by Ash Harlow
“Don’t move,” Noah says, taking my photo.
“Want me to do a handstand?” I offer. “You can put it on your IG account.”
“I don’t have one.”
“I bet you do. Hot Doctor of Dallas, or something like that.”
“I closed it down. I was getting mobbed every time I left the hospital,” he teases.
I do a handstand, anyway, right on the edge. Noah takes my photo then swears at me.
“What?” I say as I lower my feet back to the ground.
“If you go over that edge you’ll break your neck. You don’t have to take risks any more to prove you can keep up with the boys.”
“It wasn’t a risk. Watch, I’ll do another one, nice and slow.”
He grabs my arm. “You’re not a kid, Steffi.” His voice has dropped an octave, one step away from a growl. “We’re equal, okay? I’m not going to jump on my bike and ride hard and fast away from you.”
We’re really close again, and he still has my arm. I want to slide my hand inside his jacket and feel the hard body I know it’s covering, which is sort of crazy because I’m not usually driven to do that sort of thing. “You’d collapse with exhaustion, trying. I was third woman across the line in the Gutbuster race last year. Over the Hector mountains, through the Nevis Valley and over Duffer’s Saddle on the Old Woman Range. This year, I intend to be first. I’ve been training, and I bet right now I could whip your ass.”
“And I could whip yours, but it wouldn’t be on a mountain bike.”
Right. Okay. I wasn’t expecting that. The peculiar feeling between my legs just turned into a full-on throb in my pussy. “I don’t think we whip people these days,” I say quietly.
He gives me a sexy wink. “You might be surprised. Come on, let’s go. I need a drink.”
We head off back to town and when we reach home, Noah sets about making a fire. Once he has it roaring he stands and I notice him yawning. “Sorry, the time difference is starting to catch up with me.”
“I’ll fix dinner. I made a rabbit casserole yesterday, but it needs a couple of hours to finish off. Do you think you can stay awake that long?”
“That sounds amazing. I have a few things to catch up with, and some emails to send. I’ll do them in my room.”
I hold up the local Pinot Noir I’ve opened. “Something to help you work?”
He grins. “I’ve been looking forward to some local wine,” he says.
I can see he’s tired, but it doesn’t reduce the effect of the smile he gives me. When he leaves the kitchen, I blow out a breath. I should call Terra. She’ll be dying to know about Noah. She came to Queenstown after Noah left, so she knows him only by reputation. But for just one night, I want Noah to myself. If I call Terra, I’ll have to invite her over. It makes me feel like a bad friend, but I know once she meets him she’ll understand the reason I wanted to keep him to myself for one night.
An hour passes and Noah’s still in his room. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s fallen asleep so I go down the hallway to check on him. Outside his door I hear him laughing and decide he must be on the phone. I slink back to the kitchen because I don’t want him to think I’m spying on him.
I flip open my laptop and immediately O-Zone pops up on the screen. I obviously hadn’t shut down the app after the last time I logged on. I’m going to have to be more careful about that with Noah around. Total humiliation if he discovers I hang about in a chat room run by a self-professed doctor of orgasms. I log in, ready to slap the laptop closed if I hear Noah approach, but when I see that Dr. O isn’t on, I log back out and shut down the app.
Part of me wants to share the news that my house-guest has kick-started my libido. That revelation would probably earn me some sort of O-Zone badge and an avalanche of happy emojis from the ’gasm-girls. But another part of me wants to keep that information to myself. I don’t want to jinx what I’ve got going on between my legs at this early stage.
Noah appears in the kitchen. “Dinner smells amazing. Like nothing I’ve eaten since I left New Zealand.”
“It’s ten minutes away. Did you get everything done? Was your internet connection okay? It can be a bit spotty at times.”
“Perfect. I’ve caught up with everyone.” He refills our wine glasses. “It’s weird being back in that room. Nothing’s changed. I keep waiting for your mother to holler at me to turn the music down.”
