by Shaye Marlow
I squeezed my thighs together, fumbled around for two brain cells, and finally managed to rub them together. The reason why my coffee tasted like poison, I realized, is because I’d forgotten the cream and sugar. “Fuck,” I muttered.
“Cream and sugar?” Zack guessed before I could slide off my stool. “Here, let me get you some.” He dried his hands, then turned to the pantry.
My coffee mug froze halfway to my mouth as he bent at the waist to retrieve the creamers. I watched his boxers stretch over his taut ass and in doing so, become semi-transparent. I could see his crack, and when I traced it down, the bulge between his thighs.
“Hey, there’s coconut oil down here,” he said with what sounded very much like false surprise. The coconut oil joined the carton of sugar in his arms, and then he was prowling across the kitchen, eyes stuck to mine and full of determination.
I reached for the carton.
“Allow me,” he said, his voice low and smooth. He opened the carton, and sprinkled sugar into my coffee. “More?”
“Yes,” I croaked. “Please.” But I wasn’t watching how much sugar he poured in. I was watching his big, scarred hands, and the perfect way they attached to his muscular forearms via a set of strong wrists. And those bulging shoulder muscles, and the pink nipples dotting heavy pecs…
And he was still pouring. Shit. “That’s good.”
He set the sugar down, retrieved a spoon, and stirred it in with a leisurely stroke, all the while keeping his eyes on me.
I reached for the handful of creamers he’d set on the counter.
“It’d be my pleasure,” he said, voice low. When he popped the first seal, I started like it’d been a gunshot.
There was something about the way he poured that cream… I watched greedily as he picked up the next container, and peeled, and poured, and it was the sexiest coffee service I’d ever had the pleasure of witnessing.
“Good?” he finally asked.
“Oh yes.”
Smiling, he dipped his spoon into the mug and stirred. Then he pulled out of my coffee and watched me.
I took a sip, feeling like I should’ve been chugging ice water instead. The coconut oil was blocking my view of his crotch, so of course that’s where my gaze landed. “What’s that for?” I asked, nodding toward it.
“My skin’s been feeling awful dry lately,” he said, unscrewing the lid. “I read somewhere that coconut oil is a great moisturizer.” Then, before my disbelieving eyes, he scooped out a goodly dollop, and smeared the stuff across his chest.
All I could do was stare as he spread it over himself, and as it warmed and became transparent, he began to shine. He was thorough. So very thorough. He swept coconut oil over his shoulders, and all the way down to the waistband of his boxers, which he nudged downward to get even lower.
Holy fucking… The hair at his crotch was almost as light as the stuff on his head. Yes, I’d seen it yesterday, but that’d been in passing. I’d been distracted. Now, I couldn’t seem to look away.
“Wanna get my back?” he asked.
I shook my head vehemently. If I touched him, I’d jump him, and then he would’ve won this little contest we were apparently having. Much as I desperately wanted to touch him, I didn’t want him to win.
Even managing to pout sexily, he set the coconut oil aside. I stiffened as he reached for me—
But he was just gathering up the spoon he’d used to stir my coffee. He dropped it into the soapy dishwater, and the show started all over again. Every cylindrical dish in the kitchen had seemingly become dirty at the exact same time, and his attention to detail in this matter was superb. He wiped and scrubbed and plunged, and did it all so vigorously that bubbles went every-freaking-where. They slid down his greased chest and arms. They soaked through his underwear until they were a darker shade of black and clinging to him like I wanted to. And throughout, he kept sending me glances hotter than the water.
I wanted his hands on me, wanted that body sliding along mine, his fingers plunging, and even a damn good scrubbing—as long as he gave me that look while he was doing it.
He was succeeding this morning, I realized. He was beating me at my own game.
He was running the faucet to rinse out a storage canister when the pipes began to rattle. The flow of water diminished, slowing to a trickle before stopping altogether. Zack turned the faucet off, then back on. Nothing.
Behind him, the fridge sighed to silence.
Zack crossed to the door and tried a light switch. Flick. Flick, flick. The light fixture did not respond.
“Well, fuck. The batteries must be dead.” He let himself out the door in his wet underwear. The screen door snapped shut behind him.
I amused myself with digging through the clutter on their counter in the several minutes he was gone. “Problem?” I asked as he stepped back inside. Noticeably absent was the sound of a generator.
“It looks like we’re out of fuel.” He took the stairs two at a time, and I imagined him bursting into Rory’s room. His voice was muffled, his tone accusatory. Rory sounded like he was denying everything.
The two clattered back down the stairs, both big blonds in their underwear, and disappeared out the door. I could hear them arguing out in the yard.
When Zack came back in, he looked mad.
“So?” I asked.
“So, Rory used the last of the fuel without telling me. We have barely any gas in the boat tanks, and the Jeep’s at a quarter.”
“You gonna siphon it?”
“I’m going to call around, see if I can buy some.” He picked up the land line, cursed, and slammed it back down. Next was his cell, which he dialed in the corner of the living room, where I could only assume he’d found signal. Somebody answered. “Hey, this is Zack over at—”
He held the phone away from his ear and stared at it. “Damn, we got cut off.” He dialed again, and again, and didn’t get an answer.
