Walk With Me

by Abby Knox

  Ever said, “I want you to know I’m not a helpless Bella. I am most definitely a Buffy. A slightly chunkier Buffy who could easily get herself killed, but still.”

  He zipped up his pack and wordlessly started adjusting the straps on Ever’s pack. He helped her slip it back on and fasten it properly.

  “This should feel better,” he said.

  “It does,” she conceded.

  He put his hands on her hips. For a second she thought the ranger was going to go in for another kiss, but he said, “Here is where the belt should rest. On your hips. Not around your waist. This will save your back.”

  Ever felt humbled and grateful. She blushed. “Thank you.”

  He smiled, and she got a look at his flawless white teeth and dimples so deep they could be declared their own natural wonder of the world.

  He said, “And I don’t know who Bella or Buffy are, but it just so happens I’m headed the way you’re headed, so let’s just say we’re keeping each other company.”

  She bit her lip. She could not deny that she had been innocently stalking him all morning for just this purpose. No reason to die on the hill of self-sufficiency anymore. Her wet panties would never forgive her.

  “Fine,” she said, tilting her chin up, studying the park ranger’s lips.

  He was close again, and his hands were still on her hips. He was trying to keep himself from saying or doing something. She wished he would just do or say whatever it was that was on his mind.

  And then, she got her wish.

  He said with a low, sexy growl. “If I ever meet your boyfriend, I’m gonna kick his ass for implying there’s something wrong with your body.”

  She bit her lip and smiled. “Ex-boyfriend.”

  She could see him gritting his teeth, but all he said was, “Good.”

  He let go of her hips after a long time, and abruptly began walking down the trail ahead of her. He shouted over his shoulder, “Let’s go, we need to get to the hollow before sundown to check you in.”

  Ever allowed herself to watch him walk from behind for a bit. So much hard body hiding under all that khaki. It would be a shame if she never got to see more of it.

  Chapter 8

  Logan

  “So now that you’ve rummaged through my personal belongings and it’s totally obvious we have the hots for each other but you’re scared to kiss me again, I should probably introduce myself. My name’s Ever.”

  Logan wanted her to stop saying shit like that, but then again … he did not want her to stop. He did indeed have a boner for her. She was spot on about that. And she was making it harder by the second every time she opened her mouth. Walking next to her on the downward switchbacks was driving him crazy. The scent of her sweat intensified the deeper they spiraled into the belly of the canyon. The sound of her voice was delightful and drove him half mad with lust.

  He had to force himself to keep it together. It could mean the difference between keeping her safe and making a fatal mistake.

  “What do you do, Ever?”

  She launched into the details of her personal life with the passion of someone who had longed for another human to talk to for a while. Clearly this woman needed a vacation companion. She was not an introvert like he was, and he enjoyed the sound of her voice.

  He forced himself to concentrate on her words and put out of his head the thought of rutting her speechless as soon as they reached his ranger station for the night.

  “I grew up on a Century Farm, which is a status you get from the state if your farm has been around for 100 years in the same family. It was awesome. It looked like a children’s book: big red barn, acres of sweet corn, ducks and geese roaming around. Big white house with a wide front porch. Even a big oak tree with a tire swing, and a creek in the woods. But my parents died while I was young. The bank took the farm away because my older sister couldn’t make the payments, and we were forced to move to town. I hated it, but I learned to live with it. I always enjoyed writing, so I just always did it. I got a scholarship and earned my B.A. in English. I wanted to write fiction, but my sister was always pushing me to work in journalism because she figured that would be steady work. I kind of feel like that’s not my real calling though. But I listened to her, and now I’m an editor of the newspaper in my small town in Iowa,” she began. “It sounds interesting, but let me tell you, there’s nothing exciting about answering angry or weird or annoying phone calls day after day. Now my sister is the youngest judge in the state of Iowa, and that’s about as big of a claim to fame as the Diamonds will ever own.

