I heard my phone vibrate across the kitchen counter and I grabbed it, hoping for a message from Julian.
Six: I’ll be getting in Wednesday morning. I’ve got some business in Denver and then I’ll be by the ranch. We’ll eat dinner before heading to the airport.
I sighed, disappointment and anxiety warring for dominance. It was only then that I realized I’d forgotten about our trip to Michigan. Julian’s visit earlier that day had helped exponentially in that regard.
Me: Business in Denver?
Six: See you Wednesday.
I shook my head. Six was secretive about what he did for money. I didn’t know much about his life. Even when I lived with him, I was hidden away in the basement. I didn’t think he did a lot of legal things – I mean, he assisted in my disappearance after all – but I don’t think he caused harm to good people.
Six was the one who had essentially created Andra Walker. He knew my mom well and even carried a torch for her shortly after she’d had me. My dad had never been in the picture; I didn’t even know his name. But Six had been there when I needed a father figure the most, as a teenager trying to escape a Monster.
He was quiet, a man of few words and almost no emotions. But he loved me and cared for me the way I needed him to, and I truly couldn’t ask for a better stand-in brother.
I crawled into bed and turned on a movie I’d seen at least fifty times. The noise lulled me into a peaceful, uninterrupted sleep.
My alarm went off at 4:30 and I climbed into the shower still half-asleep. It was amazing how a restful sleep could make me feel more exhausted than a night of tossing and turning.
I poured hot water into two travel mugs and then added a tea bag each before grabbing two scones I’d taken from Rosa the night before, warming them up in the microwave right before I expected Julian.
Butterflies erupted in my stomach, and I smiled softly to myself. I couldn’t wait for this date. It’d been a long time since I’d been camping. And the idea of spending time out in the wild with Julian appealed to me more than I expected it to.
A soft knock on the hard wood door sounded his arrival and I opened it, smile on my face and mug in hand.
Julian sipped the tea I handed him and took the scone I offered. “I didn’t make those,” I said at his questioning look. “Rosa.”
Julian nodded and leaned back against the counter, putting him exactly opposite of me. I took the moment to take in his appearance. He wore dark jeans, brown work boots and a navy blue cable knit sweater. His hair was wet and curly on the top, his stubble showing more growth than I remembered. His lips were smooth and wet from the tea and I found myself transfixed on his mouth. I couldn’t explain the feeling that moved through me at the way he looked early in the morning, but it caused me to walk the short distance to him and kiss him, softly, simply, one hand on his shoulder.
Julian’s hand rested on the small of my back before he pulled me closer. I went without hesitation. We didn’t deepen the kiss, but just savored it. I pulled back first and met his eyes. Julian smiled at me before brushing his hand over my hair and tugging on my ponytail playfully. “Ready?”
I nodded and reached down to grab my backpack. Julian beat me to it and swung it over one shoulder, scone in his other hand. “I got it,” He said, “just grab the teas.”
After I locked up my cabin, we walked to the convertible he’d parked in my driveway. I looked over at him and laughed, remembering that he promised to pick me up. He tossed my backpack into the trunk with his. I made out a guitar case before he closed the trunk. We slid into the warmed car and I shivered off the slight chill of the morning.
I noticed he hadn’t changed the disc in his CD player, so Queen was still playing. I wondered if he’d listened to it while running errands on Sunday. “How did everything go?” I asked, sipping my tea while we drove off in the dark.
“Good. I’m very happy with the tile work. My meeting was boring, but necessary. My sisters are pains in my ass, but also necessary.”
My lips quirked up. “Necessary pains in the ass?”
Julian glanced over at me with a smile. “Yes. Four pains in the ass that I love with obligation as their brother, but also because they are funny, smart, and they keep me on my toes.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Okay.” Julian turned onto a road I wasn’t familiar with. “Annemarie is the youngest. She’s twelve and absolutely hammers against any youngest child stereotypes. She is far from spoiled, reckless, and isn’t a princess. My sister Danielle on the other hand…” Julian looked at me with big, scared eyes. “She’s sixteen, and about as intimidatingly beautiful and hard-headed as they come. She’s going to give our mother a heart attack.”
I laughed. “Sounds like a handful.”
Julian nodded his head. “And don’t get me started on Elizabeth. She breaks hearts about as often as she changes her major. Which is every month or so. She’s gone to school for everything from a nurse to a horticulturist. Both of which she would fail spectacularly at. Keeping things alive is not a strong suit of hers. I shudder to think of her having children.”
At my laugh, he continued. “That being said, she probably has the biggest heart of all my sisters and absolutely means well. She’s just a bit misguided, hence the constant changes in her major.”
“And your fourth sister?” I asked, sipping more tea.
Julian smiled softly. “Rachel. She’s the closest thing to a best friend I have. I’m not quite two years older than her, so we grew up together. She is down-to-earth, but she tells it like it is. You don’t ever have to worry that she’s not telling you the truth.”
That caused me to choke on the tea I was sipping, the hot herbal beverage burning my throat as I coughed.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded and smiled weakly at him. “It went down the wrong pipe,” I lied. No more talk of truths. I couldn’t tell the truths I wanted to, and this was a reminder to keep what I was doing with Julian a casual thing. Guilt settled heavily on my heart.
