Christopher shook his head. “I hope you two have kids. And I hope they’re hellions.”
With that, he went back into his room. Reese and I went downstairs as fast as we could without running. She held my hand again as we went through the kitchen, down the hallway, and to the bedroom next to the office.
I stopped Reese before we went in. “Wait,” I whispered.
“What?” she whispered back.
“Breno’s in there.”
“What? Why?”
“I told him he could have the bed. Sorry.” I shrugged. I was an idiot.
“Shit.”
“Couch?”
Reese grinned and pulled me back to the living room. We fell onto the couch. Reese tried to take off my shirt, but we were kissing so she only got it off of one arm. I started laughing. She raised her thigh so it was tight against my crotch. That made me stop laughing.
“We have to be quiet,” Reese whispered.
“Fuck that. I’ve been wanting this all day. No, all week. No, wait since I was fourte—” Reese kissed me again. It was good way to get me to shut up.
Reese twisted her leg around mine and pushed up, and suddenly, I found myself on my back with Reese stretched on top of me.
“Smooth, honey. Maybe you should have been a wrest—”
“Cooper, shut the fuck up.” And then she wrapped her tongue around my nipple. I decided to stop talking.
The heat and warmth of Reese’s mouth against my skin seemed to spread from my chest out to every inch of my body. With every gentle lap and hard suck, I got wetter, more needy. Her hands were at my hips holding me still. Her fingertips dug into my flesh.
I wanted to push up, to put her under me and thrust until I came. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just let her kiss down to my bellybutton and back up to my lips. Her hands never moved. It wasn’t until I groaned into her mouth that she smiled and unbuttoned my jeans again.
“Please, Reese,” I whispered.
“Shhh, soon, sweetheart.”
Just the sound of her voice made my heart pound. I knew the promise of that tone. I’d missed the sound of her voice when she was getting ready to take me. How easy she made it to let her.
She started to kiss me again. Her tongue traced my bottom lip, the inside of my mouth. It was distracting. But not distracting enough to draw my attention away from the subtle vibration as she unzipped my jeans. I lifted my hips so she could tug my boxers down. She scraped her fingernails up my thigh, down the other, teasing me, promising me. I whimpered when she finally slid between my folds. Her now slick fingers dragged through my heat.
Her mouth never left mine. Even as my breathing got rough. Everything, every sensation in my body was reduced to the glide of her fingers over my clit and her lips against mine. She edged my boxers further down, pressed two fingers low enough to enter me. But then she waited. I lifted my hips and pushed against her hand.
When she went inside me, I moaned. Loudly.
“Oh God, you feel so fucking good,” Reese murmured.
“Don’t stop. Please.” She eased out, then back in. “Oh, fuck. Harder, please, harder.”
Reese moved her hand faster. I could hear the wet sucking sound of her fingers buried in my cunt. I grabbed the back of her neck, pulled her closer. Her mouth was at my throat. The rush of her breathing filled my ear.
I spread my legs wider, arched into her thrusts.
“Reese, I’m gonna come.”
She just groaned and kept fucking me until I came. I felt the tremble and pull of my muscles grasping her fingers as she nursed every small contraction from me that she could until I shuddered and she slumped on top of me. Her weight felt good, right.
“I missed you.”
Reese nodded against my shoulder. “Same here.”
I fell asleep with her still inside me.
*
Breno and Joan left the next morning for the Caymans. They’d only been gone for a few hours when Christopher gathered us all in the kitchen.
“Where’s the kid?” I asked.
“Nap time,” Christopher said. He’d taken over Emma watch. We didn’t want to do it. And he was oddly good with her.
“So what’s up?” Ryan asked.
“We need to figure out where to go from here,” Christopher said.
“I vote Italy or Spain. Maybe Portugal,” Reese said.
“Spain,” I said. They all looked at me. “What? I can’t speak Spanish, but at least I sort of understand it when people talk to me.”