  “And today, I’m here because my boyfriend asked me to do this with him for shits and giggles and he said originally that I needed a vacation. But the more I think about it, I think he wanted to do this to compel me to get into better physical shape. And when I failed his little experiment, he tried to cancel the trip. But fuck him, I'm doing it anyway, with or without him. Because all this shit is paid for and I had to order this stupid backcountry pass like 18 months ago and I can't get that money back.”

  “Boyfriend. Right, I forgot.”

  “Ex-boyfriend, remember? I dumped his sorry ass after he more or less called me fat.”

  Logan stammered. “Good. I mean…it’s good you dumped him. You’re not fat. You’re perfect. I mean, you’re fine. I mean…you’re just fine the way you are. I mean…nobody should comment on anybody’s appearance.”

  Ever laughed. “Good lord, calm down. You don’t have to try to figure out what I want to hear. I already kinda like you, you know, for saving my life, I mean. What’s your name?”

  “Logan.”

  “I like that name, Logan. Thank you, Logan. I’m sorry, do I call you Officer Logan?”

  “Only when we’re role-playing cops and robbers.”

  This made her laugh. Logan was over the moon that he had just made her laugh.

  “Sorry, that was not appropriate.”

  Ever laughed again. “Are you serious? Have you heard me open my mouth?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. Kind of a lot.”

  “So basically you know I’m a veritable parade of inappropriate. Go nuts, man. Say whatever you want. What about you? What happened to your mom?”

  Logan gritted his teeth and decided he wasn’t ready.

  “I don’t want to talk about myself yet. I want to hear more about you. We’ve got a long walk ahead, so let’s have it,” he said.

  She didn’t even pretend to not want to talk about herself, which was a relief to Logan. He disliked false humility.

  “Well,” she continued. “The best thing I can say about my job is it has honed my sense of humor and made me never give a shit what anyone thinks of my attitude. People call the newspaper thinking that I’m supposed to be in customer service. They call to complain about typographical errors, factual errors, or that they don’t agree with my editorials about the latest dumb-assery done by the town council. They in turn expect me, a small-town single lady, to be sweet and understanding and try to make the world right again for them, the dear readers. However, that is not my job as a newspaper editor. I mean, I listen, sure. But I don’t cater to people or hold back my opinions. Calls like that come in, like, 15 to 20 times per day, from all walks of life—from elected officials to drug dealers who don’t appreciate their names being published in the police blotter—and it is no wonder I simply do not care about the words coming out of my mouth. On top of that is my real job, clicking away at the newspaper layout day after day, proofreading stories, and slamming donuts and coffee whenever I forget to eat lunch—none of those things do great things for my backside.”

  Logan felt the protective instincts resurface again, this time to protect her from herself. “There’s nothing wrong with your ass. Your ass is perfect,” he gritted out.

  She paused and said, “But it sure is why Brody and I broke up. And a part of me thinks he must be right. Those long days of sitting, being stressed, not getting enough sleep and subsisting on junk food is definitely taking
its toll out here in the desert.”

  “You’re doing fine. And Brody’s an asshole and an idiot for letting you get away. But I’m glad he did, because I don’t intend for that to happen to me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Logan quickly added, “I mean, I don’t intend for you to be out of my sight in case you need help.”

  He could hear the grin in her voice as she replied, “In case I need help…unbuttoning my shorts?”

  Logan laughed, but the caveman inside growled. There would be no unbuttoning anything once they reached the ranger station. There would be hasty ripping and shedding of clothes, but there would be no slow, agonizing unbuttoning of anything.

  Chapter 9

  Ever

  Her toes were throbbing from the downhill slog. She was hot, thirsty and was a little worried that she was going to run out of water before they reached the next rest area.

  Oh my god, I hope I don’t get dehydrated before Logan even has the chance to rip my shorts off and fuck me blind.

  The two of them were slowly making their way down the steep switchbacks of the trail that hugged the side of the canyon.

