by Jenna Barton
“Don’t you have any sort of short-term memory?” came Erin’s text reply.
“Been four days since I saw you naked. Technically that’s long-term memory.”
Still grinning, he stretched across his bed and pulled down the picture. Once it was in view, Walt cupped his balls and tugged, grunting with satisfaction at the pleasant shift of pressure in his thighs. Later, he promised himself, and pushed back the urge to compare and contrast the way Erin affected him to his long-ago, horny teenage guy self.
“Well, technically it’s been five days since you’ve see me naked because I was dressed before you woke up to take me to the airport.”
Should he tell her he’d watched her that morning as she wiggled that ass of hers into her jeans, muttering and sniffing over her luggage while he pretended to sleep?
“Too long then,” he typed. “Send me a better picture of you.”
Walt chuckled to himself, imagining his Type-A Miss Reboot on task, taking picture after picture with her phone, trying for the best angles and lighting. After a stretch of minutes, his erection began to wane. Her ass. Now, memories of that ass and what he’d done to it Saturday night would keep him hard until she got the picture together.
“Speaking of four days, how’s your ass look?”
No answer.
“You there?”
Still nothing.
“Erin.”
The reply was almost immediate. “Sorry. Here. Lighting conflicts.”
Another apology. If he could make one rule for Erin, it would be the end of her sorrys. Rules.
She wanted to keep up the D/s while she was gone, had told him, right there in her bed after they finished.
So. Give it a shot.
He typed, “Try that again.”
“Try?” After a few seconds another message from her appeared. “I’m here, Sir.”
Walt sank into his pillows, grinning to himself. “Good girl.”
She didn’t reply again, at least with words. A picture followed, though, this one much clearer than the reflected shadows and shafts of light in a window she’d sent before. It was her. All of her, with no glasses and no prim ponytail, but still Erin, looking into the shot over her shoulder. Her eyes had dropped a half-hitch shut, framed with her pale hair falling to her shoulder. And down that long slope, past the deep curve of her waist, her ass. High, rounded, and still bearing the marks his hand left there four days before. Groaning, he dialed her number.
“Walt? I mean—”
“You sound sleepy,” he said.
“Mmmm…I am. Have to be in at six tomorrow.” She yawned, and the phone rustled against her. “Oh and hi, by the way. You didn’t have to call. It’s late for you.”
He imagined her smiling as she said it and smiled too. “Hey yourself. And I wanted to.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“So how was your meeting?”
“It was fine. Long. Productive, though. I…” He could see her, slanting her eyes away under a raised right eyebrow, as she always did when she didn’t want to say what she was thinking.
“Was your review okay?” He knew the answer already, but a simpler question would ease her open. It was a muddy area, between kinky play and coming closer to D/s, expecting answers to questions he knew she was skirting. When she didn’t respond, he cleared his throat. “Erin, answer me.”
She did, but only after several long, drawn exhales, a sniff or two, and the telltale rustle of her phone sliding under her chin. Finally, she took a short breath. “I miss you, Sir.”
That forlorn note in her voice; it wasn’t usual Erin. The revelation was hard for her, Walt knew, and took time to let it out. “I miss you too.” He rolled to his side. “Have you been doing the drop care I told you to do?”
“Please, not now. I can’t talk about this here. When I think about it, I miss being like that with you, so much I can’t…” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I had to quit reading Claire’s notebook and am focusing entirely on work. But I’ll be okay. I can make it until Thursday.”
“Two more days?”
She laughed a little, quiet and a bit rueful. “I’ll keep eating chocolate and drinking hot tea and taking deep breaths. I’ll get outside when I can for some sun. I can’t promise I will be able to sleep more than I have been. So…” Her voice quaked. “So I’ll do all of those things, because you told me to and Claire wrote about it in her notebook. But…I wish you were here. Can I do that too? Can I miss you?”