“Maybe Lane,” he muttered, punching in a new number. He wandered back toward the kitchen as it rang.
I heard a woman say hello.
“Hey, it’s your neighbor, Zack,” he said. “We just ran out of gas, and I was wondering if we could buy some—”
There was laughter on the other end.
“Well, yeah,” Zack said. “But we also built you that coffee shack.”
The woman spoke again, and it wasn’t sounding good.
“We can pay you well, twice the going rate, even—” He pulled the phone away from his ear again, giving it a disbelieving look.
“The phone cut out again?” I asked innocently.
He growled and punched in another number, this time pushing out the door so I couldn’t eavesdrop.
ZACK
The generator might’ve been out of gas, but Frances was quick to point out that her 180 still had enough for a flying lesson. We were up for two hours before I checked my phone.
“What are you doing?” Frances asked.
“I think Rory’s streaming without me,” I said, tilting my phone to reduce the glare on the screen.
“Zack, we’re in the middle of a lesson.”
“More toward the tail end, I’d say,” if my bladder was any judge. “Just fly for a minute, I gotta watch this. That sonofabitch.” He really was broadcasting without me.
Rory came on the screen, his hair just as wild as usual. “Welcome back, fellow flingers!” he crowed. “I’ve got a special treat for you today. I, along with my rocket scientist buddy—and no help at all from my deadbeat brother—have designed a laser-guided, long-distance catapult, with the hopes of breaking the world record for catapult flings, and today, my lovelies, today—” his grin got wide and scary “—will be her maiden voyage. Her trial run. Her first fling.”
“How is he sending that out without electricity?”
“He probably siphoned the Jeep’s gas,” I said. “Ran the generator just long enough to charge the battery for some internet.”
She shook her head.
&
nbsp; Rory panned to the catapult. “I call her… The Vanessa,” he said. “And let me tell you why. This bitch has a metric shit-ton of thrust, thanks to the depleted uranium my buddy fit her with. The body? Pure titanium.”
“Zack, you can’t just take a time-out from flying to watch a video, if you’re actually the pilot.”
“Sh-sh-shh. Damn it,” I said, slamming my fist on the dash. “We need to get down there. He’s gonna do it without me.”
“Zack…” She said something else in that chiding tone, but I was watching my brother.
Rory’d panned the camera, and zoomed in on the tallest cottonwood tree across the river and at the top of a hill. “We’re gonna try to take out the top of this tree. For the usual long-distance test, I’d use a solid shot, but today I opted to load this baby with lead sinkers straight from the tackle box of my slacker brother, Zack. And hey, Zack, if you’re listening…” The screen turned and Rory stuck his tongue out at me.
“Dumbass,” I muttered.
“Aha! Speak of the devil,” Rory said. “You see that plane up there? That’s him, learning how to fly at this very moment.” The tiny speck of a plane cruised just beyond Rory’s chosen treetop, and appeared to be turning toward the camera.
Rory focused on his hand on the lever, then swung the camera back up to that treetop. “You ready, boys and girls?”
“Might want to veer,” I said, realizing Frances was flying us right into the line of fire. Surely Rory wouldn’t pull that lever with us in the way.
“Might want to put your phone away and do it yourself,” Frances said.
My breath caught. “Too late.” The top of the tree exploded, and I shrieked my excitement into the mic. “They did it! It worked.”
Frances was glowering at me when the plane jerked. We both looked at the instruments.
The engine coughed. Smoke began seeping in through the dash, and billowing up and over the windshield.
An ominous clang shuddered through the plane, and the engine died. It’s amazing how eerily quiet it is in an airplane when the only sound is the whistle of the wind.
I coughed, trying to wave the thickening smoke from my face. “Umm,” I said. “This seems bad.”
Frances cracked her window, which violently churned the smoke filling the cockpit. “I concur,” she said.
“I don’t hear the engine.”
“An astute observation.” She tried to restart it, and got no response.
“So, what happened?” I had a terrible feeling I knew the answer to that question.
“The more important question,” she said, “is where the hell are we going to land?”
I scanned the instruments, noticing she was keeping us tilted down just far enough to maintain a glide. “So we’re going down.”
“Yep. Without power, that’s what happens.”
“Well, where are we gonna land?” My voice was rising, I couldn’t help it.
“That marsh.”
I pulled myself forward to see over the dash and through the wafting smoke. “It looks bumpy,” I observed. “And marshes are wet. You sink into marshes. Are we really gonna—”
“Yes, Zack. Yes, we are gonna land right there, in that marsh. We have one chance at this, and I’m gonna take it on a ground surface that is soft. My alternatives are trees, trees, and more trees. Do you want to land in the trees?”
“Maybe if we got caught and suspended in the upper branches.”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t work that way.”
We were angling in over the last of the trees, losing altitude over the first part of the marsh.
“This is gonna suck,” I said, grabbing onto the bar above the dash.
“Yup.”
The first grassy hillock caught the tires, and the plane bounced and tried to pivot. Frances rode the rudders hard, keeping it straight. We hit another mossy bump and another, until we were bouncing and jouncing, and enough of our weight was on the ground that water slung off the tires, spraying the underside of the wings.