  “All right, Logan. It’s your turn.”

  “My turn for what?”

  “Your life story! I told you basically everything about me.”

  Logan sighed.

  This made Ever think, maybe he’s just not that into me. He said at first that they had a lot of time to talk, but maybe she’d turned him off completely with all her chatter. Shit. Well, this was going to be awkward.

  “OK,” he started. “I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. My dad was an attorney in the financial industry. My mom died when I was a baby, so I mostly just spent time with nannies. I never felt close to my dad. Dad worked seven days a week. He seemed to enjoy the office more than his family. I’m fairly convinced the stress of being married to him is what made my mom sick. I just kept my head down and got through high school, then got as far away from that life as I could.”

  That’s it? Ever attempted to keep the conversation going. “Iowa, huh? Small world,” she said.

  “Sure is,” he replied.

  Maybe he just doesn’t like talking, she thought. So what, he’s not perfect. Maybe I’m the weird one. Everybody has quirks. Wasn’t he flirting with that role-playing remark?

  Was cockiness a dealbreaker? Well…definitely not if it was in pursuit of a simple roll in the hay. Or in this case, roll in a tent in the desert. And really that’s all she wanted, right?

  Of course, in her over-analytical mind, Ever didn’t know what to think. Was he actually attracted to her, or did he feel obliged to watch over her? She knew she had a pretty enough face, but nothing that would sail a thousand ships. Plus, she was a fairly curvaceous girl with flabby thighs. She had zero upper body strength and zero desire to lift weights to improve on that. Guys who are incredibly fit and good-looking park rangers did not go for girls like Ever. He probably had an address book full of chicks who dig mountain climbing and kayaking and shit. Ever could not compete with any of that. Sure, she had great boobs, and often random men would stare at them while she was talking, as if the boobs were going to talk back to them, but that was just the age-old story of men and boobs.

  Ever would have been happy to stay in the fantasy in her mind. She could fantasize the entire hike that she might hook up with this amazingly hot guy, and it would be a harmless happy place in her mind.

  But now that they had kissed—and what a ridiculous hot kiss that was—the veil between fantasy and reality had been ripped open. Now she didn’t know if he was really attracted to her or if they had both been caught up in the adrenaline of the moment after he’d rescued her from the fall.

  “I'm so sorry you have no memories of your mom. And I’m sorry you and your dad don’t get along well. I’m sure it was hard on him, too. Isn’t there anything nice you can say about him?”

  Logan let a long pause go by. “We used to watch Star Trek together on the rare occasions he took a Saturday off. We both liked it. We had all of them on VHS. He said I reminded him of Spock. He sometimes called me Spock and I would call him Jim, ‘cause he would sometimes fly off the handle and make rash decisions.”

  Ever smiled sadly. “Old school trekkies, huh? Well, that’s something for you to use to bond with him the next time you see him.”

  Logan went silent again.

  After a while, he finally said, “I doubt I’ll see him again. He’s a bitter, angry, filthy rich old man. He doesn’t approve of my lifestyle. I prefer picking up and traveling whenever I want to. I prefer working outdoors. He would like for me to put roots down, preferably close to him. So I can start a family and promptly start neglecting them by being a workaholic, I guess.”

  Ever decided it was time to let Logan off the hook, for now. She stopped in the shade of a huge cactus that was growing at the corner of their current switchback and dropped her pack. “Hang on, I need some water.” It was true. Ever could not walk and drink water at the same time. She could tell off the mayor on the phone while choosing a headline font and housing a doughnut at seven a.m. before she’d even had her coffee, but she could not walk and drink at the same time. Gave her a stomach cramp.

  Logan waited patiently as she drank, and as she took a huge gulp from her bottle, she noticed a weird look on his face.

  “Is that the only water you brought?”

  She swallowed and looked at her bottle dumbly. “Well, you’ve already looked inside my pack, so you know the answer is yes.”

