“To, um…pine trees, I guess.”
“Suddenly? After two days of hiking in the forest with no prior symptoms? I call bullshit.”
“Delayed onset allergies.” She chewed back the urge to explode into embarrassing tears.
Leo’s eyebrows lifted at the rawness of her spilling out everywhere. “Come on now,” he said, softer now. Warmer, even. “Let’s take a break.”
He reached for her, against her desire for him to come any closer. He placed two manly sympathetic hands that she just wanted to release herself into.
“You’re not here to help Nate with his problems, are you?” Mia asked the instant she felt his warm embrace. “You’re here because I’m here. You think I’m crazy.”
He paused and regarded her with mild interest. “What makes you so sure about that?”
“Because you haven’t been able to take your eyes off me since the parking lot.” Her comment felt bold. Embarrassing, even. But as true as any statement could ever be. “I think you’re watching me because you think I’m writing these notes to myself and you want to analyze me through the context of this trip.”
“Is that a fact?” He rubbed his mouth as he regarded her with sudden softness. “Is that what you think?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve been thinking the wrong things,” he said.
“I don’t think I have been,” she whispered.
Well…” He seemed lost to find his words and he watched her eyes. “I know you’re not crazy, Mia. And I know you are not writing these notes to yourself.”
“How can you be so sure?” she said. Even she wasn’t that sure.
“I just know.”
Every time his eye contact cast upon hers, it gripped with her a slow ache that twirled up from the bottom of her belly. Slowly, he licked his lips.
She hated feeling this way. Vulnerable, raw, at his mercy. What the hell am I doing? She thrust herself back to reality. Blinking. Barely aware.
If she had known it would be this way—the smoldering fire that pulsed for him—she never would have agreed to take this trip. Instead of finding her son, she was constantly distracted by wanting to be consumed by him. It was like his body was her medication.
As if drinking in every last one of her feelings, she felt his rough warm hands touch hers.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked.
His question hit her out of nowhere. She still could never tell him why.
“It’s what you wanted,” Mia lied.
“Wanted?” he said. “How the hell could I want the woman I loved to leave me? You were just so cold, the way you left. Like it meant nothing.”
“We were only seventeen, Leo. You’d think by now you’d get over it.”
“You don't know what it did to me.”
Her eyes blinked open at the sting of his words. Her body shuddered, threatening to finally make way to tears. His masculine, sweaty scent draped across the path at her, holding her in.
“We were only kids at the time; there was nothing personal when I left you.” She said. But of course it was personal, it was as personal as you could get. She felt his sadness seep into her back and immediately regretted her words.
“I was getting tired of just always having sex at your house and lunch break at school and after school. I needed to move on and have a better life. I was tired of living life like I was a slut.”
“Like a slut?” he said. “That’s what you felt like being my girlfriend?’
“No, I didn’t mean…” she said. “That came out wrong. I mean I needed to be focused on myself for a while.”
“And being with me prevented you from doing that?” he said.
“No…” She hated herself for hurting him like this.
He sighed deeply and let her go. His face torn with dark confusion. “Having you back in my life, Mia…I’m not going to lie. It’s complicated and weird. I wanted to be professional on this trip, but clearly, that ship has sailed. I want to help you survive the demons of your past. But the truth is, right now I want to kiss you more than anything.”
She dropped her mouth up in delicious horror and anticipation as he stood there. She imagined him coming closer to her and taking her in his arms without permission or professionalism. She imaged him kissing her throat. Her body disobeying her strict orders to stay calm. Every molecule whirling in pleasure at the heat of his lips. With each touch of him, adrenaline slamming through her body, sizzling every last nerve ending. She imagined such an aggression in herself, with which she was not familiar, pulsed and twirled through every capillary. The next thing she knew she was imagining gripping his biceps, grinding her fingernails into him, pulling him closer to him. Closer. Closer.
It could never be enough.
He looked at her, confused. As if sensing she was long gone in a weird fantasy without him.
“I didn’t want to leave you, Leo,” she interrupted him before he could ask her what the hell was going on. “Why can’t you understand that?”
Her need for him all these years was beyond desperate. Bitter years that had layered suffering upon suffering on her shoulders. Blackness stuffed her heart full and dead with each disastrous trauma. An abusive husband who left her for a younger woman. Losing her precious only child. Then losing her own self amid the clutter of her house. A home was supposed to be a haven, a place for refuge. Hers was a manifestation, a constant physical reminder of the pain she’d endured day after day in a long list of meaningless failures.
So, how dare he just stand there and accuse her of not caring about him?
Of not remembering him?
Leo had been everything she’d ever known a real man to be.
“I'm so sorry if I made you feel used at that time,” he said to her. And the sadness in her eyes told her that he was 100% sincere. “I could never forgive myself to know that I have caused you just as much sadness.”
You didn’t, she desperately wanted to say to him, if only she were brave enough. You were amazing.
This sadness is my own.
“There are things that have happened to me since you left that I can’t even begin to describe,” he said. “I married another woman, but even she left me because I was a cold, empty-hearted asshole.”
“You told me you were never married,” she said.
