by Hamel, B. B.
As I stripped out of my work clothes, wrapped myself in a towel, and walked into the bathroom, every horrible thing imaginable kept running through my mind. Maybe they were attacked by bears, or fell down a ravine, or drowned in the river, or just got hopelessly lost, or bitten by a snake, or worse. The deep woods were beautiful and incredible but also full of thousands of different things that could potentially hurt you.
I turned the shower water on and waited for it to get hot. I knew Reid was a big boy, completely capable of taking care of himself and the people he guided, but still. It was impossible not to worry.
The water felt good against my skin as the grime from work rinsed from my body. I could practically feel the stress of the long day begin to melt from my body and my muscles as I stood there longer than I needed to thinking about Reid, remembering him.
Remembering the feel of him between my legs. The way his hands moved like they could play me like a piano. The calluses on the ends of his fingers rubbing my soft, sensitive spots.
I felt a thrill run through me and I could tell I was soaked through as I began to explore myself. Part of the excitement was the danger of it all. His strong hands had taken me, pressed me up against the tree like I was his to command and I couldn’t fight him. I wouldn’t have even if I had wanted to because I knew what was going to happen next. As I began to rub my clit, soft and quiet moans escaping my lips, I remembered the way he fucked me so confidently right there in the woods where anybody could have stumbled upon us.
And what a scandal that would have been. Getting fucked in the woods by your stepbrother? It didn’t get any dirtier than that. Or maybe it did if your stepbrother was Reid and his hands knew exactly how to send wave after wave of pleasure through your body, his thick cock rolling in and out of your body.
I leaned back against the cool tile wall and let the warm water stream over my breasts as I began to work my clit faster, soft moans of Reid’s name escaping my lips. I didn’t know if I wanted him because his cock felt so incredible or if there really was more there beneath the surface, but all the confused feelings swirled through my mind as I remembered the way he spanked my ass hard, growling into my ear like an animal. He ravaged me without a second thought, taking my body as his own and working me until I was sweating and panting and begging for more. And just as I pushed up against that edge, he softly tipped me over into the heaviest orgasm of my life.
I could feel my body stiffen as I remembered coming, the words he’d said, and how loudly he had fucked me there in the woods. I began to come again, my mind locked on Reid and his perfect body, his ripped climber’s body, his hands and fingers stronger than anyone’s I’d ever met.
Finished, I stayed against the tile wall panting softly, hoping Cora or my dad hadn’t accidentally heard me. I doubted it, but it was a possibility. What’s wrong with you?
I thought to myself. Are you trying to get caught?
As I began to soap off and wash my hair, part of me wanted to indulge in selfish thoughts about how unfair everything was. It was unfair that my dad married Reid’s mom right after that night at the party. It was unfair that, despite being stepbrother and stepsister, he still wanted me and loved to push my buttons mercilessly. And worst of all, it was unfair that I loved it and wanted him just as badly.
But I couldn’t let myself think like that. The world was unfair in so many other ways, and if my worst problem was that I wanted my stepbrother, well, life could have been harder. I’d figure it out, learn to deal, whatever. I wasn’t going to be one of those whiney girls that kept obsessing about her relationship with some guy. It couldn’t happen, even if it felt too good. I didn’t even know what I wanted or what I could want, and besides, it was Reid. He was an asshole and had probably slept with half the girls in town by now.
Done with the shower, I shut off the water and began to dry off. I walked across the hall wrapped in a towel and got changed into comfortable clothes back in my room. I walked back out into the living room and noticed that dad and Cora had left.
“Hello?” I called out, but there was no answer.
With a frown, I went back upstairs and knocked on Reid’s bedroom door. No answer there, either. I cracked it open and peeked inside, but he wasn’t inside.
I went back downstairs and checked the clock on the kitchen stove. It was seven thirty and the sun had dipped dangerously low in the sky. The clouds were red, refracted through the upper atmosphere, as the earth completed another full spin.
I paced the kitchen for a minute, not sure what to do. I was worried that Reid hadn’t come home yet. It was extremely unusual that he’d be out in the woods after dark, and there was probably only a half hour of sunlight left at best. If he was guiding, something had to have gone wrong, otherwise he would never put his clients in any danger.
Resolved, I jogged upstairs and threw on some hiking gear. I tied my hair back in a tight, wet bun, and went back downstairs. I grabbed my boots and pushed open the back door, sitting down on a chair to tie my boots onto my feet.
My heart was pounding in my chest. Something had happened to Reid. Something really bad had happened to him, otherwise he would have called or shown up or something. Cora had been right earlier, and now I was actually scared. What if it had something to do with the weird stuff Lindsey kept mentioning? Also, Reid definitely was into some dangerous activities, like climbing. What if he had gone climbing without telling anyone and had gotten hurt?
Terror and worry was beginning to overwhelm me. I should have called the police, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. In fact, I was so far in my own head that I didn’t even notice the figure approaching me until he was practically standing in front of me.
“Where are you going, college girl?”
