by Alexa Davis
“I rushed you.”
“Well, yes. Half the time it feels like an exhilarating roller coaster ride. The rest of the time, I wonder exactly how far over my head I’m in. I’m a solitary person, with a quiet life. I feel like I fell off the ride and I’m being dragged behind it.”
“Wow. That sucks.” He pulled away from me, and instantly I regretted saying anything at all.
“It does. Because I have feelings for you that I’ve been afraid to allow myself before. I know how these things end, at least for me. But no matter how hard I push you away, or what dumb, insecure thing I say, you’re sticking around. We don’t have a history that obligates you to stay.”
“Nope. But, you’re mine, and I don’t give up what’s mine.” His voice had gone dark, and my body reacted instantly, as heat built between my thighs.
He bent his face to me and kissed me, his lips teasing and gentle, coaxing my mouth open so he could slip his tongue in and explore. I tasted wine and flicked my tongue over his lips and into his mouth, and he groaned and pressed his hand to my chest, blindly seeking out the edge of my top and sliding his warm, rough hand over the globe of my breast and massaging it in his palm until I made little sounds of pleasure.
I moved Hope to my folded jacket next to the blanket and laid back, tugging at Logan’s shirt so he’d roll on top of me. He slid his leg between mine and pressed his thigh into me, grinding his hip on me while he kissed my neck and played with my breasts.
Even fully clothed, he was building a fire between my legs, with impulses of pleasure shooting down like electricity from my lips, my neck, my breasts, all coming together in that heat between my legs. I rocked my hips and pressed harder against his thigh.
“I wish you were inside me,” I gasped as he pulled my shirt up and kissed and sucked my nipples. He groaned and sucked harder, until he drove me over the edge. Undoing my jeans and pushing his fingers between my legs as his mouth worked at my breasts, sucking and biting at my nipples until my breathing came in harsh gasps and it was all I could do to keep from crying out.
“I will always come back to you, Heidi,” he said as I came with his fingers inside me. He kissed me gently and thrust again, as I whimpered and lifted my hips to push him deeper into me. “I stumbled onto something special. You can’t deny that this is fate at work.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my hand against his, running my fingers over his skin to feel where he disappeared into me. Slowly, he pulled away, and I sighed in disappointment that suddenly, I was alone in my body.
“How is this real? It shouldn’t be,” I asked. “The first boy I loved spent weeks making me think he liked me, only to serve me up on a platter for humiliation and pain. The next man I trusted tried to force me to give him what he wanted, without caring what it did to me.”
“Then there was me.”
“Then, there was you. Hotter than hell, even covered with dirt and blood, carrying that tiny fawn, and asking for help with the most adorable look of helplessness.” I pushed him away from me and onto his back. I straddled him and rubbed the damp spot on my jeans over the bulge in the front of his pants before lying down on his chest and nipping at his jawline.
“Be careful what you start. We’re in a public place, and we could get caught,” he warned.
“You looked shocked when your eyes met mine,” I continued, reaching down to undo his zipper and push the heavy denim out of the way. His erection burst out of the jeans, pressing against his boxers and throbbing under my hand.
I kept my hand between us, stroking him as I kissed him. His full lips parted in a panting breath, and I slid my tongue over his lips, sending shock waves through my own body. He pulled my face to him, and his kisses deepened as he used his teeth and tongue to tease more sounds from me.
His breathing ragged, he glanced around us and found the denim jacket he’d been wearing. He threw it over my hips and tugged my jeans down my thighs, and I pushed them to my knees, desperate to feel him inside me. Under the shelter of the tree and obscured from the path by the grass and our horses, I shoved my jeans down to the tops of my boots and straddled him, gasping as he slid inside me in a long, wet thrust that made my muscles instantly tighten around him. I rocked my hips and he held me on him by the edges of the jacket that was wrapped around me until I crested the wave of pleasure and cried out, biting off the sound and leaning forward to kiss him.
