by Aden Lowe
Flag grinned a little. "Well, see, it's around back. Come on, I'll show you." Did he expect me to pee in a hole in the ground? Or a bucket?
A squat little building sat a slight distance from the back of the cabin. Inside, an elevated platform held two toilet seats, with a roll of toilet paper sitting between them. The rest of the interior surprised me with white-painted walls, a mirror, and a pretty vase on a little table in the corner.
"There's an LED touch light here." He indicated the small fixture just inside the door. "Just tap it to turn the lights on."
I just stood there, looking, more than a little appalled. "An outhouse. There's no plumbing." I couldn't remember a kitchen sink inside, either. "How do you wash your hands? Or dishes? Or anything?" The idea challenged my imagination.
Flag chuckled again. "Come on, I'll show you." He led the way around the front of the cabin to the other side of the clearing. A red contraption with a long handle extended from it stood in the middle of a small concrete square. "Here's the well. It works like this." He raised and lowered the handle several times until water rushed from a spout. "There are buckets inside. We fill those and store them inside to use when we need. We can heat it at the fireplace, so we'll have hot water too." He seemed so proud of the place, I hated to burst his bubble.
"Honey, the great outdoors is wonderful, but it's so not my thing. I'm not sure I can do this." I tried to keep the words light, but some of my fear leaked in too. This place terrified me. Even when I planned to go into the military, I decided on medical support as my specialty. Working in a hospital appealed to me more than any of the other options.
He grinned again, not the least worried. "Consider it a learning experience. You can take photos to show your class. They'll love it."
Well, he did have a point there. I looked around with the critical eye of a Kindergarten teacher. The children would definitely be fascinated, and some things could probably be replicated in the classroom. "Okay. I'll give it a try, but no promises." The place would probably kill me before I made it back to civilization.
Oh no! Work! "Oh my God! I didn't call the school this morning to let them know I wouldn't be there!" I dug in my pocket for my phone, my hands shaking so bad I nearly dropped it.
Flag chuckled, grating on my nerves. "Don't worry, baby—"
"How can you say don't worry? They won't have a substitute and that will leave everything on Carrie! The children will be worried! I simply can't believe—"
He cupped my face in his hands. "Azia. Listen to me. I took care of it this morning."
I paused for a second. "How could you take care of it? You don't have the board number. And if I'm not like in the hospital, they require I call myself. So you couldn't take care of it!" Frustration made my hands shake even worse. Why could he not understand? Surely it wasn't that difficult, right?
"Stop for a minute and I'll tell you." He went silent, waiting until I nodded for him to go on. "I called X-Man and had him tell Carrie to let them know you wouldn't be in today. She called for you, and told them you had a family emergency. All taken care of."
A full minute passed before I could speak. "Flag, I didn't mean to yell at you. My work is the only thing I had until now. Those children are everything. I need to know they're taken care of. I have to call Mrs. Bryant and ask her to cover the rest of the day for me. God only knows who they called in for me." I started scrolling through my contacts, searching for the number. "Should I ask here to cover tomorrow, too?"
"Carrie already called her. She's taking care of your class, and she will for the rest of the week. X-Man told me that when he called back to confirm it was taken care of. So you can relax a little."
I did, just a little, until another catastrophic thought occurred to me. "Wait. How is Richard Riley, or whoever the killer is, going to get here? You have some kind of monstrosity of a truck, and it barely made it through that one hole. He's from the city. He probably drives a small hybrid car, or something like that. We're wasting our time here. And now we're trapped out here with bears and who knows what else." Yes, I was perfectly aware how ridiculous it sounded, but at the moment, I didn't care. The whole thing left me overwhelmed and lost. "And if you laugh at me one more time, I promise, I'll do something you won't like."
Of course, he did exactly that. "Baby, I don't think there are any bears out here, but if there are, I promise, they're more afraid of us than we are of them. Now, you remember I said I left notes, right?"
Impatient, I nodded, more concerned with how we were going to get out of there than with whatever he was saying.