I looked up with a start. “Reid!”
He grinned down at me. “The one and only.”
He was drenched in sweat and was breathing heavy, but he seemed perfectly okay. He was wearing his usual hiking clothes and had his pack strapped to his back, which meant he probably really had been out in the woods somewhere.
“Where have you been?”
“Out guiding.”
“You stayed out this late?”
He shrugged off his pack and sat down across from me. “Yeah. The guys wanted to.”
He began to strip off his boots.
“Your clients wanted to stay out this late? That’s pretty dangerous.”
“I needed the money,” he said, distracted.
“Right, but still. Why would you put up with such a risk?”
“Lots of money.” He pulled off one boot and began on the other.
“Why would they want to stay out this late, though? I mean, what’s there to do?”
“Hunt,” he grunted as he pulled off the other. He leaned back and rubbed his foot, his eyes closed.
“Who were these guys?”
His eyes snapped open. “What’s with the questions?”
“You worried me and your mom, that’s all.”
“I told her that I was out guiding.”
“But you’re never this late.”
For a second, I thought I saw anger flash across his face. Instead, he stood up and sighed, clearly too exhausted to try and fight back. Without saying anything, he walked around me and went inside the house.
I quickly pulled off my boots, not ready to let him get away with it that easily. I found him sitting at the kitchen table eating cold leftover pasta and drinking a beer.
“Seriously Reid, why are you so late? Why didn’t you call?”
“No service,” he said with a mouth full of food. “Sit down, will you?” He kicked out a chair and nodded to it as he took another big bite.
I sighed and sat down. “I’m just trying to figure this out.”
“I get it.”
“You can tell me, you know.”
He looked at me for a second. “I love how you look with your hair like that.”
I laughed. “Soaking wet and in a bun?”
/> “Exactly. Soaking wet. Just the way I want you.”
“Not the time.”
“It’s always the time. With a body like that, you should be getting fucked constantly.”
“Reid, not here.”
“Okay, I can fuck you somewhere else, then.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
He took a deep swig of his beer and grinned at me. He looked so cocky and sure of himself, although the tiredness was pushing in around his eyes. “It’s what I mean, though.”
“Look, I just want to know where you went so I can make your mom feel better.”
“Cora is fine. This isn’t the first time I’ve been late.”
I was quiet at that, letting the implications sink in. “So Cora knows about where you’ve been?”
“Not exactly. But I’m willing to bet she has a guess.”
“Is this about what Lindsey said?” He didn’t respond, just kept eating his food. “You can’t just ignore me, Reid. Other people say things about you, too. It’s really obvious something is going on.”
Suddenly, he stopped eating, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. When he opened them, his gaze was dangerous, like he was trying to size me up while looking deep into my heart. It was the most excited and afraid I’d ever felt, all wrapped up in one moment. I could see something in him, something wild and dangerous. I hadn’t seen it before, but Reid was harboring something, carrying something difficult and heavy and dark around with him.
“Are you sure you can handle it?” he said softly.
“If you’re in trouble, I can help.”
He shook his head sadly. “You can’t help me.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
He picked up his beer and finished it off in three big swallows. When he was done, he placed it back down in front of him gently and then locked his gaze on to mine. Butterflies filled my stomach.
“When my mom got sick,” he started slowly, “your dad wasn’t making much money. I’m not saying that to blame him or to belittle him. He provides the best he can and he’s a decent enough guy, even if he hates me. But back then, when she was first diagnosed, money was really, really tight.” He paused and looked down at his food and then back up. “Do you know how much cancer drugs cost? Hospital stays?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“One afternoon, a few weeks after she started her treatments, I found a bill. And let me tell you, it was for a lot of fucking money. Worst of all, though, I could tell that it was just one of many that we’d be getting in the future. Each new bill meant years of debt, years of hard work and toil and maybe even worse than that.”
“What about insurance?” I asked.
“Insurance helped, but it couldn’t cover everything we needed over the years. Try as hard as he did, your dad just couldn’t cover it all, either. Nobody could, not really.”
I remembered this time. I was coming home as often as possible, and I kept begging Cora to let me drop out of school to be with her, but she kept refusing. “Cora said you started winning more climbing competitions at this point?”
“That was the story, yeah.”
“What do you mean, ‘the story’?”
“Even in the largest regional competition, first prize was only a few thousand dollars at most. It just wasn’t enough. In that first year, I entered and won pretty much every competition within driving distance, but that money was still just a drop in the bucket.”
“What happened, Reid?” I asked softly.
“I did what I had to do for my family. If I hadn’t gotten involved with Thom, we’d probably be living in a trailer somewhere. Cora would probably already be back at work and your dad would be dead from pulling double shifts every day.”
“What did you do?”
“I talked to Thom. He had contacts in the mob, some French Canadian group of guys. They’ve been running prescription drugs across the Canadian border for years, mostly painkillers and stuff like that. But their smuggler had gotten caught and they needed someone who knew the woods to take his place.”
I felt a stab of horror. “What did you do?”
