by Lauren Dane
“Look at your cock. Hard again already.”
Hatch looked down at his cock, bouncing as he rode Charlie’s. Heat raced over his skin as pleasure, edged with pain, bloomed through his gut.
Charlie poured lube down Hatch’s cock, leaving a warm trail as it coated him. Then Charlie fisted him, pumping slowly, in time with his push and pull in Hatch’s ass.
This was perfection. The way each movement flowed into the next. The give and take they’d created together. No shame. No guilt. Just a reach for pleasure and the joy of giving it to someone you loved as well.
He watched their reflection in the mirror. A favorite part of sex with Charlie. Watched that fist, glistening with lube, as it fucked Hatch’s cock. Charlie’s face, flushed, gleaming with sweat as he got closer to coming. Charlie caught his bottom lip between his teeth as he dug his heels into the mattress and began to thrust up as Hatch moved down.
It was nearly too much. Sensation swamped him so he gave over. He’d fought it the first few times and he’d tensed. It was better to ride it, to let it have the lead.
So he did, sucking in a gulp of air as the burn eased again. “You’re so close. I can feel it. That muscle on the side of your neck is cording with each thrust. Come on, baby, give it to me.”
Charlie’s mouth slid up at the right. “You too.” He picked up the pace, jacking Hatch faster, the burn of the lube adding to the sensation.
“Yeah, that’s it. Come on. Come on.” Hatch rolled his hips, arching into Charlie’s fist and in turn, stroking Charlie’s cock over his gland again and again until he knew he was going to blow again. “Gonna come all over your belly.”
“Go on then.” Charlie’s words were a snarl as he stilled on a long groan. Hatch’s body hugged Charlie’s cock so tight Hatch felt every jerk and pulse when Charlie finally tipped into climax. That was the last bit of sensation he needed and he joined Charlie, shooting all over Charlie’s hand and belly.
Hatch pulled up carefully and Charlie got up quickly, returning with a warm, wet hand towel so Hatch could clean up as well. One of the reasons they used condoms, even though STDs were a thing of the past, was to make clean up easier, but he wasn’t going to refuse a warm, wet towel in any case.
Charlie grinned. “Now you feel up to talking?”
Hatch stretched, a little sore, but that was all right. “I need to load my pipe and drink some tea while I tell you.”
“I put the chairs outside earlier, you want to sit a while?”
Hatch nodded. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Charlie stepped close, brushing a kiss against his mouth. “We’ll work through it. I’m going out. I’ll load a bowl for us both.”
Hatch moved through their small kitchen and got the water on for tea. His skin smelled like Charlie but every once in a while, there was a wisp of Summer too.
He hadn’t forgotten her. It would have been impossible to forget all that Summer was to him. Everything they’d shared. She was part of him in ways he couldn’t even begin to quantify. Part of his heart. Having had her in his life had shaped the man he was now.
He’d had to leave four years ago. Even though he’d left her behind he didn’t regret his choice to leave the city and go on the road. He’d needed it. The city had suffocated him to the point he wasn’t quite sure who he was and what he was doing. And there was no small matter of the fact that if he hadn’t left there’d be no Charlie in his life.
But he hadn’t told Charlie about her. And he needed to now, which also meant he had to truly face the depth of what he’d done and the outcome of it all.
Steeling himself, he poured them both mugs of tea and headed outside.
Charlie was that part of him Hatch had always figured would be underdeveloped. The vulnerable part. Charlie coaxed it to life. Maybe he’d needed the time and space away from everything he’d known to open it up. He wasn’t sure. He did know that all of his life, up until he’d first met Charlie that Summer had been the only other person to see past his exterior to the softer vulnerability within him.
Hatch handed Charlie a mug as he sat.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Charlie wasn’t hurt, just curious.
Hatch blew out a breath. “I wasn’t nice when I left.” He sipped his tea and then lit the pipe, pulling the smoke into his lungs and holding for long seconds as he tried to find the right words.
“So you know I grew up in the Northeast and that my family are New Earthers. Growing up, we lived on a large communal farm with about twenty other families, mainly triads. Summer’s family was one of those.
“A lot of the childrearing was communal so I didn’t live with my parents. She and her sister lived with hers though and I spent a lot of time at their table. Summer and I were best friends from an early age. She was my confidante.
“She was—is—a light. You can see it from feet away. She smiles and it’s like your muscles unknot. She works like no one I’ve known. She never really seems to get tired.” Hatch snorted. “You saw it too. She’s unique. Special.”
“Even in the dim light last night she caught me up. And today I’d been looking at another woman in line. Summer had been bent behind the counter and she stood and it was like no one else was there.”
Hatch nodded. Thinking about the past. “After we were friends for so long when we were in our teens we became more. But we had to hide it from her parents. Her fathers were very strict about wanting her to be at least eighteen before she started thinking about finding a partner or partners. I suppose the secrecy was part of the excitement. Then her entire family moved to Portland when her older sister entered into a licensed triad and got pregnant.”
Hatch looked up at the clear sky, dotted with a million stars.