"Okay. One of those notes was that the terrain is very rough, and we would have to rent an ATV. I also left a handy phone number for him so he can rent one himself. Which he will, because he wants to kill me and claim you. And we'll have the advantage of hearing him coming." He pulled me into his arms, but I remained stiff and unconvinced. "Baby, I know this is all scary for you. I know you're worried. But please, trust me with this. I know what I'm doing."
A tear escaped, even though I tried to blink them back, as all of it threatened to simply fall in on me. I couldn't do this. It was too much.
Flag's gentle thumb wiped my tear away. "It's okay, baby. I promise."
I leaned against him and soaked in his confidence, and gradually calmed down. "Okay. I'm sorry. It's just…all of this is so far outside my realm of experience, I'm at a total loss."
"I know." He pushed my hair back and looked into my eyes. "I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you, Azia. You're mine now. I'm not fucking going to lose you again as soon as I've got you back. I just need you to trust me with that. Okay?"
When he put it that way, everything, all the anxiety and fear, melted away. "Okay. I can do that."
He leaned down for a quick kiss. "Good. There's drawers under the bed, and fresh sheets and everything there, if you want to get the bed ready while I plan some surprises for our visitor."
Slightly embarrassed over my meltdown, I went inside to attempt to make the cabin habitable. I found rags in a basket on the shelf that served as a kitchen, and buckets by the fireplace. Outside, the well thing took a little getting used to, but I managed to fill my bucket and lugged it back inside. Hot water and soap would be much appreciated, but I had no clue how to do the fireplace, and I didn't see any soap. Cold water and a rag would have to do.
I spent an hour or so, wiping things down, and sneezing when I stirred the dust up. How long had the place been closed up? It couldn't have been all that long, since the dust was only a thin layer. I looked around, satisfied with my work, and stretched my tired muscles. There had better be a broom somewhere, because I had no intentions of cleaning the floor with a rag. After a quick search, I found it, tucked in next to the fireplace. The smooth floor let go of the dust easily, and it only took a few minutes. Then I found bedding exactly where Flag said it would be, and made the bed.
As I finished straightening the beautiful handmade quilt, Flag came inside carrying an armload of short logs. "Figured you might want a fire to heat up something for lunch soon."
I stood there, watching intently, while he placed the wood in the fireplace and used a cigarette lighter to get several long thin splinters burning, then used them to get more lit, until he had some of the logs going, too. The rest of the logs, he left lying beside the hearth in a dirty heap.
A surprising amount of heat radiated from the fire, but I ignored it for the moment. "You know, I just spent all this time getting rid of the dust and dirt. I can't believe you just brought more in and dropped it there." I felt petty for even mentioning it, but it seriously irked me.
He glanced at the jumble of wood, then bent to stack it neatly. "Sorry. Didn't even think about it. I should make a rack to hold the wood anyway." His contrition struck me as funny. Here was this big strong man apologizing for some dirt after he came in from preparing to catch a serial killer.
It was too much. I covered my mouth, but the laugh still managed to get out. "Don't wor
ry about it."
He straightened and came into my space. "Are you laughing at me, woman?"
I stepped back, nodding and trying to hold back my laughter. The look on his face was just priceless.
Right up until he grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder. "We'll just see about that. I believe I have some promises to keep."
Heat flashed through my body as he stalked to the bed, even while I pretended to object. Then he lowered me gently and pressed me into the soft quilt, his eyes blazing with desire. All thoughts of protest fled as his mouth descended to mine.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Flag
Azia's soft body yielded to me, and heat blasted through me. Her independent nature didn't allow for easy surrender, but she gave that to me. Another thought intruded. How many others had she given her sweetness? I bristled at the thought of any other man touching her, let alone her enjoying it. None of that mattered now though, because I had her back. I couldn't hold it against her when I hadn't been exactly celibate either.
She pulled back a little from my kiss. "What's wrong?" Shit, some of what I was thinking must have shown.