“C’mon,” Frances said. “C’mon…”
For one beautiful moment, I thought she’d managed to land it without mishap.
Then the tires caught, and we lurched forward. The nose of the plane hit the ground, which exploded as the prop threw muck and bits of greenery everywhere. We teetered, and then either god hated us or it was breezy today—the plane flopped the rest of the way over, hanging us upside-down from our seats as it banged down onto its wings.
It was awful quiet in that cockpit for several seconds, the only sounds that of aluminum creaking and pinging and the squeak squeak squeak of the slowing tires.
Glancing over at Frances, I saw her eyes were open, and she was apparently uninjured. She was clutching the yoke as if she could still pull us out of this. She looked like she was in shock, just staring out the windshield at earth where there should be sky.
I unbuckled myself and flopped to the ceiling. “We need to get out of here,” I said, fumbling for my door latch.
Frances thumped out of her seat behind me.
My door was stuck, and refused to budge even when I kicked it.
“Do not break my airplane!” She yanked on my arm.
“Little late for that,” I grunted, rolling to face her. “We gotta go out your side.”
She slapped me.
Hand to my stinging cheek, I stared at her. She looked mad. Like, really mad.
“Your brother…. Your brother did this. He shot us out of the sky!”
“And why, then, are you slapping me?”
“Because you look like him, and you’re in the catapult business with him, and you’re close!”
I could smell gas. “Look, honey—” Whoops, that’d been the wrong way to start. I caught her flying wrist.
She fought me, squirming and clawing like a wildcat, yelling at me about my stupidity—which stung, as did all things with a seed of truth, especially coming from her.
“My brother… didn’t… do this. And even if he did,” I grunted, trying to keep her contained, “we need to get… out of here before the plane… catches on fire!”
But she was too busy trying to bash my skull in to be reasonable.
I finally threw my weight across her, pinning her to the ceiling as I reached across to pop her door. Ignoring her flailing arms, I slithered free.
I wound up on the wing, and then in the bog beside it when Frances gave me a shove. I went in ass-first, and when I tried to roll, my arm went into the muck up to my shoulder. Glaring at her, I flailed myself upright only to have similar sinkings with my legs. By the time I crawled back up onto the wing, I was panting, soaked through, and covered in swamp stench.
“You sonofabitch,” Frances was saying, trying to shove me off. “You’re denting my wing!”
But I was hanging onto the wing strut, and because she was being unreasonable, I stiff-armed her off instead. She shrieked when her backside hit the muck.
Settling into a more comfortable position, I smiled, watching her struggle. Her insults had gone up a notch in volume, down a couple syllables, and back a few generations.
“Frances,” I said. “Fanny, dear. You need to calm the fuck down.”
She threw her upper body across the wing, and finally managed to claw her way back up. But instead of doing as directed, she launched herself at me.
I shouldn’t have been, but I was taken by surprise. She landed on me, smooshing me back against the aluminum. “You wrecked my plane!” she yelled, slamming a powerful right hook into my jaw.
I grabbed her wrist, and then her other wrist, and twisted to avoid the nut-crackers she called knees. “Calm down!”
“No!” she yelled back. She was livid. Practically foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling, face blotchy. It shouldn’t have been attractive. Hell, it wasn’t attractive.
Maybe it was all about power, or punishment, or maybe I’d always found beauty in ugly things. Whatever drove me, in the next moment, I had my mouth on hers.
> She yanked her head away. So, I rolled her over, pinned her in place, and did it again.
It was an angry kiss, like grappling for a hockey puck with teeth and tongues. I muffled her next yell. She bit me, the shot of pain as exciting as being shoved out of an airplane.
I was suddenly hard, and she was by far the hottest, wildest, softest armful I’d ever fought to contain. For a beautiful moment, she directed all that fire and angst at me, clinging to me, digging her nails in and kissing me more punishingly than I’d ever been kissed before.
Then she turned her head aside. “You shit.”
I gazed down at her, considering. I regretted the role I’d played in bringing her plane down. I refused to take all of the blame, but… “I’m sorry.”
She glared.
I desperately wanted to kiss her again. The bow of her upper lip had me hypnotized. The pink blush, the moist gleam…
“We crashed my plane,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And we survived.”
That, we had. And my unruly cock was eager to affirm life.
I gently brushed her hair back from her forehead, and my fingers lingered, tracing her hairline. “You have a hint of a widow’s peak,” I said. “Incredible angles in your face, and… the most graceful ears.”
She snorted, but her expression no longer threatened ball-crunching.
“I love your eyes. Tilted. Shining. So expressive. I wish I could capture the look in them right now.”
“What look?” she asked, her voice slightly breathy.
“I’m not sure. Can I paint you?”
She cracked a smile. “That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether we survive this.”
I scoffed. “Of course we’ll survive this. I’m very hard to kill.”
“‘We’,” she reminded me.
I gave her a look. “Nothing’s gonna get through me to you, and I’ll carry you home if I have to.”
“Even through a sucking bog?”
I nodded. “Even then.”
Just then, a shot rang out.
Chapter Seventeen
ZACK