“I followed. She was building something in Portland by the time I got there. Her sister had a family and Summer was really close with them. Her parents all had jobs. They had a great plot of land with several small houses on it. I could see how happy she was. And I wanted her to be happy.
“But the trip across the country awakened something in me. It was my first caravan journey and by the time I got to Portland I was itchy. City life is great for most. Like I said, Summer was thriving.” He shrugged. “But it wasn’t for me and within a few months I knew I had to go. I had to see what was out there. I asked her to come with me but one of her fathers was in poor health and she wanted to stay.”
Guilt washed through him at the memory. He’d been young and desperate to get out of a place he’d felt stifled by. But she’d been dealing with the weight of illness of a loved one. He’d left anyway.
“I wish I could say I was a bigger person and waited with her until she was ready to come with me but once I’d enabled myself to think about the world beyond a city or a village, it was like a fever. I had to go. That was four years ago.”
“You never contacted her from the road?” Charlie’s question held no judgment, which was good because Hatch felt enough of it on his own.
He searched hard for the right words. “I hate this. I hate having to confess that while I did a few times after I’d been away for a while, it felt like I’d made the choice between her and being on the road and that if I really loved her I’d either go back for her or let her go. I talked myself into believing it was better that I was gone. I worked and moved and saw more places and then I met you and we worked and moved and saw more places and that life sort of faded. I always figured she needed life in the city with her family. I assumed she’d be in Portland still, partnered up, or working a farm on a New Earth commune. I felt like I wasn’t what she needed and I couldn’t be what she needed back in the city. I can’t pretend it was totally noble of me. I did it for selfish reasons. I needed to go. But I honestly did feel like she’d move on and have a better life if I just let her go and do it without me. What could we have had with me on the road anyway?”
Charlie blew out a breath.
“When you said you’d met a strawberry blonde it was her I remembere
d. I never forgot Summer and frankly, when I came to meet you I figured I’d pretend maybe. Because there’s no woman like her. When I saw it was her, when I kissed her—and she kissed me back, by the way—it was like everything was perfect. You and her, me and the two of you. It was right. She’s here and her circumstances are different. It’s a possible thing and the place I’d shoved away my feelings for her can’t hold them anymore. It’s all back, flooding me. I can’t stop remembering. I can’t forget the way she feels.”
“You’re going to have to do some groveling.” Charlie sipped his tea. “She’s clearly hurting. But in my arms she was fire. She’s not shy about fucking or wanting to be fucked. But the heart is another thing entirely.”
“You sure you want this then? After hearing my story?”
“You’re telling me you want to drive away? Head to another site and work there? Look for another woman when the perfect one is just on the other side of the village? Really? You’re in love with her still. I can hear it in how you describe her. I could see it when you looked at her.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“I know. Which is why I guess it’s easier for me to push this issue. You think, after three years with me and driving all over the country, after the dozen or so women we’ve shared, that you really believe we’ll drive on and find another? Not just another one to fuck. We’ve had enough of those. It doesn’t last if there’s not more. Do you think we’ll just run into another woman who can be what Summer already is? I know you’re feeling guilty and it’s never fun to confront a time when you did something you regret. But life is complicated, Hatch. You made choices. She made choices. Those choices make us who we are now.”
And maybe that was the bottom line. The Hatch he was four years ago didn’t deserve her. He just needed to find a way to deserve her now.
“You don’t even know her.”
Charlie laughed then. “You always tease me about my intuition, but you know it’s real. I knew I loved you about half an hour after I met you. I’ve been on the road nine years. I’ve had my share of lovers, male and female, and only two of the people I’ve come across in all that time have made me feel this way. I know what I know, Hatch. I’m sure about you. Every time I touch you I’m sure. And tonight when I held her against my body, when I saw where she lived, the expressions on her face? It is what it is. Whether I allow you to talk yourself out if it because you don’t want to risk letting her close again and maybe getting hurt—well it’s still perfect. We’d just be letting it go because we were cowards. And I know neither of us is. You want her. I want her. Let’s do this right and make it happen.”
Four
Hatch was in Paradise Village.
Summer moved through her morning in a daze. After tossing and turning most of the night, she got up before dawn and headed to the bakery. She usually came in later, dealing with the prep work for the morning rush, but since she was awake anyway, she figured she may as well be useful.
Lucy’s careful eyes though, well they missed absolutely nothing. The older woman was married to and co-owned the bakery with Clifton and Isaac and had become a friend and confidante in the year Summer’d been in Paradise Village.
Summer tied on an apron and then put a scarf over her hair to keep it back. When she was washing up at the sink, Lucy gave her a look.
Summer waved a hand around the space. “What can I do?”
Lucy pointed to the other long table. “Needs kneading. By the looks of you, punching some dough might improve your mood. First, get yourself some coffee and top my cup up too. I must have been psychic when I decided to make a pot this morning.”
Summer did as she was told, breathing in the delicious scent before taking a sip. Sometimes they did barter business instead of for cash. The coffee beans were payment for a week’s worth of bread and tea from one of the workers who’d come through for the last tea harvest.