“Spain it is. We need to go, buy a house. My associate will meet us there…” Christopher kept talking, but I tuned out. Apparently, Reese and Ryan did to. We just nodded along. “Are any of you listening to me?”
“Uhh.” Me.
“Sort of.” Ryan.
“Not at all.” Reese.
“Why?”
“I just realized something,” Reese said.
“What?” Christopher asked.
“We’re not coming with you,” she said.
An awkward silence fell over the room. For some reason, I knew exactly what she meant. Christopher looked a little hurt.
“If that’s how you feel, I understand. Just tell me where you want the money sent,” Christopher finally said.
“No. Well, maybe. But that’s not what I meant. We’ll probably meet up with you in Spain. But Coop and I are going on a trip.”
“Where?” Christopher asked.
“It doesn’t matter where,” I said. “But the two of us need a vacation.” Reese and I hadn’t discussed it. We didn’t need to. ’Cause we both just knew that we needed time away from all of them. I reached under the table and took Reese’s hand.
“What about Ryan?” Christopher asked. We all looked at Ryan. He shrugged.
“I’m guessing he’s going to need a Eurail pass and a big backpack,” I said.
“Yep,” Ryan said.
That was it. Just yep.
“When you and Breno are settled, just let us know. We’ll show up at some point,” I said. Reese squeezed my hand.
“Okay.” Christopher nodded. He probably didn’t understand. But he didn’t need to.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m totally serious.”
“Sure.” Reese glared. Okay, she was wearing sunglasses so it was hard to tell. But I was pretty sure there was a glare in there.
“Dead serious.”
“Idiot.”
“I could do it,” I said.
“Live off wine and bread and honey? It’s not possible.” More glaring.
“I’m sure it’s like biblical or some shit. I could probably start a foundation. People would pay me to eat biblically.”
“Yes, what a wonderful philosophy.” Reese turned away to stare at the ocean.
“I’m just sayin’ it’s that good.”
“I thought you hated wine.”
“That was American me. That bitch was dumb. Turns out, wine is good,” I said.
“And biblical, apparently.”
Why did her indifference turn me on so much? “The bread makes it biblical.”
“Sweetheart, maybe you shouldn’t speak so often.”
“Oh, I see how it is. You want me to take you out to dinner and fuck you, but not talk.” I pretended to be offended.
“Exactly.” She smiled and pulled out a slim cigar.
“Deal.” I dug around in Reese’s beach bag until I found her cigar cutter. I held it out in one palm, while searching through the bag for her lighter.
“Thanks.” Reese clipped the end of her cigar and tossed the cutter back into the bag. When I found the lighter, she leaned over to catch the flame I held. She puffed on the cigar and blew rank smoke into my face.
“Bitch.”
She just smiled at the ocean. But I knew the smile was for me. This was what happiness felt like. My girl and sunshine and a pretty ocean.
*
We were in Corsica. In an old port town. Like actually old. Not El Dorado Hil
ls old. And I wasn’t lying about the wine and bread and honey. I could probably live off that shit. And cheese. And fish maybe. The food there was insane.
We’d spent a week in our hotel room before going outside. I hadn’t managed to get pants on the entire time. I hadn’t tried. But after that first week, we ventured out a little. And then went back to the room. Naked Reese was way better than an old town.
We wandered. We held hands. We drank wine and sat on the beach. Bought bread that had been baked that morning. We weren’t the only tourists. It was a tourist town. But at our little hotel, we were the only Americans. At first.
Reese saw them before I did. I don’t know how long they had been staying at our hotel. Maybe they were really good and had been there the whole time. That lost week kind of stripped away all awareness of the world around us. Reese noticed them at a little café over the water. Then again on the beach. And then at our hotel the next morning.
They could have been tourists just like us. But they weren’t. Something about her posture was too hard, too defined. That was what gave them away.