He came as I sucked on his tongue, holding me in place and throbbing inside me until I felt hot liquid gush out of me onto his torso. Laughing shakily, I held myself up as he wiped his stomach clean and laid me down on him, still sheathed in me.
“We’re going to get arrested,” I panted, bouncing when he laughed underneath me.
“We should probably get dressed so that doesn’t happen.” He laughed again, and as he pulled out of me, a shock went through me, making me gasp. Instantly, he was on alert, worried that I was hurt again.
I shook my head and laughed humorlessly. “I’m not made of glass, Logan. I’ll tell you if it hurts, okay?”
He nodded and tugged his pants up over his hips. I reached for him, teasing him, but the mood was ruined. He brought the horses closer as I dressed and collected the still sleeping Hope and tied my jacket in a sling so she could cuddle against my chest.
He held the jacket while I mounted my horse and handed my makeshift baby carrier up to me. When his hand brushed my leg, my body tingled, and I shivered, making him look up at me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, holding the reins of my mare.
I nodded dumbly and took a deep, cleansing breath. “It’s been more than five minutes since we made love, and I’m jonesing.”
He laughed.
I shrugged. “It’s clear that I will never get enough of you. Thanks for that.”
“Well, then, tomorrow, after your appointment, we should get together. Dinner, six-ish?”
“So, we’ve graduated to dates where you pick me up?” I teased, and he gave me a wide grin.
“I think we’re serious enough to have a predictable dinner date. Considering we’ve done this almost completely backward, I’m not really sure where we can go after this.”
I slipped the reins out of his hand and backed Dotty up a couple of steps, careful not to jostle Hope. “The way we’re going, the next step would be to find a house together, raise some children, and after ten or fifteen years, get married!” I laughed, then shushed myself as Hope shifted and yawned before rolling over in the sling and going back to sleep.
“Oh, honey. One thing I can guaran-damn-tee is that all of those things will happen, just maybe not in that order.”
It was my turn to grin as his words made my face split into a goofy smile that I couldn’t hide if I wanted to.
A young girl at the stables said she’d get our mounts brushed and back to their stalls for five dollars. Logan gave her ten for being an entrepreneur, and I gave her another ten when he walked away, because she was sweet and offered to get them oats as well.
It was another long, quiet drive back to my house, and when he dropped me off, he came in and gathered the things he’d left behind. It felt empty and lonely when the door shut behind him, and irrationally, all I wanted to do was call him back. I’d been alone all my life, in one way or another. Only my own sheer stupidity could be to blame for choosing to be alone when the alternative was a rock-hard body to hold and an artist’s mind to share with.
I picked up my phone, and as I unlocked it, it rang. I picked up and said cautiously, “Hello?”
“Are you done being alone yet? Because I walked out the door and realized that it sucks to be away from you.”
My heart gave a little bounce, and I sighed. “We haven’t ordered pizza yet. There’s this place about five minutes away. It has great ambiance and loud ‘60s rock. We could go there. The Pie is amazing, I’d stake my reputation on their ‘Wise Guy’ deep dish.”
“I’ll be back in two minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I let Hope out into the backyard and quickly changed my top and pulled up my hair, grinning like an idiot the entire time. My heart ached from how happy it made me that he’d called. I’d never felt the way I felt about him. Knowing he felt the same seemed to erase so many hurts from my adolescence and childhood.
I wasn’t just some skinny little kid so sick on chemo that she looked like she was already half in the grave anymore. I hadn’t lied when I told Logan I didn’t want to fight or to live for anyone else. Tomorrow, I’d still go into the hospital alone and learn whatever there was to see about my strange pain and fatigue, and I knew the news wasn’t going to be good.
But I knew that I could handle whatever they had to say. Then, after it was all done, I’d give Logan the chance to stay or go with no hard feelings. It was still nice to know there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, he’d choose to stick around. It had been a long time coming, but it was time for me to realize that everything I’d hoped and prayed for had finally found me.