  Logan crossed his arms. “I didn’t go through all of it, I assumed you had more in there. There’s not much. You're going to get dehydrated before we reach the hollow. Hopefully the first rest area will have water and we’ll refill. And you can share my water, I'm used to this climate.”

  Ever got a knot in her stomach. “What do you mean, hopefully? This is a national park. The Internet showed me all the water stops along the trail.”

  “Problem is, this is the desert,” Logan replied. “Sometimes there isn’t water. You can’t depend on being able to refill in the canyon.”

  This was a little disconcerting. But then, he was a ranger, so it was his job to overestimate danger, wasn't it? Like a weather forecaster? He seemed like a little bit of a worrywart as well. She guessed that went along with being a ranger in the wilderness. He was probably trained in preparing for every little emergency. That’s not all bad. It was, in fact, a good quality. Especially for a dad, said her biological clock.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  Before she could apply a filter, as if she ever had one or knew where to get one, Ever blurted out, “Nothing, I just can’t stop thinking about that hot kiss and whether or not it was just you being nice to me, or you really wanting to kiss me, or you feeling protective of me and mistaking that for attraction, or if we were both just caught up in the rush of the moment after I almost died.”

  Logan put his hands on his hips and looked at her like he was thinking hard.

  She continued. “I can’t take the silence. Just tell me now, are we gonna do it later? ’Cause my lady bits have got a major boner for you right now. And if I have a lady boner, I’m either gonna have to do something about it or talk about it, because maybe it’s just because you saved my life? I don’t know. And frankly, I feel like I’m done talking about it. I also feel stupid for saying all of that but you kind of forced me to with your kissing me and then not talking about it, and then giving me bits and pieces of your sad life. But is it sad? I don’t know. Do you like me? Are you into me? I’m not sure.”

  Oh shit. Ever, you have got to find that filter.

  Chapter 10

  Logan

  Logan had that feeling that he had blinked and missed the whole plot of a movie. He had been so busy lusting after Ever’s body, letting his eyes linger over her luscious curves, thinking about that kiss, and then trying really hard to be thinking about snakes eating puppies so maybe his hard-on for her could calm down, that he re
alized she’d revealed a hell of a lot of information—about herself and her…lady bits … and he was barely keeping up.

  He felt like an ass. Thinking with his dick instead of getting to know the woman. Is this what you traveled the world for, so you could find yourself? Is this what you found? Logan McBee: a total cad?

  He watched her full, pink lips sipping from her water bottle, unable to fight back the thoughts about where else he’d like to see her place her lips. Meanwhile, it was beyond time to process all this new information.

  She was from Iowa and had lost a farm as a child. That fact alone carried a certain sting. How many times had his father been out in the countryside as a financial attorney overseeing bankruptcies and estate sales. If she knew his background she could be instantly turned off.

  Besides that, she had a boyfriend until just a little while ago. He couldn’t possibly take advantage of someone in such a vulnerable place emotionally. Could he?

  Sure, he wanted to tear her shirt off with his bare teeth and plunge his face between her ample breasts, but would that be right? Even if she wanted him just as badly? Would that be the right thing to do?

  And finally, there was that self-esteem thing. It was sweet and endearing that she had no idea how beautiful she was. But to hear her refer to herself as fat. Well, she had not said that in so many words, but she said it was a lie when he’d tried to contradict her dickish ex-boyfriend’s opinions. That meant she didn't have a very high opinion of herself, physically, which was too bad.

  Because to Logan, she was extremely sexy. From the way her curly, damp wisps of hair escaped from her topknot and clung to her tempting neck, to her shocking blue eyes, her small, feminine chin, rosy cheeks, a sassy bellybutton he desperately desired to nibble on. Never mind the astoundingly inviting curves of her breasts and thighs, or the incredible skin that glowed in this heat. If it were up to him, he’d be gripping one of those thighs in each arm as he devoured her pussy right at this moment.