“Wrong,” he said. “You asked if I’m married now, and I said ‘as if.’”
She tightened her face to remain calm and expressionless at this new information. She’d had no idea he’d married. Imagining him with a woman—a woman he had, more than likely, made love to at least once—drove her absolutely berserk. All these years she had remembered him only as the cocky and macho, but tender-hearted and loyal, high school boy she left behind. And in her memories-slash-fantasies, he’d only slept with her. The idea of Leo pleasuring and satisfying another woman trickled her with a deeply uncomfortable sense of jealousy. She didn’t even want to imagine it.
She couldn’t.
“When you left me,” he said, “do you realize that you never even kissed me goodbye?”
His question came out of nowhere and she didn’t understand how to respond to it. Mia knew full well that the priority was to find Glenda and save her from Nate. That Mia should give a damn about the only woman who cared about her who could be in danger. But the hunger for Leo was ripping through her and out of control now. As dangerous as it was, she knew she could not hold back any longer.
“I want you to kiss me,” she said, knowing full well he would not resist taking it all the way again. “Kiss me goodbye, right now.”
*******
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Glenda wound her arm around Nate’s and giggled, “Wow, can you believe that guy, Leo? What a controlling jerk.” She gestured that he should run with her. He obliged and they took a side path and then ventured off the trail, deep into the forest. “Shh. Be quiet, I think he’s following us.”
“OK.” Nate watched her face as she spoke to him, his ey
es mesmerized.
The sounds of Leo and Mia’s hiking boots pounded closer. Glenda took Nate’s hand and led him along the edge of white rocks on the side of the path and down into a dip of ferns. She got onto her belly under the ferns and instructed Nate to do that same. Through the gaps of leaves, she saw Mia looking panicked and Leo’s face torn with frustration.
After Mia and Leo had passed, Glenda whispered to him, “By the way…I still have that bouquet of mice you sent me. I treasure it with all my heart, you know.”
“Really…?” Nate picked up a pinecone, picked it free of pine needles, and then twisted it self-consciously between his fingers. “I was worried you might have gotten creeped out.”
“It was an edgy move, for sure.” Glenda regarded him with forced kindness. She stood up and took his hand, and guided him to walk with her, deeper into the forest. The feel of his cold, clammy palm against hers made her gag. God, he was repulsive. The sour milk stench of him, the blankness that always brimmed his eyes. The weird way he still clenched the pinecone in his hand, crunching and twisting it with disturbing force. Gently, Glenda pried it free from his fingers and chucked it into a bush. “But I like edgy.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“And you know what else I like?” Glenda pushed a smile on her face. “I like you, Nate. Very much.”
He took his hand away from hers and cast his eyes away. His hands wrung helplessly in the absence of the pinecone. “Then why did you not respond to my comment on your channel?”
“Oh?” She had no idea what comment he was referring to, but nonetheless reached a hand to caress his forearm. It was as cold and clammy as the rest of him. “That was just a glitch with my computer.”
Unable to figure out exactly how to connect with him, she made a random confession. “Listen, Nate, I know about your past,” she murmured. A guy like Nate always had some sort of past. You don’t grow up awkward like he was without negative life experiences, whether self-inflicted or a result of the uncomfortable way he made people feel.
“Y-y-you do?” He tensed and snatched his hand away from her in horror.
“Sure,” she lied. “And I know it’s not your fault. Everybody makes mistakes.”
“Oh…” Nate looked away. “Well, I beg to disagree. The doings of my past are fully my mistake. I accept responsibility for that now, and I have vowed to never hurt another soul. It’s why I am going to therapy with Doc Leo. Only, he doesn’t yet know everything about my past.”
“Either way.” Glenda, bored with his monologue, fought the urge to roll her eyes. She reclaimed his hand in hers. “The important thing is that we are here together now. And we have the chance to fall in love.”
“We do?”
“Most definitely.”
“I like that.” Then he hesitantly added, “May I ask you a favor, Glenda?”
“What is it?” she sighed.
“May I ask that you call me a special name?”
“Excuse me?” Glenda said.
“Silky monkey.” Nate smiled hopefully. “In my dreams, it’s what you called me. Silky monkey.”
“In your what? No. Absolutely not. I am not going to call you silky monkey,” Glenda said. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s just that—”
“You’re being creepy now,” Glenda barked.
“OK…” Nate lowered his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Glenda softened and forced another round of smiles. “I’m just not into pet names.” She leaned in to deliver him a sumptuous kiss across his lips. He pulled away the moment her lips brushed against his.
“What I have done is so terribly, terribly bad, Glenda,” he said. “I don’t think you should trust me enough to be your boyfriend.”
“Nate,” Glenda said sternly, getting irritated with his boring confessions. She melted her voice like honey again. “I want you to take me over to that cave there and make love to me.”
“Wh-wh-what?” Nate watched her with wide, horrified eyes.
It was all she could do to stop from clenching her fists and shrieking in his face. But she needed to just get this over with. She grabbed his belt and roughly undid it. She shoved his pants down his thighs.
“Wh-wh-what are you doing?” he begged her.
“Just shut up and enjoy this.”
“Glenda!”