“Of course you can—I told you I miss you too.” The conversation was close to running off the rails and the first steps at modeling the formal D/s exchanges he’d watched over the years had evaporated in the face of Erin’s distress. Being there for her was more important than acting like a kinder, gentler version of Paul Saldino anyway. “How was your day?”
“It’s over. That’s the best thing I can say about it. And you called, so it’s ended better than it started.” She sniffed and let out a long, ragged breath.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
“Steve and I agreed to put Alan on an action plan this morning.”
“Oh yeah?” Walt would have fired the asshole months ago. “How did Dirtbag handle his medicine?”
She sighed heavily. “I haven’t done it yet. I’ll meet with him once I’m back at Callahan House,” she said, her voice falling off at the end. She went silent.
“Erin?” If the damn signal dropped now…“Hey, Erin, you still there?”
“I am. Let’s—can we talk about something else?”
“Okay,” he said. “I can let you go if you’re—”
“No. No, I want to talk to you, Walt. Just…I want to not be that person right now. I don’t want to be work Erin, either.”
“All right. Who do you need to be?”
“Right now? Your girlfriend, I think? If that’s what I—”
“Erin, yes. Girlfriend.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, maybe you could tell me a story,” she said softly. “Tell me something about you that I don’t know. Or tell me something that happened to you today in your forest.”
His forest. There she went with that your forest business again, making him grin to himself over this idea she’d always had of Poplar Branch being his domain or something crazy like that. Reaching past his shoulder, Walt tucked his pillow around his head again. “All right. You remember those retirees from the first day you came up to the park?”
“Oh? Estelle and the girls from Long Island?” Her laugh, a real one, bloomed and filled the airspace between them. There was something about making this girl let loose, remember to let go, let herself just relax.
“I think they sent a few more members of their bridge club down. And guess who led them around the Hemlock loop?”
“Sam?” She giggled again. “Sam and a tour group of retired ladies? What happened?”
“Well, it would seem my assistant ranger had a date this evening. With four ladies.”
It felt good to hear the taut edge drop from Erin’s voice as she speculated about Sam Cross’s potential for polyamory. The knot of tension in his shoulder he’d been twisting and popping at all day had disappeared. And, he realized as he listened to her, he heard his own laughter again and again.
Chapter Fifteen
THE FINAL LEG of my flight was three hours late, nearly grounded in Chicago due to weather. Our pilot made an announcement assuring the passengers he could skirt a break in the line of thunderstorms traveling north along the Appalachian Mountains from the Gulf of Mexico and still land in Charlotte close to the original arrival time.
So the captain engaged the Fasten Seatbelts sign somewhere between Nashville and…Ohio? Beneath the clouds was unknown country, one of the few regions Kathy never moved Dani and me to. The plane pitched a little, prompting another reassuring announcement from the cockpit. And I held on, crushing my hand around the cuff of an obscenely overpriced sweatshirt I’d purchased when I changed planes in Chicago. The lulling ef
fects of the glass of wine I’d drunk before boarding in San Jose were long gone and, with the cabin crew restricted to their seats, so was my means of getting another.
There was so much lightning. Rain drove hard against the window beside me. I’d refused to trade the kindly-looking woman beside me for her aisle seat, earning a sour look and stony silence for the rest of the flight. The concave space between my seat and the window provided a sterile, silent cocoon where I could watch, my eyes fixed on the blinking red light perched on the wingtip outside my seat.
If I went down, at least I’d see it coming.
During the initial descent into Charlotte, the plane dropped, more than once. A violent, sudden surprise. Each time, the captain’s voice reassured us all was well. Just a bump…a little turbulence.
But then an intense silence fell over the inhabitants of the plane, as though we were all just willing things to be okay. When the flight crew put wheels to the wet runway in Charlotte, more than one pair of hands came together, applauding our anonymous captains. I couldn’t join them. Until I saw the plane anchored to the gate, I would keep one hand curled around the armrest, the other into the sleeve of my ninety-five-dollar sweatshirt.