I laugh. “You and Cam used to drive her crazy with your music.”
“Are you still in your same room?”
“No. They turned downstairs into an apartment. It’s small, but it gives me some privacy. It’s hell trying to find accommodation in this town, and the prices are insane. I’ll move if I can find anything decent, but it makes sense to have someone here while Mom and Dad are away. Once the new center opens, I’ll look for somewhere else to live.”
The house has a formal dining room, but the kitchen has a big old wooden table, scrubbed to within an inch of its existence, and homely. Noah helps me carry the food over. He lifts the lid from the casserole, breathes deeply and moans.
“Smells magnificent,” he says.
For some reason my libido takes the sound he makes as a personal compliment, and jumps back to life. How do people function like this? Giving every word and action some sort of sexual meaning? I’m sure I’ll get over it, but I’m going to have to keep my wits about me to stop me making a fool of myself.
My wits have left without my permission. I make it through dinner somehow by drinking a lot of wine and I’m feeling a pleasant buzz as I clear away the dishes. I send Noah on a trip to the cellar for another bottle of wine, and more wood so we can keep the fire well stoked.
We settle on the floor by the fire. The drapes are open and, below us, Queenstown sparkles.
“Dinner was fantastic. When did you learn to cook?” Noah asks. The fireplace is built high, with a hearth you can sit on. Noah’s leaning one elbow on it, rearranging logs with the poker, and I’m on the floor with my feet up on the hearth. The wine’s taken the edge off my nerves and now this feels comfortable. Two old friends who haven’t seen each other for a while catching up.
“I worked in a few restaurant kitchens in my student days. I even considered switching courses to become a chef. But, chefs are crazy and the hours are terrible.”
“Much like an ER department.”
“Probably. However, it sparked my interest in cooking and I made friends with a few chefs who showed me some tricks of the trade.”
“Well, that was the best chicken I’ve ever eaten.”
“It was rabbit!”
He grins at me. “It was? Are you sure, because it tasted just like chicken?”
“My rabbit does not taste like chicken. What the hell have you been eating in America? Your taste buds are broken.”
His gaze slides over my reclining body, stopping at my eyes. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”
“No. Probably…yes.” I’m feeling defensive so I give him every answer possible. I’ve no idea what he’s referring to.
“At the dinner table one night, I guess you would have been about eleven. Dinner was a chicken casserole and you refused to eat it because somebody at school had it on good authority that it was impossible to tell whether you were eating rabbit, cat or chicken. Everything, you declared, tastes just like chicken. Your mother tried to reason with you, that she wouldn’t serve cat, and if she was serving rabbit, she’d say it was rabbit. Cam teased you about it for months.”
I start to laugh. “I’d forgotten that. I went vegetarian for a short while, until the aroma of roasting chicken was too much to resist. Cam caught me in the kitchen sneaking a piece of crispy chicken skin.”
I’m trying not to read too much into the fact Noah remembers these little details from my childhood. It means nothing. Siblings reminisce about this sort of stuff all the time, and we were like brother and sister back then.
I have another sip of wine to top up the warm, relaxed feeling
I’m enjoying. Noah finally stops harassing the logs with the poker and leans against the hearth by my feet. If I let my feet slide along the hearth a few inches, I could nestle them against his back for warmth. Stupid excuse. The fire is doing a more than adequate job of keeping them warm. Earlier today Noah asked me about a boyfriend which I think gives me permission to ask the same question of him. Perhaps he was talking to some woman he’s left behind when I heard him laughing in his bedroom earlier this evening.
“Tell me about Dallas,” I start. “Is there a woman or two back there pining for you right now?”
Noah laughs. “No time for girlfriends.”
“Oh, come on,” I tease.
The mountain air was thick with the unrequited love of at least a dozen teenage girls when he left Queenstown to go to medical school. By the time he qualified and left New Zealand, we were almost choking on it.