She took his penis, still insultingly flaccid, between her lips and sucked gently while she looked up at his face. Nothing happened. It refused to harden in her mouth. He stared down at her in horror as she mechanically worked on him. After several minutes of him remaining soft like a jellyfish, she shoved him away.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked.
“Glenda!”
“Quit the whiny bitch act, you know you want me.”
He lowered his eyes shamefully.
“And if you want it, you will get it, baby. Because we’re in love now and that’s what lovers do.” She said.
“We are?”
Yeah, sure. I love you like I love eating my own shit.
“Absolutely! But the thing is,” Glenda said, “before I can get in the mood for any hanky-panky, I need to ask you a favor.”
“You want me to give you my equipment so you and Mia can go to Blueflower,” Nate said.
“Well, yes, that goes without saying. But there’s also something else,” Glenda said. “I want you to do something much more important than that. But it’s going to be hard. So I need you to be brave for me.”
“Anything at all, Glenda,” he said, “I will do anything to please you. I would even kill someone for you.”
“Kill someone?” She raised a curious eyebrow.
“If it came down to it. Yes. Yes, I would.”
Interesting. She grinned.
Maybe this plan of hers was going to work out after all.
She took his hand in his and smirked with a giggle. “Well, my wonderful little silky monkey,” she chewed out the pet name as best she could. “Now that you mention it…”
“Silky monkey,” he said. “Not ‘my wonderful silky monkey.’ Just silky monkey is the way you’re supposed to say it.”
“Okay…Silky. Monkey.” She repeated each word with resentful emphasis. He beamed appreciatively back at her, oblivious to her frustration and sarcasm. She sighed ridiculously hard and faked a smile for the last time back at him. Luckily, she thought, she would not have to deal with him much longer after the deed was completed. Pleased with that prospect, she leaned in and told him her plan.
*******
Without any verbal response, Leo took two steps across the path toward Mia and his mouth obeyed and founds hers. Hot. Wet. Pressing. Desperate for her. His hands gripped her waist and held her close against his body. His tongue twirled in delicious circles in her mouth. Each flick of him sent ripples of pleasure through the marrow of her bones. She kissed him back with hunger. The drenching of her panties told her there was no backing out of this now. She tilted her hips and pressed her pelvis hard against him.
What the hell was she doing?
She knew it was wrong. Idiotic, really. Her roommate, who was practically her daughter, was captured by a man who could very well hurt her. Glenda was vulnerable just like her son, Brendan. And here she was, distracted and blindsided by lust like some fool. The out-of-control feelings she’d experienced as a child all came rushing back now.
She felt him harden against her tummy. Despite everything, she ached to have him pummeling her mercilessly to the edge of delirium over and over again. He grabbed at her sweatshirt and pushed it up over her body and chucked it in a great arc over her head. It landed across a yellow-leaved bush like a splayed flat corpse. Leo’s fingers hungrily gripped her shoulders as he devoured her neck. His hands slid to her back and expertly knit through the complicated clasp of her bra and yanked it off. That went soaring into another bush.
He bent his head down and his mouth closed onto her breasts. His tongue and teeth trickled across her goosebumped skin. Un
able to remain calm any longer, her body undulated against him. He left a trail of hot wet kisses from one breast to the other.
“You taste like heaven,” he said to her. Her pants were off in another aggressive swoop.
He was making her crazy, and this whole escapade was beyond insane. She knew they shouldn’t be doing this. It was all so distracting and disturbing.
“This whole trip has been highly unprofessional, you know,” she cheekily murmured through kisses. “You're taking advantage of a crazy lady and I should report you to the Psychological Association first thing when I return to town…have your license revoked.” She groaned as he bit harder at her nipple, sending pulses of pain and pleasure through her. She gripped his shoulders, her fingernails hungrily digging into his flesh.
He looked up at her with a dark grin. “We already agreed that I’m not your therapist anymore. And if you want to stop, baby, just say the word.”
She chewed her lip and rolled her head back in delicious pleasure. His hands slid down her and gripped each butt cheek, pulling her body hard against his. The wetness from her panties must have spread to cover every inch of cotton. “Don’t stop,” she breathlessly whispered.
“You sure you want me?” He arched an eyebrow at her, hesitating on purpose to drive her mad.
“Mm-hmm…”
He slid his fingers inside the hem of her panties and expertly shifted them off her body like a magician makes a bunny disappear.
She heaved in desperation and vulnerability. His strong, thick finger curled wildly against her pink wet lips. The teasing of his rough fingertips against her delicate petals drove her mad. She needed more. She had to have him.
“I'm begging you,” she said to him. “Take me again…”
He glared at her with the same livid intensity she’d seen in the bear watching her. But maybe there had never been any bear. Maybe the sense of danger, the feeling of being stalked, had been Leo all along.
He trickled his hands between the silk of her lips and sunk his mouth against hers, pulling her into another deep delicious kiss. She groaned and lifted one leg around his waist to pull him nearer. He was fully dressed and she was naked against the roughness of his dirty hiking clothes. Her hands frantically scattered across his shirt, pulling each button free from its prison.
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 14