“I got a job, Becca. I started out slow, doing just a few runs, but the money was too fucking good. I hike out into Canada, meet some guy in a campground, and hike back over the border the next day. I meet up with Thom and his boys, make the exchange, and get paid. It’s so fucking easy and scary and I’m good at it, as much as I hate it.”
“That’s what Lindsey keeps talking about?”
“Your pill-head friend should keep her mouth shut, but yeah. I’ve been smuggling drugs from Canada for the mob. Every single penny I’ve made has gone to paying for Cora’s medical bills, and if it weren’t for this job we’d be out on the streets.”
When he finished talking, he took another deep breath and then stood up. He walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed another beer, cracking it open. I stared at him, shocked into silence, not even slightly sure what I felt about what he was telling me.
Reid, involved with the mob and smuggling drugs? That was so far removed from the guy I thought I knew, the danger-loving but still inherently good person that I had spent so much time with.
“How long?” I asked.
“A while. Years.”
“Does your mom know? Does my dad?”
“Like I said, they probably have their suspicions.”
“Are you still doing it?”
He didn’t respond, just took a deep drink of his beer.
“Are you still doing it?” I repeated, desperately hoping he would say no, no, of course not, he only did it for Cora and was putting that all behind him.
“Yes,” he said, his face impassive.
I felt like I could barely breathe. I felt like the walls were turning dark and like I was about to fall out of my chair. I stood up, feeling a little unsteady. For some reason I had to get out of there, couldn’t look at his perfect, beautiful face, his criminal face. He was part of the problem in our town. He was the source of all the pills that were ruining lives. He was the reason Lindsey was a pill head, or whatever he wanted to call her. Reid, the guy that gave me the best orgasm of my life, was a drug smuggler.
I lurched my way out of the kitchen, afraid that if I spoke I’d say something I’d regret, or maybe I’d vomit, or both. He watched me leave but didn’t say a word.
I ran upstairs and slammed my bedroom door behind me, locking the handle. I didn’t know why I did that. I knew Reid wouldn’t hurt me, but suddenly he was a menacing figure in my life. He was Reid but he was also a criminal, a smuggler.
I wanted to hide. I felt like a coward. I wanted to make him quit.
As I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, trying to get a grip, I knew that something had changed between us even more than it already had.
Chapter Fourteen: Reid
I hated the look in her eyes as she left the kitchen. That look haunted me as I finished off my beer and found where I had dropped my pack.
I didn’t want to tell Becca, but the weight of the lie was too much. I could have kept lying to my mom and Jack, but Becca deserved better. At least I wanted to give Becca better.
They always say that the truth will set you free, but in my case the truth only seemed to make things worse. Still, if she was going to be mine, it had to be for real. I couldn’t trick her into wanting me by lying about who I was and what I did to make money.
I pulled open my pack and dug down toward the bottom. The gun’s grip felt good in my hand as I pulled it out of the pack and hefted its weight. Cora had given it to me for my sixteenth birthday, back when I had started hiking for real. It was an old .38 caliber handgun, something my dad apparently used to carry around for protection from bears. I always kept it handy when I did my Canadian hikes, though I had never had to pull it out of the pack. Besides, it was shoved down at the bottom so deep that by the time I dug it out it would be too late.
I slipped the gun into my waistband and pushed out
the front door. Anger and disappointment were warring for control of my emotions, but I couldn’t let myself give in to either.
There was only one option. I wanted Becca, wanted her more than I’d ever wanted something before, but I had to get out. I had no other choice.
I started the truck and drove. My mind wandered over the events of the last few days, and although I should have been absolutely exhausted, for some reason I felt awake and wired. My mind was buzzing as I headed north, away from town, with no real destination in mind. I just wanted to drive, to be moving, and to be away from Becca. I couldn’t stand staying in that house while that look still lingered in the air.
As I made a left onto a dirt road, it suddenly dawned on me where I was headed. Almost as if on autopilot, I was only about a half mile from the shitty trailer Thom called home. He was my direct link to the mob, though he was about as low level as it got. At first, I thought he had been some big shot, but as time went on it became clear that he was only involved because the Canadians needed an American dumb enough to be their fall guy in case anything went wrong on our side.
Unfortunately for Thom, he was the perfect fall guy. Trusting and stupid and loyal to a fault, he’d be willing to jump on a grenade for the mobsters, even if they continually overlooked him for promotions within their organization.
Worst of all, he didn’t make that much money, especially considering the amount of risk. As I pulled up in front of his dingy trailer, it was clear that Thom was a stooge in their whole enterprise. For a long time I felt bad for him but didn’t say anything about it, since I needed him to help facilitate the deals and to get me paid, but maybe it was time to try and push him. He had already begun to notice the changes that were happening in the mob, and maybe that would make him a little more inclined to change.
I parked the truck and waited a minute. Usually he came right out when he heard a car pull up, often drunk and almost always with a rifle. Not many people got up around his area, and that was how he liked it. But as I sat there, his trailer remained completely dark.