Somewhere beneath the dimly lit atrium, spread past the wing that bounced and shook with the force of another wind gust, Walt was waiting. I shut my eyes hard at the thought of him sitting there, waiting so long for me.
Deplaning and the long, chilly march from jetway to concourse seemed to happen to someone else. I was a ghost traveler, hardly aware I passed shuttered stores and dimmed gates, merely following other bodies to the end of concourse. I stepped in time with them, depending on the rule of a crowd to steer me to baggage claim.
And there he was: blinking at me with heavy eyes and mouthing my name. Standing, his long legs pushing him to his feet from a seat that looked too narrow and too hard to have given him any kind of comfort. A paperback book tumbled from his thigh, the spine cracked midway through the pages.
He smiled the familiar half-grin I’d imagined so many times over the past week.
Two thirty a.m. Waiting for me.
“There you are. Hey,” he said as I reached him. I felt him pause, waiting for my usual response—Here I am. Hi—but I couldn’t make the words form. I disappointed him. It seeped from his skin immediately. This was not going how he’d imagined. “Hey, you okay?”
Still avoiding his eyes, I nodded and crouched down for his book. Gavin McCloud, Esq.: Assassin, Plead the Fifth. “Looks like a good one.”
“It lags in the middle,” he said and accepted the paperback from me. “You okay?”
“The flight was full. I had to check my bag.” I turned for the carousel, already lurching along. Walt’s fingers skimmed across my hand and I stopped, inhaling.
“Erin, look at me. I asked you if you’re okay.” His warm skin hovered near mine. I let myself reach for his index finger and no more.
My voice hung in my throat, thick after nine hours of silence. “I am now. The storm—” I wrapped my hand around his finger and didn’t care how juvenile it was. I couldn’t reach any farther. “Walt, I need to not be in an airport anymore.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Stay here. I’ll go get your bag.”
“No,” I said, too quickly, and flinched at it. “I mean, you don’t know which—”
“It’s black and has the ThinkMine hangtag, right? I carried it to the car when I brought you.” His thumb found my wrist, stroked it twice. “You wait here. I’ll be back. All right?”
I nodded silently and crossed my arms across my chest, resolute in my floor-watching. If I looked up, caught sight of him, of his back, walking away from me…
Damn you, Erin. No. Not like this, not in the middle of this place and not like some hysterical woman.
“Got it.” His big hand, splayed wide in the center of my back, was a warm and solid living thing, so much more welcome than the stiff, narrow back of an airplane seat. A real anchor behind me. “I’m parked across the way.”
To me, in the punch-drunk perception of my overstimulated shutdown, Walt said across the way like the traffic lanes outside baggage claim were a river we needed to traverse to get to some place that was his, and called up that phrase, his—our—words I’ve got you. Someone other than me making sure I’d cross to safety. Again, I nearly broke apart. Instead, I let my nerves sink into the heavy bundle of exhaustion, and let him ford the crosswalk.
The short-term parking garage was nearly empty and silent, except for the occasional bark from the wheels of my bag. When Walt finally stopped and stepped from my side, the chirp of a key fob made me jerk back to the present. Instead of his truck, or my car, which he had driven me in to the airport, was Lucy’s sleek black Range Rover.
I stood behind it, watching as he slid my laptop bag and suitcase into the rear hatch. My purse dangled from my elbow, in danger of dropping to the concrete beneath me.
“Where’s your…” I struggled to push the words from my mouth, too tired and too wary of what was churning inside me to make more than a whisper.
“Shhhh,” Walt said into my forehead as he placed a kiss there and took my hand again, leading me to the passenger side. “Thought you’d be more comfortable riding home like this after that flight. C’mon and get in.” He pulled the door open for me. When he took my hand in an attempt to steady me as I climbed in, I tensed. He shouldn’t have to…I don’t need him to…
Yes, I did. So much.