He watches me in a way that makes me think he’s considering an appropriate answer. One that won’t necessarily involve the truth. “There’s no one, Steffi.”
5 ~ Noah
Her feet are propped up on the hearth right beside my shoulder. They’re hidden by lime-green socks with BAD and GIRL written on the soles. I imagine her kneeling on the bed, wearing only the socks, advertising how wicked she can be.
I’m thankful for her questions because I can kill my rising lust with thoughts of Diana.
“I’m serious,” I say. “I had one relationship, with a woman named Diana. I managed to keep it going for nearly two years before she’d finally had enough of me canceling dates at the last minute, or having to leave midway through important functions because I was on call. The final straw was some big fancy fundraiser her family was involved in. They were wealthy Texans, oil money. Last minute, I was called to the hospital to cover for a couple of sick colleagues. Diana told me if I went to the hospital instead of the fundraiser, we were finished. Apparently I was on some final warning notice, which to me, sounds like a pretty weird way to run a relationship. By the end of that shift, I felt this enormous sense of relief. I think her parents probably did, too. They had much grander ideas for a future son-in-law than what I had to offer.”
“Sounds like a lucky escape. No other girlfriends?”
“Nothing serious,” I say, honestly.
“On your side, maybe. I bet those casual dates were madly in love with you.”
“I’m not that easy to love.”
Steffi frowns. “What makes you think that?”
“You have to get to know someone first. I didn’t have spare time for relationships. Work was demanding, and outside of that, I had other things.”
“The gym,” Steffi says, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, don’t knock it. That gym kept this guy fit.”
“Where’s your phone,” she says, looking around.
“What do you want my phone for?”
“I want to see how many gym selfies you’ve taken posing beside the bench press. Oh, and those locker room ones where you’re shirtless, and you stand with a fist-grip on a towel that’s held way too low on your hip. I’ll find your social media accounts. I bet you have little inspirational messages followed by about twenty hash-tags like #YouOnlyGetOneBody #KaleSmoothieOrdered #HealthStyle #IGotTheV.
I can’t stop laughing. “You couldn’t be further from the truth,” I tell her.
Any time I spend on social media is taken up by writing smut, and O-Zone. Two things whose future I need to make a decision about. I don’t need the money, and maybe I’m kidding myself that all those women need another private chat room in their lives, but I can’t simply close it down. I wonder about making some of the long-term members moderators and gradually easing myself out of it.
“Do you seriously expect me to believe you’ve been celibate since this Diana woman?”
“There’s been nothing serious. A few casual relationships that were never going anywhere.” Her lips are pressed together as if she’s trying to hide a smile. I run the tip of my finger over the contours of her foot, and she jerks it away, a little shiver running through her. “Still ticklish?” I ask.
“Still,” she says, putting her foot back down on the hearth.
“Any truth in these socks?”
A crease forms between her eyes, and she cocks her head. “What do you mean?”
“Bad, girl,” I say, tapping the words.
She laughs. “I’d forgotten these were my bad-girl socks. I’ve got them in three colors.”
“Interesting. Do the colors depict any specific level of deprivation?” How easily we could slip into flirting territory.
“Sure. Green is an earthy, outdoors badness. My hot-pink ones are kind of sweet-bad, and the burnt-orange socks, well they’re fiery-bad. You don’t want to meet them.”
“You could be wrong. I think I’d like to meet them a lot.” In fact, right now, wrestling with being awake in a foreign time zone, well fed and full of wine, I think I’d like to meet those orange socks immediately.
She flicks her hand, dismissively. “I was just being silly,” she says.
“You’re pulling back. That’s not the Steffi I know.”
She glances at me, then shifts her focus to the fire. “The Steffi you know was sixteen with a smart mouth, and a desire to be as fast and as strong as the boys.”
“That’s true. I liked her, but I have to say, I like Steffi at twenty-three even more. Want to tell me about her?”
“She’s had some life experience, I guess. She’s focused on her work, and keeping fit, and….”