23. Logan
I sat up in a pine tree that was too thin to hold my weight and prayed that I didn’t fall and break my neck before I had a chance to find out how Heidi was doing. Every time she asked for space, I tried to give it to her, only to turn around and crowd her more, so we’d decided that maybe it was time for me to take that trip up to the Midwest while she recovered at Lago Colina. I thought we’d handled it pretty damn well when the doc told her she had a tumor on her spine. I’d even managed to wait until she was out in the backyard with Hope before I vomited from sheer anxiety.
God, I didn’t want to lose her. She, of course, was tough as nails about it and agreed to do whatever was necessary to get rid of it. That ended up including radiation to shrink it, and surgery to remove it.
Eli had turned out not to be such a bad guy, for being so socially stupid with women. He kept Heidi on, working remotely, and explained to the crew that her cancer made it impossible for her to go into the office. As soon as she’d had her surgery, he’d accept her resignation, and we’d never heard from him again. I appreciated what he was doing, but I’d seen Heidi up until well after midnight right before her treatment, catching up on work. He wasn’t in it for the charity, and I’d been happy to see the last of him.
Boyden gave me a bird call from a few hundred feet away, and I shook my thoughts off and brought my camera up to my face. Using the telephoto lens instead of binoculars, I scoped out the clearing ahead of me, trying to find what Boyden had found.
Five men in army fatigues they’d probably purchased from the Smith and Edward surplus store fanned out among the trees and sighted their guns on the mountain lion we’d been tracking. I started hitting the shutter, getting as many pictures with defining features and faces as possible, while I saw the tree Boyden was in shaking near its crown. Shit. What’s the old fool up to? Poachers weren’t just thugs. They were thugs with a lot to hide and a love of killing things. We’d been told when we arrived that it was a problem, but to steer clear. Even taking pictures was dangerous if it was done from too close.
My heart pounded in my chest hard enough to make it impossible to hold the camera steady. I looked toward Boyden’s prior position through my camera and searched for signs of him in the tree, then on the ground. I found him crouched in the tall grass at the edge of the water that separated us from the hunters. The cougar, however, was getting closer to him, stalking along the water’s edge for muskrat, or hunting the strange large man-shape that had come down from the trees. I swore under my breath and checked the poachers’ positions on the opposite shore. They were still in the trees, but Boyden was now right in the line of fire if they took the cougar down from there.
In a split-second decision, I put my camera back in the sack I’d hung from a hook on my hide/platform and jumped out of the tree to the one adjacent, screaming like a banshee and praying no one shot me for scaring them. The cougar bolted, and two shots rang out, and I instantly checked myself for holes or the agonizing pain I would expect from being shot.
Upon finding my body whole and my pants still urine-free, I shot a “thank you” skyward and started yelling for Boyden. I couldn’t see where he’d hidden anymore, and I feared the worst. I clambered down from my tree, ignoring pine needles in my hair and stuck to my face with sap, running to the place where I’d seen him last.
He was face down in the dirt, and I skidded to a stop, afraid of what I’d find. Hesitantly, I reached out and touched his shoulder, and he flinched and rolled over onto his back. I realized he was gripping his arm, and when I pulled his hand away, it was obvious he’d been grazed by a bullet. Pale-faced and wide-eyed, he sat still and quiet while I tore him a bandage from the bottom of my t-shirt and bound it up.
“I’m glad that was just a shallow wound,” I chided him. “What the heck were you doing? Martyring yourself for the animals won’t get poaching stopped; it’ll just get you dead.”
“Maybe I just trusted you to keep me alive and stop those men.”
“Maybe you planned on getting shot and making headlines for being murdered by poachers.”
“I was going for wounded, not murdered,” he countered. “Hey, look, it worked!”