“Once you’ve got a few sips in you, get to work and tell me what’s going on.”
Summer let the work soothe her rough edges. The mindless rhythm of the kneading and then the flouring of the board, the dividing of the dough and the preparation of the unleavened biscuits and scones while the rest rose, helped her get herself together.
“You remember that cutie who came in yesterday? The one I invited to come to the social last night?”
Lucy pulled some trays from the large wood fire ovens, placing them on cooling racks. “Do I need to send the constable after him? Did he do something?”
In the time before the Parkington-Bay, the virus that killed nearly ninety percent of the world’s population, violence against women was commonplace. In the two lost generations after Park-B, when those who survived struggled against the successive waves of contagion from all the dead, violence was an epidemic that smoothed out toward the end.
Later generations dealt with rebuilding society with less people in a landscape increasingly changed from climate change. Dealt with the dust storms and temperature hikes that rendered most of what used to be the breadbasket of the United States totally inhospitable.
But they also had to accept the drop in fertility in the people who were left, as well as what had developed over the years—a hugely skewed ratio of male to female babies.
Less people and far, far fewer women had changed their culture deeply.
In the generations since, as humans found their footing and worked to find a new way of life, they had ended up with a near reverence for women that had become enshrined in their society. Violence against women did happen, but it was a rare thing, especially in a village as old and established as Paradise.
And when it did, the response was quick and…severe.
“No. Nothing like that.” She began to peel apples for the cakes. “He’s lovely in fact. I…it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt like that toward anyone. But his partner.” Summer sighed.
“Not interested? That’s a tough one.”
“The opposite. He was my first love. The last time I felt this sort of pull toward someone? It was Hatch. Charlie’s partner.”
Lucy’s brows rose. “What’s the problem then? Did he do you wrong?”
“If I’m being totally fair, he did what he needed to do. He left Portland and went on the road. Four years ago.”
“Ah.”
The thing was she didn’t blame him. Not totally. They’d grown up in a sort of bubble on the farm. It was just them and the extended family of New Earthers who shared the land. Moving to the city had been a shock to Summer’s system, but for Hatch, it had been like a switch was thrown. He needed to see more.
“He asked me to go with him but I couldn’t. One of my fathers was sick with Park-B-related cancer. He died soon after Hatch left. I needed to stay there for my mother and father.” And then Dulce’s tragedy had been another, far more terrible blow.
Lucy didn’t push. She knew Summer would tell the story in her own time as they moved through the kitchen and out front, putting things in the cases and on the shelves. Summer got water started for tea as well.
“Last night he walked right up to me and kissed me and it was like no time had passed. Which was good and bad because I was that young woman again, who was so in love it felt like she died anew each morning when she woke up and remembered he had gone.”
Lucy pulled her into a hug. “No wonder you’re here hours early with dark circles under your eyes. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“What do they say?”
“I left when Hatch showed up at the social. He kissed me and I kissed him back and then I walked off. They followed me to my place and I told them to go away.”
“If they sniff around today you’ll know what to do next. Maybe.” Lucy snorted. “We have more choices than our foremothers did, but oh boy, I bet men are still as big a pain in the behind as they were three hundred years ago. Just remember that you have those choices, no matter how his kisses make you tingle. You don’t
have to be with anyone who won’t make you happy. You have a job. You have a place to live. You have a community, friends and your sister is here. Make the best choice for Summer.” Lucy kissed her cheek. “Now get back to work.”
Work she did. The first day of a new session was always hectic with newcomers trying to figure out where everything was and what their new schedules were. There was a line when she pulled open the gates at the front.
“Morning, everyone! Come on in. Order at the right, pay at the left.”
She sliced and bagged, poured tea into mugs people handed her, laughed and gave directions and let herself get lost in her job for a while.
Until.
“I’d like two of those tomato and egg sandwiches on the brown bread and two slices of the apple cake.”
She looked up into Hatch’s face and it was like everything in her belly tightened. Hatch Mowbry wasn’t handsome. Not precisely. He was compelling. It was easy to get lost in his features. He was a big man, braw, wide shouldered. His body was that belonging to someone who’d worked hard from an early age. He had rough edges, which she’d always found alluring. But now, after four years on the road they were rougher, and that worked too. He had fine lines next to his eyes and mouth.
That lush mouth dominated his face. A nose that had been broken twice by the time he’d turned eighteen now sported a piercing. Dark brown eyes that always held some sort of amusement in them. Right then, as she made the sandwiches by rote, they took her in and didn’t miss the way she shook just a little.
“You’re looking pretty this morning.”
“Thanks.” She tried for light and carefree with her tone, but failed. She wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper and dropped them in the bag before turning to grab the cake.
“Would you have dinner with me and Charlie tonight?” he asked when she handed the bag over. “We have a lot to talk about. I have a lot to explain.”
What could she say? If she argued it would be in full view of everyone else in line. It was busy and hectic. Or so she told herself when she agreed.