by Toby Neal
Holding her gaze, Cash brushed his fingers over his chest, his nipples rippling with sensation. Sunshine bent over him, taking him in her hands, in her mouth, making him moan and toss, his eyes rolling back and closing in ecstasy. She worked him, and knew what she was doing. She wasn’t shy at all, his princess, once she got going.
Her eyes gleamed triumphantly as he ruptured, his essence on her tongue.
Sunshine licked her lips, her eyes darkly challenging, clearly exulting in her newfound power over him. “You’re good, too, Cash. Mmm. So good.”
He looked away, withdrawing, rolling aside to head for the bathroom.
He was lying to her by staying silent, but he couldn’t bear to expose the truth right now, not with the taste of her still on his tongue, the tingling of his exultant climax still vibrating through his body.
All of his efforts, all of his rescues as a firefighter—it was all atonement. He would make her understand, but now wasn’t the time.
Cash woke suddenly to the deep woof of Tiny’s voice outside the window, directly below. He shot upright, alarm jangling his nerves, but Tiny only barked once, and she would verbalize more if there were a threat.
Gradually he relaxed even as he woke fully.
The fluffy duvet bunched around his naked waist, and Sunshine pressed against him, her back turned, sleeping peacefully. Moonlight poured through the uncovered window to gild her white velvet skin so that she glowed. The moonlight touched the scar on the back of her head, exposing the ugly, knotted line that her silky blonde hair just covered.
A man could get lost in Sunshine, and never want to be found.
A chill passed over Cash. He had lost control of his feelings. He was going to break her heart for sure, and demolish his own in the process.
Cash feathered a kiss across the warm skin of Sunshine’s neck, and she murmured something and wriggled that sweet tush up against him. He couldn’t handle her touching him without wanting more.
Cash eased back and away, extending a leg outside of the bed. He had to get some space to think, decide what to do, now that he’d taken it to the next level without planning to.
Hunting would clear his head.
Cash and Tiny walked down the road to the town’s tiny armory, a locked metal shed in the back of Jeb’s house. Jeb didn’t like being woken up at what turned out to be four in the morning, but at the promise of more food for the town, he grudgingly unlocked the shed where he’d stored Cash’s weapons. “Sure you don’t want a rifle?”
“No.” Cash took his bow, stifling dark memories. “I don’t touch guns. See you later.”
“You’re not leaving us, are you? And leaving your girl behind? Don’t pretend she’s not your girl. I saw you two last night. Only couples fight like that.” He waggled his brows.
Cash slung his quiver over his back, strapped his big hunting knife on one hip and the butterfly blade on the other, refusing to respond. “I told you already. I’ll see you later.” He slipped on his hunting kit, a light mesh backpack containing supplies.
“Well, if you want to leave her here, she’d be welcome. You know we’re trying to rebuild our numbers.”
“I said I’d be back!” Cash tossed the comment angrily over his shoulder as he strode off into the dark, snapping his fingers for Tiny. The big bear dog trotted at his side as Cash walked quickly away from Jeb.
From the town.
From her.
Chapter Fifteen
Sunshine
Sunshine woke slowly, light filtering through the lace curtains waking her. She reached out into the bed beside her and found cold space and rumpled, empty sheets.
Cash had left.
Panic pulsed through her. She was alone!
Sunshine sat up quickly, her eyes darting around the room.
She gripped the sheets and dug her nails into the mattress as cold shivers ran over her body.
You’re mine, sister. I own you. Her brother’s voice, whispering in her ear, his breath warm and too close.
Cash’s hands on her. The way he had caressed her, teased her, pleasured her. The power she felt with him as they connected.
A powerful man had been on his knees for her, loving her—making sweet, hungry sounds as he took her over the edge into the first real climax of her life. She picked a spot on the floor and concentrated on it, her breath slowly returning to normal.
Sunshine wasn’t the same frightened, lost woman Cash had found in the woods. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been before she lost her memory, when her brother’s words had felt true.