“How sad.” Reese tilted her wineglass ever so slightly in their direction. We were in that first café staring at the ocean.
“What?”
“You think that dude knows his wife is a dyke?” Reese smiled behind her glass.
I stretched and not so subtly checked them out. Then I laughed. “No, he doesn’t have a clue. But does she?”
“Come on, the cropped, peppered hair. Khaki cargoes. Columbia shirt. You don’t buy Columbia unless you know you’re into women.”
“So sad.”
We laughed in our smugness. Poor dyke trapped in a marriage to a dude. Made us want to help her. But not enough to do or say anything. Being twenty-one and having seven years out of the closet breeds a special brand of arrogance.
Later on the beach, we saw them again. She was still wearing a T-shirt. He wasn’t. Odd. Most couples sport the same level of public nudity. Reese and I did.
“Seriously, look at their body language.” Reese tilted her chin at them.
“I know. Arms crossed.” The dude. “And she is leaning in close.”
“But when she touches him it’s with the back of her hand,” Reese said.
We watched as the woman finished the story she was telling her partner. She nudged his leg with the back of her fingers. Second time she had done it.
“Like, they know each other really well,” I said.
“Yeah, intimately, but not with intimacy.”
“That was hella deep.”
“Shut up.”
But it wasn’t until the next morning when we went downstairs in the very late morning. Too late for a normal couple to be drinking coffee. And there they were. Drinking coffee.
“They’re staying here?” I asked.
Reese shrugged. We started walking. There was a place with perfect coffee, according to Reese. We’d gone there for the last few mornings.
They got up and followed us.
After that, we couldn’t shake them. I wouldn’t have even seen them if I hadn’t been looking. Except I was definitely looking. They split up partway through the day. He took the afternoon shift.
That’s what it was. Shifts. Those two were cops. And they were following us.
*
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Reese said the second we got back to our room.
“No shit. Pack your stuff.”
“Leave it. If it won’t fit in here, it doesn’t matter.” She tossed her beach bag and my daypack on the bed.
“Good call.” After eight months on the run, we knew that favorite T-shirts and books were replaceable, but decent socks could save your life.
“How are we doing this?” Reese asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You want to fly or take a ferry?”
“You’re the exit strategy person. I was the carry the bags person.”
“Dumbass. I researched both. I’m asking if you would rather be trapped on a plane with the cops or trapped on a boat with the cops.”
“Boat.” Easy choice.
“Same here. And that means we can take another small bag. Story is we are doing a night in Livorno. Then we’re coming back here. We’ll book a return ferry for good measure.”
Reese pulled out her passport. In the back was a cleanly folded sheet of paper. I glanced over her shoulder. Bastia, that was where we were, but the rest of the cities on the list—Livorno, Ancona, Patras—I’d never heard of.
“How does that make any sense?”
“The arrows.” Reese drew her finger down the line of arrows that linked the city names.
“No, the list under each city.”
“Hotels, hostels, bars, restaurants. Addresses for all of them. Shit like that. So we know where to go in each city.”
“Plan much?” I was giving her shit, but at least she had a decent plan. It was kinda hot.
Reese rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking Livorno to Ancona. Then take a ferry to Greece. Backpack through there. From Athens we can fly to Vienna. If we can’t lose them in Italy, we’ll definitely lose them in Greece. Then catch a train to Munich, where we’ll hook up with Ryan and go back down to Spain.”
I shrugged. It sounded complicated as fuck, but that was probably a good thing. If I could barely keep up, the Feds would have an even harder time.
*
It was dark by the time we arrived in Livorno. We went to a small hotel for the benefit of the cops following us. The guy had managed to get his “wife” to the ferry in time to follow us. Not a travesty. At least we knew where they were. And this way they wouldn’t know we were running until we were already gone.
They stopped in a small restaurant across the street from the hotel. Watched as Reese pretended to book a room. Instead, she offered fifty euros for an escort through the back entrance of the hotel. It’s amazing what people will allow in exchange for a decent tip.