We reached our destination three hours later after driving on a gravel road for ten minutes. The road ended at a large sandy parking lot surrounded by trees and large boulders. There was no campground office. We were literally in the thick of the forest.
When the car stopped, I got out and stretched my legs, walking to the edge of the parking lot to where the larger boulders shielded what lay beyond.
I looked back and saw Julian following me, so I climbed up onto a boulder and looked out. Down a gradual slope sat a deep blue lake, spanning as far as the eye could see. It was surrounded by mountains, a little oasis in a land of green. The sun was just beginning to rise over the mountains, illuminating part of the lake. I looked to Julian with a grin. “What is this place?”
Julian shrugged, hands in his pockets. “I used to camp up here as a kid. It’s mostly a secluded fishing spot, but not so much during the week.” He joined me up on the boulder and looked sideways at me. “Wanna swim?” He lifted his eyebrows playfully.
I looked at him incredulously. “That water has to be freezing this early in the morning! And you didn’t tell me to pack a swimsuit.”
“Is that a no?”
“That’s a HELL no.”
Julian laughed and headed back to the car. “Come on, we have to hike a little to get to the camp site.”
The hike was less than a quarter mile and it was around the top of the hill that sloped down to the lake. Julian stopped at a small clearing about fifty feet from a sandy beach down to the water. It looked like a spot that had been used for tent camping before, based on the primitive fire pit made from stones. The area was surrounded by old pine trees and I wondered briefly what the view was like from the tops of them.
We set up the tent in silence. I noticed Julian had brought the guitar case with him and watched as he set it carefully inside the tent.
“Want a sandwich?” Julian asked, reaching into the cooler he’d brought along. I nodded and spread o
ut one of the blankets he’d packed, laying it over the grass. He sat next to me and handed me a wrapped sandwich. I recognized it as the same kind of sandwich Rosa had made for me the day before. I eyed Julian with a “Really?” look and held up the sandwich.
“What?” he asked innocently. “She likes me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve got Rosa wrapped around your finger. All because you have a pretty face.” I shook my head but bit into the sandwich anyway.
“You think I have a pretty face?” he asked, a smirk lighting up his lips.
I rolled my eyes again. “You know you’re handsome.”
Julian stretched his legs out in front of him. “It’s nice you think so.”
“Come on!” I was exasperated. “You are the kind of effortlessly good-looking that pisses people right off. And you’re charming, intelligent…” I paused before continuing. “And the way you kiss…just wow.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’ve not subjected Rosa to kissing me.”
I laughed and pushed him gently. “Good thing too. I don’t think Clint would take too kindly to that.” And me, too, I thought to myself.
“Well, fear not. There’s only one woman I want to kiss.” He leveled his gaze on me, brown eyes focused solely on me.
I shivered and tugged on my sleeves. The air was warming up by the minute as the sun rose in the sky, but my shivering had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do to my body’s reaction to the man sitting next to me. I finished my sandwich and brushed the crumbs from my hands before lying down on the blanket.
“So, you have me for the entire day. What’s on the agenda?”
Julian finished his sandwich and leaned back on his hands. He looked out on the lake, before leaning his head in my direction. “Well I was thinking we’d hike around the lake, lay out in the sun for a bit, and have a picnic on the beach. Then I thought we could go out on the lake.”
My eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Go out on the lake? On what?”
Julian smiled a secretive smile. “You’ll see.”
I ran my tongue over my lips in a teasing manner and he laughed before standing up and reaching a hand down to me. “Come on, let’s go.”
He grabbed a smaller cooler and filled it with some things from the large cooler while I changed into my hiking boots and shorts and then grabbed the water bottles I’d packed. I slid a baseball cap over my hair. Julian folded the blanket over his arm and led the way through the trees, holding back branches to keep me from having to duck underneath them. I knew I was strong, capable, but the simple gesture was welcome, another thing I wasn’t used to. I was quickly learning that this dating thing wasn’t awful. Or maybe it was Julian that made it fun. I forgot my worries in his presence, forgot to hide the dark parts of myself.
After hiking the perimeter of the lake, we returned to the area where we’d started and Julian spread the checkered blanket on the sandy shore, setting his cooler down.
I slid the ball cap off my head and ran the back of my hand over the sweat that had collected there. I plopped onto the blanket and watched Julian as he crouched down to the cooler.
He pulled two beer bottles, a small container of olives, some prosciutto, hard cheeses and crackers from the cooler and set them out on the blanket before opening both beers and handing me one. I looked at him with a small smile and a raised eyebrow. “Recreating our first date?”
He took a pull from his beer and gave me an enigmatic grin as I opened the olives and popped two in my mouth. “Well, I know you go a bit crazy for olives and cured meats, so I thought I’d bring some along, make my company a bit more bearable.” The sun filtered through his hair, highlighting the coppery highlights. I ached to run my hands through just then, and swallowed hard, forcing the olives down my throat.