Not anymore.
Her body told her that she was free. She was a whole new Jolene.
She padded on bare feet across the worn carpeting toward the bathroom, naked, unashamed of her body, listening to it, reveling in it, trusting it. All new, and full of joy.
You’re nothing but a dirty slut.
She stumbled, catching herself on the bathroom counter.
That voice again, that sickly harsh sound she kept hearing in her head, that she’d heard for a lifetime.
Her mother’s voice.
Sunshine closed her eyes and tried to find her mother’s face through the wisps of darkness that floated across her memory. But all she could hear was that voice.
Stupid. Useless. Ugly. Weak. Slutty. Lazy. Selfish.
She opened her eyes and looked up at her reflection.
Sunshine didn’t recognize her own face. She didn’t know the woman standing in front of her, but she liked her. This new Jolene was brave and strong and had been pleasured by a gorgeous, kind, humorous, heroic man who had taken her to new heights.
She didn’t ever want to come back down.
Sunshine pushed aside the jarring, negative voice from her past and turned to the bucket of water left on the counter to wash up. Returning to the bedroom, Sunshine found the dress she’d worn the night before discarded on the floor in a heap. Ugh. She was done with dresses.
Sunshine was gonna get herself some pants.
She threw on a terrycloth bathrobe before heading downstairs, finding Maud in the kitchen.
The older woman, her gray hair pulled up into a sloppy bun, turned and smiled at her. “You hungry?”
“Starving. But do you have any pants I could borrow?”
Maud grinned. “Sure do. In my younger days I had a nice full figure almost like yours.”
The woman was thin now, her skin sagging, her shoulders bowed. Life had withered her. Change was the only constant. But for all that she’d lost, Maud’s eyes still sparkled with vigor, and there was energy in her step.
Sunshine would revel in every minute she had. Every second was a gift. Her new life started today. She was a new Jolene, and Cash had given her that.
Even if he never came back, even if he was really gone, she had last night.
She had herself, strong and complete even if her memories weren’t. And she’d had him, and given as good as she got, and maybe that was enough.
Dressed in too-tight jeans and a purple plaid shirt that hugged her breasts in a way her mother’s voice disapproved of, Sunshine devoured buckwheat pancakes that Maud made her, savoring every bite.
From the kitchen table she could see into the inn’s pantry. Nothing was organized. The food stores were scattered and piled everywhere, mixed with linens and cleaning supplies. Her fingers itched to clean it up. She wanted to do something nice for Maud to repay the innkeeper’s generosity.
“Mind if I take a stab at organizing the pantry?” Sunshine gestured toward the open door with her fork. “I’m really good at tidying up.”
Maud glanced in the direction of the messy space and shrugged. “Sure, if you want to.”
Sunshine spent the rest of the morning in the pantry, surrounded by the scents of flour, sugar, coffee and vanilla bean.
She took everything down and wiped the surfaces with a wet rag, enjoying the way the painted shelves came back to life under her touch, after being smothered in flour and spilled spices. Sh
e found a toothpick, and pried crud out of the crevices.
Once the shelves were clean and the floor mopped, Sunshine organized the food stores, grouping all of the cans: beans, vegetables, tomatoes all neatly lined up, labels facing forward. She combined four different flour bags that were all half full, filling a metal tin she found in the basement.
Being useful felt so good.
Maud returned in the late afternoon and grinned when she saw Sunshine in the pantry. “Looks amazing.”
“I really enjoy cleaning up. I wanted to do something to thank you.”
“You got some flour on your nose.”
Sunshine swiped her face.
“You just made it worse.”
Sunshine giggled and shrugged, brushing at the purple shirt covered in dust as the back door creaked open.
Her heart surged. Was it Cash?
Billy stepped into the kitchen. Seeing her in the pantry, he broke into a smile, the crow’s feet around his warm brown eyes crinkling with delight. “Hey Sunshine! Just the lady I was looking for.” He sauntered over and leaned against the doorjamb. Sunshine’s face heated as he raised his brows. “Looks like you got yourself some.” Billy scanned her up and down. “You’re glowing.”
