reason. I expected better of you. He’s hard working and ambitious, and I respect that.”
“Honey, please. It’s not just the boy,” Mom hurried on. “He’s just a symptom of a much larger problem. These hazardous choices. They could put a big dent in your future.”
“You mean changing my major, the Culinary Institute, the internship? Which things? What choices?”
“Watch your tone, young lady,” her father said.
“The thing is, you just don’t have the life perspective yet to understand the long-term consequences of the decisions you’re making. You’re the one who can take Shaw Paper Products into the new century. You just can’t see it yet. So your grandfather has been talking it over with us, and we have decided together that we can’t in all good conscience invest money in this…this fleeting whim of yours.”
Her throat tightened. “It’s not a whim. I’ve wanted this for years. I’ve worked part-time catering gigs since high school. This internship is an incredible opportunity for me.”
“I know it looks that way to you, but it’s just another bright shiny thing, honey.”
“So what I’m hearing is, I’m on my own, for the tuition for the Culinary Institute,” Demi said. “Just to be clear.”
“Demi, honey, please. It doesn’t make sense for us to throw away money on—”
“It’s okay, Mom,” she broke in. “I’ll work it out on my own. If Eric can work three jobs to invest in his future, so can I.”
“Honey, don’t storm off!”
Demi stopped halfway up the stairs. “I’m not storming. Truly. I’m sorry you’re so disappointed in my choices, but my mind’s made up. Excuse me, please. I want to put on some dry clothes.”
“Don�
�t throw that attitude around when you’re misbehaving!” her father roared.
Demi turned to face him. Her face was getting hotter. “Me, misbehaving?” she said slowly. “You’re a fine one to talk about misbehaving.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I know what happened at the Tacoma Distribution Center a few years ago, Dad. It was my senior year in high school. I was living here, remember? I overheard the yelling and screaming. It was hard to miss.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “Demi, don’t. That has nothing to do with—”
“You stole money from Shaw Paper Products,” Demi said.
“I did not steal money!” Dad bellowed. “It was a misunderstanding! And every last cent was replaced!”
“Sure it was, once they caught you.”
“Demi! Please, stop!” Mom sounded like she was about to burst into tears.
Demi barged on, unmoved. “That’s why they moved you to the Granger Valley Distribution Center. It’s smaller, right? Not so much money moving through, less temptation, less exposure, less probability of getting into trouble again. Wasn’t that your reasoning, Granddad?”
Granddad sat there, expressionless, with his arms crossed over his chest. He neither confirmed nor denied her words. He didn’t have to.
Dad lunged forward and slapped her face. She rocked back against the banister.
“Ben!” her mother yelled. “Don’t!”
“That’s enough, Benedict,” Granddad barked. “Never do that again!”
“Honey, are you okay?” Her mother shoved her dad out of her way and started up the stairs, but Demi flinched away from her and retreated up the steps, her hand pressed to her face. This wasn’t the worse slap she’d ever gotten from Dad, but it was always nasty and humiliating. She just could never learn to keep her big mouth shut.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m used to it. I can’t even breathe without pissing him off.”
“Maybe you should come stay with me for a while, honey,” Granddad said.
Demi stifled a groan, touched though she was by the offer. Granddad was great, but he breathed down her neck just as hard, in his own benevolent, stone-heavy way.
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