“And, what?”
She shrugs, keeping her eyes on the dwindling flames.
I wrap my hand around her foot, rubbing my thumb over the contour of the arch to her heel, and back to her toes again. She tenses for a moment, then relaxes. With the point of my thumb I trace the word ‘BAD’ across her sole.
Steffi draws a noisy breath. “And, basically, men are kind of disappointing. It’s probably me. I’m not saying they’re monsters, or assholes, or anything like that. Just disappointing. Work is mentally challenging, and I love getting outdoors and physically testing myself. I have good friends.” She gives me a bright smile. “I’m happy.”
“But the man thing is a fail, so not completely happy.”
“Pfft. I don’t need a man to complete me. Anyway, sex is overrated.”
“I’d have to disagree with you on that point.”
“Of course, because you’re a man. It’s different for you.”
“Why would it be different for me?”
“You know. Wham, bam, jam it somewhere warm and welcoming and it’s pretty much satisfaction guaranteed.”
Do not laugh. “Sure, there are guys like that, but there are also a hell of a lot of us out there who take a woman’s pleasure very seriously.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been out with him, too. Nothing like a guy who’s just about rubbed you raw but still won’t let up because you haven’t—”
Her hand flies across her mouth.
“Because you haven’t, what?”
She’s embarrassed, which is probably the first time I’ve seen Steffi that way.
“It’s nothing. I’ve had too much to drink. Forget I said anything.”
I pull her foot down onto my lap and keep rubbing it. She lies back on the floor, stretches her arms over her head, and stares at the ceiling. I wish she hadn’t done that because I can’t look at her face when her breasts are forced up like that. And her fucking nipples are hard, which I have to ignore when I don’t want to.
“Technically, Steffi, you haven’t said anything. Is there something you want to get off your chest?”
“Nope. Everything’s fine.” She lifts her head and smiles at me. “Truly. I’m good. And thanks for the foot rub, it feels great.”
“All part of the service.” I’m disappointed she doesn’t want to talk any further, although it’s easy to guess why. “Listen. You’re going to be fine. You just haven’t found someone compatible,” I
say, sounding like a doctor, because even though I’d like to prove to her that sex is definitely not overrated, I’ve got to remember that I didn’t return to Queenstown to complicate my life, or hers. And fucking Steffi would be one big complication.
“You think?” she says softly.
“Yeah, I do. Like everything else in life, sex can be complicated. Look at all those sports you’re so accomplished. A lot of people would find cycling down a narrow trail covered in loose schist, with a two-hundred-foot sheer drop on one side, fucking difficult. Yet you don’t even blink.”
“That’s not a good analogy, Noah. Sex should be like eating. It’s a normal thing to do.”
“Okay, that’s fair. But eating’s only pleasurable if you like the taste of the food. If it’s something you don’t like the taste of, you’re not going to enjoy it.”
“Fair enough. But I’ve stopped looking. It’s humiliating.” Her bottom lip folds into her mouth, and her focus shifts to the wall at her left.
“You’re making me sad. You’re a very sexy woman, Steffi. I mean, hell, look at you. You’ve got a body most women would kill for, and most men, too.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.” She props herself up on her elbows, takes a big slug of wine and wipes her mouth. “I didn’t need that. I’ve had too much to drink already. And I want you to promise me you haven’t heard anything I’ve said tonight.”
“I heard.”
“We were talking as brother and sister. No, wait, we’re not that. We were talking as doctor and patient. What I mean is, I want you to forget whatever it is you thought you heard. Am I drunk?” She pulls her foot away from me and rocks to her feet. “My foot says thank you. “
“I haven’t finished, I only did one.”
“Shhh.” She puts her finger to her lips in this really cute, and slightly drunk way. “I’ll use that as an excuse for why I can’t walk straight.”
I stand, too. “How do you get to your apartment?”
“The side path. Why? Are you planning on a nocturnal visit? Going to show me what your bedside manners are like?”