“Leave her be,” Maud chided, slapping Billy’s arm.
“Cash and I had a very nice time last night.” Sunshine turned away, straightening already perfectly straight cans, her ears and neck burning.
“You two go chat on the porch. I’ve got work to do.” Maud handed them a couple of beers and ushered them out of the kitchen. They sat in the two rocking chairs. Sunshine liked Grimesville. Surveying the street, she noticed every piece of litter and leftover paper cup from the night before, and she pictured herself helping clean it all up as a real part of the community.
There were several things that needed fixing on the old Victorian’s porch, and she’d spied a toolbox in the basement. She knew how to fix that loose drainpipe. Yes, she knew how to do that, and much more.
She could paint the houses, replacing rotting boards on the porches.
Maybe they’d even let her teach again. Her heart swelled with happiness. Now all she needed was for Cash to come back.
“So when are you guys moving on?” Billy asked.
“I don’t know. Cash and I haven’t talked about it.” Just that quickly, the bubble of joy popped. She was in danger, and the future was uncertain.
“But you two are together?”
“I don’t know.” She sipped her beer. She hated to say the words. “Cash has some history that makes him not want to be with me.” In her head she could be okay with it, but in reality it was a painful wound. Cash would leave her because he cared and worried he’d hurt her.
He really might not come back.
Sunshine’s stomach squeezed into a knot. She put down the bottle, her hand trembling. Cash didn’t want her. He’d given her a gift, offered her freedom, pleasure and power for a night, but he didn’t want to settle down.
She’d survive no matter what.
She’d been enslaved by her brother and offered as chattel to one of his men. She’d had a swastika carved into her head, and she escaped. She’d run through the woods and found salvation. Cash had led her out of that darkness and into the light. And she was never going back to that darkness again.
If Cash didn’t want her, she’d stay in the light by herself.
Jeb and a small group of men appeared at the end of the block. They looked concerned, their brows furrowed, hands tight around their weapons. Sunshine sat forward, leaning on the porch rail with her elbows, squinting, trying to see them better in the low light. The way they moved set off alarm bells in her mind.
Something had happened.
Her brother’s name popped into her mind in a flash of memory.
Dwight. His name was Dwight. A shudder ran through her.
Dwight was here. Sunshine surged out of the chair so that it rocked back, thunking loudly against the porch floor.
“What’s going on?” Billy asked, standing.
“I have to go.” Her voice came out choked. She stumbled toward the door and Billy grabbed her, holding her up. She ripped free and raced through the living room, headed for the back door. Sunshine burst into the kitchen, colliding with Maud, who bumped into the counter.
“I’m so sorry!”
“What’s the hurry, child?” Maud asked, rubbing her elbow.
Sunshine heard men’s heavy booted footsteps in the living room, and then Jeb’s voice. “Where is she?”
“Why?” Billy asked, his tone suspicious. “What’s going on?”
“Just tell me where she is.”
Sunshine’s throat closed as panic seized her. She turned away from Maud and pushed through the back door, jumping off the porch into the big, overgrown back yard backed up to the forest.
She dashed for the back gate just as it opened. Sunshine jerked to a halt, fear racing through her veins, making it hard to think, to figure out what to do.
She was surrounded.
Chapter Sixteen
Cash
Dawn bled up from the horizon like a Polaroid slowly developing into the fullness of light and color as Cash followed Tiny through the black trees.
His whirling brain and jagged emotions settled, a shaken snow globe drifting into peace. The faint creaks and squeaks of the trees, the twittering of the earliest birds waking, and the smell of sap surrounded him like a familiar perfume.
This was his element.
Tiny found a deer trail, and was hot on the scent of something big.
The memory of Tiny’s relentless tracking and his first glimpse of Sunshine kneeling on the bank overtook Cash.