And with that, I wanted to collapse, sobbing, on his shoulder. I wanted Walt’s arms circling me and needed to hear the familiar deep, comforting sounds rumbling from his chest.
I found my breath again and turned my head away, blinking at gritty eyes as I searched through my bag, pretending I needed to blow my nose. Walt shut the door behind me and walked to the driver’s side. Seated behind the wheel, he turned to me, reaching across the console for my hand.
“Erin,” he began.
“I’m sor—” Clearing my throat, I started again, this time with what I needed to say. “Thank you. For the late night and Lucy’s car and…just thank you.”
“You want to get a hotel room, stay here tonight?”
“No.” I shook my head, enough to send my weary senses scrambling again. “I’d like to go home, please? If you are able to drive so late?”
“Sure. Why don’t you try to get some rest?” The big SUV came to life. “We should be there in an hour or so.”
Before we cleared the exit gate, I was asleep.
I opened my eyes again to the sound of his voice calling me sweetheart, his hand on mine.
“Walt?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
And he was, really was. Waking up to him as he leaned into the space where I slept, smelling him, feeling him, with no time to come alert and find mental space between needing him so much and the low-grade terror of the return flight sent me over the edge I’d been peering past since I saw him waiting for me in baggage claim.
“You’re here,” I said, reaching for him. “You’re here.”
“Yeah. Shhhh.” His arms were around me, cradling me against his chest and I rose. “Got you. Shhhh.”
“N—can’t. Walt, you can’t carry me.” My eyes blurred with tears, burning my sandy eyes.
He laughed softly. “Well, better open your eyes then, sweetheart, because I am.”
“Can’t,” I said, my head thumping against his shoulder.
“Hold on to my neck. I’m gonna put you down so I can open the door, okay?”
I felt a whoosh of cooled air and caught the scent of sun and wood and the new bamboo-lotus candle I’d bought the last time I was in Asheville with Claire. Home. I reached for the lights by the front door, but Walt’s hand was already there, turning the switches on.
“Can you make it back to your room? I’m gonna go get your bags.”
“Um…sure. Okay.” I inhaled, heavy and somehow still sharp, and sagged into his arms again. “Hurry back.”
<
br /> Chuckling, he kissed the top of my head and was gone.
I shuffled through my bedtime routine, answering only the most important needs. Walt and I exchanged places in the bathroom.
Before I could rationalize it, I was on my knees, waiting. The bathroom door swung open and he was behind me.
“Hey, baby, I—” He went quiet for a stretch of seconds, then crossed my bedroom, coming to rest in front of me, dressed only in his navy boxer briefs. “What’s this?”
“I need you.” He was so far up there, from down at his feet, and the dim light from my bedside lamp didn’t illuminate his face at all. Being on my knees in front of him, out of the blue, without invitation, and without his careful planning and negotiation from our first scene, was like flinging myself into a narrow, shadowy void.
“Erin,” he began, his voice husky with something. Weariness, wariness, maybe both.
“Sir, please. I don’t know how to explain. I need you to…” He sat at the edge of my bed, in front of me. A good sign, which was very helpful considering I had no idea just how to ask someone to spank me so hard I’d feel put back on the ground again. He reached toward me and tucked my chin into his palm.
“It’s okay, Erin. Don’t worry about right. Just tell me what’s going on.”
The pass of his thumb over my cheek settled me enough to speak again. “I need you.”
“Hm. Need. Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced. Not reluctant; just not convinced.
“I’ve been so…like I’ve been floating all week, here—or there—but not?” The lack of precise words to explain what the ache for him was like frustrated me, and I shook my head at it, once again making my travel-weary self a bit dizzy for my efforts. “It was like being anchorless. It made me miss you more, but the only thing that helped me focus was thinking about this, between us. About calling you Sir and the way you talked to me when we played and what it feels like to…you know—to submit to you. About what it felt like to be yours, and knowing I’d let you be in control. Well, and the chocolate helped too, Sir.”