"Nothing, baby. Not a thing." I tried to resume kissing her, but she turned slightly, stopping me in my tracks.
"I'm not buying that, Flag. I can feel it in you. Something is bothering you, and you need to tell me. What did I do?"
I grunted. "What makes you think you did anything?"
Okay, that did it. She pulled away and sat up, hands in her lap. "I can feel it. You're tense. And it has nothing to do with a killer or anything like that. Something I did, or didn't do, is bothering you. Tell me, so we can deal with it and move on." The steely determination in her voice made very clear she intended to keep on it until I told her.
Might as well get it over with. I sat up too. "I'm sorry, Azia. I was thinking about how sweet you are, and then I started to wonder how many other…" I couldn't say it.
The furrow between her eyes disappeared. "None."
My jaw dropped a little. "What?"
She looked down at her hands, then back up to me. "There have been no other men. Only you. Even though you were gone, dead, I just couldn't get close to another man. I even tried a couple of times, but when they started to expect things, I just couldn't." Her gaze never wavered. "There have been other women for you, though."
Oh FUCK! The enormity of her words hit me, rocked me to my core. She kept herself only for me, even when she expected I would never be there. How could she make such a sacrifice? Why had she not just moved on?
Fuck, why wasn't I as strong? She still waited for my reply, even though she hadn't actually asked. "Yeah. There have been." How the fuck could I explain in a way she would understand. "I don't know how many. One night stands. Hook-ups. Empty. Physical. Nothing."
Tears filled her eyes and she looked away.
"I'm sorry, baby. I wish I hadn't done it." I sat back against the wall. "For a long time, I didn't. The other guys in my unit had a ball with it, saying things like I couldn't get it up. The truth was, every night, I fell into my bunk hard as a rock, thinking of you. But I gave in to the pressure. When we hit the bars on the weekends, I fucked whatever was available." Shame burned my face.
"You don't have to be sorry." A faint sob escaped her. "You thought I left you. And you had needs." She fucking ripped my heart out with those words, with the hurt and broken sound of her voice.
"No, I had needs, but only you could satisfy them. I fucked those women, but it just made things worse. It made me need you more. And then I became really angry, both with you, and with myself. I thought I should be able to move on, be with someone else, but I couldn't. It was wrong and I knew it. I cheated you, I cheated them, and I cheated myself." My eyes fucking burned and a lump the size of my truck sat in my chest.
Azia's soft hands cupped my face, bringing my gaze up to meet hers. "It's okay, honey. You don't have to explain."
Pain, unlike anything I ever experienced, ripped through my chest, Pressure blasted through my throat, and a rough sound escaped. I managed a shallow breath, then another spasm hit. Fear cramped through my gut. What the fuck? A heart attack? No! I couldn't die out here and leave Azia at the mercy of a killer and the wilderness.
She pulled me to her and curled up against me. She let me hold on to her tight, sensing the depth of my need. And she held me back, just as tight. "Don't cry, Flag. We have each other now. That's all that matters."
Cry? No fucking way! I couldn't remember the last time I fucking cried, even as a little kid. Not when G-Ma died. The old man warned me not to shame him and I never did. That couldn't be what this was. But it kept happening. I couldn't get a deep breath, couldn't make it stop. My fucking chest and head hurt from the pressure. My goddamn insides fucking cracked. The whole thing left me helpless to do anything other than clutch Azia and ride it out. Why the fuck had I not been stronger? Been true to her? True to myself?
She held me and made soothing sounds, and gradually, it faded. If that was crying, I never fucking wanted to do it again. It left me weak, shaking and exhausted. When it was over, she dried my tears, and hers, and placed a soft kiss on my mouth.
Desperation raged through me, taking me entirely by surprise. "Fuck, Azia, no other woman exists in this world. I don't ever want to think about that part of the past again." I dragged her roughly to me, needing her more than I needed my next breath. She met me with the same frantic need. Our mouths clashed, tongues twining together, leaving us both breathless.