He stared at me, eyes searching my face. I let him stare, unashamed of my makeup free face, surely boasting a fine sheen of sweat. His eyebrows were drawn together, and the way he stared at me was almost as if he was studying a puzzle. My heart thudded in my chest, almost painfully. What was it about him that affected me so deeply?
Before I said anything, he picked an olive from the container and caught me staring. Keeping his eyes locked on mine, he brought the olive to my already parted lips and set the cool, salty fruit just on my bottom lip. I heard his breathing becoming shallower as I opened my mouth more before sucking the olive from his fingers. His eyes were hard on mine, his gaze dominant with desire. I felt that ever present warmth in the pit of my stomach flare up so I set my beer down before I climbed over, straddling his hips, bringing my mouth to his.
Julian immediately wrapped his arms tightly around me, holding me closely as we kissed. The condensation from the beer bottle gripped in his hand soaked the back of my shirt and sharply contrasted with the little bursts of heat igniting all over my body. My mouth was insatiable, desperate. I had never needed physical touch so intensely, so frequently. I didn’t know what these impulses were from, or why I acted on them, but in this moment there was no room in my head for anything but Julian.
My hands slid into his hair and his lips moved over mine in a dance of teasing brushes before he deepened the kiss. An ache bloomed in my chest, some unnamed emotion that was equally painful and satisfying. This connection was nourishment for my soul, feeding a starving part of me that I didn’t know existed. I was absolutely breathless with want, with need, with something.
The gravity of our rapidly developing connection forced me to pull away first and I sucked in a breath of clean air, filling my lungs. Panic pricked just below the surface but I didn’t pull away from his body completely, just enough to rest my head on top of his shoulder. My hands slid down his back, eliciting a shudder from him as I reached my hand out blindly for the beer I’d set down. When I gained purchase of the cool bottle, I took a large swig, fully aware of Julian’s eyes on me.
The hand clutching the beer bottle was dripping with the cooled condensation, so I switched hands and ran the wet hand down my throat, cooling the fire that burned just beneath my skin. I still sat straddled in Julian’s lap and became aware of the part of his body that was pressing against my shorts.
Julian must have realized the same thing because he shifted and winced, taking a pull from his beer. As I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, mesmerized, I whispered, “What are you doing to me?” My eyes swung up to his, and I searched his dark eyes for an answer.
Julian finished his swallow with a slight smile and brushed his free hand down the side of my face. Leaning forward, he nuzzled that same side of my face, stubble against my smooth skin. I sucked in a breath, suddenly reminded that my attraction to him wasn’t something that could be turned on or off. It was always on, and just heightened when he touched me. I felt his cool lips at my ear. “I was going to ask you the same question.”
A small part inside me cautioned against letting this continue. I thought I could keep my physical connection to Julian casual. But I was realizing that being around him was both soothing and enlivening. I was driven by feeling alive. And being with Julian fueled that larger part, the more dominant part of me that craved being free. So I muted the small part that protested and turned my face to his cheek, kissing his stubble.
I pulled away and smiled softly at him, taking another sip from the beer. I looked at our surroundings. With the sun starting to heat the earth, the sounds of wild birds cawing, and the smell of Julian, all sandalwood and cinnamon, I felt safe.
“Open,” Julian whispered, breaking me out of my trance. I looked quickly at him and saw the cracker topped with cheese in his fingers.
I locked eyes with him as I opened my mouth. Being this close to him, with the sun lighting up his face, I made out slivers of gold and green in his brown eyes. He had a beautiful face with strong eyebrows and a strong nose. As my eyes traveled down his face, I noted his perfect Cupid’s bow and licked my lips. Desire sat in the front seat of my mind, aching with each tease.
H
e placed the cracker in my mouth and I closed it, snagging the tips of his fingers in the process, again. I smiled slyly as I slowly chewed. The cracker was buttery and hinted of onion and some other spices. Combined with the pepper jack cheese, it was delicious and elicited a small moan from the back of my throat as I closed my eyes, chewing.
Swallowing, I opened my eyes and saw Julian watching me, intently as always. “Good?” he asked, his voice gruff.
I nodded and licked my lips. “Very.”
“I love watching you eat.”
I bit my lower lip to hold back my Cheshire cat-like grin. “So you’ve mentioned before.”
Julian reached out and brushed a finger over my lip ring. “I like this.”
“It’s my only more radical piercing. I used to have my nose, but that was more annoying than anything.”
“Ears?”
I nodded, pulling my hair to one side. “I have five piercings in my left and three in my right. But that’s it for piercings.”
“I know about the Queen tattoo, but do you have any others?”
“Yup. Sure do,” I replied with amusement.
Julian looked at me a moment. When he realized I was making no move to show them, he smirked.
“Maybe you’ll get to see them later,” I teased, sliding off his lap. I took another pull of my beer and lay down on my back, staring up at the sky. It was as if we belonged in the same magnetic field. Even with the distance I’d put between us, I still felt his presence next to me.
I soaked up the sun’s warmth and closed my eyes, completely at peace. “Tell me what growing up with four sisters was like.”
I could feel my body relaxing, partly thanks to the beer and mostly thanks to the company. I listened to him tell stories of his sisters, and laughed at their shenanigans. His voice was maple syrup, coating me with warmth.
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