What if Tiny hadn’t followed her? She’d likely have died that first day, a meal for a wolf. And even if she’d escaped that, she’d have been caught in that net.
What had grown between them was natural. He was a red-blooded man, and she was a young healthy woman, and they were thrown together in a life-or-death situation. People got attached to each other in situations like that, and it was the freakin’ apocalypse. But the things she’d said to him—that he’d made her feel powerful, given her things she’d wanted her whole life? Those words had made him crazy for her.
He wanted to give her everything.
But he wasn’t the type to be reliable and settle down.
And boy did she love to nest. Sunshine had cleaned up that ratty old cabin and made it feel like a home so easily, so naturally.
She’d given him things, too.
Cash shook his head like shooing away a fly. “Focus, Cosimo Luciano.” he muttered.
A sudden crash and surge of movement to his left. Tiny had flushed game.
Cash dropped and spun, his arrow already nocked. He drew, tracking the flash of brown between the trees, and let fly.
A flurry of movement, crackling undergrowth, crashing. The peace of the forest was shattered by impending death.
Tiny barked her warning that the quarry was escaping as she pursued. Cash ran into the undergrowth, his arms up blocking his face from branches. He caught a glimpse of red on the leaves. The deer was hit. He followed Tiny as the deer led the way in a headlong flight through the forest.
Tiny tracked the buck to the edge of a stream where it fell, the thirst from blood loss driving it to water. At the sight of them, the buck struggled to rise again, but Cash ran forward and quickly dispatched it with a slice to the throat, ending its suffering.
He hated when he missed and an animal suffered. But he loved the unstructured, elemental, dangerous nature of hunting. Messy, challenging, hard labor—hunting was truly necessary now for humans to survive in this terrible new reality.
Cash removed his shirt as he butchered the carcass, draping it over a rock to keep it clean. The familiar, mundane tasks of skinning and quartering the buck occupied Cash, giving him an hour-long mental break.
For lunch, he gave Tiny the deer’s heart and liver, while Cash ate homemade
pemmican, a Native American staple made from game and grains that Jeb had given him.
Cash wrapped the fresh deer meat carefully in the hide, securing it with rope from his hunting kit and rigging up a crude backpack. He washed the blood off of his hands and arms, put his shirt on, and hefted the heavy pack.
“Tiny, if I could figure out how to make a saddlebag for you, I’d load you up with some of this.” Tiny cocked her head quizzically, as if to ask why he wasn’t doing that now. “I will if I get too tired. Good girl.”
The Akita opened her mouth in a doggy grin, panting.
“We make a good team.” He and Sunshine made a good team, too. Cash pushed the thought away.
He set off toward Grimesville, navigating by the compass in the haft of his Buck knife.
The sun reached its zenith and began tracking down into afternoon. Coins of golden light filtered through the leaves. The weight on Cash’s back and tiredness brought on by exertion calmed him and allowed his rebellious mind to return to the bedroom with Sunshine.
Sunshine in his arms. Really, that was what she was: light and warmth and life. Women had all sorts of flavors, and in his time he’d enjoyed many of them. But he’d never tasted anyone as sweet as Sunshine with her essence of apricot and honey. Delicious.
He replayed their lovemaking: her eager surrender, his delight in awakening her. That moment when she took flight in his arms and he knew he'd never be the same for experiencing it with her… His groin grew heavy and hard at the memory, and there was nothing to be done but take care of it himself.
Maybe then he would get some relief from this obsession.
He dropped the pack, told Tiny to go chase squirrels, and lay down under a pine with such deep, long branches that it was like a tent. Resting on the deep needles, hidden and alone, Cash gave in to his need to replay all that had passed between them.
Her hands were on him, her mouth, her body, so tight, so hot, wakened to passion by no one but him. In a new fantasy, she rose above, riding him, her white skin dappled with sunlight because she was pure sunshine over a dark river… He came on an inarticulate groan, wrenched from within and without by his need for her.