Then Azia pulled away and stood up. "I love you, Flag. I love the man you've become." She pulled her shirt off, and the rest of her clothes quickly followed.
My chest tightened again but I pushed the emotion away and stood up to take her softness into my arms. "I love you, Azia. Don't ever forget that, and never doubt it." Need crashed into me again, and I stripped, not caring where my clothes landed, and lowered her to the mattress again.
Azia pressed to me with her sweet surrender, and I took it. All. I kissed her until we both panted, and then moved to her hard nipples. When that wasn't enough, I parted her thighs to taste her. She came on my mouth, dragging a satisfied groan from me. And then I couldn't wait any longer.
I reached blindly for my jeans and dragged out the pack of condoms I picked up that the gas station. My hands shook as I opened one. Fuck, I couldn't even get the fucking thing on my dick. Shit, I had to go get tested right away. I wouldn't survive condoms much longer. I couldn't wait to feel her wet heat without that separation. "Can't wait 'til we don't fucking need these."
"Me either." Azia took over. "Let me do that." Her soft hands became incredible torture as she rolled the latex down with slow, deliberate movements.
As soon as the damn thing was on, I shoved her back and slid up her body, making sure I touched every sensitive part. Sliding into her felt like…I couldn't describe it, other than knowing it changed my life.
She cried out as I drove into her, over and over, relentlessly focused. Fuck, I was close! I slipped a hand between our sweaty bodies and found her clit. Her nails scored my back, breaking skin with delicious pain, as her body contracted around me. A nuclear explosion wracked my body, centered at the base of my spine and in my balls, and emptied me inside her.
Utterly devastated, I fell over her, struggling to breathe. We lay like that for a long time, until we recovered slightly. Feeling an incredible loss, I gently withdrew from her and took care of the condom. "I fucking love you, Azia."
"Mmm. Come back here."
I followed orders, and we lay there, just holding one another. Her body relaxed completely, and her breathing deepened as she fell asleep. I dozed off, too, to dream of a life with Azia, one where we had a home, kids, peace…everything. Everything I ever hoped for. Everything we should have had from the beginning, before life intervened and tried to take it all away from us.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Flag
I roused up, feeling better than I had for years. A glance at t
he window showed why. Full fucking dark. I slept with Azia in my arms for hours, and no nightmares. Holy shit! I couldn't afford to do that, not in my life, and especially not in this situation. The killer could have walked right in while I was fucking passed out cold. Not to mention, I still had shit to finish outside. About the time that thought hit, my stomach growled.
Azia stirred, and blinked sleepily. "Hi." She curled her sleep-warm body closer. "Mmm, I like this." My dick started to harden, and she circled my shaft with her soft fingers. "I like this, too."
"Oh fuck." Food. Killer. Traps. Perimeter. Finally, I got myself under control a little. "I like the way you like it. But we have to get up." I scooted away a little.
Azia raised up on her elbow, beautiful tits on full display in the flickering light from the lamp I'd left burning earlier. "Are you sure?"
No I was fucking not sure. Fuck. "No. But I have to finish a couple things outside. And I need some fuel. And so do you."
One eyebrow went up. "Fuel? I thought you got gas right before we got here?"
I grinned and stood up. "Not that kind of fuel, baby. The kind to be sure we can fuck our brains out again." Fuck, the way she blushed killed me. In self-defense, I turned to grab my jeans and pull them on. "Stay naked for me? I'll be right back with some water to heat, and by the time it's warm enough to clean you up, I'll be back."
The blush intensified, but she shook her head. "No, I have to find you something to eat. I don't want any delays when you come back inside."
I drew her to her feet and pulled her close so I could palm her sexy ass. "Well, when you put it that way, you need to get something on." I leaned down to kiss her, marveling at how relaxed I felt with her. Giving her ass a light smack, I moved away to find my shirt. "I'll try not to take long."
"Make sure you don't." She gathered up her clothes and started to get dressed. "Let's hope I can figure out the cooking situation here." Fuck, what if she got burned?