From there we found a bar. One from Reese’s list. Filled with twenty-something-year-old foreigners. Reese left me to make friends and headed for a nearby hostel.
It didn’t take me long to get invited to sit with a group of kids. I wasn’t above buying friends, so I offered to get them a round of drinks. I used one of the crumpled euros that Reese had stuffed in my pocket. Not one of the crisp, clean bills in my wallet. Reese had been very specific about how to flash money.
“So you’re American?” one of the girls asked me. Caitlin. I was pretty sure her name was Caitlin. She was Australian. Or that’s what her accent suggested.
I shook my head. None of them were from North America so I figured I could lie. Which was good because my passport was definitely not American.
“Canadian. British Columbia,” I said. The girl wrinkled her eyebrows. “I know.” I smirked like I got that a lot. “I lived in the States until I was fifteen. Moved back to B.C. Then back to California for college.”
“Oh.” Caitlin nodded and smiled like that made sense. “We were traveling with a guy for a while. He had the same deal. Except he was from Saskatchewan.”
I nodded politely. Where the fuck was Saskatchewan? Reese would know.
The other girl in the group spoke up. Her name was Sheer or something. She said it was a popular name in Israel, but I’d never heard it. She was the one who had invited me to sit with them. Which I was guessing was directly related to the amount of times she had cruised me since I’d walked in. She was super hot, but not my type. Not Reese.
“What about that girl you walked in with? The pretty one.” Sheer was setting herself up for failure.
“Oh, my girlfriend? She’s from B.C. too. But she came to the States with me for college,” I said.
“Oh.” Sheer’s face dropped. “So you guys have been together a while then?”
I laughed. “Not really. Her brother is my best friend. But Reese and I only started dating a few months ago.”
“Ohhh, your best friend’s sister. Really?”
Sam asked. He was Caitlin’s brother. Or maybe boyfriend. I wasn’t sure.
“Yeah. He’s mostly over it now. But he was pretty pissed,” I said.
“So where is he? Back in the States?” Caitlin asked.
“No, he’s traveling with us. But we ditched him in Ireland. Reese wanted to do Italy. He wanted to do the Netherlands. So we split. What about you guys?”
“We hooked up in Spain.” Sam nodded at Sheer.
“I was tired of traveling alone,” Sheer said. “Getting hit on by drunk American boys is really annoying. Sam never hits on me, and he doesn’t mind when I flirt with Caitlin.”
They all laughed.
“So where did your girlfriend disappear off to?” Caitlin asked. “Reese, right?”
“Yeah. She went to get our bags.”
“Alone?” Sheer asked.
I shrugged. “She wanted to e-mail back home too. It’ll take her forever.”
They nodded like that was normal.
“You guys staying nearby?” Caitlin asked.
“We were. I dunno. The hostel we were at was a little sketch. I want to find a different one,” I said.
“Come back to our hostel. It’s great. Clean rooms. The guy who runs it is really nice. And I think there are a few rooms available,” Sam said.
“Serious? That would be awesome.” And it was exactly what I was hoping he would say.
We chatted for another hour. Caitlin and Sam were sociable types. Sheer was more quiet. But she got over her crush pretty quick. By the time Reese showed up they were all excited to meet her. Perfect.
“Hey, babe.” Reese dropped the not so heavy backpacks she was carrying.
I didn’t know how she had managed it. The bags were worn and the zipper was jammed on one of them. They looked like they were filled with clothes, but I was guessing she had stuffed them with newspaper or something. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She told me she was going to get backpacks so we would fit in. And she did.
“Hey. Meet Caitlin and Sam. And this is Sheer. Guys, this is Reese.” Reese shook hands with everyone. Repeated names. Smiled that Reese smile. They were hooked. “Sam said we should come back to their hostel with them. He said it’s really cool.”
Dirty Power Page 11