I couldn’t bring myself to participate in his good mood. “I get that what you do comes with risks. But I don’t want to be the one to have to take pictures of you and hike the Staties back in to claim your body.” I didn’t say it aloud, but I also didn’t want to be the one to go to jail for whatever illegal things we were doing, such as trespassing, unlawful surveillance, and I’m sure a myriad of other things I’d never even heard of.
Boyden hissed as his brain finally acknowledged the pain searing through his arm, and I helped him to his feet, glancing around for the hunters. He was able to walk on his own, and together we collected the things from the blind he’d been using. I climbed up and tossed his things down to him, and he bagged it up as best he could one-handed until I made it back to the ground and could help him.
“You know,” I panted as I climbed down from the tree I’d used, “I need to be available to go to Heidi. I can’t be stuck in some godforsaken podunk town because you pissed off poachers and got shot. Especially since around here, the poachers could be the police.”
“I won’t bore you with the number of North American predators that have gone extinct in the last twenty years,” he replied.
I rolled my eyes and hefted my duffel over my shoulder. “I won’t bother to remind you that dead people can’t save shit. And don’t you dare risk my ability to get home again. You want to pull a stunt like that, do it with someone who doesn’t have obligations to meet back home,” I growled at him, then picked up his duffel bag as well.
“I can carry my own gear,” he huffed, but his eyes were on the ground, and he’d lost his swagger, either from pain or from the guilt that he’d asked me to leave Heidi all alone to photograph the wildlife in the foothills of the Killdeer Mountains when she needed me.
“I got amazing footage, Boyden. More than good enough to make people open their purse strings. Not to mention the great shots of the indigenous people. Lucky for me, you were here. I couldn’t have gotten them to speak to me, let alone invite me into their homes and customs.” I shifted the bags on my shoulders and picked up our pace. Even though his wound didn’t seem life threatening, I wanted a more expert opinion and to get him stitched up.
The reservation was just around the hillside from where we’d chosen to camp out, looking for animals like the cougar to make an appearance. In reality, we were on reservation land, which made me curious as to how the elders would feel about the white poachers I’d caught on film.
The trees rustled and swayed as the breeze moved through them, and I glanced around, wary of the danger still present in the woods. The poachers could have stayed to see who they’d shot. If they realized it was the ‘animal-rights dirtbags’ whose vehicles they’d been vandalizing all week, I was afraid they’d go ahead and finish the job.
I saw
the truck up ahead and tossed Boyden the keys, so he could start her up while I loaded our gear. Every sound, every moving blade of grass, made me twitch. I couldn’t wait to get back onto reservation land and feel safe again. Boyden seemed to feel the same, and watching him peering into the trees as I secured our bags and checked his wound before he climbed into the cab made me feel less paranoid.
“I swear, Logan, something’s out there,” he muttered as I shut the door on him and ran around the truck to climb in on the driver’s side.
“Yeah, Boyd. Five pissed-off game hunters who were planning to bag our momma cougar. I feel like we should check her den now. What if they already got the kittens?”
He shook his head and glanced in the side view mirror. “If they know where the den is, there’s nothing we can do to stop them, other than talking to my friends on the reservation and telling them where we found the den, and where we found the hunters.” He clenched his fists in his lap and let out a shuddering breath.
Boyden was a ridiculously wealthy man who disliked people, generally. He was rude and sexist and seemed to constantly be putting a valiant effort into becoming the most hated man alive, among his acquaintances and strangers alike. But he loved nature, and wildlife, and was a constant source of immense knowledge on subjects of flora and fauna in the wild. I knew he hadn’t given a second thought to whether he was getting me detained or arrested with his stunt. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do, at least short term. Protect the cougar, who we’d named Kira.
“I can do better than tell them where we found the hunters, Boyd. I can show them what they looked like.” I glanced at him sideways as I slowly got the truck moving through the tall grass and uneven ground. He grinned at me and reached over to clap me on the shoulder, grabbing it and shaking me as I tried to navigate our way out of the clearing where we’d parked.